Vanity Fair Magazine | The New York Observer

My Night At The Oscars

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:16:07 -0500

On Friday night, Feb. 20, in Los Angeles, Mark, a friendly expert in the art of mixology, tore up a few more bits of oregano at Cecconi’s, a sprawling Italian bistro that sits atop the hallowed Melrose Avenue dirt that was home to longtime industry staple Morton’s. The restaurant, which is owned by the folks who operate SoHo House in New York, was playing host to the Oscar crowd. Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman and...

January Groans: Mags' Lean Month Gets Downright Gaunt

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:31:45 -0500

Over the next week or two, the January issues of monthly magazines will start hitting newsstands—or perhaps “lightly floating onto newstands like little snowflakes” would be a better way of putting it.

“A lot of people are really, really down in the dumps about what January looks like,” said Jay Lauf, the publisher of the recently revamped Atlantic.

Layoffs, hiring freezes and canceled Christmas parties have cast a...

Happy Tina Fey Day!

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:29:49 -0500

What else do you call a day when the comedic actress and writer is seemingly everywhere all at once?

First up, Vanity Fair, which enlisted The Times' Maureen Dowd to profile Ms. Fey, whom the magazine's cover trumpets as "A New American Sweetheart!" (Punctuation theirs.) The magazine's Web site also features one of those behind-the-scenes videos of Ms. Fey's photo shoot that all magazines' Web Editors are convinced Internet users love. (In an...

Graydon Carter, George Plimpton's Understudy

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:30:40 -0500

The New York Times has posted a preview of the Book Review's lead review from this week: Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr.'s George Plimpton oral biography, George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Few Unappreciative Observers. (An oral biography of George Plimpton: Capital idea!)

It's hard finding just one thing to quote from...

Vanity Fair Returns to the Red Zone

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:28:15 -0500

Even though the election and economic crisis have pushed the Iraq war off the front—or even the first dozen—pages of newspapers, the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair features an article by Seth Mnookin in which he reports on life inside The New York Times' Baghdad bureau. The story is not yet online, but it's full of interesting points, including details of "internecine warfare that once wracked the bureau." Update: November 4, 2008: Here...

Also! Graydon Nabs Mr. Blackhawk Down

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:03:44 -0400

One more addition to Graydon Carter's stable: longtime Atlantic writer and Blackhawk Down author Mark Bowden is dropping his exclusive contract with The Atlantic and signing a two-story-a-year contract with Vanity Fair.

In a landscape where there are no available media jobs, and there's virtually no mobility in the market, Mr. Bowden appears to have written his ticket. He told The Observer that after six years on contract at The Atlantic, it was...

Brad Pitt Wants Better Investigative Journalism

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:46:44 -0400

An up-and-coming writer named Brad Pitt has a piece on Vanity Fair's Web site in which he nominates Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to the magazine's "Hall of Fame." (Not, it should be noted, to the magazine's Best-Dressed List: International Hall of Fame.)

Mr. Pitt offers this bit of press criticism in citing Mr. Roth for the list:

At the heart of the group's effectiveness: meticulous field research, which creates an...

Is It Just Us?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:38:44 -0400

Maybe the heat's just getting to us, but is there something odd about the logo for Vanity Fair's VF Agenda Web site, where readers (presumably of all persuasions) can get "the inside story" on everything the magazine cares about.

OK, fine, keep...

Cartoonists Agree: John McCain Old; Wife Fond of Pills; Constitution Very Flammable

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:49:16 -0400

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Power & Politics blog posted a satire of The New Yorker's now legendary Barry Blitt cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as flag-burning, Osama bin Laden-honoring terrorists. In VF's version, drawn by illustrator Tim Bower, John and Cindy McCain are portrayed as their own worst caricatures: The presumptive Republican nominee for president is seen hunched over a walker, while his wife is juggling various prescription pills. On the wall is...

Brothers in Arms

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:14:33 -0400

"It's really easy to get killed in Iraq," says Phillip Robertson, a freelancer who covered the war for Salon and wrote the introduction to the book Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq.

"They want to kill you. All you have to do is give them a chance and somebody will kill you or kidnap you." Mr. Robertson had his own near-kidnap experience, but he managed to get away. His...

Graydon on Bill's Blowup: 'Saddening ... Characteristic'

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:29:18 -0400

On the afternoon of June 2, Wolf Blitzer was talking to Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum about his 9,647-word piece about Bill Clinton.

“Some people who work for him now say that he seems to be angry all the time, angry when he gets up in the morning and angry when he goes to bed at night,” Mr. Purdum was saying.

