After 84 years, Good Night, Bobby Zarem.

Bobby Zarem knew two people in this world: “a great friend” and a “fucking piece of shit meshuggeneh cunt, may G-d strike him/her dead.”

You were one or the other, there was no middle ground, and depending on the time of day, one could fall into either camp.

This wasn’t because Bobby was psychotic, though sometimes neurotic, he just saw the world from his exacting point of view. For many of us, it was a privilege to behold his landscape, but I never expected to see that world until one fateful day on Twitter.

I was directing Desires of the Heart in Savannah, Georgia, when Lisa Kaminsky reached out to me. We were shooting some scenes on Tybee Island. Lisa had looked up some information about the film, and wanted to let me know that she owned a plot of land we could use for parking. Though we were covered, I was intrigued to learn more about this stranger.

Looking through Lisa’s tweets, I saw that she was a regular attendee of the Savannah Film Festival, and engaged with filmmaking through her friend, Bobby Zarem. I wanted to meet Lisa, because she seemed like a nice person. But truthfully, I also wanted to meet Bobby.

After filming, Lisa and I sat down for lunch and hit it off quickly, sharing many common interests. At the end of our conversation, she said, “Well, if there’s anything I can do for you in the future, please let me know.”

I quickly piped up, “I know that you’re friends with Bobby Zarem, and if it’s not too much of an imposition — I’ve always wanted to meet him.” She told me that meeting Bobby wouldn’t be a problem at all.

The first time I met Bobby Zarem, I was terrified.

In “the business,” the public sees the outwardly facing folks, the stars who bring the work you love to life.

Behind them, there is a constellation of creatives, not just directors, writers and producers like myself, but agents, managers, lawyers, executives and publicists like Bobby who curate the culture and influence the way media is perceived.

Of course, that has changed dramatically in the 21st century. But the echoes of Bobby’s work in the 20th century draws a direct line to the present, felt through the stars in public and the people in private. In many ways, Bobby was one of the last remaining bridges between old and new Hollywood.

I knew that he was a legend walking into his childhood home in Savannah, where he had returned to retire from 50 years in New York. Lisa had warned me that he smoked a lot of pot, but I told her that wouldn’t be an issue.

Strolling in the door, it was like stepping into a museum. There were letters to Bobby and pictures with Bobby from every major public figure you could imagine, his friends and clients from decades of work. In an instant, he could call most any of them and they’d hop right on the phone.

In fact, that was one of the first things I noticed; there was no person that worked a phone like Bobby Zarem.

We entered and he was already lit up. After our perfunctory introductions, he extended the joint and said in his specific New Yawker, Savannah pitch, “you want some grass?”

I absolutely took a puff.

We sat down and went through the perfunctory motions, discussing my childhood in Bellville, my dad dying at 12, going to Georgia Southern and now, working on my first feature film.

He just sat and observed as I prattled on, Lisa smiling. It was nerve-racking, because Bobby didn’t interrupt, he just listened and stared piercingly.

As I concluded, he nodded and said, “My father died when I was 12 too. I think you’re a developed person.”

Outside of being a great friend or fucking piece of shit meshuggeneh cunt, this is probably the greatest designation Bobby could bestow upon you.

I thought that it would be a one time meeting. I never thought that Bobby, Lisa and I would become such friends.

From that moment until I left Savannah, Lisa, Bobby and I hung out every week. He would reminisce on his years of work, providing advice to both of us in the present, while working two phone lines that were constantly ringing off the hook. The man knew how to work a phone.

We would go see the latest movies together, and he would curse at the screen anytime he hated someone in a trailer (Morgan Freeman, fucking piece of shit! He declined my invitation to the Savannah Film Festival—). Sometimes his passion felt rational, and other times, wildly irrational. But his perspective was always “factual and developed,” and it was entirely part of his charm.

Bobby was always connected to young people, taking them on as personal development missions. It kept him fresh, able to connect the dots between old and new Hollywood. I know, because I was lucky enough to be one of his projects.

After I moved from Savannah to Los Angeles, the first major meetings that I had with agencies, production companies and producers were because he arranged them.

At the time, I wasn’t ready for those meetings, but Bobby believed in me and gave me the confidence to go do them.

I even got to meet many of his famous friends, who regaled Bobby’s entourage with stories from his 50 years in entertainment, bringing vividly to life the pictures he painted.

He invited me to his birthday parties at Lynne Wasserman’s in Los Angeles, where I felt entirely out of place on her beautiful white carpets.

