Vanity Fair articles from April 2004

Vanity Fair archives from April 2004

The Nanny State.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: New York used to be a sophisticated city. Now it seems to me the peasants have taken over ["Breaking the Law in Michael Bloomberg's New York," by Graydon Carter, and "I Fought the Law," by Christopher Hitchens, February]. Is there...

Ambulance Chasing.(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Craig Offman Sleeping with your bandmate's sister, who is also your roommate? Delivering your harmonic melodies and obscure lyrics to a city obsessed with fuzz-pedaled punk throwbacks? Opening packed shows with an instrumental?...

Strange Love.(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Bruce Handy Charlie Kaufman may be the most distinctive brand-name screenwriter since... well, Joe Eszterhas is the first name that comes to mind, but I meant distinctive in a good way. At this point in Kaufman's career, with five...

ON THE DOWNLOAD.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Zach Braff, the 28-year-old star of NBC's Scrubs, made his directorial debut amid great fanfare at Sundance 2004 with Garden State, the story of a young man, estranged from his family, who returns home for his mother's funeral. The...

Hot Type.(Bibliography)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Elissa Schappell Rats! Robert Sullivan's histoire du rodent, Rats (Bloomsbury), is a fascinating look at the lowly beasts that wreak havoc, spread pestilence, and (in this way they differ from compassionate conservatives) have sex...

Kauaian Punch.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Roman Alonso Don't go to Kauai. Go to any of the other Hawaiian Islands-Maui, Oahu, Lanai, the Big Island-but leave Kauai for us. The weather on Kauai is so unpredictable. Sometimes it rains all day-in fact, it's the second-wettest...

The Laptop Brigade; Don't dismiss blogs as the online rantings of B-list writers.(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: James Wolcott Are we in danger of drowning in blogorrhea? Of being swamped like Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason at the end of How to Commit Marriage in chin-high sludge? Only a few years ago blogs-short for Web logs, frequently updated...

Going After Martha; Avowedly pro-defense, the author is invited for sandwiches with Martha Stewart, her broker, Peter Bacanovic, and their families on the fourth floor of New York's Old Federal Courthouse.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Dominick Dunne Martha Stewart's extraordinary success has made her one of America's most famous and controversial figures, loved and detested in almost equal proportion. The hottest ticket in New York right now, and the hardest to...

Hack the Vote; Glitch-prone and vulnerable to hackers, the electronic voting machines that will be in nearly every state this November could make hanging chads look benign.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Michael Shnayerson Florida's first election of 2004 was a small one, almost quaint. Seven Republicans were vying to fill a vacancy left by Connie Mack IV, who had resigned as state representative from Broward and Palm Beach...

Broadway's Evening Star; Marian Seldes began her stage career in 1947 under the wings of Sir John Gielgud and Katharine Cornell, became Edward Albee's favorite actress, and married the late Garson Kanin.(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: By David Kaufman In 1994, after nearly two decades of neglect, Edward Albee won his third Pulitzer Prize and emerged as the playwright who came in from the cold with Three Tall Women, which also catapulted the stalwart character...

VANITY FAIR NOMINATES WILLIAM AUSTIN.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Jennifer Massoni Because he was on his way to becoming a hometown doctor in Springfield, Minnesota, when a part-time job at a hearing-aid repair shop changed his life. because he founded the Professional Hearing Aid Service in...

Daughters of France, Daughters of Allah; From news reports, it may have seemed that the greatest threat to France's secular values was Islamic headscarves in public schools.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Marie Brenner "I really want to thank you for listening to me. The silence is a summation. To speak is very, very difficult. I hope that other young girls find the courage to speak out and to get their freedom to live in another...

The Blairs' Dangerous Luxury; Carole Caplin is Tony and Cherie Blair's close friend and lifestyle guru, but she embroils them in one scandal after another.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Leslie Bennetts Every time the telephone rings, the caller is greeted with endearments so syrupy they practically drip into the receiver. "Hello, my darling," Carole Caplin says, her voice dropping to a throaty bedroom purr. "How...

Good-Bye, Helmut.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Robert Evans In the multitude of lectures I've given around the globe regarding the world of film, the one question most asked is "Who are the most talented people you have worked with?" My response has always been the same. I have...

Freddy Adu.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Scott Gummer age and occupation: 14, Major League Soccer player. provenance: Potomac, Maryland. pomp and circumstance: His debut with D.C. United will be televised on April 3, a month before Adu, a gifted student who...

