About this conversation
Tony Toscano was seventeen and playing big band records on his hometown radio station in West Covina when he told listeners to go see Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome.
The phone rang.
It was Sinatra, and they talked on the air for ten minutes.
That was 1972.
Tony took Talking Pictures from that station to television in Salt Lake City, into 65 million homes, and to two Emmys, then retired it after twenty years because studios kept telling him what to ask.
In this hour, he talks about Story Forge, the event where he and Cynthia met, what Harrison Ford and Robin Williams were like off camera, why every movie starts with five stars, and what the river gives him that a theater can't.
In this conversation
- 00:00Five decades of asking the questions, and Story Forge
- 04:24Seventeen, on the air, and Frank Sinatra on the phone
- 12:11"Talking Pictures," and the aunt who voiced Rocky
- 16:12The perfect face for radio
- 24:31His favorite movies, genre by genre
- 28:43Forty beta tapes a day, then two Emmys
- 33:47Why he retired Talking Pictures for Screen Chatter
- 40:49Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, and Robin Williams off camera
- 45:23Every movie starts with five stars
- 52:01The river, the barbecue, and the first movie he ever saw
