by Tina Brown
Back in NYC, on Monday night, Brooke Astor gave a dinner for us in her apartment. This seemed puzzling until it became clear she wants to be contributing editor of either VF or Traveler now that she is chucking in HG, where she used to offer pieces about grand houses. I sat between her son, Anthony Marshall, a gloomy bore, and the British actor Peter Glenville, whom I’ve never seen the point of before but was amusing on this occasion. I got him reminiscing about Larry Olivier and he riveted me by saying that what tied him to Joan Plowright was “very dirty sex.” When pressed he explained that Vivien Leigh was a porcelain romantic beauty that he could never get down and dirty with, but Plowright, “a runty gamine,” was up for “anything bestial.” This was so outlandish it paid the price of admission, as far as I was concerned.
Pat Buckley tried to get up and found that the sequins on her evening pants had locked together and she couldn’t move. I thought Jason Epstein’s pumpkin head was finally going to explode with mirth.
A new writer I like, John Seabrook, came in to talk about stories. Wants to do Barbara Bush. “Why should she say yes when we have trashed her husband twice?” I said.
“You could always tell her I am an idiot savant,” he replied suavely, “who learned to read and write thanks to her literacy program.”
I had to host a lunch for the director Barry Levinson and his new movie Rain Man at CAA’s request. When I went to the screening I felt rising unease. Rain Man’s insistent preoccupations remind me very much of Georgie. Could there be any element of Rain Man’s autism in the way G rocks and repeats things and doesn’t want to play with others?
Monday, December 5, 1988
This afternoon in the art-planning room I looked at the layout for Nick Dunne’s piece on the last days of Robert Mapplethorpe. The final picture is Robert’s self-portrait, probably the last before he died of AIDS, and it’s haunting. The image that packs the most punch, though, is a paparazzi picture, not one of his own, taken recently at the opening of the Whitney. It shows what Mapplethorpe had really become at the end—hollowed out, wheelchair bound, surrounded by groupies and hangers-on. The leather loop of a woman’s handbag nearby looks like a whip. An incredible Dorian Gray picture of the end of the life he chose to lead and the death he doesn’t deserve to die. Sharon felt it was important to use only Mapplethorpe’s own portraits but the news picture makes a more powerful statement. I argued first with her, then with myself, feeling it was perhaps too raw. But then I decided, it’s also the truth, hard to look at though it may be. I used it as the opener to the story, in black and white as a double-page spread.
1989
ART OF THE DEAL
Thursday, January 5, 1989
Hooray! I love my job! I love Vanity Fair! The crazed two-week Christmas holiday in London nearly put me away! Office life is a doddle after the chaos of uninterrupted family life. Bam bam bam! In the last three days I have persuaded Ryszard Kapuściński to write about Pope John Paul, dispatched Alex Shoumatoff to Brazil to write about the murder of the rain-forest activist Chico Mendes, aimed T. D. Allman at a profile of Qaddafi, and entertained Diana Ross for afternoon tea. In the middle of all this I am interviewing a weekend nanny. I was trying to decide between spreads of Catherine Deneuve and of Emperor Hirohito to lead off an issue when the first candidate showed up. I asked Sarah Lewis to go and chat with her first (a crazy idea, since Sarah always believes in everybody). G chose that moment to come on the line, wailing, “I want to be cozy with Mummy! I want to be cozy!”
What is the candidate like, I shouted through the door to Sarah. “She seems great,” said Sarah. “She’s Irish. She can cook. She can clean. She’s a trained accountant and has just finished a computer-training course.”
“Jesus! Does she do a shampoo and blow dry, too?” I had a sudden vision of the “wife” of my dreams, when in walks the most glowering individual I have ever entertained in my office. She radiated ill feeling as her left hand drummed neurotically on the side of her handbag. I would have been scared to be in the same room with her myself, let alone allow her to babysit G.
Today I reworked the March issue four times. It’s still not as good as the February issue about to hit the newsstands, which has the Arafat interview scoop by T. D. Allman, Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover in a killer gold strapless dress, Dunne on Robert Mapplethorpe, and Peter Boyer’s great story on the firing of the editor of The Atlanta Constitution. But it does have the new emperor of Japan, the new movie about the London prostitute Christine Keeler, and Anthony Haden-Guest on the last days of Christina Onassis. (It sounds like the lyrics for a Cole Porter song. Which it sort of is, really, the magazine version of it anyway.)
