THE 29TH ANNUAL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN KLEIN

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
 FTX FALLOUT:
The Sinking of the
BORED APE
YACHT CLUB
By Nate Freeman

THE NEW RIGHT’S

NEW OBSESSION:
Retaking
THE
AMERICAN
WEST
By James Pogue
 P L U S

BILL
NIGHY
Answers the
Proust
Questionnaire

GEN Z IN THE HOUSE!

MR. FROST
Goes to
WASHINGTON
By Abigail Tracy

KING OF THE HILLS: SEX, LIES, AND

THE DUELING TYPEWRITERS:

The Making of
HOLLYWOOD GLORIA
SIGN SWANSON’S
at 100
By Mark Seal
Memoirs
By Wayne Lawson
swarovski.com
 The Hollywood Issue / No. 746

Vanities

33
33 / Opening Act
Gabriel LaBelle on
his breakout role in
The Fabelmans.
37, 35 / The Gallery
A beautiful illusion from
Hermès high jewelry,
and a beloved aughts
bag reimagined.
36 / Trending
Neon-bright items to shine
through winter’s final days.
38 / My Stuff
A few of designer Sarah
Staudinger’s favorite things.
39 / Beauty
The scent of the good life,
plus five perfumes fit
for big-screen adaptations.
40 / Books
Nonfiction about the art of
performance, fresh fiction,
and more new reads.

G A B R I E L L a B E L L E ’ S J A C K E T B Y T H O M B R O W N E ; T - S H I R T B Y C A LV I N K L E I N . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
Columns

PAGE 33
42
Free Agents
BY NATALIE JARVEY
ILLUSTRATION BY JORGE ARÉVALO
“If you’re really lucky, you can watch With old guard talent
Spielberg make the movie.” reps sticking around for
the long haul, many
—GABRIEL L a BELLE
younger agents have been
changing lanes.

On the Selena Gomez’s dress by Prada; sandals by Jimmy Choo; ear cuff and ring by Givenchy; choker by
Cover Swarovski. Jonathan Majors’s clothing by Hermès; bow tie by Paul Stuart; brooch by Tiffany & Co.
Schlumberger. Austin Butler’s clothing and boots by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; jewelry
and watch by Cartier. Ana de Armas’s clothing and bag by Schiaparelli; sandals by Pı–feri; jewelry
by Louis Vuitton. Florence Pugh’s dress by Valentino; shoes by Giambattista Valli; gloves by Lael
Osness; ear clips by Tiffany & Co. Schlumberger; cuffs by Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti. Keke Palmer’s
trench coat by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; shoes by Giuseppe Zanotti; necklace by
Van Cleef & Arpels. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s suit by Bally; boots by Saint Laurent by Anthony
Vaccarello. Julia Garner’s dress by Richard Quinn; shoes by Pı–feri; earrings by Gucci. Regé-Jean
Page’s clothing and tie by Giorgio Armani; boots by Christian Louboutin; continued on page 16

14 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY N I C K RILEY BENTHAM H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3

 n
tio
ec
ll
co
tre
ua
q
 The Hollywood Issue / No. 746

PAGE 94

“Gen Z isn’t waiting.”

— U.S. CONGRESSMAN MAXWELL FROST, 26

Features

46
The In Crowd:
72
Times of the Sign
80
West of Eden
86
Swanson Song
The 2023 Hollywood BY MARK SEAL BY JAMES POGUE BY WAYNE LAWSON
ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER
Portfolio From beat-up billboard Inside the surprisingly
PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN KLEIN to global icon, A dispatch from the Rockies, torrid affair that fueled the
STYLED BY PATTI WILSON
the Hollywood sign where the New Right creation of 81-year-old
Kicking back with turns 100. is obsessed with “exiting” screen legend Gloria
12 of the season’s coolest society and reclaiming Swanson’s autobiography.
young stars. a past that never existed.

continued from page 14 brooch by Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti; bracelet by Bulgari. Emma
Corrin’s clothing by Area; sandals by Khaite; bra by Tom Ford; earrings and ring by Cartier; TALES FROM THE CRYPTO
bracelet by Cartier High Jewelry. Hoyeon’s dress, sandals, and tights by Louis Vuitton;
gloves by Lael Osness; jewelry by Louis Vuitton High Jewelry. Jeremy Allen White’s clothing
by Valentino; boots by Alessandro Vasini; ring (left middle finger) by David Yurman.
Additional sandals by Tom Ford. Makeup products by Estée Lauder (de Armas), Gucci
(Garner), Lancôme (Hoyeon), Rare Beauty (Gomez), Chanel (all other women). Nail enamel
$150,000,000
Value of NFTs sold by Christie’s in 2021.
by Gucci (Garner), Dior Vernis (all other women). Grooming products by Boy de Chanel. In 2022, the number plummeted to $5.9 million,
Styled by Patti Wilson. Photographed exclusively for VF by Steven Klein at Milk Studios in a 96 percent downturn. [P. 100]
Los Angeles. For additional credits, see page 73. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

16 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY K R I S TA SCHLUETER H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
 The Hollywood Issue / No. 746

Features
86

94
Gen Z in the House
BY ABIGAIL TRACY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
KRISTA SCHLUETER

A tumultuous week in the

capital—and the Capitol—
with Maxwell Frost,
the nation’s first Gen Z
congressman.

100
The Apes of Wrath
BY NATE FREEMAN

What one of the world's

oldest auction houses,
Sam Bankman-Fried, the
Bored Ape Yacht Club, and
Jimmy Fallon have to do
with the near-total collapse
of the NFT market.

106
L.A. Confidential
BY JOE POMPEO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MARTIN SCHOELLER

For several years, Richard

Rushfield has written
an industry newsletter that
Hollywood hates to love.
Now, he and Janice Min
have plans to take
The Ankler mainstream.

PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE

24 Editor’s Letter If you were to die and come back

26
28
Contributors
Behind the Issue
as a person or thing, what do you think
128 Proust Questionnaire it would be? I’d like to come back as
Pharrell Williams. — BILL NIGHY [P. 128]

18 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY H O R S T, 1941 H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
Dubrovnik. Roam free.
Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik, Hotel Bellevue Dubrovnik, Hotel Supetar Cavtat, Villa Orsula Dubrovnik, Villa
Agave Dubrovnik, Hotel Dubrovnik Palace, Grand Villa Argentina Dubrovnik, Hotel Croatia Cavtat, Hotel
Kompas Dubrovnik, Villa Glavić Dubrovnik and Hotel Odisej Mljet are Adriatic Luxury Hotels.
www.adriaticluxuryhotels.com
 ®
Editor in Chief Radhika Jones

Creative Director Kira Pollack Deputy Editor Daniel Kile Executive Digital Director Michael Hogan

Director of Editorial Operations Kelly Butler Executive Editor, Features & Development Claire Howorth
Executive Editor Matthew Lynch Executive Hollywood Editor Jeff Giles Editor, The Hive Michael Calderone
Director of Special Projects Sara Marks Global Head of Talent Alison Ward Frank
Awards and Audio Editor Katey Rich Editor, Creative Development David Friend
Senior West Coast Editor Britt Hennemuth Senior Editor, The Hive Tara Golshan Senior Hollywood Editor Hillary Busis
Senior Vanities Editor Maggie Coughlan Senior Editor Keziah Weir Entertainment Director Caitlin Brody
E-Commerce Editor Morgan M. Evans Editorial Operations Manager Jaime Archer Associate Hive Editor Jon Skolnik
Senior Media Correspondent Joe Pompeo National Correspondent Emily Jane Fox Politics Correspondent Bess Levin
Senior Hollywood Correspondent Anthony Breznican Senior Vanities Correspondent Delia Cai Senior Awards Correspondent Rebecca Ford
Hollywood Correspondents Natalie Jarvey, Julie Miller National Political Reporter Abigail Tracy
Chief Critic Richard Lawson TV Correspondent Joy Press Art Columnist Nate Freeman
Staff Writers Dan Adler, Kenzie Bryant, David Canfield, Yohana Desta, Charlotte Klein, Chris Murphy, Erin Vanderhoof
Staff Reporter Caleb Ecarma Special Correspondents Nick Bilton, Bryan Burrough,
Joe Hagan, Molly Jong-Fast, Maureen Orth, Jessica Pressler, Mark Seal, Gabriel Sherman
Writers-at-Large Marie Brenner, T.A. Frank, James Reginato Associate Web Producer Kathleen Creedon
Assistant to the Editor in Chief Daniela Tijerina Editorial Assistants Arimeta Diop, Kayla Holliday, Savannah Walsh
Special Projects Manager Ari Bergen Special Projects Associate Charlene Oliver
Business Director Geoff Collins Director of Product Mindy Yuen Product Design Lead Kristina Pedicone

Design & Photography

Design Director Justin Patrick Long Visuals Director Tara Johnson Art Director Emily Crawford
Senior Visuals Editors Natalie Gialluca, Lauren Margit Jones, Cate Sturgess Senior Designer Khoa Tran
Visuals Editor, Photo Research Eric Miles Visuals Editor Allison Schaller
Associate Visuals Editor Madison Reid Designer Pamela Wei Wang

Fashion & Beauty

Fashion Director Nicole Chapoteau
Beauty Director Laura Regensdorf Accessories Director Daisy Shaw-Ellis
Associate Menswear Director Miles Pope Market Editor Kia D. Goosby Assistant Fashion Editors Samantha Gasmer, Jessica Neises

Content Integrity
Senior Counsel Terence Keegan
Production Director J Jamerson Research Director David Gendelman
Copy Director Michael Casey Associate Legal Affairs Editor Simon Brennan
Production Managers Beth Meyers, Susan M. Rasco, Roberto Rodríguez
Research Managers Brendan Barr, Kelvin C. Bias, Audrey Fromson, Michael Sacks
Senior Line Editor Katie Commisso Copy Managers Rachel Freeman, Michael Quiñones Line Editors Lily Leach, Leah Tannehill

Video & Audience Development

Director, Audience Development Alyssa Karas
Senior Director of Video Programming & Development Ella Ruffel Associate Director, Analytics Neelum Khan
Senior Social Media Manager Sarah Morse Associate Director, Creative Development, Social & News Margaret Lin
Audience Development Manager Tyler Breitfeller Social Media Manager Mark Alan Burger
Senior Manager, Creative Development, Visuals Hannah Pak Associate Social Media Manager Burake Teshome

Communications
Director of Communications Rachel Janc Communications Associate Izzy Goldberg

Contributors
Contributing Art Director Theresa Griggs Associate Editor S.P. Nix Architecture Consultant Basil Walter
Summit Contributing Producer Graham Veysey Special Projects Art Director Angela Panichi Visuals Editor Morrigan Maza

Contributing Photographers
Annie Leibovitz
Jonathan Becker, Larry Fink, Nick Riley Bentham, Collier Schorr, Mark Seliger

Contributing Editors
Kurt Andersen, Lili Anolik, Jorge Arévalo, Peter Biskind, Buzz Bissinger, Derek Blasberg, Christopher Bollen, Douglas Brinkley,
Michael Callahan, Adam Ciralsky, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Leah Faye Cooper, Sloane Crosley, Katherine Eban, Lisa Eisner, Bruce Feirstein, Nick Foulkes,
Ariel Foxman, Alex French, Paul Goldberger, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Michael Joseph Gross, Bruce Handy, Carol Blue Hitchens, Jordan Hoffman, A.M. Homes,
Uzodinma Iweala, May Jeong, Sebastian Junger, Sam Kashner, Jemima Khan, Emily Kirkpatrick, Hilary Knight, Wayne Lawson, Kiese Makeba Laymon,
Franklin Leonard, Monica Lewinsky, Eric Lutz, Ryan McAmis, Bethany McLean, Nina Munk, Katie Nicholl, Maureen O’Connor, Jen Palmieri,
Evgenia Peretz, Maximillian Potter, Robert Risko, Kelly Rissman, Lisa Robinson, Mark Rozzo, Maureen Ryan, Nancy Jo Sales, Elissa Schappell, Jeff Sharlet,
Michael Shnayerson, Chris Smith, Richard Stengel, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Saltzman Walker, Benjamin Wallace, Jesmyn Ward, Ned Zeman

20 VA N I T Y FA I R
 @vanityfairlondon Agenda / Hollywood 2023

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3.
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Head for the HILLS

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H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 21
 ®
Publishing Director/CBO Travel & Lifestyle Simon Leadsford

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Associate Commercial Director, Fashion Alexis Williams Senior Account Director, Fashion Roya Farrokhian
Senior Account Director, Fashion & Luxury Charlotte Pennington Senior Account Directors, Beauty Caroline Hooley, Jess Purdue, Camilla Wilmot-Smith
Account Director, Fashion & Luxury Emily Goodwin Senior Account Manager, Beauty Caroline Sillem
Account Manager, Luxury Dawid Matkowski Account Executive, Fashion Ellé Butcher Account Executive, Luxury Charlotte Hearth
EA to Chief Business Officer Style Tiana Ware Advertising Assistant Rachel Holland
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Home
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22 VA N I T Y FA I R H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
LOOK CLOSER
WE ARE QATAR
Bouthayna Al Muftah,
Qatari Artist

lookcloser.qa/vf
Editor’s Letter

The spectacular actors

on the cover of this
magazine are only in
their 20s and 30s, but it
feels inadequate to call
them rising stars: They’ve
already staked out their
rightful places in the firmament. None of them,
however, had yet appeared on our annual
Hollywood cover. That obviously had to change,
as quickly as possible. We are pleased to present, Radhika Jones and Jonathan Majors at the Gotham Awards
under the banner of the Hollywood Issue 2023, in New York City, November 2022.

a new power generation—12 leading lights

of stage and screen who we know will impress, If our cover subjects are redefining movie stardom,
enrapture, and entertain us for decades to come. Gloria Swanson helped invent it in the first place. So we’re
Our dynamic dozen have turned in terrific delighted to publish a deeply personal and wickedly
performances over the past few years, running observant piece by Vanity Fair living legend Wayne Lawson,
the gamut from prestige television to indie films all about his surreal and triumphant experience ghostwriting
to box office smashes, and they’re racking up Swanson’s autobiography starting in 1979. He also sets the
award nominations and industry honors—all record straight regarding the contributions of her business
that goes without saying. What truly sets them partner and (much) younger lover, Brian Degas. Wayne
apart is their willingness to take risks, surprising began working at VF in 1982 when it was being relaunched
their audiences and maybe even themselves by S.I. Newhouse Jr., and during his 32-year tenure at the
with their range and ambition. Julia Garner’s magazine edited Dominick Dunne, Bob Colacello, Patricia
journey from a scene-stealing teen on The Bosworth, and other prominent writers. He has been holding
Americans to the spitfire Ruth Langmore on this story close for decades, and we’re so glad that the time
Ozark to the Céline-sporting con woman Anna was finally right to share it.
Delvey on Inventing Anna already qualifies her The Hollywood sign turns 100 this year, and in a dispatch
as a national treasure. Jonathan Majors just from its iconic setting, Mark Seal writes about its enduring
wowed crowds at Sundance with his turn capacity to inspire cinematic dreams. From first-time Oscar
as an aspiring bodybuilder in the new movie nominees Ana de Armas and Austin Butler on our cover
Magazine Dreams (other new projects, for to first-time Oscar nominee Bill Nighy answering the Proust
a change of pace, include Creed III and a Marvel Questionnaire on our back page, we hope this year’s
Studios Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel), while Hollywood Issue inspires those dreams too. n
Florence Pugh, who’s had a monopoly on
onscreen magnetism ever since she rebranded
Little Women as an Amy March vehicle, heads
for the deserts of Dune, joining Austin Butler,
a.k.a. Elvis. It’s all par for the course for these
extraordinarily talented people. radhika jones, Editor in Chief

24 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY L A N D O N NORDEMAN H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
Contributors

Clockwise from
left: Samantha
Gasmer, Wayne
Lawson, Krista
Schlueter,
Natalie Jarvey,
Martin Schoeller

G A S M E R : M O S E S M O R E N O . L AW S O N : M AT T T Y R N A U E R . S C H O E L L E R : L A U R E N J U R AT O VA C . S C H L U E T E R : C H R I S T O P H E R PAT R I C K E R N S T. J A R V E Y : L U K E F O N TA N A .
Samantha Wayne Martin Krista Natalie
GASMER LAWSON SCHOELLER SCHLUETER JARVEY
“L.A. CONFIDENTIAL” “SWANSON SONG” “L.A. CONFIDENTIAL” “GEN Z IN THE HOUSE” “FREE AGENTS”
P. 106 P. 86 P. 106 P. 94 P. 42

“The very LA nature “Swanson on Swanson “After reading articles Krista Schlueter, a While listening to her
of this shoot was was a memorable, in The Ankler, photographer and sources share their
special to me,” says rewarding project for I thought this concept native New Yorker personal reasonings
Los Angeles native me,” says Wayne of journalists at who has been for leaving their
and VF assistant Lawson, whose story work, mixed with documenting the jobs as agents, Natalie
fashion editor this month goes a 1930s private-eye New York scene for Jarvey—who joined
Samantha Gasmer. inside his work on aesthetic, would be over a decade, VF as a Hollywood
“I loved diving into silent-film star Gloria the perfect theme was very excited to correspondent in
Martin Schoeller’s Swanson’s 1980 to photograph Janice go to DC to capture 2022—realized how
Chinatown and memoir that proved and Richard,” says Maxwell Frost. much she could relate
Bonnie and Clyde pivotal in his career. Martin Schoeller. “It’s inspiring to see to their experiences.
references, so I was Two years after its The celebrated someone in Congress “Like many of the
thrilled Richard publication, VF portrait photographer who more closely people I spoke to,
Rushfield and Janice brought him on as and longtime resembles your own I was part of the Great
Min were game to a senior editor. VF contributor is lifestyle and Resignation. In fact,
go there with the “That changed the preparing for a perspective,” she says I changed jobs twice,”
fashion,” she says course of my life 25-year retrospective of the youngest she says. “The
of the day filled for the next 32 years. of his fine art series member of Congress, pandemic caused me
with laughs and My ghostwriting days Close Up. who she believes to rethink what
Hollywood secrets. were over,” he says. will help usher in a I wanted out of work.”
new era of change.

26 VA N I T Y FA I R H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
Behind the Issue

“IT STARTED WITH Steven sending me

images of the Viper Room in LA in
the ’90s—Johnny Depp and Kate Moss,
Keanu Reeves,” says stylist Patti
Wilson. “Of course we had to make
it more of a glamorous after-party
but still keep it a bit dark and twisted.”
Steven, as the hyperreal portraits
in this issue make clear, is the legendary
photographer Steven Klein, who
photographed a generation of rising
stars for our 29th annual Hollywood
cover. The portfolio was shot at LA’s
Milk Studios in November. There were From top left: Julia Garner
and Keke Palmer on set;
10 guards for the jewelry and 36 racks stylist Patti Wilson and
of clothes, not to mention 300 pairs of photographer Steven Klein;
Hoyeon sits for a portrait;
shoes, which Jeremy Allen White’s Jeremy Allen White and
young daughters played with happily as Austin Butler show off
Daddy got styled. Selena Gomez and their party tricks.
GAR N E R : K I R A P O L L AC K . W I L S O N AN D K L E I N : CO U R T E S Y O F S T E V E N K L E I N .

Ana de Armas met and formed a mutual

admiration society. Keke Palmer,
who would announce her pregnancy
two weeks later on SNL, seemed to
PA L M E R , B U T L E R , H OY E O N , W H I T E : M I C A H H A M I LT O N .

hug everyone she met, even in passing.

Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 was
the crowd favorite on set.
In a smaller studio nearby, the stars
all happily demonstrated their favorite
party tricks—Florence Pugh showed off
her contortionist skills, and Regé-Jean
Page broke and unbroke his nose—for
videos that you can, and honestly must,
see at VF.com. It was a hell of an
after-party. —brit t hennemuth

28 VA N I T Y FA I R H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
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30 years of commitment.
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The Estée Lauder Companies supports research, education,
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 VA N I TA S VA N I TAT U M
G R O O M I N G , M I R N A J O S E ; TA I LO R , H A S M I K KO U R I N I A N . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P R E I S S C R E AT I V E . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

PAGE 34

GABRIEL L aBELLE
wowed Steven PAGE 36

Spielberg—while FASHION FOR

playing Steven THE DANCE
FLOOR
Spielberg PAGE 38

A FEW OF
STAUD’S
FAVORITE
THINGS

PAGE 39

VIVA
AROMAS!

Clothing and tie by

Prada; belt by The Row.
Throughout: hair
products by Oribe;
grooming products by
Laura Mercier. Styled
by Sean Knight.

VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPHS BY N I C K RILEY BENTHAM H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 33

Vanities /Opening Act

days to prep, I’m not eating with the family,

Home MOVIE I’m just isolating and working on it.” After
nabbing the role, he says the rest was like a
In his first major film role, master class. “You get there early enough,
he’s setting up the shot in real time—part of
GABRIEL LaBELLE stars as a
me was envious of the stand-ins! If you’re
future big-league filmmaker lucky, you can watch him make the movie.”
WHERE ADOLESCENT STEVEN (and Sammy)
That’s Amore
This spring, chef Evan Funke,
Steven Spielberg has quite the track record had Paillard Bolex 8-mm cameras, LaBelle of LA’s beloved Mother Wolf
for launching some of Hollywood’s greats: had Snapchat. “I had a cooking show called and Felix Trattoria, is launching
Drew Barrymore, Christian Bale, Gwyneth Chef Gabe. I’m off social media, but I didn’t Funke, a new restaurant in
Beverly Hills. Here, he shares
Paltrow, last year’s Oscar-winning Ariana delete my account, because I have my whole some inspirations.
DeBose. His latest find, however, was a bit high school life documented.” In his youth,
more personal; the director needed someone Spielberg was unique for his obsessive family
to play his fictionalized teenage self, Sammy, cataloging—“Everybody can do that now.”
in his semi-autobiographical movie, HIS COSTARS Michelle Williams, Paul Dano,
The Fabelmans. Enter 20-year-old Gabriel and Seth Rogen similarly found success in
LaBelle. Amid Oscar buzz for the film their late teens and offered wisdom on that
and LaBelle’s performance, the newcomer professional transition. He also savored
reflects on all kinds of screen life. his time with scene-stealer Judd Hirsch. He
asked Hirsch a ton of questions, including BOLOGNA
La BELLE CAUGHT the acting bug during a how the pasta was one day. “He said, ‘It’s very Italy
summer camp production of Footloose at good, but if I was Italian, I wouldn’t like it.’ ” The city is “where I found my
home in West Vancouver, British Columbia. AT THE TORONTO International Film Festival true self,” says Funke, who served
as the 2022 VF Oscar party

F U N K E : W O N H O F R A N K L E E . B O LO G N A A N D PAVA R O T T I : G E T T Y I M A G E S . LO S T I N T R A N S L AT I O N : E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
“I’m eight and I’m hanging out with premiere, LaBelle knew what was coming. maestro de cuisine—sating guests
13-year-old girls who are playing with my “Two scenes before my character shows up, with lasagna Bolognese—
giant curly hair. How do I keep doing I grab my mom’s hand. After about and returns to the role this year.
more of this?” 10 minutes, I exhale. I’m like, Phew, my “It’s my second home.”
HE AUDITIONED for the part over Zoom life isn’t going to be ruined.”
from his parents’ dining room. “I had two —brit t hennemuth

“A VUCCHELLA”
sung by Luciano Pavarotti
The song, “composed by
Paolo Tosti and written by the
poet Gabriele D’Annunzio,”
is “a Napoletana love song
written in dialect.”

LOST IN TRANSLATION
Focus Features
Tuxedo jacket and pants
“I like it because it has this
by Saint Laurent by
Anthony Vaccarello; quiet energy to it. It’s about
T-shirt by Calvin Klein; what could be but can’t be.
sneakers by Converse; It’s beautifully shot and
belt by The Row. perfectly romantic.”

34 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Vanities /The Gallery

Stitch in TIME
If you weren’t carrying a Marc Jacobs Stam handbag in the
early aughts, you wanted to be. Named for model Jessica Stam
and synonymous with effortless cool, the It bag dangled from the
crook of many a famous arm: Rihanna, Beyoncé, Lindsay Lohan.
Now, 10 years after its retirement, the distinctive quilted leather,
chunky metal chain strap, and coin-purse closure are reborn
as part of the M archives—other beloved reboots include the
Karlie and Mini Natasha bags—in three colorways and two
sizes. Advice for those eager to dive into their style storage units:
Take the bag, leave the BlackBerry. —Daisy Shaw-Ellis

Photograph by
HORAC IO SAL I NAS
F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

Marc Jacobs
The Stam bag in
leather, £1,525.
(marcjacobs.com)

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 35
Vanities /Trending

1. 2. RAVE REVIEWS

3. 1. Bottega Veneta
sunglasses, £430.
(bottegaveneta.com/
en-gb) 2. Fendi pants,
£1,350. (fendi.com/gb-en)
3. Kosas Plump + Juicy
Vegan Collagen spray-on
serum, £40. (kosas.com)
4. Submission Beauty
4. plastic-free red glitter, £21.
(brownsfashion.com/uk)
5. Richard Mille watch,
£1.1 million. (richardmille
.com) 6. Pat McGrath
Labs Dark Star mascara in
Aquamarine Dream, £28.
(patmcgrath.com)
8.
7. Neon Hippie Aura
Cleanse facial cleanser,
£25. (neonhippie.com)
8. Rick Owens top,
7. £1,500. (rickowens.eu)
5. 9. Don’t Let Disco
bracelet, £225. (dontlet
6.
disco.com) 10. Marie
Lichtenberg necklace,
£4,700. (marielichtenberg
.com/en-fr) 11. Marni top,
£455. (marni.com/en-gb)
12. Poster Girl dress,
9. £1,595. (poster-girl.com)
13. TooD Hypnotic Color
Cream in Moondance,
10. £15. (toodbeauty.com)
14. Gianvito Rossi
shoes, £710. (gianvito
rossi.com/gb_en)
15. Louis Vuitton Men’s
mini trunk, £2,430.
(uk.louisvuitton.com)
11.

12.

F E N D I , P O S T E R G I R L , R I C K O W E N S : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . H I LT O N : G E T T Y I M A G E S . A L L O T H E R S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S .
Make A SCENE
Be it in Berlin or Bushwick, dance
straight on till morn with glitter eye If you buy using the
shadow, sky-high platforms, and a 13. section QR codes, we may
beat louder than your Day-Glo outfit earn a commission, which
supports our journalism.
Our affiliate program
functions independently
of our editorial process.

14. 15.

Glow like Paris Hilton—club kid, hotel heir, ur–reality star,

Ibiza DJ, and author of Paris: The Memoir, out this month.

36 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Vanities /The Gallery

Hermès Lueurs du
Jour mono earring,
price upon request.
(Hermès stores)

Master of
ILLUSION
For a magician, shadows are as
important as the spotlight.
Pierre Hardy, creative director of
Hermès’s jewelry métier, explores
the art of visual deception in this
single earring, which foregrounds
glistening gems—moonstones
in orange, gray-green, and white,
and two colors of diamonds.
A slick of black jade reflects and
reconfigures the stones’ shapes,
like a fun house mirror. Now you
see it… —Daisy Shaw-Ellis
F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

Photograph by
HO RACI O SALI NAS

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 37
Vanities /My Stuff

1. 2.

5.

6.

3. 4.

About TOWN
LA-based designer SARAH STAUDINGER
knows how to play it cool, from borrowed
button-downs to mezcal on the rocks

7. ■ Style File ■ At Home

DAILY UNIFORM: I borrow THE WORKOUT: I use a mat,
my husband’s blue Hermès bands, free weights, and
button-downs all the time. a medicine ball. I love the
[Ed note: That would be Ari Bala bangles (5) and EOX
Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor.] fabric bands. AROMA: The
TO ACCESSORIZE: Sidney ThreeSix9 Gardenia candle
8.
Garber’s Carine earrings (1). is my favorite (3). The

S TA U D I N G E R : N ATA L I A M A N T I N I . T H E I N F I N I T E G A M E : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R . T E A : G E T T Y I M A G E S . A L L O T H E R S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S .
9. FOR BED: What I wear to vessels are so beautiful,
sleep depends on my moods: and once burned through,
Leset’s loungewear (2) I can reuse them. ON THE
or La Perla’s slips (11) and TABLE: I like single-stem

11.
robes cover most of them. arrangements in muted
ACTIVEWEAR: I live and work colors, especially this time
10.
out in our Staud x New of year. Lily Lodge in LA
Balance collaboration (8). is my go-to florist (13). My
12. everyday dishware is by
■ On Beauty Christiane Perrochon, and
SKIN CARE: Biologique I love Carlo Moretti’s glasses
Recherche Lait VIP O2 for a touch of color (14).
cleanser (10) followed by
the brand’s P50V, every day ■ Entertainment
no matter what. Serum is READING: I love Speechify,
where I go a little crazy. so I can bounce between
Right now I use Face Tight a physical and audiobook.
by Skin Design London (7). I just finished Simon Sinek’s
MAKEUP ROUTINE: I use The Infinite Game (12).
Charlotte Tilbury’s Beauty
Light Wand, Summer ■ The Menu
Fridays Sheer Skin Tint, and MORNING CUP: The first
YSL’s All Hours foundation thing I drink each morning
when I need fuller coverage. is a glass of water with
For contour, I use Merit’s lemon, ginger, and apple
Bronze Balm (4), and I love cider vinegar (9).
13. 14.
Tower 28’s BeachPlease HAPPY HOUR: Mezcal on
in Happy Hour on my lips the rocks is pretty much the
and cheeks (6). only alcohol I indulge in.

38 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Vanities /Beauty

Camera Ready
Five new fragrances reveal a Your Own BELLE ÉPOQUE
cinematic bent, as if primed for
hypothetical film adaptations.
What makes a good life? Six actors, inspired by
a classic fragrance, get philosophical By Laura Regensdorf
PACO RABANNE
FAME
Dressed in blackout
shades and a silver
chain-mail dress,
this bottle suggests
the glittering armor
of a star. Notes of jasmine, mango,
and incense give the scent a sunny
spin (befitting its ambassador,
Elle Fanning)—conjuring a satirical
two-hander about an A-lister and
her oversharing assistant. £86

FRÉDÉRIC MALLE
UNCUT GEM
There is a bracing
sensuality to this
creation by Maurice
Roucel: warm musk,
frankincense, and
leather brightened by citrus and
ginger. A variation on the nose’s
own cologne, it sparks the story of
a sculptor (sorry, not a diamond
district guy) and his obsessions, in
marble and in love. £270

HERMÈS
UN JARDIN À
CYTHÈRE
For this ode to the “JULIA CHILD WAS not a classical beauty,” feeling centered and seen,” says the mother
Greek island of
Kythira, perfumer
Isabella Rossellini says from her converted of three. Cruz cites an evening years ago at
Christine Nagel barn in Bellport, New York, days after filming Roberts’s home, when they discussed moth-
drew on memories wrapped for the second season of HBO’s Julia. erhood. “I remember a great conversation
of pink pistachios and olive trees
by the sea. It sets the scene for a (Rossellini plays the culinary legend’s coau- with Julia when she already had her children
Palme d’Or–winning saga about thor.) “She was very tall and kind of awkward and I didn’t yet have mine, and telling her
a complicated family that reunites
for one indulgent summer. £106 and had a funny voice—but had an enormous how much I wanted that kind of life for me,”
sense of wit and this passion for the kitchen.” she says. “The more gratitude you are able to
D.S. & DURGA Rossellini is talking about the French phrase experience every day, I think the happier you
STEAMED la vie est belle, which she likens to the Latin will be. It seems we all know that, but some-
RAINBOW
There’s whimsy and
carpe diem: a call to relish life. If the TV times we forget to practice.”
exactitude in this chef embodied that philosophy with gusto, So the verb in “Make life beautiful” is key:
fragrance, which so does another Julia: the Pretty Woman Living well is, in part, an endeavor. Zendaya
features a spectrum
in scent-note form (red mandarin who has fronted Lancôme’s La Vie Est Belle has made gratitude a nightly practice. “Some-
to violet), all bound together by perfume (optimistic, with notes of iris, times I write it down and sometimes I say it out
humidity. It evokes an art-house
road movie about an adrift young vanilla, and jasmine) since its debut in 2012. loud. But simply saying ‘I’m thankful for these
painter and her dog making A decade later, the French beauty house is things’ really helps put life in perspective.”
their way back to Kansas. £147
uniting six of its ambassadors—Julia Roberts Collins remembers 2012 as the year of her
and Rossellini, along with Penélope Cruz, Lily first major film, Mirror Mirror, with Roberts.
19-69
YES PLEASE! Collins, Amanda Seyfried, and Zendaya—for “Back then I was focused more on keeping
This fragrance pairs a campaign that waxes essential. “Make life myself busy. I always wanted to be on the go
garden staples beautiful” goes the new tagline, which begs and say yes to everything I could,” she says,
(thyme, rose) with
gin-and-tonic and the follow-up: In what way? Like a trusted describing a current devotion to morning dog
vinyl notes for a astrologer, Vanity Fair consulted the stars. walks on the beach. Seyfried, who tends a
nod to the clubs of
late-’80s Manchester. In that spirit, Roberts, appearing next in the adaptation menagerie, can relate. “Isabella and I talked
a music-driven rom-com rewinds of the novel Leave the World Behind, defines about our farms and how eerily similar our
to the era, following an aspiring
writer tending bar and a rocker living well outside the self. It’s a “sense of lives are right now,” she says. “We have the
whose destinies entwine. £185 —LR all those around me being in a good place, same passion for what we’ve created.” ■

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY B I J O U KARMAN H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 39
Vanities /Books

Star Power
An indie publisher harnesses the
muscle of household names.

