by Greg Oguss
Launched in 1913 by publisher Condé Nast, Vanity Fair was quickly associated with New York’s literati and those to-die-for parties in swanky penthouses on the Upper East Side. Legendary cultural critic Edmund Wilson jumped from Dial Magazine to become VF’s managing editor in 1920. Back then, Nast was enamored of a Ziegfield Follies girl named Olive Thomas, who was the window dressing at his fab soirees. Olive eloped with Mary Pickford’s husband Jack and became the first incarnation of the flapper on the big screen before committing suicide in a Paris hotel at age 21 in 1920.
These days, the only juicy scandal associated with VF is the crap that Graydon Carter deems fit to publish in its pages. After being resuscitated in 1981 by Si Newhouse, VF experienced a renaissance in the 1990s. They produced several actually readable exposes as well as a notorious cover shot of Demi Moore we’ve all seen a thousand times. But lately, the mag has transitioned from a paragon of respectable journalism to a bastion of celebrity whoreism in an attempt to keep up with the Gawker crowd. In an era of disappearing profits, the film, TV and book reviews have been trimmed to the bone so that glorified interns have 100 words or less to write only glowing things about new projects by folks who have intimate relationships with the Condé Nast empire. What service are they providing me with those ebullient announcements: “Ishmael Reed revels in Mixing it Up (Da Capo). Novelist Xiaolu Guo entices in Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (Doubleday)”? Fyi, Graydon, I know the way to my local Borders and I can find the New Releases section without help from your interns.
Even more laughable are the occasions when a VF contributor comes out with something that’s allotted a space of, say, 500 words, for the de rigueur rave review, in which case an actual writer is tapped to write a piece of whoreism. When Evan Wright’s Generation Kill was adapted into an HBO mini-series he co-produced, this task fell to Julian Sancton. The ridiculous quote from Wright that concluded Sancton’s rave was, “I don’t care about the American public, I made this for, like, 20 Marines I know.” The fact that Sancton and Wright seem to have forgotten is that HBO execs are extremely interested in how a significant portion of the American public feels about Generation Kill, precisely the portion that subscribes to HBO. And if those 20 Marines do not, perhaps because they’ve been blown to Kingdom Fuck by smiling Iraqi faces bearing IEDs hidden inside yummy treats, those Marines can go screw themselves as far as HBO is concerned.
VF remains proud of their critiques of the Iraq War. But if I have to read another 10,000 word article by that porky Brit Christopher Hitchens referring to America as “we” and explaining why the U.S. shouldn’t torture, I may volunteer for a tour of duty myself to escape the misery. Media critic James Wolcott also handles politics, although with as much success as his so-called dissections of Hollywood. In 2003 and 2008, Wolcott has written breezy surveys of up-and-coming Hollywood kids trying to pinpoint who will have the staying power to become the next Lindsay Lohan. Carter’s blurb promoting Wolcott’s 2008 installment trumpeted his ability to identify sleepers like Shia LaBeouf in 2003. But the odds are stacked in Wolcott’s favor when his 2008 edition contains no less than 28 picks, including mega-stars like Jonah Hill and the ENTIRE CAST of Gossip Girl. Way to put your balls on the chopping block, dude. It’s not as if there aren’t incidental pleasures still to be found in VF. The letters to the editor often feature bitchy rants by Hollywood insiders. When Peter Biskind wrote an error-riddled piece on the 1978 Oscar race between Coming Home and the Deer Hunter, he was attacked by Coming Home‘s producer Jerome Hellman. Nancy Dowd, who felt cheated out of a screenwriting credit by Hellman and Jane Fonda, also wrote a letter labeling Fonda an “unbankable bimbo” and calling screenwriter Waldo Salt a “drunk.” Hellman wrote a second livid response as did the late Waldo Salt’s daughter, Jennifer. The back and forth was the most entertaining VF has been in ages.
I’m guessing those gossipy celebrity-fights are the principal reason why my colleague at Slurve Magazine and gossip rag-addict Miss Flox still enjoys the magazine. I don’t know if Flox is in lust with everything they print, although her journalistic standards are rather low as she’s an avowed Perez Hilton fanatic. I do know that she joined the Vanity Fair Facebook fan page immediately after I casually mentioned to her that I read the magazine. Back then, we were in the midst of a torrid cyber-affair. She was debasing herself in all sorts of ways on the intarweb in a desperate bid to impress me. So I can’t say for sure if joining the VF fan page wasn’t related to this. Since I deleted Flox on Facebook after we broke up, I have no idea if she deleted VF immediately after I dumped her. I suspect she’ll explain in the comment section underneath me, which is exactly where that kind of slut belongs.
