'10 sorry.

This seems a good thread to post random recollections of meeting and/or communicating with Ray. In response to a mention of the Bradbury Building on the Twilight Zone board:

From Sam Weller's Biography The Bradbury Chronicles: "The opening sequence for [The Ray Bradbury Theater] episodes, showing Ray's office--a sort of laboratory of the imagination, jammed from floor to ceiling with toy dinosaurs and rocket ships and books--was shot, in part, in Ray's Beverly Hills office. Other shots, showing Ray arriving at his office in an old, hand-operated, wrought-iron elevator, were photographed in, ironically enough, the Bradbury Building at 304 South Broadway, in downtown Los Angeles. The name was purely coincidental. The Bradbury Building was constructed in the late 1800s and had a remarkable open lobby with a lacework of iron railings and stairs; it had been used as a location in many films over the years, and in, another coincidence, Forrest J. Ackerman's grandfather, George H. Wyman, designed it."

The book goes on to describe how the shoot didn't even start till after midnight and Ray had to leave before it was over because he had the flu, so another guy stood in for some shots.

I remember this well as it took place just at the time I was supposed to do a telephone interview with Ray--a consolation as I'd tried like hell to get a personal meeting and couldn't arrange it--but when I called him he sounded awful, so sick and weak the conversation was soon cut short and after playing the tape for a few friends I taped over it as I just couldn't stand to hear him sounding like that. One of my friends and I baked chocolate chip cookies and sent a get well card with a little cartoon dandelion making the peace sign and saying, "It's your trip, man," and I received a lovely note from Ray thanking me for my thoughtfulness. I later did get the phone interview when he was well.

Besides the show intro, he would tape introductions to each episode. I remember how happy and proud I was when they did "A Sound of Thunder" as the tape showed Ray's dinosaur collection. This same friend (who helped make the "it's your trip" card) and I spent a long time touring Seattle's underground selecting a gift for Ray and chose a windup dinosaur skeleton. I said when I sent it that I hoped Ray didn't already have one, and he said he hadn't, so I know it was MY dinosaur which appeared on camera! The camera panned over the collection and held on the skeleton, for like, 8 seconds! It was one of my proudest moments in life.

The show was not funded for state-of-the art special effects, so the T-rex on the episode was kinda pathetic, but if it's any consolation it scared hell out of my cat.

this is a good idea, dandelion, I love reading people's accounts of their meetings with Ray.