Hilton Als

Hilton Als Staff writer Charlie Atlas was the first director to ask me to write for film. This was a long time ago—the mid-nineteen-eighties—and he was trying to complete a movie called “Ex-Romance,” which featured two of his stars, the dancer-choreographers Karole Armitage and Michael Clark. The idea was that I would write some bits to help tie the film together. It was such a flattering thing, to be hired by Charlie—because by then he was already a legend. Raised in St. Louis, he landed in New…