Vanity Fair articles from April 2003

Vanity Fair archives from April 2003

The Hollywood Portfolio 2003.(photoessay)(Illustration)
April 1, 2003... The unmistakable signs that spring is just around the corner: H & R Block ads. Oscar fever. Snowdrops. And-yes, here it comes, ta-da!-V.F.'s fabulous, one-and-only, 100 percent cholesterol-free annual roundup of Hollywood legends, big guns, and...

All thanks to Max.(Miramax Film Corp.)
April 1, 2003... Plenty of ink has been devoted to the rise of Miramax Films, the personalities of the two brothers who run it, and the company's extraordinary run of Academy Award nominations. Now, in a deeply personal reflection, BOB WEINSTEIN reveals the key...

In Cold Mountain country.(photoessay of the making of the film Cold Mountain)
April 1, 2003... Bringing his own vision to the film of Charles Frazier's Civil War best-seller, Anthony Minghella has directed Cold Mountain as a double love story, with Romania's Carpathian Mountains standing in for Appalachia, and a deep-bench cast led by Jude...

Losing his grip.(Michael Jackson)
April 1, 2003... Does it get more bizarre than it's been getting lately? Apparently, yes. From Michael Jackson's increasingly freakish appearance to his voodoo death spells, to the disturbing revelations in a $21.2 million civil suit against him, the pop star's...

Gentlemen's agreement.(Cary Grant, Ronald Colman, Jimmy Stewart)(Biography)
April 1, 2003... Auditioning actresses with Cary Grant. Christmas shopping with Ronald Colman. Trying to get Jimmy Stewart to trade up from a 15-year-old Volvo. As a friend and colleague to three of Hollywood's most idolized stars, former producer WILLIAM Frye...

Of vice and Mann.(Michael Mann and Los Angeles film noir)(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2003... Michael Mann never got the kudos he should have for his 1995 movie, Heat, a compulsively watchable pairing of De Niro and Pacino, and his gutsy TV series Robbery Homicide Division died in its first season. But they reveal the director as a master...

The sound of murder.(Dominick Dunne's Diary)(celebrity trial coverage)
April 1, 2003... Getting the lowdown on L.A.'s latest killing-with music producer Phil Spector hiring O.J. lawyer Robert Shapiro amid rumors of an insanity defense-the author also keeps his ear to the ground on Sydney Simpson's frantic 911 call, Ted Maher's...

Confidential's reign of terror.(history of Confidential magazine and the development of celebrity journalism)
April 1, 2003... By the mid-50s, Robert Harrison's Confidential magazine was the scourge of Hollywood, naming names and dishing dirt, with its army of tipsters, private eyes, and libel lawyers. A 1957 court case-the "Trial of a Hundred Stars"-dismantled...

The man who minted style.(Hollywood celebrity agent Charlie Feldman)(Biography)
April 1, 2003... During his three-decade romp as agent, producer, and playboy, Charlie Feldman represented some 300 of the movies' greatest talents, from Greta Garbo and John Wayne to Richard Burton and Marilyn Monroe. He also changed the way Hollywood did...

King Banana.(comedian Phil Silvers)(Biography)
April 1, 2003... From the roughest of Brooklyn's Jewish ghettos came one of the smoothest comics of all time: Phil Silvers, loved and laughed at by pals such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Bing Crosby. Eighteen years after Silvers's death, his Sergeant Bilko...

It happened one night...at MGM.(rape of dancer Patricia Douglas at an Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios party in 1937 and resultant landmark lawsuit)
April 1, 2003... When Patricia Douglas was raped by an MGM salesman at a 1937 studio party, the 20-year-old dancer filed charges, taking on Hollywood's most powerful institution. Today, as Douglas breaks a 65-year silence, the author exposes the perjury, bribes,...

Herb Ritts's leading ladies.(photoessay of female movie stars, 20th anniversary portfolio in memoriam for celebrity photography Herb Ritts)(Illustration)
April 1, 2003... The legacy of Herb Ritts, who died last December, can be conveyed in one word: "beauty." He saw it, celebrated it, and captured it, often in the pages of Vanity Fair. For this special 20th-anniversary portfolio, V.F. culled Ritts's most glorious...

Dead, but still above the line.(focus on biographical articles on deceased celebrities)(Editor's Letter)(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... One of the great pleasures of editing a magazine, especially if it happens to be one like, say, Vanity Fair, is that interests that have been nibbling away at you for ages can be put to use at some juncture. Case in point: Sam Spiegel, the great...

