Mr. Big

This is him, Mr. Big. The real Mr. Big. Our entertainment reporter, Brent Hallenbeck, and I took a drive down to Pomfret, VT on a gorgeous afternoon last week to visit with him before last night's release of the "Sex and the City" movie. The hugely successful magazine magnate was the inspiration behind Candace Bushnell's column in New York years ago. Mr. Big (Ron Galotti in real life) left New York five years ago to retire to the hills and valleys of our beautiful state of Vermont. I really had no idea what to expect as I knocked on the door of his beautifully restored and remodeled country farm house plopped in the middle of 100 acres of rolling farm lands and wooded hills. He didn't answer the door, his wife, Lisa, did. Ron (Mr. Big) was busy down the road building a tree house for his nine-year-old daughter, Abbi. Clad in jeans and a John Deere tee, Ron, who was much smaller in stature than his actor counterpart Chris Noth, strolled up the road with Brent and stopped to talk in front of his new pride and joy: his hay field. "You know you're not dealing with a farmer when they look at this and all they see is a field of weeds," Ron said after I noted that the dandelions had completely taken over is field. The yellow weeds made for a good shot though so we plopped down to snap a few photos.


I was humbled when he told me THE Annie Liebovitz had photographed him upon occasion and that the very ideas I had envisioned (dressing him in one his many Prada suits to stand in the middle of his hay field) had already been done before when huge publications such as Country Living and Vanity Fair had run profiles on his new Vermont lifestyle.

Ron has seen amazing things and met incredible people with dozens of stories to tell (my favorite being that Elton John played a private concert for him and Versace at Versace's home), our one hour interview extended into two hours as we roamed the property and toured the house. Brent and I couldn't quite fathom the amount of power and wealth he has as we stood before him as lowly journalists that are quite confident we won't experience those two elements in our lifetime, but success and fame aside, Ron was a great guy and a truly interesting man to talk to. Plus, he says that the old family Vermonter's that also call Pomfret their home have given took some time to warm up to him. Money's no object in Vermont...can you farm?