So Peter takes over in 1994…
I knew very early on that he was the right guy.
You’re still involved with the paper but no longer the majority owner; you own 20 percent.
I was losing millions and after 20 years, it can be difficult. Personally. Economically, certainly, but even beyond that. It was something I decided I wasn’t willing to do anymore. So I had three or four candidates who were interested in buying the paper, and I thought Jared Kushner was a perfectly decent guy to do it. He had the resources.
You’ve established yourself as a sculptor and have a book coming out this year published by Abrams. How is your art related to The Observer?
When I started The Litchfield County Times, I became its graphic designer. We had a very wonderful guy who did all that, his name was Gary Gunderson, and at the beginning—don’t forget, he was a very experienced guy—he and I’d get into a lot of arguments, but you know, I owned the paper. It was the same at The New York Observer. I designed The Observer, every detail. I had a few people who came with me, who were working there, they executed my design. I had no background. I was a serious classical pianist, yes. But that’s not graphic design. So not many people knew that. Even the people at The Observer. Like what type do we use, every aspect of it. I became very interested in that, never knowing that this is what I liked to do. And then I started to sketch a little bit, because of the graphic design. And I had hired two brothers who were carpenters and contractors up in Connecticut to work on the farm there. We have a lot of houses, facilities. So I’d done three or four sketches and I said to these guys, “Let’s build something,” first out of wood. And then we built it out of steel. And then I took pictures of these up and down Madison Avenue, talked to a few of the galleries and sure enough, one of them said, “We’d like to have a show.” I had a show and everything sold. So I built a workshop for myself, a design studio up in Connecticut, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
When you walk by a newsstand and see The Observer do you think, “That’s my creation, I did that”?
Well, I know I did. I don’t think I did.
Is it true that when you would interview people to work at The Observer, you would ask about their SAT score?
I think it’s true.
And this would be for editors?
Anything. The colleges use it, so why shouldn’t I? You don’t get into Harvard or Princeton or these other places—they make you take that test. So why shouldn’t I have a little guideline: This is a smart guy, this is a dumb guy.
And did you always get an answer?
People would always be a little shocked, like, “What?” If they went to Harvard, you don’t have to ask them what their SAT scores were.
Whom did you have a good working relationship with?
I liked Terry Golway, I liked Peter Stevenson, Frank DiGiacomo—the three of them were wonderful to work with. Jim Windolf. Terrific. Super-talented guy. Very sad to see him go.
You and Peter Kaplan would have a weekly lunch.
Once a week. Gino’s, a few other places. Half the time we would talk about everything else, like what you’re doing in your life. Just a fun lunch. I did it with Susan, with Graydon. A fun lunch and often it was some issue we wanted to resolve: In other words, are we hiring somebody or are we firing somebody?
Did you do most of the talking?
Are you kidding? With those three?
What do you miss?
The day-to-day relationships I had with a lot of people who were there.
Illustrated by Barry Blitt
* * *
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
1991-1992
Donald Trump plots riverside towers as courts parse his post-nup
Mario Cuomo totes up 10 years as governor of New York
Literary Brat Packers Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis face sophomore slump
The new New Yorker: Staffers hold noses as Tina Brown brings Vanity flair
Grown-up guys form Iron John drumming circles, then glue selves to Game Boys
“Too-tall” building on Upper East Side lops off a dozen stories
Madonna generates flashbulb frenzy with rockumentary Truth or Dare
Vox in socks: bearded, beaming Nicholson Baker writes best-selling phone-sex novel
Charlie Rose’s talk show is the way to spend the hour between 11 p.m. and midnight
Miramax movie moguls Harvey and Bob Weinstein court controversy, critics
George Herbert Walker Bush prepares to yield his WASP-y White House to Bubba
1991-1992
MARCH 18, 1991 BY ROBIN POGREBIN
THE OBSERVER POLL: Lawyers Overpaid, Not So Honest
O.K., SO MAYBE STEVEN BRILL IS incapable of mellowing. Maybe he will always retain the mercurial, blustery streak that is by now the stuff of legend. But let a reporter from another publication into the lion’s den at The American Lawyer and the reputedly pugilistic Mr. Brill practically purrs.
