Vanity Fair articles from January 2004

Vanity Fair archives from January 2004

Producing The Producers; Starting with just a title, Springtime for Hitler, TV comedy genius Mel Brooks wrote and directed The Producers as his shot at Hollywood.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Sam Kashner They call me the producer. Pray for me. -Sidney Glazier The Producers, one of the most lauded and successful Broadway musicals in recent memory, began life 36 years ago as a movie that got queasy...

MODERN'S MASTERS; More than half a century after modernism re-envisioned daily life, the apostles of Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Le Corbusier are inspiring new appreciation.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Matt Tyrnauer One of the mysteries of the 20th century is how modernism-a radical movement of the left which gained focus in the years between the World Wars at the Bauhaus in out-of-the-way Dessau, Germany-came to be the dominant...

MANOLO BLAHNIK; Blithe spirit of the stiletto, maestro of the mule.(Interview)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being surrounded by wonderful company... or being totally alone. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Philip II of Spain. Which living person do you most...

Quite a Production.(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Graydon Carter Four years ago, at a dinner party at Sue Mengers's house in Beverly Hills, I first heard that Mel Brooks planned to turn his 1968 film, The Producers, into a Broadway musical (and that he was going to write the music...

Way more than 15 minutes.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: It was with great amusement that I read your article about the question of Warhol attribution ["Judging Andy," by Michael Shnayerson, November]. Once I had lunch with a select group of Warhol regulars, including Fred Hughes...

Tragic Triumph.(House of Sand and Fog)(Movie Review)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Leslie Bennetts From the opening frames of House of Sand and Fog, in which a ravaged Jennifer Connelly stares into a fog-shrouded night from the widow's walk atop a seaside bungalow as police lights flash ominously below, it is...

Hot Type.(variety of fiction novels)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Elissa Schappell Revenge fantasies about bad guys getting their due rule the New Year. Elmore Leonard, grand master of the flashy crime novel, is back with a double dose of homicide in Mr. Paradise (Morrow), while swinging Peter...

A Prayer for Indonesia; With many trials-including those of a hard-line mullah and five foot soldiers in the Bali nightclub bombings-Indonesia has put radical Islam on the stand.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Namehere Indonesia. A rather vague and magical name, exotically redolent of "the Indies" and also of a pattern of islands. It was evolved as a title about a century ago because nationalism always needs a re-invented name-and...

The Princess Theories; Given Princess Diana's prediction of her own fate 10 months before she died, and how much her royal in-laws knew about the palace-rape tape she kept for protection, no wonder talk of conspiracy continues.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Dominick Dunne Let me make clear right up front that I was one of those people who worshipped Princess Diana. I once described her in the pages of this magazine as "awesome." I have spent most of my adult life around stars, but I...

GINNIFER GOODWIN.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Krista Smith age and occupation: 25, actor. provenance: Memphis, Tennessee. chick-flick alert: This month, Goodwin stars in Mona Lisa Smile-think Dead Poets Society with short pleated skirts-alongside Julia Roberts, Kirsten...

Jenny Craig on weighty matters.(Interview)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Geoge Wayne Twenty years and 10 million clients after she opened her first weight-loss clinic, Jenny Craig's name is synonymous with prepared food and strip-mall storefronts. As Craig prepares to step out from behind her logo with...

Finding Viggo; Moviegoers know Viggo Mortensen largely as Aragorn, the reluctant monarch he plays for a third time in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Alex Kuczynski Viggo Mortensen is waiting for me in a parking lot on the Pacific Coast Highway near Topanga Canyon. He thought it would be nice to walk along the beach, watch the sunset and the deepening pink clouds and the...

Double Exposure; Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and his wife, C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame, are at the center of controversy over President Bush's bogus claim, in last year's State of the Union address, that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Vicky Ward On a sunny Wednesday in mid-October a mixture of journalists, lobbyists, and the odd politician were sitting down to plates of cold salad in a stuffy dining room at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C.,...

Pas de Trois.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Wayne Lawson Since 1974, when he leapt over the Iron Curtain, Mikhail Baryshnikov has become a revered figure in American dance, performing with American Ballet Theater (ABT) and New York City Ballet (NYCB), acting as artistic...

Guantanamo Bay on Trial; At Guantanamo Bay, or "Gitmo," the U.S. naval base in Cuba, some 660 alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists have been indefinitely detained without hearings.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: David Rose In the beginning, in January 2002, when the first alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners were unloaded from an army aircraft to kneel, shackled and blindfolded, in the dirt at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the camp hospital was...

La Femme Lagerfeld.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Evgenia Peretz Karl Lagerfeld's pant size may have changed, but the essence of his girl has not. Meet Anna Mouglalis, the latest in the line of wonderfully angular, slightly haughty, and wildly chic Chanel women that includes Ines...

The Code Warrior; The nightmare began in August with Blaster, a new kind of virus, which infected computers through their Internet connections, without e-mails or attachments, replicated on its own, and may have played a role in the recent blackout in the U.S. Northeast.
January 1, 2004... BYLINE: Michael Shnayerson In Edgar Allan Poe's classic story "The Mask of the Red Death," an uninvited guest slips into a costume ball, his mask in place, and mingles with the crowd until the clock strikes midnight. Only then do the...