Always Leave Them Laughing

Sam Simon, a co-creator of The Simpsons and a writer and a producer for Taxi and Cheers, was diagnosed with terminal cancer two years ago. He’s been dealing with it by working on philanthropic causes and spending time with close friends and loved ones.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 19, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,622 words)

Should Airplanes Be Flying Themselves?

William Langewiesche on the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, and how automation has changed the role of airline pilots.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 1, 2014
Length: 49 minutes (12,400 words)

What Life Is Like When You’re Born on a Commune

Erika Anderson on her early years at “the Farm,” and what the ultimately shattered promise of a utopian community meant to her family.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 28, 2014
Length: 7 minutes (1,829 words)

Nightmare on Elm Drive

Did Lyle and Erik Menendez really murder their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion and then make taped confessions? In this piece from 1990, the legendary reporter Dominick Dunne talks to the mystery witness who says she heard everything, and uncovers the secrets that turned the Menendezes’ American dream into a fatal nightmare.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Aug 1, 1990
Length: 56 minutes (14,122 words)

The Camorra Never Sleeps

For years before they caught him, the Italian police had no idea that Paolo Di Lauro was one of Naples’s most powerful crime bosses, running a drug and counterfeit-goods empire—and responsible for a peace his turf had rarely known. Writing for Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche goes deep into heart of the Neapolitan mob’s most dangerous family, revealing the chaos that followed the fall of a patriarch.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 1, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,900 words)

Her House of Cards

“The rumpled Houston showed up next, followed by Tobey and Leo.” Inside Hollywood’s most exclusive poker game.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jul 1, 2014
Length: 19 minutes (4,960 words)

Shame and Survival

Monica Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair essay, now online in full:

In my own case, each easy click of that YouTube link reinforces the archetype, despite my efforts to parry it away: Me, America’s B.J. Queen. That Intern. That Vixen. Or, in the inescapable phrase of our 42nd president, “That Woman.”

It may surprise you to learn that I’m actually a person.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 28, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,051 words)

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Jeffrey Wigand, who inspired Russell Crowe’s character in the 1999 movie The Insider, emerged from the sealed world of Big Tobacco to confront the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown & Williamson. Hailed as a hero by anti-smoking forces and vilified by the tobacco industry, Wigand found himself at the center of an epic multi-billion-dollar struggle.

The anti-tobacco forces depict Jeffrey Wigand as a portrait in courage, a Marlon Brando taking on the powers in On the Waterfront. The pro-tobacco lobbies have been equally vociferous in their campaign to turn Wigand into a demon, a Mark Fuhrman who could cause potentially devastating cases against he tobacco industry to dissolve over issues that have little to do with the dangers of smoking. According to New York public-relations man John Scanlon, who was hired by B&W’s law firm to help discredit Wigand, “Wigand is a habitual liar, a bad, bad guy.” It was Scanlon’s assignment to disseminate a wide range of damaging charges against Wigand, such as shoplifting, fraud, and spousal abuse. Scanlon himself, along with B&W, is now the subject of an unprecedented Justice Department investigation for possible intimidation of a witness. For First Amendment specialist James Goodale, the charges and countercharges B&W has attempted to level against Wigand represent “the most important press issue since the Pentagon Papers.” Goodale, who represented The New York Times during that period, said, “You counteract these tactics by a courageous press and big balls.”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 1, 1996
Length: 76 minutes (19,199 words)

What Hillary Wants

An in-depth 1992 profile of Hillary Clinton offers a fascinating snapshot of the pre-White House Clintons:

The president is one of Hillary’s favorite targets, and she pillories him mercilessly in her speeches. “When it’s all stripped away,” she told the L.A. crowd, “at bottom what we see is a failure of leadership, rooted in a very hollow sense of what politics is and can be.” As one listener put it, “She’s unbelievably articulate and connects with her audience with a message that hits home.” Then she joined the buzz heard all over the room: “You can’t help but think, Why isn’t she the candidate?”

She almost was. Two years ago, when Bill Clinton considered forgoing his fifth gubernatorial contest in order to build an early base for his lifelong presidential ambitions, Hillary called up a friend and former newspaper publisher in the state, Dorothy Stuck, and asked, “What would happen if I ran for governor?”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 1, 1992
Length: 44 minutes (11,174 words)

Scientology’s Vanished Queen

After the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige disappeared from public view, in 2007, those who asked questions were stonewalled, or worse. Now interviews with former insiders provide a grim assessment of her fate:

This cryptic explanation only fueled the mystery. Had Shelly fled the church? Was she in hiding? Some Scientology defectors believe she was exiled to one of several secretive and heavily guarded bases the church owns in remote western locales. There, the sources say, those who are banned endure lives of isolation, menial labor, and penury. The reason, they claim, is simple. “The law [in Scientology] is: The closer to David Miscavige you get, the harder you’re going to fall,” says Claire Headley, an ex-Scientologist who, along with her husband, Marc, worked closely with the Miscaviges. “It’s like the law of gravity, practically. It’s just a matter of when.” (The church of Scientology declined Vanity Fair’s repeated requests to interview the Miscaviges. In so doing, church representatives dismissed most of V.F.’s sources as disgruntled apostates, and called V.F.’s questions “ludicrous and offensive.” Additionally, the representatives described Shelly Miscavige as a private person who “has been working nonstop in the church, as she always has.” They also point out that I have written critically about the church in the past.)

Author: Ned Zeman
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Mar 1, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,446 words)