A: Here, you are striking me to my very core. I have conversed with folks about my hat and my reasons, but I have never put it into "print" until "of all the gin joints of all the world [you] walked into mine."
My hat has little to do with Bogart other than I tip my hat to him. I do cock it a bit as he did in Casablanca, but that is merely an homage.
I hate when people say, "Indiana" or "Crocodile Dundee" as I was actually thinking of Director, Sam Peckinpah, the inventor of slow-motion violence in such films as The Wild Bunch. There are many photos of Peckinpah looking into a lens on location wearing a hat. While I don't aspire to films of that genre, I do aspire to create an art form. Sam did. So much so, that one of his colleagues said, "Sam Peckinpah?! Hell, I went to his funeral just to make sure he was dead."
I also liken it to Linus' blanket. It's been a security to me. I often say that I cannot shoot without it.
When I bought my first hat of this type, it was in Baltimore. An African-American woman was around the counter as I tried my first on. I looked at myself in the chapeau and looked at her. She guffawed and I thought, "That's Me!" Many producers searching for my camera were told, "Find the Man in the Hat." That's the story.