In books, it’s all about the

C O L L AG E , T H E W I F E O F W I L L E S D E N : M A R C B R E N N E R . N E G G A : B E N R O T H S T E I N / F O C U S F E AT U R E S / E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N . M O N R O E , O S C A R S TAT U E T T E S , B A L L E R I N A : G E T T Y I M A G E S . WA I T H E , PA R K E R , F LY N N : G E T T Y I M AG E S . B O O K S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R S .
eyeballs. In 2020, Molly
Stern (a longtime top figure
at Crown and other Penguin
Random House imprints,
whose authors included
Michelle Obama and Gillian
Flynn) launched Zando, an
innovation on traditional
publishing that had a mission
to partner with “beloved”
public figures and institu-
tions in putting forth books.
This month, the namesake
imprint from Flynn launches

It’s SHOWTIME
Holocaust with the help of the future publisher its first, Margot Douaihy’s
of DC Comics, supposedly captured Marilyn mystery Scorched Grace;
Monroe’s subway grate moment on film. In Stone Village Television
Books on performance, from Permission to Speak, from Penguin Business, (which co-produced Station
Samara Bay—the speech coach who’s helped Eleven) has already snapped
en pointe to onscreen
Ruth Negga, Gal Gadot, and others perfect up film and TV rights. Later
dialects on film—offers an empowering take on this year and next, Ayesha
ALL THE WORLD’S a stage or film set in this public speaking. Alice Robb presents a beauti- Curry’s Sweet July, John
troupe of books. First, two tales of the movies. ful, difficult, and compelling memoir of her Legend and associates’ Get
Michael Schulman’s Oscar Wars, from adolescent ballet training—and her decision Lifted, and Lena Waithe’s
Harper, examines the history of America’s to leave it behind—in Don’t Think, Dear, from Hillman Grad will celebrate
most watched—and perhaps most divisive— Oneworld Publications. And following two crit- their own launches—the lat-
awards show, from the birth of the Academy ically acclaimed runs in London, Zadie Smith’s ter, Waithe says, will focus on
to the 2017 Moonlight versus La La Land best bawdy, contemporary Chaucer reworking, work that highlights “issues
picture debacle. In Helene Stapinski and Bon- The Wife of Willesden, has just hit bookshelves of identity, belonging, and
nie Siegler’s The American Way, from Simon courtesy of Hamish Hamilton and, leaping challenging the status quo.”
& Schuster, Siegler looks into a piece of right off the page, debuts off Broadway at Regardless of the celebrity
family lore: Her grandfather, who escaped the BAM Strong in April. —keziah weir heft, for Sarah Jessica Parker
(whose former imprint at
Crown’s Hogarth might be
seen as Stern’s early proof of
SIX-PACK Time travels, sexual travails, and more new fiction concept), what’s important is
that “these are authors who
THE LOST BIRNAM WOOD TAKE WHAT will stand on their own.” Her
AMERICANS A rogue gardening YOU NEED first SJP Lit book, A Quitter’s
In VF contributing editor collective in New Following her estranged Paradise by Elysha Chang,
Christopher Bollen’s Zealand, led by a “self- stepmother’s death in
sharp new literary mythologising” rebel, Appalachia, a woman is out in June. —KW
thriller, a woman clashes with an American returns home to
searches for answers in the wake billionaire over land use in Eleanor confront old memories and new
of her brother’s mysterious Catton’s thoughtful, personality-rich revelations in Idra Novey’s
death in Cairo. (Harper) page-turner. (Granta) double character study. (Viking)

FLUX WHAT HAPPENED BIG SWISS

Jinwoo Chong’s TO RUTHY RAMIREZ Plumbing trauma and
engrossing debut braids In Claire Jiménez’s desire, Jen Beagin’s
three narratives— assured debut novel, funny, poignant novel
a boy in mourning, a a trio of Staten Island sees a transcriber
whistleblower, and women glimpse the for a Hudson Valley
a laid-off media employee—to sister and daughter they lost sex and relationship coach fall
unspool a mystery examining pop years earlier and go out looking entranced by an orgasm-deficient
culture and time. (Melville House) for her. (Grand Central) client. (Faber & Faber) —KW

40 VA N I T Y FA I R I L L U S T R AT I O N BY B L A K E CALE H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
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Vanities /Showbiz

Free AGENTS acquisition of rival agency ICM Part-

ners. So CAA’s leaders-in-waiting asked
themselves if they wanted to stick
With the old guard holding on to power, younger talent reps around another decade or two to inher-
are shaking up the industry by walking out By Natalie Jarvey it the agency, at which point some
of them would be pushing the new 40.
The defections, sparked by factors
beyond succession in some cases, start-
ed with a trickle. In 2018, überconnected
out. CAA’s trio of cochairmen—Bryan talent rep Michael Kives headed out
Lourd, Kevin Huvane, and Richard on his own. So did Peter Micelli, the
Lovett—had already led the agency cohead of CAA’s television department,
through a 15-year period of tremendous who departed to join independent stu-
growth, and their contracts were set to dio Entertainment One. Leaving CAA
expire within a half dozen years. But the felt “much like a divorce,” Micelli tells
new generation soon realized that cor- me. “It’s a hard change. I had an incred-
onation day was further off than they ible business there and left at the height
expected. Lovett began reminding staff of my career. I was giving up a lot and
that 60 was the new 40, according to two risking an enormous amount. But it was
sources. “I was like, Fuck no, it’s not,” coupled with this new opportunity
says one of them, who recalls thinking, to learn and sit on the other side of the
Oh, you guys are never going to leave. table.” Movie agent Jim Toth and top
WHEREVER THERE ARE thrones, there Lovett, Lourd, and Huvane are now sports rep Nick Khan left for new oppor-
are games. In the early 2010s, the leaders in their 60s. They seem more engaged tunities too. The flood came in 2020,
of Hollywood’s most powerful talent than ever, having just guided CAA when four top agents—who repped
agency, CAA, began telling senior through a turbulent few years that saw a Margot Robbie and Chris Hemsworth,
agents that the kingdom would someday ferocious battle with Hollywood writers, among others—announced that they
be theirs. The timing certainly checked a crippling pandemic, and a $750 million were quitting to reunite with Micelli.

42 VA N I T Y FA I R I L L U S T R AT I O N BY J O R G E A R É VA LO
He was flush following Entertainment pandemic—and suddenly stripped of drive fancy cars, but it’s not all it’s
One’s $4 billion sale to Hasbro and the power lunches and premieres—they cracked up to be,” says a source. “It’s
launching a new talent management simply reconsidered their careers. As a definitely a less desirable job today.”
firm. In a pitch deck that leaked to the leader at one top agency says, “COVID
press, the company—later named Range was the hundred-year flood, and I think IN THE EVENT you’re weeping for them,
Media Partners—trumpeted, “We have people made decisions about their lives the average midcareer agent can make
never seen more high-end representa- at a scale that you’ve never seen before.” between $400,000 and $600,000,
tives ready to leave these institutions.” not including a year-end bonus, while
All the major agencies have suffered a successful partners pull in millions.
steady stream of exits over the last three But the rise of streaming, the decline of
years amid what a former agent tells me cable, and the erosion of the theatrical
is a “generational shift.” At WME, a business have cut into those fat pay-
number of high-powered agents of col- One agent looked checks. People are also insisting, as they
or walked out the door, while UTA said
goodbye to several leaders in digital at THEIR BOSSES seem to do every few years, that the
movie star is dead, which means fewer
and new media. Due respect to the
memory of Entourage’s explosive mad-
and thought, Oh, new clients. And that’s assuming that
talent even want an agent. After the
man Ari Gold, but a lot of hard-driving you guys are never agencies’ fight with the Writers Guild
agents decided there was a better way
to generate power and better places to
going to leave. of America, during which thousands of
writers fired their agents, some (like
hug it out. “It’s just an ever-changing Lost cocreator Damon Lindelof ) never
time in the industry,” says another per- hired them back. Some industry
son who recently left a plum agency But the pandemic didn’t cause the heavyweights—Jennifer Lawrence and
job. “Traditional power structures are departures, it just accelerated them. Leonardo DiCaprio among them—have
shifting because what clients want is Forget that the last three years even done without them for years.
shifting.” Some agents were clearly part happened, and it’s still arguably harder To keep up with the changing land-
of America’s Great Resignation: Fac- to be an agent right now than at any scape, the agencies have chased growth.
ing layoffs and pay cuts because of the other time. “Agents wear nice suits and CAA has expanded into seemingly

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 43
Vanities /Showbiz

every business with even a passing Managers typically have a smaller roster faze the old guard. “Our access to cli-
connection to entertainment, adding for whom they provide career guidance. ents, our ability to influence decisions
a sports division to rep stars like While they’re barred from negotiating they make and create opportunities for
Cristiano Ronaldo and launching a deals—that’s the domain of agents and talent and for people who want to work
venture capital fund. To fuel the expan- lawyers—they can do things that agents with talent—that makes us powerful,”
sion, the company opened its doors can’t, like producing and personally says Zimmer. “The next generation of
to a private equity investor, TPG Cap- investing in a client’s tequila empire, say. agents will have that also.”
ital, which now owns a majority stake That means managers can potentially
in the agency. Ari Emanuel’s Endeav- make more money, especially at a time BUT WHO WILL the next generation be
or, meanwhile, has bought up assets when stars all seem to crave the same if younger agents keep changing lanes,
as far-flung as UFC, the Miss Universe new status symbol: a billion dollars. though? At six foot seven with a broad
Competition, Professional Bull Riders, “You become their partner versus just a frame, Micelli, the Range CEO, is hard
and New York Fashion Week. rep,” says an agent turned manager. to miss when he enters a room. A former
The ballooning of the agencies might The men—and, yes, they’re still all college basketball player who considered
be good for business—and for enriching men—who run the top agencies playing professionally in Europe, he
leaders like Emanuel, who made know better than to act alarmed about spent the first 20-plus years of his adult
$308 million following Endeavor’s IPO life channeling his competitiveness
in 2021—but it’s fundamentally changed into the closest thing Hollywood has to
the day-to-day for talent reps. Multiple a sport: working as a talent agent at
current and former agents say that the legendarily cutthroat CAA.
the agencies used to feel like a family, But in 2017, during the agency’s
at least the kind of family that ritual-
ly hazes the youngest kids. Now these
“I just kept annual retreat at a resort near San
Diego, Micelli realized it was time to
places have hundreds, if not thousands, coming back to, quit. “Something inside me told me this
of employees who have to wear name
tags to corporate retreats so they
WHY WORK for was the last retreat I was going to be
on,” he says. “I needed a new energy.”
can recognize their own colleagues. anybody again? At Entertainment One, he got a crash
What happens when someone wakes
up one day and realizes they don’t It’s their agency. course in running (and selling) a com-
pany. After his windfall, Micelli had
want to be an agent anymore? If they
don’t run screaming from the industry
It’s their dream.” offers from agencies: “But I just kept
coming back to, Why work for anybody
altogether, some become executives, again? It’s their agency. It’s their vision.
others producers. But many pivot to It just felt the most appropriate next
management, where they can focus defections. “Some agents at a certain step for me was to do something that
more on building a client’s career and point either get managed out or they was at least partly mine.”
less on landing them their next job. get burnt out—and some become man- While Micelli had stepped away
Theresa Kang-Lowe, formerly a power- agers,” says UTA CEO and cofounder from representation, the Writers
ful WME agent, now manages Alfonso Jeremy Zimmer. “We still continue Guild lawsuit against the talent agen-
Cuarón, Lena Waithe, and others while to grow, and we still continue to thrive, cies had created a fissure in the part
producing television like the Apple and we continue to work really well of the business at which he excelled,
TV+ epic Pachinko. Phil Sun left WME with managers. We don’t necessarily packaging writers and stars, then hand-
and brought Michael B. Jordan and feel it’s competitive.” delivering full projects to TV studios.
Donald Glover to a new management But conversations with nearly two (The agencies later agreed to end the
firm, M88, focused on a diverse clien- dozen industry insiders suggest that controversial practice and divest most
tele. Two former agents from UTA and management is more and more alluring of their majority ownership stakes in
WME, Ben Jacobson and David Stone, as the aura around agents dims. No one production companies.) Meanwhile,
recently launched the Framework denies that the guys atop CAA, WME, the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter
Collective to manage TV writers. and UTA are powerful. But what hap- movements forced a reckoning at the
The distinction between agents and pens when they’re gone? Some sources agencies over their part in perpetuat-
managers can seem nebulous, but there say a new breed of managers—people ing systemic discrimination. “I started
are key differences. Agents often rep- who’ve been agents and understand thinking about what was needed, and
resent dozens of people in a specific dealmaking—will challenge them for Range started to form in my head—oh,
area of the business (think film roles but primacy. As one former agent puts it, the markets are changing this way and
not television ones, or brand deals but “Before, the agents were the most pow- new technologies are coming that are
not public speaking engagements) and erful. Period. Now there might be a gonna shift content distribution again,
focus on landing their clients new work. splitting of the power.” This still doesn’t and there’s a bunch of little things

44 VA N I T Y FA I R
we can do to create a better culture and agents, and we’ve decided to invest careers, she was cut out of the creative
a better environment,” Micelli says. in a shared services platform that’s process once she brokered deals. At
He quietly reached out to friends and unlike what any management com- Range, she’s producing a film that Ilana
former coworkers at the agencies to pany’s ever done.” Cook, Micelli’s Glazer cowrote about an unplanned
see who might be interested in joining colleague, adds, “We all did our 10,000 pregnancy. “I also set aside time every
him at this new firm while also pitching hours as agents—we wake up and we week for creative time to think about
his vision to investors. Soon he’d lined dial for dollars, we think about packag- ideas and about how to help somebody
up capital from Steve Cohen, the contro- ing, and we’re really proactive. I built get to the next level,” she says. “That’s
versial billionaire owner of the New York a career being very hands-on with the something that I didn’t have time for at
Mets, who helped fund Donald Trump’s people that I represent, and I think my previous job.”
inauguration in 2017. The money hit the all of our managing partners would say There are plenty of people who are
account on August 4, 2020, before any- the same thing, which is that they still quite happy working their way
body had even agreed to join Range. were very managerial agents. We saw through the talent agency system. The
“It was just me and our COO, Rob Whit- an opportunity to jump-start a com- mail room remains one of the best
tel, and we literally said to each other, pany with a client list that would rival places to learn the entertainment busi-
‘What do we do with the money if even the most powerful management ness, and agency leaders say they don’t
nobody comes? If we can’t get the nee- company pretty quickly.” have a problem recruiting for those
dle movers, if we can’t get the people jobs. All the change in Hollywood has
that really matter, could we call Steve ONE TUESDAY AFTERNOON in Novem- also created opportunities for enterpris-
and give the money back?’ ” But by Sep- ber, Range’s Santa Monica headquarters ing young agents who want to discover
tember, 10 people from CAA, WME, and hums with an energy that’s rare for new podcast talent and TikTok stars.
UTA had signed on—and many clients most postpandemic offices. Dozens of And the agencies have been working
followed them. “I fell in love with Pete employees lounge on chairs and couches on succession plans. In 2020, CAA creat-
very quickly,” says Rich Cook, who’d run inside the airy building, where not even ed a board of top agents to help manage
the motion picture literary department the partners keep permanent desks. the agency. Last year, Emanuel tapped
at WME. “We all have the same promise The goal is to encourage conversation Richard Weitz and Christian Muir-
to each other, which is like, let’s go take a and collaboration—and eventually a head to co-run WME. Still, both agents
shot and build something.” drink or two at a bar being designed by and managers are bracing for what will
client Luca Guadagnino—and that’s almost certainly be a rocky year. The
THE RANGE HIRES surprised the exactly what’s happening today as the industry is already reeling as the stream-
industry. Deadline called the news a company prepares for a retreat at the ing services that were supposed to save
“bombshell.” An insider told The Holly- home of managing partner Dave Bugli- the business have been hemorrhaging
wood Reporter that such an exodus was ari and his wife, Alyssa Milano. money. Now throw in a potential reces-
“unheard of.” During the battle with In the last couple of years, Micelli sion and a potential writer’s strike.
the WGA, CAA’s Lourd argued in a has grown Range to over 160 employees As Hollywood belt-tightening con-
legal declaration that the ongoing dis- and more than 500 clients, including tinues, what happens to the newly
pute had made agency clients—like recent signees M. Night Shyamalan, minted managers who defected from
Lindelof, who signed with Range—ripe Busy Philipps, Shailene Woodley, and the agencies with only a handful of loy-
for poaching. The management world Mariah Carey. The company has also al clients and a dream? And if talent
was shaken up, as well as the agencies. expanded from film and TV into music are forced to make hard choices, are
“I don’t think that there’s any manage- management, marketing, branding, they more likely to dump their agents
ment company that thinks Range is sports and TV production, as well as or their managers first? The agencies,
anything other than an agency masquer- more speculative business like Web3 with their recently diversified busi-
ading as a management company to get and the metaverse. nesses, seem well insulated. “No one
around the rules,” says one longtime Managing partners took sizable wants to ride out a strike, I’m not
manager. Another source notes that all pay cuts to leave their agent gigs, but saying it’s good for us by any means,”
the former agents have to do to circum- none of the people I speak with express says an agency leader, “but we have
vent the no-dealmaking mandate is to regret. “There’s nothing better than the ability to weather those situations
make sure that it’s the lawyers who pick when you’re the dumbest person at the better than most.”
up the phone to negotiate contracts. table, and you can get real advice from For his part, Micelli says he’s focus-
Micelli argues that Hollywood just people you trust,” says Susie Fox, who, ing on growing Range into something
hasn’t encountered a management while at UTA, signed up-and-coming he can pass on to the next generation.
company like Range before. “We’re comedians like Ali Wong, Jerrod Car- “It’s healthy for everybody when
not acting as agents at all,” he says. michael, and Ramy Youssef. She always things shake up a little bit,” he says.
“I think where there’s some confusion felt frustrated that, despite work- Sometimes you inherit a kingdom,
is because a lot of us are former ing with her clients to develop their sometimes you build one. n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 45
PHOTOGRAPHS BY

STYLED BY PATTI WILSON

46 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Set design by
Jack Flanagan

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 47
BY JEFF GILES

For our 29TH ANNUAL HOLLYWOOD ISSUE, a DOZEN CAPTIVATING

YOUNG STARS GATHERED for the AFTER-PARTY of our DREAMS

“When I was filming Elvis, Selena found

this photograph of the two of us when I
did a guest-star thing on her show Wiz-
ards of Waverly Place,” says Butler. “And
she sends it to me, just going, ‘Wow,
remember this?’ It feels like another
life. When you’re a child actor, you see
so many people come in from Texas or
something, and at a certain point they
may quit or go back. We’re just so fortu-
nate to have careers in this industry for
this amount of time.”
Everybody here is ecstatic just to
be regularly employed when, as Regé-
Jean Page puts it, “a good 90 percent of
my industry is out of work at any given
time.” Page, who grew up in London and
in Harare, Zimbabwe, is best known (for
“LOOK, THERE WAS a time I thought it was a dirty word,” says now) as the duke on Bridgerton. He regularly reminds himself that
Jonathan Majors. “You know what I mean?” He’s talking about an entire fictional world has been built before he even steps on
stardom. He says the words movie star, then lets them hang in a set—that every project “has had love, sweat, tears, and break-
the air like an incantation. “In school, you would never dream of downs before I’ve ever read the script.” Palmer, a native of Illinois
saying something so ambitious.” Majors grew up poor in Texas, and a magnetic heroine in Nope last year, also refuses to take too
where he was raised by his mom, who’s a pastor. As a teen- much credit for her trajectory. “Anything that’s happened in my
ager, he was combative. Anti-authority. Then he discovered the life—especially how it’s happened this year—was ordained by
release valve that was acting. This year, the Yale drama school forces beyond me,” she says. “I give it up to God. I give it up to
grad’s coiled presence is on display in Creed III and the new the universe, because I could not have written some of these
Ant-Man and the Wasp movie, and he’ll reign as the archvillain things, you know what I mean? I’m not that good of an author.”
in the next phase of Marvel blockbusters. Majors pours himself
into his roles and wants them to be seen, so he doesn’t shy away ARE THERE POTHOLES that everybody here has to swerve around
from the notion of stardom anymore. “I think it’s a word that I on a daily basis? Of course. For one thing, how do you remain
was afraid of, because it actually comes with a lot of hope,” he elusive and intriguing in a ravenous culture like ours? “When
says, “and that’s scary.” Paul Newman was acting, he was always 40 feet tall,” says But-
There aren’t many actors who give us as much hope as the 12 ler. “We didn’t see a ton of him outside of that big screen, and
stars in these pages. None of them have been on one of our Holly- there’s something really special about that.” Julia Garner, whose
wood covers before. We’ve chosen them because they’re riveting talent felt like a bolt out of the blue in Ozark and who has been,
onscreen and driven and ever-evolving in real life. Florence Pugh, justifiably, receiving awards on something like a conveyor belt
the British actor who entered the atmosphere like a comet not so ever since, worries about overexposure too: “Everyone is so
long ago, recently shot Dune: Part Two with other bright lights of out there, and the mystery is disappearing. And when a person
her generation, including Austin Butler. “They are remarkable doesn’t have mystery anymore, you can’t get it back.”
people, number one, and unbelievable actors, number two,” says Three of these actors—Butler, Ana de Armas, and Emma
Pugh. “They’re stars in their own ways, not in the cliché way of Corrin—have given arresting performances as the most famous-
using the word. They’re just—they’re sparkly people.” ly doomed icons in history: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and
Despite their youth, most of the sparkly people in this issue Princess Diana. Both Butler and de Armas even snagged Oscar
have been acting forever. Pugh played Mary in a school nativity nominations. So, yes, this generation knows the glare can burn.
play at the age of six—and decided her character should have a Their opinion of social media is…let’s call it complicated.
Yorkshire accent. Keke Palmer made her film debut as a child, “If it was up to me, I would delete Instagram right now, but I
and Butler and Selena Gomez found fame early on TV as well. can’t,” says de Armas, who grew up in Cuba and had to learn her

48 VA N I T Y FA I R
 INTERVIEWS BY
CAITLIN BRODY, DAVID CANFIELD, YOHANA DESTA,
REBECCA FORD, NATALIE JARVEY, JULIE MILLER, CHRIS MURPHY,
JOY PRESS, KATEY RICH, AND SAVANNAH WALSH

first English-language roles phonetically. The reason she can’t Gomez has thought a lot about public personas since that
delete it, of course, is that she needs to promote her projects and photo of her and Butler was taken on the set of Wizards of Waverly
the brands she has partnerships with. “It’s tricky because you Place, needless to say. “I wasn’t a wild child by any means, but
feel the pressure to share some personal insight, or something I was on Disney so I had to make sure not to say ‘What the hell’
about your private life, to keep people interested in you,” she around anyone,” she says. “Now I think being the best role
says. “You have to find a balance somehow, which I find very model means being honest even with the ugly and complicated
difficult.” Gomez, a toweringly popular figure online, as well as a parts.” Talking openly about her anxiety, depression, and bipolar
key part of the delicious series Only Murders in the Building, has disorder had a dramatic, liberating effect, which she noticed
taken breaks from social media, but recently returned to posting even when encountering fans on the street: “I wasn’t just this
on Instagram and TikTok, the latter of which she finds to be “a prop to people. You’re so cute—let’s take a picture! It was more than
little less hostile.” Jeremy Allen White, who’s been inspiring a that. It was a conversation about mental health or a conversation
couple of different kinds of hunger as a chef on The Bear, may about courage or disappointment or grief or loss. And I started
have landed on the healthiest way to filter out noise: “My mom to go, okay, this is paying off.”
tells me what they’re saying on Twitter, which is nice.” Corrin, the British actor who gave such raw, humane per-
formances in The Crown, My Policeman, and Lady Chatterley’s
GIVEN THE SCRUTINY, it’s been refreshing to see these actors Lover, has been sharing their experience as a nonbinary actor.
admit to being human as devotedly, and publicly, as they do. “No matter who we are or what our jobs are, we have a self that
Pugh wages a kind of campaign against the appearance of flaw- we present and how we feel on the inside,” they say. “Everyone
lessness. Is it ever a burden? “No, I love it, I love it,” she says. has a journey of combining those to feel like we’re living as our-
“When I started out, my granddad would always tell me off and selves. In the past that has been so restricted. So, there’s a lot of
be like, ‘Why are you showing everyone your ugly spots?’ He’d joy for me in talking about that and sharing that part of myself,
be really confused as to why I’d show my cellulite. My answer because I hope that it helps others as well.”
was like, ‘Well, I’d much rather do it than they do it, and then I The message in all this is that pretending is best left in movies
feel ashamed.’ There’s no pretending with me. When I put on and on TV, where everyone in these pages is fully committed.
makeup and step in a wonderful dress, I give credit to the people “That’s the thing that I get the endorphins and the high from—
that made me look like that, and I also want my fans to know that being around great actors, working with directors, digging deep
(a) I don’t look like that all the time, and (b) I also have stress into characters where you’re really feeling vulnerable and on
acne, and I also have hairy eyebrows, and I also have greasy hair.” a path,” says the British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson. “It feels
therapeutic.” He remembers loving Brad Pitt’s movies when he
was growing up: “I was a big fan of Brad when I was a kiddo. I
« loved his presence onscreen. He really was the master of cool.”
This past year, he appeared in Bullet Train with Pitt. Now, like
Page, he’s rumored to be in the running to inherit James Bond’s
tux from Daniel Craig. So, you know, no complaints.
As her own star rose, the South Korean actor Hoyeon did have
one small request: some time off to recuperate and filter through
MOVIES: THE WONDER, everything that had happened since Squid Game became a
A GOOD PERSON, DUNE: PART T WO, phenomenon. After last year’s Emmys she found herself over-
OPPENHEIMER whelmed: “These kind of complex emotions were coming from
everywhere. I thought I could have a break, but I was working,
She’s been fearless in every role, and became
an icon of defiance just for holding an Aperol
working, working.” If it’s any consolation, as with all the stars
Spritz. Pugh stars in two of 2023’s most here, we’ll be at our screens, ready to watch, watch, watch. n
anticipated films, Oppenheimer and the Dune
sequel. She hasn’t given up hope in the future
of movie stars, partly because she knows
Timothée Chalamet. “He’s our Leo,” she says.
In that case, she may just be Kate Winslet. M A K E U P P R O D U C T S BY E S T É E L A U D E R ( D E A R M A S ) , G U C C I ( G A R N E R ) , L A N C Ô M E ( H OY E O N ) , R A R E
B E AU T Y ( G O M E Z ) , C H A N E L ( A L L O T H E R W O M E N ) ; N A I L E N A M E L BY G U C C I ( G A R N E R ) , D I O R V E R N I S ( A L L
O T H E R W O M E N ) ; G R O O M I N G P R O D U C T S BY B OY D E C H A N E L . H A I R , WA R D ; M A K E U P A N D G R O O M I N G ,
K A B U K I ; M A N I C U R E S , A S H L I E J O H N S O N ; TA I LO R S , H A S M I K KO U R I N I A N , S U S I E KO U R I N A N , H A KO P J AC K
Dress by Dion Lee; earrings by Tiffany & Co. P O G O S YA N ; L I G H T I N G D I R E C T O R , DAV I D D E V L I N ; M O V E M E N T D I R E C TO R , M E G A N L AW S O N ; A S S I S TA N T
M O V E M E N T D I R E C TO R , TAY LO R J A M E S . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N BY T H AT O N E P R O D U C T I O N .
Elsa Peretti; bracelets by Tiffany & Co. P O S T P R O D U C T I O N BY DT O U C H . LO C AT I O N : M I L K S T U D I O S , L A . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 49
 “THIS INDUSTRY is a BEAST. IT’S REALLY SCARY
to SEE WHAT HAPPENS when YOU’RE GIVEN SO MUCH
POWER and MONEY at a YOUNG AGE.”

T V: ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING,

SELENA + CHEF
MOVIES: MY MIND & ME

The former Disney Channel kid is now an

acclaimed actor and mental health advocate
whose frankness has won her 374 million Instagram
followers, arguably more than anyone else in
Hollywood. For a time, Gomez turned her social
media passwords over to her assistant because the
rare toxic comments were traumatizing: “These
people get inside your head.”

Trench coat by LaQuan Smith; bodysuit by

Skims; ear cuff and ring by Givenchy; choker
by Swarovski.

50 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 51
 “PLAYING ELVIS MADE ME THINK YOU can HAVE
SEEMINGLY EVERYTHING and STILL FEEL EMPTY.
YOU EXPERIENCE a TON of PUBLIC LOVE, THEN
YOU’RE BACK in a SILENT ROOM.”

52 VA N I T Y FA I R
MOVIES: ELVIS, DUNE: PART T WO
T V: MASTERS OF THE AIR

Butler exploded from former child star to global

icon in the vertiginous Elvis, for which he’s been
nominated for an Oscar. With the Dune sequel,
he’s now part of one of the most exciting casts of
his generation. “If I had some film hit really big
when I was younger,” he says, “I wouldn’t have
had to keep going back to the drawing board and
saying, ‘How do you get better at this?’ ”

Coat by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello;

tank top by Calvin Klein; sunglasses by Gentle
Monster x Moncler; necklace (top) and watch
by Cartier; necklace by Lisa Eisner.

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 53
 “I’M GOING to
BE HONEST: I’M NOT GOOD
at a LOT of THINGS,
SO I WAS LIKE, ‘THIS
ACTING THING
BETTER WORK OUT.’ ”

54 VA N I T Y FA I R
T V: OZ ARK, INVENTING ANNA

Last year, she drew Emmy nominations for both

Inventing Anna and Ozark, and won for the
latter for the third time. Still, Garner remembers
being 21 and struggling to find work. “But
I booked Ozark,” she says, “and I kept pushing
because I felt like I still had a lot to do.”

Clothing and bra by Miu Miu; earrings

by Demarson; ear cuff (right ear) by
Pearl Octopuss.y.

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 55
 “IT’S ABOUT the WORK and HOW YOU DO YOUR WORK.
I HAVE NO INTEREST in the FUCKERY OF THE INDUSTRY.
I’M in BED BY 12 O’CLOCK.”

MOVIES: DEVOTION, ANT-MAN AND

THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA , CREED III,
MAGAZINE DREAMS

If you haven’t followed Majors’s career yet,

2023 should wake you up. He’s put on weight
and muscle to play a boxer and a bodybuilder,
as well as Marvel’s new big bad, Kang the
Conqueror. Says Majors, “I’m very happy with
how everything is going, but I’m not satisfied—
and that’s the way it’s got to be.”

Tank top by Tom Ford; pants by Dolce &

Gabbana; watch by Rolex.

56 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 57
 “THE CONCEPT of a MOVIE STAR is SOMEONE
UNTOUCHABLE YOU ONLY SEE ONSCREEN.
THAT MYSTERY IS GONE. For the MOST PART, WE’VE
DONE THAT to OURSELVES—NOBODY’S KEEPING
ANYTHING from ANYONE ANYMORE.”

MOVIES: BLONDE, THE GR AY MAN,

BALLERINA

The Cuba-born actor will star in the John Wick

spin-off, Ballerina, and is starting to produce.
But her turbulent, Oscar-nominated turn in
Blonde is never far from her mind: “If you put
Marilyn Monroe ‘the movie star’ aside, she’s just
an actress trying to navigate life and this system,
which is so hard to navigate for anybody.”

Clothing and bra by N21 by Alessandro

Dell’Acqua; earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and
ring (left ring finger) by Louis Vuitton; rings by
Louis Vuitton High Jewelry.

