It was 1991 and I was covering the NBA Finals in Los Angeles. The Lakers were playing the Bulls and we had set up a tiny darkroom in an employee lunchroom in the bowels of the old Great Western Forum. And as film came out of the "soup," dripping with smelly fixer, I turned to the gentleman eating a chicken salad sandwich next to me. "Jack," I said to Mr. Nicholson, "be careful, I don't want to get you wet." Jack was a constant fixture in our little darkroom that year. For him it was a place to get away from the masses during halftime. He'd look at our monitors and tell us if he thought we had gotten a good picture, and the next game he'd congratulate us if we had made the L.A. Times.
"Good going, guys," he say in that Jack voice. "I see you made the L.A. Times."
Ah, the celebrity life.