I once -- no, twice -- attempted to ask Charlton Heston if it was true he had tried to stick a sword through the director Sam Peckinpah on a movie location in Mexico.

Heston, the iconic Hollywood actor who died Saturday at 84, was in a television studio in Chicago, promoting a book about his life. I was in the room because -- well, the real answer is I was there because I was 22 years old. When you're 22, you think you can do anything.

Heston was destined to live another 30 years -- this was 1978 -- but his book, "The Actor's Life," had just come out, detailing his experiences working on Hollywood blockbusters like "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben Hur."

One of his promotional stops in Chicago was "Kup's Show," a talk program on WTTW-TV hosted by Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet.

Kupcinet always did an advance puff for his weekly show in his newspaper column, and one morning, while a student at UW-Madison, I read an item saying that week's guests included Charlton Heston, Eartha Kitt, John Avildsen, Paul Sorvino and Thomas McGuane.

Heston was already a legend as an actor; Kitt was an actress and cabaret singer; Avildsen a film director whose credits included "Rocky"; and Sorvino, an actor, had the lead role in Avildsen's new movie, titled "Slow Dancing in the Big City."

It was the last name, however, that grabbed me. Maybe not a lot of people in Madison in 1978 would have recognized the name Thomas McGuane, but when I read it, I almost fell out of my chair (actually, I was drinking coffee in a booth in the Kollege Klub).

McGuane was a young novelist whose book, "Ninety-Two in the Shade," had been nominated for a National Book Award. He had written screenplays -- one, "The Missouri Breaks," starred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando -- and had been married, briefly, to a movie star -- Margot Kidder.

As a college student with a vague hope of being a writer, I revered Thomas McGuane. I went directly from the Kollege Klub to a telephone, called WTTW in Chicago, and asked to talk to someone connected to "Kup's Show."

I eventually reached the producer, who said they were taping that afternoon. He stunned me by adding that while there was no studio audience, I was welcome to drive down and watch the taping from the so-called "green" room, the waiting area adjacent to the studio set. To this day, I don't know why he was so nice to me.

It was while driving down to Chicago -- blowing off my classes for the day -- that I remembered that Charlton Heston had starred in "Major Dundee," a film directed by Sam Peckinpah, another of my heroes.

Peckinpah had become a hero the moment I watched his masterpiece, "The Wild Bunch," at a campus film society screening. I immediately read anything I could find about Peckinpah. One story mentioned that on "Major Dundee," Heston had become so enraged at Peckinpah that he charged the director on a horse and tried to impale him with a sword.

I was one of the first people in the green room, but it soon filled with between 15 and 20 WTTW employees, all of whom were hoping for a glimpse of Heston.

Suddenly, the great man strode in. Smiling, he began circling the room, introducing himself. With the arrogance of youth, I decided I would ask him about trying to stab Peckinpah.

"Hello, I'm Chuck Heston," he said, smiling and extending his hand.

I shook it and said, "Mr. Heston, when you were in Mexico... " but he had kept moving on to the next person.

A few more people had entered the green room. Eartha Kitt arrived, attended by two men who might have been her sons but who, I feel safe in saying, were not. Heston had kept circling, and about 10 minutes after we first shook hands, there he was in front of me again, saying, "Hello, I'm Chuck Heston."

This time I said, "On Major Dundee,' with Peckinpah, did you really... " but again he was gone. (Years later, I read a Peckinpah biography in which Heston told the author he did charge Peckinpah with a saber but missed -- narrowly -- on purpose.)

That day in Chicago, I had my moment with Thomas McGuane. When I asked if I might speak with him after the show, a publicist immediately said, "Are you with a publication?" McGuane brushed her away, and later spent 10 minutes answering my star-struck questions. "Persevere," he replied, when I asked him the secret to making it as a writer. "Work as hard as anyone with a 9-to-5 job."

While I was not destined to become a dashing novelist and screenwriter like McGuane, my future was there in the Chicago studio that day. Paul Sorvino's character in "Slow Dancing in the Big City" is a daily newspaper columnist. Pauline Kael noted in her New Yorker review: "He's a loud, sad-sack oaf, with an idiot smile -- a patsy."

It's enough to make a daily columnist want to fall on his sword.