The Vanity Fair Diaries

by Tina Brown

  The unhappy debacle has of course messed a lot with Ian’s concentration on Phoenix House. I took off for LA again on Saturday, not knowing if he was coming or not. To compound difficulties, Robert and Ian had brought in someone they describe as a “lighting genius,” Arthur Weinstein. He’s another of their weirdo nightlife kings, a former fashion photographer who turned to creating sexy ambience in after-hours clubs like the World. No one asked me about bringing him into the mix but there he was, already dipping candelabra bulbs into tubs of magenta dye, his arrival threatening to take us fifteen thousand over budget. The VF team adjourned to a nearby hotel bar to rethink. Clearly we were going to have to raise more money. We had to ensure we hit our million-dollar fund-raising target.

  “I could try Phyllis McGuire again,” said Sarah Giles, conjuring up the old gangster’s moll Nick Dunne had profiled in Las Vegas. “I could ask her who else could cough up.” (Phyllis’s suggestion was Meshulam Riklis, who said he’d give us fifty thousand if his wife, Pia Zadora, could be the cabaret. We passed.) “Don’t worry, fearless,” said Reinaldo, “I will call my friend Al Taubman.”

  “Al Taubman?” I squeaked. “Remember we called his wife a Madame Claude girl and how long it took to get him over it?”

  “Well, but Alfred is a friend,” said Reinaldo, getting suaver by the minute as he hyped himself for the pitch. “I can just call him and say, ‘Hallo, this is Reinaldo, I’m in a bit of a bind. I’ve asked five hundred people for dinner on Thursday and find I have no lighting. Can you give me fifty thousand dollars for the cause?’” I loved imagining Taubman’s face on the other end of the phone when he heard this request, but the imperturbable Reinaldo went off to make the call (and came back very quickly, I might add, with suspiciously little to report). Incredibly, it was Sarah who scored the biggest. Phyllis McGuire was so disgusted by Riklis’s quid pro quo that she coughed up another thirty thousand of Sam Giancana’s mob money. That should do it.

  I was supposed to have dinner with the producer Larry Gordon at Morton’s but I was too stretched to go. Instead I asked if he would come to me at the Bel-Air. I got a call from his PR person shortly afterward, asking, “Mr. Gordon would like to know, is this a power play?” Imagine retaining someone to make a call like that? No, it’s not a fucking power play. I just have a migraine and don’t want to slog over to Morton’s. Anyway, he showed up: another wild-man producer in the Joel Silver genre, produces big action movies like Predator and Die Hard. “Wanna know who has the balls in this town?” was his opening riff. Here we go … What is it about this crew? Ovitz asked me the other day, “Wanna know how big are the balls of Akio Morita at Sony?” NO, ACTUALLY. “They are YAY big.”

  Tuesday, March 27, 1990

  Phoenix House gala. When I arrived at the soundstage at two o’clock for the dress rehearsal I gasped. The magic wasn’t just in evidence, it pervaded every luminous, beautiful corner. Robert’s crew were testing the slide shows on the cyclorama and when I walked in the ten-foot-high Vanity Fair covers, a visual feast of Annie and Helmut’s best work, glowed and pulsed from every wall with Force 5 celebrity glamour. The magenta chandelier bulb, the rosy underlit fuchsia tablecloths, the rich glory of poppies, the blue mystery lights in the gantry, the stage at the back—yes! I felt the spine tingle of perfection … It was even more beautiful than the VF fifth-anniversary room, until now Robert and Ian’s pièce de résistance.

  From the moment the first guests arrived it became clear this night was going to reinvent the charity gala in LA, because every single star, expected or not, showed up. Limos disgorged Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Anjelica Huston, Isabelle Adjani, Paula Abdul, Elton John, Joan Rivers, Milli Vanilli. David Kuhn came with Daryl Hannah, who whispered “What the hell is this all about?” to him before the cameras descended, and, fed by David, she said, “Phoenix House is the most important drug rehab center in California and it needs FUNDS,” which was a gold-dust sound bite for Mitch. Along with the stars came all the major power players, studio heads, network honchos. Tru was the hit of hits. LA loved getting twenty priceless minutes that meant they didn’t have to see the show. (I won’t tell David Brown that bit.) My table was Ovitz, Geffen, Berry Gordy, Carrie Fisher, the producer Suzanne de Passe, Reinaldo, and Helmut Newton.