Annie, get your guys; Un-starlike is the description that leaps to mind for V.F.'s all-star cover shoot: the guys did things like drive themselves to the studio, show up early, and wear mismatched socks.
April 1, 2003... Byline: Katie Sharer, Punch Hutton, Marc Goodman, Laura Kang, Matt Trainor, Jennifer Massoni, Abby Field, Lindsay Bucha, Caitlin Morley, Lauren Tabach-bank, Daisy Ho, Anderson Tepper, Fred Turner Here are a few things we know about Tom...

The Great Debate, Continued; Christopher Hitchens, Catholic League hero.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... Rarely is there an article on abortion worth reading anymore. That's because both sides are so utterly predictable that it's a waste of time. Christopher Hitchens's contribution, however, is the exception to the rule ["Fetal Distraction,"...

Mock of Ages.(Movie Review)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Bruce Handy One of the great pleasures of studio movies from the 30s and 40s is seeing the same old character actors spinning variations on their shtick in film after film after film. Take Eugene Pallette, the squat,...

To Live and Dance in Buenos Aires.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Bruce Handy Assassination Tango is the story of a New York hit man, played by Robert Duvall, who takes a job in Buenos Aires and finds himself drawn to the city's tango subculture. You may watch with dread, waiting for the moment...

HOT TYPE.
April 1, 2003... Byline: Elissa Schappell It's love Arab-American-style! In Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent (Norton) love, lust, and Lebanese cooking commingle to create a deliciously romantic romp about l'amour and the quest for identity. Love and rockets...

Women on Top.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: A. M. Homes They are 21st-century urban pioneers, firsts in their fields; they are the power women of Los Angeles's cultural landscape. And they are a unique phenomenon-in no other city in America are so many women running major...

Viva Valentino.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Bruce Handy No one really knew what to make of Rudolph Valentino. Arguably the most famous screen lover of all time, he was swooned over as an "earthy tiger" and denigrated as a "pink powder puff." A sportsman and fitness buff-Jack...

Miracle on 42nd Street.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Helen Schulman If you're like us, Americans of a certain age, The Miracle Worker conjures up images of a young, feral Patty Duke and a schoolyard's worth of Helen Keller jokes. (Remember the one about the waffle iron?) So, upon...

Best in Show.(Brief Article)(Television Program Review)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Richard Rushfield Re-creating the clowning, clubhouse atmosphere of a 1960s Ratpack TV get-together in a contemporary stage show is no simple task. But comedian-impresario Paul F. Tompkins accomplishes that every month in...

A Chorus Line.(Brief Article)(Concert Review)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Michael Hogan Tony Blair isn't the only Brit with a soft spot for Texans. Dallas's "choral symphonic pop" outfit, the Polyphonic Spree, has become the latest Top 40-proof American band to blow up in the U.K. Singer and songwriter...

Great Ball of Fire.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Michael Hogan If you've been using your familiarity with Hot Hot Heat's debut album, Make Up the Breakdown, to shore up your indie-rock cred, earning bonus points by comparing the band's broiling blend of New Wave and punk rock to...

Girl Power.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Helen Schulman Undeniably, the world is skittering its way to hell in a handbasket, and we social critics find ourselves divided into two distinct camps: those of us who cling to our memories of Academy Award-winning Julie Andrews...

Love Actually.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Evgenia Peretz Since 1995, Richard Curtis, who wrote the scripts for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones's Diary, has been providing movie-lovers with one very simple, albeit crucial pleasure: watching Hugh...

VANITY FAIR NOMINATES TESSA WICK.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Patti Davis Because when she got the frightening diagnosis of juvenile diabetes at age eight, four years ago, she didn't waste time feeling sorry for herself, but instead embarked on a crusade to help find a cure, reaching far...

NEVERLAND.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Krista Smith Neverland takes an entirely original approach to the classic story of Peter Pan, who first appeared as a minor character in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird, by the Scottish author and playwright Sir James Matthew...

Le Divorce.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Sara Switzer Like her American predecessors-from Jerry Mulligan to Sabrina-Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson) has a lot to learn when she arrives in Paris from Santa Barbara to help out her pregnant stepsister, Roxy (Naomi Watts), and...

