Sunset Boulevard Memories

I came to the United States in 1979; Andrei Konchalovsky arrived soon thereafter. A few years later I started haunting the Cannon Films offices on Sunset like a lovesick puppy. Real reason? I was madly in love with the head of advertising—a stunning, whip-smart, bulimic woman ten years older who could stop my heart with one glance. I made up any excuse to drop by her desk. I was hopeless.

The Entertainment Herald

Then she crushed me with a smile: her big crush wasn't me—it was Chuck Norris. Her exact line, still burned into my brain: "He doesn't even have to take his boots off to jump into my bed."

I stopped wearing boots the next morning and haven't touched a pair since.

That ridiculous heartbreak is how I ended up living inside Cannon's glorious madness, surrounded by the cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus—two loud, proud Israeli powerhouses that Hollywood loved to dismiss as "tasteless." A lot of that dismissal, let's be honest, carried the usual quiet antisemitism the town was so good at. Two Jewish guys who swung for the fences and never bowed? Some people couldn't stomach it.

In my Sunset Memoriess they were pure gold. They filled page after page of The Entertainment Herald—the first bilingual trade publication in the industry, which I founded—with ads that didn't just help us survive, they let us thrive. The Herald reached both Hollywood and Latin American exhibitors, which made it valuable to producers looking south—Golan and Globus got that immediately. They handed me credentials, set visits, everything a hungry 25-year-old publisher-reporter could want.

Jon Voight and Me | Photo by Alex Chionetti

First cover I ever ran, September 1985: RUNAWAY TRAIN, directed by Konchalovsky. I interviewed Jon Voight, watched a baby-faced Eric Roberts tear up the screen (years before anyone knew Julia's name), and saw Rebecca De Mornay own every frame. Voight and Roberts both walked away with Oscar nominations—well earned.

(Little footnote: Menahem himself directed the Israeli film El Dorado that scored an Oscar nomination. The guy could do anything.)

Sunset Boulevard Memories

Sitting here tonight, I'm still floored. A 25-year-old immigrant who started out chasing a woman who only wanted Chuck Norris somehow ended up ringside for film history—Golan yelling in half-Hebrew, half-English, Jon Voight quoting poetry between takes, Konchalovsky fresh from the Soviet Union directing an American action classic.

I was young, clueless, and insanely privileged to be in that room at that exact moment. Founding The Entertainment Herald, meeting those giants—it still feels like it happened to somebody else.

Grateful doesn't even begin to cover it.