by Tina Brown
Monday April 3, 1989
I am deeply content with the May cover. Helmut Newton’s divine shot of Kevin Costner in black-tie deshabille, dress shirt open, black tie dangling, whiskey tumbler in hand. It’s so hard to get the cover that defines the mood of the magazine inside and this one does. Sophistication, devil may care, the promise of surprise. Hallelujah. Inside, Myra MacPherson’s “Anatomy of a Serial Killer” about Ted Bundy is top class. Myra did an amazing reporting job, talking to his mother, aunt, investigators, and—a major coup—got an exclusive with the New York psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who was one of Bundy’s last confessors. Harry Benson’s photograph for us of Ted’s mother, Louise, clutching Ted’s Boy Scout uniform, is agonizing. In the attention to victims, no one thinks about the pain of being the mother of a killer. The last and only person who thinks of him as human.
Sunday, April 16, 1989
Frank Bennack asked me to come in to Hearst again on Thursday. The third time. He wanted to focus discussions on Harper’s Bazaar. The truth is I rarely look at the current incarnation, which feels like a humdrum fashion magazine. To me the excitement of Bazaar is in reinventing its distant past of the late thirties, forties, and early fifties, when Carmel Snow and Brodovitch reigned. It was always cleverer than Vogue, a magazine for “well-dressed women with well-dressed minds,” as Snow put it. She brought cutting-edge fiction writers and art and reporting as well as iconic photography. She discovered everyone good from Vreeland to Avedon to Jean Cocteau to Truman Capote to Warhol. That’s a legacy I could get my teeth into, as juicy as Vanity Fair’s.
I was snapped out of these musings by Bennack’s financial pivot. He talked about a profit-linked bonus that was impressive, so good it made me quite miserable. I am also starting to really like and respect Bennack, and the time and patience he is putting into this courtship. He is a real gentleman. Since the meeting my mind keeps returning to Bazaar’s potential.
On Friday Bernie Leser called me up to tell me the close-held secret that year to date, VF January to March has made a profit of $1.4 million! Si always mumbles about the “chimera of meaningful profit” when I ask him how we are doing. Now I feel that a piece of that chimera as we grow ought to be for me. To compound all this, the persistent reporter Albert Scardino from The New York Times called me about a piece they are writing for tomorrow about VF’s writers getting top rate, and requested a graph of our rising revenue. Also, Newsweek is busy fact-checking their next week’s piece on me. (“Fire and Ice” is one of the lines Annie Leibovitz saw on the cover dummy, if it makes the cut, which depends on the news.) It seems I am having a “moment” here. So what does all this point to? A big fucking quantum-leap change-your-life-forever raise, that’s what. Now or never. Howard Kaminsky, who from contacts at Hearst has been privy to Bennack’s interest in me, said that when I went in to Hearst I should say to him, “I’ve got only two words to say to you, Mr. Bennack: San Simeon.”
The lawyer who was the model for Tommy Killian in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Ed Hayes, has become another consigliere on the matter. He thinks I should leave Condé. Why? “Because no one can ever crack the Newhouse barrier at Condé. You’ve always got the midget family Robinson one step ahead. You go to Hearst and you could end up as Kay Graham.”
And Dick Holbrooke’s ten cents: “Anything south of one mil is inadequate for what you’ve done for Si.” He volunteered this not in the context of my confiding in him, but over dinner at the news anchor Peter Jennings’s apartment, when salaries in general were being discussed. I was seated next to the financier Felix Rohatyn, whom I found extremely entertaining on the subject of who has the biggest golden parachute on Wall Street. At the same table was Jennings’s boss at Capital Cities, Tom Murphy, a media suit with a conical head. He looked aghast when Holbrooke, whom I hadn’t seen for a while, came roaring over, grabbed me, and slobbered over my exposed shoulder.
