Posted 10:23 AM by Scoobie Davis

Brushes With Greatness
I'm not a starstruck person but one of the best things about being in LA is meeting famous people. There are many events in LA in which there is the opportunity to meet famous people (e.g., at last month's LA Times Festival of Books, I met Howard Fineman and Cathy Silvers, the daughter of Phil Silvers who is best known for her role as Jenny Piccalo on Happy Days).

Also, because a lot of famous people live and/or work in LA, it's not uncommon to see famous people in one's day-to-day life. For instance, I bumped into Fabio at the supermarket and Miguel Ferrer outside a movie theater.

Yesterday, I went to get some coffee in Santa Monica and I met and spoke with actor Stanley Herman, famous (or infamous) as "Uncle Hank," the "ass-to-ass guy" from the acclaimed film Requiem for a Dream (though the montage that included the scene Herman was in was really downbeat, here are some amusing comments about the role on an Internet forum). I spoke with him for a few minutes; he told me about working with Darren Aronofsky on Requiem and Pi. He's a really nice guy.