Christmas photos from Atlantis Bookstore, Oia Santorini, Greece..

Some photos from the fb site of Atlantis Bookstore in Oia, Santorini.. I wasn't there this Christmas en I missed them, as much as I missed  the Christmas Eve ceremony, and the "ave Maria's" from  the women's Dominican Catholic Monastery of Santa Irene, in Fira too.. 
Ending the post I am sharing Graig's Walzer enlighting appearance, in the TEDxAthens 2012.. The title of his so much humurous, best stand up role there was : "Artful Lies and Shelves of Fiction"..

Happy Christmass to me, the only reader of this blog and to "all" of you who accidentally are readin "all" of these..

Please copy en paste the belowmentioned link because I can't reload that here..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPtgzNMX7uo&list=LLIZEeWx3HYiFzpjNUdz6OrQ

Επιστολή μου προς Κορνιθίους Α'

Επιστολή μου προς Κορνιθίους Α' σχετικά με κλαδικά θέματα Εφοριακών πληναδέλφων..

Διάβασα την χριστουγεννιάτικη ευχητική επιστολή των νησιωτών (?) συναδέλφων και θα σας παρακαλέσω πολύ σύντροφοι να δημοσιεύσετε και μια δικιά μου..

Δεν περιμένουμε από τον Εχθρό μας να μας σώσει.. Αφού στο λέει καθαρά και ξάστερα πως θέλει να σε βιάσει.. Τι του ζητάς.. Συγχώρεση για τις αμαρτίες Του ?

Πάμε καλά. ?

 Ποιον παρακαλάμε τους μεγαλεμπόρους κάθε είδους μονομανιακών ιδιοτελών συμφερόντων να μας σώσουν, είτε λέγονται αρμόδιοι υπηρεσιακοί παράγοντες, που βάζουν πρόεδρο της επιτροπής ΜΟΝΟ ΓΙΑ ΕΜΠΟΡΟΥΣ,  κλεισίματος, έναν πιτσιρικά, ειδικό στην διαχείρηση αποβλήτων (κάποια συνάφεια, τουλάχιστον εδώ την βλέπω) ή κάποιους άλλους που περισσότερες φορές από "καλημέρα" έχουν μιλήσει και μιλάνε για απολύσεις και λουκέτα, πασκίτες και δακίτες, που το μόνο που τους ενδιαφέρει και η μοναδική αφορμή ξεσηκώματος είναι α αφαίρεση της κουτάλας από τα ελεγκτικά έργα.. Απείλησέ Τους με κλείσιμο ΦΑΕΕ και ΕΘΕΚ και θα δεις πως θα σκούξουνε οι λεχρίτες.. 

Συνδικαλισμός ηγεσίας -  κορυφής, ΧΩΡΙΣ ΤΑΞΙΚΗ ΣΥΝΕΙΔΗΣΗ, χωρίς αυτοθυσιαστική αυταπάρνηση με Έρωτα για την Ζωή, ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ σε οποιονδήποτε και οτιδήποτε νεκρόφιλο δεν γίνεται .. Τι να κάνουμε.. 

Εδώ και ο γνωστός πρασινοφρουρός ο κ.κ. Μπαλασόπουλος κάλυψε καταλήψεις και εμείς περιμένουμε υποστήριξη από ζάμπλουτους χομπίστες ?

Ο ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ ΣΟΥ Η ΖΩΗ ΜΟΥ είναι.. 

Οταν σε πιάνουν από τον καρύτζαφλο και περιμένουν πότε θα ψοφήσεις για να τους αδειάσεις την γωνιά, δεν παρακαλάς και δεν περιμένεις μάννα από βρυκόλακα ..

Σήμερα στην ΔΟΥ Θήρας, απήργησα μόνο εγώ με τα πέντε δάνεια.. Εχουμε να κάνουμε και με αναδέλφους  βούδια ως επί τω πλείστων, τι να κάνουμε..

Δεν έχω τι να προτείνω γιατί γεννήθηκα 10/2/68 ημέρα διάσπασης του ΚΚΕ και όχι το Μαη του ΄68, οπότε διακατέχομαι από την αιώνια γκανεμιά της σκατίνας..

