Transcript: What Keith McNally Can Teach Hollywood

Rob Long on the restauranteur who makes you feel like the star of your own scene

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for the Ankler.

Years ago, a friend of mine found himself in a downscale hotel ballroom, surrounded by Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.

He was a writer, doing research, and found out about the group from reading some badly Xeroxed flyer pinned up to a bulletin board in an radical bookstore. Do they still have those? The internet, right? That killed the in-person conspiracy-con, I think. Except for maybe CPAC? Well, a lot of this is just show business and in show business, the rule is you go where it's easier to find an audience.

Well, he went to an actual meeting — what we would now call, I guess, a “meet up” — and wandered around the tables and talked to people carrying huge binders of clippings and what they called evidence, and at one point he bumped into someone he knew slightly.

"Oh!" his friend said. "Do you love the assassination, too?"

"Well, I don't know if I love the assassination," my friend said. "Not sure that's the way I'd put it."

"Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I guess, are you passionate about it?"