Vanity Fair articles from March 2004

Vanity Fair archives from March 2004

Symphony for the Dead.(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Graydon Carter The invasion of Iraq was launched a year ago this March. On these pages are the names, ages, and hometowns of the 502 American men and women in uniform who, as of January 21, 2004, had lost their lives in the war and...

That's Glamour, Kids; Dazzling talent.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Jennifer Massoni, Laura Kang, Lindsay Bucha, Carolyn Bielfeldt, Abby Field, Lauren Tabach-bank, Fred Turner, Meg Nolan, Jacqueline Neiss, Emily Poenisch, Patrick Christell, Caitlin Morley, Katie Claypoole One of only nine actors,...

The Spy Game; Valerie Plame's laughable chance for justice; Senator Murkowski steps up to Ms.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Leaker's Den the article on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame ["Double Exposure," by Vicky Ward, January] only confirms that the Republican radicals in our administration are willing to do the most disgusting things in order to...

Ready for His Close-up; Mr.(Cecil B. DeMille)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Bruce Handy Cecil B. DeMille, who died in 1959, was once upon a time the most famous and successful director in Hollywood. Today, he is probably best remembered for (1) playing himself in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, and (2)...

Suicidal Tendencies.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: A. M. Homes The transcendent dark comedy Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is the first English-language film by Danish Dogme director Lone Scherfig-known for her 2000 art-house hit, Italian for Beginners. It's the story of a pair of...

Guilty Pleasure Havana Nights.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Eve Epstein Starring: Diego Luna ("the other guy from Y Tu Mama Tambien"), Romola Garai, Sela Ward, John Slattery, Jonathan Jackson. Directed by: Guy Ferland. Find your seat and grab your Milk Duds: February 27. Fade in: A...

Hot Tracks.(Sound recordings)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Lisa Robinson Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. -Voltaire Am I going up this staircase alone, or is [composer] Max Steiner coming with me? -Bette Davis, to director William Wyler, on the set of The...

Hot Type.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Elissa Schappell How do I lie to thee? Let me count the ways . . . In The Book on Bush (Viking), Eric Alterman and Mark Green expose the astounding manner in which "the most messianic, radical, special-interest and dissembling...

God Save the BBC.(BBC America appreciated)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Elissa Schappell I want my BBC! BBC America, that is. A British invasion has stormed U.S. television. If there is another season of The Office-the excruciatingly realistic and comic mockumentary series nominated for two Golden...

Design for Life.(Bagutta Life clothing store in SoHo )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Lauren Tabach-bank Just walking into Bagutta Life is like a religious experience. Picture a 12-foot-high Peter Beard photograph amid a bi-level, 8,000-square-foot, 17th-century-Dubrovnik-church-inspired space-complete with...

Tune in Tokio.(sushi-and-karaoke club)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Dany Levy From the guys who brought the Beauty Bar and Star Shoes to L.A. and the Coral Room to New York comes Tokio, a hot new sushi-and-karaoke joint opening this month smack in the center of Hollywood. "I always thought it...

On the Download.(Internet music)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Brett Brooks, the 34-year-old owner of the new music station at the Ron Herman Melrose store in the Fred Segal complex in L.A., mixes compilation CDs for stores and private clients around the world. Customers can listen to...

Puppy Love.(exhibition, sale of photographs owned by collector Bruce Weber; Delta Society benefit)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Leslie Bennetts Elvis Presley croons "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog" to a hound dog. Elizabeth Taylor cuddles up to a Yorkshire terrier. A young Paul Newman fries an egg while Joanne Woodward nestles a Jack Russell terrier in...

Shear Genius.(Bumble and Bumble, beauty salon in New York City)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Punch Hutton Have you ever been to a hair salon where preening stylists pay more attention to their own reflections than they do to reshaping your shaggy layers? If so, you'll be thrilled to know that the new Ross Anderson- ...

The Gospel According to Mel; For his controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, which seeks to convey the true horror of Christ's torture and death, Mel Gibson has been charged with anti-Semitism.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Christopher Hitchens But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. -Isaiah 53:5. 'e's not...

March Madness.(actor Christopher Plummer's part in play King Lear)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Bruce Handy King Lear is better read than seen, claims Harold Bloom, seconding Charles Lamb. And better read years ago in college, we ourselves might add (with reflexive middlebrow churlishness). But what about a funny King Lear,...

A Death in the Family.(author John Gregory Dunne; narrative)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Dominick Dunne My brother the writer John Gregory Dunne, with whom I have had a complicated relationship over the years, as Irish Catholic brothers of our era often did, died unexpectedly on the night of December 30. I was at my...