At about...

Vanity Fair Has The Last Laugh

Fri, 30 May 2008 15:57:44 -0400

What do you do if your magazine was embroiled in a possibly manufactured controversy over its allegedly sexualized photos of a minor? If you're Vanity Fair, you make fun of the whole thing, of course.

VF Daily has posted a sneak peek of the magazine's July issue featuring Angelina Jolie's impressive décolletage below the cover line "Angelina Jolie Uncensored." (Thankfully, the magazine had the tact not to use the cover line Angelina's Twins.)...

A Look Back: Miley Cyrus Joins Lohan, Hilton, Wolfowitz in Denouncing Mean Magazine

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:26:47 -0400

As you may have already read, Miley Cyrus is totally embarrassed by the semi-topless (back view) photos printed of her in this month's Vanity Fair. In a statement put out by her publicist, Ms. Cyrus, age 15, said, "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed... I never intended for any of this to happen and...

Magazine Nabobs Resolve in 2008 to Kick Bad Habits: Waverly Inn, Post

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:15:13 -0500

Each New Year brings with it the obligatory slate of resolutions. And like some college-level sociological experiment, each New Year also brings with it a slate of stories about what famous people have resolved to either quit—smoking, say—or begin—usually something kind of boring, like marathon training or French classes. True to form, WWD recently called some executives in the magazine world to ask them what they hope to accomplish, respectively, in 2008. ...

Dina Lohan Speaks: Back to Reality!

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:40:51 -0400

Lindsay Lohan’s mother, Dina, was partying Tuesday night at the Tropicana Zone in Times Square.

“I’m doing a reality show; if you asked me two years ago, I’d be like, ‘You guys are smoking crack! I’m not doing this!’ But now I realize that I have no choice. I have to fix it for my little kids, and I have to fix my life,” she explained, while two ambiguous video-camera crews, complete...

Wolff: The Enemy of Murdoch's Enemy Is His Friend

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:49:18 -0400

When Michael Wolff started shopping his biography of Rupert Murdoch, he opted to go with a "high six-figure" offer from Doubleday instead of taking the risk of having his previous publisher, Harper Collins, put out the book. (Mr. Murdoch's News Corp. owns Harper Collins.)

But these days Mr. Wolff has emerged as something of a sympathizer—at least with Mr. Murdoch's ambition to own The Wall Street Journal.

In The Times:

In a 3,600-word column in the September...

Bono, Graydon, Annie To Make 20 Covers For July Vanity Fair

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:18:05 -0400

MemoPad is reporting that the Bono Vox guest-edited July issue of Vanity Fair, with its theme of Africa, will up the ante on that whole "collect-'em-all" cover trend:

"Sources close to the title said it could publish as many as 20 different covers, all shot by Annie Leibovitz."

Insiders seem to be telling MemoPad good things about Bono's editing abilities, though we can't help but wonder what's going on between the lines here:

Bono has been...

Elsewhere: McCain's Praise, Ben's Goodbye

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:40:42 -0500

Vanity Fair has a profile of John McCain in which he says of Hillary Clinton:

"People underestimate her political intelligence and her antennae. She's not her husband--no one's her husband. But she's good. And I like her. I know you're not supposed to say that, but I...

Gender? I Don't Even Know Her! Sklar Charges Sexism, Carter Bristles

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:27:41 -0500

At today's luncheon for the American Society of Magazine Editors, on the second floor of The Princeton Club and starring the former editors of Spy magazine, a Q&A session got complicated. Susan Morrison--a former Spy editor, and so friendly with former co-worker Graydon Carter, and now an editor at the New Yorker--made a wee gibe about a new piece by Christopher Hitchens, which was just published in Mr. Carter's magazine, Vanity Fair. That piece explains...

Annie Leibovitz, Having Seen

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:21:34 -0500

Annie Leibovitz, the grand dame of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone covers, was the one facing flashbulbs. The other morning she gave a private press tour of her new show at the Brooklyn Museum. "Walk slowly. Watch your cameras," she said. Microphone booms swung through the air, nearly knocking the photos off the wall. "Careful, we have lots of time," she said as she was followed. Ms. Leibovitz has recently been profiled in Newsweek,...

Shouted Down by Snapshots- The 9/11 Photographic Record

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:00:00 -0400

The photographs of 9/11 hold an unparalleled, monumental power over us. So one picks up a 400-page book that promises to tell “The Stories Behind the Images” with high expectations, and with some nervousness, too: If it doesn’t live up to its billing, it will feel like just another meretricious contribution to the expanding shelf of 9/11 titles.