Ready Freddie.(Freddie Ljungberg )(Interview)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: George Wayne The signature red Mohawk-like hairstyle is gone, but Freddie Ljungberg is still the bad lad of English soccer-and the latest in a long, ripped line of Calvin Klein underwear models. Our correspondent gets to the bottom...

What if ...
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Henry Alford What if the Statue of Liberty wrote a tell-all autobiography? Page 4Liberty describes torrid evening spent with Trafalgar Square's Nelson's Column. Page 17Liberty says she's cross-addicted to OxyContin and...

The Lady, the List, the Legacy; With a little help from World War II, publicity genius Eleanor Lambert made New York the world capital of fashion, commandeering the Paris dressmakers' best-dressed-women poll in 1940, organizing a biannual Press Week for Seventh Avenue (the forerunner of today's Fashion Week), and founding the Costume Institute and the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Amy Fine Collins In 1939-while Germany was invading Poland, Italy was trampling Albania, and women and children were being evacuated from London-Seventh Avenue's captains of industry were panicking about selling dresses. In an...

The 2004 International Best-Dressed List; Praised, denounced, and dissected, but never, ever ignored, the list has survived war, counterculture revolutions, and bribery attempts.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: -abby Field Sally, Countess of Albemarle Cate Blanchett Marina Rust Connor Sofia Coppola H.R.H. Princess Olga of Greece H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan Jemima Khan Kate Moss Oprah Winfrey Aerin...

The International Best-Dressed List Hall of Fame; In 1958, when such icons as the Duchess of Windsor and Babe Paley were appearing perennially on the Best-Dressed List, Eleanor Lambert created the Hall of Fame.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: The Women's Hall of Fame Natividad Abascal, former model, former Duchess of Feria; Madrid (1984). Sra. Giovanni Agnelli (Marella), international socialite, philanthropist, co-founder of the Pinacoteca Agnelli art museum,...

Macbush.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Harold Bloom Preface There can be little doubt of the historical existence of the King-Emperor Dubya the Great, who is thought to have reigned from 2001 to 2009, and to have presided over the transition from the American...

The Man Who Wanted More; Just six months ago, his panache and erudition evident in his new biography of F.D.R., right-wing press baron Conrad Black was momentarily the toast of New York, London, and Toronto, his dazzling columnist wife, Barbara Amiel, at his side.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Duff Mcdonald Sitting on a dais inside a private club on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Conrad Black was in his element. It was nearly eight p.m. on Thursday, November 6, of last year, and Lord Black was expounding to an...

Kings And Queens of Clubs.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Punch Hutton In their song "New York, New York," Kander and Ebb called Manhattan "the city that doesn't sleep." From the speakeasies of the 1920s to the disco-dance-hall days of the 70s, to the myriad of today's V.I.P.-only clubs...

Something About Marc; With those A-list fans (Sofia Coppola.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Evgenia Peretz Before Marc Jacobs arrives, a top-level advertising-strategy meeting at Louis Vuitton is just another fashion bitchfest. "What about Eva Herzigova?" asks Antoine Arnault, the thirtysomething son of LVMH's C.E.O.,...

The Inconvenient Sharon Bush; As Neil Bush went from one venture to another, tarnished by his role in the 1990 Silverado S&L scandal, his wife, Sharon, couldn't understand why she had to worry about the grocery bills.
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Vicky Ward At 11 a.m. on Friday, January 30, a petite blonde woman with large blue eyes and a nervous expression waited outside Houston's old Cotton Exchange building, now used as an extension to the Harris County District Court...

Knightley Magic; After scoring in the breakout indie Bend It Like Beckham and opposite Johnny Depp in the box-office hit Pirates of the Caribbean, Keira Knightley is getting casting calls- and more personal inquiries-from some of Hollywood's biggest hitters.(Interview)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Steven Daly When Keira Knightley was in Washington, D.C., last year, promoting her schoolgirl soccer movie, Bend It Like Beckham, she and co-star Parminder Nagra were invited to a soccer match between two professional women's...

LAUREN BACALL; When she taught her future husband Humphrey Bogart how to whistle in her first film, To Have and Have Not, Lauren Bacall became an instant icon.(Brief Article)(Interview)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: What is your idea of perfect happiness? Waking up in the morning. What is your greatest fear? Not waking up in the morning. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Marie Antoinette. Which...

Rob the Vote!(Editorial)
April 1, 2004... BYLINE: Graydon Carter It's about time Americans stopped worrying about the Baathists, Shiites, and Islamists playing footsie with free elections in Iraq, and paid attention to more pressing electoral problems we have here at home. The...