Unchain My Heart.(Ray Charles portrayed in film)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Kevin Sessums In the early 1960s, jazz critic John S. Wilson wrote in The New York Times that "almost every aspect of nonclassical music" was being "blanketed by the varied talents of a man named Ray Charles." Director Taylor...

The Pellicano Brief; Anthony Pellicano was the go-to guy for everyone from Michael Jackson to Don Simpson.(security consultant is arrested for allegedly hiring mobster to intimidate journalist Anita Busch)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Howard Blum And John Connolly Within 24 tense hours, Anita Busch received two warnings. And each in its own chilling way had unforeseen and increasingly momentous consequences. The first came early on a bright, lush California...

The Life Aquatic.(motion picture)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Lauren Tabach-bank Every director has his muse: D. W. Griffith had Lillian Gish, Josef von Sternberg had Marlene Dietrich, and Wes Anderson has, well, Bill Murray. In this fall's The Life Aquatic, the latest comedy from the...

VANITY FAIR NOMINATES WILLIAM CHRISTIE.(conductor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Wayne Lawson Because this keyboard artist from Buffalo, after studying at Harvard and Yale, crossed the ocean in 1971 and re-discovered the lost world of French Baroque music, the sound of France's golden age under Louis XIV, when...

Raiders of the Lost Backyard; When 10-year-old Chris Strompolos and 11-year-old Eric Zala decided to remake Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot for shot, in the summer of 1982, they never imagined it would take 7 years-and emerge, two decades later, as a minor cult phenomenon.(filmmakers)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Jim Windolf Chris Strompolos was a rowdy, pudgy kid who craved attention. He once bit a classmate, and he had a habit of barking at his teachers, which didn't go over very well at the Episcopal schools he attended in southern...

Stage Beauty.(film)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Michael Hogan Every innovation has its victims, those whose livelihoods fall into sudden obsolescence when something better comes along. Consider carbon-paper manufacturers, for instance, or record executives. Or take the case of...

Before They Were Kings.(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Richard Meryman Forty years ago no one-least of all the three men themselves-would have believed that out of the thousands of struggling actors in New York they would turn out to be Academy Award-winning superstars. But it...

A Dirty Shame.(film by director John Waters)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Krista Smith John Waters may have a mainstream musical on Broadway (Hairspray) and another in the works (Cry Baby, based on his 1990 film with Johnny Depp), but he's still the self-described master of "good bad taste." His next...

Bonnie Fuller's Fear Factor; One of the most talked-about, highly paid, and widely disliked editors in print journalism, Bonnie Fuller has successfully shaken up five magazines in less than 10 years.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Judith Newman Bonnie Fuller is in crisis. This is not an unusual state of affairs. She is a Prada-clad terror-alert system, and today she is Code Orange. "Please join our prayer group," she says after begging off our...

Masters of the Real.(documentary filmmakers)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Anderson Tepper Herewith is a fine (albeit testosterone-heavy) sampling of some of the most provocative documentary-film makers today. Far from the blinding lights of Hollywood, they often toil away for years on pet projects with...

The Day I Saved John Ford's Life; In 1970, with his first hit movie under his belt, the author was invited by George Cukor to a pre-Oscars lunch, alongside such legendary directors as George Stevens, Mike Nichols, and John Ford.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: By Paul Mazursky I was in my cutting room at MGM working on Alex in Wonderland one afternoon in 1970 when the phone rang and the assistant editor told me it was George Cukor. I was surprised. I'd never met Cukor, but I had great...

TROY GARITY.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Krista Smith age and occupation: 30, actor. provenance: Los Angeles. as cool as ice: Garity is best known for his roles in Bandits and Barbershop; he reprises the latter currently in Barbershop 2. "I love that...

THE FILM SNOB'S DICTIONARY VOL. 2; Are you the odd man out in your friends' bull sessions about Dolemite and Mexican wrestling pictures.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Compiled By Steven Daly And David Kamp Ai No Corrida. High-toned Japanese skin flick from 1976, featuring actual intercourse, that dragged pornography from the grindhouse to the art house. Putatively the story of a 1930s brothel...

The world's greatest living writer Neal Pollack Meets Prince Howard.(satiric look at Vermont Governor and former contender for Democratic presidential nominee, Howard Dean)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Neal Pollack What you think of howard dean, what howard Dean thinks of himself, how the media portray Howard Dean, and what Howard Dean is really like are four entities so separate and distinct that if they were in the same room...