That could well be because the president and editor in chief of the magazine is a savvy journalist who knows when to turn on the charm. But there is also the possibility that working with established media experts on his new, 24-hour cable Courtroom Television Network has taught the consummate boss that Steve Brill doesn’t always know best.
The cable network, otherwise known as COURT TV, is due to start broadcasting in July. According to its planners, it will offer gavel-to-gavel coverage of trials all over the country, and reporting from legal journalists in the field will be supplemented by occasional commentary from prominent trial lawyers such as Arthur Liman, Floyd Abrams, David Boies, Robert Bork and Barry Slotnick. On weekends, COURT TV will offer continuing legal education programming provided by bar associations and other legal groups nationwide that is directed at the legal profession as well as the general public.
MARCH 18, 1991 BY ADAM BEGLEY
POET BECOMES A GURU OF THE MEN’S MOVEMENT
ROBERT BLY’S IRON JOHN: A Book About Men, published in November by Addison-Wesley, has been on the nonfiction best-seller list for 17 weeks, and in the number one spot for six weeks, including a four-week stretch during which the ground war in the Gulf erupted; even The Prize, Daniel Yergin’s timely history of the geopolitics of oil, could not match its rate of sale.
The success of Mr. Bly’s book has taken the publishing industry by surprise. Save for a small number of editors and publishers aware of an ill-defined but rapidly growing men’s movement, nobody thought that a complex, poetic meditation on “male initiation and the role of a mentor” (to quote the flap copy) could attract such a wide audience.
Iron John contains Mr. Bly’s prescription for how to rehabilitate the wounded male psyche. He argues that many of the “soft males” of the 60’s and 70’s, the kind of man who grew up with feminism, “are not happy,” and he urges the development of the “inner warrior.” He is careful to distinguish the kind of masculinity he favors from crude “macho” insensitivity. Mr. Bly has not written a vulgar how-to book but Iron John does offer a battery of suggestions for self-improvement.
In years to come, the publication of Iron John may be seen as a watershed event, the first of a major trend. Enthusiasts argue that the men’s movement is as yet in an embryonic state; they make extravagant claims for its future potential. But even if the trend proves to be a passing fad, the current success of Iron John is certainly sufficient to prod a me-too publisher.
APRIL 1, 1991 BY ALFRED KAZIN
AMERICAN PSYCHO: HORROR SHOW OF MONOTONY, HEAVY-HANDEDNESS
THAT NOW-CELEBRATED ITEM known as American Psycho (Vintage Books, $11), by a 27-year-old from Los Angeles named Bret Easton Ellis, confirms something I have long been afraid to disclose. It is perfectly possible to have a certain amount of literary talent yet to be as dumb as hell.
Nothing I had heard or read about this book—outside the routine mutilations, disembowelings, stabbings, shootings, eye gougings, ridiculously acrobatic sex trios and utterly passionless
rapes with assorted mechanical devices (at one point, as more than mere voyeur, a large, starving rat)—had prepared me for the terrible earnestness of this author. This is a relentlessly moral tract, a cautionary tale by an almost entirely humorless writer. He is attempting a satire on the super-yuppiedom of various horribly spoiled young gentlemen on Wall Street during the now-universally execrated 80’s Reagan boom. Abandon all hope, ye who still dream of entering upon a life of hideous extravagance and pleasure!
What we have here—in intention—is not exactly pornography. No one decently interested in sex is likely to get a jump out of this horror show. The book is really a heavy-handed attack on a madly trendy New York subculture during the 80’s that was self-indulgent to the point of hysteria—wasteful, cruel mindless, ignorant. Yet above all it was fashionable, having more to do with designer labels than (at least in this book) with the acquisition of money.