58 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 59
 “THE MOMENT YOU START
believing THE SHIT PEOPLE
SAY ABOUT YOU, you’ve
LOST your FUCKING MIND.
You’ve LOST IT.”

MOVIES: BULLET TR AIN,

KR AVEN THE HUNTER

The Englishman has character-actor depth, and

enough magnetism to keep climbing the
marquee. The Bond rumors are still just rumors,
and he’s careful to keep them in perspective:
“You just want to stay grounded, and stay around
the people that you love and love you back.”

Trench coat by Gucci; pants by Double RL;

boots by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello;
watch by Rolex.

60 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 61
62 VA N I T Y FA I R
 “IT’S a REALLY NICE SHIFT that a ROLE MODEL has
EVOLVED into SOMETHING WHICH IS MORE ABOUT
FLAWS THAN FLAWLESSNESS, BECAUSE I THINK THAT’S
the REALITY of MOST PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCES.”

MOVIES: L ADY CHAT TERLEY’S LOVER,

MY POLICEMAN
T V: RETREAT

Just being cast as Princess Diana in The

Crown informed Corrin’s portrayal of the role.
“I had a weird parallel experience of being
plucked from nowhere and suddenly having
people outside my house,” says the British
actor. Corrin identifies as nonbinary and
credits friends in the industry, like actor Dan
Levy and comedian Mae Martin, with helping
them on their journey.

Clothing by Noir Kei Ninomiya; shoes

by Givenchy; bralette by Luelle; earrings by
Cartier; bracelet by Cartier High Jewelry.

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 63
 “IF YOU READ TOO MANY REVIEWS,
this THING THAT WAS ONCE OURS has
had SO MANY IDEAS PUT ON IT.
I’M HOPEFUL we can SHUT the WORLD
OUT A LITTLE BIT.”

64 VA N I T Y FA I R
T V: THE BEAR
MOVIES: FINGERNAILS,
THE IRON CL AW

After 10 years on the cult treasure Shameless,

White broke big as chef Carmy Berzatto
on The Bear. He’s since made the sci-fi
romance Fingernails alongside two actors he
loves, Riz Ahmed and Jessie Buckley, and
donned “ridiculously skimpy clothing” as the
late wrestler Kerry Von Erich in The Iron Claw.

Clothing by Ferragamo; boots by Alessandro

Vasini; watch by Omega; rings by Bulgari (right
hand) and David Yurman (left middle finger).

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 65
“I WISH I COULD SAY I STRATEGIZED
INSANELY. But THERE’S TOO MANY
THINGS that can SHAKE SHIT UP.
So I’m not OVER-STRATEGIZING to that
DAMN DEGREE BECAUSE then I CAN’T
FOCUS on the PRESENT.”

66 VA N I T Y FA I R
MOVIES: NOPE, LIGHT YEAR

She was a spirited, surprising hero in Nope,

and—thanks to SNL—her baby bump enthralled
the internet. Asked who her heroes are, the
former Nickelodeon darling says, “One hundred
percent Tyler Perry. He’s showing a path of
ownership for Black creators. You want somebody
else? We got Jordan Peele, we got Donald
Glover, we got Issa Rae. It’s like, we have options.”

Dress and shoes by Dior; jewelry by Cartier

High Jewelry.

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 67
 “THERE’S a HEALTHY AMOUNT of WOLF-AT-THE-DOOR
that KEEPS YOU GETTING UP EVERY MORNING. A GOOD
90% of my INDUSTRY IS OUT OF WORK at ANY GIVEN TIME.”

MOVIES: THE GR AY MAN, DUNGEONS

& DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES

The British actor broke out in Bridgerton,

then made clear he’s more than just
a (breathtakingly) handsome face with
The Gray Man. Page, one of two actors
in this portfolio rumored to be in the running
to play 007, has a strict policy of humility:
“The actors are the piece of equipment that
turns up last and fucks up most, basically.”

Clothing and tie by Burberry; ring (ring finger)

by Cartier.

68 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 69
T V: SQUID GAME, DISCL AIMER

The Korean model turned actor rocketed

to fame (and a best actress award from the
Screen Actors Guild) with Squid Game.
Next up? A role on Apple TV+’s Disclaimer,
starring Cate Blanchett. It’s all made for
an intense ride with “complex emotions
coming from everywhere.”

Dress by Christopher Kane; gloves by

Urstadt.Swan; earring and ear cuff by Bulgari;
bangle by Swarovski.

“I DON’T WANT to GIVE UP JUST BECAUSE it is NOT

an EASY PATH. THERE are SO MANY STORIES to be TOLD.
ASIAN ACTORS are PREPARED.”

70 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 71
72 VA N I T Y FA I R
T I M E S O F T H E S I G N
The Hollywood sign began its life, fittingly enough, as a flashy
billboard no more permanent than a film set. In the 100 years since,
it has been rebuilt, rebranded, and reborn as a beacon for
aspiring stars from around the world—and a reminder of just
how few dreams of fame and fortune come true

BY M A RK S E A L | PH OTO G RA PH BY DA N W I N T E R S

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 73
YOU ARE SURROUNDED by 45-foot-tall white letters, so close you
cannot discern what they say.
Fourteen hundred feet above the city of dreams, you can see
the sweep of the metropolis, from the hills to the sea, and within
it the cauldron of struggle and strife that is Los Angeles. But the
eyes down below are staring at you, for you are atop the town’s
most famous monument, the ultimate symbol of fame, fortune, 2019 song “Falling.” She asks you not to reveal her secret route,
and the fantasy of moviemaking worldwide. which would be next to impossible for a neophyte to navigate.
You are standing atop the Hollywood sign. The warning signs begin almost immediately, erected over
You are not supposed to be here. the years by the city and residents fed up with the pilgrims traips-
Normally, you would be chased away, fined, and possibly ing across their lawns and disturbing their peace.
even arrested. For the sign may be the only monument in the “No Access to the Hollywood Sign,” reads the favorite, which
world that keeps visitors out instead of welcoming them in. Get- seems to adorn every street corner.
ting to the sign is almost as tough as breaking into Hollywood, “Park Closed.”
and almost as treacherous: a vertical climb that requires nerves, “Caution! Rattlesnakes in Area.”
C O U R T E S Y H O L LY W O O D S I G N T R U S T. P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : DA N W I N T E R S , S I G N O N A H I L L ,
tenacity, and, like everything in this town, connections. There are coyotes, gray foxes, bobcats, and until recently
But to understand its significance and its story, you have to a mountain lion—the famous “P-22,” which prowled the area H O L LY W O O D , C A L I F O R N I A , 1 9 9 1 , T O N E D H A N D - C O LO R E D G E L AT I N S I LV E R P R I N T.

start, like everyone who has gazed upon it and dreamed of star- around the sign until his death last year.
dom, not at the top, but at the bottom. Some say the rabid tourists are the most dangerous creatures
of all. “For the tourists it’s not about viewing the Hollywood
sign, it’s about viewing themselves with the

T
HOSE WHO KNOW how to get to the sign don’t tell; and Hollywood sign in their photos,” says Anne-
LOCATION,
those who tell don’t know. LOCATION, Marie Johnson, an actor whose extensive
“We don’t particularly promote this,” Diana Wright LOCATION! screen credits range from In Living Color to
Originally
says of the drive she’s about to take you on. Wright conceived as
Grey’s Anatomy. A second-generation Ange-
is on the team that handles PR for the Hollywood Sign Trust, a billboard leno, Johnson understands the sign’s appeal
an organization of nine men and women, some appointed by for a tony all too well. She remembers an old episode
new real estate
the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The trust’s mission, development of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball stands on
she says, is “to preserve and promote the Hollywood sign as a called a hotel room balcony and gazes directly at
Hollywoodland,
symbol of hopes and dreams and international filmmaking.” the sign was it. “It stuck in my brain: how important it
Early one summer morning, she picks you up in her dusty built out of was for Lucy to be near the Hollywood sign,
telephone
Nissan at the gateway to the sign: Beachwood Canyon, a quaint poles and sheet which represented her constant desire to be
hamlet whose café was made famous by Harry Styles in his metal. in the business. Just like everyone else.”

74 VA N I T Y FA I R
 “I think of going to the sign as the ultimate VIP experience
because it’s closed off. Not even celebrities can come up here,”
she says. “It’s really the people that want to support and protect
Hollywood and believe in the sign and the park and the mission.”
Along the way, you see a woman gazing up at the letters, her
eyes closed and her arms outstretched, as if praying towardMecca.
And you meet Azhanti Williams, a TV production coordina-
tor who says she has a secret route to get behind the sign, where
she regularly hikes to celebrate the realization of her lifelong
dream of moving to Hollywood and launching a life here. “It’s
like, Wow, I’ve finally made it. I’m working in the industry. I’m
living in Hollywood!”
Far below, on Hollywood Boulevard, tourists are lining up
to pay $199 to ride to Lake Hollywood Park, one of the favorite
(but distant) public viewing points, in a Ferrari or Lamborghi-
ni. The proprietor of this thriving tour business is John Gabin,
a crêpe maker from France who moved to LA in 2001 to open
restaurants. Soon he began hiking up to view the sign and
dreaming up ways to build a business around it: “People want
to see glamour,” he says. “They want to see movie stars. They
want to see the Hollywood sign, and I only saw people doing it
in a big ugly bus. So I was like, Let’s do it in a glamour way, in
Ferraris and Lamborghinis.” His company, I Ride Like a Star,
was born.
“It’s just, uh, the symbol that highlights the Hollywood indus-
try,” a young woman stammers, attempting to explain why she
and a friend are climbing into a Ferrari for a 30-minute ride to
the sign. “Like when I think of Hollywood, the sign pops up in
my mind. So that’s why I want to do it!”
But when their brief time in those $250,000 Italian luxury
cars is up, the windblown tourists are back on foot on Hollywood
Boulevard, under the sign’s unblinking gaze. For some, it must
surely seem to be laughing.
Over time, the sign evolved from the dream factory’s weather- For something so huge, the sign is impressively elusive. The
beaten emblem into an ultra-commercialized global tourist des- intrepid souls who brave the elements and rattlesnakes to clam-
tination that’s a nightmare for the neighbors. “It’s being used as ber directly up the hillside trails toward the sign itself are turned
a billboard for things like the Los Angeles Rams football team. away by gruff voices from the sky: the two cops at the top.
The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce transformed the sign
with panels to say ‘RAMS HOUSE.’ I believe it’s a slippery slope.
Can anyone advertise if they have the money?” says Johnson. “If
you speak to the residents who live below it, you’ll get an earful
of how their lives have been disrupted.” IN 1932, PEG ENTWISTLE CLIMBED
But you aren’t here to police, patrol, criticize, or debate.
You’re here to celebrate this icon, which turns 100 this year. It TO THE TOP OF THE H, THEN
first blinked to life, illuminated by thousands of light bulbs, in
1923. To kick off the sign’s centennial year, the Hollywood Sign
LEAPT AND ROLLED DOWN THE
Trust recently announced that a visitor center will at long last be HILLSIDE TO HER DEATH.
built to offer a “close-up experience” of the monument, though
when it will open and where it will be have yet to be determined.
Your guide, Wright, grew up in LA and long ago internalized
the sign’s cardinal rule: Admire from a respectable distance. She is
so devoted to burnishing its image that she carries a can of white “There are police stationed up at the top of Mount Lee 24
paint and a brush in her trunk for small patch jobs. hours a day to kick people off,” says Wright. “Do you want to
Today she is going to take you all the way up, onto the ridge see a security cage?”
where the sign stands on Mount Lee, named for the pioneering She stops her Nissan at a cage filled with security devices.
LA entrepreneur Don Lee, who sold Cadillacs and owned a radio “This is where we have the cameras, infrared motion sensors,
station whose tower stood on the peak. Once at the summit, and a two-way radio system to deter people from climbing to
she’ll hand you a rope and show you how to access the magical the sign. The majority of people are just curious tourists who
letters on the hill. might have gotten lost. But every once in a while we get some-
But first, the drive. one who likes to go rogue.”

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 75
 Several rogues are scurrying across the hillsides now, evad- called Hollywood, with a poster of the head of this huge evil
ing the security cameras and even the police. But not the eagle man, who ironically looks a bit like Harvey Weinstein, with
eyes of Diana Wright. the word Hollywood embossed upon his head. His mouth is
“Excuse me!” she shouts from her car window. “You are open and all these women who are about to get chewed up are
trespassing! You, in the white shirt! Turn around! You’re in a heading into this open mouth.”
closed area!” Around this time, five city power brokers dream up an exclu-
The trespasser turns around and descends obediently, but sive new housing development high above the hullabaloo, free
others are even higher, racing up the hillsides, determined to from the crowds, criminals, and bloodsuckers down below.
somehow get to the sign. “Where will you live when the second million has come?”
“I’m going to call the cops on her,” Wright says of one brazen asks an early advertisement, referring to LA’s then booming
interloper. population. “Will your family enjoy a delightful home in the
A siren followed by a loud voice from on high suddenly fills clean, pure mountain air…with its wonderful climate, broad
the hillsides. “You are trespassing!” a cop’s amplified voice open spaces and plenty of ‘elbow’ room—or—will you live in a
declares. “There is no hiking on the trail! Walk back down the ‘dwelling’ in the flat, uninteresting houses-in-a-row sections of
same road! You’re in a fire district area. Thank you.” the City, your family’s freedom hampered by this maelstrom
They turn around and retreat, but they’ll be back, in ever of human existence?”
greater numbers and with even fiercer determination to touch “It was also a place for whites to get away from Black and
the untouchable, all believing they can somehow make it theirs. brown people in the inner city,” says Braudy. “They didn’t say
it explicitly, but that was the imagery of the advertisements.
There was one ad of a young white couple in a roadster, driving

S
AY YOU’RE AN aspiring actor. Or a tourist, a businessper- up out of the city, filled with trolley cars and smog, and up to a
son, or just a traveler passing through. Whatever your shining city on the hill.”
objective, you long for a touchstone, something that Up there, the sun is bright. The streets are clean. And the
announces and celebrates your arrival. In New York, it’s houses are built right into the hill.
the Statue of Liberty; in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge; The name of this suburban paradise: Hollywoodland.
in Paris, the Eiffel Tower: all accessible, embraceable, inclusive Naturally, the grand opening requires an ad campaign. But the
public monuments. In Los Angeles, it’s just a word, the name man who conceives it—a 26-year-old Angeleno named John D.
of the nebulous neighborhood it looks down upon. Nine white Roche—never intends to create an icon. According to a 1977 Los
letters splayed out in a slightly crooked but somehow majestic Angeles Times article, all he wants is a mock-up for a brochure. He
formation on a hill. sketches the hillsides, the home sites and equestrian trails, the
Its birth is a happy accident, a testament to serendipity in broad streets and rolling avenues. Then, as an “afterthought,”
the city where, to borrow the title of Sandra Tsing Loh’s 1996 he pencils in the development’s name, Hollywoodland, across
collection of essays, Depth Takes a Holiday. Built out of a con- the mountainside above.
glomeration of telephone poles and sheet metal, the sign isn’t He takes his sketch to one of the developers, Harry Chandler,
meant to last two years but somehow endures for a century. “The the all-powerful publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Chandler
only monument in the world that started out as a billboard,” as sees pay dirt in the name in pencil on the hillside. It isn’t merely
Hope Anderson, director of the documentary Under the Hol- a word to Harry Chandler; it’s a sign. He wants it big and blazing,
lywood Sign, once put it. so that motorists can see it all the way from Wilshire Boulevard
To understand its beginnings you have to go back to the early two miles away.
1920s, to a Los Angeles then, as now, swarming with dreamers John Roche goes to work to create the sign: 13 big, bold,
and schemers from all corners of the earth. no-nonsense white letters, each 45 feet high. No permits,
“Don’t Try to Break Into the Movies in Hollywood” a deliberations with planning boards, or environmental reviews
Chamber of Commerce newspaper advertisement warns at are required. “I don’t think the word ‘environmentalist’ was in
the beginning of the Roaring Twenties, under a photograph of the dictionary in 1923,” Roche will later say. Almost a hundred
a mob stampeding an employment agency, all seeking work Mexican laborers with mules march up the hillside and dig holes
as movie extras. “Out of the 100,000 Persons Who Started in the rocky terrain. Into the holes go telephone poles, upon
at the Bottom of the Screen’s Ladder of Fame, ONLY FIVE which are fastened the sheet-metal letters, painted white. The
REACHED THE TOP.” cost: $21,000.
Around the desperate fame-seekers, the city roars, real-life The sign is lit for the first time on December 8, 1923. It basks
dramas competing with the pyrotechnics onscreen. In 1921, in the glow of 3,700 20-watt light bulbs. The Hollywoodland
the comic star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is accused of killing a sign is “believed to be the largest in the world,” The Los Angeles
young actress at a boozy party during Prohibition. (He’ll even- Evening Express reports. The denizens of the city below revel
tually be acquitted, but not before his career is ruined.) In 1922, in the light show on the hill, the massive letters spelling out
the silent-film director William Desmond Taylor is found shot first “HOLLY,” then “WOOD,” then “LAND,” and finally,
in the back. Hollywood’s reputation for decadent depravity after a pause, “HOLLYWOODLAND”—a phantasmagoria so
only grows as the years pass. “In 1923, the Edgar Rice Bur- extravagant that a full-time employee, Albert Kothe, is hired
roughs novel The Girl From Hollywood was published, about the to change the bulbs that constantly burn out. He works out of
horrible things that happen to women there,” says Leo Braudy, a hut behind the first L.
author of the book The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of The sign, along with the development it advertises, is a
an American Icon. “Also in 1923, Paramount released a movie smash hit. The lots, costing between $150 and $400 apiece, sell

76 VA N I T Y FA I R
quickly. The grand houses rise. And the residents move in, soon Murphy, who will make a pilgrimage to the Hollywood sign
to include actors Humphrey Bogart and Bela Lugosi, the mob- shortly after moving to LA in the late ’80s, tells Oprahmag
ster Bugsy Siegel, and business leaders and titans of all stripes. .com. “There were tours where they would show you which let-
Nine years later, on the night of September 16, 1932, an ter she jumped off and how she did it,” he’ll recall. The second
out-of-work actor will shatter the peace and quiet so dear to episode of the Netflix series Hollywood, cocreated by Murphy,
Hollywoodland. will show Darren Criss, Jeremy Pope, Laura Harrier, David
Her name is Millicent Lillian Entwistle, but she goes by Peg. Corenswet, and Samara Weaving climbing the sign—the ulti-
She is 24, with a flapper’s hairdo and a solid stage résumé, hav- mate metaphor for acting’s ladder of success.
ing appeared opposite the young Bogart. An 18-year-old Bette Entwistle becomes known as the Hollywood Sign Girl, a
Davis is said to have told her mother, “I want to be exactly ghostly symbol of all Hollywood’s failures. Her favorite scent,
like Peg Entwistle.” Now, though, Entwistle is divorced and gardenia, is said to waft on the evening breeze.

“I THINK OF GOING TO THE SIGN AS THE ULTIMATE VIP EXPERIENCE

BECAUSE IT’S CLOSED OFF. NOT EVEN CELEBRITIES CAN COME UP HERE.”

depressed, either over her lying cad of an ex-husband—who Maybe she even cursed the sign. By 1939, seven years
deceived her by not revealing his previous marriage and child— after her death, the sign is a ragged wreck. Most of Holly-
or her struggle to replicate her success on the New York stage woodland’s lots have sold, and maintenance of the sign has
in the movie business. stopped. A torrential rainstorm demolishes the H from which
Her few months in town have been rocky. Acting jobs lost Entwistle leapt.
or abandoned. Movie scenes cut by the National Board of “It’s supposed to be temporary, a billboard, just sheet metal,
Review. Housing troubles. And, compounding the indignities, and so it gets ripped up,” says Braudy. “The Recreation and
financial woes so deep that she is forced to move in with her Parks Department considers it a public nuisance and wants to
Uncle Charles and Aunt Jane at 2434 North Beachwood Drive tear the whole thing down.”
in Hollywoodland. In April 1949, the sign’s first savior—the Hollywood Cham-
She tells them she is going to buy a book at the village drugstore. ber of Commerce—steps up as caretaker. The word “LAND”
Instead, she may well have walked up Beachwood Drive on is excised and restoration begins. The sign will now become a
the route you are traversing now, past the cute little gingerbread billboard not merely for homes but for dreams.
Hollywoodland Real Estate office, near the house Clark Gable It reads simply “HOLLYWOOD.”
once shared with Carole Lombard, and onto the now forbidden
trails leading to the sign.

A
No one will remember seeing her. Not hikers or pedestrians. S THE YEARS pass, the sign moves from supporting to
Nor residents. Not even Kothe, the light bulb changer. She bor- starring roles in movies, television, and, eventually,
rows his ladder to climb up to the H, then takes her final bow social media. Maybe you saw it in the opening credits
before the City of Angels, leaping from the letter and rolling of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, hovering over the young
down the hillside to her death. Will Smith as he whistles for a taxi to take him to his new home
Two days later, a woman calls the LAPD. She says she’s found in Southern California. Or in season four of Seinfeld, mocking
a jacket, a purse, and shoes beneath the Hollywood sign. Then Kramer’s dreams of fame and fortune after he travels to LA and
she hangs up—but not before saying she’s left the items on the ends up being wrongfully arrested for murder. Or in Quentin
steps outside the Hollywood station. Tarantino’s comic noir Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, taunt-
Inside the purse is a note: “I’m afraid I am a coward. I am ing a washed-up television actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his
sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago it would stunt double (Brad Pitt) as they try to make sense of the late ’60s.
have saved a lot of pain.” The sign beckons as a backdrop for love and lust. In Friends
Headlines blaze. “Actress Ends Life by Jumping Off...Sign With Benefits, Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake traverse the
After Failure in Movies” read The New York Times. “Suicide Laid sacred ground behind the sign, then sit together on the first O
to Film Jinx” adds an LA newspaper. until a cop in a helicopter orders them to “Get down!” In the
It’s difficult to separate truth from myth. Did she leap or fall? teen romance The Kissing Booth, late bloomer Elle (Joey King)
What was her motivation, considering her prospects for film and bad boy Noah (Jacob Elordi) lie naked on the hillside near
roles were improving? (Legend has it that “the very next day a the sign as the camera sweeps across the magical letters.
letter arrived in her uncle’s mailbox, offering her a role in a play Directors love to destroy the sign, perhaps in subconscious
about a woman driven to suicide,” says Wright.) revenge for their early struggles here. In the disaster movie San
However her life ended, Entwistle is elevated in death Andreas, a monster earthquake levels the Los Angeles landscape,
from tortured actor to legend—the “cautionary tale,” as Ryan bringing the sign tumbling down.

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 77
 Such a downfall seems unlikely, though. For the sign is eter-
nal, indestructible, forever in the sky and the minds of those
inspired by it.
“ ‘Just find the hills,’ we were told, ‘and you’ll know where
you are,’ ” says Stephen Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker and author
who drove out to Los Angeles in the summer of 1978 at age 29.
“No money. No prospects, except hope—which was echoed by
the sign.” He and his first wife, the screenwriter Naomi Foner,
pull into town with their eight-month-old baby, the future actor-
director Maggie Gyllenhaal, in the back seat. (Their son, the
actor Jake Gyllenhaal, will arrive two years later.) They move
into a small house just south of Melrose, “almost directly below
the sign,” he says.
After all these years, Gyllenhaal is still transfixed by the sign’s
contradictions. “Sure, there’s the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids,
Mount Kilimanjaro, the Great Wall of China, but we have our

“THERE IS NO HOLLYWOOD.
HOLLYWOOD ONLY HAPPENS WHEN
YOU SUCCEED. BUT THAT SIGN IS
REAL. THAT SIGN IS A GLOBAL
MAGNETIC FORCE FOR DREAMERS Kardashians, and dozens more. “You gotta come here with a
FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.” dream. You can’t touch the sign and you can’t touch the dream.
But it’s always there.”
She looks skyward as if staring up at those nine letters on the
hill. “It’s not at eye level. It’s always looking down at you and
saying, ‘Get your shit together or go home to mama.’ That sign
Hollywood sign perched precariously on top of hills that too is in your face all the time.”
often catch fire, marketing the magic of storytelling,” he says. And yes, she acknowledges, “the whole thing is a sham. What
“Nine letters. Silly, romantic, tenacious. Hopeful and almost is Hollywood? It’s a bunch of motels, hotels, and tourist shops.
dignified—but not quite. The perfect monument for the place People from all over the world come to Hollywood thinking they
that I proudly call home.” are going to see Scarlett Johansson walking down the street. The
“For me it was always the welcome signpost I returned to whole thing is bullshit. Hollywood is a storefront window with
when I wrapped a film. Home,” says two-time Academy Award no store. There is no Hollywood. Hollywood only happens when
winner Jodie Foster, who attended an elementary school directly you succeed. But that sign is real. That sign is a global magnetic
beneath the sign. “The movie business has been my family since force for dreamers from all over the world. It’s as universal as
I was three years old. I’ve never known anything else. When the Apple logo or the Nike Swoosh, the ultimate global symbol
I park my car off Beachwood and take the palm-lined hike up of everything these young kids want: fame, fortune, and the
to the fire trail behind the sign, I’m back in the ’70s. Back to the keys to a Malibu beach house.”
Polaroid color of my childhood nostalgia. Familiar and bitter- Elegance Bratton, the filmmaker, writer, and producer
sweet, just like the sign.” making his narrative fiction debut this year with the semiau-
Bobbie Chance is 18 years old the first time she sees the sign. tobiographical film The Inspection, first sees the sign in 2009.
It’s the mid-’60s, and she has just arrived from Miami with a Then a Marine corporal visiting a friend at Camp Pendleton
seven-year studio contract that will lead to roles in Pajama in San Diego, he feels the sign calling to him from afar. “We
Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, and other swinging beach flicks. She can’t be this close to Los Angeles without seeing the Hollywood
falls in love with the letters at first sight, and the sign becomes sign!” he tells his friend. So they jump into her car and drive
her lucky North Star, spurring her not only to make it in Hol- three hours to Beachwood Canyon. Staring up at the letters,
lywood but to inspire others. Bratton imagines “Marilyn Monroe, Sidney Poitier, Madonna,
A P P H O TO / L E N N OX M C L E N D O N .

She becomes a Hollywood acting coach, goading and guiding and so many other icons” looking at this “concrete, tangible,
a multitude of wannabes in hopes of unleashing their potential. touchable symbol of Hollywood.”
“That sign stands for dreams,” she sighs in her Valley Village He has to get closer.
home office, whose walls are filled with pictures of celebrities A combat filmmaker accustomed to rocky terrain, he
who she says passed through or visited her Hollywood Actors begins the long climb, evading everything to reach the sum-
Showcase: Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Martin Lawrence, mit. And here, he reaches out and actually makes contact with

78 VA N I T Y FA I R
 and stare at it. I would say, You fucking bitch! It was like what
Dennis Hopper said in Blue Velvet: Don’t look at me! Don’t you
fucking look at me!”
He often felt the presence of Peg Entwistle. “Maybe they’re
not jumping off the sign anymore, but that sign still represents all
the darkness and sadness that this town has imparted on young,
impressionable people. I would look at the sign at two in the
morning and think about all of the broken dreams.”

N
OW YOU ARE almost there, riding up the circuitous
route, the sign peeking at you around every turn. You
think about all of the greats who have gazed upon it,
an unfathomable array of talent and tenaciousness,
producing and performing in the sign’s looming shadow. You
remember the icons, as humbled by the sign as the newcomers.
In the Baz Luhrmann biopic Elvis, Austin Butler, playing The
King, lounges, lip curled and determined for a comeback, in
the rusty tattered O of the 1970s sign, telling his crew, “When
I first came to Hollywood, I’d come up here and sit for hours….
The sign was beautiful then. And now, feels as though lots of
things are like that these days. Broke down. Beat up. Rotten.”
In 1978, with the sign once again on the brink of destruc-
tion, another savior rose up: Hugh Hefner, the priapic founder
of Playboy magazine. An authority on the power of symbols,
having turned a drawing of a bow-tied bunny into a globally
recognized logo, Hefner spearheaded a $250,000 campaign
the letters, feeling their power. “I was just blown away. All to save the sign. The amount was “oddly equivalent in terms
I could think about is, How many people who aspired to be in of inflation to the $21,000 the sign originally cost,” says Leo
the industry made the same trek that I did?” Braudy, but it’s enough for a renovation so thorough and suc-
Eight years “after actually touching the sign and realizing cessful that an engineer will say, “That’ll be there when the
what’s possible,” he releases his first short film, Walk for Me. mountain leaves. It’s there for good.”
Today, he lives in Beachwood Canyon, right beneath the land- And now you are there too, ready at last to see the sign up
mark where it all began. “It’s like when people go to Mecca, close. You pass through the fabled “gate,” whose name you
or the Vatican to look at the Virgin Mary, or the Louvre to see are forbidden to reveal. Once opened, it allows you to access
the Mona Lisa. Being able to climb up there was an influential a private road at the top of Mount Lee where you and Diana
experience for me.” Wright will traverse the rocky terrain straight down to the sign.
For some, getting too close to the sign is like getting too close She hands you a rope.
to the sun. “When we were in our backyard, we looked up at “We’re going to rappel down to the letters together,” she says,
this behemoth,” says the director and artist Aaron Rose, who holding out the rope for you to grasp as you go slipping and slid-
lived for five tortured years in a midcentury-modern house ing down the steep hillside.
hanging off a cliff directly beneath the sign. “It was challeng- At last you are there, standing amid the letters, reaching out to
ing. One of the largest tourist destinations on the West Coast. actually touch them. But from this vantage point they are too big,
But no infrastructure. Strangers walking onto the property to too close: mammoth walls of blinding, indecipherable white.
get a photo. Once, our security camera caught three girls in a Like a movie screen, the sign is best seen from a distance. “Pret-
convertible yellow Mustang who pulled into our driveway, took tier from far away, fairly ordinary up close,” says Jodie Foster.
their tops off, and posed in front of the sign.” You cast a nervous glance at the terrain below: It’s a very long
Sometimes, he would stare up at it and ask, Are you my way down. But you have made it to the summit and, like every
friend or are you my adversary? other fresh-off-the-highway interloper with the audacity to
As a director, he was in and out of work. believe you belong here, you want that photo.
KING OF When things were going well, the sign “Sunglasses or no?” you ask the keeper of the sign.
THE HILL
In 1978, Playboy
seemed to be smiling down on him. “Like “It’s Hollywood,” she replies. “Sunglasses.”
impresario fate had placed me in that house at the foot So you put on your sunglasses and you smile. Will the sign
Hugh Hefner of that monument of Hollywood success, smile back at you, miraculously replacing your vagabond clothes
teamed up with
actors Viviane and I loved it,” he says. But when he was with Oscar gowns and acceptance-speech tuxedos? Or will it
Blaine and Rita between jobs, the sign bore down upon curse you, standing in smug but silent witness as you are cast
Hayworth,
among others, him with an unrelenting glare. “It took on to the hinterlands?
on a $250,000 a human, almost like a godlike personality. Whatever your fate, the sign will still be there, blessing the
effort to save
the then I’d wake up in the middle of the night and town’s winners, mocking its failures, and beckoning a never-
dilapidated sign. sit at the outdoor table in my underwear ending parade of aspirants with the power of a single word. n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 79
80 VA N I T Y FA I R
 OUT OF THE FRINGE RIGHT,
A NEW VISION OF THE OLD FRONTIER
IS RISING—OFF THE GRID,
BACK TO THE LAND, “PROTECTING”
AN AMERICAN DREAM THAT
THEY BELIEVE TO BE THEIR OWN
By JAMES POGUE
Illustration by B R I A N S TA U F F E R

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 81
 as the dissident right. Tech executives
and crypto investors are creating secre-
tive groups to help people “exit”—a term
that has taken on almost mystical signifi-
cance in some circles recently—from our

THE BUFFALO WERE

liberal society, tech-dominated lives, and
fraying system. And there are grander

GRAZING BY THE HIGHWAY

plans, for whole secessionist movements
using crypto and decentralized autono-

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF
mous organizations to build whole mini
societies, many on the model of what