A former photo director for Life magazine (now “editor of creative development” at Vanity Fair),...

New York World

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 20:00:00 -0400

The Eight Things You Need to Know About Hollywood Four years ago, I published a book called How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, about my spiraling descent down the New York food chain. I started out as an editor at Vanity Fair and ended up road-testing sex toys for a short-lived men’s magazine. Now, I’ve written a sequel, The Sound of No Hands Clapping, this time about my failure to “take” Hollywood....

LaBute Tells It Like It Is- Again! Men Are Jerks

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:00:00 -0400

I very rarely hear from anyone I write about, though Neil LaBute is an exception. He drops me an e-mail whenever I review a new play of his, saying, in effect, “I’m sorry you didn’t like my play and fuck you.”

Well, fair enough. No artist in the history of the world has ever enjoyed negative reviews, and it so happens I don’t enjoy writing them. I would much sooner celebrate theater than...

Michael Roberts to Vanity Fair

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 09:37:59 -0400

Michael Roberts New Yorker fashion director Michael Roberts is moving over to Vanity Fair, according to a press release just issued by Conde Nast today. Full release after the jump. —Gabriel Sherman
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE VANITY FAIR GRAYDON CARTER NAMES MICHAEL ROBERTS FASHION AND STYLE DIRECTOR OF VANITY FAIR New York, N.Y. -- Michael Roberts has been named to the newly created position of fashion and style director of Vanity Fair, editor Graydon Carter announced today. ...

Best Comment Ever

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 06:23:00 -0400

This from the comments section beneath a recent post on the sudden spate of street construction around Freddy Ferrer's home: "A bunch of us 'managerial appointees' in DOT had fun ordering the tearing up of the pavement outside Vanity Fair's offices back in '96 or '97 on the same day that its issue containing the article asserting that Rudy was sleeping with Cristyne hit the newsstands. We never told City Hall we were doing it,...

Making Big Bucks in Magazines Is Easy—and Fun!

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 04:05:00 -0400

In January, FishbowlNY attempted to crack the complex economics of Vanity Fair's writer-payment system: We don't know how much Peter Biskind gets paid to write for Vanity Fair. Or Fran Lebowitz. Or Sebastian Junger. Or Michael Wolff. But we can...

Deep Throat, Inc.

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 20:00:00 -0400

On May 31, when Vanity Fair broke the biggest media secret of the past 30 years-that Deep Throat, the confidential source to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their investigation of the Watergate break-in, was W. Mark Felt, the No. 2 man at the F.B.I. at the time-there was one more thing the wide world didn't know.

The Deep Throat futures market had already been constructed and sold. Mr. Woodward, who had...

Metaphysics of a Magazine

Sun, 22 May 2005 20:00:00 -0400

The invitation- my invitation-to the relaunch party for Radar magazine arrived in the form of Martha Stewart's head, in stiff paper, with a stick to glue it onto. Other invitees apparently received other celebrities (Gawker showed one that was Michael Jackson's head), but mine is Martha: luridly colored, like a tinted Daguerreotype, and with the eyes cut out to serve as a mask.

The head of Martha on a stick, with its empty eyes, is...

March 23 - March 30, 2005

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Wednesday 23rd

Technically speaking, it's spring (even though we're still sleeping under flannel sheets and using our unlimited MetroCard to creep about underground), and we're beginning to see signs of seasonal stirrings: punning headline writers crowing (sorry) about Pale Male knocking up his bird; brightly colored trench coats and bathing suits on display everywhere (as the pressure to lose the back fat steadily mounts); jackass guys dumping their winter girlfriends (cuddly yet chubby) in...

Fear and Anxiety At Academy Awards: A Ritual Shilling

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Several days before Oscar weekend, I was in a studio executive's office discussing a script. As the rain pounded the windows, I asked what she thought of the awards, and the fact that her division of the studio-the main division-had been overshadowed in the completion by its smaller, quasi-independent sister.

"It's irrelevant," she said. "It's a sideshow." She pointed at a wall filled with story boards for an upcoming picture whose title ends with a...

Power Elves Party!

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 19:00:00 -0500

It's the most wondrous time of the year … again!

And what else truly heralds the start of the holiday season more than the highly anticipated office party? Where else can workplace terrors and ambition be seen so nakedly on display, tongues loosened by liquor and the sex that fizzles under the politically correct surface of the American workday allowed a measure of release-the girl who wore that dress; the married segment producer who propositioned...