Καλή Ανάσταση και καλή αντάμωση στα τελικά που έλεγε και ο Ίκαρος της ΕΛΠΑ..

Εκλογές στον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ Θήρας (Σαντορίνης)

Πραγματοποιήθηκε σήμερα, Κυριακή 25 Νοεμβρίου 2012, στην αίθουσα συνεδριάσεων της SantoWines στον Πύργο, η Γενική Συνέλευση, της Τοπικής Οργάνωσης Θήρας, του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ.

Η Γενική Συνέλευση εξέλεξε τη Γραμματεία του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ Θήρας καθώς και τους αντιπροσώπους για την Πανελλαδική Συνδιάσκεψη του κόμματος, που θα πραγματοποιηθεί στις 30/11-2/12.

Για την Γραμματεία εκλέχτηκαν οι:
Πατραμάνη Ανθή, Καντζέλης Χρήστος, Δαμίγος Ηλίας, Παγκαλίδης Κύρος, Σιγάλας Πάρης, Παπαλέξης Γιώργος, Ρουσσάκη Μαργαρίτα

Αναπληρωματικά μέλη : Παγκαλίδης Δημήτρης και Ζήκος Χάρης

Αντιπρόσωποι στην Πανελλάδική Συνδιάσκεψη οι:
Πατραμάνη Ανθή, Κωσταντινίδης Αντώνης, Καντζέλης Αντώνης, Τσιγαρίδας Κώστας

To Ireland, a Son’s Journey Home

By FRANK BRUNI NEW YORK TIMES

I read today the down mentioned Frank's Bruni article of New York Times paper/ Travel..I love Ireland, especially the countrysides aspcts en I posted that for my beloved Reader : Me..

MY mother was mad for the color green. She carpeted rooms in it, upholstered furniture with it and assembled her wardrobe from it, in all of its shades: Kelly and hunter, pistachio and olive, moss and myrtle. For my sister’s wedding she wore an emerald dress. I thought back then that she was trying to match her eyes. I realized only recently that something bigger and deeper was at work.

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You see, I finally visited Ireland. I say “finally” because I should have gone long ago, in tribute to her, in acknowledgment of the Irish in her background, her blood and mine. But that part of our heritage got lost when she married an Italian and was swept into his Italian clan, which was so thoroughly steeped in its ethnicity — and so exuberant about it — that none other had any chance. She learned to make ravioli and frittata with the best of them, and I grew up thinking of myself simply as Italian, in spite of my pale skin and freckles, which mirrored hers. I even went on to learn Italian and to live briefly in Italy, using it as a base to explore much of Europe. Except for Ireland. Somehow, I kept forgetting about it.

I went in mid-September, and I went mostly, truth be told, because it promised spectacular scenery, bountiful seafood and an infinity of pubs, which my traveling partner, Tom, was especially excited about. We covered as much of the country as we could in a week’s time, dipping into Cork as well as Dublin, logging over 700 road miles, lounging beside a lake in the southwest and ambling along a creek in the northwest.

But I also went for a sort of communion with, and investigation of, Mom, who died almost 16 years ago. It was like an adult version of that classic children’s book “Are You My Mother?” except that I wasn’t a lost bird asking a kitten, a dog, a boat. I was a grown man asking a country.

It was on Day 2, on the road between Dublin and Cork, when it hit me that the greens that decorated Mom’s days were the greens that decorate Ireland. You read about them before you come — about their depth, shimmer and variety — but books can’t capture the way the hue of the hillside in front of you, fleeced with sheep, will be markedly different from that of the hillside behind you, flecked with cows. Nor can books convey the sudden shift in these colors with the arrival of a cloud or the onset of rain, which seems to fall four or five times daily and would be infuriating were it not the very agent of this verdant patchwork. Beauty has its price, and in Ireland it’s a soggy one.

I didn’t have relatives to look up or areas of the country to home in on. Mom had never carefully traced her family tree. She knew only that she was a British Isles amalgam and that Ireland was prominent, and maybe predominant, in the mix. Italian-Irish: that’s what she told my three siblings and me we were.

