Why is it that once I begin to watch a David Lean movie, especially one of his epics, I am completely drawn in? I think because he understood how to create an “epic” in a way that no one else did at the time (50s, 60s), and because his films were underscored with that wonderful sense of British understatement that communicated, so subtly, all the things that could not be openly shown: sexuality, violence, madness…

I’m not expressing this well. Suffice to say that from the opening scene of the bike wreck in Lawrence of Arabia, where he died on that beautiful Brough, to the closing scene of the emotionally broken Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), being driven away from the desert after the Turks had been defeated (which he had been fundamental in achieving, but which cost him greatly as war costs everyone), with a dispatch rider passing him at breakneck speed, so that the flick starts and ends with a bike–suffice to say that everything that passes in between these two scenes is of epic scope, from the filming to the writing to the acting. Never mind that the movie had little to do with Lawrence’s actual life, this is cinematic art at its best. Omar Sharif was as brilliant as Anthony Quinn, who was as brilliant as Claude Reins, all of it reinforced by O’Toole. Only Lean could have pulled this off, the way he did in Zhivago, the way he almost did in River Kwai. Lord, what a talent.

Went to a client’s house this afternoon to discuss how we are going to hang a Vernon Brecha glass sculpture in his foyer: 150 pieces of glass, 200 lbs. How are we going to hang it? That ain’t my problem, that’s Erin Holliday’s. I hired her for the job. Now it’s hers. I’m sure the result will be brilliant.