What you need to see, do, buy, and make in the next 72 hours

Throw a killer barbecue. All you need is the food, the friends, and the right summery drink to stoke their rebellious spirit. Here's your (red, white, and…) blueprint.

The marinade: Perfect for skirt or flank steak.
The slaw: Because it isn't a barbecue if you don't have to sweep some slaw off your deck the next day.
The drink: See rebellious spirit, stoking of, above.

Get the music for free. Instead of buying Mos Def's new The Ecstatic on CD or downloading it from iTunes, buy this cool Mos Def T-shirt and get a download code for MP3s of the album along with it. The shirt is emblazoned with the album's cover art and is available via LnA Clothing starting July 7th, and, unlike Mos's last few "efforts" (they all sounded like he didn't care), The Ecstatic is actually damn good. Don't believe us? Check out the deep, soulful funk of first single "Casa Bey."

Again, get the music for free. Independence Day is all about outdoor concerts that don't cost a thing. This year, you can drag your stingy self to New York's Battery Park to celebrate with two indie-Americana idols: Conor Oberst and Jenny Lewis. The show starts at 3:30, but get there early—after all, it is free.

Or, pay a fortune. There are still tickets—tickets which will run you between $129 to $229, by the way—to see Jay-Z and special guest Ciara at the Pearl Concert Theater at the Palms in Vegas. You may still have 99 problems, but Fourth of July plans won't be one.

Take the high road to Atlantic City. To properly celebrate our nation's independence, a man needs ready access to the freedoms we enjoy: high-stakes poker; dry-aged ribeye; plentiful cocktails. And if you reside between our nation's capitol and the colonial villages of New England, your best bet is Atlantic City. Spend the weekend at The Chelsea—a non-gaming boutique hotel on the water, where the amenities include an impeccable retro steakhouse and a velvet-walled living room with an amply stocked bar—the kind of place Ol' Blue Eyes would feel right at home. And The Chelsea recently added The Cabana Club—15,000 square feet of outdoor, ocean-view roof deck—because the party curated by Matt Abramcyk of New York's Beatrice Inn needed some room to breathe. Check out the rest of our AC picks under the Extra Mile tab of our Philadelphia City Guide.

The Kubrick Konundrum

Calling Stanley Kubrick some kind of cinematic genius will get you no arguments from me. That doesn't mean I have to like him. After all, Leni Riefenstahl has often been called the same thing—and for reasons that aren't totally dissimilar, since her mastery was a command of film's vocabulary above all.

What makes it unpleasant to give Riefenstahl even that much credit is that her shock-and-awe imagery and skill at rhythmic editing were put to work celebrating Hitler. About the most that can be said in her defense is that she didn't invent the ideology she lionized in Triumph of The Will. By contrast, everything that disturbs me about the great Stanley originated nowhere but his self-impressed noggin.

The backhanded compliment here is that aversion isn't the same as indifference, especially up against a critical consensus that's so laudatory. Hence my return-bout interest in checking out new Blu-ray editions of two landmark Kubrick films. He made so few, and eventually with such pomp, that damn near all of them fit that ambiguous category.

I figured I was giving him every advantage, since Blu-ray might as well have been invented to showcase his fabled visual perfectionism. Not only that, but 1964's Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb and its 1968 quasi-sequel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, each have a hallowed place in his filmography. They're the birth and zenith, respectively, of his legend. I've always had my doubts about the first, but I'm a kajillion times more likely to alienate your average cine-head by making impolite noises about the second.

Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory. 14 years before A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick had the look down.

For better and worse, Dr. Strangelove was the first Kubrick film to dramatize his antihuman world-view without compromises. No matter how edgily directed and superbly cast, The Killing was still in hock to a standard genre—the heist flick, although I do prefer Kubrick's decorative perversities to the sodden overripeness of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Even Paths of Glory was constrained by the choir-preachy outlook of Humphrey Cobb's original novel, though Kubrick didn't seem especially engaged by the material's pacifist message.

His one job as a hired hand was replacing Anthony Mann on Spartacus, with no say over a script he disdained. Then he'd been hobbled on Lolita by censorship restrictions, while also betraying a vestigial willingness to play along with Hollywood notions of crowd-pleasing yucks. On Strangelove, though, he had absolute control. It shows.

