Sometimes having the person--
one thing to do is it never get
discouraged if you don't get the person
who is the center of the story.
Sometimes that's the last person you
want. I mean "Frank Sinatra has a
cold," is a great example of that, something 
we all study and teach in journalism. But
if Frank Sinatra had actually shown up in
that story and actually had said, you
know, normal Frank Sinatra things, it
wouldn't be as great a story. You know
the tension of not having him there and uh...
I have a friend named John Alter who wrote a book is gonna second one coming out about Barack Obama
and uh... he wrote about his first year
in office, and he said to me we were
talking about it, and he said he got interviews
with all the very high level White House
people and with the president,
and he said, "You know I did these interviews with
Obama." I knew I had to do them because
I'd go on these talk shows to promote the
book and they'd say, "How many interviews
did you have with the president," and he'd
have to say seven or four, and that's 
how he would be judged. It he said, "None,"
they'd think, "Now this is a second-rate
book," when in fact
he's...I happen to personally a big
obama fan, so I don't say this is
in a negative way, but when you talk
to the subject
things that seem like conflicts in
and fiery meetings between people
he had a way of putting a spin on them
in explaining them and seeing them
and sort of making up, putting everything
into that middle zone in the middle
distance;;"That wasn't so bad, it wasn't so
dramatic, that wasn't so this or wasn't so
that" so he kind of
deflated the story
and took the air out of it. Years ago I did a
story about Rodney Dangerfield, who
wouldn't talk to me. It was kind of a mini
"Frank Sinatra has a cold" situation and
I wound up interviewing so many
different people around him out of fear
of not being able to pull off the story,
that I got a much better story than if
Rodney Dangerfield...The worst thing 
for me would have been if he would have
finally changed his mind at the end it
sort of weighed in and agreed to be
talked to because then he would have
just made it
a more of an average, normal piece, and I think it
was a better pieces than that and I often
think that
my personal opinion is that uh... Gay
Talese left Frank Sinatra out of the
piece
didn't, because he's obviously go so
much access to Frank Sinatra and his
people that he left him
out of the piece on purpose cause he saw it would
be a better piece, a more
tense and dramatic piece uh...
without Frank Sinatra.