Anyway, bottom line, I need real professional advice on all this. Tomorrow morning I am having breakfast with Mort Janklow and I am going to ask him to represent me with Si. If I do it myself, Si will just throw me something incremental and I will wimp out and accept it. This time I want real acknowledgment that I took a money-hemorrhaging disaster story, invented a new magazine brand, and took it into profit that will only build over the next ten years. We are already on our way to being the company flagship just as much as Vogue. And if he doesn’t want to do it, I will hightail it to Harper’s Bazaar.
Sunday, April 30, 1989
The New York Times ran a piece on VF calling me “the gold-dust fairy” (which I assuredly wish they hadn’t; Spy will have a field day). Said I have upped the ante on writers’ payments, changed the literary marketplace, signed up all the available talent, and as a result (they printed two beautiful graphs to prove it) the circulation and ads are on a straight upward climb. Ed Kosner was quoted as saying that in the 1980s Playboy paid more than anyone else, “and then Tina came along and began throwing money around like crazy. She escalated everything.” I love the way he says “throwing money around” as if I am some ditzy girl run amok with the budget, rather than operating with a budget blessed by Si and targeted strategically at top talent we get to do their best work. The Times graph shows it pays off. Scardino cites our 63 percent rise in circulation and tripling of ad pages from 431 in 1985 to 1,193 today. So fuck all the naysayers. I am so over being patronized by know-all guys.
On the wings of this I had my breakfast with Janklow. You only understand what’s behind a celebrity reputation when you experience its force field of expertise firsthand. It turns out he knows Bennack. Thinks the world of him. Sees Hearst as I do—a sleeping beauty … was shocked by what I am paid (now $225,000) comparative to others he reps, especially when I told him that a month ago Dick Snyder had ruminated to Ed Victor about the S and S job that pays a lot more. Agrees with me completely that in an era when magazines are changing hands for as much as 150 mil, we need to explore all with Bennack, and then talk to Si. “You may still decide to leave, whatever Si counteroffers,” he said. The thought of this discussion scares me witless. I sent a note to Bennack, holding him off for a few days while “I talk to my advisers.” Back came a nice note mentioning financial “participation” in future success, something Si would never, ever do because of the wholly owned family situation. I would so much rather have stock options, or phantom stock (I am learning a lot from Mort), than perks and lifestyle treats. With phantom stock, a future payday tied to the performance of the magazine could turn out to be extremely valuable, especially if he ever sells it.
Then a weekend of tension. Newsweek kept coming back with fact-checking queries, clearly about to run. I bounced on and off the cover and finally lost it to a news piece on abortion, but with a cover strap line that read, “High-gloss news. Tina Brown revives Vanity Fair.” The blurb says, “A fresh eye, an advanced sense of mischief, and fingertips sensitive to the arrhythmic pulse of the eighties.” Yippee. A timing bonanza. The last paragraph describes me as “a brightly polished red Porsche cruising down the highway.” Jesus. First a gold-dust fairy. Now a red Porsche. Let’s hope it doesn’t crash on the expressway. All I had hoped for was a positive business story on the numbers that also noted we do good journalism, not just celebrity stuff. Good thing I wasn’t on the cover—as it was, at the Waldorf the next day for the ASME magazine awards I could see the editorial gritted teeth at every table. Just in time, my skin broke out in a rash so everyone can say I am nothing like my picture (and indeed I am not, all thanks to Annie’s brilliant retouching).
Byron Dobell, who is on the ASME awards board, had told me I would be “well pleased” with the result. So I kept it to myself but took three tables and made sure I was next to Si. I had Reinaldo on the other side of me. He deserves it. Has brought in so many scoops. He had just got off the phone with the Libyan ambassador, trying to nail Qaddafi for T. D. Allman. “If I eat one more plate of couscous for this story I will scream,” he told me.