Rivers of youth.(comedian Joan Rivers)(Interview)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: George Wayne Queen of E! Queen of QVC. Queen of jokes about the Queen. For nearly 40 years, Joan Rivers has been the trailblazer for several generations of comediennes. She climbed to the top on the backs of Liz Taylor and Nancy...

The Hollywood Portfolio.(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Has it really been a decade since V.F.'s first Hollywood Issue, the one that anointed Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore as rising stars by putting them on inside cover panels? (Notice the prime real estate those two...

The Jackhammer; Jack Black, actor, musician, active volcano.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: The problem with movies is that they're not always the ideal showcase for comics, whose volatility and improvisatory gifts are constrained by such nuisances as plot and scripted dialogue. But in School of Rock the mighty...

The Cool One; DIANE KEATON, actress, director, producer, progenitor of fashion trends.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: The Cool One One has so many thoughts after seeing Something's Gotta Give, prominent among them: Good God, why did it take the two and a half decades since Annie Hall for Hollywood to find another great romantic...

The Dynasty.(family of actors, the Hustons)(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: The Dynasty The Hustons: Jack, Matthew, Danny, Allegra, Anjelica, and TonY. Only one Hollywood family has an Oscar to show for three successive generations, and it's the Hustons. (Take that, Douglases and Barrymores.)...

The Wizard; Peter Jackson, writer, producer, director.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Has there ever been a more ambitious movie project? You'd probably have to go back to Intolerance, D. W. Griffith's 1916 epic, to find anything that begins to compare to Jackson's thrilling and magisterial The Lord of the...

The Nowhere Man; Bill Murray, actor, comic, minor-league baseball impresario.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Just as Cary Grant always played Cary Grant and John Wayne always played John Wayne, Bill Murray has made a career of playing Bill Murray. But unlike those men, who traded in being square-jawed and iconic, Murray has ...

The Diva; JANET JACKSON, singer, actor, kid sister.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: She has said that people think of her as "the normal one"-which, with Michael, LaToya, Jermaine, et al. coming before her, is kind of like saying Happy is the sexiest of the Seven Dwarfs. But it's true: as the youngest of...

The Bombshell; CHARLIZE THERON, actress.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: As shape-shifters go, Charlize Theron at first seems an unlikely contender: the blonde, five-foot-ten-inch ex-model/ ex-ballerina's classic starlet looks have defined most, if not all, of her film roles thus far....

The Workhorse; Karl Malden, actor.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: For anyone who grew up knowing him as Detective Mike Stone on TV's The Streets of San Francisco, or as the sage bystander in the trilby who gravely intoned "American Express-don't leave home without it," it's a...

The Rebel with a Cause; Sean Penn, actor, director.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Sean Penn made a name for himself in 1982 with his breakthrough performance in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Playing stoner Jeff Spicoli, he was the funniest thing in a very funny movie. In the two decades since, Penn has...

The Scribe; Peter Viertel, screenwriter, novelist, surfer.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: He married Deborah Kerr, whose on-screen kiss with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity had made her one of the planet's most desired women. He wrote 11 feature films, for directors including Alfred Hitchcock...

The Thespians; Hayley Mills, Sir John Mills, and Juliet Mills, actors.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: As the heroic, stiff-upper-lipped face of wartime Britain and the embodiment of English decency, Sir John Mills, 96, has appeared in more than 100 films, including Great Expectations, Hobson's Choice, and Ryan's Daughter,...

The Legacy.(Samuel Goldwyn Sr., Samuel Goldwyn Jr., and the next generation of Goldwyns)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: "In two words: im, possible." -Samuel Goldwyn Sr. His father pretty much invented the business (not to mention the malaprop), so the success that Samuel Goldwyn Jr. has had as an independent film distributor...

The Nuevo Wave; Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and Alfonso Cuaron, directors.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: What do you get when you cross two groundbreaking Brazilian directors with two innovative, iconoclastic Mexican directors? It's no joke: it's a new New Wave-or, more aptly, a Buena Onda, or "Good Wave"-with the potential of...

The Assets; HOPE DAVIS and PATRICIA CLARKSON, actresses.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: The Assets They'll likely never crack the $20 million club. They've done some of their best work in the smallest and most independent of movies. But are there any two actresses whose names you're happier to see in a...

The Rapscallion; Johnny Depp, actor.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: He smokes. He lives in France. He has 12 tattoos and a Beatnik's goatee. In a politically touchy climate, he says bad things about George W. Bush. And yet Johnny Depp is more popular than ever, thanks to his bizarre...

The Team; Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse, actors, dancers, legends.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Some Hollywood affair these two have had, 137 years of showbiz between them (not to mention what some believe to be the sexiest pair of legs ever to grace the big screen-hers, not his). Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse...

