Nicholas was just twenty-one when we had our first photo shoot, but I knew of him from “Birdy.” With his father August (a Comparative Lit professor), his uncle Francis (a film director), and his grandfather Carmine (a composer), Nicholas (born Nicholas Kim Coppola) had a cultural education genetically built into him. Our session—no surprise—had a wild improvisational energy to it: there was the brooding atonal music of an avant-garde Polish composer to set the mood (usually rock is requested), skulls for props, and ripped seamless paper as background. That day, with the mind of a mad genius and the eyes of a lost basset hound, he was Hamlet in a Hawaiian shirt. Come to think of it—all our sessions wandered off the road. Elvis and Sailor Ripley Live!