Broadcasting From New York To Explain America Abroad

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 19:00:00 -0500

Letter from America: 1946-2004, by Alistair Cooke. Alfred A. Knopf, 503 pages, $35. In October, for the first time since the Revolutionary War, the Stars and Stripes flew over Westminster Abbey-a tribute to the late Alistair Cooke. It's a rare sight in England: the American flag, or any flag at all for that matter, waving with pride in the breeze. America's flag fetish seems wrong-headed and embarrassing to the Blitzed Brits, who explain...

The Graydon Carter Enigma: Why Is He so Hot to Bash Bush?

Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:00:00 -0400

What We've Lost , by Graydon Carter. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 352 pages, $25.

As a Vanity Fair contributor, I had the perfect rebuttal whenever Graydon Carter hassled me about a deadline: What about the book he was supposed to be writing for the British firm Chatto & Windus? By the time I started working for the magazine full time in 1995, the book was at least eight years overdue. The subject of that...

Vanity's Unfair to Reese?

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:00:00 -0400

Hand on the hip of her Alberta Ferretti gown, her proud chin jutting out from that pixie face, Reese Witherspoon stares out from the cover of the September issue of Vanity Fair, the cursive headline announcing the actress as "Regally Blonde." The caption continues, "Reese Witherspoon brings home a $15 million paycheck, makes time for the kids, and still looks fabulous. Why are we putting her on our cover?*" At the bottom of the...

The Self-Regard of Journalism Crowds a Curious Orphanage

Sun, 20 Jun 2004 20:00:00 -0400

Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print , edited by David Wallis. Nation Books, 430 pages, $16.95.

I've had articles killed by editors-every working hack has-and, as an editor myself, I've killed articles by other working hacks, as well as by policy wonks, nutters who temporarily masqueraded as sensible, hopeful freelancers and senior government officials (who invariably use their assistants as ghosts, by the way). I've even killed a piece because, in one memorable...

Is Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair?

Sun, 23 May 2004 20:00:00 -0400

Graydon Carter, the star-struck bon vivant editor of Vanity Fair magazine, has crossed a line that no journalist can afford to cross, and few would dream of crossing. As has been recently reported, Mr. Carter has been taking money from the movie people his magazine covers in its pages-thereby severing the relationship of trust that any reputable magazine or newspaper must keep with its readers. The moment Mr. Carter accepted a $100,000 payment from...

Oh, Sam Tanenhaus: New Cerebral Boss Takes Book Review

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:00:00 -0500

"I'm very moderate by nature," Sam Tanenhaus said by telephone from his home in Westchester, two days after The New York Times announced that he would be the next editor of its Book Review . "People with extreme views interest me, dramatically and narratively."

The author of a very well-received 1997 biography of the journalist and eventual anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Mr. Tanenhaus...

Expert on Matters Military Gets Chummy with Rummy

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda , by John Keegan. Alfred A. Knopf, 387 pages, $30.

Sir John Keegan is the British chap that the History Channel brings into your living room to explain war. Which war doesn't matter: the First World War, the Second, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Crimean, Seven Years, Thirty Years, Hundred Years, Spanish-American, French-and-Indian, Russo-Japanese, Napoleonic, Punic, Peloponnesian, of the Roses-you name it, he's the expert. With...

A Holy Outrage, Or Mere Hypocrisy?

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Boy, you go to the beach for a few days in August and while you're there, news happens, the lights go out and the Mets put together a winning streak. We have some catching up to do:

· The Vatican says it will intercede with Catholic politicians around the world in hopes that they will oppose measures that could allow gay couples to marry. Perhaps not surprisingly, the announcement inspired great outrage among some politicians...

My Pseudonym, Myself: If You Got One, Flaunt It!

Sun, 03 Aug 2003 20:00:00 -0400

The Storyteller , which arrives in stores this week, is an engaging, funny novel about an aspiring author named Steven (with a V, so as not to be confused with that guy who wrote The Shining ) King, who inherits a friend's manuscripts, retypes them and publishes them under yet another pseudonym-to huge professional success and even greater guilt. Both a light thriller and an affectionate send-up of the publishing business, it is edited...

Grouchy Graydon Sends a Hitman To Restaurant 66

Sun, 27 Jul 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Even hard-core Vanity Fair readers come up blank when pressed to remember the last time the monthly ran a restaurant review that was more than a few paragraphs long and covered anything other than a) Keith McNally, b) Ian Schrager or c) the establishment's popularity with the in crowd.

