Vanity Fair articles from August 2006

Vanity Fair archives from August 2006

The Vietnam Syndrome; Agent Orange, used by the U.S. to defoliate Vietnam's jungles, has now poisoned a third generation.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Christopher Hitchens To be writing these words is, for me, to undergo the severest test of my core belief-that sentences can be more powerful than pictures. A writer can hope to do what a photographer cannot: convey how things...

Click Here for Conspiracy.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Nancy Jo Sales Nine-eleven conspiracy theories have been circulating for years, producing millions of Web links, scores of books, and a nationwide collection of doubters known as the "9/11 Truth" movement. In 2005 the State...

Michael Pena.(actor )(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Krista Smith AGE AND OCCUPATION: 30, actor. PROVENANCE: Chicago. LUCKY CHARM: Oliver Stone's decision to cast him in World Trade Center (opposite Nicolas Cage) could be a great career move for Stone: two of Pena's most recent roles...

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL; Vanity Fair salutes Al Gore.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Kate Reardon The third Vanity Fair party at the Hotel du Cap during the Cannes Film Festival was a corker. Graydon Carter hosted the dinner and after-party in honor of Al Gore and his global-warming warning, An Inconvenient Truth,...

The Lady's on a Roll; With three new movies in the can-Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia (out in September), followed by The Reaping and Freedom Writers-and her marriage to Chad Lowe over, Hilary Swank is alternately brimming with joy and fighting tears as she faces the remake of her life.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Leslie Bennetts She started her morning with a hard run up through the mountain trails above Malibu-Hilary Swank's idea of a really great time. After that she came back to her beach cottage and, unable to decide whether to make...

The Good Life.(Tony Bennett)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Richard Merkin With the passing of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and, recently, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett stands as the premier stylist and interpreter of classic American song. His new album, out in September,...

A Flowering Evil; The shooting of environmentalist Joan Root at her 88-acre farm overlooking Lake Naivasha, last January, shocked Kenya's "Happy Valley" and the entire conservation world.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Mark Seal "Not far from where we're gathered today, Joan Root was murdered in cold blood," the priest tells the audience of hundreds of the world's leading conservationists, wildlife experts, and filmmakers sitting outdoors on a...

A Rock Of Her Own; As 2005 came to a close, Sheryl Crow was looking forward to a year of long-term wish fulfillment, culminating in marriage to her "soul mate," seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Frank Digiacomo It's almost one o'clock in the afternoon, but it feels like midnight inside the Murat Theatre, in downtown Indianapolis. The seats are empty and shrouded in a chilly darkness, and, save for the red glow of the exit...

G.E.'s Green Light.(Company overview)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Amanda Griscom Little Founded more than 125 years ago by Thomas Edison, General Electric is the oldest and most diverse industrial conglomerate on the planet. The company that gave America the first lightbulb, the first dishwasher,...

Illusions Of Arbus; Fur, starring Nicole Kidman as photographer Diane Arbus, will reach theaters in November-the $17 million culmination of two decades of Hollywood stop-and-go that involved Diane Keaton, Barbra Streisand, Bernie Brillstein, and Roger Avary, among others.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Patricia Bosworth A new film (Fur) starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey, Jr., about the life of the photographer Diane Arbus will be shot at Brooklyn's new Steiner Studios.... Shooting on Fur, to be directed by Steven Shainberg...

O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Trappist monks' new abbey of Our Lady of Novy Dvur, in the Czech Republic, is being built by Minimalist architect John Pawson, who designed Calvin Klein's flagship store, on Madison Avenue, as well as projects for Ian Schrager and Martha Stewart.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer I am standing with the architect John Pawson on a snow-covered ridge in Bohemia, two hours outside of Prague, somewhere between Pilsen, in the Czech Republic, and Marienbad, the famous spa town near the German border....

Raising Ramona.(Ramona Quimby, character of Beverly Cleary's book)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Bruce Handy Ramona Quimby, the notorious pest of Klickitat Street, was a pre-schooler in 1950. She entered kindergarten in 1968. By 1999 she had finally made it to fourth grade, celebrating her 10th birthday. So in Ramona years her...

Malibu's Lost Boys; Surfing was still a strange and exotic art in 1961, when Mike Nader, Duane King, and Larry Shaw escaped their troubled homes for the beach at Malibu.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Sheila Weller One summer day in 1961, three 16-year-old Beverly Hills boys-Mike Nader, Duane King, and Larry Shaw-got up at dawn in their separate homes and eagerly pulled on their swim trunks. The sport that was their...

Sherry Lansing; For more than 12 years, she acted as chairman and C.E.O. of Paramount Pictures, but Sherry Lansing has left the Hollywood highlife behind to embark on a career in philanthropy, establishing her foundation for cancer research and education.(Interview)
August 1, 2006... What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being in love with someone who loves you back. What is your greatest fear? Being dependent. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Mary Lasker. What is the trait you...

Big Boats and Bad Weather.(Editorial)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Graydon Carter In mid-May, I set off for Cap d'Antibes in the South of France for the first leg of an annual two-week European trip-business largely, but this time also a respite from conversations about the war, the...

