Vanity Fair articles from October 2003

Vanity Fair archives from October 2003

The admirable Clooney.(interview with George Clooney)(Interview)(Cover Story)
October 1, 2003... Despite an abiding passion for practical jokes, George Clooney is a man of deep convictions. At the star's new villa on Italy's Lake Como, where Clooney has been contending with burglars, cell-phone-camera-wielding babes, and paparazzi, NED ZEMAN...

Liberia's savage harvest.
October 1, 2003... Terrorized and recruited by the army, by rebel groups, and by private militias, a generation of Liberian kids know little but inhuman cruelty and slaughter. Will the arrival of peacekeeping forces and the departure of President Charles Taylor end...

Hooked on supersonics.(decommissioning of the Concorde jet)
October 1, 2003... Concorde devotees loved its glamour, its look, and its celebrity cargo. Above all, they loved its speed. And if there were gripes about noise or wasting fuel... well, for most of the world that $12,000 round-trip was a...

The return of Tarantino.(interview with Quentin Tarantino)(Interview)
October 1, 2003... Quentin Tarantino's first film in six years, Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman as a kung fu assassin called "the Bride," is being released in two parts beginning this month. What has the 41-year-old director-who changed the independent-movie...

A liberating experience.(Iraq War)
October 1, 2003... The press has contained little except bad news from Iraq and warnings of quagmire. Despite continuing violence, the author, on his own reconnaissance mission, finds reason to hope: even as mass graves are exhumed, so are the spirit and talent of...

MSNBC's fox hunt.(management and marketing strategies)
October 1, 2003... By day, MSNBC is a first-rate news operation. At night, it gets hysterical-witness Michael Savage's self-immolation, Chris Matthews' high-volume interrogations, and Joe Scarborough's Fox-inspired swagger. An NBC in-house study suggests why the...

Gallery for scandal.(case regarding stolen art and books)(Dominick Dunne's Diary)(Column)
October 1, 2003... An Upper East Side antiques dealer with a tragic past, James Sansum has been charged with stealing half a million dollars in art and books from his former employer, well-known gallery owner Helen Fioratti. In Southampton, the author gets a tip...

Saving the Saudis.(the Bush family oil connection and extradition of Saudi officials back to the Middle East after the September 11 attacks)
October 1, 2003... Just days after 9/11, wealthy Saudi Arabians, including members of the bin Laden family, were whisked out of the U.S. on private jets. No one will admit to clearing the flights, and the passengers weren't questioned. Did the Bush family's long...

The message in the anthrax.(investigation into the 2001 anthrax letters)
October 1, 2003... After fingering Joe Klein for Primary Colors and helping snare the alleged Atlanta Olympics bomber, the author, a professor of English at Vassar, was asked to analyze the 2001 anthrax letters. Frustrated with the F.B.I.'s anthrax task force, he...

Princesses behaving badly.(Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie of Monaco)
October 1, 2003... Despite her own romantic misadventures and the boozy antics of her third husband, Princess Caroline of Monaco is livid over her sister's string of declasse liaisons (bodyguards, circus performers, their father's butler). But Stephanie, the...

Fly the friendly skies.(airlift of Saudis from American back to the Middle East after the September 11 attacks)(Editor's Letter)(Editorial)
October 1, 2003... Imagine if, instead of invading Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler had staged a surprise attack on the U.S. In a dawn raid, Nazi forces destroy the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings in New York and cause serious damage to the War Department in...

Con Heir.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Bruce Handy You're tempting the gods of bad acting when you cast Nicolas Cage as someone with facial tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder-it's like asking Al Pacino to be loud. But twitch and twitch some more is what the already...

A Midsummer Day's Dream.(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Bruce Handy There are a lot of shots of trains in The Station Agent, and a lot of shots of people walking down train tracks. There is a lot of train talk too, and one of the main characters lives in an abandoned depot....

Hot Type.(Bibliography)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Elissa Schappell Let's all get lit. Literature, that is, darling. In Ayelet Waldman's powerful and provocative novel Daughter's Keeper (Sourcebooks), a spirited, naive young woman finds herself a nightmare casualty of the...

Charming Chaplin.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Patricia Bosworth Richard Schickel's documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin is an eloquent, informative overview of our greatest slapstick clown. Charlie was first screened in May at Cannes, where it created much...

Ferrer Tale.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Amy Fine Collins She was a waif-like muse to Billy Wilder, an aesthetic paragon to Cecil Beaton, a chic ideal to Hubert de Givenchy, a literary archetype to Colette, and a merciful angel to unicef. But to Sean Hepburn...