Amidst Diane Lane and Timothy Dalton, I was speaking to Brian Tenenbaum, when I came to the climax of my story and flailed my hands upward.

Unfortunately, at the same time, a waiter came in with my next glass of Cabernet, and it went all over the floor and onto the cream suit of Beau Turpin, my production partner. The room gasped, and I was mortified.

10 minutes later, Jack Nicholson strolls in and Bobby proceeds to introduce both of us on top of the formerly soiled carpet, which had been promptly cleaned.

Bobby decided to pitch the merits of our talent for another 10 minutes, and Jack goes, “What are you trying to do Bobby, sell me on them?”

Beau and I shook our heads, both reeling from the previous moment, but also on the insanity of the situation.

Another time, Bobby, Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren and myself were sitting around the table talking for hours on end, with Jane and I lamenting the plight of poverty in South Georgia — after yet again a little too much Cabernet.

But this time, I didn’t have any such accidents, and I knew how to handle myself better. Between moments like these, my visits to important offices and backstage moments on Broadway, Bobby had taken me from being an aspiring filmmaker from Bellville, Georgia into being a professional.

Though I was not peers with any of his friends, he taught me to see them as people who could be one day, stripping away the public personas into a personal, private citizens who want to be treated as such.

An old African proverb states, “when an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” The stories and knowledge that Bobby possessed were unparalleled.

Even on his death bed, he could recall from memory every phone number he wished to call. His obsession with not just celebrity, but indeed everything he did, required you to rise to his level.

He expected excellence from the people he surrounded himself, because it is what he required of himself. Though he imbued all of us with knowledge, of publicity and life itself, as he goes, so goes a depth of emotional intelligence that I believe we barely could understand.

Perhaps my point of view is framed from knowing him fully in his final decade. To Bobby’s friends and family that knew him throughout his life, their perspective is shaped through that prism of time. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have that.

Instead, I knew him as he began to reflect, to analyze his life and what it all had meant. When you get to know someone so closely, speaking almost daily, the person you get to know is a different one.

Bobby had nothing left to prove, only things to consider.

Visiting Bobby from September 16th – 18th, I emotionally watched him decline in real time. There were moments of confusion, but many of clarity.

In our final day together, he explained to me where he was in those muddled times. Between dreams and reality, he saw himself on a stage, all of his visitors spectators, as Bobby prepared his final performance. He was both starring in, and also directing, his final show.

The day before, he told our friend Lisa, “I just want it to be perfect. I want perfection, but I know I can’t have it.” We realized it was his obsession, yet again, driving those precious moments.

He wanted to hear from and visit with all his friends and family as he moved towards the exit. In those few days, there was a countless stream of visitors and friends on FaceTime unable to fly to him. In life as in death, Bobby curated his stage exit with a supporting cast of the living people who meant the most to him.

It was time for me to go the airport.

Over those three days, in the same living room where we first met, I sat and talked with Bobby, often sleeping in his hospice bed. As the final moments approached, I kept running out of the room, choking up, attempting to compose myself before he woke.

I knew this would be the last time I would see him. Approaching the bed, hesitating, I tapped Bobby on the shoulder, telling him that it was time for me to go.

He gazed at me, knowing exactly what the moment meant, and started weeping.

Holding back tears, I kissed him on the forehead, held his hand and told him how much I loved him, and how I hoped he knew how much he meant to me. He made me promise to call him every day when I got home, and I did.

Nearly running out of the house, not wanting to upset him further, Lisa chased after me and said, “I’m so glad that I stalked you on Twitter all those years ago.” I smiled and said, “Me too.”

The night before he died on Sunday, September 26th, I went to bed feeling that Bobby wouldn’t be with us when I woke. When I picked up my phone and the news was confirmed, I wept, and suddenly, the world felt a little smaller.

Bobby made you feel that anything was possible. There was no door that couldn’t be opened, no dream that couldn’t be attained. He did that through the incredible arc of his life, beginning and ending in his childhood home where he dreamt of liaising with the stars.

No matter what you do in this life, everyone needs a Bobby in their life, a mentor and friend who shows you how to maneuver through this complicated world. In my formative years, I was so lucky that Bobby Zarem was that person for me.

Bobby, you were a great, great friend, and I’ll never forget you. I hope that my life and career will make you proud.

When my time comes, and I sit up on that stage, I know that you’re going to be in the audience.