Peter Sellers as Doctor Strangelove…

It's a tribute to Kubrick's grip that you can watch the movie over and over—and I've probably sat through all or part of it a half-dozen times over the years—without grasping how confined and static it is. Aside from the process shots of the B-52 piloted by Slim Pickens's Major "King" Kong and the jittery mock-newsreel footage of the attack on his demented commanding officer's Air Force base, we're mostly trapped in just three cramped locales. The War Room's design is claustrophobia on a grand scale compared to the office of looneytunes General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) and the rogue plane's interior.

The cross-cutting between them is what gives us an illusion of watching a much rangier panorama than is actually the case. That's partly because they're each photographed with an acute sense of different perspectival values. We're in tight with the bomber crew, but the War Room sequences are all about the eeriness of dwarfed figures gesticulating under vast situation maps and a looming black ceiling. Ripper's scenes are a mix of almost sitcom-style framing and oppressive closeups. The way each setting disintegrates from stately to messy is brilliantly modulated, too.

…and as Group Captain Mandrake, with bonkers General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden).

The downside is that the satiric wildness the movie is famous for is largely glued onto a dull cautionary tale. The plot spends more time showing us the mechanics of how a nuclear war might start than finding room to eviscerate the mentality of those responsible. As every Stanley buff knows, the source novel—something called Red Alert, by Peter George—wasn't comic at all. Preproduction was well along before Kubrick made the decision to jazz up the script with black humor. That's when he brought in Candy's Terry Southern to play script pediatrist.

Fond as I am of him, Southern wasn't Jonathan Swift by a long shot. Basically, he just added burlesque names—Bat Guano, Merkin Muffley—and one-note hangups that go for the easy target (fluoridation, not anti-Communism) time and again. Thanks mostly to Peter Sellers' performance, the title character is the movie's only inspired satiric creation.

Nonetheless, even Strangelove's showpiece monologue dwindles awfully fast into an echt-Southern gag—meaning fantasy—about America's rulers drooling at the prospect of banging a harem of sexpots for the future's sake. If runamok testosterone can explain nuclear holocaust, keep in mind that it also goes a long way toward explaining Picasso. While a movie that indicted both on those grounds would have been genuinely radical in 1964, Dr. Strangelove isn't that movie.

One unforgivable but commercially smart omission lets us revel more or less heartlessly in the spectacle of a world blown up by a handful of self-important idiots. We never glimpse the doomsday scenario's victims—the billions of ordinary men, women and children wiped out by their leaders' folly. Anyone can understand why Kubrick would want to avoid the mawkish shots of ordinary people awaiting annihilation already made banal by solemn end-of-the-world treatises—Stanley Kramer's On The Beach, for instance. Yet leaving them out is a huge evasion. Black comedy or no black comedy, it's hard to admire a nuclear-holocaust movie that's too smug to remind us of the horrific human consequences of its big kaboom. That's why the laughter Strangelove invites is a superior snicker, not the kind that freezes in people's throats.

Come into my parlor, said the Stanley to the fly.

At the time, liberal audiences were able to take it as a given that Kubrick thought destroying the planet would be a bad idea. But 2001 indicated that this might have been a fallacy on their part. Keep in mind that its finale was to have been identical to Strangelove's—a string of nuclear explosions wiping out life on earth. Kubrick plainly didn't see humanity's demise as cause for regret. You literally can't go farther than that in playing God, especially since the reasons why humanity had it coming (inventing weapons? Dull conversation? Just time to move on?) are so inexplicit.

While the ending we've got is less apocalyptic, whatever the "Star-Child" is mulling as he gazes balefully down on our pathetic blue orb doesn't spell good news for Peoria. But why we should be moved or impressed has stumped me for decades. When a movie gets described as "thought-provoking" as often as 2001 has been—idly Googling the two gave me 13,400 hits—I have an old-fashioned hankering to hear someone explain the nature and value of the thoughts being provoked.

If you aren't on 2001's wavelength, the thing's tedium is staggering. The nearest thing to a dramatic situation in 148 minutes is the astronauts' contest with HAL the computer for control of the Jupiter probe. With one mildly clever exception—HAL's ability to read lips—the duel between man and machine isn't worked out with much ingenuity. Not that you've got reason to expect any from a script whose idea of smart exposition has been to have the astronauts watch an endless TV report about their own mission.

Guess which fist I'm holding the Earth in. C'mon, guess.

Nothing has any urgency, right down to the lack of suspense when Keir Dullea finally gets busy yanking out doohickeys. He isn't in a race against time, and HAL—some super-genius computer he is in the crunch—doesn't concoct any strategies to thwart him. Nor do we care which one wins. Since whatever's at stake hasn't been made compelling, it's like watching a carrot outwit a Waring blender.