Chick Lit.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Krista Smith Sloane Tanen never planned to make a name for herself as the creator of poignant and wickedly funny dioramas featuring miniature yellow toy chickens. It just worked out that way. The 33-year-old artist grew up in...

The Pigs Are Alright.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Henry Alford It's possible that the English saying "Dogs look up to us; cats look down at us; but pigs treat us as equals" does not apply to Ian Falconer's children's-book heroine, Olivia the pig. After all, here is a little blob...

After Hours.(Hollywood Hills party rooms)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Lauren Tabach-bank, Punch Hutton It's a balmy L.A. night and most people are mourning the two a.m. last call, but there's a set of locals who haven't begun to slow down. They're ready for more, and there they go... headed...

Mind Games.(Echoes)(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Michael Hogan For several decades now, there's been a peculiar Manichaean divide within American pop: rock music stimulated the mind; dance music stimulated the body. Period. But today's rock 'n' roll kids don't subscribe to the...

The Art of War.(Atomic Time: Pure Science and Seduction)
October 1, 2003... Byline: A. M. Homes The clicking of the Geiger counter, like the ticking of the clock counting down, like a secret code being tapped out for only the initiates to understand-this is "Atomic Time: Pure Science and Seduction." Out...

Queen of Tarts.(Tarts with Tops On)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Helen Schulman Tarts with Tops On may sound like a new show on British TV. Fortunately, the title of this yummy new cookbook by Daily Telegraph food columnist and V.F. contributor Tamasin Day-Lewis, out from Miramax next month,...

Pushing the Envelope.(The Office)(Television Program Review)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Mike Sacks If it's true, as Mark Twain wrote, that "the secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow," then the BBC's The Office (the second season premieres this month on BBC America) is about as humorous as it gets. A...

Bathing Beauties.(Femme Fatale)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: David Colman Need a pick-me-up? Well, forget feel-good. Try feel-bad. Really bad. Let's face it. All that New Age beauty nonsense has been hogging the vanity table for too long. Here to up the va-va-va-voom quotient is the...

VANITY FAIR NOMINATES JEREMY GILLEY.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: David Friend Because one afternoon five years ago, while sitting in a field at a world-music concert in Reading, England, Jeremy Gilley vowed to change his life-and the planet. because, then and there, buoyant with the helium of a...

The New Establishment 2OO3.
October 1, 2003... Byline: -by Alan Deutschman, Richard Siklos, Heather Fink, John Brodie, Craig Offman, Richard Rushfield, And Anne Thompson. 1 Rupert Murdoch Chairman and chief executive, News Corporation STAB AT MORtALITY: Admitted for the...

JACINDA BARRETT.(Brief Article)(Biography)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Krista Smith age and occupation: 31, actor. provenance: Brisbane, Australia. an aussie with real world experience: Barrett was on one of the first seasons of MTV's The Real World. "I wasn't really sure what the...

the world's greatest living writer.
October 1, 2003... Byline: Neal Pollack Except for the caves of ramjullah-and they are 20 miles off-the city of Baghdad presents nothing extraordinary. The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist, they're hidden in...

Russell Simmons: phat and happy.(Interview)
October 1, 2003... Byline: George Wayne Only Brooke Astor moves across as many circles in New York City as Russell Simmons, who counts presidents, hip-hoppers, mayors, and industrial magnates as his friends, and who has parlayed Def Jam Records into a...

VF Camera.(entertaining troops)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Krista Smith This summer, V.F. joined forces with MTV, the U.S.O., the A.F.E., the Tribeca Film Institute, the N.B.A., and the Intrepid Museum Foundation to entertain the troops in the Middle East. Robert De Niro, Brittany Murphy,...

Lasting Valor.(veterans)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Byline: Scott Gummer 'You want to take our picture, you better hurry up," warned Gerald Brown, 85 (front row, second from left). "We're dropping like flies!" Brown and his brethren are, indeed, the last of a dwindling breed: World War II...

Joan Didion.(Interview)
October 1, 2003... What is your greatest fear? I have an irrational fear of snakes. When my husband and I moved to a part of Los Angeles County with many rattlesnakes, I tried to desensitize myself by driving every day to a place called Hermosa Reptile...

Tragic choices.(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2003... f course I was compelled by your recent cover ["Secrets and Lies," by Edward Klein, August]. Who isn't intrigued by the tragic story of two beautiful and successful people? But when I read the excerpt from Edward Klein's new book, my stomach...