I had two unicorns to find during the making of Stro: The Michael D’Asaro story. One was Al Morales. Morales was in so many stories of D’Asaro’s fencing days. He competed against D’Asaro when Navy fenced against NYU or during National Championships. And Morales was D’Asaro’s teammate when they fenced in the World Military Championships. Morales and D’Asaro also won two National Team Saber championships together when they fenced for the New York Athletic Club. The third member of that team was Alex Orban.

Morales proved elusive, but I eventually cornered him. I found Morale’s personal attorney and sent a message through him. Mr. Morales graciously shared his time with us.

The other, for me, was Neil Diamond. When I first heard that D’Asaro was friends with Neil Diamond, I couldn’t believe it was that Neil Diamond, as in Global Superstar Neil Diamond. But it was Global Superstar Neil Diamond. They had been teammates at New York University.

One of the things we made perfectly clear to our interview subjects was that in many instances we didn’t know what we didn’t know. That is why we would just pepper these poor people with questions. Many of which were based on assumptions that had no basis in reality. Answers to our questions would quickly reveal our ignorance.

This seemed to be especially true in Neil Diamond’s case. I desperately wanted for them to be fast friends, having each other on speed dial. We heard reports of Neil Diamond inviting D’Asaro to concerts all the time. Or that Mr. Diamond helped immensely during D’Asaro’s final days. But the more we questioned, the more we realized how off track we were. The Venn diagram of Diamond and D’Asaro’s life was a very small area. They were friends, just not in the deep way we needed.

I made the decision not to use the few tidbits we did get about their relationship in the movie. It would have been just too overpowering. Yes, D’Asaro was famous enough to warrant his own movie. But he was fencing world famous, not instantly recognizable world famous.

We did however get some great stories about Neil Diamond that had nothing to do with D’Asaro, including the happenstance way Mr. Diamond started fencing. Much like D’Asaro he wanted an open period during High School and fencing was the way to do that.

That story was told by Herb Cohen. Mr. Cohen has the relationship with Mr. Diamond that we thought D’Asaro had had. Mr. Cohen was kind enough to pass on the interview request to Mr. Diamond. 

If Mr. Diamond had accepted the request, my film crew would have immediately grown by two. My wife stated in no uncertain terms that I would not be going to Mr. Diamond’s house without her. And if my wife was going, her mother was coming, too. See what I mean about famous? My wife and her mother didn’t come to any of the other 50 interviews. For Mr. Diamond, they would make the sacrifice.

Mr. Diamond however was dealing with the double whammies of having just come off a tour and getting a dismal report about his health. He declined to be part of the project. Which I can completely understand. The requests for his time must be constant.

Finally, thank you to the wealth of fencing knowledge that is Andy Shaw and the Museum of American Fencing. He came through with the nice scan of American Fencer Magazine you see in the short film.