My fascination with the screen gangster led me to Silver Cup Studios in Long Island City, New York, and the office of the creator of The Sopranos, David Chase.
A fellow Lynch enthusiast, Chase was, long before I met him, the catalyst for my book on gangster films. It was his television series that re-opened the gangster film case for me, impelling me to look with fresh eyes at where the genre had been before he built his revolutionary television series on its foundations. From there it was a short hop to a sudden insight that Hong Kong gangster films created an intriguing mirror image of the American gangster metaphor. And then there was Dying to Belong: Gangster Movies in Hollywood and Hong Kong. With Dying to Belong, a third indispensable editor made her entrance in my life, the incomparable Jayne Fargnoli, my steadfast, adventurous publishing mentor/friend. David Chase and I are still talking, as well.