  After Mitch spoke so movingly about his work, David Geffen told me he would send him a check the next day for fifty thousand dollars. Many others said they would dig deep. Mitch was deeply content, which made me feel good.

  I looked around for Robert Isabell as the crowd began to thin. He had vanished, as he always does, along with Arthur Weinstein and his magic elves. I did see Ian, who only had time for a brief, businesslike hug. He was walking out of the backstage to catch the red-eye, carrying his suit bag, maybe getting married, maybe not.

  Looking in the mirror in the ladies’ room, I patted the gentle bulge under my black Giorgio di Sant’Angelo jersey tube and allowed myself to admit a fact I have been hiding from myself and everyone else till this was over: that I am pregnant. This is a pleasure, a gift, a reward that outweighs any other and I feel bathed in happiness.

  Monday, May 28, 1990

  Memorial Day, NYC

  Waiting for my trainer, Richard, he of the enormous thighs and high-pitched laugh, to come to take me to the gym. He still knocks on my door three times a week and drags me, snarling, into the street for an aerobic walk or I’d never do it. Probably the only reason I haven’t put on fifty pounds like I did the last pregnancy. I am fat but still hidably so. This is the day that the London Condé Nast contingents arrive to talk about the UK launch. Tonight I am having dinner with them to try to ensure all goes well. The prospects are good. Si has done his usual trick and hired the publisher without letting me meet her first. I just don’t understand him. Thankfully, I think she may be okay, but it makes me crazy that she is already giving interviews about VF in London without ever having talked to the editor about how to interpret the magazine. Anyway, I am getting used to it and trying to shortstop it by meeting her today.

  Spoke to Gabé in London. She hates being back at Tat and said she made a huge mistake returning to England. She’s asked Anna for her old job back and Anna’s trying to make it happen. Very hard to go back to the UK after living in New York. The pace here is so intense it shaves off all patience with a ten o’clock start to the day and phone calls not instantly returned.

  Monday, July 2, 1990

  Quogue

  Well, hooray. The visit from the British VF group was terrific. I am crazy about the publisher, Sarah Vincent, so kudos to Si this time for appointing her. Wish I had her over here. She is very good-looking and tough and experienced, a go-getting meritocrat, not some lame procrastinating Sloane Ranger from Condé of old. I also love the Brit circulation director, Vivien Matthews, another toughie with a Buster Brown haircut and Jean Muir suit. These are girls after my own heart and we bonded fast.

  Have been closing Marie Brenner’s terrific piece on Donald and Ivana Trump. We wanted to capture their fascinating repositioning now that they are divorcing and Ivana has been upgraded to superstar victim of a brutish, philandering husband, which she is playing to the hilt. Toiling with Marie and Wayne to get the copy right. Wayne is so remarkable, the way he can enable writers to be their best. He’s a seamless tailor, sewing and stitching and cutting. Marie has been able to establish such a pattern of lying and loudmouthing in Trump that it’s incredible he still prospers and gets banks to loan him money. Great quote where his brother says Donald was the kid who threw cake at the birthday party. He’s like some monstrous id creation of his father, a cartoon assemblage of all his worst characteristics mixed with the particular excesses of the new media age. And the portrait of Ivana as a Stockholm syndrome enabler, reconstructing her whole face and body to try to win favor, absorbing all his delusions and adding her own striving, desperate pretensions is really great stuff. The revelation that he has a collection of Hitler’s speeches at the office is going to make a lot of news. />
  I feel more and more pregnant, which has been awkward as 60 Minutes has been filming in the office for a piece about us, a coup for VF. Will be incredible exposure that could drive up circulation exponentially. I am nervous about the footage they have got. I realize I called Sly Stallone’s fiancée a bimbo in the art department when they were filming and am praying they don’t use it (as I would for sure if I’d been the reporter!).

  Wednesday, August 22, 1990

  So long between entries. Have had the whole family to stay at Quogue. Heaven having the cousins here for Georgie.

  When not with the kids have been glued to CNN, watching the developments in the crisis in the Gulf since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He’s such a preposterous figure, with the backward beret and huge chimney-sweep mustache, but clearly much more dangerous than anyone gave him credit for. No one took Hitler seriously either. It seems to be the hallmark of the most dangerous dictators that no one considers them a threat until too late.