&nbs
p; As awards began, the first unexpected bonus was Harry winning a reporting award for Traveler. Si was thrilled, as was Harry. The New Yorker won two awards, but Gottlieb was too much of a snob to show, so Steve Florio lumbered up to collect. Then the big one—the mag equivalent of Best Picture in our category, magazines with a circulation over four hundred thousand. And the winner is … VANITY FAIR! Si was so excited, he jumped up from his chair and whooped. The applause was so loud that The Washington Post later called it “the most popular award of the day.” I shot from my seat and bounded up onto the platform before I was supposed to, and stumbled across to the craggy face at the podium for my trophy, the bronze Ellie elephant. I felt so emotional as I did all the thank-yous. I was happy we took three tables so many of the staff could come. When I got back to the table, Jane, Pam, Wayne, all of them, even tough, cynical Sharon, were so excited and tearful. (Okay, Sharon was not tearful, but she had a look of pure satisfaction.) Si was flushed with pride: “I can leave now, Tina. I am so thrilled.”
But how thrilled? I wish he would show real trust and give me some real stake in the ongoing success. It would mean more to me than any raise. The true luxury of early success is it allows you to be conceptual about the rest of your career. (If not the rest of your life. A year ago Mark Boxer was dreaming of New York. Now his children are learning to forget him.)
I retreat to Quogue to think about it all. The power life roars along with all real thoughts, fears buried or put indefinitely on hold. I want more time to contemplate, but I can’t seem to live any other way. I feel panic when I stop. I am an action junkie. My best hope for peace is when I am with G.
At the PEN dinner Vartan Gregorian grabbed Harry and urged him to come teach at Brown. “It’s so wonderful,” he said to Harry, “to be safe with my books in academia instead of watching ladies not eat their lunch at Le Cirque.” I am sure he’s right, but journalists like us find it hard to be out of the arena.
Saturday, May 6, 1989
Quogue
I am upstairs in the sitting room, writing this in front of the window that looks out on the dunes. I can hear the splashing and arguing of Harry and Georgie in the bath together. John Lennon on the radio—“Mother, you had me but I never had you.” My legs ache after an afternoon of pursuing G around the playground, where he kept escaping me, crying, “You can’t stop me! I’m the gingerbread man!” It was sunny but still cold. I can feel the tantalizing whiff of summer to come. This morning when I woke up with G in my bed he said, “Mummy, I love you with all my tummy.” His new dear joke.
Last week in the wake of Newsweek’s encomium I feel the need to outperform. Pam McCarthy had lunch with an editor who runs a section in Newsweek and was taken aback when she opened the first course with “Well! Tom Mathews [who wrote the piece on me] will never work again! His career is over! And Steve Smith who pushed it through! He’s over, too! What a puff piece! Everyone knows it’s because Steve’s wife wants to work for Vanity Fair!” Pam was stunned and surprised, which I wasn’t. They are all gunning for me beneath their polite smiles at ASME. And I am fully aware at some point they will eat me for lunch.
On Tuesday night, Anna Wintour asked us to join her table at a Lifesavers dinner at the Puck Building, at which her husband, Dr. David Shaffer, was being honored for his life’s work counseling and medicating teens who want to commit suicide. Wanted to go to show appreciation for David, who has been helpful with G. I like him. He has a wonderful, droll sense of humor. All the speakers had suicides in their families, from Joan Rivers to Mariette Hartley. The most affecting and surprising was the novelist William Styron, who suddenly got up from where he sat and spoke about the night he tried to kill himself. In between courses I went to tell him how powerful it was and asked if he would consider turning it into a piece for Vanity Fair. He was still moved from speaking so personally, but to my delight he said he would like to and asked me to call him tomorrow. It would be incredible personal history if he will do it. It would help so many people who live in shame, believing depression is a weakness instead of a disease. And he has never gone public before except in this circle of fellow sufferers. It would be news and literature combined. If I hadn’t gone to this weird-sounding dinner, I would never have heard Styron or had the chance to approach him. Good for David for doing this suicide work, such a radical contrast to the life Anna leads at Vogue, which perhaps is why their partnership works.
I wondered what Anna herself thinks of all this? Clearly it was her night to support David. She looked wonderful as always in a tight dress and shiny bob and impassive face. David made the best speech, short and British in its crispness.