THE RICHEST COUNTY IN THE

Balaji Srinivasan, the former partner at
Andreessen Horowitz, calls a “Network

RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE

State.” (Wyoming recently became the
first state in the country to allow DAOs to

HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

incorporate as private companies.)
These ideas used to be at the fringiest
fringe of a worldview that sees our basic
It was a clear morning in the Tetons, and was living in DC. “I was afraid of being political battle lines shifting from left-
with binoculars it was possible to see all thrown into a concentration camp. I know right divisions toward a rebellion against
the way across the valley known, since that sounds crazy.” globalization, against the notion that the
prehistory, as one of the most secure and “I was with my friends and I was like, massive market- and tech-driven change
comfortable little basins in all of the Moun- ‘Well, we’re kind of fucked,’ ” she said. that we’ve been living through really rep-
tain West—named, for one of the first “And they’re like, ‘Well, let’s choose a red resents progress. But this dissident-fringe
white trappers to winter there, Jackson’s state to go take over.’ And I was like, ‘Well, view has rapidly become mainstream on
Hole. The landscape may have looked like I have a place in Wyoming we can go.’ ” the right, in part through the dire warn-
wilderness to the caravanning tourists in She is a proud conservative who views ings of a disintegrating global system
$200,000 Sprinter vans and thousands the corporate elite as enemies of Amer- shared almost nightly on Tucker Carlson
more in athleisure who now flood Teton ica, and believes that we’re on the cusp Tonight, and—significantly—through
County year-round. But it is also a kind of of a populist uprising against the brand coded signifiers broadcast by Repub-
hyperreality of money—tens of thousands of transnational capitalism championed lican politicians trying to capitalize on
of acres and hundreds of millions of dol- by Republicans for most of the last half- the populist ferment, most obviously
lars worth of conservation easements—in century. Her politics have marked her, at Ron DeSantis, who gave a speech titled
what may be the world’s most unequal least to the minds of people who share “Florida vs. Davos” to the National Con-
political jurisdiction. Above the ospreys her worldview, as a bit of a class traitor in servatism Conference in September.
and eagles, there was a constant traffic of their emergent epochal struggle against “The United States is a nation that has an
small jets and private aircraft, humming the entire system. economy, not the other way around,” he
into and out of a town that has become “Maybe I’m biased—obviously,” she said. “And our economy should be geared
a modern refuge for people with remote said. “But if these organizations were run toward helping our own people.”
jobs and portfolios fattened by one of his- by people like my grandfather—he was a According to this view, the American
tory’s great asset bubbles, many of them devout Christian and actually cared about empire is in danger of fading, weakened
driven to the Northern Rockies by a worry this country and wanted to build this by a greedy and insulated oligarchy with
or wariness that the rest of America is on country up—that would be one thing.” more loyalty to their pals in London and
its way toward environmental, political, or “He literally led the way for this coun- Tokyo than to their fellow Americans. The
economic breakdown. Or some combina- try to be a superpower,” she said. “And we elite have driven regular people into a serf-
tion of the above. have seen a one-eighty now. That’s what’s like existence, putting money above every
A couple hours outside Jackson, I met interesting with a lot of these executives. other source of value or meaning: national
Catharine O’Neill, whose family once They’re now trying to, it seems to me, interest, local cultures, our long-term
owned these mountains. Her great-great- break the country down.” financial stability, even the environment.
grandfather was John D. Rockefeller, and O’Neill was “the key to understanding (Many young conservatives have sudden-
she worked in Trump’s State Depart- all this,” according to the former Trump ly adopted an almost mystical reverence
ment. Now, she was living in a modest staffer who put us in touch, not because she for nature, itself a form of protest against
little house outside of Casper, Wyoming, necessarily possessed any secret knowl- our money- and tech-driven world.) The
and was about to have her first child with edge, but because she captured so many of result is that now a lot of highly online
a home appraiser she’d met after moving the quiet currents swirling around younger coastal elites talk in much the same
there. She isn’t hiding out exactly, but, conservative circles these days. Wealthy way that backwoods militiamen arming
like many Americans these days, she and well-connected preppers and back-to- themselves against the new world order
has a sense that things are cracking up. the-landers have been moving west, many have been for decades. And vice versa.
“Election night we were talking, kind of them at least tangentially involved in Just before I left for Wyoming, a Sub-
of joking,” she said. At the time she the edgy online realm of thought known stack post by a writer who tweets under

82 VA N I T Y FA I R
the name Disgraced Propagandist titled possibility that more than 40 percent of and popularizer of the idea that America
“There’s Gonna Be a War in Montana” Americans still think is likely, even after is not and should not be a functioning
went viral. A dozen acquaintances sent the midterms produced an outcome democracy, flew in for the screening the
it to me, including my editor at Vanity that made our politics look surprisingly next day. In front of him was the former
Fair. The writer explicitly linked the anti- normal, by the eerie standards of today. Trump staffer and documentarian Aman-
globalist analysis to an anger that’s been “This is not a game,” she said. “Our da Milius, who was wearing an elaborate
swirling in the American West over the nation is barreling, once again, towards white dress and showing off her serpentine
land rush engendered by well-off coastal crisis, lawlessness and violence.” Amer- Bulgari bangles, with emeralds for eyes.
buyers, which has sent rents and home ica is “young in the history of mankind,” In front of her was Ali Alexander, the
prices spaceward, forcing people to move she said, “And yet we’re the oldest Stop the Steal organizer who had, along
away or become homeless. Longtime democracy in the world. Our survival is with Jones himself, helped put on the rally
locals talk about being “colonized” by a not guaranteed.” that devolved into the Capitol invasion.
flood of rich liberal newcomers. A big mustachioed oilman named Tex Ariel Pink, the chillwave musician who
“On one side you have global interests McBride, who ran a pro-Cheney super was an indie kingpin before it got out
imputing their values, importing cheaper PAC, was watching from the back of the that he’d been at the January 6 rally (he
labor, hollowing out Montana’s attractions crowd. I asked him what he thought was left before anyone breached the Capitol),
and selling them to an international bour- coming next for America. “My answer’s was there too. So were Mike Cernovich
geoisie for maximum profits,” went the not fit for the record,” he said. But he went and Anna Khachiyan, the cohost of the
post. “On the other side you have the new on anyway. “I think we’re fucked.” formerly left-wing podcast Red Scare.
underclass. Not the friendly Chris- Glenn Greenwald hosted the question-

T
tian country folk of times past. HE SO-CALLED DISSIDENT right is and-answer session with Jones and Alex
And not Cowboy Hat Republican a world of thought where catego- Lee Moyer, the film’s director. Greenwald
Rancher Dad either. No, these ries get scrambled. It shares space looked out at the room, beaming, and
are a new kind of country per- with the more buttoned-up poli- described the gathering as a “merry band
son. Angry, exasperated, poor,” tics of the New Right, but these of misfits,” charter members of a disaf-
he wrote. “This group is acutely aware of days includes a whole range of unlikely fected counterculture. “We’re a bunch of
just who controls Bozeman and Big Sky, allies. The “scene,” as everyone calls it, weirdos and rebels here,” he said. “And I
and believe that the same people are com- is a small, cliquey, and status-obsessed just love that.”
ing for their territory. And they’re right.” world where even at parties people often Jones himself had been visibly upset
The Montana-based novelist Walter call each other by their Twitter handles. throughout the screening, getting up half
Kirn, who has become a hero in dissident Extremely wealthy tech types chat on a dozen times from his front-row seat
circles, called it “immaculate bullshit” Signal all day with hustling writers and to escape backstage. “I couldn’t watch
and suggested it had been written by smugly racist bodybuilders and “ratio- myself through some of that,” he said
someone hoping to inflame liberal fears nalist” sex workers, and the simple truth during the Q&A. “I looked like Jabba the

“At the END OF THE DAY,” says Paul McNiel, “if you’re not willing to
SHOOT FEDERAL AGENTS, then you’re NOT SERIOUS about it.”

of rural revolt. But it captured a moment. is that many people tend to think America Hutt on PCP.” He kept apologizing for
It was the same moment in which Liz as we once knew it is already pretty much his conspiracy theories about the Sandy
Cheney, Wyoming’s lone congressional gone. “Who even needs a civil war,” one Hook killings without seeming to want
representative, found herself losing her scene fixture texted me recently, “when to actually say that he was apologizing.
primary race in an election in which her the institutions are doing such a good job “A lot of that stuff I say,” he went on, “it’s
opponents cast her as an almost perfect of delegitimizing themselves?” like I drank a bottle of vodka, I’m smoking
expression of the kind of elite oligarch This scene was very much on display in cigarettes, and you’re just talking. I don’t
with no true local roots or state loyalty. Austin, where in July I went to see the pre- know what the hell I’m going to say.” At
I arrived in Wyoming just in time to miere of Alex’s War, a documentary about the after-party, at another swank Austin
attend her concession party. Cheney’s Alex Jones. The night before the screen- hotel, he grinned next to a cart of Cham-
father looked on, tight-lipped, stand- ing, Futo, a software company started by a pagne bottles and posed for photos with
ing next to a carefully placed hay bale founding investor of WhatsApp and dedi- well-dressed young fans.
at stage left, as she conceded at twilight cated to fighting “tech oligopoly,” hosted There’s a story that Jones has been tell-
among a small crowd of well-heeled sup- a swank cocktail party on the roof of the ing these last 30 years, as he rose from a
porters dressed in haute-Western finery. downtown Marriott. Curtis Yarvin, the local curiosity on public access television to
She too talked openly about civil war, a intellectual godfather of the dissident right someone who claimed, by the time of the

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 83
2016 election, to be pulling in more unique be the perfect slave at the mercy of finan- as she talked about how she no longer had
viewers than every cable news network in cial speculators. The perfect consumer.” any hope of being able to buy a house to
America combined. And it has risen from But it’s not just the right. Even figures live in with her daughter. Too many oth-
the sort of thing that only kooks and rural in the Democratic Party seem to be com- er people were looking for a small-town
militiamen talked about to become the ing to the conclusion that globalization feel, space to roam and be in nature, a
grand narrative at hand. “I don’t know who presents a deeper problem than anyone life that felt calm and sane. “They don’t
is going to be in the White House on Janu- wants to talk about during our overheated want to be in the cities anymore. And
ary 20, 2021,” he’d said, hours before the elections. President Joe Biden’s national I don’t blame them.”
January 6 rally he helped organize. “But security adviser Jake Sullivan has been on She said she’d gotten into an argument
I do know that Joe Biden is a globalist.” a subtle journey of discovery, talking about with some investors from Atlanta just a
Resistance to “globalism” is a new orga- how our headlong rush into globalization few days before. “I said to them, you’re
nizing force of right-wing politics. “These may have been misguided. In Novem- gonna have to make housing for people
people at the World Economic Forum,” ber, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy who are going to wipe your asses,” she
DeSantis told the National Conservatism published a piece in The Atlantic titled said. “Everybody deserves to choose
Conference in September, “they just view “The Wreckage of Neoliberalism,” using where they want to live, but people that
us as a bunch of peasants. I can tell you, a phrase that, on the left, critiques much are in the elite, in their heads, they don’t
things like the World Economic Forum the same system. “By accentuating a pro- think that. When did that happen?”
are dead on arrival in the state of Florida.” family platform of economic nationalism I had versions of this conversation
It could have been Alex Jones talking. salted with a bit of healthy tech skepti- dozens of times over the next few weeks.
If you believe this story, marking your- cism,” he wrote, “Democrats can build “The only fix to what is happening right
self as a “nationalist,” as many Republican a new coalition that sells in the parts of now,” a man from tiny Augusta, Montana,
politicians now call themselves, or a our society that have suffered under, and told me, “is gonna be if we drag that real
“localist,” as The American Conservative— grown tired of, the neoliberal consensus.” estate agent who is selling away the soul
house organ of the anti-globalist Last November, The Wall Street Journal of this community down Main Street with
right—proudly describes itself, this fram- ran a slideshow describing “The Messy a chain.” I stopped to fish off the Green
ing explains why our society seems to be Unwinding of the New World Order,” River, between Pinedale and Jackson
spinning apart: The relentless power of depicting a pullback in international Hole, and ended up chatting with a moth-
markets has worked its way into every part investment since the high times before the er and her adult son who were living out
of our lives, breaking down traditional 2008 financial crash. “New world order” of a camper, having been priced out of
cultures and modes of life, forcing us to was once famously uttered by President rural California. “What’s going to happen
live drone-like lives ordered by our phones George H.W. Bush, and it described a sys- when there’s nowhere left affordable to
and credit scores, leading to the mass tem built on the expectation of more or go?” the mom asked. “There’s gonna be
export of jobs overseas, the destruction of less constant economic growth, American a war,” the son said casually.
the natural world, an internationalist for- military power as stabilizing force, and I’d been invited to the annual Jackson
eign policy that costs trillions of dollars ceaseless technological development, to Hole Land Trust Picnic, billed to me as
and thousands of lives, and even the allow the world to pay for the cost of build- “the most glamorous picnic on earth.”
destruction of institutions like the Ameri- ing it and the massive increase in global It was held 80 miles and a world away
can family farm. It is, like Marxism was population. It’s a kind of gigantic pyramid from Pinedale, on a ranch just south of
once for the global left, a story that is a scheme we all participate in—a “constant Jackson, where guests had to nose their
bible to all the other stories you need to revolution,” as the Israeli journalist Nadav vehicles through a small herd of cattle
understand the world. Eyal described it in Revolt, his best-selling blocking the dirt access road to get to
This politics is already reshaping account of the anti-globalization backlash. the field tents serving local meats, whis-
Europe, where Vladimir Putin keys, and wines. The land trust is at the

O
has made it clear that the inva- UR CONSTANT REVOLUTION and center of the local philanthropic scene. It
sion of Ukraine was intended to the response to it was on full dis- has secured conservation easements pre-
be a first step in smashing what play at the Corral Bar on West venting development on 55,000 acres of
you’ll hear sneeringly called the Pine in Pinedale, Wyoming— private land in a county where the federal
“globo-homo”—a term spiced town motto, “All the Civilization government already owns 97 percent of
with homophobia, used both in Russia You Need.” You can still smoke inside and it. This has been very good for the sur-
and on the American right to describe the night I was there, most of the clien- rounding ecosystems and very good for
a world transforming into a soulless tele was sunburned and foul-mouthed the private-jet class, who save millions in
landscape of chain stores and empty fly-fishing guides with endless ribald federal income tax. “Wealthy people out
hedonism. Just after Giorgia Meloni and anecdotes about the private-jet types they here tend to do conservation easements
her right-wing coalition won elections in cater to. A sticker above the bar reads “My as a financial tactic,” as one land trust
Italy last September, a video ricocheted Wyoming Has An East Infection.” expert put it to Justin Farrell, the author
around the spheres of the dissident right “I want to put the blinders on, but you of the book Billionaire Wilderness. At least
and the social media feeds of some highly know what? It’s going to happen,” a richly one member of this class of “new Rock-
placed Republicans. In it, Meloni says, tattooed grandmother named Cathryne efellers” has made a sport of it, flying a
“When I am only a number, when I no told me. “It’s happening everywhere,” helicopter each summer to scout a new
longer have an identity or roots, then I will she said, just before she burst into tears parcel to buy.

84 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Meanwhile, the town has an underclass way of saying that it is money derived Hungary, respectively. He wanted to cre-
of service workers, largely Latino, with from having money. He described how a ate “somehow, some sort of convening
little but cramped and irregular hous- “location-neutral” economy dominated authority, for conferences and stuff like
ing, a pattern now common in wealthy by a small elite had transformed a place that, so we can get ideas like that out there.
towns in the West and across the coun- that, until recently, had still been remote Nobody’s doing it right now.”
try. In Ketchum, Idaho, the town council enough to retain a cross-class community “Nobody’s doing it,” Farage said as he
recently considered legalizing camping in character. “These people are getting paid nodded along, seeming to have trouble
the city park—which would have created a ton of money, they can get whatever ser- getting a word in. “It’s a global revolt,”
a government-sanctioned shantytown for vices they want online, and they can have Bannon said. “It’s a zeitgeist. We’re on the
service workers who can’t afford to live all these bodacious ski hills,” he told me. right side of history. But it’s going to need
where they work. “And so you get all these people who are the mode of power.… The ideas have to
The crowd at the picnic had the same like, okay, great, we’ll buy up a pool of come in more sharp focus, the economic
turquoise jewelry, big hats, and effort- homes and jack up the rent, and it’s just ideas, the political ideas, right.”
fully folksy manner that colors Western become another money pot to them.” I’d been hoping to meet with Bannon
high society in every town from Santa Fe The process is unfolding across the when I left Jackson to link up with O’Neill,
to Sun Valley. Everyone I spoke to was expanse of the Greater Yellowstone the Rockefeller farmer. She had told me

“I also SPEAK WOKE and have all the LEFT-WING FRIENDS,”

Fredrickson told me. She VOTED FOR HILLARY CLINTON.

uncomfortably conscious of what the region, the closest thing to a large, intact that both Bannon and David Bossie, the
town had come to symbolize—a place for ecosystem left in the lower 48 states, head of Citizens United, were coming to
an elite to playact at rugged Americana. which encompasses towns like Bozeman town for a “movie night” hosted by the
The average home price in the county is and Livingston, Montana, both undergo- state Republican Party, which had been
now $4 million, and the median income ing their own upheavals. No one talked taken over by a die-hard Trump faction
is $420,000. Shawn Smith, the absurdly about any of this during Cheney’s primary, led by a man named Frank Eathorne, who
handsome chairman of the land trust’s the highest-profile election Wyoming has was reportedly at the Capitol on January 6
board and the founder of an environ- ever seen. “What makes it sad is that can- and who revved up crowds by saying he’d
mentally minded hedge fund, said, “I didates who want to run in Wyoming are “run through barbed wire” for Trump.
didn’t come to Jackson to change Jackson. preening and dancing for outside billion- The bitter congressional primary had
I fish, I hunt, I recreate, my wife works aires instead of addressing what people passed, but there were still strange machi-
for a nonprofit,” he said. “So I see that are actually worried about,” a longtime nations at work. Jennings had wondered
and wonder how it’s changing.” He was Wyoming politico named Rob Jennings aloud how the state party had been “taken
a Republican and a Brown graduate. “The told me. “Everyone in Wyoming becomes over by people who carry clubs and knives,
wealthiest people in town used to drive almost like a subject or a service worker,” members of the Oath Keepers, crap like
around in pickups and Suburbans,” he he said. “You’re turning it into a service- that.” He suspected national forces were
said, which has changed, judging by the worker economy, and the only people who at work. “He doesn’t even have a base.
cars parked in the field. “But if you look at get heard are the political interests, the oil Nobody even fucking knows the guy.”
anywhere in the US, the socioeconomic interests, the billionaire interests.” O’Neill was friendly with Bannon,
structure is changing, and I think who had tried to persuade her to run

A
it’s easy to look at the West as a FEW YEARS AGO, Steve Bannon against Cheney. “I was sitting in Steve
microcosm of that.” had a coffee date with Brexit Bannon’s house January 12,” she said.
“The whole system is rapidly campaigner Nigel Farage. “If He told her, “ ‘You have to run, you have
unraveling,” town council mem- you’re interested…and I’ll fund to beat her, you’re going to be Trump’s
ber Jonathan Schechter had told it somehow,” Bannon told his girl,’ ” she said. “I was sitting there like,
me after he’d given a panoramic environ- English counterpart while a documentar- I don’t really want to take on this duty.
mental, political, and economic analysis ian filmed, “we’ll help knit together this That’s not really where I actually am.”
of what had made Jackson into an extreme populist-nationalist movement through- She laughed and said she was thinking,
example of what was off in all of Ameri- out the world.” “I’m about to be picked up in a helicopter
ca. It was strange to hear, coming from a “Guys in Egypt are coming to me,” Ban- and shipped to Guantánamo Bay.”
small-town city councilman, but these are non said. “Modi’s guys in India, Duterte, “I am so torn,” she said after a while.
strange times. Eighty percent of the per- we get Orbán,” he said—referring to the Her baby was due in a couple of weeks, and
sonal income in the county comes from then president of the Philippines and we’d been talking about her family, about
investment proceeds, which is another the current nationalist prime minister of Wyo m i n g , C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 1 4

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 85
READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP
A joyful Gloria Swanson
posed for Richard Avedon on
September 4, 1980, two months
before her book’s release.
 GLORIA SWANSON’s best-selling
autobiography was the product of a literary quadrangle with
all the emotional complexity—and sexual tension—
of her immortal comeback vehicle, Sunset Boulevard.
Breaking his silence four decades after helping
ghostwrite Swanson on Swanson, WAYNE LAWSON
sets the record straight about its fraught genesis
and the smear campaign that followed

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 87
PART ONE
On November 5, 1980, I attended a book party
at the home of S.I. Newhouse on Manhattan’s
Upper East Side. Random House, the publisher of
Swanson on Swanson, the book being celebrated
that day, had been purchased earlier in the year by Advance incarcerated during World War II. It ran
Publications, the giant media company owned by Newhouse from 1972 to 1974. In 1968 he married
and his brother, Donald. I don’t think I knew a single one of the the BBC radio announcer Maggie Clews,
large group of invited guests. and they had two sons.
The book was the autobiography of Gloria Swanson, who, Over the years Degas and I lost touch.
back in the silent-screen days, had been one of the highest-paid When I got the unexpected call from him
and most popular actors in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille’s big- in 1979, I was a freelance editor. Knowing
gest star. She was now 81 but looked 60. Not quite five feet tall, what I did of Degas’s success in England,
consummately stylish, she held court in the art-filled rooms that I was shocked when he informed me that
evening as the fancy crowd swarmed to congratulate her. he was working with Swanson on her
For an hour or so, I hugged a wall and nursed a drink, feeling memoirs. They hoped shortly to turn in
quite out of place. Then I saw Swanson making her way over the first 100 pages to Random House, and
to me. “Only you and I know who wrote this book,” she said. he asked if I would read them and give my
“Thank you.” opinion. I said I’d be happy to.
That was four decades ago, and only now do I feel comfort-
able telling the story surrounding it. Actually, it took four people I HAPPENED TO be a big fan of Swanson’s.
to write the book: Swanson, her sixth husband, her lover, and In September 1950, on my first trip to New
me. When Swanson spoke to me that day, she couldn’t have York, I went to Radio City Music Hall, and
imagined that the story was far from over, or that it would be the film on the enormous screen was
distorted almost beyond recognition in the course of time. Sunset Boulevard, her great comeback
picture. It knocked me out.
IT HAD BEGUN for me the previous year, 1979. According to the When I was a student in Paris in 1958
diary I kept then, on July 19 I had a call from Brian Degas, a and 1959, one of my French friends gave

P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : C O P Y R I G H T © T H E R I C H A R D AV E D O N F O U N D AT I O N . O P P O S I T E : C O N D É N A S T A R C H I V E S .
friend I had not seen in almost 20 years. Smart, likable, and very me a whole new insight into Swanson.
handsome, he had arrived in New York from Argentina in 1956. Guy Jacquet was an actor in Jean-Louis
We had two mutual friends, both former Princeton classmates Barrault’s repertory company, and one of
of mine: Chiz Schultz, a producer at CBS, where Degas worked, its productions that season was Madame
and Art McCormack, an account executive at McCann (then Sans-Gêne, the vintage comedy by Vic-
called McCann Erickson), with whom Degas shared an apart- torien Sardou and Émile Moreau about
ment for several years. a plainspoken laundress who rises in the
I had left New York the year before Degas arrived to get an court of Napoleon. Madeleine Renaud,
MFA at the writers’ workshop at the University of Iowa. After Barrault’s wife, was playing the title role.
that I spent a year in Paris on a French Government Scholarship Jacquet said Swanson had starred in a
and a semester at the Princeton Graduate School. In 1959 I gave silent-film version in the 1920s.
up on academia and returned to New York, where I spent most Swanson was on his mind because
of the next decade working on two encyclopedias published by Erich von Stroheim, the Austrian actor-
Grolier. Degas was a regular part of my circle of friends. director who had played the role of Max,
In 1963 he moved to England, where he became a writer Norma Desmond’s butler and former
and producer on a number of TV series, including The Saint, husband in Sunset Boulevard, had just
which starred Roger Moore. He also collaborated with the Ital- released a small part of a sprawling,
“WE HAD FACES!”
ian producer Dino De Laurentiis on several films, including Swanson was at the unfinished film he directed in 1928 called
the provocative sci-fi feature Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda. peak of her silent-era The Swamp, which starred Swanson. The
powers when Edward
Degas became best known as the creator of Colditz, the award- Steichen shot this released portion was called Queen Kelly,
winning series about the German castle where POWs were portrait in 1924. and Jacquet raved about Swanson’s

88 VA N I T Y FA I R
performance. “You have to see it. She Degas said he turned to friends in Los you, I know it would be a big success.”
plays a 16-year-old convent girl, and she Angeles for help, and the actor Claire He said she told him to go ahead and
was 30!” he said. I dutifully went to see Trevor had an idea. Her husband, Milton see if he could get a publisher interested.
the film and realized that Jacquet had not Bren, had directed Swanson in 3 for Bed- Degas confessed to me that he hadn’t had a
exaggerated. Swanson was incandescent. room C, the picture she made after Sunset clue where to start, so he checked out stars’
Now, 20 years later, I could hardly Boulevard. Swanson was an amateur biographies in a couple of big bookstores in
believe that a friend of mine actually sculptor, and Trevor suggested Degas New York to see which publishers to even
knew the extraordinary creature. contact her and propose mounting an approach. Then, without consulting any-
exhibition of her work. one or looking for an agent, he personally
ON AUGUST 23, Degas phoned to say he Once he met Swanson, Degas said, he pitched the idea to Jason Epstein, the top
would bring me the finished pages in had little trouble persuading her to show editor at Random House. To his amaze-
10 days. In the meantime, he said, he her sculptures in a London gallery. He ment, he said, Epstein offered $450,000
wanted to explain the project to me, so the even got her to make several new pieces. (some $1.8 million today), to be paid in
next day I went to the apartment he was It all went off perfectly. three installments—upon the signing of
renting on the Upper East Side. “What next?” Swanson asked him. a contract, upon delivery of the manu-
During the past year, he had copro- “How about writing your memoirs?” script, and upon the star’s completion of
duced Chapter 17, by the English “No,” she said. “Bill and I tried it once, a book tour.
playwright Simon Gray. After it flopped, and it didn’t work.” Bill was William Degas said he now sat with Swanson
he went to Hollywood to raise financing Dufty, her sixth and current husband. for hours every day, squeezing every juicy
for a big-budget motion picture. His bad Degas said he told her, “That’s because detail out of her about her triumphant
luck continued there. The backers sud- you didn’t go at it right. Your life should years in Hollywood, her six marriages,
denly pulled out. read like a novel. If I worked on it with and her long string of love affairs. Dufty
was writing the text.
“The book could be just the begin-
ning,” Degas said. It could be turned into
a one-woman stage show for Swanson, for
instance. Just her affair with Joseph Ken-
nedy, who took over her business in 1927
and almost ruined her, was ripe material
for a play or movie. He reminded me of
how big Swanson had been, how at her
peak she had only one female rival: Mary
Pickford. Her salary from Paramount in
1925 was $7,000 a week, or $98,000 in
2022 dollars. Before Sunset Boulevard she
had made more than 40 feature films, with
costars ranging from Rudolph Valentino
to Laurence Olivier. “So who knows,” he
said, “what this book might lead to?”

ON SEPTEMBER 18, Degas brought me the

first 100 pages. “Be very honest,” he said.
I was. I called him the next day and
said, “I don’t think you should show this
to Random House. It reads like an old
lady’s book: I feel sure that unborn babies
pick their parents? Come on, Brian. Every-
one thinks of her as Norma Desmond.”
“Are you willing to tell Gloria that?”
Two days later I was in Degas’s apart-
ment again, face-to -face with the great
star. “Brian says you have ideas for
improving the book,” she said. “What
are they?”
I said first of all I thought it was a mis-
take to start with her birth. She probably

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 89
 1.

3.

4. 5.

2.

6.

had the greatest comeback story in movie gave Henri and me a private railroad car all Dufty had sat next to Swanson at a
history. I suggested, therefore, beginning across America, and the day we arrived in medical conference. Swanson, a longtime
the book with Sunset Boulevard and telling Los Angeles, every important person in the natural-health advocate, was appalled to
her life as a flashback. industry was on the platform to meet us.” see the heavyset guy beside her dumping
“I don’t know why,” she said, adding, “Well,” I said, “that’s where I’d start more and more sugar into his coffee. She

1 & 4 . B O T H PA R A M O U N T/ KO B A L / S H U T T E R S T O C K . 2 . G I N N Y W I N N / M I C H A E L O C H S A R C H I V E S / G E T T Y.
“I hope you don’t think I’m anything like the book.” told him he was killing himself.
that awful woman I played in the film.” Several days later Degas called to say Over the next year, Dufty translated
“Of course not,” I said. “I just assumed Swanson accepted my idea, and they You Are All Sanpaku, the Japanese book
Sunset Boulevard was the high point of wanted me to edit the book. that popularized macrobiotics, and
your career.” “What about Jason Epstein?” I asked. sent a copy to Swanson, who invited him
“It was certainly not the high point!” “What about William Dufty?” to her apartment. The man she greeted at
3. CLIFFORD COFFIN, CONDÉ NAST ARCHIVES. 5.EVERETT COLLECTION.

she exclaimed. “The high point was the “Bill will write the first draft of what the door had lost 80 pounds, and he told
year I made Madame Sans-Gêne in Paris. Gloria and I give him,” he said. “We’ll her she was responsible for the change.
I was the first Hollywood actress to pro- give Jason Epstein your edit.” He was nearly 17 years younger than
duce and star in a picture in Europe, and she, separated from his wife, with whom
I married a titled Frenchman. When the DEGAS NEXT ARRANGED for me to meet he had a 20-year-old son. Before You Are
picture was finished, in 1925, Paramount Dufty. A journalist by training, in 1965 All Sanpaku, he had ghostwritten Lady

As Swanson put her life on pages, she started to inhale

the old glory days, when headlines referred to her by
her first name only and the world was at her feet.

90 VA N I T Y FA I R
 9.

7.

10.

8.