Deconstructing Cheney; Claws are out for the V.P. and V.F.; Cooper is super; recasting Animal House; New Orleans: open for tourists; George Wayne's bad behavior; and "Wake up, America.(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... I applaud Todd Purdum for his article on Vice President Dick Cheney ["A Face Only a President Could Love," June]. Cheney has made a mockery of our centuries-old system of checks and balances. On his watch, politics has trumped all other things...

WEB SITES.
August 1, 2006... LALA.COM STYLEHIVE.COM TMZ.COM

Hey Ya!(Andre 3000 and Antwan A. Patton in an original musical about love)(Michael Mann brings his classic to Universal Studios Inc.)(Uma Thurman in My Super Ex-girlfriend)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... 18 Samuel L. Jackson leads the charge to get "these motherf-ing snakes off the motherf-ing plane" in Snakes on a Plane (New Line), the high-altitude action film whose so-bad-it's-good premise has bewitched the blogosphere. Three days later,...

ALL THAT JAZZ.
August 1, 2006... Impulse Records celebrates its 45th anniversary with Ashley Kahn's thoroughly researched The House That Trane Built (Norton), which is out now and chronicles the rise and lasting impact of the record label most famous for producing some of John...

CLASSIC-CAR WEEKEND.
August 1, 2006... 18 The Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, in California, pay special tribute to the Cooper Car Company. 20 The Automotive Fine Arts Society and the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance parade vintage cars...

ACE EXHIBITIONS.
August 1, 2006... 1 Life-size fiberglass Labrador retrievers painted by stars such as Jack Nicholson, Salma Hayek, Anjelica Huston, and Snoop Dogg festoon the streets of Aspen leading up to the Aspen Filmfest's Best in Show charitable auction, at the Little Nell...

Hot Type.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Elissa Schappell Allow me to introduce Winkie (Grove), the teddy bear accused of committing terrorist acts in Clifford Chase's absurdist tale of how a society's bumbling war on terror turns good people into barbarians. Also...

DARK SHADOWS.(The Keep (Knopf) by Jennifer Egan)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Elissa Schappell In many ways, The Keep (Knopf), Jennifer Egan's gothic novel within a prison novel, mimics the mysterious and claustrophobic castle where much of the story unfolds. Full of disturbingly dark corridors and secret...

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: The Experiment Since 1936.
August 1, 2006... Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings were affable clubmen who founded an architecture firm in 1936. They couldn't design for anything, but they were brilliant businessmen-half the battle in big-time architecture. They hired great...

TOYWATCH.(Marco Mavilla designs)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... ToyWatch, an Italian venture that aims to fuse high style with low prices, is introducing a line of very handsome, waterproof timepieces designed by Marco Mavilla. Featuring stainless-steel bezels, acrylic bands and casings, and dials that come...

FURNITURE.(Established & Sons at Milan Furniture Fair)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Last year at the Milan Furniture Fair, a British design company, Established & Sons-led by Alasdhair Willis, the founding publisher of Wallpaper magazine and the husband of Stella McCartney-launched its first product line. The Milan debut is...

FRANK GEHRY.(Hotel Marques de Riscal )(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer Ever dream of being able to spend the night inside the Guggenheim Bilbao or L.A.'s Walt Disney Concert Hall? Go to Spain, where Frank Gehry has struck again with a contorted-titanium building, this one in the town of...

MAPPING MANHATTAN'S FUTURE.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer New York hit its architectural peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and, considering it is one of the centers of global design (that is, many great architects have offices here), it has a poor record for...

Iconic Images.(Harry Benson)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Aaron Gell Legendary photographer Harry Benson was but a lad of 15 living in Glasgow when he got his first camera, a gift from his dad-which he promptly pawned to buy a "Robert Mitchum jacket," in reddish-brown herringbone....

FRAGRANT DESIGN.(Mark Badgley, James Mischka)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Christine Muhlke For 18 years, Mark Badgley and James Mischka have made it their mission to help women look glamorous with just one zip. Now they're adding a spritz to their sequins. This month, the duo will release an eponymous...

A Novel Collection.(Dragon Books in Bel Air)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: A. Scott Berg After decades of going without, the citizens of Bel Air just got their first neighborhood bookstore-Dragon Books. Stocked with used and antiquarian volumes, the shop at the crest of Beverly Glen feels more like a...

Marty with an M; Pity Martin Short.(Biography)
August 1, 2006... Byline: James Wolcott Martin Short is the complete entertainment package, loosely wrapped. Singer, dancer, comic, impressionist-the man does it all, milking applause as if it were his long-lost mama. With a demented gleam in his eyes and...

A Riviera Row; Cannes always dazzles, and this year's only sour notes were the French boos for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Dominick Dunne I've been going to the Cannes Film Festival for years. In 1971, I actually produced one of the American entries, The Panic in Needle Park, which was written by my brother and sister-in-law, John Gregory Dunne and...

Washington Babylon; California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Judy Bachrach The corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"-an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the...