In Which No One Gives Anyone the High Hat

So I'm having a cup of coffee at Edgar's Cafe on West 84th Street (Edgar Allen Poe Way), reading Colin Meloy's underwhemling entry into the 33 1/3 series, The Replacements' Let It Be, when I pause and look up to see, sitting opposite just a table away, the actor Gabriel Byrne, a rolled up Times of London in his mitt, in the midst of an intense discussion with a short bald guy in hipster eyeglasses. I could catch enough of the conversation to hear the lilt of Byrne's Irish accent, but not enough to really make out what he was talking about, as the acoustics of Edgar's resemble the cellar in which Montressor bricks up Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado."

Not a bad NYC celebrity sighting--it beats seeing a very weary and cranky Alan Alda trudging through Staples. Only later did I realize the literary synchronicity: I finished Fiona McCarthy's exellent biography Byron: Life and Legend two nights before, and had just finished the first canto of Don Juan the previous evening. Bryne of course played Byron in Ken Russell's ill-advised 1986 film Gothic. Odd to have spent two weeks musing on things Byronic and to then bump into an interpreter of George Gordon Noel, 6th Lord Byron.

Plus, Byrne is one of the highlights of Hal Wilner's 1997 tribute to Poe, Closed on Account of Rabies. Byrne reads "The Masque of the Red Death" with chilling efficiency. So it was nearly an NYC celebrity sighting in context.

Sadly, Byrne hasn't been in a particularly good movie since David Cronenberg's Spider (2002) and hasn't had a hit since The Usual Suspects (1995). I wonder if he was in town for the Coen Bros. retrospective at BAM. I think Miller's Crossing (still my favorite gangster film) was playing that very evening.

And here's the other odd connection: I own a poster for Miller's Crossing that's signed by Byrne, but because he signed it in black ballpoint, the signature is completely obscured by the background of autumnal forest that makes up that poster's top half. I was completely unaware of the signature, until one night the light hit that spot on the poster just so, for at least ten years.

Which saved me the trouble of asking for an autograph. Not that I would have asked in any case.

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