Early in the book, virtually a whole chapter is given over to Patrick’s state-of-the-art living room. White marble and granite gas-log fireplace. An original David Onica. A 30-inch digital TV set from Toshiba.
Of course Tom Wolfe too had to research a lot for Bonfire of the Vanities; he even had to locate something called the Bronx. But Bret Easton Ellis doesn’t know the difference between a novel and the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. He thinks that if you hammer the reader page after page with designer names—ARMANI, ELLIS, BLASS, GIO PONTI, SANUI, ETTORE SOTTSASS—you have shown up such people for the trash they are.
Our author is a jerk. His book is a satire of itself. American Psycho is at the very heart and center of the New York it wants to denounce.
JULY 1, 1991 BY ANDREW SARRIS
THE ACCIDENTAL AUTEURIST: Madonna’s Truth or Dare Offers Witch’s Brew; Lee, Too, Lacks Art
MADONNA AND SPIKE LEE TURNED OUT TO BE THE MOST PUBLICIZED personages at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, although neither has come close to being universally admired and probably neither ever will be. Indeed, Madonna is not even a real movie star, and Mr. Lee has yet to win personal recognition from a Cannes jury after two hyped-up tries. Still, Madonna generated more flashbulb frenzy for disrobing to her metallic-sheen underwear than more voluptuous women have traditionally done posing au naturel.
For his part, Mr. Lee received more press coverage for losing the Golden Palm than the less charismatic Coen brothers did winning it. But once we stipulate that Madonna and Spike Lee are prodigiously shrewd self-promoters, is there all that much more to say about them? My own feeling is that there is both less and more than meets the eye in the careers of these two cutting-edge phenomena. I have grave reservations about their “art,” but they remain indisputably “there” whether I like it or not, and I must come to terms with the challenges they have posed.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1991 BY HELEN THORPE
Miramax Brothers Court Headlines Like This One; Business Booms
NOW SHOWING IN THEATERS near you are Paris Is Burning and The Pope Must Die, two films distributed by Miramax Films Corporation. Now featured in newspaper headlines are the same two movies, both embroiled in controversies over their content. Which is just how Miramax likes it.
When Paris Is Burning, an acclaimed documentary about drag queens in Harlem, was released nationally in August, it was met by protests from fundamentalist Christian groups. Press coverage followed. Meanwhile, advertisements for The Pope Must Die, a British comedy about a fictitious pope who advocates safe sex and birth control, were refused by ABC, NBC and CBS and amended by some newspapers, including The Boston Globe, to read The Pope Must…. Miramax responded by retaining celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz to “monitor the networks.” What Mr. Dershowitz also did was hold a news conference, generating additional stories about his involvement in the spat.
Two Brothers From Queens
Most companies avoid controversies at all costs. Miramax feeds on them: Since advertising budgets for its films are miniscule in comparison to widely released studio pictures, controversy is a blessing. And the Manhattan-based distributor has an uncanny gift for generating free publicity from disputes involving issues of censorship and freedom of expression—subjects dear to the press. In addition, many Miramax films have received considerable critical acclaim.
Among the films Miramax has distributed are Scandal, about the Profumo affair that rocked the British government; The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, the violently scatological drama of manners by British director Peter Greenaway; Truth or Dare, Madonna’s tell-all documentary; and the film that gave hope to models aspiring to be actresses, Sex, Lies and Videotape.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the brothers from Queens who founded Miramax and are still its co-chairmen, are an incongruous pair to sit atop a small empire that has made its name distributing art films: They resemble car salesmen in both appearance and manner, have a management style that supporters call “energetic” and detractors call “brash,” and have earned a reputation for playing hardball—in an industry not known for playing any version of softball. At least one producer of an award-winning film told The Observer that he is battling the Weinsteins for money he claims they owe him, and it is rumored that other producers also have complaints with their business style. The Weinsteins dispute such assertions. Boosters and critics agree that as the field of independent distributors has thinned and Miramax has grown, the Weinsteins have come to wield considerable muscle.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1991 BY CLARE MCHUGH
ENTREKIN MAKES ATLANTIC PRESS A HOUSE OF MORGAN
BECAUSE MORGAN ENTREKIN IS the person he is—a highly social, supremely self-confident, youngish man in a traditionally stodgy field—finding telling anecdotes about him isn’t difficult. And most are anecdotes he’ll repeat himself, happily.