More puzzlingly yet, this long central episode has no detectable connection to Kubrick's big theme—you know, the self-important business about tracing man's evolution from apehood to post-human deity, or whatever the Star-Child is supposed to be. The only way it might make sense would be if defeating HAL is the test that proves Dullea is qualified to hop to the next rung of the evolutionary ladder, but that's just my desperate guess. Nothing we're shown bears it out.

For that matter, if Dullea is the one who's going to wind up transformed into the ultimate embryo, shouldn't it make some sort of difference—to Kubrick, to us, to the extra-terrestrial intelligence playing galactic mumblety-peg with all of us chimps—whether he or Gary Lockwood is the astronaut who makes it to that Las Vegas Presidential suite in outer space? So far as I can tell, it doesn't. About all that distinguishes the two is that Dullea has blue eyes. As proof he's destined for higher things, that would probably gratify Leni Riefenstahl.

Also sprach Tony Bennett: the dawn of the musical.

Like their counterparts in the moon-base sequence, they're deliberately portrayed as boring, bland ciphers, presumably for satiric contrast with the technological marvels of their environment. But that's an awfully slender joke to keep on repeating ad infinitum in a movie this supremely convinced of its own profundity. Except that the caption isn't as witty, we might as well be trapped staring for over two hours at a New Yorker cartoon about boobs who can't appreciate the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

So remember who thought he was painting one. Since it's painfully evident Kubrick didn't think of himself as trite or trivial, why are the only characters allowed any individual spark or pizzazz in his post-1962 movies all monsters bent on destruction: Strangelove, HAL, A Clockwork Orange's Alex, Jack Nicholson in The Shining? Notice the steady progression from pretended disapproval to gleeful identification, too.

But doesn't 2001 still look great, you wonder? Eh, yes and no. The pre-CGI special effects in the space-travel scenes hold up astonishingly well. The bombastic "Dawn of Man" prologue looks awfully silly—those mimes prancing about in simian costumes to Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" split the difference between Bishop and Busby Berkeley—and the climactic light show is pretty flimsy. In between, Kubrick's unholy fascination with static compositions that pin his puny characters in place like tails on a missing donkey makes the first few seconds of scene after scene hypnotic—until the monotony leaves restless viewers like me struggling not to zone out, the way people do on long car trips once the fixed view through the windshield has even the family dog losing interest.

Sorry, but when it comes to 1968 sci-fi epics, I'll take Planet of The Apes over 2001 any day. It's got better monkeys, cleverer evolution jokes, and Charlton god-love-him Heston, all of whom seem healthily eager to keep me amused until hell freezes over. It's no work of art, but it doesn't aspire to be; even its occasional fake profundities are in the enjoyable vein of sophomore bull sessions played for irony that screenwriter Rod Serling specialized in. Planet of The Apes leaves Kubrick's cinematic genius safely unchallenged, sure. You'll just have to forgive me for thinking that in every other way it makes the great Stanley look like a bloody idiot.

An Interview with Phoenix Guitarist Branco

In case you missed their three-song appearance on SNL (or haven't visited any music blogs in the last six months), French band Phoenix's latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, is the kind of smart, feel-good pop album you should download and play over and over (seriously, go to iTunes now). Smack dab in the middle of their tour, we caught up with guitarist Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz—former bandmate of the guys from Daft Punk—to get his thoughts on their slow but strong rise to stardom, how to piss off the French, and what it takes to make him cry (hint: not much).—andrew richdale

You guys have been around for 10 years now. Your last album, It’s Never Been Like That, was received well critically, but never garnered the sort of mainstream attention this album has. Did you expect this when you were writing it?
When we recorded it, we thought it was too complicated. We just wanted to make good music, and we were thinking, ‘It’s the end of the age of singers.’ Radio doesn’t exist anymore, so let’s do a weird album that some people will adore. A few of them. So it’s cool that with this album, something happened.

What’s changed, you think?
I think there is something happening right now that is really positive. I think it’s just that the power is coming back to the people, instead of the hands of radio executives or whatever, and now real people, real music-lovers, they are able to decide. They can just listen to what they want. They don’t need anyone to pick it for them.

