This summer, I bumped into Evan Handler at the NBC party. He was there with his wife, Elisa Atti, because he's one of the costars on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," which airs a new episode at 9 CT tonight. (And tonight's episode is a good demonstration of the rule-of-thumb that you should judge a new series by its first two shows.)
Handler, as you may know, survived a virulent form of leukemia in his 20s, wrote about it in a book called Time on Fire, did a one-man show called Time on Fire, and has served as cancer spokesman for M.D. Anderson (where I was treated in 2001) and Livestrong Foundation.
What you don't know is that he has a hard time connecting with cancer patients, mostly because the ones he'd visit in hospitals were relentlessly upbeat, something he most definitely is not. That's evidenced by the title of his upcoming book, It's Only Temporary: The Good News and Bad News About Being Alive. At the time we talked, he had just sent it to his editor. Two months later, there's no sign of it at Amazon. I don't know if that's good news or bad news or only temporary.
Anyway, here's our unedited 6-minute talk in Pasadena, California, late one July evening this summer. Download WS_10067.mp3
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