I ran into John Turturro again today. (Not today as you read this, but today as I write this, which is more than a month before this memo is scheduled to appear.) Well, okay, I didn't really run into him. I actually just passed him on the sidewalk while I was walking down Seventh Avenue here in Brooklyn, on my way to the hardware store and then to the Second Street Cafe for Sunday brunch.
This is the second time I've run into—or maybe I should say "run across"—John Turturro in Brooklyn. The first time was in the subway station at Grand Army Plaza one morning about six months ago when I was late for work. I was descending the stairs into the station when I saw a tallish fellow with curly dark hair and a goatee determinedly trying to get one of the turnstiles to read his MetroCard. There he was, head down with a look of intense and single-minded concentration on his face, repeatedly swiping his card through the slot, and I thought to myself, "My God, that's John Turturro."
Now, I have to tell you, I'm a really big fan of John Turturro. Barton Fink, Quiz Show, Miller's Crossing, Clockers, Box of Moonlight—I think they're all terrific performances. I'm amazed at the way he can make what seems like a physical transformation in his varied roles. The tough, abusive older Italian brother of Do the Right Thing is nothing like the sweet but picked-on kid of Jungle Fever—and he looks physically smaller in the role. Amazing.
So there he was in the subway station, having trouble with his MetroCard, and the woman with him was egging him on from the other side of the turnstiles: "Come on, John! Hurry!"
My God. John Turturro, despite powerful biceps, looked so much like an incompetent kid being harried by an impatient parent in that moment that I just wanted to go up to him and put my arms around him and remind him that he was John Turturro. And incidentally tell him how much I loved his work.
But, suave and unflappable New Yorker that I have become, all I did was go around him and slide my MetroCard smoothly through the slot in the next turnstile, just as he finally got his to work. The three of us—Turturro, his female companion, and me—all descended the stairs to the platform at the same time, and I said, just one New Yorker to two others, "There's something wrong with that turnstile. It gives everyone problems."
I said that to the great actor John Turturro, who is ten years my senior, because he looked so much like a kid in dutch. He didn't say anything to me, and neither did his female companion.
Today when I saw John Turturro, he was walking north on Seventh Avenue with a woman and a small girl. I honestly can't tell you whether or not it was the same woman as before. I didn't pay much attention to the woman either time. The goatee was gone this time, and Turturro was looking around himself with what looked like open-mouth wonder, and maybe some apprehension. I swear to God he looked like a kid on his first trip to the city. And Brooklyn was where he was born and raised.
I didn't say anything this time. But maybe next time I see him—and I'm sure I'll see him again, since he obviously lives in the neighborhood—I will say something. Maybe I'll say, "John, what the hell is going on inside your skin? Are you just an empty vessel that fills from time to time with these amazingly real and well-defined characters and then lies as slack as a drained wineskin the rest of the day? Or do you look that way simply because the mantle of celebrity the rest of us have placed upon your shoulders, the weight of our awed gazes as you pass, has forced you apart from our company? What can I do to help make your passage through this ordinary world more meaningful?"
Maybe I'll say that. But it's more likely that I'll just look at him and think to myself, once again, "My God, that's John Turturro. Wow."