The one about the start in publishing involves Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mr. Entrekin, then 23, had come to work for Seymour Lawrence at Delacorte Press as an assistant. Mr. Vonnegut was turning in his 11th novel at the time, and Mr. Lawrence let Mr. Entrekin take a look at the manuscript. Mr. Entrekin, who comes from Nashville and had been to Stanford, where he’d studied modern fiction and even written some himself before realizing he neither had the patience nor the stamina for that kind of work, dissected the novel in a lengthy memo and provided suggestions for its improvement. His boss was very impressed—so much so that the publisher forwarded the memo to Mr. Vonnegut, who was similarly impressed. Mr. Vonnegut made all the changes the young assistant suggested, or so Mr. Entrekin remembers. The novel duly appeared, titled Jailbird.
Mr. Entrekin was not long for assistantdom. He stayed only a couple of years at Delacorte before moving on to Simon & Schuster, where he rose to the rank of senior editor, acquiring nonfiction and fiction. It was to Mr. Entrekin that Fatal Vision author Joe McGinniss sent a first novel written by one of his students, Bret Easton Ellis. Mr. Entrekin bought the book, which became the successful Less Than Zero, but he left the company before it was edited, turning the task over to Bob Asahina, who also edited Mr. Ellis’ third novel, American Psycho.
Meanwhile, Mr. Entrekin was getting cash together to emulate his mentor, Mr. Lawrence, by founding his own imprint. He joined Atlantic Monthly Press as an independent publisher in 1986, soon after a fellow Tennessean, Carl Navarre, bought the small, Boston-based firm from Mortimer Zuckerman and moved it to New York.
MAY 4, 1992 BY DEBORAH MITCHELL
TALK OF THE NEW YORKER
READERS WHO WERE SHOCKED AT THE FIRST “Notes and Comments” in The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” of April 27 can only imagine what the piece was like before it went through the magazine’s exhaustive editing process. The story, about four young women who drove from New York to Washington, D.C., for the pro-choice march on April 5, was written by 24-year-old Elizabeth Wurtzel. “Whatever else feminism may have accomplished,” her essay begins, “it hasn’t got rid of the automotive double standard.” First the women have to find a car, then they have to find a woman who can drive it. That takes a column and a half. Then “the car r
ide turned into a Homeric catalogue of gynecological ills,” before they discovered, around about Maryland, that they were driving in a convoy of women going to the march. “Which was fortunate,” the hapless writer continues, “since we’d forgotten to take a map.” Ms. Wurtzel then allows that she “felt a little funny” chanting and carrying a placard at the march. Ready to call it a day at 4 P.M., she and her friends were flummoxed when their car wouldn’t start. Fortunately, a man driving a taxi came by, looked under the hood and fixed the carburetor.
“’I guess we didn’t manage to make this trip without help from any men,’” one of the author’s friends observes. “This seemed a sorry note to end on, but, of course, women can’t get pregnant without any men, either,” Ms. Wurtzel continues.
Several New Yorker staff members were not impressed with the original piece and shared their opinions with the magazine’s deputy editor, Chip McGrath, who edits “Talk.” Mr. McGrath says the article was sent in on Tuesday and was revised on Wednesday, Thursday and twice on Friday—which he calls “par for the course.” Several insiders took great pains to explain that dissenting views are common at The New Yorker and Mr. McGrath says he took some of his colleagues’ objections into account while editing. The editor of The New Yorker, Bob Gottlieb, says he didn’t hear any complaints. “I thought it was rather funny that, to the extent that there was guff, it was Chip who had to deal with it, while I stood around being Olympian,” says Mr. Gottlieb.
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 7