Well, that all changed in the magazine's August issue, when British writer A.A. Gill trained his gimlet eye on chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and restaurateur Phil Suarez's...

'Bye, Meritocracy! O'Connor's Opinion

Sun, 20 Jul 2003 20:00:00 -0400

The meritocracy has been around for nearly 60 years now, but the moral claims that were made for it at the beginning have all but vanished. That is the news contained in the Supreme Court's recent decision on affirmative action in the Michigan Law School case: The meritocracy's days may actually be numbered.

For the first time in the history of the meritocracy, the government has embraced an alternative value, and a superior value, to...

Lelyveld Using Farewell Tour To Retool Times

Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0400

"I O.D.'d on The New York Times ," said Clyde Haberman, The Times ' Metro columnist, of his recent overindulgence in news about his own newsroom. "And now I'm going through withdrawal."

Mr. Haberman was speaking early in the morning of June 17, after publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. brought Joe Lelyveld-Howell Raines' predecessor-out of retirement after 21 months. In those 12 days, Mr. Lelyveld has managed to administer The Times a stern slap and a...

Guys Getting Nailed: Tips for A Macho Manicure

Sun, 06 Apr 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Men! We're at war-so, for God's sake, butch it up a bit!

Face it, as a bloke, there are just certain things you simply cannot be seen doing during wartime, one of which is getting your nails done. Trust me, no matter how gritty and innately masculine you are, you do not want to be caught sitting in the window of your local nail salon passively dunking your cuticles under the quiet but emasculating supervision...

Oscars at War: A Sombre Party, A Gentler Glitz

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Near midnight, Pacific time, on March 23, actor Ryan O'Neal pulled Dr. Ruth Westheimer close to him at the Vanity Fair Oscar party and began to dance. Disheveled in an earth-toned suit, Mr. O'Neal hunched over the petite sex therapist as he swept around a small dance floor of his own making that was bordered by the D.J. booth and a couch where his intermittent girlfriend, actress Farrah Fawcett, the novelist Jackie Collins and...

Toby On Top

Sun, 21 Jul 2002 20:00:00 -0400

"Hello? I'm looking for Margie Beck. Do you have any idea where I might find her?"

It was Sunday night, less than 24 hours to go before my book party, and I was desperately trying to get in touch with a woman I'd heard about who ran a celebrity look-alike agency in Manhattan. It was part of an elaborate publicity stunt I was planning to coincide with the launch of How to Lose Friends &...

Aspiring Expatriate HackEmbraces the Cult of Failure

Sun, 14 Jul 2002 20:00:00 -0400

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People , by Toby Young. Da Capo Press, 329 pages, $24.

We're all familiar with the idea of the warts-and-all portrait, but Toby Young, in sitting for his own likeness, has followed a more extreme formula: all warts. There's almost no form of triviality or obnoxiousness that he doesn't confess to, and his not admitting to a particular sin doesn't suggest innocence so much as lack of space....

Times' Pulitzers Create 'Legend' and Resentment

Sun, 14 Apr 2002 20:00:00 -0400

Seven Pulitzers. They didn't expect that haul even within The New York Times.

"How many could they possibly give us?" a Times source wondered the week before the Pulitzers were awarded on April 8. "Would they go as high as five or six for one paper? They deliberately don't want to do that." But they did. History said the Pulitzer committee didn't ever give more than three prizes to a single newspaper-they liked to spread them around to...

The Monster's Ball

Sun, 31 Mar 2002 19:00:00 -0500

It ain't that easy," said Artie Shaw.

The onetime King of Swing's frustrated cry resonated in the chilly blue-lit air of the Vanity Fair Oscars party as the rich, the powerful and their facilitators rose from their chairs beneath the c avernous tent billowing beside Mortons restaurant on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Surrounding them were six eight-by-six-foot projection television screens beaming the dramatically solemn face of actor Kevin Spacey as he asked the audience...

A Piece Offering: Vanity Fair Chief Bids for Old Foe

Sun, 31 Mar 2002 19:00:00 -0500

Ten years ago, a red-hot Tina Brown left Vanity Fair to become the editor of The New Yorker .

One decade and one failed magazine later , Vanity Fair wants Ms. Brown back. Representatives for Ms. Brown and Vanity Fair told Off the Record that Ms. Brown has been asked to write a column for the same publicationshe reinvigorated during the 1980's and tried to challenge with Talk in the late 1990's. A spokesperson for Vanity Fair said...