You guys keep good company—Roman and Sofia Coppola [girlfriend of lead singer Thomas Mars], Daft Punk, Air. Any artist—musician or otherwise—you'd like to add to the mix?
The fantasies are always better than the real thing, I guess. But I would be happy to hang out with Bob Dylan…in Tuscany. Something exotic. With lots of Rosé. [laughs]

In an interview you did with Death and Taxes, you said that you like music that makes you cry. Is there a song that you can think of, in particular, that elicits this sort of reaction?
Oh, there’re a lot. I have a special compilation, a mix tape with only songs that make me cry. Some of them are French. When we’re on the road and we listen to very beautiful and very sad French songs, it makes us cry, for sure. Actually, if you go on our blog, we’ve a little journale, it’s called, and I have a section—it’s called ‘Songs That Make Me Cry.’

Any Bob Dylan songs on there?
No…there's only one song for the moment. You should listen to it…I want it to be a collection of very beautiful songs—maybe you can give me one?

Hmm, I'll have to get back to you on that…You guys just wrapped up the North American leg of the tour. What town showed you the most love?
Well, we played this gig in Williamsburg, [Brooklyn] and it was a hipster crowd—not usually the best crowd—but it was great, actually. It was one of our best gigs. It's like playing in front of yourself…like being in front of a mirror. When it happened to be really enthusiastic, it was a really great feeling.

How would you compare your American fans to your French ones? Who's rowdier?
Maybe here [in America] the level of musicality—I don’t know if that’s a word, but let’s pretend—is really high. People clap in time. When you go to karaoke the level of singing is very high, you know? In France when you go to a karaoke it’s just like we are now. So I get to pick it up.

I'm curious—are your compatriots in France resentful that you guys sing in English?
Oh, they don’t really like it. We were sort of the first guys to do that, and it wasn’t easy. But now it’s cool. In the old world, it was not a thing you could do. But now the kids don’t care.

Are there are any bands over there who sing in French that we’re missing out on?
Uh, I wouldn’t say that. [laughs] I think the best ones, you know them.

Every once in a while we see a pop-cultural confluence so noteworthy we just can’t resist bringing its key players together. This time—and there’s no point in getting coy about it—the common ground is dick size; specifically, how the length and girth of a man’s penis can be his strength or his undoing. By now, you know that HBO’s Alexander Payne-directed series, Hung, revolves around a well-endowed but otherwise hapless high-school teacher who tries to use his one asset to get him out of debt. Penis as salvation! Alan Wiederm’s book Year of the Cock, which comes out mid-July, is a mercilessly frank memoir about a young TV producer’s obsessive dissatisfaction with his seemingly average member, and how it came just a foreskin from ruining his otherwise enviable life. We sent Wiederm the first four episodes of Hung, and asked him how the show measured up.—mark healy

GQ: So what did you think of the show?
I thought it created a surprisingly sympathetic character out of a guy most men would be inclined to hate.

Especially you.
When I first heard about the show, I wondered how they would make a guy with a big donger sympathetic. And they clearly worked very hard on the pilot to make you care about him and to show you that he’s a guy who really has nothing else going for him in life. I guess he’s smart enough to be a history teacher, but he lacked any kind of self-insight and was just this… kind of sad dude. He’s just a guy trying to figure out what to do with himself, a guy in a predicament that a lot of men can relate to. But I really had a hard time imagining how they’d make him sympathetic, because after all, there are plenty of guys with average cocks who’re just as broke as he is.

Exactly. As a TV guy—you know, someone who understands what it takes to make a character and a story—could you have imagined anyone caring about a guy who was successful and handsome and smooth and also really well-hung?
No. No, you hate that guy.

Yeah.
But somehow, I cared about Ray and I wanted to watch more, certainly as a guy who wrestled with these issues. The implication is that he’s kind of bad at sex, too—all he’s got is this big punishing rod, but he doesn’t really have any moves, or any suaveness, so you can kind of sympathize with him there a little, too.

In a lot of ways it is the polar opposite of Year of the Cock.
It’s funny how much of an opposition my book is to Hung. There’s a guy who has nothing for him and his penis is his way out. And my book is about a guy who thinks he has everything going for him but his penis is his undoing.

How do you feel about the myth that Hung perpetuates, that larger—at least in the first three episodes—is decidedly and consistently better?
That’s an interesting question. I think it’s true. I think larger is better. I think any guy would say that. When I was a kid, I grew up thinking that big dicks were just porn stars—John Holmes had a big dick, and Ron Jeremy had nine-and-a-half inches, but ordinary guys probably didn’t have that, because if they did, they’d be porn stars!