And it was time — long past time — to focus on the far side of the hyphen.

I SHOULD make something clear right away, especially since I’ve already mentioned food several times and, like many travelers, put it at the center of every journey. While Ireland is Italy’s peer in natural beauty, it isn’t on the culinary front. As a visitor you just have to make peace with that. By eating carefully I ate well, and there were also serendipitous delights, most notably a fish-and-chips that I’ll return to in a bit. But certain clichés exist for a reason and hold true over time, which is another way of saying that I had potatoes coming at me everywhere I turned.

In Ireland, “and chips” is a phrase that annotates much more than fish. It’s ever-present and all-purpose. One pub near the Rock of Cashel, a cluster of medieval buildings on a hilltop in County Tipperary, advertised a lunch special of lasagna and chips. A fashionable, relatively new riverfront restaurant in Cork named Electric served chips alongside a steak that was already resting on a bed of mashed potatoes, and Electric was a model of spud restraint in comparison with what was actually my favorite among the restaurants I visited, the Winding Stair, in Dublin. There my stuffed cabbage was filled with mashed potatoes and placed beside what tasted like a thin potato purée, which abutted wedges of roasted potato. The kind word for this would be redundancy. The accurate one would be overkill.

  

For the rest of this best article from Frank Bruni please follow the link / New York Times/ Travel / October.26/2012 :          http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/travel/to-ireland-a-sons-journey-home.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=frankbruni

Κατάληψη ΔΟΥ Θήρας

Σήμερα την 26η του Οκτώβρη, από τις πρωινές ώρες,  σύσσωμες οι ομοιοεπαγγελματικές ενώσεις και οι παραγωγικοί φορείς του νησιού της Σαντορίνης, προέβησαν σε κατάληψη του κτιρίου που στεγάζεται η ΔΟΥ Θήρας, αντιδρώντας δυναμικά στην ανθρωποκτόνα απόφαση, της μετακόμισης της τοπικής Εφορίας στην Νάξο..Δεν μας έφταναν τα υπόλοιπα σφαγιαστικά μέτρα και οι ετσιθέλικες πρακτικές των  επιτροπειών των κάθε είδους  σοφολιογιοτάτων και εθνοσωτήρων, που μας έχουν φέρει κυριολεκτικά σε βιωτικό και υπηρεσιακό θάνατο, έρχονται τώρα με νέες νεκρόφιλες διαθέσεις να ασελγήσουν στα πτώματά μας και να μας αποτελειώσουν.. Για να γλυτώσουν το νερό και το ρεύμα του ιδιόκτητου κτιρίου όπως οι ίδιοι κυνικά λένε και να δείξουνε "έργο αναδιάρθρωσης" στους ξένους δυνάστες, ξεριζώνουν δεκαπέντε οικογένειες, τις φορτώνουν με νέα θηριώδη έξοδα, δαπάνες και ένα σωρό άλλες τρομαχτικές υποχρεώσεις, και στέλνουν ομαδικά, χιλιάδες ήδη καταταλαιπωρημένους πολίτες από την  Σαντορίνη, την Ίο, την Φολέγανδρο, την Ανάφη. την Σίκινο, την Θηρασιά, να ναυλοναυμαχούνε στα φουρτουνιασμένα, πελάγη του Αιγαίου και της γραφειοκρατίας, Στο "τεχνοκρατικά" συγκαμένο κεφαλάκι τους, όλα είναι εύκολα.. Πατάς ένα κουμπί και βγαίνει μια χοντρή.. Τα λέγαμε χρόνια.. Πολλά.. Εις ώτα κωφά..  Κάποιοι μονομανιακά ιδιοτελείς από τα δύο δεξιά κόμματα, έπαιζαν τα δικά τους παιγνιδάκια, εκπροσωπώντας όχι εργαζομένους, αλλά το εξογκωμένο τους Εγώ.. Τώρα όμως, από το κακό μας, έχουμε λυσσάξει.. Και είμαστε πια πολλοί.. Να δούμε λοιπόν ποιόν θα δαγκώσουμε..