I feel the happy sense that we are flying! The sales of VF continue to get higher and the quality better and better. Average paid subscriptions for 1988 now 429,737 and newsstand 194,909, in total up 16 percent over 1987. The sky’s the limit, I feel, and I have no desire to leave. We are starting to become indispensable reading for our current affairs and foreign coverage. People are loving Tim’s Haiti piece and they will love his Arafat, too. It lifts my spirits when he barrels into the office, wheezing on his foreign correspondent cigarettes.
Sunday, January 22, 1989
On Thursday I went to lunch at Hearst at the invitation of the CEO, Frank Bennack.
Sane, solid, all-American, decent and humane, and very shrewd, I thought. I didn’t like his bow-tied sidekick, Gil Maurer much. After a drink in the anteroom they took me into the executive dining room, the theme of the chat being all the opportunities offered by Hearst newspapers, TV stations, magazines, and, as Howard Kaminsky puts it, “a shitload of real estate.” This company sell went on all through both courses and I tried to be bright-eyed and perky and suitably impressed. As coffee came, Bennack pushed back his chair and said, “Miss Brown, there are very few real stars in the editing world. They come along once every twenty-five years. And you are editing the best and the hottest book in America today. You have reached the top of the ladder very young. We at Hearst would like to offer you an Aladdin’s lamp. What would you like from us? Any existing magazine in the company? Any magazine you would like to start? We would like to give you what you want.”
I gulped. A pretty glamorous opening gambit.
It also felt ridiculous that I couldn’t think of anything to want. I said I would think about that kind suggestion but that I am still under the sway of the genie of Vanity Fair.
Descending in the elevator, I felt high as a kite. But I also suspect that anything Hearst offered me Si would offer, too. And Si, I realize, has one great advantage. He doesn’t have to please any board, or any shareholders. Bennack is a smart and impressive CEO, but Hearst is a family trust. He doesn’t have the freedom of spending money that’s his own.
I decided to tell Si of the approach, not to hit him up—it’s dangerous to bluff if you don’t plan to go—but because I may have been seen by some gossiper in the elevator coming down. Also I am trying to get Chris Garrett again, who is still working at Tatler, to come from London at additional expense to fill in for Pam’s second maternity leave. It would make life so much smoother than trying to fill in with people who don’t know how I work. And this little Hearst overture may make him inclined to say yes. When I started to tell Si about Hearst, it was gratifying to see the expression of intense pain that crossed his face before he jumped up and ran around my side of the desk even as I reassured him I am not interested. Some of his fear, I am sure, is how much talent I could steal if I left. Chris Garrett’s three-month sojourn is now safely approved if I can get her to agree.
This weekend was the first since we winterized Quogue and I have hired a warm, kindly woman from St. Vincent, Cynthia Knights, from the agency to help out with G on the weekends so I can work. She is so generous and sweet to G. It was a treat having her here and I had time to compose passionate, pleading faxes to Chris Garrett and her husband, persuading them to figure out how to come to America. Judging by the going-wobbly replies, I think
I have succeeded.
Gabé called to tell me that the Times style writer John Duka died today. AIDS. No one knew he had it. It was incredibly swift: three months or so. Bruce Chatwin died on Monday. It goes on and on. Our Mapplethorpe piece has caused a storm. Including an irate letter from Dr. Mathilde Krim, who, unfairly in my view, accuses me of linking “the plague” to homoerotic behavior rather than to just being “in the wrong place at the wrong time in New York in the eighties.” I can see how the impulse behind this distortion is probably well intentioned, because after all there is still so much homophobic bigotry out there. But it shouldn’t require pretending AIDS has nothing to do with gay life to make it a cruel and tragic disease we have to stamp out.
The worst thing about Duka’s end was how attached he was to all things ephemeral. Such sadness.
Wednesday, January 25, 1989
The cover of the February issue is making waves. That Herb Ritts photograph of Michelle Pfeiffer bathed in warm California sunlight, wearing the gold strapless, striped lace dress by Calvin Klein, has been a fashion sensation. Calvin’s people say it is flying off the racks. Now other designers are calling Marina, saying they want their crack at getting a piece on the VF cover that becomes The Dress. Herb can be so difficult, such a control freak, but this cover, this dress is box-office gold. Charles Churchward is very happy, as Herb is his guy and he runs him as well as Jane manages Annie.