And then something changed—the year 2005 was a year when the size of a man’s penis started to matter in a really public way. I mentioned some things in my book like, Jude Law, it turned out, wasn’t very well-hung, so everybody was on him, and Fred Durst, who I mention in my book, was a very disturbingly formative moment for me. And I think that now, any chick will tell you that they’d rather have a guy with a big dick. I think that most chicks do care; that’s the frightening thing. They say they don’t, because ultimately they want a nicer guy, but I think they care a lot more than guys think, I’ll put it that way.

And there are those who…
I think there’s this expectation that if a guy has an average cock he’s sort of implicitly small because he’s not as big as the guys who are seen all over the internet, you know? It used to be that the only way to see a big cock was to rent a porno, and so that was a relatively small amount of people; compared to now, where probably every girl in America has seen a video—or something—and knows that they’re out there. So I think the big dick has been totally demythologized, and as a result, guys who have ordinary packages have a lot more to live up to. But I’ve gotten over my own hang-ups about it.

How did you do that?
I don’t know, really. A lot of therapy, I guess. I got really good in the sack, also.

Uh-huh. That helps. I guess that’s the best remedy, really.
It is the best remedy. I think raising your skill level is very important nowadays. If you don’t have a big cock, you need some moves.

Do you feel like you have to work a little harder?
You gotta work a little harder, gotta be a little more attentive, I think. It would be nice for us average guys if larger penises truly weren’t more pleasurable, but I really feel like women think they are. At least if they’re not physically more pleasurable, they’re visually more pleasurable. How could they not be? Now, when I say that it’s important to women, I don’t think it’s all-consuming, but I think that if given a choice between a really great guy with an average cock and a really great guy with an 8-inch cock, they’d probably choose the 8-inch every time, or most times.

How do you think your life would be different—or how do you think you would be different?
Um…

If you did have a big one?
I don’t know that I can answer that question without having… I think if you have a big cock—and I know guys who have big ones, I’m friends with guys who have big ones, certainly for my book I talked to a lot of men about it—I think when you have a big cock it’s something you become aware of from an extremely young age.

You think so?
Yeah, yeah. I have this friend—this is why Hung really resonated with me—there’s three guys I know who are really, really well-endowed. And they knew it in high school because in the locker room, everybody was like, ‘Aw.’ And they got laid a lot in high school, all of them, they were all studs; but now they’re kinda losers. I joke with my writing partner Steve about how guys who have a big cock kind of have a sense of entitlement, they feel like the world is going to just kind of work out. Because when they’re young and discovering themselves they feel like such studs, and typically they are. But in truth, your big cock—while it will help you in the bedroom and maybe earn you some awe from male friends and colleagues who see you in the locker room—it’s not really going to help you get ahead in life at all, and I think that’s what Hung really shows.

What would you give to be well-hung for a week?
I’m happy with where I’m at right now. I don’t really long for a big penis anymore. Even when the thoughts recur, I don’t think [my problems] would be solved by having a big penis. I feel like my thoughts were self-hating and I’m no longer a self-hating person and I like the body I have now. The thoughts occur but they’re hollow. I don’t know that I would even want that.

Now you just want more money?
Yeah. Now I just want people to buy my fucking book. If you gave me the choice between a sensation bestseller and three more inches, I’d definitely take the bestseller.

When you don’t surf, and you’re too married to hang out at the pool at the Hard Rock Vegas anymore, you might want to rethink your swimwear. In other words, time to move on from those Quicksilver and O’Neil board shorts hanging past your knees. But then, what kind of swimsuit do you wear? About a month ago, GQ’s creative director Jim Moore turned me on to Orlebar Brown, a high-end British swimsuit label that’s now being sold in the States. I took a pair on vacation to Jamaica and, well, I’m hooked.

What’s great about them is that they don’t really look a bathing suit; they look like shorts—ones that Borg or McEnroe or Vitas Geuralitis might have worn back in the '70s. I got the Bulldog in a dark, matte navy, almost black, like a Yankees cap. They fall about three inches above the knee, they’re slim but not tight, they’ve got a snug, mesh lining, the cotton-nylon blend dries quickly in the sun, and the snap front and zipper fly and back pocket are a lot less annoying than Velcro. Best of all, they’ve got sidetabs—like a Savile Row suit—so when they do start to sag a bit after you’ve been in the water all day, you just cinch them a bit tighter.