  Now I am in NYC to progress the November issue and have to figure out how to respond to it when events are changing so fast. The September issue is a news storm with the Trump piece and the Hitler speeches revelation. Happily, Trump trashed us to Barbara Walters on her show, and that spun another column from Liz Smith. We are promoting the hell out of it. Marie is such a huge asset to VF, with the tenacity of her reporting and eye for the killer detail.

  Tonight had the underwater feel of summer in the city. A strange social group for the dog days of August assembled at Le Cirque at the behest of Swifty Lazar—the Erteguns, the social decorator Chessy Rayner, etc. Mary Lazar was more noticeably sozzled than in colder months. Ahmet was somewhat drunk as well and in nostalgic vein with Swifty, punch-lining his stories with cries of “Well, fuck you, Daddy!” Chessy in her new looser, post-husband-Billy-dumping-her mode, Mica Ertegun her usual impeccable, patent-haired self. At one point everyone was talking about hair and Chessy commented: “There’s nothing worse in life than a small head.” That’s one to remember. Throughout the long, rich, somnolent dinner, the rise and fall of laughter from the next table felt like a distant liner at sea. Swifty kept up his usual repertoire of ancient anecdotes. “Dino De Laurentiis. Now, there’s a man who was truly ignorant. He wanted to make a movie out of War and Peace. He’s never read it in English. He’s never read it in Russian, and sure as hell he’s never read it in Italian … ANYway…”

  “Daddy,” said a gently slurry Ahmet, “do you remember that awful night on Sam Spiegel’s boat in Cannes?” And so on and so on. No one mentioned the crisis in the Middle East except when Mica and Ahmet argued about what Henry Kissinger had said at a dinner the night before, which no one in the alcohol haze seemed to be entirely sure about. Stepped outside into a blast of hot air like Delhi, feeling that the world is blowing up all around us and no one seems to notice—dancing on the lip of a volcano, as Julie Baumgold put it in her wonderful piece on Lacroix in New York mag.

  Tuesday, August 28, 1990

  Quogue

  The coming of fall is always poignant. The winds at night picking up speed. G has been so loving and sweet, as if he senses this is our last summer on our own together. The house is full of inflatable whales, big and small, that he drags up and down stairs. He enjoyed camp at the Quogue Field Club, though I find all those stuck-up WASPs impossible. But I could see with a lurch of anxiety how very different he is from the other kids, not just the nervous fiddling with his fingers but the daydreaming introversion that makes him check out and refuse to either concentrate or properly participate in the games. He is helped by his glowing beauty and sweetness, which make everyone want to support him. At the International Preschool, where he is with a nice motley crew of UN kids, they love him. And his cleverness with words is a godsend. Anyway, when we splash around the pool with Monstro the whale, with him calling me Mummy Mermaid and me calling him Georgie Shark, I love him so much that I would lie down and die for him. I dread the coming of September turbulence and fear he will feel displaced by the coming sibling.

  Monday, September 17, 1990

  A lot of stuff happening as I wait for baby X, who we now know, to my wild joy, is a girl. G is getting excited, too. I find myself thinking about her all the time. Will we be as close as I have always been to my own mother? I never had rebellious years with Mum. All my rebellion was focused on school. It’s a wonderfully soothing feeling, the notion of a best friend coming whom I haven’t even met.

  VF sales have been punished by Iraq and Desert Storm. There’s an ad recession we didn’t expect. The war is bad for a magazine with a title like Vanity Fair, just as the thirties were bad for it before. VF suggests glamour and levity and that’s not the mood of the times. I am moving the editorial in a more serious direction by choice as much as need, but perception will lag behind the reality of what’s now in our pages. The split identity we have evolved of the movie star on the cover and the grit inside has worked well for us until this moment, but it’s hard to judge how much to change in the news direction without also alienating the huge audience who love that high-low balance that we do. October has the come-hither smile of Debra Winger (a big improvement on the last time) for the newsstand sale, but inside are powerful stories, such as the strong piece on President Bush confronting the encroachment of Saddam, Winnie Mandela and upheavals in South Africa, the Menendez murder, which gives a classic Dunne portrait of California affluence and amorality, and Ralph Nader, the scold on the rise.