Chan Marshall, The absolute Fall's Beauty Icon..

                         Fallinspiration: Chan Marshall

I haven't posted one of these in awhile (make that: I haven't post anything in awhile), but I was

 feeling inspired by Chan Marshall of Cat Power today. There is something 

effortlessly cool about her style, and I'd give the Girl a big high five if I could. Here's an e-five to you, 

Chan.

Source : blythehill.blogspot.gr 


One of my fave Cat Power tunes:

Heres the GQ article about Chan 

Sept/12, issue

No One Cat Should Have All That Power

Post-breakdown, post-breakup, Chan Marshall is finally ready to go big time. Only took nine albums

BY JESSICA HOPPER

£ΜÀÄ­¼²Á¹¿Â 2012

Singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, hasn't released an 

album of original music since 2006's The Greatest, a raw, soulful tour de force.

 Life got rougher  after that. The epically troubled singer suffered a psychotic 

breakdown in 2006 and had to  cancel a tour, leaving her nearly bankrupt and

in foreclosure.  But now she's back with Sun, her ninth Cat Power record, 

on which she's shed her  band and her sad-indie-chanteuse sound for  some- 

thing pissed off, alive, and masterful. She spoke with GQ from a sidewalk café 

in Hamburg, where she was  having a drink or two.

What have you been up to the past few years?
I moved to Los Angeles to be with a man I loved. I started making this record three 

and a half years  ago in Silver Lake, and then someone from the label said the 

songs sounded like "old, depressing Cat Power." I got depressed and didn't work on

them for eight months. I got the itch again, but then I ran out of money. I cashed 

in a bond  and bought some gear and rented a house in Malibu and wrote these 

other songs. I saw on the Internet this morning that it was "a breakup record,"

 and it made me wanna hit 

something, because we broke up a couple of months after the record was done.

 It's like it invalidates it somehow.

Sun doesn't sound like a breakup record. It sounds like you're riled up.
It's an outrageous time. It's not a politics record, but I am a human being

 from America. I'm not super-educated, but I give a shit.

I felt like I was hearing your inner Mary J. Blige come out.

I would love to have that kind of pride—that Mary J., Beyoncé pride. Hip-hop 

and R&B  is mostly what I listen to. I don't have a connection with punk rock

—I just never had that experience. I listened  to [Blige's] The Breakthrough

 when I was coming out of the  hospital; I was on that. 

There's a lot of talk about how this is going to be your big crossover 

record.  Is that why  you finally got a manager?

I got told so many times I needed a manager. For a long time I resisted, and 

I finally got one so I can pay my mortgage, and it helped me from becoming 

a homeless person.

You're offered a lot of opportunities, but it seems like you mostly say no. 

How  do you  know what to turn down?

I am just going where the wine takes me. I got more guts than brains, 

and that's my problem. My gut taught me a lot, so I know a little bit. 

Does that answer the question? [laughs] This is my ninth record. I still don't

 believe it. I definitely thought I would be  married and have a couple of 

children by now. I always thought for a boy's name... 

 I think it's Sarah in the Bible, she never found love, and finally a good man

 shows up: Boaz. 

I always thought I would name my son  Boaz Mexico. "Mexico" just 

because it sounds good. I had a dream I had a daughter and we were on 

the beach and she was sayin' "Mama! Mama!" and I opened my eyes and

 the sun was  behind her head and I called her Tumbleweed. What do you

 think of the name Tumbleweed for a girl? 

It's hard to imagine it on a business card.

There will be no President Tumbleweed. [laughs] Since this is for GQ, can you 

make sure they Photoshop me to look like I have a big penis?