Bright Young Things.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Doug Stumpf No writer of fiction was meaner to his characters than Evelyn Waugh. In Vile Bodies, Waugh's second novel, written in 1930, Adam Fenwick-Symes aims to make his fortune with his memoirs, written in Paris. But they are...

Jessica Pare.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... age and occupation: 21, actor. provenance: Montreal. blame canada: Pare starred in the little-seen Canadian films Stardom, with Dan Aykroyd, and Lost and Delirious, a lesbian coming-of-age drama in which she shared some...

The Film Snob's Dictionary Volume 1; Do you have a pale, joyless friend who insists that you haven't seen Kubrick's Spartacus until you've seen the Criterion Collection laser-disc edition.
April 1, 2003... Byline: David Kamp And Steven Daly Anime. Catchall term for Japanese or Japanese-style animation, an understanding of which is said by Snobs to be crucial to understanding the future of cinema (yea, of our very culture!), since it, like...

Shooting Stars.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Stephen Levey One of these days someone will set up a booth outside the Staples Center and hawk maps to the stars' seats. It's not a bad idea. When a team is as dominant as the Los Angeles Lakers have been over the past few years...

Handicapping the Academy Awards.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... 23 to 1 Odds that there'll be a big Gangs of New York dance number featuring a butcher's cleaver and a lot of rhinestone- studded codpieces. 4to 1 Odds that someone will thank a lawyer before a spouse in an acceptance...

The Real Deal; Kathy Bates, actress.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... From her Oscar-winning performance in Misery to her breast-beating in At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Kathy Bates has made an art out of channeling the damaged and deranged. And yet she's just as memorable playing lovable...

The Heartbreaker; Diane Lane, actress.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... At 19, Diane Lane was a Hollywood ingenue with a Time cover on her resume and a ticket to stardom in a Francis Ford Coppola epic. But The Cotton Club (1984) flopped, and Lane found herself off the Hollywood fast track. ...

The Familiar Face; JOHN C. REILLY, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Plucked from character-actor obscurity by Paul Thomas Anderson for his feature debut, Hard Eight (1997), and his follow-up epic of porn, Boogie Nights (1997), John C. Reilly became even less of a Hollywood secret in 2002, with roles in...

The Survivor; Roman Polanski, director.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... It seemed that, after more than 40 years of making movies, Roman Polanski was quietly coming to the close of a rambunctious career in film. He had made classics (Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, Knife in the Water), works of...

The Match Made in Heaven; Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, director and actress.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... He is the visionary writer-director who once made a movie with a cast of Barbie dolls, the cult classic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. She is the versatile, brainy bombshell who started out in soaps and theater and is now...

The Ingenues; Kate Bosworth, Kerry Washington, Zooey Deschanel, Alison Lohman, Sophia Myles, and Joy Bryant, actresses.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Kate Bosworth, 20, was a surf savant in last summer's Blue Crush and can't stop riding the big ones: in the forthcoming Wonderland, Bosworth plays the teenage girlfriend of porn legend John Holmes. Sin and The Human Stain could be...

The Professional; CHRIS COOPER, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Sometimes moviegoers are treated to a performance by a relatively unknown actor so powerful that, no matter who headlines the film, it's the wild card who gets much of the buzz. Such was the case for Chris Cooper, who mesmerized...

The Kid Brother; Kieran Culkin, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The title character in Burr Steers's Igby Goes Down hails from D.C., but Manhattan is his playground, and only a New York City kid could have infused this renegade preppy with the proper measure of Caulfieldian insouciance. Enter...

The California Girl; Yvette Mimieux, actress, writer, yoga instructor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Los Angeles-born Yvette Mimieux began her career wearing a toga and fending off blue-skinned Morlocks opposite Rod Taylor in The Time Machine before settling down as the ultimate California beach bunny in Where the Boys Are and...

The Nebraskan; Alexander Payne, director.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Alexander Payne has no wizards in his movies, no car chases, no flashy sex. In his works so far-Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), and About Schmidt (2002), all written with Jim Taylor- Payne simply follows ordinary people...

The Ghost; Daniel Day-Lewis, sometime actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... How fortunate we are that Martin Scorsese was able to persuade the world's most famous cobbler's apprentice to forsake the awl and the boot last in order to give movie acting another try! Five years on from his last film, Day-Lewis...

