Cut to: 1993. The Athenaeum.

Commencement speaker and Paris Review founder George Plimpton is being honored at an Athenaeum dinner. The actor, writer, and editor is approached by Riley with an idea for his influential journal—an interview with author Anne Rice, whose Vampire Chronicles books have now sold millions. Plimpton says yes, and Riley spends the summer reading Anne’s books and prepping for the interviews to follow. One day—after looking over an exhaustive 400 pages of transcript—Riley half-facetiously says, "What I ought to do is slap covers on the damn thing and publish it!" He ends up pitching the idea to Rice on a fax, which she accepts. The book, Conversations With Anne Rice, is published in 1996, and earned raves from Rice fans who assert that Riley’s handling of the project was the "next best thing to being there," in the room, with Rice and Riley.

Dissolve back to: present day. Riley’s office.

Riley’s yogurt sits mostly untouched on his desk. That’s OK, he’ll get to it, he says reassuringly. He is back to the present, thinking about the College and where it is headed. "It will be a different college in some ways," he says. "It’s a kind of organism that evolves and matures and changes and adapts to circumstances." He is thinking about his colleagues and the students and the administrative faculty he will miss. He is thinking about the professor who will take over film studies and make it "his own thing" just as Riley did. There will be a heavier burden on that professor to bring technology into the course in ways that Riley didn’t. He is thinking about the battles that were worth fighting for on campus; and about how whichever side people were on, they were sincere. He is explaining that another reason he stayed here so long is that Claremont McKenna has always been a "fascinating, interesting and lively place to be." And it’s not surprising that one of the toughest questions he has answering is how he will spend his retirement years.

"The first thing I’m not going to do is have a set of plans or obligations I’m committed to," says Riley, although he will be working on a book that examines TV’s Golden Age, involving Delbert Mann. The bigger challenge is figuring out what to say to his students on the last day of school. "I can’t walk out of the door that day, not saying goodbye," Riley says. "I’ve really loved them." In all aspects, he considers himself a blessed man, having been able to combine his literary interests, his lifelong love of movies, and his deep satisfaction being at CMC. Says Riley, "I think there became a time, quite clearly, when what I do, and who I am, became the same thing. It’s made my life wonderfully gratifying."

Dissolve to credits.

Riley, emceeing an early Athenaeum event.