Sings the Blues, the memoir of Billie Holi- opened with an item about the wedding by a reporter named
day, who was a friend of his wife’s. Basil Woon, and that gave it a genuine flavor.
Dufty and Swanson soon became a It also gave me an idea: start chapters with epigraphs. I called
9. A N DY WA R H O L , G LO R I A S WA N S O N & W I L L I A M D U F T Y C . 1 9 76 -7 9 © 2 0 2 3 A N DY WA R H O L F O U N DAT I O N F O R

couple. In 1975 he published Sugar Blues, Michael Lutin, an astrologer friend, said I was editing Gloria
6 . K E Y S T O N E P R E S S /A L A M Y. 7. S A N T I V I S A L L I / G E T T Y. 8 . G A R Y W E A S E R / K E Y S T O N E / H U LT O N A R C H I V E / G E T T Y.

about the deleterious effect of sugar on Swanson’s autobiography, and asked if he could give me a quote
America’s health, and Swanson went on for an Aries born March 27, 1899, to open Chapter 6.
the book tour with him. They married the He came up with a passage from his book Saturn Signs, ending
T H E V I S U A L A R T S , I N C . /A R T I S T S R I G H T S S O C I E T Y ( A R S ) , N E W YO R K . 1 0. R A N D O M H O U S E .

following year, when he was 60. with: “The world’s big, and you will see it all. You’re an arrow as
Our meeting at Degas’s was very short. it travels between the bow and the target.”
Dufty made no effort to be cordial. He I passed this on to Degas, who reported that Swanson
said he was writing a new opening for was thrilled with it. I said in that case we would need lots of
the book, not acknowledging that I had STAR POWER high-powered quotes for epigraphs from important people in
1. A poster for Sunset
suggested it. He said that he would finish Boulevard, 1950. Swanson’s life, starting with Cecil B. DeMille. Degas said that
it in a week or so. 2. Swanson in would be easy; Swanson was a pack rat. She had saved every
Telluride, 1974.
I never saw him again. 3. In fur, 1949. 4. In article, interview, clipping, program, invitation, and letter,
Madame Sans-Gêne, enough to fill hundreds of boxes, which she kept in storage.
1925. 5. On set with
DEGAS BROUGHT ME the new opening Billy Wilder, 1950.
One week later I started editing. The schedule before us was
chapter on October 19. It was a remark- 6. Staring down a daunting. Degas had promised Epstein the full manuscript in a
able improvement, with Swanson not sculpted self-portrait, year. Six months had been spent on these first 100 pages, which
1978. 7. At home
only reliving her marriage to Henri, in NYC, 1980. 8. Her I cut considerably. We figured we would need to produce a chap-
Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye, future lover Brian ter a week for the next six months.
Degas, 1968. 9. With
and her triumphant return with him to sixth husband William
America, but also disclosing the abortion Dufty, late ’70s. IN EXPLAINING HOW the chapters he started bringing me were
10. Gracing the
she underwent in Paris in order to avoid cover of Swanson arrived at, Degas said Swanson was not getting along with
scandal and save her career. The chapter on Swanson. Dufty, so they stayed at opposite ends of the apartment. Degas

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 91
 Late one afternoon when I was writing the final pages,
Degas phoned. “Something amazing just happened, and
I have to share it with you. I just fucked Gloria!”

worked with Swanson at her end, getting her to tell everything Shortly after she left, however, things
she could remember, prompted by the material in her boxes of took a strange turn. Degas told me Dufty
files. Together they shaped her recollections as dramatically as had come on to him. When he went to
they could, and Degas gave the resulting narrative to Dufty, who pick up the latest pages, he said, Dufty
composed a rough typed draft. I didn’t question Degas about this had met him at the door in an open robe
strange-sounding arrangement, but I felt that he was not giving with an exposed semi-erection. Degas
me the whole picture. said he had pretended to ignore the
I usually did a heavy edit of Dufty’s work—frequently rewrit- creepy overture.
ing whole pages—and copied my edit out in longhand on legal A week or two later, things got even
pad pages. A typist made a clean copy, and Degas delivered it weirder. As usual, Degas brought me a
to Random House. new chapter, but he said Dufty had told
Each week Degas brought me the next chapter, and I read my him he did not want me to touch this one.
edit of the last one aloud to him. Occasionally he would interrupt It was a lengthy diatribe about Joseph
me, saying, “That’s a word Gloria would never use,” and together Kennedy. In addition to being a crook in
we would modify the language. business, Dufty said, Kennedy was a thor-
The longer this procedure went on, the more obvious it became ough degenerate who led a dissolute life.
to me that I was Swanson’s ghostwriter more than Dufty was. For “He said he didn’t want a word
instance, I proposed that we end the first half of the book where changed,” Degas said. “He wanted it to go
it started and repeat the flashback pattern, starting with Sunset straight to Jason Epstein. What shall I do?”
Boulevard for the second half. In spite of reservations Swanson “Give it to Epstein,” I said.
had about Sunset Boulevard, Degas convinced her I was right. Degas later reported Epstein’s reaction.
Swanson had routinely complained to interviewers over the “He asked if it was some kind of joke.”
years that, after the success of Sunset Boulevard, producers kept I have no idea what happened to those
trying to typecast her as Norma Desmond. pages. No part of them got into Swanson
From little hints Degas dropped, however, I began to sense on Swanson, and very soon Dufty was out
more and more strongly that the doppelgänger in the film was of the picture.
taking over. As Swanson put her life on pages, she started to
inhale the old glory days, when headlines referred to her by her WHEN SWANSON CAME back from the
first name only and the world was at her feet. At the same time, in spa, she stayed at first in a hotel on the
her Fifth Avenue apartment she was actually replicating Norma East Side. Degas said she would not
Desmond’s situation in Sunset Boulevard. move back into the apartment until
Just consider: In the movie Norma is revising the screenplay every trace of Dufty was gone, and she
with which she hopes to recapture her stardom with the aid of Joe insisted on having the place fumigated
Gillis (read: Degas), a handsome young man who is completely and the locks changed.
at her disposal because he is broke. (In the original script, it was The book still needed a conclusion, in
Norma’s memoirs they were working on!) With each passing day, the form of another flashback, starting
she falls more deeply in love with Joe, until she cannot bear to with Swanson’s being honored by the
have him out of her sight. And though Joe yields to her advances United Nations for a postage stamp she
out of gratitude and necessity, deep down he yearns for the day designed to commemorate the United
when he can return to the world of his contemporaries. Nations Decade for Women, followed by
On the premises, all the while, working as Norma’s butler, a résumé of her varied activities between
doing his part to keep her legend alive, is Max, the discarded, Sunset Boulevard and the writing of the
degraded husband: Dufty. memoirs. In those 30 years she had,
among other things, made three unsuc-
AT THE END of five months, Degas told me Swanson was going cessful feature pictures and a TV movie;
“I’M SELLING ME!”
to a spa in California for two reasons: She needed a rest, and she Swanson on Swanson acquired a whole new audience through
wanted to get away from Dufty. As he delivered the news, I got a was a critical her frequent guest appearances on tele-
and commercial hit,
distinct sense of relief in his voice. During Swanson’s absence, selling some vision—everything from Dr. Kildare to
he would be free to be himself. 450,000 copies. The Carol Burnett Show; starred in three

92 VA N I T Y FA I R
 “Who said my father said that?” she
snapped over one note.
“That’s what they gave me,” I said.
“But he’s your father, and it’s your book.
What would he have said?”
“Well,” she said, and her voice sud-
denly softened, “he would have said
something like…”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s change it.”
We spent hours rewriting a passage
about her famous scene with a live lion in
Male and Female, and about how meticu-
lously DeMille had directed every second
of it back in 1919.
Degas occasionally came in while we
were working, and it was obvious that she
was totally infatuated.
The day we finished, Swanson invit-
ed me to stay for dinner. She prepared
salmon and corn on the cob, and the two
of us sat in a small booth in her kitchen.
“There’s no mercury in that fish,” she
declared proudly.
Later, she offered dessert, but I said
I’d rather have a drink. “I’ll have one too,
to celebrate,” she said. “Fix me a little
glass of that green stuff.”
I poured a scotch for myself and some
crème de menthe for her. As we settled
back with our drinks, she said, “Thank
you. Now it’s all up to the critics.”
I remember two things I asked her
that evening and her arch replies. Was
she friendly with Greta Garbo, who lived
Broadway plays; and held contracts with In our subsequent talks, however, the blocks away in New York? “I don’t really
Neiman-Marcus and a clothing line called thrill he conveyed that afternoon, after know her,” she said. “I understand she
Forever Young to design and promote having had sex with the greatest star of just likes young girls.” How about Buster
women’s fashions. She and Degas pulled them all, could suddenly cool. Within a Keaton (a particular favorite of mine);
the necessary material from the files, and week or so he began to complain that he what was he like in real life in his prime?
I wrote the text. had lit a fire he could not put out. She had “We never socialized with him,” she said,
Ironically, that final block of time become rapacious, he said. Whenever adding, “Chaplin was my clown.”
covered her marriage to Dufty and her they were in a room alone together, she Within days Degas wrote me a check
association with Degas, but Swanson would start grabbing for his fly. He said it for my work, doubling the amount we had
did not mention anything about getting was mortifying. initially agreed on, and I don’t believe
rid of Dufty or falling in love with Degas. But he ran hot and cold—impressed I saw Swanson again until November,
and amused by Swanson one day and when the book was published.
LATE ONE AFTERNOON when I was writing annoyed by her the next.
the final pages, Degas phoned. “Some- SHORTLY AFTER THE party at S.I. New-
thing amazing just happened, and I have ON MAY 1, I completed the text. Degas house’s house, I went to Swanson’s
G . PA U L B U R N E T T/A P / S H U T T E R S T O C K .

to share it with you. I just fucked Gloria!” said he doubted if Swanson would read apartment, and she signed a dozen copies
He said it hadn’t been easy: “I’m hung like the whole thing. She not only read it but for my relatives and friends. I’m looking
a bull.” But he said it was thrilling: “You also attached hundreds of query notes at one of those copies now, inscribed to
know how critics always talked about her with straight pins to the typed pages. She my sister: “To Beverly Lawson, You have
eyes in her big love scenes? How sexy they and I spent the whole first week of June in such a wonderful brother. I’m jealous.”
were—liquid, luminous? Well, they were her apartment, incorporating her chang- I think that’s the day I met Swan-
just like that today!” es, as well as those requested by Epstein. s on’s older C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 1 2

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 93
A week with MAXWELL FROST, the youngest new member of Congress

BY ABIGAIL TRACY | P H O T O G R A P H S B Y K R I S TA S C H L U E T E R

94 VA N I T Y FA I R
 his “Swearing In Concert.” Kevin McCarthy was still in the throes
of negotiating enough votes to win the House speakership, so
the 118th Congress was on hold, and all the members-elect were
in political limbo. But the party went on. In a crisp, white wide-
collar shirt with subtle polka dots and a navy suit, Frost made
the rounds with ease. He is, simply put, cool—“probably is the
coolest member ever elected to Congress,” per Congressman
Ruben Gallego of Arizona. A drummer, Frost cofounded an
Orlando music festival before he ran for Congress. That night,
he toggled seamlessly between the roles of a selfie-snapping
politician and an emcee for the Brooklyn-based band Phony Ppl.
At 26 years old, the Florida representative is fighting hard not
to be put in a box. “I’m learning from the past, and I think it’s
easy for people to craft a narrative around you that can have oth-
er implications. So for instance, the biggest one we hear about
SHORTLY AFTER 7 P.M. on January 3, down a is like the Squad this and Squad that,” Frost said, a reference
cobblestone alley in the splashy Washing- to representatives Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria
ton, DC, waterfront known as The Wharf, Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar. “Then you might think that,
a steady pulse emanated from Union oh, someone like AOC only speaks with those four people or
Stage. Inside was a raucous scene: strob- whatever. But that’s not true.” Frost’s welcome to Washington
ing lights, high-top has been distinctly different from that of Ocasio-Cortez and the
tables covered with Squad. AOC was sworn into office in 2019, having participated in
A RAUCOUS
empties, the stagnant START a sit-in in Pelosi’s office with climate activists; some of her col-
smell of beer-soaked Max Frost spent leagues anonymously went to the press to paint her outspoken
floors. A backlit white his first days on activism and online tactics as divisive and self-promotional.
the job in the
sign near the entrance Capitol in limbo, Four years later, the number two and number three House
read “Tonight: Swear- unable to be Democrats are partying in celebration of Frost’s victory.
sworn in until
ing In Concert of Republicans Among those in attendance: two Cabinet secretaries, Marcia
Maxwell Alejandro agreed on Fudge and Deb Haaland; media figures Joy Reid and Symone
a Speaker.
Frost.” Inside, an Previous spread: Sanders-Townsend; Gallego and fellow representatives Steven
eclectic crowd—half Frost at his Horsford, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Ruiz, David Cicilline, Eric
dressed like they’d “Swearing In Swalwell, Jonathan Jackson, Jan Schakowsky, Darren Soto, and
Concert.”
just left meetings on Sheila Jackson Lee; and—notably—new House minority whip
Capitol Hill, the other Katherine Clark and House Democratic Caucus chair Pete
half like ’90s teens—filled the dance floor. Aguilar, security detail and all. Even the Reverend Jesse Jack-
“I am too old for this shit,” one attendee son made a brief appearance.
near the bar quipped with a laugh as In some ways, Frost’s reception on Capitol Hill is notable not
music thumped in the background. because of his age—former Republican mem-
Most people there were too old for this ber Madison Cawthorn, if not Gen Z, was also
shit—and that is, in a sense, what the party 25 when he took office—but in spite of it. His
was about. Elected when he was 25 years relationships with other politicians and politi-
old, Frost is the first Gen Z member to win “We just cal players seem more in line with a multiterm
a seat in Congress. His arrival on Capitol
Hill comes at a critical inflection point for
got old established leader than a freshman. “Brother
Maxwell Frost is awesome, double awesome
House Democrats. For the first time in two enough with some whipped cream on top,” Jackson Lee
decades, Nancy Pelosi, who is in her 80s, declared onstage. (Just minutes earlier she was
is no longer the Democratic leader—New and we are dancing with Frost. “She’s got moves,” he said
York representative Hakeem Jeffries, a
52-year-old Gen X’er, is. And despite his
already of the 73-year-old Texas lawmaker.) “I want to
be part of the Maxwell Frost movement.”
complicated record on progressive issues, here. “I’m really old, and I love it when Max gets up
Jeffries is ushering in a new generation at 25 and says, ‘I’ve been an organizer for most
of Democratic lawmakers, Frost among And I think of my life,’ ” Schakowsky said onstage. “Max
them. “It’s not like Gen Z has been wait-
ing to get into Congress. We just got old
that’s is the beginning, I think, of a new progressive
era in this country. He’s going to lead the way
enough,” Frost told Vanity Fair. “But the really the for many years.”
thing is that we just got old enough and we But first he needed to get sworn in. As the
are already here. And I think that’s really story: party wound down around 10 p.m., Frost took
the story: Gen Z isn’t waiting.”
At that moment, though, Frost was
Gen Z isn’t the mic one final time. “If you live in DC, now
you know how our parties are. Come to the next
waiting. There was no swearing in before waiting.” one. This one is over.”

96 VA N I T Y FA I R
H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 97
D
IGGING INTO A plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and hash representative of the generation.” Just as
browns at Pete’s Diner on Capitol Hill, Frost exuded generations before have touchstones of
weariness. Three days into what was supposed to be the identity—the moon landing, Watergate,
118th Congress, and all he had done was repeat Hakeem Jeffries’s the assassination of JFK, the space shuttle
name in Speaker votes. “I mean, I love Hakeem Jeffries,” Frost Challenger disaster, 9/11—a handful of
said. “It’s just a wild experience. [I’m] excited for once we get events played an outsize role in shaping
past all this bullshit and we’re like, actually legislating.” Later, he Frost’s worldview. He remembers watch-
acknowledged the chaos over the Speaker vote was just a window ing the Occupy Wall Street protests as
into the next two years under Republican control. He’ll likely a student; in Barack Obama, he saw a
be spending more time undercutting GOP messaging bills and president who looked like him; when
political investigations than legislating. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in a
The dysfunction, in a way, flattened his learn- Florida suburb roughly 30 minutes north
ing curve. After all, none of his colleagues have of his, Frost stopped running around
suffered through such a drawn-out Speaker his neighborhood playing with Nerf
fight. “I’m pretty lost right now, but everyone “Getting guns; when a gunman shot and killed
is, right?” He is adjusting. Self-described as “not
a morning person,” every night he transfers his
sworn in on 26 people—20 of whom were children
six or seven years old—at Sandy Hook
green congressional pin to the suit he plans to my fourth Elementary School in Newtown, Con-
wear the next day. He is still not used to being necticut, he threw himself into activism.
recognized by strangers, though it happens. day here He reached out to a Sandy Hook
As he walked through the U.S. Capitol Visitor
Center, a DC native wished Frost luck finding
after a fight teacher over Facebook asking how to get
involved and went to Washington, DC,
an apartment, referencing his tweet about strug- almost by himself at 15 years old to attend a vigil.
gling to sign a lease in DC because his “credit Frost recalled sitting around a hotel pool
was really bad.” He said he accumulated debt breaks out listening to Matthew Soto talk about his
while campaigning. For now, he is staying with a
friend but looking for a permanent place in Navy
on the sister, Victoria, one of the Sandy Hook
victims. “It just really hit me.… And that’s
Yard, so he can walk or scooter to work. House floor really where I dedicated my life.”
Frost is already pushing back on the idea Frost dropped out of Valencia College
that he represents his entire generation. “I’m is not the before his senior year to focus on organiz-
the first of this generation in this institution,
which is important,” he said. “The perspective
best first ing full time. (He has said he plans to go
back to school at some point.) He volun-
needs to be there, but everyone in Gen Z is the impression.” teered for Obama’s reelection campaign

98 VA N I T Y FA I R
“COOLEST and on the Hillary an exercise in progressivism. “I wasn’t trying to just shift the
MEMBER EVER
ELECTED”
Clinton and Bernie conversation. I wanted to actually win,” he told me. After winning
Frost in his Sanders campaigns. a competitive primary, Frost secured the general election with
Capitol Hill office. He did stints at 59 percent of the vote on a platform of abortion rights, Medicare
Opposite: The
congressman, MoveOn and the for All, and ending gun violence.
who cofounded American Civil Lib-

F
an Orlando music
festival, was at
erties Union. He was ROST’S CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE, 1224 Longworth, is
ease behind the arrested during the sparsely decorated. Above a black leather couch hangs
mic at his first- Black Lives Matter a large painting by Manuel Oliver—whose son Joaquin
day celebration.
protests. Running was among the victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Mar-
for Congress wasn’t jory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida—a
part of Frost’s plan. When other activists transplant from Frost’s campaign office. “Time to save lives!
first suggested he run for Florida’s 10th So get on board or get out of our way!” it reads. The books
Congressional District seat after Demo- strewn across a wooden coffee table in the center of the room
crat Val Demings announced plans to suggest the young congressman is doing his homework: Doris
seek higher office, his response was, “Hell Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times and Cornel
no.” At the time, Frost was content in his West’s Democracy Matters rest between issues of the Unquiet
role as the national organizing director zine, copies of Freedom Papers, and a visual history of the Back
for March for Our Lives. But, as he put it, to the Future movie franchise. His staff, a mix of people who
“they really planted that seed.” have known him for years from his activist and organizing roots
Ultimately, it was a conversation Frost and a handful of Hill veterans, are milling around, also waiting.
had with his birth mother that compelled At 1:40 a.m. on January 7, Frost was sworn in. When he took
him to run (Frost was adopted in 1997 by the oath of office, most of his friends and family had already
a mother who is a Cuban refugee and a returned home. In a phone call on Sunday, after the dust had
special education teacher and a father settled, Frost reflected that in the moment, “it was hard to take
who is a Kansas-born musician). “There’s it all in” in the wake of the chaotic, protracted Speaker battle.
times in life where there is a call to action. “Getting sworn in on my fourth day here after a fight almost
And you make a decision,” he said. “But breaks out on the House floor is not the best first impression,”
it’s everything before that that makes the he said, in reference to a dustup between Republicans Matt
environment in your life where you feel Gaetz and Mike Rogers, the latter of whom had to be restrained
comfortable enough to make the commit- by another lawmaker as tensions peaked in the final hours of
ment, where it hits you in the first place.” McCarthy’s battle for the speakership.
Frost didn’t just want to run for office as “I’m just anxious and ready to get to work,” Frost said. n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 99
THE APE S OF WRATH

NFTS LIKE BORED APE S WERE

SUPPOSED TO BE A FAST

TRACK TO BILLIONS. THEIR

RAPID DECLINE SAYS A LOT

ABOUT CRYPTO, CELEBRITY,

AND ART IN THE HYPE ERA

BY NATE FREEMAN
100 VA N I T Y FA I R H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3
IN SEPTEMBER
Sotheby’s offered up for auction a cache of 101 Bored Ape NFTs paper trail.) When FTX began supporting Ethereum NFTs on
as a lot in a special sale called Ape In! The digital art revolution its sales platform in December 2021, some of the Apes FTX had
had seemingly remade the art market in the months prior, and available to sell were clearly identifiable from the Sotheby’s sale
this was the finest collection of non-fungible tokens ever assem- three months earlier—one Twitter watcher posted a screenshot
bled by one of the world’s oldest auction houses, founded in 1744. of the platform that shows eight of the Sotheby’s-sold Apes.
Scrolling through the catalog of cartoon monkeys in funny hats (Sotheby’s declined to comment to Vanity Fair on the Bored Apes
and jackets, one could see a rare Bored Ape with solid gold fur sale.) That December 1, FTX announced the marketplace with a
and holographic eyes, and, rarer yet, an Ape with an unshaven video where the Apes from the Sotheby’s sale were front and cen-
face eating a piece of pizza. For digital art enthusiasts who aspired ter, to which two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry, who had been
to membership in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, this was a huge deal. recently named FTX’s “global ambassador,” responded, “Cool
The house was confident that Ape In! could ride the NFT announcement video, but my editing skills are missed,” add-
momentum that had been building since the previous spring, ing a crying-laughing emoji. When a new crypto denomination,
when Everydays, a work by the digital artist Beeple, sold at Chris- ApeCoin, debuted in March 2022, $8 million worth of the stuff
tie’s for $69 million—and the house could peddle these online was transferred from the digital wallet that made the purchase at
pictures of weird primates for a similar sum. A promotional video Sotheby’s back to Alameda Research. Alameda is the sister firm
showed the cartoon monkeys in DJ booths spinning EDM at a of FTX where, complaints allege, Bankman-Fried could park his
party in what appeared to be Sotheby’s global headquarters on missing billions. More fun with org charts: Yuga Labs has been
York Avenue in Manhattan. Young and ambitious specialists clear that it is not the entity that launched ApeCoin. That would
in the house’s digital art department, a brand-new endeavor, be something called ApeCoin DAO. It just so happens, as the tech
bullishly offered the lot at an estimate of somewhere between outlet The Verge reported in March 2022, that ApeCoin DAO gave
$12 million and $18 million. a good chunk of the early windfall of the coin’s launch to “Yuga
Instead, the lot sold for $24.4 million, smashing records Labs, Yuga Labs’ founders, and the VCs who backed the project.”
for Bored Apes. What newly minted patron of the digital arts And what firm was a prominent part of Yuga Labs’ $450 mil-
snagged this for eight figures? At the time, Sotheby’s wouldn’t lion fundraising round in 2022? FTX.
comment on the buyer apart from saying that among those heav- According to blockchain Twitter’s sleuthing, here we had a
ily involved in the bidding were legacy art collectors. major Yuga Labs investor inflating the value of Yuga Labs’ most
“We’re seeing a growing number of traditional art buyers get- valuable asset by bidding it up at auction. With Bankman-Fried
ting interested in NFTs,” Michael Bouhanna, cohead of digital now facing charges of fraud, money laundering, and campaign
art sales at the house, told ARTnews at the time. And why not? finance violations, his company’s trove of Bored Apes remains
Some thought these monkeys with headgear and lasers for eye- in the FTX wallet. The old link to the NFT collection now goes
balls could be worth billions in our not-so-distant virtual lives. to a claims agency.
Bored Ape Yacht Club, the moniker given to the 10,000 unique
iterations of the NFT created by Yuga Labs in April 2021 and ini-

S
tially sold for $190 a pop, tweeted out, “To the buyer, I think we
speak for everybody when we say: WELCOME TO THE CLUB.” BF AND THE Mystery of the 101 Apes (working title)
It punctuated the message with a skull-and-crossbones emoji, a is emblematic of the art world’s deal-with-the-
monkey emoji, and a boat emoji—to signify a yacht. devil approach to the NFT market. During the bull
Increasingly, it looks as though the buyer was not a traditional years—well, months, really—of the phenomenon,
art collector or even a human that other Ape owners could wel- auction houses built up their digital art departments
come to a club. The blockchain is an opaque-at-best space, but (Sotheby’s Metaverse, Christie’s 3.0, etc.) and even the galleries
in the months following the purchase, some close observers established separate wings to pump out NFT sales, most notably
settled on the idea that the buyer of the Apes at Sotheby’s was Pace Gallery’s Pace Verso. Hollywood talent agencies hired
FTX, the crypto exchange that recently crashed and burned, Silicon Valley–adjacent fixers to score content deals to make
resulting in an inquiry into the possible market machinations movie franchises from NFT IP. In 2021, according to the research
of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently charged firm Statista, an estimated $2.6 billion in art NFTs were sold,
with crimes related to the overnight disappearance of billions and anyone in the art market who hopped on that gravy train
O P E N I N G S P RE AD : AL AMY ( AL L P H O TOS ) .

of his investors’ funds in the fall. (Bankman-Fried has pleaded seemed to be getting a cut.
not guilty and, in a statement, said he “did not steal funds.”) As even a casual observer of the art world, Silicon Valley,
The evidence, per the blockchain Twitter hive mind, boiled or global finance might note, hype is very much not just a
down to this: A few months after the Sotheby’s sale, FTX had by-product but a full-on function of the markets at this stage of
listed the 101 Apes on a page detailing its NFT holdings. (While the game. For all the decentralized spin and non-fungible hot air,
a number of interested watchers pieced all this together, Conor the most innovative trait of NFTs—and the shrewdest play by
Grogan, a director at rival exchange Coinbase, presented a their evangelists—has been their harnessing of the world’s great
particularly digestible version of the extremely Web3-style engines for wealth speculation. It has been a phenomenon that

102 VA N I T Y FA I R
2021,
is part Art Basel Miami most famous fans. The 94-page complaint reads like an episode
Beach, part Davos, part of Entourage set in the midst of the crypto-crazed early ’20s,
Burning Man. In the starring a Mad Libs grab bag of rappers, zeitgeist hitters, and
months that the Apes A-listers: Diplo, The Weeknd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg,
and their digital breth- Post Malone, Future, Kevin Hart, and—inevitably—the Chain-
ren grew ever more smokers. The suit, seeking class-action status for buyers of Yuga
valuable, it was hard to shake the feeling that, no matter how the NFTs or ApeCoin, weaves a narrative of alleged crypto fraud,
market played out, we’d at least get some kind of 21st-century Hollywood machismo, social media spamming, celebrity wor-
parable from the whole affair. ship, and a little bit of Bono. In sum, it alleges that the rise of the
Sure enough, in mid-2022 the bottom fell out. In late June, planet of the Bored Apes was a scheme to make the monkeys look
crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital went belly-up, leav- like assets that celebrities and art dealers were spending millions
ing investors both big and small holding the bag. Genesis to obtain. Those transactions were staged, the suit claims: The
Capital had put billions into 3AC—all gone. Terra, a $60 billion famous and influential were getting their Apes gratis and were
Singapore-based crypto exchange, imploded spectacularly after being paid to promote the stuff, a fact they failed to disclose.
its stablecoin, UST, collapsed and its token, Luna, fell from a “These famous celebrities, they’re getting in, and they’re
price of $80 to pennies. And then the FTX zeppelin fire brought going to cause a spike in the price as they continue to interact
the crypto crisis to the front pages, causing a global sell-off of in the ecosystem. They’re part of the club, and more people
risky assets. The cheapest available Bored Ape in April 2022 was are going to want to have these to be a part of the club with the
about $429,000, and earlier that year Justin Bieber reportedly celebrities,” said attorney John Jasnoch, a partner at the San
had to pay $1.29 million to get his. In the days after FTX implod- Diego firm Scott+Scott, which filed the case on behalf of a pair
ed, Apes were available for as little as $76,400. of aggrieved NFT and ApeCoin owners named Adonis Real and
“Oh, the bubble burst,” said Kimberly Grauer, the head of Adam Titcher. “And so, ‘Oh, they’re unique and they’re scarce’—
research at crypto data firm Chainalysis and an expert on trends it drives that thought that it’ll be a successful investment for you.”
in cryptocurrency economics and crime. “People stopped view- Perhaps you noticed in early 2022 that nearly every celeb was
ing it as a way to make money via speculation. It dried up, it on a crypto company payroll—Curry was making bank as the
cooled down. People were less eager to put their money in NFTs spokesperson for FTX, and various celebrities were putting up
than they were before.” Instagram Stories about their pricey NFTs. And there was that
The crisis has forced economists, cultural prognosticators, Larry David Super Bowl ad. According to the suit, the alleged
art world rubberneckers, and tech world cheerleaders to col- scheme began when Yuga Labs partnered with music-industry
lectively grapple with the phenomenon that we witnessed. Was veteran Guy Oseary, who manages Madonna and U2. Oseary,
it a legitimate burst of enthusiasm for a revolutionary way to who’s named as a defendant in the suit, allegedly brought in
create and sell a new kind of art? Or a tulipomania specula- high-profile friends and clients to buy and promote their NFTs.
tion bonanza that was driven purely by greed and hype? Here’s But what the lawsuit alleges is that Oseary and company used
another way of framing the question: Were the art world figures a consumer-crypto app called MoonPay—think Venmo or PayPal
who presumably knew better sell-
ing snake oil to marks? Or did they
really believe in the value of these
digital tokens? WAS IT A LEGITIMATE BURST OF
Benedict Evans, a tech thinker ENTHUSIASM FOR A REVOLUTIONARY
who is an analyst at Mosaic Ven-
tures and had a stint at Andreessen WAY TO CREATE AND SELL A NEW
Horowitz—though he had left a16z KIND OF ART? OR A TULIPOMANIA
before it led the $450 million fun-
draising round for Yuga Labs, just SPECULATION BONANZA THAT WAS
before the crypto winter—told me, DRIVEN PURELY BY GREED AND HYPE?
essentially, caveat emptor.
“Does a real estate broker feel
any obligation to tell you that you’re
in a real estate bubble, and you shouldn’t buy this?” Evans said. but for crypto—to allow the “transactions” to occur without hav-
“No. That’s not their job. Their obligation is still to the seller.” ing to disclose them to investors. In addition, the suit alleges that
Oseary’s venture capital firm, Sound Ventures (of which Ashton
Kutcher, who is not named as a defendant in the suit, is a partner),

B
and several of the other celeb Ape endorsers named elsewhere
UT BUYER BEWARE of what, exactly? It is hard to in the lawsuit were early investors in MoonPay, allowing them to
overstate how loud and how layered was the hype “financially benefit from the cross-pollination and promotional
around certain NFTs, the Bored Apes included, efforts for the Yuga Financial Products.”
at the boom’s peak. In December an explosive “Together, Oseary, the MoonPay Defendants, and the Pro-
lawsuit started making its way through the US Dis- moter Defendants each shared the strong motive to use their
trict Court in the Western Division of the Central District of influence to artificially create demand for the Yuga securi-
California, taking aim at the founders of Bored Ape and their ties, which in turn would increase use of MoonPay’s crypto

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 103
GORILLA MARKETING payment service to handle this new of thousands of dollars of NFTs translated to the popularity of
The NFT craze was part Art demand,” the suit reads. “At the ApeCoin. Which translated to a $450 million seed fundraise
Basel Miami Beach, part
Davos, part Burning Man. same time, Oseary could also use and a $4 billion valuation. (Neither Fallon nor Hilton respond-
The hype, in other words, MoonPay to obscure how he paid ed to requests for comment.)
was a feature, not a bug.
off his celebrity cohorts for their “Did you watch the DJ Khaled one?” Jasnoch, the lawyer,
direct or off-label promotions of the asked me.
Yuga Financial Products.” He was referring to footage of DJ Khaled, aughts-era hip-
Asked for comment, a Yuga Labs spokesperson said, “In our hop’s walking exclamation point, standing on a yacht looking
view, these claims are opportunistic and parasitic. We strongly at multiple phone screens, various people telling him, “You
believe that they are without merit and look forward to proving bought an Ape! You bought an Ape!” as Khaled wobbles
as much.” A MoonPay spokesperson said, “MoonPay says all around, confused.
celebrity clients were charged in full for the price of the NFTs “Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Jasnoch said. “He’s just like, ‘I don’t
and a service fee.” As of deadline, Oseary had not responded to know what this is.’ ”
requests for comment, and the court docket shows that he was
granted an extension to respond to the suit.

I
While the lawsuit is in its earliest stages, it may have
already provided some much-needed context to one of the N THE AUCTION world, the sale of the digital future was
more baffling exchanges of our entire pandemic-era screen a relatively subtle proposition: The houses needed to
consumption: the “I bought an Ape” back-and-forth between incept the cultural cognoscenti and implant the idea
Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton on The Tonight Show in January that NFTs are art. Was Beeple’s Everydays—a series of
2022, in which the pair, Ape owners both, discussed the finer thousands of images and illustrations, some of which
points of NFT shopping. Fallon, with the somber tone of a man are sexist or downright puerile—actual fine art worthy of a
who had come to terms with the state of his soul, said he picked downtown gallery opening and a celebratory private dinner
his Breton-striped Ape because he, too, wears striped shirts. at Frenchette, which Beeple really had thrown for him last
Hilton, as if she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was saying, March? In retrospect, is it a bit crazy to say things such as
offered, “I saw you on the show with Beeple and you said you “I look at life as pre-Beeple and post-Beeple—like the world
M AT T E O P R A N D O N I / B FA . C O M .

got it on MoonPay.” As the suit alleges, for all its unintended thinks about before Jesus Christ and after,” as Noah Davis, who
comedic gold, the exchange was helping to build up the idea arranged the $69 million Beeple sale at Christie’s as the house’s
of Bored Apes as investment pieces worth millions and attract head of digital sales, really did once say? (Davis has since left
more buyers. As the plaintiffs and their lawyers tell it, celebri- Christie’s and now works as a brand lead at Yuga Labs for
ties talking about their Apes on social media, or late-night TV, CryptoPunks, another of its NFT offerings. Think Apes but
became the public-facing part of a plan in which their hundreds spiky-looking eight-bit cartoon guys.)

