George Plimpton tries out for the Detroit Lions in what would later become his bestselling book, The Paper Lion.
I recently watched the movie “When We Were Kings”. This is a documentary that revolves around the heavyweight boxing fight between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman.
I’d safely call it the greatest documentary I’ve ever seen. The fight, the context and the perspectives all make for an entertaining…
A Talk with George by Jonathan Coulton
My Coulton-fest continues. This song celebrates George Plimpton and his approach to living life to the fullest. It makes me both joyous for how things could be and sad about how things are.
Ag
(via kidpretentious)
An awesome picture posted on Slate.com to coincide with the new Mad Men season.
NEW YORK CITY—A literary cocktail party at George Plimpton’s Upper East Side apartment. Plimpton is seated at left with literary agent Maggie Abbott next to him. At top, left to right: Jonathan Miller, Gore Vidal, Ricky Leacock, Robert Laskey, and Paul Heller. In background, left to right: Ralph Ellison and Peter Matthiessen. Center: Walter Bernstein (seated on couch with back to camera), Sydney Lumet (behind Bernstein to right), Mario Puzo (leaning against mirror), Jack Richardson (tall man, front, right foreground), Arthur Kopit (foreground, right), Frank Perry (left of Kopit), Eleanor Perry (left of Frank), Arthur Penn (obscured behind Eleanor), and Truman Capote (center on couch), 1963.© Cornell Capa C / Magnum Photos
In his frequently excellent book Fireworks, the late George Plimpton had occasion to mention a Hitchcock scene:
Do you remember Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief, their union symbolized by a great crash of fireworks outside their balcony overlooking the harbor of Monte Carlo? The only thing wrong with that scenario, it has always seemed to me, is that any normal couple would be out on the balcony enjoying the fireworks, and not inside tumbling around on a bed.
Really, George? Grace Kelly is in the hotel room ready to go, and you’re going to put her on hold to take a peek at some sparklers?
From Troy Patterson’s article Fireworks Suck- They Really Do
time magazine’s famous literary drunks & addicts:
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961): Booze
Notorious for making fun of his fellow writers who sought relief from their own alcoholism (when Fitzgerald admitted that alcohol had bested him, Hemingway urged him to toss his “balls into the sea — if you have any balls left”), Papa himself was an increasingly messy drunk. George Plimpton once famously observed that by the end, Hemingway’s ruined liver protruded from his belly “like a long fat leech.”
George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals, and a Few Unappreciative Observers - Nelson W. Aldrich
George Plimpton was an interesting character. From his tenure at the Harvard Lampoon to becoming…
George Plimpton in the irony of all ironies hosting a “Best of” collection on Married With Children 1995.