Read More http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201209/cat-power-interview-chan-marshall#ixzz26jnYXSNP

I have forgiven Jesus, Moz / Morrissey

Moz will be at Athens Greece, Lycabettous Theatre,  in a few days, but I have no money to go from Santorini isl.. Thats one of the reasons I got in mind, the belowmentioned lyrics from his song "I've forgiven Jesus".. What a Poetry..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was a good kidI wouldn’t do you no harmI was a nice kidWith a nice paper-roundForgive me any painI may have brung to youWith God’s help I knowI’ll always be near to you

But Jesus hurt meWhen He deserted me, but
I have forgiven JesusFor all the desire he placed in meWhen there’s nothing I can do with this desire
I was good kidThrough hail and snowI’d go just to moon youI carried my heart in my handDo you understand?Do you understand?
But Jesus hurt meWhen He deserted me, but
I have forgiven JesusFor all of the love he placed in meWhen there’s no one I can turn to with this love
Monday, humiliation, Tuesday, suffocationWednesday, condescension, Thursday is patheticBy Friday, life has killed meBy Friday, life has killed me
Why did you give me so much desire?When there is nowhere I can goTo offload this desire?And why did you give me so much loveIn a loveless world?When there is no one I can turn toTo unlock all this love
And why did you stick me inSelf-deprecating bones and skin?Jesus, do you hate me?Why did you stick me inSelf-deprecating bones and skin?Do you hate me?Do you hate me?Do you hate me?...

Η μούγκα των ασβών..

Μοναδικός ένοχος ο Ακης και μοναδικά σκάνδαλα στην ελεεινίτσα η siemens και το βατοπαίδι..

Μετά από τις δεκάδες αγορές του αιώνα, τα εκατοντάδες αεροπλάνα μόνο για εμπόρους, τους πυραύλους, τις πυραυλακάτους, τα βαπόρια, τα τραίνα, τα ποταμόπλοια, τα διαστημόπλοια και τις λοιπές θηριωδίες των διαστημικών υπερτιμολογήσεων της άκρως δυσαναλόγου ωφελιμότητας, τις επιδειξιομανικές υπό της σκατίνος αναβολικοολυμπιάδες υπερταχείας αναθέσεως, τα χιλιάδες δημόσια φαραωνικά έργα, τα χιλιάδες γιοφύρια της Αρτας για τον Υπεράρτο τον ΥπερΟύσιο, τα μοναδικά σκάνδαλα στα τελευταία 38 χρόνια της διαολοκαβαλημένης αδηφαγίας, είναι ΜΟΝΟΝ τα 3 στραβά αρμενίζοντα υποβρύχια και κάποια torr πυραυλάκια γάλακτος..

Καμία άλλη μνεία, καμία άλλη αποκάλυψις, όλα τα υπόλοιπα καλώς και ηθικώς καμωμένα..
Κανένας άλλος ένοχος, κανείς, τίποτα, ούτε ψίθυρος, παρά μόνον ο Άκης με την σουσουδοκοπέλα του..
Ακόμα και αυτός όμως ο απίστευτος τύπος, θα την είχε γλυτώσει εύκολα, αν εξέλειπαν οι προηγούμενες γνωστές έρευνες επί του προκειμένου, της γερμανικής δικαιοσύνης..
Και κατά τα άλλα μας φταίνε οι ξένοι και όχι η χειρότερη, η πιο ιδιοτελής, η πιο μονομανιακή, η πιο εγωπαθής, η πιο εγωκεντρική φάρα που αναδύθηκε ποτέ στη παγκόσμια ιστορία..
Αυτή του βρωμερού νεοέλληνα..

Terry Papadinas, the "T 4 Trouble and the Self Admiration Society (2009)" docymovie from Mr Dimitris Athiridis ..

Terry Papadinas,  a charismatic rockmusicMagicMaker, a "rock's greatest single body of riffs" in 70's rock stage in Greece, and an epic movie from Dimitris Athiridis..!! 

I have seen that in Athens "Trianon" cinema, Patision, three yrs ago.. The afterparty at "An" club, Exarheia, with Him, playing his awe(inspiring)some songs was just unforgettable..

God bless You..

For much more about this movie : http://www.polytropon.gr/new_polytropon/htmls/record.php?id=147

Diner movie, 1982.. The influense..