  Meanwhile Harry’s had an amazing offer that couldn’t have come at a more difficult moment, just as I am about to give birth and want him more at my side. Alberto Vitale has asked him to be the editorial boss of Random House, as president/publisher, which is a fantastic opportunity and restores him to the top of the tree, where he belongs. I have admired so much his creativity and brio in his four inventive years at Traveler. Everyone said behind his back the job was too small, but he never felt or behaved that way, he just threw himself into founding a brilliant new magazine—in profit faster than any Condé Nast mag before, says Si. Most men of his age and stature would have “held out” for some big board seat or top CEO position that wouldn’t have come. A classic mistake when people at the top are fired. When you have been a big star in a job and lose it, everyone dances with you, but everyone is too threatened to hire you. It’s very, very hard to get a commensurate power base back. So he has been smart as well as creative to take Traveler and make it a hit. Success in America is a brand in and of itself. Truth is, he’s happier than he’s been for years playing the mentor role to a young staff, with time to work on his American Century history and be home early with us. Now the big time wants him back. If Harry does Random House, that locks us into NYC for another five years. I will have to stop imagining there could still be an alternate reality in London. The decision was brought into nerve-racking relief when, on his way out to Quogue from the Hunterspoint Avenue train station, a menacing thug in a beanie leapt out of nowhere, pointed a gun at him, and demanded all his money. Took it and fled. It rattled us both. I kept thinking of how he could have become one of those news stories we devour in the Post. The three of us, me, H, and G, sat on the little seat at the end of the boardwalk at Quogue, holding one another tight, soothed by the ocean. G, holding his penguin, had no idea what his dad had been through.

  Tuesday, September 25, 1990

  I received an anonymous typed note today in interoffice mail. “You are going to have a staff insurrection on your hands,” it read, “if you don’t fire Sharon Delano.” Jesus. Wonder who wrote it. Sharon, back from her European jaunt, is again making waves of static. Conferring with Pam about how to handle it. I can’t create another sabbatical. But it’s an awkward moment with the baby due in October.

  How did we get to the Holiday Issue with no cover again? Just when I am about to go off for maternity leave? And no good lead either. I got cold feet about putting Trump’s new squeeze, Marla Maples, on the November cover, though there was a strong lobby to do so. So
I slapped on Cher, who had been destined for December. I should have left it alone as I now have no cover when I am out with the baby. Instead, in a spirit of reinventing the cultural mood, I am using an insane Annie pic of Roseanne Barr on top of her husband, Tom Arnold, her huge bosoms squeezing out of a swimsuit, with inside photos of them mud wrestling half-naked. Proletarian chic is all the rage. Nothing could be sexier at the moment than a fat guy in a wife-beater vest, frolicking around with a roly-poly wife. Ralph Lauren will have a heart attack, but I will be on leave so won’t have to hear the flak. Fuck fuck fuck, as Madonna shouts in her new crotch-grabbing video. I am reeling from all the combined pressures. The construction on the apartment across the landing we have annexed to ours to make room for baby’s arrival was supposed to be completed this week, but has fallen months behind. Why is it always like this in our house? (Answer: because we live here.)

  On Friday night we were unable to slink out of town because Si and Victoria asked us to join them for dinner for the opening night of the New York Film Festival. The two other guests were Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, who I find are always a struggle. Not helped by the fact that Wolcott just savaged John’s new novel in one of his best columns lately. But there were only six of us, so we all had to behave.

  At dinner, John Dunne was maddeningly contrary. Joan and John have always seen everything first and have a view on it. The festival movie was Miller’s Crossing, which was flawed, but Gabriel Byrne was very good in it, I thought. “I like Byrne,” said John, “but not in this movie. He was much, much better in that little David Puttnam movie four years ago.” It was like that all the way through. John always disagreeing on the basis of some prior inside intelligence. Joan’s tiny voice is impossible to hear. She is redeemed of course by the amazing talent I love and revere. Si sat most of the time in silence, except when he suddenly got exercised by an idea that seized him about California—that it had only ever produced marginal art. And that only metropolitan centers can produce art at all. (Dunne was able to counter that by talking about how there was no good art being produced anywhere, period.) I longed to be eating a baked potato in Quogue.