The Tween Queen; Hilary Duff, actress, burgeoning Disney franchise.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... How cool is Hilary Duff's so-called life? The 15-year-old actress and budding pop star has a hit Disney TV show, Lizzie McGuire, a couple of hot-selling CDs-even her own fashion doll. And now, this spring, two movies are...

The Man to See; Ice Cube, rapper, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Even as he was recording a series of multi-platinum gangsta-rap records that came straight outta Compton, Ice Cube had begun working new territory: Hollywood. In 1991 he made his acting debut as gangsta-with-a-heart Doughboy in...

The Thin Man; Adrien Brody, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... If you felt as if you had been through hell after watching Roman Polanski's two-and-a-half-hour Holocaust epic, The Pianist, imagine how 29-year-old actor Adrien Brody felt after making it. To play the part of musician and...

The One in Demand; Naomi Watts, actress.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Naomi Watts played "the friend" to Nicole Kidman in the Australian film Flirting back in 1991. Since then the careers of the two Sydney girls have followed different paths. While Kidman was on the fast track to world ...

The Mind Warp; CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, actor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... For someone who has made films at the rate of nearly two and a half per year over the last three decades, Christopher Walken may still be one of our most underused actors. So often called upon to play spooky or kooky, he has...

The "Actresses"; Jenna JamEson, Taylor Hayes, and Savanna Samson, Vivid Girls.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Take the old studio-contract system, update it for pornography-Louis B. Mayer, meet Larry Flynt-and voila: more adult-film stars than there are in heaven! That was the inspiration behind the Vivid Entertainment Group, said to be porn's...

The Weekend Warriors; THE reunited Cast of DeliVerance Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Burt Reynolds (in replicas of their original costumes), and director John Boorman.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Released in 1972, at a time when urban America was choking on crime and decay, Deliverance was the movie that left an entire generation with a paradoxical fear of the Great Outdoors-or, more specifically, of toothless, hog-calling mountain...

The New Yorker; Martin Scorsese, director, writer, film curator.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Pet movie projects seldom work out; they get caught up in studio politics, budget crises, and their creators' own myopia, until they finally peter out, unloved and unreleased. For a while, it looked as if Gangs of New York was...

The Humanist; Arthur Cohn, producer.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Though he doesn't have film credits in the hundreds, his six golden statuettes serve as proof of his producing prowess. Swiss-born Arthur Cohn has stepped up to the Oscar podium every decade since the 60s, more often than any...

The Seductress; TUESDAY WELD, actress.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Tuesday Weld carved out a name for herself as a sweater-clad sex kitten in films like Lord Love a Duck and Wild in the Country. But life got more interesting (at least on film) when she starred as lethal cheerleader Sue Ann Stepanek...

The "Kid"; ROBERT EVANS, producer.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... "I went from legend to leper," Robert Evans likes to say-a tidy encapsulation of the first two acts of a Hollywood career which has been an exemplary and cautionary tale. As chief of production at Paramount in the late 60s and early 70s,...

The Immortal; JEANNE MOREAU, actress, director, chanteuse, writer, nouvelle vague icon.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Jeanne Moreau has packed more into her life than a whole platoon of airbrushed Hollywood "stars": a tough childhood in occupied Paris sneaking black-market food past the Germans; friendships with Cocteau, Hemingway, Genet, and Picasso;...

The Reunion of a Reunion; THe reunited cast of the bIG CHILL Meg Tilly (on TV), Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, co-writer Barbara Benedek, Kevin Costner, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Kay Place, William Hurt, JoBeth Williams, Tom Berenger, producer Michael Shamberg, and director Lawrence Kasdan.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Here it is, the 20-year reunion of the amazing cast that director/co-writer Lawrence Kasdan put together for the greatest reunion movie of them all (including Kevin Costner, whose big scene was left on the cutting-room floor). With its mix...

Angels with pretty faces.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Byline: Michael Hogan It's safe to say that Charlie's Angels won't appear on the American Film Institute's next Top 100 list, but unless you're one of those people who order a muffin and a cappuccino at the concession stand, you must admit...

DON RICKLES; A cornerstone of the Dean Martin era, Don Rickles, "the Merchant of Venom," has raked a parade of celebrities (such as Princess Margaret and Ronald Reagan) over the coals at his shows.(Brief Article)(Interview)
April 1, 2003... What is your idea of perfect happiness? Perfect happiness is having a wife who loves you and doesn't ask for too much jewelry. What is your greatest fear? My greatest fear is going out onstage and having the audience just...