Much Ado About Nothing

For a little movie without special effects, dramatic reveals, or cutting-edge sex scenes—a movie about nothing at all, really—Barry Levinson’s 1982 comedy,Diner, caused a tectonic shift in popular culture. It paved the way for Seinfeld, Pulp Fiction, The Office, and Judd Apatow’s career, and made stars of Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin, and Paul Reiser. Three decades later, S. L. Price reports how a novice director and his raw cast broke all the rules—and stumbled into genius.

By S. L. Price

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PAUL REISER.

TABLE TALK On the set of the Fells Point Diner, 1981; the diner itself had been trucked to Baltimore fromNew Jersey. From left: Tim Daly, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Reiser.

Nick Hornby knew better, but he didn’t care. Because suddenly there was that face—the upturned nose, the lupine grin, the wary expression barely softened by the passage of, what, three decades now? Everyone else in the London club that December night was flittering around Colin Firth, set aglow by the Oscar buzz for his performance in The King’s Speech. Hornby let them flit. For here stood … Kevin Bacon. Undisturbed. That knowing smirk may have derailed him as a leading man, but it has allowed for a career of darker, richer roles—and allows him still to cruise a cocktail party longer than most boldfaced names without some fanboy rushing up to say how wonderful he is.

God knows, Hornby had seen that too often: an actor friend, eyes darting, cornered by a gushing stranger. This belated celebration of Firth’s 50th birthday was a private bash where artists and actors, people like Firth and Bacon—and, well, Hornby—could expect to relax. After all, between best-selling books such as About a Boy and a 2010 Academy Award nod earlier in the year for his screenplay for An Education, he had been cornered plenty himself.

Yet when he saw Bacon, Hornby couldn’t help it. He edged closer. It was like that scene fromDiner when Bacon’s buddy sees a boyhood enemy in a crowd and breaks his nose: Hornby had no choice. In 1983 a girlfriend had brought home a tape of director Barry Levinson’s pitch-perfect comedy about twentysomething men, their nocturnal ramblings in 1959 Baltimore, their confused stumble to adulthood. Hornby was 26, a soccer fanatic, a writer searching for a subject. Diner dissected the male animal’s squirrelly devotion to sports, movies, music, and gambling. Diner had one man give his fiancée a football-trivia test and had another stick his penis through the bottom of a popcorn box. Hornby declared it, then and there, “a work of great genius.”

Midway through the movie, the ladies’ man Boogie, played by Mickey Rourke, is driving in the Maryland countryside with Bacon’s character, the perpetually tipsy Fenwick. They see a beautiful woman riding a horse. Boogie waves the woman down.

“What’s your name?,” Boogie asks.

“Jane Chisholm—as in the Chisholm Trail,” she says, and rides off.

Rourke throws up his hands and utters the words that Hornby, to this day, uses as an all-purpose response to life’s absurdities: “What fuckin’ Chisholm Trail?” And Fenwick responds with the line that, for Diner-lovers, best captures male befuddlement over women and the world: “You ever get the feeling there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”

In all, the scene encompasses only 13 lines of dialogue—an eternity if you’re Bacon at a party and a stranger knows them all. But Hornby wouldn’t be stopped. “I pinned that guy to the wall, and I quoted line after line,” Hornby recalls. “I thought, I don’t care. I’m never going to meet Kevin Bacon again. I need to get ‘What fuckin’ Chisholm Trail?’ off my chest.”

The Invention of Nothing

Hornby could not have planned a more apt tribute: Diner introduced to movies a character who compulsively recites lines from his favorite movie—and nothing else. And Hornby’s subsequent books about a fan obsessed with Arsenal football (Fever Pitch) and another obsessed with pop music (High Fidelity)—two postmodern London slackers who could easily have slid into a booth at the Fells Point Diner—are only the most obvious branches of the movie’s family tree.

Made for $5 million and first released in March 1982, Diner earned less than $15 million and lost out on the only Academy Award—best original screenplay—for which it was nominated. Critics did love it; indeed, a gang of New York writers, led by Pauline Kael, saved the movie from oblivion. But Diner has suffered the fate of the small-bore sleeper, its relevance these days hinging more on eyebrow-raising news like Barry Levinson’s plan to stage a musical version—with songwriter Sheryl Crow—on Broadway next fall, or reports romantically linking star Ellen Barkin with Levinson’s son Sam, also a director. The film itself, though, is rarely accorded its actual due.