Oh yeah, one more thing—they cost about $250, which I realize is a little ridiculous. But as long as you don’t leave them hanging in a hotel bathroom somewhere, you’ll wear them for years. Shorts like these don’t go out of style.—adam rapoport

Available in New York at Jeffrey (www.jeffreynewyork.com), Opening Ceremony (www.openingceremony.us), and Clearly First (www.clearlyfirst.com). Available in Los Angeles at Opening Ceremony (www.openingceremony.us).

Related: Click here for "How to Buy a Swimsuit," your GQ guide to finding that perfect-fitting pair of trunks.

While on assignment at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival (one of her first commissions), GQ contributing photographer Brigitte Lacombe met Dustin Hoffman. The actor invited her back to the States to shoot on the set of All the President's Men—the first of hundreds of film sets and theatrical stages she'd photograph over the next thirty years. But to call Lacombe a "celebrity photographer" doesn't grasp the scope of her art (she cracks the façade of stardom like few since Avedon), not to mention her ambition (she has trekked across the globe to document politicians and political unrest). Describing her process recently by phone, Lacombe said, "I just try to create an intimate atmosphere." Here, the photographer—whose work is stunningly rendered in her new book Anima Persona—offers GQ.com a behind-the-scenes look at some of her best shots.—sarah goldstein

Jack Nicholson, Los Angeles, 2002

Brigitte Lacombe: "There are some people who are so set in the way they present themselves, and the more it goes on the more difficult it is to see them as anything other than the prepared image. Jack Nicholson is one of these people and so I was trepidatious about shooting him because I thought it would be very hard to get a portrait of him that was not the usual Jack Nicholson portrait. In the end I think it's impossible to do anything very different with him, but still, as a portrait I think there is something genuine that comes across in his smile. He also looks very handsome."

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer, New York, 1979

"Although Meryl was not that well known yet, I think everyone knew that she was the most promising young actress. There is something about her that is so luminescent; she seems to come out of the movie camera. This was just one day on the set—it seems like a still moment but they were talking. I love how Dustin is looking at her. It's just one of those moments that's beautiful when you catch it. Also when you work on a film you don't know what it's going to become, you never know, so when it ends up that it's two of the greatest actors in one of the most important films…well, that's very special."

Al Pacino and Sydney Pollack, Bobby Deerfield, New York, 1976

"Just before a new take the actor is checking himself in the mirror, checking his hair. He's not looking at himself; he's looking at his character. Some people mistake this for vanity, but that's not it at all. He needs to make sure that the character is there."

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, at home, Los Angeles, 1975

"I came to the house to do a portrait of her and I guess he walked in while we were shooting and, well, there they were. They were so young, very American looking. I actually think they look quite alike here. And they are obviously so entwined as you are when you're at the beginning of a great love affair. You can see it from the way she sits on his lap."

Nicole Kidman, Cold Mountain, Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania, Romania, 2002

"They had recreated this village in the mountains and she was getting dressed in one of the houses on set. It's such a classic thing, the dresser helping the actress get into her clothes, this could be at any time. She did not pay special attention to me, she just let me be. That attitude all comes from the director. The director invites you to be part of his team and then the actors just accept you. I had a great friendship with Anthony Minghella, he was an exceptional man, and I worked on almost all of his films."

Robert Redford, Ordinary People, in flight, California, 1979

"This was his first time directing a film, but it was at the height of his stardom as an actor. It was a very intimate film, very small. No one knew that this film would end up being important or that he would get an Academy Award for it. This was in flight on our way back to California from Chicago. They were shooting a scene on the plane in that moment and he was watching very intently. I dont know why he has the flower in his hair."

Leonardo DiCaprio, Gangs of New York, Cinecitta Studios, Rome, 2000

"They shot Gangs of New York at Cinecitta Studios, which is the most famous studio in the world—it's where Fellini shot all of his films. This was in the midst of doing a big scene and I noticed that Leo had this little digital camera. I saw him in the middle of this big crowd in this period film and I thought it was such a beautiful gesture. He wanted to document everything, too."

Jude Law and Matt Damon, New York, 1999

"This was for Frank Rich's story about The Talented Mr. Ripley. Matt was not the huge star that he is now just yet, and neither was Jude, but everyone had their eyes on them. They recreated a sense of what their characters are in the film through a very simple gesture. I asked Matt to look at Jude because in the film he wants to be Jude's character. All I said was, 'Will you look at Jude?' They brought their own intensity to it."