The Prodigy; EVAN RACHEL WOOD, actress.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: There are teen stars. In fact, there are too many teen stars. But teen actresses are few and far between. Sixteen-year-old Evan Rachel Wood made her first mark in television-at the age of 12- on the late, lamented Once...

The Real Thing; Jeff Bridges, actor.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: If anyone was born for the screen, it was Jeff Bridges. The son of actors Lloyd and Dorothy Bridges, he had his first movie role while still an infant. That was him on Jane Greer's lap in the 1950 melodrama The Company She...

The Discovery; Keisha Castle-Hughes, actress.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Say you're a smart, voluble, mostly ordinary 11-year-old girl growing up in a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. Say one day fate-in the form of a casting director-snaps you up to star in an independent film being shot in...

The Wanted Man; Colin Firth, actor, mums' heartthrob, fair-trade activist.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: In his high, stiff collar and tight breeches, Colin Firth was so smolderingly glandular as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that one could only assume he was another English pretty boy,...

The Heartthrob; Orlando Bloom, actor.(Brief Article)(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Just how "totally yummy" is this kid? On the teenage-girl fan sites, he beats Josh Hartnett and punks Ashton Kutcher. This by playing a 2,931-year-old elf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was a tiny part in the...

The Rogue; Albert Finney, actor.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: From the fastidious ber-detective Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express to the dissolute diplomat of John Huston's Under the Volcano, from bickering with Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen's Two for the Road to...

The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business; Alec Baldwin, actor.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Alec Baldwin started out doing soap operas (The Doctors, Knots Landing) before unleashing his now trademark mix of blue-eyed, pursed-lipped, furry-chested intensity in movies such as Married to the Mob and Working Girl....

The Irish Eye; Jim Sheridan, filmmaker.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: The Irish Eye For a generation of filmgoers, Jim Sheridan might as well have invented Ireland. Beginning with My Left Foot in 1989 and continuing through his trilogy of films about the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland,...

The League of Extraordinarily Silly Gentlemen; The Monty Python troupe re-united: Terry Gilliam, the disinterred remains of Graham Chapman (dead since 1989), Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones (with friend), and John Cleese.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: George Harrison always said that when the Beatles broke up their spirit passed on to the Pythons, and the parallels are indeed striking: a collection of utterly distinct personalities that nevertheless coalesced into a magical...

Neverland's Lost Boys; The latest charges against Michael Jackson-of molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient-are more than a deja vu of allegations that led to his $25 million settlement with young Jordie Chandler in 1994.(Biography)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Maureen Orth Michael Jackson refers to white wine as "Jesus juice" and red wine as "Jesus blood." He prefers the juice and usually drinks it out of soda cans so that nobody will know he is consuming alcohol. In and out of rehab...

The Rakes; Michael Caine and Jude Law, actors.(remake of the movie Alfie)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: We're not typically in favor of remaking nearly perfect movies, especially those inseparable from their time and place. Take Alfie, a deceptively breezy product of swinging mid-60s London that starred Michael Caine as an...

The Evangelist; Robert McKee, screenwriting instructor.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Number of students who have won Oscars: 19. Number of students who have won Emmys: 112. A not-so-secret force in the movie industry these days is Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriting instructor, Robert McKee. While...

Coming Attractions; Arriving from North Dakota and New Zealand, from London and Louisiana, from TV, ballet, modeling, and the stage ... Coming with stardom in their sights ... Opening soon nationwide.(movie actors)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Krista Smith Representing four continents, these 13 hot prospects possess the rare combination of sex appeal, talent, ambition, and luck it takes to make it in a business where the majority of working actors earn less than $7,500 a...

The Lipstick Jungle; The ultimate three-girls-in-the-city movie, The Best of Everything, based on Rona Jaffe's wildly popular novel, was a plush, CinemaScope, DeLuxe-color 1950s jewel, with a cast that included a trio of hot ingenues (Peyton Place's Hope Lange, supermodel Suzy Parker, and Diane Baker), plus Joan Crawford, Louis Jourdan, and a slick young Robert Evans.
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: Laura Jacobs The genre was a winner for the movies, right from the start. Requirements were minimal: a big city, three pretty faces, some wolves. Sally, Irene and Mary was the first-silent but scrappy in 1925-a tale of three chorus...

Blake Edwards.(Interview)
March 1, 2004... BYLINE: What is your idea of perfect happiness? Listening to Renata Tebaldi sing Puccini's "Un bel di." What is your greatest fear? Losing my hearing. Which living person do you most admire? My wife. What is...