Rich Cohen in Vanity Fair, on the rise of True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto in Hollywood, the evolution of television writer as auteur, and the HBO crime drama’s second iteration set in Southern California.
vanity fair
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Roots of the Greek Debt Crisis
The crisis in Greece is getting worse. Its people on July 5 voted against the terms of the most recent bailout deal in a referendum, rejecting austerity. If a new deal isn’t reached soon, its government won’t be able to pay its debts and will run out of euros, which many expect it will mean […]
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How Vanity Fair Protected Their Caitlyn Jenner Exclusive
The magazine was concerned about leaks and took security measures “every step of the way,” including on the photo shoot [where they hired security and confiscated cellphones], in the VF editorial office and at the printing plant for the upcoming issue. The story and pictures were done on a single computer that was never connected […]
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Vanity Fair’s New Cover Story: Caitlyn Jenner
“As soon as the Vanity Fair cover comes out, I’m free.” Vanity Fair has just released its cover image of Caitlyn Jenner—photographed by Annie Leibovitz, with a story by Buzz Bissinger. The story is not yet available online, but Jenner tells Bissinger: “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret […]
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How the Modern Modeling Agency Came to Be
This was a precursor for what would become the protocol by which models were paid for the rest of the century, but as Natálie [Nickerson] put it to Eileen [Ford] in their late-night Barbizon conversations, the system was back to front. According to Eileen, Natálie told her, “Models were treated as if they worked for […]
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Recalling Life in Liberia
Yes, I remember: boiling leaves to eat; rubbing leaves on your skin because you have no soap; crushing leaves under your arms so that you don’t smell bad. Leaves and dirt, sticks and rocks: these are the only things a refugee can count on. Even if the exiles go home, the average wage in Liberia […]
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‘I Knew They Loved Spending Time With Us…But I Also Knew We Were Good Cover.’
When Weathermen did get around to bombing things, the preparation and execution remained fraught with risk. Long-haired young people lingering outside courthouses and police stations late at night tended to draw attention in the early 1970s. It occurred to Dohrn, and to others in the leadership, that disguises alone wouldn’t ensure their safety. Thus the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Alex Gibney’s much-talked about new documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief—based on Lawrence Wright’s similarly titled 2013 exposé—has been making headlines since it made its Sundance debut in January. It opened on limited screens across the country last Friday and will premiere on HBO in two weeks. In the meantime, the Church of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Truman Capote Compiled the Guest List for His Famous Black and White Ball, According to Gloria Steinem
What gave the Black and White Ball “its intoxicating piquancy,” according to Amy Fine Collins, was the fact that Capote’s guest list had “flung together, in a gilt-edged melting pot, the most alluring power brokers in the worlds of high society, politics, the arts, and Hollywood—disconnected universes that collided, if not for the first time that evening, then at least with unprecedented force.”
The Ball also found an unlikely chronicler in Gloria Steinem, an invited guest who had made Capote’s acquaintance after she interviewed him for Glamour the year before. Steinem wrote a feature on the party for Vogue in January 1967 in which she described the luminaries, feathers, masks, ball gowns, and jewels all whirling around the room: “The effect was like some blend of Hollywood, the Court of Louis XIV, a medieval durbar, and pure Manhattan.”