Yet no movie from the 1980s has proved more influential. Diner has had far more impact on pop culture than the stylistic masterpiece Bladerunner, the indie darling Sex, Lies, and Videotape, or the academic favorites Raging Bull and Blue Velvet. Leave aside the fact thatDiner served as the launching pad for the astonishingly durable careers of Barkin, Paul Reiser, Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, and Timothy Daly, plus Rourke and Bacon—not to mention Levinson, whose résumé includes Rain Man, Bugsy, and Al Pacino’s recent career reviver, You Don’t Know Jack. Diner’s groundbreaking evocation of male friendship changed the way men interact, not just in comedies and buddy movies, but in fictional Mob settings, in fictional police and fire stations, in commercials, on the radio. In 2009, The New Yorker’s TV critic Nancy Franklin, speaking about the TNT series Men of a Certain Age, observed that “Levinson should get royalties any time two or more men sit together in a coffee shop.” She got it only half right. They have to talk too.

What Franklin really meant is that, more than any other production, Diner invented … nothing. Or, to put it in quotes: Levinson invented the concept of “nothing” that was popularized eight years later with the premiere of Seinfeld. In Diner (as well as in Tin Men, his 1987 movie about older diner mavens), Levinson took the stuff that usually fills time between the car chase, the fiery kiss, the dramatic reveal—the seemingly meaningless banter (“Who do you make out to, Sinatra or Mathis?”) tossed about by men over drinks, behind the wheel, in front of a cooling plate of French fries—and made it central.

Of course, kitchen-sink films had been made before, featuring snippets of halting, realistic dialogue, as epitomized by Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty. And in 1981, Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre elevated one long conversation into an art-house hit. But producers and editors mostly found the imperatives of plot and pacing best served by verbal ping-pong matches where nobody is at a loss for words—snappy His Girl Friday lines that keep the viewer awake until the next thing happens. When making the 1973 Robert Redford-Barbra Streisand hit, The Way We Were, director Sydney Pollack had to argue furiously with producers to keep a scene where Redford and his friend Bradford Dillman lounge on a boat, trying to top each other by ranking the best city, day, and year. But it ended up saying far more about time and regret than did Streisand crooning about memories.

During postproduction on Diner, MGM/UA executive David Chasman complained to Levinson about one of its most famous set pieces, when Guttenberg’s Eddie and Reiser’s Modell argue ownership (“You gonna finish that?”) of a roast-beef sandwich. Chasman wanted it cut because it didn’t advance the story. “You don’t understand,” Levinson explained: between the lines about roast beef lies all you need to know about their fear, their competitiveness, their friendship. The roast beef is the story.

“I wanted the piece to be without any flourish, without anything other than basically saying, ‘This is all it was,’ ” Levinson says. “These conversations that can go on endlessly through the night—bets over the stupid fucking things that you can bet on—is it. Without gimmicks: nothing. Without gimmicks. This is it. Period.” John Wells, the executive producer of the kaleidoscopic 90s hospital series, ER—nominated for a record 122 Emmys during its 15-year run—and former president of the Writers Guild of America, West, was a graduate student at the U.S.C. film school when Diner came out. Mesmerized by Levinson’s “tremendous empathy for those characters even when they were being idiots,” Wells estimates he saw it 30 times in 1982 alone. He still makes a point of watching Diner once a year.

‘It influenced a whole generation of writers,” Wells says, “revolutionizing the way characters talk and how realistic we were going to be. And it was particularly influential with actors—this notion that you could play someone who was extremely real and at the same time be humorous and emotional. It had a complexity that not a lot of movies at the time had—they tended to be tremendously dramatic or broadly comic—and this was landing in a territory between, where somebody could be entertaining and humorous and also make you cry.”

Article in the "Vanity Fair" mag, of March 2012..