104 VA N I T Y FA I R
 The auction houses had their boilerplate explanations of why windfall. In October, Sotheby’s Metaverse offered the first
a certain NFT should be contextualized as art, making sure they NFTs by the artist Sebastião Salgado, but they weren’t exactly
remain as devoted as ever to the seller, not the buyer. Did Beeple lighting the place on fire. They cost $250 each. Back in 2021,
really “achieve something historic” when Christie’s slotted his the Natively Digital sale netted Sotheby’s $17.1 million, with
NFT-cum-walking-man-sculpture, Human One, into its evening $11.75 million paid for a single CryptoPunk.
sale between paintings by Issy Wood and Stanley Whitney? But in February 2022, Sotheby’s set up a special sale where
With that sort of thinking in the air, it wasn’t long before the it expected a set of 104 CryptoPunks to go for as much as
digital art hype became a self-fulfilling prophecy. At a certain $30 million, only to see the thing collapse minutes after the
point it didn’t even matter if it was art—auction houses sell wine scheduled gavel-in when the consignor backed out, reportedly
and constitutions and sneakers and watches and first editions. due to a lack of interest from bidders. The house didn’t explain
If it’s selling, you sell it. at the time, and the seller crowed online that it had all been an
“It’s like Hollywood making movies about how Hollywood elaborate gaming of the system—though just how anyone got
sucks. You actually embrace it,” Evans, the crypto sherpa, said. played remains unclear. By last December, the Natively Digital
“Like, yeah, I’ll take that money.” sale seemed to have lost its luster entirely. Sotheby’s offered
Surveying the digital currency and art landscape a few the first-ever Keith Haring NFT as the star lot of the sale, but
months after the FTX scandal, it’s hard not to wonder if any it sold for $25,000, well below the $80,000 high estimate.
of this stuff ever had any value beyond speculation. Jasnoch, Things aren’t much better at Christie’s, where the NFT
the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the Yuga suit, attempted to thread platform Christie’s 3.0 has a smattering of work for sale,
this needle by comparing the Bored Ape NFTs and their mostly in the low four figures. Despite the fact that the auction
crypto complement, ApeCoin. The former can, in the broad- house launched an on-chain marketplace in the Web3 space
est sense, be argued to be artwork. The latter is purely a unit in 2022, sales of the stuff were way, way down year to year. In
of currency with no artistic value whatsoever—making it, in 2021, the house sold $150 million in NFTs. In 2022, sales were
his estimation, a viable thing to be regulated. The linking of just $5.9 million, a 96 percent downturn. And it’s not like Chris-
the two entities so closely is where things get tricky—and the tie’s had a bad year that dragged down the digital sector: The
lawyers get involved. house saw a record $8.4 billion in top-line sales, and NFTs were
“I think the concept of an NFT can have intrinsic value, just about .07 percent of the total.
and that a token can represent value in some fashion, and Neither Sotheby’s nor Christie’s responded when asked for
I think there’s value in people liking the look of the artwork,” comment on whether they plan to continue with their NFT
he said. “But in terms of it being a financial product and platforms.
how they were marketed and how
they were sold, it really is an unreg-
istered security and it needs to be
subject to proper disclosure. And “DOES A REAL ESTATE BROKER FEEL
once you get into generating all
that hype around the Bored Ape
ANY OBLIGATION TO TELL YOU THAT
itself, they release the ApeCoin YOU’RE IN A REAL ESTATE BUBBLE, AND
token, which doesn’t even have the
pretense of a piece of art or any- YOU SHOULDN’T BUY THIS? NO. THAT’S
thing. And that’s just a straight-up NOT THEIR JOB.”
unregistered security that is used for
speculation and for trading.”
Evans offered another conun-
drum. When a market offers something for sale at a large sum, There’s no definitive way to say whether the NFT market will
there is, at a base level, an understanding among the public ever come back. When asked what the data says, Grauer, the
that it has some legitimate importance. Perhaps the artwork crypto expert, said it’s certainly a bear market at the moment,
is not to one’s liking, but it has a provenance and the artist is in but things could hypothetically recover.
museum collections—or there’s historic relevance to something “A lot of people are very eager and say that we are in the
that makes it at the very least a curio. heads-down-and-build phase and are looking for the right
“When you are buying vintage vinyl, or rare sneakers, or projects to invest in when liquidity opens up in the next year
Marilyn Monroe’s shoes, or a Salvador Dalí print, or whatever or so,” she said. “Other people have said the bubble’s burst, and
it is, you’re getting something that has no tangible physical I certainly don’t have a strong idea of which one’s correct.”
value, but you’re also getting it in the belief that other people One tech outfit seems to have found a solution. In 2022, Skyler
attribute value to that too,” Evans said. “There’s like a deep Hallgren, David Sawyer, and Zach Miller launched Unsellable, a
cultural base that thinks Jordan sneakers are worth something, start-up that purchases worthless NFTs for a penny as a way to
early Sex Pistols vinyl is worth something. And the challenge provide a tax write-off. It’s proven quite popular with collectors
with all of these NFTs was you didn’t really know that there looking to exit the space as quickly as possible, those who have
was that broad, deep cultural base. It was just: ‘Oh, my gosh, accepted the fact that these once-promising investments are, in
somebody just bought one for 200 grand.’ ” fact, devoid of value. The Unsellable Collection, the start-up’s
For the time being, some in the art world are still acting vast haul of worthless digital detritus, is currently home to more
as though the devotion to NFTs could result in some kind of than 16,000 objects. n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 105
106 VA N I T Y FA I R
 With a classic
flair for
Hollywood intrigue,
The Ankler has
become an
industry must-
read. But can
Richard Rushfield
and Janice Min
scale a scrappy
newsletter into a
media empire?

By JOE POMPEO Photographs by MAR TIN S CH OELLE R Styled by S A M A N T H A GA S M E R

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 107
 “This is the story,” he wrote, “of a very that it can become a bigger player with-
troubled writer who used the megaphone out diluting Rushfield’s boutique appeal.
of ‘journalism’ to work out her insecurities Depending on who you talk to, it’s either a
and issues in a hellstorm of performative total must-read or, well, not quite so.
rage, all while hiding—ailing, agorapho- Ankler Media will, of course, face
bic, sick—behind an online persona.… hurdles in the punishing digital media
[I]f Donald Trump had been an enter- economy: subscriber churn, the vagaries
tainment journalist, you can see how he of advertising, ever-increasing competi-
would have looked a lot like Nikki.” Still, tion for attention in a world where anyone
Rushfield also gave Finke credit where can start a Substack, the pressures that
due. “She had the imagination to cre- come with taking money from venture
ate a story out of all this,” he continued. capitalists, and so on. (Plus it’s in the same
“The story of entertainment is not gray, chase for high-end subscription dollars as
dutiful marching towards the quarterly Matthew Belloni’s influential Hollywood
earnings report—it is wild, colorful char- newsletter at fellow start-up Puck.) “Rich-
acters doing completely ridiculous things, ard and Janice are world-class experts in
and if you can’t capture life’s rich pageant building publications people want to read
ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, Richard Rush- that way, then you should wonder how and pay for, and they have opportunities
field’s phone lit up with the type of accurately you’re representing the true both in subscriptions and ad revenue,”
jaw-dropper that can really get Twitter experience of an industry whose business said Brad Flora, the angel investor who
going on a weekend: Nikki Finke, legend- is entertainment.” worked with Min and Rushfield for Sili-
ary Hollywood journalist, dead at 68. You might say Rushfield is capturing con Valley’s esteemed Y Combinator
Finke had largely been off the radar life’s rich pageant but without Finke’s program. “That said, the word and can
since parting ways with her self-made malevolence and ethically compromised often be deadly for young companies.
entertainment news website, Deadline, behavior. The Ankler, which he started Navigating that is a tricky thing for them.”
at the end of 2013. But her death from an in late 2016, chronicles Hollywood in As far as founders go, Rushfield is a
unspecified “prolonged illness” was no all of its naked theatricality, with a mis- curious sort—a gruff and curmudgeonly
less monumental. Gone was the mythi- chievous bent and a sardonic regard for Gen X’er who wouldn’t look out of place
cally fearsome woman who, some two the industry’s towering egos. It’s a sen- in a film noir. He comes from an irreverent
decades earlier, saw an opening in the sibility Rushfield has nurtured for years journalistic tradition and sees himself as a
staid landscape of Hollywood’s trade press through an array of DIY media projects, foil to the conventional trade press, allergic
and drove an 18-wheeler straight through from his alternative college newspaper to the minutiae of carefully leaked studio
it, lobbing bombs at anyone in her path. (The Hampshire Hypocrite) to his AOL-era announcements and agency scooplets.
Rushfield had a history of crossing email newsletter (The Barricade) to his He’s unique among his peers in that he
Finke, as the furious messages in his early-aughts fanzine (L.A. Innuendo) and built a significant brand from scratch with
email archives can attest. “Nikki Finke now The Ankler. “I seem to have a history his bare hands, a middle-aged one-man
One Step Closer to Dream of Becom- of starting troublemaking publications,” band without the backing or support of
ing World’s Worst Boss,” declared the Rushfield told me. a larger organization. He’s also the only

“I seem to have a history of starting

headline of a Gawker post Rushfield The Ankler is expanding as a venture- one whose name rolls off the tongue
wrote in 2009. As word of Finke’s demise backed, Substack-hosted business, Ankler with the same alliterative ring as the
spread across the internet, Rushfield’s Media, for which Rushfield has joined legendary columnists of yore: Walter
“blood started rising.” Finke was a fear- forces with the veteran editor and execu- Winchell. Hedda Hopper. Army Archerd.
less trailblazer, the eulogies went, who tive Janice Min, who recently told me the Richard Rushfield.
disrupted entertainment journalism and goal is to become “a primary resource

R
redefined its relationship with the world about the entertainment business for USHFIELD IS HARDLY a one-
it covers. Not untrue, but Rushfield saw the largest audience available on a global man band anymore. He and
it as revisionist history, glossing over scale.” Grand ambitions aside, Rushfield Min, who officially teamed
Finke’s dark side: the toxicity, the bul- remains The Ankler’s beating heart, and up on Ankler Media in early
lying, the lies, the sheer meanness. He his trenchant analysis is the main reason 2022—Rushfield as edito-
started belting out an article for his own people are willing to pay for it. Which is to rial director and chief columnist; Min as
Hollywood publication, a subscription say, not everyone is convinced The Ankler CEO and editor in chief—are now part of
newsletter called The Ankler. can or should be much more than that, or a full-time staff of four, including a chief

108 VA N I T Y FA I R
 GET ME revenue officer and back-of-the-envelope math, that would contrarian voice.” Here was Rushfield’s
REWRITE!
a managing editor. put The Ankler’s annual subscription rev- take on Disney’s ouster of Bob Chapek,
Richard Rushfield
and Janice Min, Those four salaries enue a little north of $1 million.) a move portrayed as a hastily assembled
photographed and a freelance bud- “I read it the second I see it pop up,” palace coup that even Iger didn’t see com-
on December 12
in Los Angeles. get are the only sig- says Richard Plepler, whose post-HBO ing. “It’s amazing how quick a narrative
nificant overhead. life involves an Apple TV+ production has come out here. Almost like they had
Previous spread: There’s no physi- deal. “They have a little bite, but their it ready to go: the vote of no confidence
Rushfield’s shirt cal office, account- bite is always within the bounds of fair from the deputies, the sudden phone
by Brooks
Brothers; pants ing and payroll are play. People read it, people respect it, call, the summons-back to destiny. All
by Paul Stuart; outsourced, and serious people send it around.” Imag- comes together very cleanly and nicely.
hat by Stetson;
tie by Isaia. Min’s Substack handles ine’s Brian Grazer told me, “People in Everyone on the same page. Nothing to
dress by Chanel; the back-end tech Hollywood like it. They think it’s titil- see here. No conspiracy—involving Bob
watch by Cartier.
stuff. The Ankler lating and find it largely truthful.” The I anyway. Who was just minding his own
has enlisted a cabal Ankler’s About page boasts raves from business, working on a World War II book
of regular contributors, among them Rob Bret Easton Ellis and media analyst Rich when the call of destiny came.”
Long, Peter Kiefer, Jeff Sneider, Vincent Greenfield. Other satisfied customers The target that helped put The Ankler
Boucher, Nicole LaPorte (Rushfield’s bet- include David Zaslav, Patrick Whitesell, on the radar in its early days was Netflix.
ter half, with whom he has two elemen- Kathleen Kennedy, Donna Langley, and “This was kind of the height of Netflix
tary-school-aged kids), Sean McNulty, Maureen Dowd, who told me, “I just boosterism,” Rushfield recalls. “Every-
who writes a morning briefing called The think Min and Rushfield are smart.” one was saying, ‘This is a miracle! Why
Wakeup, and the Entertainment Strategy In conversations with an array of would anyone else even think of starting
Guy, an anonymous data wonk who loves sources, I caught some whiffs that The a streaming company? They should all
a good chart about the streaming wars. Ankler may not be as essential to Hol- just shut down their companies and give
There are three Ankler podcasts and a lywood’s power class as it’s made out to their libraries to Netflix!’ And I presented
budding events component. (Think gab- be. “I think Richard’s excellent, but the a contrarian voice on that.” Rushfield in
fests, screenings, cocktail hours.) Come diversification of The Ankler feels like a 2018: “What if competition at the bottom
for the scoop on Michael Lewis’s impec- stretch,” said a well-placed source in the stays so intense that Netflix is never able
cably timed Sam Bankman-Fried project; agency world who reads Rushfield and to command anything like monopoly
stay for the feature about the first hun- The Wakeup but ignores “all the other power and has to start shrinking its offer-
dred days of CAA-ICM. stuff.” A second knowledgeable agency ings while raising its rates. In the olde
As with all start-ups, Ankler Media’s source concurred: “I just don’t feel like it’s timey economy, that’s what folks call
finances are opaque. Last spring, after necessary reading. When something like a death spiral.”
completing Y Combinator, the company [Bob Iger returning to Disney] happens, Netflix is far from a death spiral, but one
raised $1.5 million at a $20 million valu- you wanna hear what Richard has to say. of the biggest media stories of 2022 turned
ation. The company says it is profitable, But the other things on The Ankler, I still out to be the company’s stunning sub-
with about 50 percent of revenue from haven’t figured out why I’m supposed to scriber stumble. The streamer lost almost
subscriptions and 50 percent from adver- be reading them.” A Hollywood heavy half its stock value and came to be seen
tising, the type where film and television hitter told me he subscribes because it as a potential acquisition target. I asked

troublemaking publications.” — R I C HAR D R U S H F I E LD

studios pay good money to woo mem- helps him make sense of a wildly dis- Rushfield if he felt vindicated. “I wanna
bers of the awards-voting bodies. When rupted industry in a challenging market, jump up and down,” he said, “and yell
I spoke with Min in December, she told but “on the other hand, sometimes it’s ‘I told you so’ every day.”
me The Ankler landed in 38,000 inboxes a little bit prurient, a little bit claustro-

R
every day, but she wouldn’t specify the phobic, and it’s not always right.” Take grew up
U S H F I E L D , 5 4,
number of paying subscribers, who this for what it’s worth, but when I asked in Pacific Palisades and
get the full shebang of content for $17 another top player for his thoughts on The attended Santa Monica’s
a month or $149 a year. Rushfield told Ankler, he said he couldn’t help because prestigious Crossroads
me that when he moved The Ankler to he doesn’t regularly read it. School, where he over-
Substack miracle the end of 2019, there Rushfield’s fans appreciate how he lapped with future hotshots like Matthew
were about 800 paying subscribers at swims against the current. “He runs Greenfield, Jay Sures, Brett Morgen,
$40 a year. By the end of 2022, accord- counter to groupthink in the town,” Jason Blumenthal, Maya Rudolph, and
ing to Min, subscription revenue had said a senior executive at a major media Jack Black. Rushfield’s younger sister,
grown by a multiple of nearly 40. (Per my company. “He can be a much-needed the TV writer Alexandra Rushfield, was

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 109
 Rushfield first met Min at the Golden
Globes about a decade ago, “stuck at the
kids’ table in the back.”

friends at Crossroads with Jenni Kon- of BuzzFeed, Yahoo, and, finally, HitFix, Rushfield’s trench
ner, who went on to showrun HBO’s where he was editor in chief before the coat by Giorgio
Armani; shirt by
Girls with Lena Dunham. At Hampshire site was acquired in 2016. “The second Brooks Brothers;
College in Western Massachusetts, Rush- half of my career was working on every pants by Paul Stuart;
hat by Stetson; tie
field frequented punk shows—X, Sonic website, essentially,” he told me. by Drake’s. Min’s
Youth, Nirvana, Henry Rollins (he saw The Ankler almost didn’t happen. After clothing and tie by
Thom Browne;
Black Flag in high school)—and wrote HitFix, Rushfield was accepted to the USC hat by Lynn Paik.
a decidedly gothy senior thesis about Rossier School of Education to pursue a Throughout: hair
products by Oribe
Jacques-Louis David’s paintings from graduate degree in teaching. Around the (Min), Virtue
the French Revolution (Marat bleeding same time, inspired by the success of The (Rushfield); makeup
to death in a bathtub, etc.). After graduat- Information, Jessica Lessin’s subscrip- products by Clé
de Peau Beauté;
ing, he followed the grunge-era playbook tion-powered tech-news publication, he grooming products
of loafing around without a plan. Then started sending an email digest to a small by Le Domaine.
he landed an entry-level gig with the group of friends, who started showing it
’92 Clinton campaign, sharing a small to their friends, who then forwarded it to
cigarette-smoke-filled office with Noah their friends. Before he knew it, he had
Shachtman, now editor in chief of Rolling an impressive distribution list. “It started
Stone. “Even when we were kids, he was getting passed around very quickly to the
a figure from a different era,” Shachtman executive class,” Rushfield told me. He
recalls. “I felt like he had stepped out of a decided against USC Rossier and put his
Raymond Chandler novel.” eggs in The Ankler instead. “It took me
After working as a field organizer for time to get up the guts to put down a pay-
several other Democratic campaigns, wall, but I made that leap.”
Rushfield pursued a writing career. His Rushfield first met Min at the Golden
first byline, a front-of-book item for Los Globes about a decade ago, “stuck at the
Angeles magazine, highlighted a stand- kids’ table in the back,” Min joked. A for-
up comedy show featuring rising stars mer People and InStyle reporter and editor
like David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Pat- who became a mid-aughts media star as
ton Oswalt, Margaret Cho, and Janeane the editor in chief of Us Weekly, Min was
Garofalo. (He became friends with a lot of in the midst of her celebrated reinvention
these folks.) “I think it ran two sentences of The Hollywood Reporter, which she ran
and I got $25,” Rushfield recalls. In 1998, until 2017. In 2021, as Min recovered from
he and his friend Adam Leff conceived a a brief stint at the train wreck that was
Spy-inspired trend-forecasting charticle, Quibi, she and Rushfield started talking.
“The Intelligence Report,” which caught “The Ankler had come to my attention
the eye of Graydon Carter. He gave them because people were forwarding it to me,
a contract with this magazine, where the pretty senior people in the industry,” she
column appeared several times a year recalls. “My thoughts were that enter- Stone, made a number of overtures up
until 2010. (Rushfield has also written a tainment was undergoing these crazy until several weeks before Rushfield and
G R O O M I N G , S TA C Y S K I N N E R ; TA I LO R , H A S M I K KO U R I N I A N .

few features for Vanity Fair.) By the mid- upheavals, both culturally and in the Min announced their business relation-
H A I R , C H E C H E L J O S O N ( M I N ) ; M A K E U P , TAY LO R B A B A I A N ;

2000s, Rushfield was working as a web business model, and nobody was really ship. (Variety put an offer on the table in
editor at the Los Angeles Times, where a owning that conversation.” They made 2019 to add The Ankler to its newsletter
print higher-up once told him the only it official with a New York Times piece lineup; later, Penske Media boss Jay Pen-
reason people wanted the online versions shortly before Christmas and entered the ske pursued an acquisition.) Additionally,
of articles was so they could print them Y Combinator program several months Puck had conversations with Rushfield
out to read in the bathtub. He embraced later. “In Silicon Valley terms,” Min said, prior to its own launch. Min and Rush-
the web, where he ended up spending the “Richard would be ‘the product.’ ” field later explored partnerships with
majority of his professional life. In 2009, The Ankler is no stranger to courtship. Axios and Lessin, an early Ankler boost-
Rushfield left the Times to become West Penske Media, whose near-monopoly on er who’d welcomed Rushfield into The
Coast editor of Gawker. He then wrote a major entertainment titles includes THR, Information’s inaugural accelerator pro-
book about American Idol and did tours Variety, Deadline, Billboard, and Rolling gram. Ankler Media’s decision to remain

110 VA N I T Y FA I R
 independent—albeit with investors—and America, and that’s a great story.” When aspirations. When it was Rushfield’s turn,
to continue publishing on Substack, where I asked for a pie-in-the-sky target of paid he said, “What drew me to newsletters
P R O D U C T I O N S Q U A D . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

they’re part of a growing crop of full- subscribers, she didn’t flinch: “a hundred was the chance to really write something
S E T D E S I G N , B E T T E A D A M S . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y

fledged publications, reflected a desire thousand.” If they manage to get there— meaningful and to be able to do your best
to “control our own destiny,” as Min put it. that’s a lot of paying subscribers!—it won’t work. If, five years from now, I could be
What does The Ankler’s destiny look have been easy. “I think they’re off to a doing that on a stable basis, I’llbe thrilled.”
like? Min envisions “a universe of bundled tremendous start, but the road ahead is Here we are, five years later. I called
subscriptions” and a push into interna- hard,” said Lessin, one of Ankler Media’s Rushfield late one night while wrapping
tional markets. “The story of streaming investors. “It’s a really difficult, long path.” up this piece and read back his quote from
is that it hit the ceiling in the United States In early 2018, Lessin hosted Rushfield Lessin’s soiree. “I couldn’t believe I was
before it was supposed to,” she said. “So and the other members of The Informa- getting away with speaking so honestly
everyone’s saying, ‘Let’s try to make mon- tion’s first accelerator class at her home and freely about this industry back then,”
ey somewhere else,’ aggressively looking in San Francisco. Over dinner, she asked he said. “I still can’t believe I’m getting
toward markets like Japan, India, Latin her guests to describe their five-year away with it.” n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 111
 out of the star’s life, she blossomed. She her career. But Swanson refused to believe
Swanson Song
looked ecstatically joyous, for instance, Daum or her family when they came to
in a Richard Avedon photograph in Vogue, New York to deal with the problem.”
and she posed majestically in sable for Tapert concludes: “The bubble burst
Blackglama’s “What Becomes a Legend when two producers who’d been negoti-
Most?” campaign. ating with Degas for Swanson to star in a
She and Degas were now traveling Broadway show taped their conversations
in a realm so removed from mine that with him in which he spoke disparagingly
I had almost no contact with him after we of her. According to Daum, Tapert writes,
finished Swanson on Swanson, and none “When they played the tapes for Gloria,
with her. I heard from one of our mutual she finally realized she’d been betrayed.
friends that Degas had invested their Devastated, she wept to Daum, ‘You
CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 93 daughter, money from the autobiography unwisely warned me. All along I was a fool.’ ”
also named Gloria, from her second mar- and lost much of it, and that they had Playing those tapes for Swanson was
riage, to Herbert Somborn. I never met parted on bad terms. bound to have predictable and irreversible
Michelle, her daughter by her fourth hus- results. It banished Degas, for sure, but it
band, Michael Farmer. Joseph, Swanson’s pa r t t w o can only have left Swanson lonely, bitter,
adopted son, had died in 1975. and heartsick for the rest of her life. Her
That day I also met an unobtrusive man ON APRIL 4, 1983, I was stunned to hear daughters barred Degas from seeing her.
named Raymond Daum, who was the that Swanson had died of a heart attack.
archivist of Swanson’s papers. I was then an editor at Vanity Fair, which THE STORY DOESN’T end there. In 2013,
had been launched by Advance Publi- 30 years after Swanson died, two new
THE BOOK WAS a commercial success, due cations the previous month, and I soon biographies appeared (the first, inciden-
in part to Janet Maslin’s review in The New heard from Raymond Daum. When tally, since Swanson on Swanson). I was
York Times Book Review, which began “Mov- Swanson sold her papers to the Harry stunned to realize that they both reflected
ie stars’ memoirs don’t get any better than Ransom Humanities Research Center at a seismic shift of emphasis concerning the
‘Swanson on Swanson.’ ” Maslin continued, the University of Texas at Austin in 1982, contributions Degas, Dufty, and I made to
“[B]ut it isn’t her story that makes her book she arranged for Daum to continue as the Swanson’s autobiography.
so sparkling. It’s the way the story is told.” archivist there. He would remain in that Once the text of Swanson’s book was
Swanson and Degas went on an exten- position until 1991, and he quickly took it finished, in 1980, Swanson, Degas, and
sive book tour in December. In interviews upon himself to tell the end of Swanson’s I agreed that it needed a foreword, because
she referred to him as her business part- life as he saw it to anyone who would listen. readers and critics would certainly ques-
ner (they had formed a company called In our intermittent calls over the years, tion whether Swanson, at 80, had written a
Gloria’s Way), but she also said he was Daum’s major aim was to depict Degas as dense text of 500 pages by herself. I helped
the man who had changed her life. He a ruthless grifter who cunningly manip- Swanson come up with the following para-
playfully called her Madame. The book ulated Swanson for her money. Daum graph, in which her order of importance is
eventually sold almost 150,000 copies in always managed to sound more like a jeal- only too evident.
hardcover and 300,000 in paperback, not ous rival, however, than a conscientious
counting a number of foreign translations. employee, and the Degas he described was As for the manuscript itself, I have relied
I was therefore surprised, when Degas nothing like the Degas I knew. on the help of three people: Brian Degas,
and I got together for drinks later, to see Annette Tapert, who interviewed Daum who conceived of the dramatic structure
how his attitude toward Swanson had for the Swanson chapter in her 1998 book, of the book, helping me see things I was
darkened. He said she had been incredibly The Power of Glamour: The Women Who not willing to see, and was the lifeblood
difficult on the tour. He described one for- Defined the Magic of Stardom, quotes him through all the stages of getting it pub-
mal dinner where she complained about at length. lished in its present form; Wayne Lawson,
even the slightest things, insisted that they who took all the drafts and corrections
get up and leave in the middle of the meal, [Swanson] fell for Degas hook, line, and and revisions and helped me weld them
and finally worked herself into such a state sinker. She was like a little girl. She would into the final version; and my husband,
that she was on the verge of fainting. He sit on his lap and cuddle and coo and say to William Dufty, who tirelessly helped me
had to carry her up a flight of stairs in the me, “Look at that boy, he could play a lead- research all the early material.
hotel. “Halfway up,” he said, “she pissed ing man!” The whole situation was like a
all over me. It was disgusting.” parallel to Norma Desmond, except in this When Swanson got back from the spa,
He remained with her, however, and case Degas made the schemer Joe Gillis in she must have been aware of Dufty’s
the tabloids treated them as a devoted Sunset Boulevard look like an angel. behavior in her absence, from his Ken-
couple. I remember one gossip column nedy chapter to his flirtation with Degas.
carried a picture of them out together, Tapert continues: “Daum discovered She therefore ordered him out and moved
along with questions as to whether this that Degas was bilking Swanson out of Degas in. And that began the brief part of
man half Swanson’s age was destined to almost all of the modest fortune she had her story—her last two years—that Daum
be husband number seven. On the surface left and had stolen valuable personal proceeded to co-opt. He soon turned
it certainly seemed that, once Dufty was mementos and relevant documents to Swanson’s savior into her destroyer.

112 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Daum died in 2003, but he is quoted the first time the stories that make her her mother…. Daum claimed that Degas
extensively in one of the 2013 biographies, book so rich. ‘capered around the apartment when Glo-
Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star, by The source of the following passage is ria was ill, excited by the prospect of the
Stephen Michael Shearer. The author also Timothy Rooks, a friend of Dufty’s: money he could make from her death.’ ”
seems on his own to take every opportu- The cumulative picture of Degas drawn
nity to pillory Degas, as these examples In early May 1980 Gloria secretly went to by all the writers mentioned is poisonous,
demonstrate (the italics are mine): the publisher and added a codicil to the though none of them, to my knowledge,
book contract, insisting now that one- ever spoke to him. I asked Tapert, who is
Degas’s biggest draw for Gloria, indeed third of the proceeds from the sales of the a friend, if Degas had ever threatened to
possibly with all his conquests, was his book be handed over to Degas…. When sue, and she said no.
fading good looks, his accent, and his Dufty found out, he ended their marriage. So let me play the devil’s advocate,
abundant charm…. Degas, described as a A man of his word, he completed the because I was there. First of all, without
darling or a demon, depending on whom writing of her story, then walked out of Brian Degas, there would be no Swan-
one talked to, was quite able to romanti- the apartment and the marriage in June. son on Swanson. Degas may have been
cally fulfill the needs of older women, said down on his luck when he approached
one of his former friends. Hold it. Dufty did not walk out of the Swanson, but she was undoubtedly flat-
marriage with great dignity. Swanson tered to be approached—at 79, after five
If Shearer sets out to vilify Degas, it is drove him out. And he did not complete failed marriages and a sixth in trouble—
probably because he has a self-appointed the book. I did, with Swanson and Degas. by a captivating 44-year-old producer. In
hero to replace him: William Dufty. As the executive literary editor of Vanity short order, Degas did marvelous things
When Dufty’s marriage to Swanson Fair, I received a galley of Shearer’s book for her: the London gallery show and a
ended, he moved to Michigan to care for for review consideration. I phoned the best-selling autobiography. Most impor-
his ailing mother. There he met Dennis editor and expressed my concern about all tantly, he made love to her and made her
Fairchild, an astrologist, who became the inaccuracies, particularly those involv- feel young again. He did for her what only
his lover. They remained together until ing me. As a result, my role in producing director Billy Wilder had been able to do
Dufty’s death, in 2002, at the age of 86. Swanson on Swanson was amended to read: before him, with Sunset Boulevard. He gave
It is clear from Shearer’s book that Dufty “Dufty would write a chapter a week, and her back her stardom.
instilled in Fairchild and a couple of Lawson would edit the work, sometimes He also got a nice sum of money for
friends his wishful version of how he exit- rewriting whole chapters himself.” Who’s Dufty, for a book I am confident Dufty was
ed Swanson’s life and the role he played in missing from that account? Brian Degas. incapable of writing on his own.
producing her memoirs. Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up, He gave me the chance of a lifetime,
the other biography published in 2013, is which became the basis for a long career
According to Dufty’s later partner, Den- by Tricia Welsch, a faculty member at in publishing.
nis Fairchild, Bill ‘went to Spain for two Bowdoin College. In her acknowledg- In August 2018, I called Degas to say I
weeks, and then when he came back ments she says of Swanson on Swanson, was thinking of writing this article. We had
agreed to do the book as a wedding “for my money the best Hollywood mem- had no direct communication in decades.
present to her.… [H]e wrote her book in oir ever written,” and she cites the book I knew he was in England, partnered for
twelve weeks.’ some 230 times. the last 30 years with a woman he had
I am not mentioned, however, and referred to in one interview as “the captain
Nonsense. In the first 26 weeks of Degas is relegated to four demeaning who runs the ship.” He had been writing
the allotted contract time, Swanson and pages, based mainly on an article by Molly and producing episodes for two TV series,
Degas and Dufty together produced only Haskell, published in Vogue in 1980. Virtual Murder and Specials.
100 pages. About the authorship of Swanson on We talked for nearly an hour before I
Another key Shearer source is Dirk Swanson, Welsch writes as if Dufty was gingerly inquired about his separation
Benedict, an actor who played opposite the only person of use to Swanson: “Dufty from Swanson. Was it difficult?
Swanson in the Broadway play Butterflies was an experienced ghostwriter, and his “It was,” he said. “You know, she got
Are Free: organizational help was invaluable, but very angry when I told her I wanted to go
Swanson on Swanson was written in the back to England.”
For years Gloria had nagged Dufty, “Bill, actress’s own voice, as the archive hold- He stopped, and I could tell that that
you must write my book.” According to ings make clear.” was all he intended to say, with no mention
Dirk Benedict, he warned Gloria, “You She says of Degas, “Brian Degas took of Daum, or Dufty, or the new biographies.
can either have the marriage or the book,” quite a lot of credit for himself, shouldering He was emphatically bringing the curtain
telling me he always had to drag the sto- aside Bill Dufty.” Her last word on Degas down on one brief period of his life, with
ries out of her and she didn’t want to tell comes directly from the long-deceased no desire to go over any of it again, ever.
the truth. Bill eventually buckled, how- Daum, filtered through Swanson’s young- Degas died on April 3, 2020. He was
ever, and throughout the year worked on er daughter: “Worried that her infatuation 84. To do him justice, if nothing else, I
Gloria’s memoirs. with the younger man would harm Gloria, resolved to tell the whole story, starting
her friend and archivist Raymond Daum with Swanson’s saying to me, “Only you
Hardly. Degas, not Dufty, sat with warned Michelle that Degas (whom he and I know who wrote this book.”
Swanson and got her to tell in detail for called ‘that monster’) was manipulating Well, reader, now you know. n