Thursday, January 26, 1989
G turned three. When he woke he looked around, blinked, and said, “Do you know, Mummee, I am THREE!” We let him unwrap his present—a Playmobil zoo—and as he did it he kept grinning and saying, “It’s so nice to be three!” He loved his party this year with all his friends and Marsha the Musical Moose, who was a much bigger hit than Silly Billy the clown last year. I think back to that snowy day when I opened my eyes at New York–Presbyterian and the morning I saw the Challenger space shuttle explode. My fragile darling boy.
Saturday, February 18, 1989
Newsweek called up yesterday and told me they are doing a “major piece on Vanity Fair” just as Doug and I were wondering how we could get some more thoughtful press about what we do.
They assigned Annie to take the pictures and Marina Schiano is going to town on the clothes.
On Tuesday I gave a book party for Melvyn Bragg for his Richard Burton biography. Great theater/film crowd of Stephen Sondheim, Martin Scorsese, the Mailers, plus Quentin Crisp and the whole VF stage army. Afterward we took Melvyn to dinner at Petaluma with Scorsese, James Ivory, and Ismail Merchant. Scorsese talks even faster than I do, with a demented laugh. He is like a mad priest full of torment and focused intent.
I invited the Newsweek writer Tom Mathews to come to a features meeting, which was full of good copy. Reinaldo rushing in shouting, “Stroessner has fallen! Paraguay is in uproar!” (I dispatched Shoumatoff.) Annie appearing with her Don Johnson shoot from Miami and Marina wafting in, trailing a red scarf and dark glasses, jabbering about what a “beeech Melanie Griffith was for refusing to wear the white suit.”
Frank Bennack asked me back for another lunch. I am pretty sure I don’t want anything from Hearst, but he’s so gracious and I don’t want to offend him.
Saturday, March 4, 1989
There’s no time for reflection. I feel changes in the air.
On Tuesday Si gave a dinner party for Nancy Reagan, whose book he’s publishing with Random House. It was vintage Si oddity. And even odder is the way Victoria seems to play no part in improving it. Si even went home early to oversee the arrangements. I arrived to find most of the Random House brass milling around the living room, waiting for Mrs. Reagan. I asked where I was sitting and was told it’s a buffet. Which seems a bit off for the former first lady. I look around for anyone Mrs. R knows, like Bill Blass or Zipkin, but the other guests are all male publishing suits—so many of them, it looks like a KGB convention. Mrs. Reagan arrives in cordial style, chats with her editor and the only people she knows, i.e., the Janklows. Then Si suddenly vanishes downstairs. I say to Victoria, “Um, are we going to dinner?” And she looks vague and startled and says, “Oh yes! In fact, why don’t you follow Si. We thought it would be very nice if you sat with Mrs. Reagan in the first group.” I helped myself to a plate of lamb and rice and blundered off down the wrong corridor. When I found them they were all seated with Leo, who apparently knows Nancy from the old days, on a sofa with ten-foot gaps between them. Every so often someone would come over and be waved into a gap. Plus Leo is too deaf to hear anything so conversation was spasmodic. Si said almost nothing, just kept leaping up to wave people in. Philip Johnson whispered to me. “Oh dear, oh dear, what is one to say?” The next day Alex told me it was one of the most excruciating evenings he had ever attended. He said the only thing worse was Bernie’s thirty-years-at-the-company party, at which Si had decided he would only have the business side and no wives, so it was another KGB buffet.
I still had a headache the next morning when Si called. I said, “Thank you for the … interesting evening with Nancy.” And Si said, “She’s awful, really, isn’t she? Victoria and I were surprised how many people wanted to be introduced to her.”
Meanwhile, as I feel less serious the magazine only gets more so. If you told me five years ago I’d be running a piece on the death of a Brazilian rubber tapper by a New Yorker naturalist and selling a combined seven hundred thousand copies in newsstand and subs [up from 275,000 in average paid circulation in 1984], I would never have believed you.
PS: We took G to the St. Patrick’s parade in Westhampton. “What’s Jesus up to?” he asked me suddenly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Jesus was about to have a very bad Easter.
Friday, March 24, 1989
We’re off to LA for the Oscars! I feel like Cher, traveling with a cavalcade of suitcases stuffed with Marina’s borrowings from Oscar de la Renta (he’s coming around), Carolyne Roehm, and Calvin Klein. G is with me and we are taking over a suite at the Bel-Air. What a lark. But I feel as if I may as well take advantage of Condé’s richesse. I suspect this is very different from the corporate culture of Hearst.