Viggo Mortensen, Budapest, Hungary, 2007

"He was doing another project in Hungary so we shot there. He is just the most handsome man you can imagine—distractingly handsome. But when you are with him, it's not that you forget, but he is so elegant and so kind and also very interested in photography; he's published his own book. Our location person had found us this night club that looked very much like a place from the '50s, and it was in the middle of the day so it was kind of abandoned. He was very easy and generous, he gave us a lot of time. I love this picture because you can see how elegant and long he is from his arms."

Daniel Day-Lewis, The Crucible, Hog Island, Essex, Massachusetts, 1995

"There are two actors who I've never seen enjoy being photographed. One is Meryl Streep and the other is Daniel Day-Lewis. I've photographed him regularly over the years and he's very professional, but he never enjoys it. This was on the set of The Crucible and I created a mock studio in a barn. It was a very intense part, as always, for Daniel and he was completely in character; so really this was a portrait of his character."

Bob Dylan, on his ranch, Point Dume, California, 2004

"This was in 2004 when Chronicles came out. He hadn't had his portrait done by anyone in 10 years, and the last person was Avedon, so I had been warned. But I happened to know someone from his past and when I told him that, he opened up to me, or at least as much as he would have. He accepted me and the situation. He was extremely funny and dry and acerbic. Between taking his portrait we went on a walk as a way to ease the tension and he gave us this tour of his ranch. There are horses on his property and abandoned cars. He's an extraordinary character."

John Galliano

About to hop a plane to New York to get back to the family and job. One final thought on Paris: As impressive as the shows are, the spaces in which they're held are often even more memorable. In Milan, labels like Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, and Armani keep it consistent, hosting shows in their own little arenas; in Paris, it's anything (and anywhere) goes. You get centuries-old churches, sky-lit parking garages, magnificent government buildings, Napoleon-era mansions and deserted train depots, from the center of town to the farthest, dumpiest outskirts. This week, John Galliano commandeered a crumbling, 1930s indoor swimming pool, drowning in layers of grafitti. An hour later, at 10 p.m. (just as the sun was finally dipping below the cityscape), Raf Simons welcomed the crowds to an immaculate gardened courtyard, at what is now a school for the blind. The two venues couldn't have been more different, or more stunning.

Alright, gotta go—about to take off. See you in September at the New York shows.—adam rapoport

Raf Simons

Junya Watanabe

Commes des Garçons

Just walked by two thirtysomething-year-old French dudes, both in double-breasted jackets, and both obviously having been out all night. One looking like a young Paul McCartney in a full beard with Wayfarers and a trim-fitting navy mohair DB blazer and jeans; the other in a slim, plaid DB suit, short-cropped pants, no socks and sneakers, jacket slung over the shoulder of his unbuttoned, rumpled white dress shirt. Now, I realize that we all look a lot cooler the morning after, but I'm betting these guys looked pretty cool the night before too.—a.r.

Um, hmm…so this short-sleeve suit thing ain't going away. Spotted it again, this time at today's Wintle presentation at the Ritz.—a.r.

That's right—this dude's got a gold chain running from his belt to his cellphone. And gold aviators and a gold watch. Try this at home, and I'm pretty sure you'll get your ass kicked. Try this at the John Galliano show, and no one looks twice.—a.r.

At a shoe store in the Marais. Loving the selection of canvas sneakers, something that the French appreciate much better than we do back home.

If you buy a simple white pair, you can wear them as easily with a suit as with jeans or khakis. And best of all, they're cheap. Plus, when it's pushing 90, do you really need padded leather sneakers on your feet?—a.r.

If you're the type who used invest in Helmut Lang (back when Helmut was there) and Dior Homme (back when Hedi Slimane was there), check out the new men's line by Balmain, just now making its way to the States. Super pricey, but kind of a perfect wardrobe of skinny dirty-white jeans, beaten-in cargo jackets, and worn-out bombers. No full suiting yet, although designer Christophe Decarnin does do tux jackets, which he likes to pair with his faded tees and military pants.—a.r.

I've always loved the neon signage above Parisian pharmacies. You spot 'em all over town, from blocks away. Not exactly what you'd find at a CVS or Rite Aid.—a.r.

Just spotted two fortysomething-year-old women standing outside a bar drinking these things: Perrier, vodka, and Get 27, a mint-flavored liqueur. It's called a Karine Forever. The French aren't exactly known for their cocktails. Now you know why.—a.r.