James and Toni Goodale had a wedding anniversary party the next night at Doubles that made me really see the point of Tom Brokaw. Toni Goodale had given Tom the task of handing out joke awards to guests, such as the couple who’d been married the longest and the couple who had been married the most times. Brokaw watched the proceedings coolly, murmured that Toni had given him a speech to make at the end that he felt “needed help, so if you’ll excuse me…” He took out three index cards from his pocket and made small notes on them for five minutes, with the occasional pause to think. Then he got up and did a stunning tour de force riff about marriage that brought the house down.
This morning I followed up with Styron and he has agreed to do the essay on depression. Have asked Wayne to edit it and am praying it’s as good as what he said about his ordeals at the Lifesaver dinner.
Thursday, May 18, 1989
Mort Janklow looks better and better the more time I spend with him on the Bennack business. Part of my dilemma right now is that Bennack keeps throwing out numbers that make it impossible to turn him down, but I am so torn.
Last Thursday Mort went in to see him for a meeting that went on for two hours. When he came out he called from the car. “If this is the opening of a negotiation, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s something you seriously have to think about.” Bennack is offering phantom stock, newsstand bonuses, and a huge pay hike. He also made it clear to Mort he is thinking of me as his successor. That after three years or less, if I turn around Harper’s Bazaar I could move into the movie division, or the newspaper division, or the TV division. Now I am seriously thinking about Bazaar and its lustrous intellectual and visual pedigree. Commercially it is still a power in the market. It already has a circulation of seven hundred thousand but is number four with advertisers, hence Bennack’s frustration. I have been dreaming up ways I could revive it and make it exciting. But I would be sacrificing my baby, VF. Bazaar would take two years to get right and its strong fashion element would not be as appealing to writers to contribute or opinion formers to buy. Plus, fashion doesn’t interest me. Anna would be impossible to beat there. She lives and breathes it.
Last night at a dinner at Janklow’s house, Si was there at another table and I felt more agony about my conversations with Hearst. But maybe I am being a drip.
“I can’t stand a guy that’s cheap with the help,” Mort said to Harry and me after dinner. “And as far as Si is concerned, you are the help.”
It’s all true. Though I hate to hear it. And not wholly fair. Si took a chance on me, for which I will forever be grateful. And the chance he took paid off. Hugely. But then again, Mort’s intelligence tells him I get paid less than Art Cooper at GQ. I feel men handle these pay discussions so much better, but it also pisses me off they get away with it.
I am musing on all this at the Bonaventure Resort and Spa over four days of bouncing in the pool with G. This afternoon I took him on an expedition to Ocean World to look at the dolphins play and realized with a pang this was the first time for many weeks I have felt unrushed and able to enjoy time with him. His welfare is another major consideration. Harry thinks I should stick with Condé. After what he went through in the change from Thomson ownership to Murdoch, he feels that these situations that look so good can often turn out to be a minefield. Plus Si would fight back, with a bigger budget for whoever
succeeded me. And a new job at Hearst equals new demands, as I’ll have to prove myself again. But for someone as restless as me, there is great appeal in starting over, armed with what I now know about dusting off another legend. Mort, of course, is looking at this as a business opportunity that has to be rationally assessed. Which is what I have engaged him to do.
Sunday, May 21, 1989
NYC
Wonderful spring weather. I got up early on Thursday morning for breakfast at the Knickerbocker Club with Derry Moore, the photographer who shot so many beautiful house interiors for us at Tatler. Then I sped downtown with Jane Sarkin to see Annie Leibovitz’s new studio. When we walked into Annie’s huge, white, empty loft with concrete floor and the bright sun streaming through the empty windows, I felt a stomach lurch of new pages yet to come. “It’s so bright, isn’t it?” Annie whooped, looking like a great eagle in her black slacks and turtleneck. She is happy at the moment, in a torrid affair with Susan Sontag. “All my new portraits, the subjects will be looking like this.” She screwed up her eyes against the light. Over the speakers the music was dreamy and subaqueous, like in the aquarium at Ocean World. I stood in the middle of the white studio and spun around with joy. We are making publishing history here, and perhaps this is what people will write about someday. I felt a rush of affection for Annie. We have had so many fights and disputes, but only in the quest for perfection. I have come to trust her so much.