The actor Harvey Keitel and I are good friends and we go way back. For any of you who hate movies and Hollywood as I do, Keitel is your man. He was on Broadway for ten years then made Mean Streets, the first of many gritty films with Robert De Niro depicting young Italian toughs around tough New York neighbourhoods. De Niro and Keitel are very close friends, but the latter is a very open person, not at all shy or — God forbid — a Hollywood type. We became fast friends as soon as we were introduced. It went something like this: Me: ‘What’s a nice little Jewish boy from Brooklyn doing in the Marine Corps instead of being down on Wall Street?’ Harvey, while bursting out laughing: ‘Who is this guy? I like him.’
We’ve been buddies ever since. One night my young son came home and announced he had just seen Bad Lieutenant, in which Harvey plays a drug-sodden cop who screws everything in sight while shooting up heroin and chasing bad guys. J.T. went on and on about the film, so I told him to make sure to come to dinner the next evening at the Monkey Bar. I had Keitel and his wife Daphna for dinner, and when my boy saw Harvey his eyes nearly popped out. Bad Lieutenant was a very powerful film, as were Mean Streets, Reservoir Dogs and Taxi Driver — in which Harvey played Jodie Foster’s pimp.
But my favourite is The Duellists, Joseph Conrad’s Napoleonic saga about an obsessed French officer who keeps challenging a brother officer to a duel throughout their careers for no apparent reason. The atmosphere alone is worth the admission price. Harvey from Brooklyn speaks Brooklynese in the film and carries it off.
Keitel enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was 17, ‘with two other Jewish kids from my neighbourhood’.
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