My Lunch with Budd Schulberg
posted by Large
My lunch with Budd Schulberg never happened, and now it never will, for as I’m sure you’ve heard by now he died yesterday at the age of 95.
Back in April, I was planning to do a piece for HBO leading up to the Pac/Hatton fight in which I talked to Budd Schulberg about the current fight scene and discussed in particular the Pacquiao-Hatton showdown. As a conceit for an article, this was, of course, merely an excuse to talk boxing with Budd. The hook was something along the lines of, “talking about the big fight with a man who’s seen more big fights than anyone alive.”
Initially, everything went very smoothly. I called his house, talked to his wife Betsy, who was at first suspicious of me but ultimately understood that I just wanted to talk boxing with her husband. “Budd loves to talk about boxing,” she said. We set up a date for me to come out to their house in Westhampton. She’d make us a nice lunch, she said. Later that day, her assistant emailed directions to the house.