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 113
 Republicans aren’t there yet.” She was a meat-based diet. “Well-ordered, disci-
West of Eden
undecided about Ron DeSantis. The one plined groups of men bound by friendship
unabashed champion of her kind of politics are dangerous, precisely because of what
on a national stage is Tucker Carlson. “If they can do,” the masculinist health guru
Tucker announced his presidency tomor- known as “Raw Egg Nationalist” said, over
row,” she said, “I would literally move to images of the American and Haitian revo-
DC, nine months pregnant, to go work for lutions. “A few hundred men can conquer
him.” I asked if she thought he would ever an entire empire,” Raw Egg Nationalist
run. “I think he will get to a point where he continued. “That’s why they want you to
feels like he has to,” she said. But her vision be sick, depressed, and isolated.”
of the good life was so different from any- “Things are going to get worse before
thing anyone talks about on a national stage they get better,” he said. “How much
CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 85 about the that it’s hard to know whether it is even a worse isn’t exactly clear.”
580-acre “vertically integrated cattle oper- politics at all. “It used to be you have a few I drove north toward Montana, where
ation” she’d started—tiny by Wyoming acres, you work the land, you raise a family, I visited with a man named Paul McNiel,
standards, but one she had high hopes for your kids help you garden, till, or whatever,” whom I’d first met back during the fervid
as a test of new farming methods. She said she said, describing a world she thought summer of 2020, at a Fourth of July picnic
she’d been watching documentaries about had been wrecked by regulations and the and anti-government rally headlined “Rage
her family online, thinking about the irony oligopoly of corporations like Monsanto. Against the State.” “I think that Livingston
of a Rockefeller who’d adopted a politics “And then you create enough food for your has the highest per-capita concentration of
that was supposed to be about reducing the family and maybe your community.” contributors to The New Yorker of any city
power of money and corporations over our I said it must be strange to desire a in America,” he’d said when I introduced
lives. “I try to be very self-aware,” she said. life like that, being a Rockefeller and all. myself as a writer. McNiel is extraordinarily
“I can’t pretend I’m not who I am. So it’s “There’s a part of the Bible that talks about well read, and friendly with a number of
been a very interesting struggle for me.” how people that were born with a lot have a literary types. He is a bit of a prepper, and
She seemed caught between the desire lot of responsibility,” she said. (Luke 12:48.) while he is deeply Christian, he doesn’t con-
to live a simple life away from it all, and “And I definitely feel that way.” It was a sider himself right wing. “I don’t think the
the desire to be a part of the world-shaping sentiment that was not at all out of place on division is right-left anymore. It’s us against
changes that people like her and Bannon the right these days, where everyone sud- the machine,” he said, borrowing a phrase
believe are coming. Food politics is her denly seems to feel like they’re taking part from the English writer Paul Kingsnorth—
way of trying to split the difference. “We in a world historical drama. But for now she whose writings critiquing the power of tech
don’t have that stability anymore,” she was going to have her baby and enjoy being and money in modern life have become
said, talking about disruptions to supply in a place she thought still felt like an old- popular among dissident types. He was
chains and a general sense that systems we fashioned American hometown. “There’s dismissive of the local armed groups being
once never had to think about were break- a saying,” she said. “ ‘Wyoming is what flooded with new members. “At the end of
ing down. “And that’s terrifying.” America was.’ And I do believe that.” the day,” he said, “if you’re not willing to
“Look at Italy’s election,” she said to me shoot federal agents, then you’re not seri-
later. “That was a direct rejection of inter- FOOD PLAYS AN outsize role in the politi- ous about it. They aren’t serious.”
nationalism, globalism, whatever you want cal imagining of the right these days. Last McNiel had served in Afghanistan after
to call it.” She told me that her “dream” October, Carlson released a documenta- college, and when he left the military, he’d
president was Thomas Massie, the Repub- ry titled The End of Men, which features, taken out an almost unbelievable amount
lican Kentucky congressman who lives on among other self-proclaimed right-wing of debt, largely on credit cards, so that he
a 1,200-acre off-grid homestead, and who bodybuilders, an anonymous farmer who could get himself in the position of buying
combines a quixotic critique of America’s tweets under the name William Wheel- his crown jewel, a trailer park in the small
involvement overseas with a hyperlocalist wright, one of the better-known figures in town of Belgrade, Montana, just outside of
platform. “Giving Americans the right to the sphere where preppers, techies, hip- Bozeman. He now owned trailer parks as
control their own food and sustenance, I pies, farmers, naturalists, health bros, and far away as Alaska. He had ridden the wave.
mean, it’s at the core of that fight.” hard-core dissident-right types—many “I always tell myself: No more deals. I want
We ended up at the bar with her fiancé of whom are unapologetically racist— to stop, and I know I have to. But I can’t.”
and some of her friends, among them a car- mingle, argue, and plan with each other. He’d just bought a run-down country
penter, a schoolteacher, regular people. It The documentary advanced a view that resort and tavern in the tiny town of Story,
was slightly surreal to drink beer and jump our technologies and agricultural system Wyoming. It was in a beautiful and seclud-
between talking about running irrigation are physically poisoning us, destroying ed creekside cove of Ponderosas, a shady
pipe to hearing her anecdotes about how our connection to our corporeality, lead- island amid the surrounding sagebrush
funny Nigel Farage is in person. The next ing to a generation of men with declining desert. “Pretty good hideout, right?” he
morning I drove up to her small house, on a sperm counts and low testosterone. The asked me, as we had a glass of wine and
plot a few miles up Casper Mountain. globalist “regime,” as Mike Cernovich talked guns, European fiction, and the pos-
“I don’t even think there is a working- described it in the documentary, has weak- sibility of civil war. The place was a furious
class party right now,” she said. “The ened America on a cellular level. The film hive of activity. He was paying a couple doz-
Democrats have abandoned them. The called for men to take up weight lifting and en young members of Christian families to

114 VA N I T Y FA I R
get it ready to open for the public. He was of overland navigation, long-range shoot- means,” Fredrickson said. They were in
openly conflicted about his role in the churn ing, and use of high-quality optics involved their mid-30s and had been in New York
shaping the West. “My guess,” he said, “in in what is known as Western “spot-and- City when COVID hit and store shelves
10 years, there won’t be any blue-collar stalk” hunting are not very different from started to empty, which led them to start
people left in Story.” A lanky and bearded the skills involved in modern guerrilla looking for environs that felt more secure.
minister from Iowa had come out with his warfare. Insurgencies are less a military “Because obviously, me saying I’m a native
family to help him work on the place, and war than a complicated political conflict, is a little silly—because sure, at some point
there were a dozen or so kids in denim and in which a few people demonstrate that we were not, clearly. But in my mind I’m
homemade dresses rushing around, cook- they’re willing to kill, die, or go to prison, like, the West is my home, has always been
ing, and doing some light demolition. The and dare governments to overreact, gain- my home. I went to search for my fortune
scene was a prime example of “crunchy ing support when innocent people end up and came back, and then discovered that
conservatives,” an ecosystem described shot or arrested. Blood becomes political we have to go…I don’t know. I don’t know
by the writer Rod Dreher—who champions currency, and it does not take all that much where you go after Montana, I guess.”
localism and has long advocated that con- of it to create a conflict scenario. She and Miller, who’d grown up in Los
servative Christians withdraw as a way of “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Angeles and was a top-notch competitive
preserving their culture. It’s a process that McNiel said, and gestured around at his pistol shooter, were members of a secre-
eventually led Dreher himself to move to hideout. “That’s why I’m here.” tive group of tech-world people “planning
Hungary, where he has become a vocal He had invited me to an “open mic” he for a post-state future.” The group was
supporter of the country’s far-right prime was hosting at his home in Livingston, a organized by Balaji Srinivasan, the for-
minister, Viktor Orbán. “I love localism, ramshackle place at the center of a trailer mer CTO of Coinbase (and possible head
but there is definitely a point where it can park on an island in the Yellowstone River. of the FDA under Trump, time was), and
turn into blood and soil,” McNiel said. “I It was an odd combination of wholesome has been at least partly folded into his Net-
feel like my role is to argue for a localism family fun and radical politics. Girls wore work State project. It is possibly the most
that doesn’t go off the rails into exclusion.” prairie dresses, and everyone prayed before influential, but by no means the only, col-
I asked him what he’d thought of the a buffet of sautéed elk meat and apple pies. lection of connected people who are now
“There’s Gonna be a War in Montana” Children performed homespun skits, and planning for exit. There are many compet-
piece. He thought it over. In February of men got up and gave slightly doom-laden ing ideas to form new city-states, the best
2022, the New York Times columnist Jamelle speeches. “I want you to guess what the known being the crypto city of Próspera, to
Bouie wrote a piece titled “Why We Are Not most important word you’ll all need to be built in a free-trade zone in Honduras.
Facing the Prospect of a Second Civil War,” know in the years to come is going to be,” But there are innumerable smaller groups.
arguing that our first Civil War had been one guy asked the crowd. “It’s permacul- The right-wing podcaster Jack Murphy’s
produced by a political-economic conflict ture. Things are going to break down soon, all-male group, Liminal Order, has recent-
between the systems of the slave-holding and you had better be thinking about per- ly turned to homesteading and prepping to
agricultural South and the industrial maculture now to get ready.” “build sovereignty.” And the anonymous
North, and that no such economic division dissident-right figure known as Bennett’s
between the right and left exists in America A FEW DAYS later I met a very different sort Phylactery has founded a private group
today. But a political-economic division of prepper, a crypto investor and founder of called Exit, which offers in-person gather-
is exactly what many conservatives and a venture firm called Chaotic Capital who’d ings and help with everything from how to
nationalists now see as shaping our poli- moved to Montana with her husband after use crypto to get out of the financial system
tics: a divide between people who work a highly involved process of figuring out to how to raise chickens. In this realm, it
in the so-called “real economy,” and the where in America would be the best place is taken now more or less as a given that
journalists and bureaucrats and bankers to hole up. Her name was Julie Fredrickson, America is so enervated and fractured
and everyone else who occupy the “mana- and she’d grown up in Boulder, Colorado, that people need to think about fending
gerial class.” “Trump better stand up and a town long ago transformed by monied for themselves until some dictator-like
do what’s right,” Stewart Rhodes, the head transplants. “That’s the tension across all of figure steps in. “Right now the crown of
of the Oath Keepers, said on January 6, call- the West,” she said as we talked in their new France is lying on the ground,” Bennett’s
ing from a Northern Virginia hotel where home outside of Bozeman, a kind of middle Phylactery said to a podcaster recently. “At
a cache of guns had been staged. “Other- ground between full-on prepper compound some point somebody is going to figure
wise, there’s going to be a slave revolt.” and a sunny and elegant rural home, com- that out and pick it up.”
Many liberal Americans do not actually plete with an array of solar panels, food and “This is actually something that Balaji
understand how easy it would be to launch supplements, a garden, and a store of guns and the 1729 group have talked about,”
an insurgency in this country. “Everyone and ammo. “What I think about prepping Fredrickson told me. “I was one of the
on the planet is redpilled on low-intensity is, do you have what you need to be cut off early members,” she said, noting that she
warfare now,” a host of the dissident pod- for two weeks,” her husband, Alex Miller, thought the group now has a waiting list
cast Good Ol Boyz said recently, flicking at himself the CEO of a crypto start-up, told tens of thousands long. “And the big ques-
the way the Taliban was able to beleaguer me as he set out a spread of charcuterie on tion that they have, that I guess is nominally
and eventually defeat the American mili- the kitchen island. “That’s basically what somewhat related to the NRx folks,” she
tary, mostly using small arms. Pretty much you need to be ready for most crises.” said, referring to the sphere of so-called
every single guy in towns like Pinedale goes “It’s almost strange how much we fix- “neo-reactionary” thought illuminated by
out to hunt elk every autumn, and the skills ate on who are natives and what native Yarvin, “is right of exit. How hard is it to get

H O L LY W O O D 2 0 2 3 115
out of the situation that you are in if you feel Capital who was then running for the I’d heard him joke to Murphy once. “He
like you need to leave?” Senate in Arizona. “The show can’t go on should have a full battle load-out.” But he
“Balaji tends to look at it holistically,” forever,” Fredrickson said. “It’s not going was critiquing America’s conception of gun
Fredrickson said. Their cohort sees the to happen overnight. But if we don’t start rights as too individualistic and atomized.
Northern Rockies as one of a few places in taking action now, it’s like, I’m sorry.” “To me this should be like an imposed
America that will be livable in the coming duty—I don’t really subscribe to a very liber-
decades, when life in much of the country ERGO, MIAMI. JUST after I got back from al framework of the Second Amendment.”
is likely to be defined by heat waves, floods, Montana, in September, I flew there for This kind of talk was a running theme.
storms, and fires. But they were concerned an event called Urbit Assembly. This was The party the next night was at a mansion
about living through what people in these their second annual gathering, a strange owned by John Backus, who’d just sold a
spheres tend to call “managed decline,” a mix between a tech convention and a crypto company for $250 million, where
comedown period from the age of cheap degenerate art fair, for people associ- I met a young blond VC named Riva Tez,
fossil-fuel energy and rapid economic and ated with a project Yarvin had launched who flashed me the butt of a prop pistol in
technological progress, in which America’s long ago. Srinivasan was the project’s first her purse and would later give a keynote
so-called “state capacity”—our collective investor, and Peter Thiel had been the speech critiquing the entire idea of liberal
ability to do things—steadily degrades, our major funder behind Tlon, a company rationality. “The world of reason is over-
“real economy” hollows out, and political named after a mythical world in a Jorge rated,” she said. “We’ve been fucked by
divisions worsen. It is a scenario that looks Luis Borges story that Yarvin had founded the Enlightenment.”
more like the long decline of the Roman and that was still Urbit’s parent company. There were a lot of plans afoot. She
Empire than it does cataclysmic collapse. No one has ever been able to easily was working with Dryden Brown, the
And it’s this scenario—a muddling, unhap- explain Urbit. At the start of the conference, cofounder of a plan to build a city-state in
py, middle course—that most people in the head of the “Urbit Foundation” offered the Mediterranean called Praxis, a place
this sphere tend to predict is coming. attendees a node on the network, worth for “exceptional men and women seek-
“I also speak woke and have all the left- millions of dollars, if they could explain it in ing more vital lives.” There was an entire
wing friends,” Fredrickson told me. She one sentence. But the basic idea is that it’s panel on “Forking the American Code-
had voted for Hillary Clinton. But “the a peer-to-peer, decentralized internet. And base,” which described how systems like
funny thing is, the overriding concern is it’s also a software platform, and a network Urbit could offer a “new American Revolu-
the same,” she said, “that infrastructure you buy into. And it’s also a subculture. tion,” where the degraded systems of our
is not reliable, state capacity is declining.” Yarvin, who is no longer officially national “meatspace” could be supplanted
She said they’d thought about moving to associated with Urbit, wasn’t there, but by new technological platforms. It was a
Michigan. “But Michigan’s got too much he came up in conversation constantly. kind of practical politics for a world where
political turmoil, because they haven’t “Curtis Yarvin is everybody’s darling,” a politics no longer worked. “No voice, just
quite set where they’re at,” she said. “We reporter for Forever Magazine wrote troll- exit” was the mantra.
didn’t want to be in a state where, if there ingly in her piece about the weekend. I met a man named Jon Stokes, a Harvard
is some kind of political drama, somebody “Curtis this, Curtis that. In Honduras with Divinity School graduate from small-town
decides to test out if a state legislature can Curtis. In Dubai with Curtis. On the crypto Louisiana who’d cofounded and sold the
change the outcome, I don’t want to be island of Próspera with Curtis.” media company Ars Technica to Condé
anywhere near that shit when it happens.” Srinivasan gave the keynote. Kirn was Nast (which owns Vanity Fair), and was a big
She thought something had gone wrong there to do a panel. “Was that Indian figure in the online prepper world. Stokes
with us physically too. “Endocrine systems Bronson?” I heard someone whisper at had also helped to found a sophisticated
get fried. There’s too much cortisol, you’ve the opening-night cocktail party, and saw and slightly esoteric pro-gun group called
been running on adrenaline, eventu- a young man nervously debating whether to Open Source Defense. And, it turned out, he
ally you tap out. Everyone feels nuts right approach the early employee of the crypto was a member of Srinivasan’s 1729 group.
now,” she said, “because what on earth are payment platform Swype, “the most hand- “Balaji has a thing with the media,” he
we supposed to do with the fact that we’ve some man in America,” according to the said. “So I definitely can’t talk about that
had this incredible rate of change for so podcaster Jack Murphy. He’s also, as was to you.” But he was happy to get into why
long. We think we’re keeping up with it, fairly typical in this world, a critic of liberal- he was interested in prepping. I asked him
but our bodies are like, ‘Oh, actually no. ism—not liberalism as represented by the whether all the chaos it seems we’re expe-
We have no idea what’s going on.’ ” Democratic Party, but of the entire Enlight- riencing is just part of the usual course of
“There’s definitely the tension of how enment idea that individual desires and history, no different, except for the hyper-
long can this last,” she said. “Unchecked freedoms should shape society. He had just speed of the internet, than the upheavals
growth is cancer,” she said, paraphras- cofounded a new dating app called Keeper, that had swept the world in the 1960s. “I
ing the environmentalist writer Edward a project that arose at least in part from his guess that’s the trillion-dollar question,”
Abbey, who wrote that “growth for the view that the sexual revolution and our new he said. “I would be inclined to agree with
sake of growth,” the organizing principle culture of dating and breaking up into our you that it’s falling apart at a deeper level.”
of our entire global society, “is the ideol- 30s and 40s has actually been disastrous for “One of the things that is fascinating to
ogy of the cancer cell.” The Abbey quote women who want to get married and have me about the Network State idea,” he said,
had been repeated to me just a few months children. “My personal stance is that every “is this idea that a community gets togeth-
before by Blake Masters, the young Repub- able-bodied adult American man should er around a moral premise.” He thought
lican candidate and former head of Thiel own an M4A1, an M320 grenade launcher,” America lacked this now. “If I had to pick

116 VA N I T Y FA I R
one thing, I would say that there’s some- visited recently, and despite the fact that he Isaac Simpson who lived barely miles away
thing about the level of inequality, and I was a civil libertarian, he’d found it an oddly from me and was indeed very far into the
know that’s a very lefty thing to say,” he appealing contrast to America. “I was like, “scene” of this whole dissident right. We
said. “There is something about the shock- man, this place is actually truly very high headed down to an Irish bar to chat and
ing and staggering degree of inequality functioning and they care about it. They’re watch football. We ended up talking about
that feeds a lot of this.” involved in a collective thing,” he said. “And rainbow flags he’d seen in Bozeman. “Man,
“I think liberalism has failed,” Stokes they have a kind of benign nationalism.” He I don’t care if somebody fucks guys,” he
said, perhaps echoing the title of the best- shrugged. Could be worse. said. “What that flag really represents is
known expression of this kind of thinking, It was a hot and muggy morning in the sameness. It’s this one single worldview
Why Liberalism Failed, by the Notre open-air conference space when Sriniva- that is going to take over everything, and
Dame political science professor Patrick san gave his keynote. He wanted to make what that really means is just money. You
Deneen. The book, surprisingly, has even a practical case for his “crowdsourced go to these places where every single bar
been praised by President Barack Obama, territory,” in which self-selecting commu- now looks exactly the same, the same IPAs,
who said he mostly disagreed with its nities would use crypto platforms to band the same hamburger, the same interiors.
conclusions but noted “an increasing dis- together and buy themselves a country. It’s all called ‘local’ but actually what it is is
illusionment with the liberal democratic “Starting new countries is possible, pref- fucking private equity investment. And it’s
order” and a worrying “loss of meaning erable, and profitable,” he said, and drew just empty. There is no culture or life in that
and community” when he recommended a parallel between the American empire stuff. And people fucking hate it.”
it on Facebook in 2018. of today and the breakup of the French The Miami Dolphins won a thrilling
“This thing where you could be a civil and British colonial empires. “As empires game. That night there was a small gath-
libertarian and an atheist and I could be a decay you get new countries,” he said. He ering at a suite in the swank Faena Hotel
backwoods Pentecostal or a Muslim, but pitched it as an opportunity for people in Miami Beach. People were doing coke,
we can all come together and we can adju- who’d missed America’s empire-building and there were several cases of White Claw
dicate some of these things and we can live in the West. “Ambitious people now have piled on a counter. I quit smoking long ago,
in community,” Stokes told me, “I think an alternative in these frontier societies.” but every time I end up around people in
that has broken down.” I wandered over to the edge of the this scene I seem to start again. I went out
“Peter Thiel would agree with this,” crowd, having been warned in advance to the balcony to bum one and found myself
he said, referring to Thiel’s interest in the that Srinivasan wouldn’t be willing to talk face-to-face with Kirn. I told him that the
French philosopher René Girard. “There to me. I took a beer from the open bar and guy who’d written that Substack post about
was a sort of quasi-Christian state religion a hand-rolled cigarette from the artisanal Montana was at the party. He grinned.
superstructure that set a larger bound cigarette stand, and asked for a light from a “Let’s do this,” he said, and led me over to
around what was acceptable and what guy charging his laptop at a standing work- where Simpson was sitting. Kirn reached
wasn’t. And now that’s fallen apart.” table. He’d been talking about the Network out to shake hands, but Simpson looked up
“Balaji says the community has to have State idea. “That’s what a lot of these new with a set jaw. “No, we aren’t doing this,”
a point,” he said. “And it has to be a point city-states are going to look like, there are he said. “Fuck that.” He’d been badly stung
that transcends just, we’re gonna make people going to the Upper Peninsula of by a famous writer. Kirn sat down anyway.
money and get material stuff. Liberalism Michigan, to Colorado, do you know about They talked for a very long time. People
doesn’t acknowledge a point.” this shit?” He began to explain to me how kept going to the bathroom to do drugs.
“So that’s like to the civil war question, decentralized autonomous organizations Finally, somebody announced that the
man,” he said. “I think if my middle model and Web3 platforms like Urbit helped make party had to break up, and a group of us
is something like the ’70s, which is bomb- these ideas possible. I mentioned that I’d wandered out to the beach under the moon-
ings, political assassinations, that I think is been curious about this sort of thing when light. People were doing ketamine and
very, very reasonable as an expectation.” I made a recent trip to Montana. “I just skinny-dipping. I had an 8 a.m. flight but
But he was, he said, “as prepped as I can get. wrote a Substack about Montana,” he said. went for one last swim. “Nothing is normal
I don’t even know what other stuff I could So here was the guy who’d gotten me anymore,” I heard a guy mutter, apparently
buy.” Now, he said, “I honestly think these started on my whole summer peregrina- to himself, as I headed toward the water.
days about moving to Singapore.” He’d tion, a 37-year-old ad copywriter named “And it never will be again.” n

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IG: @orza_luxury_swimwear_paris Visit aidajan.com IG: @aidajan__
VANIT Y FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

Big Screen Style

JREW CREATIONS NADINE OTKUTYR
When it comes
to NADINE, all
fashion designers
are story tellers.
The inspiration for
their collections are
spun from real or
fictional stories,
which are expressed
using sustainable
and vegan tools.
As a brand which
JREW CREATIONS are redefining crochet
is inclusive to all
as a high-quality fashion and art with their
body types, the
hand-crocheted accessories. Their first
narrative is for the wearer to express however
product was their crochet durag which
she pleases, with a heightened awareness of
signifies class, style and practicality.
her beauty. Visit nadine-online.com
Visit jrewcreations.com IG: @jrewcreations
IG: @nadine.rtw

OYELEKE CORINNA HOUIDI

Introducing Oyeleke, a The German based brand
‘sophi-eccentric’ gentle Corinna Houidi stands for
avant-garde brand high-quality, individuality
founded by Bobola and independence. The
Oyeleke in 2018. label opens a world to
Oyeleke aims to create luxurious high fashion,
new silhouettes for the fused with the energy of
modern man by merging the street, precise
the finest materials with handmade details and
deconstructed, strong silhouettes.
traditional shapes and Feminine and masculine
dimensions. Featured is elements, as well as soft
the Indigo Wilderness and hard details leave a
Denim Shirt, Cropped lot of room for unisex
Denim Jacket and Tech interpretations in the
Wilderness Denim mostly very wide cut
Pants from their beautiful denim collection. pieces. Visit maisoncorinnahouidi.com
Visit oyeleke.com IG: @boboyeleke IG: @corinnahouidi

SOOD AIKER
SOOD is a San AIKER creates
Francisco founded garments for
brand designed in contemporary
OTKUTYR Fashion House is one of the first
New York that seeks women, unbound
Saudi fashion houses, established in 2011, that
to embody dualism, by a singular
produces garments both locally and ethically. It
self-expression, purpose in society
is based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at the heart of
representation, and and innately
the seaside city. The fashion house is known for
collaboration. Founder multidimensional.
its innovative eco friendly techniques such as
and designer Sana Their “Office
up-cycling, and reusing fabrics from older
Maqsood wants to Martini” collection
collections and pieces. OTKUTYR has proven
help ignite confidence, is inspired by
that ethical and slow fashion do not compromise
promote inclusivity women who are not
elegance nor quality. The fashion house is
and re-define everyday afraid to juxtapose
dedicated to showcasing local artists and
jewellery basics. the realities of
designers’ internationally by offering services
They are currently office and nightlife.
including creative direction and local production.
selling their Edge Visit aiker.eu
With collections ranging from haute couture to
series produced in sterling silver and 18k gold IG: @aiker.aiker
ready to wear, it has its own in-house line.
plated brass. Visit sood.co IG: @sood.clothing
Visit otkutyr.com IG: @otkutyrfashionhouse

SOIELI MTTC SEEZONA

Soieli is a New Creating garments Introducing Seezona,
York-based, hand- that are glamorous, the global platform
painted hair accessory unique and dedicated to the next
brand born out of the sustainable, MTTC generation of fashion
desire to make hair (Mariya Tamila designers. Originating
accessories as Tkachenko Couture) from Stockholm and
beautiful as jewellery. is the Australian showcasing over 150
Designer Sonali designer label that international brands,
Karmarkar effortlessly will not disappoint. Seezona brings style,
marries fine art with Handcrafted with unique designs and
fashion, transforming meticulous attention quality craftmanship to
hair accessories into to detail, every one space to satisfy a
silk canvases for her MTTC piece is plethora of fashion
art. Soieli weaves timeless, luxurious tastes. Seezona
stylistic inspiration from the impressionist era and will not fade into champions individual brands, most of which are
with urban street art. The result is a unique, the background. Visit run by women, and they put sustainability at the
wearable art piece perfect for the modern mttcaustralia.com forefront of what they do. Visit seezona.com
woman. Visit soieli.com IG: @soielisilk IG: @mttcaustralia IG: @seezona
 VANIT Y FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

Red Carpet Ready

1. Fall in love with PERSICA SKINCARE’s Facial Oil. 2
1 3
Featuring floral notes of jasmine, neroli, ylang ylang,
calendula, lavender and the ultimate skincare luxury
ingredient - saffron. The oil is expertly formulated with
24 botanicals and is designed to leave the face feeling
radiant and restored. Visit persicaskincare.com
IG: @persicaskincare
2. CREDENCE’s shampoo is tailored for men by UK
hair experts so you can look, feel and smell your best.
Enriched with Nature BolsterTM a blend of plant-based 6
cleansers, organic oats, British hops and wheat protein.
Available in three scents with real essences and 5
masculine notes to leave a lasting confident 4
impression. Visit credencehair.com
IG: @credence.hair
3. NATALIA ME-GAN BEAUTY provides a beautiful
range of luxurious products that are designed to
enhance your natural beauty. The brand founder and
CEO Schenika Quattlebaum, a domestic violence
survivor, turned her pain into purpose and created a
range of highly pigmented, cruelty free products.
Visit nataliambeauty.com IG: @nataliambeauty
4. BOOK OF LASHES BY GRETSHA is a luxury lash
brand. Their lashes are handmade, lightweight and reusable and can last up to 20
to 25 uses. Beautiful lashes that will give you a wispy look, giving just the right
amount of length you need and desire. Visit booklashes.com
IG: @bookoflashesbygretsha 8
7
5. DEAD SEA DREAM’s Purifying Mineral Mud Mask is
gender-neutral, fragrance-free, vegan and cruelty-free. It
can be applied on the face and body to help reduce the
appearance of acne and imperfections and leave the skin
feeling soft. It is easy to apply and powered with natural 11
Dead Sea Mud, Aloe Vera and Zinc.
Visit deadseadream.com IG: @deadsea_dream
6. Introducing BASZICARE’s Arrigo Supreme Lifting
Serum and Vivax Deluge Lift Moisturiser designed to help
make skin feel firmer and look smoother. The duo aims to
support the skin’s natural ability to restore balance. It leaves skin feeling 9 10
tauter with a defined look. Visit baszicare.com IG: @baszicare
7. Turn heads with the perfect red pout when you apply KEE
ESSENTIAL BEAUTY Bombshell Matte Lipstick. Cruelty free and
vegan, it’s designed to give you a full-bodied colour that won’t budge all
day. Aim to achieve a true matte finish that’ll stay on for up to 12 hours.
Unlock your beauty and make it personal with KEE Essential Beauty.
Visit keeessential.com IG: @kee_essential

TO APPEAR ON THESE PAGES, CONTACT [email protected] OR CALL 020 7152 3705

8. The Illuminating Face Mask by 2SQM helps to make you feel relaxed.
It is made with 98.5% natural origin ingredients, including Aloe Vera, Sea
Fennel and Hyaluronic Acid. This mask aims to make your skin feel soft
and smooth, nourishing the skin with moisture. Visit 2sqm.it
IG: @2sqmskincare
9. DAMANCI Argan Cream aims to leave all types of hair feeling revitalised. A 12 13
leave-in conditioner and styling aid that helps to improve the look of your strands,
leaving your hair appearing shiny. Visit damanci.com IG: @damancihair
10. Be kind to your skin and the planet with SEABAE’s reusable wipes. Made of
the softest hemp cotton, these zero-waste wipes last up to 1000+ washes. The
Seabae combo pack includes seven eye rounds, three face rounds, along with a
laundry bag and biodegradable pouch. With each purchase they give back to
the SEE turtles conservation, helping to save endangered baby sea turtles.
Visit seabaebeauty.com IG: @seabaebeauty
11. NOURISHED BY SHAWNTA’s founder & creative director Shawnta created
her intentional hair care brand in sincere hopes of shedding light on how far
authentic and holistic beauty can naturally take one’s hair. All elements in the
Nourished products are carefully curated from sustainable, clean and vegan
ingredients. Visit nourishedbyshawnta.com IG: @nourishedbyshawnta 15
12. COVERLUXESILK. Immerse yourself with 100% pure silk pillowcases which 14
aim to improve the look of your hair. With nine glistening colours to choose
from, enjoy optimal rest for a high-performance day. Visit coverluxesilk.com
IG: @coverluxesilk
13. No.4 Rejuvenate and Restore Collagen Mask by FAB SKINCARE aims to give
your skin the treatment of dreams with their iconic overnight collagen mask. Use it
as a pre-bedtime treatment or let it do its magic while you rest. This gel helps to leave
the skin feeling boosted and hydrated whilst also helping to improve the appearance of fine
lines. Wake up feeling like a glowing goddess. Visit fab-skincare.co.uk IG: @fab.skincare
14. MONKS is a natural, inclusive, diverse, luxurious new underarm care brand powered by
Generation Z. Their products are completely natural and are both vegan and cruelty free. It
is a newly elevated take on the original deodorant. Visit monks.world IG: @monks
15. The Shaant collection by CODEX LABS aims to address the appearance of oily skin and
clogged pores, designed for irritated, greasy and acne-prone skin. The ShaantComplexTM
aims to reduce sebum production and improve the look of redness and reduce the
appearance of pores. This skincare collection includes a Foaming Cleanser, Refining Toner,
Clay Mask and an Oil Control Cream. Visit codexlabs.co.uk IG: @codexbeauty
VANITY FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