Steak, frites, salad. That's it. No menu at L'Entrecôte. Just decide what kind of wine to order, and Paris' most charming—and toughest—waitresses take care of the rest. (There are several locations in Paris; we ended up at the one in St. Germain des Pres.) And do like Jim Moore: Ask for crème fraîche and sugar with the berries.—a.r.

What you need to see, do, buy, and make in the next 72 hours

Chill your drinks like a pro. You probably don't have the time, energy, or resources to hand-chisel your own rocks like this place, but these DIY molds from the MoMA store ($16 a set) make the next best thing: perfectly-round, 2-inch orbs of ice. Besides keeping your drink cooler for longer—they melt slower than regular cubes—they look infinitely cooler floating around in a lowball glass.

Trash your playlist. Sure you've got your favorite running mixes all loaded up on your Nano, but you know they're getting played out. ("Hey, I'm usually three blocks from here when "Paper Planes" comes on.") De La Soul's new Nike sponsored jam "Are You In?" is anything but tired. Part of Nike + Original Run series, the 45 minute file lays down a continuous groove that provides comfort and motivation through the full cycle of your run—dread, drudgery, pain, euphoria, exhaustion, more euphoria—as if it was composed for just such a purpose. And it was—De La and the other artists before them (LCD Soundsystem. Aesop Rock et al.) made it that way, and the mix has an uncanny way of knowing just when you'll need some ecstatic guitar or some heart-pounding percussion to get you through.

Don't wait for fight night to start throwing punches. Anyone looking forward to Saturday's Super Lightweight boutVictor Ortiz takes on Marcos Rene Maidanacan stoke their bloodlust early with Fight Night Round 4, which is out today. The fourth installment has a new "Legacy mode," where you can choose from a selection of 40 boxers in their primes, letting your Michael Spinks, say, slug it out with your buddy's George Foreman.

Drop $29 bucks on an express to a city where you can blow or win thousands. You still have a week to book an Independence Day jaunt to Atlantic City on Amtrak's new express service, ACES. Once you're there, follow our cues.

Watch the U.S. Men's Soccer team cap off their improbable run to the Confederations Cup final in a re-match with Brazil. After stunning the soccer world on Wednesday with their upset of top-ranked Spain (who hadn't lost a match since 2006), the U.S. seeks revenge on Sunday at 2:30 ET against a Brazilian squad who handled the Americans 3-0 during pool play. And now that we're really starting to believe in these guys, don't forget to apply for your 2010 World Cup tickets!

Think outside the butcher shop. Ubuntu—the San Francisco restaurant our food critic Alan Richman called the one vegetarian place even a carnivore will love—is entering the retail game with an adjacent store selling spices, cookware used in the restaurant, and specialty foods like chef Jeremy Fox's lavender almonds. Check out his recipe for a strawberry pizza.

A ridiculously late start—as always—but man, helluva show. Hard to think of designer right now who cuts a better suit, or makes a crisper white shirt, or who understands how to be creative without being over the top. The guy's killing it.—a.r.

Not entirely sure what look this chick is going for, but she and her little crew have been getting photographed by everyone today. They kind of remind me of the bad guys in Superman II.—a.r.

First Michael Jackson moment of the day: A sternum-pounding version of "PYT, Pretty Young Thing," as Galliano took his bows, posing and smirking every step of the way. Only question is: How is it that another designer didn't beat him to the punch?—a.r.

'Perfect show. The guy's not only a great designer, but a great stylist too.' That's our creative director Jim Moore talking about Junya Watanabe. Translation? Watanabe not only makes great individual pieces (a suit jacket, a work boot, a straw hat) but he puts head-to-toe looks together as well as anyone. He conceives a theme for a show, and as soon as the first model walks out—boom!—you get it. Might be a riff on American workwear, or sly takes on the navy blazer or cooled-up versions of hunting gear. But it never gets repetitive. He keeps you guessing with reversible jackets, and collaborations with established brands like Levi's and Tricker's shoes and Carhartt and Nike. This season he had a 1940s man-on-holiday thing going—printed neckercheifs with matching pocket squares, glen-plaid suits, driving caps. And to round it out, a series of rain parkas, in collaboration with Mackintosh. Sounds a bit dowdy and dandy, but never felt that way. The suit jackets were often made of nylon with attachable hoods, the pants were cropped short, the dress shoes chunky and tough. From start to finish: totally cohesive, totally cool.—a.r.