Former Variety staffer Stu Levine , now a PR executive at NBCUniversal, was a close friend of publicity and communications exec Robert Pietranton , the Warner Bros. TV Group senior VP who died last week at 56 . Here, Levine shares his personal memories of Pietranton.

Thank you, Marianne Romano.

It was circa 2002 and I was covering the TV beat at Variety when my phone rang in the office. It was Marianne, who was a good friend and the head of publicity for Nickelodeon. She was calling to say I should probably meet one of her publicist friends for lunch, a guy named Robert Pietranton. He had read my stories and was a big Bruce Springsteen fan, like myself. She thought we’d have a lot in common and hit it off.

Absolutely, I said. I loved talking Bruce. What did I have to lose?

We met

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