Alex took me to lunch at La Grenouille yesterday and confided that Vogue sales are down for the last two issues and he’s worried Anna is going too “downtown.” She has sacked one of his favorites, Amy Gross, who was the literary “nose” there, and installed another Brit, James Truman, as features ed. I guess after all the years of Grace Mirabella, maybe Vogue is so bland and mainstream it can’t move this fast. James is very clever, though, and knows how to come up with angles and headlines like Miles does. Vogue needs to be less safe and he will help Anna get it done.
Saturday, March 25, 1989
Bel-Air hotel, LA
Just came back from Swifty’s dinner for Michael Caine: the Sean Connerys, the Johnny Carsons, Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett, George Hamilton, Alana Stewart, Cybill Shepherd, Jackie Collins and Oscar Lerman, and John Bowes-Lyon. Quite a lineup. The only snag was that I had Bowes-Lyon, a dim and boring English toff, on one side, but never mind, on the other side was Michael Caine and opposite me were Johnny Carson and George Hamilton.
George Hamilton was the major surprise. He really is hilarious and I understood at last why he’s so popular. He was full of raffish stories about gambling with Kerry Packer and losing two hundred thousand dollars on his way from dinner at Aspinall’s. Carson was much less deadpan than on TV. There was twinkle and a tinge of preoccupied warmth, though still an aura of cool self-control. Michael Caine just free-associates fun. “Farrah, why do you and Ryan keep that place in Malibu? Any stray sod can wander up the beach, like I did, and see you and Ryan sitting there in your cozzies [bathing suits].” Carson said he had to move away from the beach because the telephoto lenses and the fans rummaging through his garbage were too intense. His glamorous wife, Joanne, had a very peculiar, complicated dress on. She seemed to have a latent sense of humor. Jackie Collins said that her hairdresser, Wally, had gone off for a year with David Bowie.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Carson. “That’s a long time to wait to get your bangs cut.” Cybill Shepherd turned up very late with a friend in tow. Swifty was seething at her rudeness. “What can you expect?” he hissed at me. “Hick girl with hick manners. Brings her friend who goes and messes up the whole fucking seating plan!” Cybill was indeed a strange sight. She wore steel-framed specs, flat brogues, no makeup, and what looked like a Bonwit Teller navy-blue business suit. I kinda loved her for it. “Who’s her friend?” I asked Ryan O’Neal. “Her wardrobe mistress,” he replied. “Couldn’t you tell from what she’s got on?” Hollywood. Just as bitchy as NYC.
Saturday, April 1, 1989
In flight, LA to NYC
Caroline Graham introduced me to a very amusing CAA agent, Bob Bookman, a self-deprecating, ironic, Woody Allen–ish type very different from the rest of Ovitz’s hit men. “No one at the agency is threatened by me,” he said. “I represent books, so that means I must be an intellectual, and therefore ineffectual. When people at the agency introduce me they say, this is Bob Bookman. He reads.” He said if you are an agent, your whole life is business to an intolerable degree. He said Irwin Winkler came back in despair from a ski holiday in Aspen with the Ovitzes and said a typical incident was one morning he wanted to go out on a run with Mike and Judy. Judy said, “Come back in an hour. We might have friends joining.” When he came back there was Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, Tom Cruise and Mimi, and Sally Field and her husband, and Ovitz had hired private instructors for them all.
I’m crazy about the producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who took me to Morton’s with Jesse Kornbluth and Jane Sarkin. Simpson talked about the rise of Madame Alex, the Hollywood Madame Claude. Also has a dark view of Michael Eisner. “Here’s the deal. Here’s how it plays out. No one has done the book on Eisner. It’s Barry Diller who’s the good guy, not Michael Eisner. Diller is stuck as the bad hat, but it’s Eisner who dissembles without a second thought. Diller is the smartest guy in Hollywood. He’s got the best head. When Barry and I were at Paramount and we’d come to him with a ton of problems, it was fun. Because he’s so smart, we could work through them and solve them all because of Barry.” Bruckheimer has a thin, intense face and big black eyes and doesn’t say much. Don has a wide, expressive face and a shock of blond hair like Don Johnson and he does all the talking. They both LOVE Vanity Fair. “Here’s the deal,” said Don. “I read every single piece. And I start to feel anxious when it doesn’t arrive.” He said the only way to judge whether a movie will be a hit is the “parking lot” theory. What’s that? “You’re both walking out of the movie house to the car, telling each other it was a pretty good movie. Then you get to the parking lot, look at each other and shrug, and go, ‘Meh!’”