Biofile Adventures

In over three decades of doing Biofile interviews, I have collected some extraordinary content – Muhammad Ali, Don Budge, Max Schmeling, Chris Evert, Hank Aaron, Jack Kramer, Mike Tyson, Ryan Seacrest, Henny Youngman, LeRoy Nieman, John Oates, have all done Biofiles.

There’s also a list of people who it took a long time even years to track down and get in position to do a Biofile. I tried to get baseball great Ted Williams for years via his son John Henry Williams and then suddenly finally we ended up doing it by phone in the mid 90s.

My first big Biofile catches were in 1992, my rookie year as a reporter. Nick Bollettieri had just won Wimbledon as a coach of Andre Agassi and was a huge figure in the sport as the first major tennis academy founder. I was a nobody reporter for one small paper in NJ called the Morristown Daily Record. Somehow I got Nick on the phone and he did the Biofile and I still remember him saying The Bee Gees were his favorite music and Saturday Night Fever is the best album ever made.

Chris Evert also did a Biofile with me on the phone that year and mid interview she said, “You ask great questions” when I asked her about her favorite athletes to watch.

NHL player Behn Wilson was another subject that eluded being interviewed for over three decades because after his playing career ended in 1988 he vanished from the scene and never did one single interview. I somehow connected with his daughter on Facebook and after some months of delays and hesitations, we finally talked on the phone and got it done. The Behn Wilson Biofile interview ended up producing two books, Facing Behn Wilson and now Behn’s autobiography Gloves Off. Thirty years of persistence can pay off.

There’s been some lucky moments too where I was just in the right place at the right time. US Open 1997 Ashe Stadium grand opening ceremony, walking down the corridor moments before it started I saw Don Budge leaning against the wall next to Gabriela Sabatini. Budge happily agreed to do a spontaneous unscheduled Biofile.

Unscheduled on the spot Biofiles often turn out to be the best.

On the grounds by pit row of the Pocono 500 NASCAR race I randomly saw Richard Petty sitting on the steps of a team bus. The racing great happily did a spontaneous Biofile with me.

Jimmy Connors was in NYC to promote his new coaching DVD. As a freelance writer for Tennis Week magazine, I got the call to go and interview him, presumably because nobody else on staff wanted to do it or make the trip from Rye, NY to Manhattan. Only two or three other tennis media attended the event so I got to do a long uninterrupted Biofile with Jimmy which my editor said was the best interview he ever read with Jimmy Connors.

I saw Jim Brown at a Wheaties press conference in NYC, with Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton. At first I was actually feeling intimidated to approach the great Jim Brown and ask him questions like his favorite movies and favorite ice cream flavor but I did take the chance of having my head bitten off and it turned out Jim Brown was one of the nicest and polite guys I ever interviewed! His image as a bad ass seemed totally misportrayed.

Dennis Rodman is wonderful guy too, he did a Biofile with me at Madison Square Garden while with his new team the San Antonio Spurs. I still remember his favorite movies are Bob Hope The Road To series. Also I distinctly remember he wanted to do the Biofile, not at his locker but in the shower area bathroom of the locker room – while he was brushing his teeth!

LeRoy Neiman did a Biofile with me on the phone and then invited me to his legendary studio at 1 West 67th Street in NYC, near Tavern On The Green so he could edit it. We became lifelong friends for the next two decades. I visited LeRoy at his studio and apartment there over a hundred times until is passing in 2012.

LeRoy actually contributed a Biofile question. He asked me to start to ask subjects for their favorite artist which I have done. LeRoy loved reading Biofiles, he even tried to help me get them into Playboy Magazine but that did not work out.

I have done well over a thousand Biofiles on subjects from art, sports, TV, music, movies, astronaut, adult films, CEOs, there are no boundaries for Biofile subjects.

It’s possible I have done the most one on one interviews in media history. Someday I will count the total number of Biofiles, it could be five thousand. The most recent Biofile I did was with Peyton Stearns and Hugo Dellien at the Elizabeth Moore Sarasota Open at IMG Academy last week.

One of the most painful moments of doing Biofiles was trying to get them in the New York Post for years, they kept rejecting it. Then suddenly about two decades ago they created an imitation Biofile using one of their columnists to do it, which he still does. But it’s a cheap imitation. Everybody in the NY media region who knows me and my Biofile work knows it was a flagrant plagiarism robbery. Shame on the New York Post and their rotten fake news media tendency.

Biofiles have run in publications in Japan, Australia, UK, South Africa, India, Germany. I still hope to do Biofiles one day with Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati, Oleksandr Usyk, Carlos Alcaraz, Andrew Ridgeley of Wham, Lillian of Dance Party USA, Wayne Gretzky.

Thanks for reading!

Art by LeRoy Neiman.