Glitter And Glam

2 1. FULLORD. Belt Ghost Earrings in 18k rose gold and diamonds. The ghost earrings
1
feature a minimal yet complex design that combines a rounded square outside with a
circular inside giving life to unique volumes and proportions. Its iconic shape makes the
ring unusual yet classic. Designed in Switzerland, made in Italy. Visit fullord.com
IG: @fullordgeneva
2. Founded by Ileana Djujic, FOXY PEARL JEWELRY was born out of her love and
passion for jewellery as an art form, specifically the intricacy of pearls. Pearls are
multi-dimensional and communicate numerous meanings; they are elegant, classic,
playful and striking. These adjectives inspire her designs. She also wanted to bring to
life a brand that offers beautiful and distinctive designs that will last long after the
season is over. Visit foxypearljewelry.com IG: @foxy_pearl_jewelry
3. Jewellery designer and founder of BEADS WITH B, Brianna Zora, designs affordable
and exquisite jewellery. Using high-quality, 14k gold-filled beads, each piece is meant to
complement the wearer’s unique style and articulate the story they want to tell. Visit
beadswithb.com IG: @beadswithb
3 4 4. ÉLAINE THE BRAND creates jewellery that is sustainable in both ways. Through
timeless designs and through durable, recycled materials. Every piece is designed
with love by founder Huelya Kula. Utilising only high-quality materials you can wear it
with pride, knowing that you’re doing your part to make the world a more beautiful
place. Visit elainethebrand.com IG: @elainethebrand
5. Based in Japan, TAMIKO JEWELLERY is a fine jewellery brand offering beautifully
curated, modern pieces. The brand integrates beauty and functionality into their
designs, using only true materials including various colours of 18k gold and gemstones.
5 Featured is their stunning ring from the MARI collection. The outer sphere is made
6 from 18k pink gold, while the inner sphere is made of 18k yellow gold with rubies and
sapphires. The inner sphere floats and moves with the movement of
the hand, allowing you to feel free whilst wearing the ring. Visit
tamikojewellery.com IG: @tamikojewellery_japan
7 8 6. BUZZNSTING is a black woman-owned contemporary fine
jewellery brand based in New York City. Each piece features bee
iconography; Egyptians view bees as sacred, believing that their Sun
God created these insects from his tears. This spirituality is carried
through their collection, symbolising divine power, majesty, wisdom,
love, mercy and justice. Visit buzznsting.com IG: @buzznsting
7. HANADIS JEWELRY is a Jordanian brand known for its
high-quality sterling silvers and innovative designs. While
majoring in Chemical Engineering, Hanadi found her passion in
9 jewellery making and decided to follow her dream and start
running a jewellery business. Her unique and joyful designs
captured hearts and she is now expanding her business in the UAE
11 and Palestine. Visit hanadisjewelry.com IG: @hanadisjewelry
8. An exclusive look at DE MONT’s 3rd collection. Lavertue is part of
12 an exquisite finery that is both alluring and meticulously designed. The
superposition of the plates refers to a very beautiful story of patience that they invite
10 you to discover. Visit demontjewelry.com IG: @demont_creations
9. ERA JEWELLERY. Elizabeth Rose Antiques are unique antique jewellery specialists
and passionate designers, best known for their timeless antique gems and inspired
re-designs. Their new ERA designs hold powerful messages; it is their mission to
empower you and create a soulful connection between you and your ERA gems. Visit
elizabethroseantiques.com IG: @elizabethroseantiques
10. BILLIE WILDE is a contemporary fine jewellery label based in NYC, each piece is
crafted with sustainably-sourced and recycled gold. Texture and colour define their
13 design ethos - a visual cadence meant to inspire strength for any look. The world is wilde;
dive in. Visit billiewildecollections.com IG: @billiewildecollections
11. LNB JEWELLERY is a luxury bijoux, made to stand out. Their pieces are handmade
with precious stones and gold or rhodium plating, with various colour options available.
Not only is their couture quality amplified by top-quality gemstones and a 24k gold filling
or Italian nano plating, but their first collection was also successfully presented during New York Fashion
Week and recognised by fashion photographers. Visit lnbbrand.com IG: @lnb.jewellery
12. US-based jewellery designer, Ala Novik, founded APRIL AFFECT to create unique designs inspired by
flowers. The store has the perfect statement pieces for everyday and special occasions. These modern
earrings are crafted from clay and are designed to add a hint of playfulness to any outfit. Not only are
these earrings fashionable, but they’re also durable and will last season after season. Visit aprilaffect.com
14 IG: @april_affect_store
13. Introducing HEY HARPER’s first high-end jewellery collection – Icons. This collection represents the
brand’s dedication to traditional craftsmanship through hand carving and intricate crystal encrusting
techniques. The collection is inspired by the natural formation of flowers seen in the unfolding series of
pieces full of graceful lines and subtle details of blooms. Their Ethereal Flora necklace petals are adorned
with a plethora of sparkling crystals and ornate gold detailing encapsulating the timeless yet contemporary
collection. Visit uk.heyharpershop.com IG: @heyharpershop
14. Welcome to PRETTY WITCHY, a shop designed by a lover of all things witchy and whimsical. The
brand prides itself on ethically sourced crystals, eco-friendly packaging and unique jewellery designs. From
February, they will be stocked at Wolf & Badger Kings Cross and partnering with Black Feather Design in
15 opening a new store at a top secret location. Featured is their Witchy Amethyst Ring ranging in sizes 5 to 12.
Visit prettywitchy.shop IG: @prettywitchyuk
15. D BY DILYS’ everyday fine jewels are perfect for stacking. Impeccably handcrafted in Hong Kong by
16 in-house artisans, the Arena bangles in 18k gold are each designed to spotlight a natural collectable
gemstone. Featured here is D by Dilys’ Arena Bangle with a unique blue sapphire centre stone.
Visit dbydilys.com IG: @dbd_finejewels
16. The Cosmic Love Bangle is one of BLUBOHO’s most iconic pieces. Handcrafted in solid
recycled gold and set with diamonds for an ornate, celestial take on a classic style. This bangle
strikes a balance between timeless elegance and unique beauty. Visit bluboho.com IG: @bluboho
 VANIT Y FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

17. SOUL OF A GYPSY JEWELRY creates handmade meditation rings of .925 17

sterling silver. Some styles have outer spin bands of natural brass and copper, while 18
others display semi-precious gemstones like this stunning London Blue Topaz.
Inspired by the beauty and strength of the wearer. Visit mygypsysoul.com
IG: @soulofagypsyjewelry
18. DEL ESTE JEWELRY was founded by Italian designer, Maria Teresa Tupini.
Her passion for jewellery design is palpable, intertwining classic designs with
contemporary styles, bringing a modern edge to fine jewellery. Striving to empower
women with each piece, making the wearer feel confident when sporting bold yet
elegant designs. All her pieces are handmade in Miami, available to order worldwide.
Visit shopdeleste.com IG: @shopdeleste
19. Introducing JACX CARTER DESIGNS. Founded by TieSha Carter in 2021 as part of her 19
creative therapy, she specialises in handmade, eclectically designed necklaces, bracelets
and earrings. She believes jewellery is a form of self-expression, individuality and identity. 20
Hoping to inspire her customers to find a connection with their identity and individuality.
She uses a variety of materials including glass seed beads, wooden beads and polymer clay.
Visit jacxcdesigns.com IG: @jacxcarterdesigns
20. VICTORIA EMERSON is a family-owned business founded in 2012 by husband and
wife, Jamie Ferguson-Woods and Jane Hemingway. Designed at their Toronto, Canada-
based head office, their goal is to provide beautiful and affordable jewellery for everyone.
Featured is their Lev Baguette Cut Eternity Ring. Visit victoriaemerson.co.uk
IG: @victoriaemersondesign

A-List Artists
1. SARA LOWE (LOMASTO-MORMONE), is a much travelled artist and works
privately in Linslade, Bedfordshire near the Chiltern Hills. The artist is focused by 1 2 3
the ideologies of escapism and concepts of behaviour, nature and beauty using
impasto movement, which is masterfully placed with sharp, bold, and overlapping
compilations of colours and strokes. Seen as a painter, designer and maker of
handmade garments, an advocate for tradition. Visit saralowe.co.uk or IG:
@saralowe_arts and @saraloweartist
2. ILARIA RATTI SALVIONI is a Swiss artist based in Dubai. Her artworks are
vibrant, energetic and optimistic. She works with matter and energy, powerfully
infusing materials. She also creates customised artwork for clients, interior
designers and boutique hotels. Featured is her piece titled Age of Aquarius. Visit
ilariaratti.com IG: @ilariarattisalvioni
3. Through her multidisciplinary practice, SEPHORA VENITES explores the
perception of reality and the subjective experiences and interpretations of human
nature. Inspired by Dadaism and Surrealism, her work aims to offer a new,
metaphorical journey for the audience, using disjointed figures at the boundary of
representation and abstraction to navigate the world as a female subject. Visit 4 5 6
sephoravenites.com and follow @sephoravenites on IG.
4. SARAH MANOVSKI is a mixed media graphic artist and painter. A self professed
philosopher and environmentalist, her artworks are heavily inspired by animals,
nature, precious stones and metals. To view her work or to purchase an artwork, visit
sarahmanovski.com or contact Sarah via her IG: @sarahmanovski
5. ANDRÉA LOBEL tries to emphasise a certain tenderness in her works; a gesture

TO APPEAR ON THESE PAGES, CONTACT [email protected] OR CALL 020 7152 3705

or gaze that could have passed by almost unnoticed. Her photography is mainly in
black and white. She feels it strengthens the focus and leaves the observation
timeless. Featured is her piece titled Lola Nina. Visit andrealobel.nl IG: @andrealobel
6. NORAH DINEEN is an award winning interdisciplinary visual artist, musician and
actress. Through her creative practices, she represents the life renewing process of
evolution and growth to eradicate the prejudices inflicted on the body by the images
in some films and media. She studied painting and performance at Central Saint
Martins. Visit norahdineen.com IG: @norahdineenartist
7. MANOELA GRIGOROVA is a Bulgarian born, London-based 9
7 8
mixed-media and embroidery artist creating wondrous, abstract realms
of escapism through colour, texture and contradiction. Often inspired
by nature, Manoela champions sustainability by interweaving unusual,
repurposed and salvaged materials in her works. Visit
mojoandmuse.co.uk IG: @mojoandmuse
8. ANAÏS CAMILLE plays between contemporary design and royal
aesthetics. This is how the piece Sand Tropez x Versailles was born.
This unique artwork contains real sand; a truly unique painting for
French Riviera lovers, accompanied by a magnificent composition. Visit
anaiscamille.com IG: @anais.creative.world
9. MICHAEL JAMES CISARIK is a self-taught abstract painter living
and working in Houston, Texas, USA. Cisarik is best known for pairing
neutral undertones with contrasting accents and gritty textures to evoke 10 11
raw emotions for his viewers. Visit michaeljamescisarik.com
IG: @michaeljamescisarik
10. BRIDGET WEISER is a self-taught contemporary artist based in Los
Angeles, California. Through layers of accrued oil and acrylic paints, her
striking and vivid work creates a space for the viewer to draw inferences
from the architecture of their imaginations. Visit
bridgetweiserartwork.com IG: @b.weiser
11. Canadian artist RITA THORP paints contemporary abstract art.
Embedded in the many layers of texture, paint and asemic writing are deep
feelings and emotions in her work. Rita is passionate about creating
meaningful art that connects the viewer to their feelings and life conditions. 12
‘Sing to Me’ is one of nine paintings in her series titled Freedom, a homage
to the freedoms many of us are privileged to enjoy as a society. Visit
ritathorp.com IG: @ritathorp_artist
12. Using abstract and mixed media techniques, GRACEIN’s work is
inspired by her personal experiences and the people who have left a strong
impression on her life. She has been featured in solo and group exhibitions,
including Rail Station Gallery in Plano, Texas; the Las Laguna Gallery,
California; and The Other Art Fair, sponsored by Saatchi Art. Visit
graceinmcginnis.com IG: @graceinco Email: [email protected]
VANITY FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

15
A-List Artists
13. CECILE LOBERT is a neurodiverse, non-verbal visual abstract expressionist
13 14
who addresses consciousness in its raw form. Challenging us to empathise with
our cores, she showcases first-hand experience in living free from conventional
baggage and external influence. Visit cecilelobert.com IG: @iamcecilelobert
14. LO HENNESSEY is a Massachusetts-based artist and Doctor of Physical
Therapy. She specialises in oil, acrylic, and watercolour paintings inspired by her
education, travels, and imagination. Her work is characterised by vibrant colours,
loud vision, and anatomical distortion. Visit lohennyart.com IG: @lohennessey
15. Australian based watercolour artist SARAH SMITH, takes inspiration from playful
concepts and everyday items to derive highly detailed and unique artworks. Sarah has
worked with brands such as Tiffany & Co, and NET-A-PORTER, and exhibits artworks
throughout varying galleries in Australia. Sarah is making her international art debut at
Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair in London this March 9-12th. You can view her works
in person at this event. ‘Espresso’ (pictured) available as a print, visit
16 17 18 sarahwatercolour.com IG: @sarahsmith__artist
16. Even when ELENA GATTI tried to push art aside and explore new things, it
always found its way back to her. This artist creates her own world through art,
a world she hopes others want to be part of too and most of all, to feel inspired,
heard and happy. Visit fiorenzaart.com IG: @fiorenza_art
17. BEDE ART STUDIO. Beata Dencikowska began her artistic career as a
pianist and opera singer but soon made a name for herself with her abstract
paintings. Her paintings have been shown in exhibitions in Vienna, Munich,
London and New York. Featured is her piece titled “Harmony” from her
“Symphony” Series, containing 14 paintings in the same technique and colours,
made with acrylic paints. This series is influenced by musical artists who have
inspired Beata. Visit bedeartstudio.com IG: @beatadencikowska
18. CARMEN DELPRAT’s exotic art merges several styles including fine art,
20 surrealism and symbolism. Through her art, Carmen captures an allegory of
19
the natural world and transforms it into dream-like interpretations. Visit her
full collection of fine art prints, gift cards and stunning art scarves at
carmendelpratart.com IG: @carmendelpratart
19. Inspired by awkward and uncomfortable social situations, BARBARA
KUEBEL handcrafts lifesized woodcuts that serve as a whole-body
experience. Although the monochromatic colours virtually pop from the
canvas, her aim is never to draw attention away from the monumentality of
the picture. The creatures in Kuebel’s work are forced to connect with each
other, forming knots and shapes that appear deformed at first glance. Her
works are available online through Saatchi Art, Riseart, Artfinder and
Singulart and she is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.
Visit barbarakuebelart.studio IG: @kuba.art
20. MICHELLE LINDSAY is an Irish artist originally from Dublin but now
based in Tara, Co. Meath. Her creative style is vibrant textured pieces in oil,
22 acrylic and mixed media. She creates one of a kind florals, landscapes and other
original intuitive works. Visit michellelindsayart.com or IG: @michellelindsayart
for more information.
21. JODIE WILLIS’ process involves merging abstract figurative elements into
21 traditional “grounded” landscapes. Jodie strives to satisfy both the objective and
subjective nature of human perception through playful interplays between negative
and positive spaces. Visit his gallery on artsy.net IG: @upnorthstar
22. Toronto Artist, JODY CLEMENT, creates abstract landscapes inspired by her
travels in Canada. Fine line masking is used to create her compositions resulting in
23 abstract mosaics that are interactive for the viewer. Visit jodyclementart.com
IG: @jodyclementart
23. ELYSIA GILMAN is an artist from North Wales who uses oil paints to create
portraits, figurative work, street and sporting scenes. She is most inspired by the
impressionists and seeks to capture moments with her work. Alongside her personal
projects, Elysia takes commissions which are often in high demand, and you can view
more of her work online. Visit elysiagilman.com IG: @elysiagilmanart
24. ALEXANDRA BAKER is a spiritually driven abstract expressionist painter.
Alexandra heals, inspires, and shares her heart through the language of texture and
colour. Featured is her 48 by 48-inch expression on canvas titled “Dancing With
Ancestors.” Visit alexandrabakerfineart.com IG: @abakerfineart
25. AMY WEBBER. In her series titled ‘Women of the West Coast: Celebrating
24 25 Diversity,’ artist Amy Webber (@amywebberart) celebrates the beauty in diversity in
ethnicities, the female form and female empowerment. Amy’s figurative work includes her
realistic painterly style combined with a moody ambience and a contemporary West Coast
colour palette. For more information, contact Allison Thompson of AT Art and Interiors at
allisonthompsonstudio.com IG: @atartinteriors
26. DORIANA SINNETT strives to express her personal vision through her art, using colour,
music and imagination. Each piece reflects her soul, inspired by the divine. She is captivated by
the magic of artwork taking shape and coming alive. Visit atelierimagery.com
IG: @dorianasinnettart
27 27. KATHY STANLEY is a Jamaican-born artist living on the US
28 West Coast. A visionary artist and ecopsychology educator, her
acrylic paintings and mixed media artwork reflect meditative inner
26 journeys of exploring the ecological self, celebrating earth and
invoking wholeness, joy and aliveness. Visit sacredartjourneys.com
IG: @kstanleyart
28. DULLAL MIAH is a UK-based, hyper-realism artist. He has
always been fascinated by art, inspired by portraits and their ability
to capture human emotions and experiences. His artistic practice is
to create a story from his subject’s emotions. His favourite tool is the
pencil because of its ability to create tones and textures with a
single shade. He is most known for his celebrity portraits as well as
for creating portraits of his family and friends. Visit
dullalmiaharts.co.uk IG: @original_d_sketches
 VANIT Y FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

Vanity Fair’s Shortlist

1. MR MONTY & ME is a luxury home and lifestyle
1 2
boutique specialising in personalised dog accessories
with staple and timeless pieces that are stylish, and will
stand the test of time. Their products are designed and
handcrafted in Melbourne, Australia using the finest
materials that your four legged friend deserves. Use code
VANITYFAIR for 15% off your purchase (expires
03/04/23). Visit mrmontyandme.com.au
IG: @mrmontyandme
2. SOWVITAL is a premium horticultural brand whose
mission is to reconnect people and their plants through
scientifically and mindfully informed rituals. Founder
Jack and his team have created a world in which routine,
care and nourishment function as a meditative process in
the urban gardener’s lifestyle, a practice comparable to a
skincare routine, a ritualised process of self-care
underpinned by both the scientific and the spiritual. Join
the adventure at sowvital.com and follow their
IG: @sowvitalplantcare
3. ANI BIOME offers Vitality as a ServiceTM- a
membership model with science-backed treatments for
supporting normal gut health and enabling greater levels
of vitality. The Targeted Preventive TreatmentTM includes
the Ani HabitTM app, which guides Members through daily
psychobiological reflections and requires only one minute
a day and personalised Age BioticsTM . Visit Ani Biome at
3
anibiome.ai IG: @anibiome
4. Elevate your space with LA VIE & BELLE’s sculptural
candles. Home to one of the largest sculptural candle ranges
in Australia, where quality and luxury meet craftsmanship. 4 5
Visit lavieandbelle.com.au IG: @lavieandbelle
5. Toronto brand SHOP JUJU is a luxury pet boutique with
a curated range of products including beds, toys, treats,
walking accessories and more for dogs and cats. As an
extension of their grooming salon, Juju Grooms, they strive
to provide some of the best products to help enrich the lives
of your pets. Visit shopjuju.ca IG: @_shopjuju_
6. WOOF FRILLS creates adorable apparel and accessories
for your beloved fur-baby. With a new winter collection
available now, and sizes to fit all dog breeds, this is the place to 6
find essentials, from harnesses and collars to ultra-soft
blankets. Visit wooffrills.com IG: @wooffrills
7. VEGA BASICS goes back to their roots, delivering a 7 8
small-scale, sustainable, timeless and quality collection in their
signature style: high-end knitwear, combined with timeless

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fabrics. They remain true to sustainability and their fair
clothing is made in Portugal and Belgium. Visit
vega-basics.com IG: @vega_basics
8. DORSET CORNER creates modern, minimal products for
your hands and home. Sustainably and ethically sourced
ingredients, hand-made in small batches to produce decadent
products. Standout products include their modern incense
blends and gorgeous soaps in a subtle, modern palette. Visit
dorset-corner.co.uk IG: @dorsetcorner
9. Founded in 2020, MY BOUGIE BOTTLE was created to
help eliminate single-use plastic bottles and sustain an
9 10 11
eco-friendly future. Their drinkware fuses fashion and
function for people on-the-go. Featuring gorgeous nature-
inspired designs, their 25oz. stainless steel double-walled
vacuum insulated bottles encourage recognition and
appreciation for the environment. Hydrate with Bougie today
for a sustainable tomorrow. Visit mybougiebottle.com
IG: @mybougiebottle
10. WHITELOFT CERAMICS is based in Canada. Amanda
Payette is a self-taught potter creating hand thrown,
functional pottery. The distinct neutral, hygge style is the
inspiration of her simplistic aesthetic in her pieces. Visit
whiteloftceramics.com IG: @whiteloft.ceramics
11. K MITCHELL COLLECTIONS is a thoughtfully curated
range of luxury accessible baby goods. A
timeless collection that is hand selected by a mother who
knows how important it is to find quality, sustainable products
for your little one. Visit kmitchellcollections.com and follow
them on IG: @kmitchellcollections
12 13
12. KIKI & CASHEW’s hypoallergenic flax bed linen helps to regulate your
baby’s body temperature, encouraging better sleep. Highly sustainable and
better for the environment than cotton, it’s as gentle on your baby’s skin as it is
on their world. Discover more at kikiandcashew.com IG: @kikiandcashew
13. All natural, eco-friendly, dog-approved and one of the safest chews for your
dog; that’s BETTERBONE. Aims to clean teeth while satiating the need to
chew, perfect for mild to moderate chewers and puppies. No harmful chemicals
or artificial ingredients. Better for your dog and the planet. BetterBone Original.
Visit thebetterbone.com IG: @thebetterbone
VANITY FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

Vanity Fair’s Shortlist

14 14. SOMETHING BLUE BY OSTRO is a modern love story that began with an
15
enduring love of these alluring Ostro ® blue topaz gems and a desire to create
bright, modern jewellery to showcase the vibrancy and brilliance of these
most timeless stones; symbolic of eternal love and true friendship. Featured
are the ‘Better Together’ range of stacking rings, designed to be worn in
many playful ways to surprise and delight. Visit somethingbluebyostro.com
IG: @somethingbluebyostro
15. The Los Angeles based brand YAY FOR YOU is sustainably made with
deadstock fabrics. Babies with good taste everywhere will want more than one!
‘The New Onesie’ is designed to keep up with your baby’s adventures. The
unisex design provides maximum movability and flexibility in any situation. Visit
yayforyoubaby.com IG: @yayforyoubaby
16. NURACHE – ‘nura’ meaning light and ‘che’ meaning God will increase, is a
memoir of Kennedy Raye’s transnational sojourning. These coconut wax,
18 cruelty-free, vegan luxe candles pour forth the prayers of her heart:
16 17 abundant peace and blessings. Experience the light and warmth by
visiting nurache.com IG: @nuracheshop
17. WUFF was born from the urge to bring cool walk-wear to the
dog world for both dogs and humans. They create, bold, beautiful,
stand-out pieces for your dog that everyone will love, and have
plans to expand the collection to matching trench coats, aesthetic
bowls and stylish home accessories. Explore more at wuffco.shop and
@wuff.co on IG.
18. HAYCREATES craft handmade resin jewellery and home décor, based in Yeovil,
Somerset. They create their designs from home, drawing inspiration from flowers and nature
and adding a touch of glamour. Shop their products on Etsy:
etsy.com/uk/shop/haycreatesshop IG: @hay_creates
19. JOLLIE BLUEBEAR is a Slovenian brand that will help you to bring beauty and warmth to
your home with their heartfelt illustrations in soft pastel colours. Their style is based on
simple style and high-quality design and everything that is created
19 20 21 under the Jollie Bluebear’s roof is made with the greatest love for
kids and kids at heart. Visit jolliebluebear.com IG: @jolliebluebear
20. DOTTYPIX, two designers from North London, make
exquisitely crafted pieces that are primal and joyful. Creating
lifestyle objects for the future and for the present. A fusion of their
collective vision and love for abstract art influences their work to
embody surreal views. Minimal yet meaningful. Visit
dottypix.co.uk IG: @dottypix.uk
21. Introducing ALCHIMIE, an Australian Artisinal Soy Candle
Company. They are an eco-conscious brand that uses premium
sustainable materials and enacts an environmental initiative; they
are currently partnered with Carbon Positive Australia to help give
22 23 back to their beautiful country. Their candles are beautifully designed in elegant glassware with
hand-blended fragrances that instantly transport the senses. Visit alchimie.au IG: @alchimiesoy
22. PEACHLY is an Australian brand created by a mum of two little girls. They make beautifully
illustrated, linen keepsake books for parents to chronicle their baby’s milestones and memories,
from pregnancy to five years old. These one-of-a-kind memory books feature a minimalist style
with modern neutrals, simple prompts, and plenty of space for photos. Each book is carefully
crafted to last a lifetime. Visit peachly.com.au IG: @peachly.com.au
23. BURNING SOUL CANDLE CO is a one-woman-owned small business founded in 2019.
Their candles are handcrafted with 100% coconut soy wax, clean-burning cotton wicks and
paraben and phthalate-free fragrance oils. The hope is that each candle will brighten your day
and speak to your soul. Visit burningsoulcandleco.com IG: @burningsoulcandleco
24 25 24. ARTCHI works with emerging artists to provide high-end art decor to people who
believe art needs to be in our daily lives, against the perception art is only locked in
museums and galleries. Their Hellenistic Sculpture Series was placed in the opening of
the Alexander the Great Exhibition at the British Library and their work has been seen
in a popular TV series. Visit theartchi.com IG: @artchilondon
25. Born in Italy, while shaped in the Netherlands, OLANDINO offers ease to dressing
your baby. Say goodbye to pulling clothes over heads, and say hello to innovative
clothing that can be fastened by minimal buttons. Not only are their designs
sustainable, but they reduce the use of water and textile waste and are produced in
limited amounts, focusing on quality over quantity. Pre-order now at olandino.com
26 27 IG: @olandino_official
26. THALEIA is a luxury, eco-friendly brand, with hand-poured candles and wax melts created
specifically for moments of pause, restoration and mindfulness. By expertly blending premium soy
wax and all-natural essential oils, they have achieved beautiful, long-lasting aromas designed to
help improve our well-being. Visit thaleia.co.uk to find out more, and follow them on IG:
@thaleia_uk for the latest news and offers.
27. GRACE CRYSTALS & ACADEMY is a metaphysical store and spiritual education centre
offering high-vibration crystals, jewellery, sacred scents and a clothing line. Grace the Label,
created by founder Rachel Grace, offers classic and elegant tees and crews made with high-quality
fabrics. “Grab a little Grace for your closet.” Visit gracecrystals.com IG: @gracecrystalsacademy
28. Slow down and savour life around a scrumptious cheeseboard from THE CHEESE LADY,
28 29 an award-winning cheesemonger offering the finest farmhouse and artisan cheeses from
Europe and the British Isles. These complex and wholesome cheese are crafted with care and
precision by masters of the craft and matured to absolute perfection. Treat yourself to a
fabulous cheeseboard using VFAIR15 for 15% off all purchases over £40 at
thecheeselady.co.uk (expires 30/04/23). IG: @thecheeseladyuk
29. URTHY SCENTS is a female-owned luxury scent company specialising in products for
home, bath and body. Their high-quality products and phthalate-free fragrance oils
contribute to their vast collections of unique and sophisticated scented products. They are
passionate about curating bold, natural scents that invigorate the mind, body and soul. Visit
urthyscents.com IG: @urthyscents
 VANIT Y FAIR ADVERTISING FEATURE

30. MORF ATHLETICS brings a value to the activewear market with their range of
30 31
high-quality pieces for everyday athletes. They are a female born and bred brand
that empowers everyday athletes who aim to push their boundaries. At Morf, they
believe in creating timeless re-engineered, high-quality pieces in limited quantities.
They constantly aim to partner with their clients to create some of the best
connected product experiences, through true collaboration, and relentless
innovation. Visit morfathletics.com IG: @morfathletics
31. Elevate your self love practice at THE SELF LOVE LAB. A wellness community
specialising in holistic therapies that feed your soul with high vibrations. Whether
you want to experience a sound bath, elevate your skincare routine with gua sha,
help to raise your vibration with crystal healing or light an intention candle, The Self
Love Lab has you covered. Discover the range at theselflovelab.co.uk
IG: @theselflovelab.co.uk
32. HUND APPAREL are specialists in Italian Greyhound apparel and have
released a range of exceptionally soft garments made from pure 100% organic
cotton. Each handcrafted item features custom-milled tonal ribbing for that 32 33 34
seamless look. Expanding to Whippet apparel in 2023. Shot and modelled by
@meekotheiggy. Visit hundapparel.com IG: @hundapparel
33. HEIRESS COUTURE NIGERIA is a luxury, made-in-Nigeria brand that
makes royal dreams come true. With a wide selection of designs available,
inspired by fairytales, contemporary themes and lived experiences, find the
perfect outfit for your princess or prince, helping to keep fairytales alive. Visit
heiresscouturenigeria.com IG: @heiresscouturenigeria
34. NOIICH presents timeless rugs in limited edition seasonal collections. The
series starts by creating a group of paintings, which are carefully worked to
select the right colours, then transformed into rugs that are machine-hand-
tufted by artisans. Visit noiich.com IG: @noiich.official
35. CULT LUXURY’s large silk scarves exude intense passion and indulgence
in every thread. Add their scarf to any outfit for a refreshing twist to your look.
Each print is hand-designed by artist, Liam Mojique Legault, and transformed
36 37
into a stunning scarf that will make you the centre of attention anywhere you go. Visit
cultluxury.com IG: @cultluxury
36. MAISON BOHITI is a London-based candle brand that
works with vegan wax to create handmade candles for those who 35
adore art. Bohiti candles compliment a variety of decorative
styles and have a timeless elegance and cosiness. Visit
@maisonbohiti on IG to find out more, or
email [email protected]
37. FAITH KU designs and creates unique one-of-a-kind
nature-inspired ceramic artworks. Her work draws inspiration
from the intricate structures of botanical and fungal life and the
cycles of regeneration in nature. Visit faithandcoceramics.com
IG: @faithandcoceramics 39 40
38. EMME ESSENTIALS was born mid pandemic when Asian
American couple Mark and Erica relocated and found themselves
seeking solace from the familiar scents of their
homes and Asian heritage. Seeing an opportunity 38
to share their cultures with the rest of the world
– and bring comfort to others feeling homesick –
Emme Essentials came to life. Their luxury candles
are hand-poured in micro-batches and celebrate
traditional Asian flavours. Visit emmenyc.com
IG: @emmeessentials

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39. At BLUE PET CO, they are as passionate about
the marine environment as they are about dogs.
Say hello to a range of clean, marine powered 41
nutritional supplements tailored to help meet your
dog’s specific health needs. Each formula is unique,
enriched in organic seaweed complexes and
micronutrients, carefully selected with the aim to
take care of your dog’s nutritional needs. Use code
VANITYFAIR15 for 15% off online (expires
03/04/23). Visit bluepetco.com
IG: @bluepetcompany
40. Founded by Ebru Yalcuk and based in Izmir,
Turkey, LAMPEROS ATELIER is a luxury
beachwear and resort wear label inspired by a chic
Greek and Turkish summer lifestyle. Each
collection is crafted from the highest quality
fabrics, using unique colours and
designs that you’ll be wearing summer 42
after summer. Visit
lamperosatelier.com
IG: @lamperos_atelier
41. PINTU, for dogs and their people,
is on the forefront of finding and
using materials and processes with
thought to their environmental
responsibility. All components of
these handcrafted dog accessories
are eco-conscious. Pintu’s dog
accessories stand out through their
elegant and stylish designs, providing
ultimate comfort for your dog. Visit
pintu-design.com IG: @pintu_design
42. Celebrate the beauty of
motherhood and elevate Mother’s
Day with the luxury of fresh flowers
from HAUTE FLORIST. With a
collection of hand-tied bouquets
designed by artisan florists, send
your mum something she’ll adore.
Visit hauteflorist.co.uk
IG: @hauteflorist
Proust Questionnaire

BILL NIGHY
The star of Living on Parisian penthouses,
mastering the air guitar, and dancing
with the Queen of Soul

What is your idea of perfect

happiness? On a train at night
in a rainstorm. What is the
trait you most deplore in
yourself? I still can’t tap-dance.
On what occasion do you
lie? When someone asks, “Did
you enjoy the opera?” What is
your greatest extravagance?
Books and dry cleaning.
When and where were you happiest? Have you any idea doll” regardless of gender, and it is possible that using it once
who you’re talking to? What is your favorite journey? From could be considered overusing it. A female friend of mine
the bookshop to the café. What do you dislike most about recently remarked, “I can’t believe you called me baby doll on
your appearance? I wouldn’t change a thing. What is your International Women’s Day.” What is your most treasured
greatest regret? One of my fondest fantasies was that I’m at possession? A homemade book of my daughter’s favorite
an Aretha Franklin concert, and out of nowhere she says: writing. Where would you like to live? In the penthouse of
“Bill, get up here and dance!” and I have to go up and dance to Le Bristol Paris. What is your favorite occupation? Air
“96 Tears.” It is one of my greatest regrets that never happened. guitar. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? It is a tie between
What is the trait you most deplore in others? Their ability to Christopher Tietjens in Parade’s End and Milgrim in William
see through my bullshit. Which talent would you most like to Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy. Christopher is the cleverest man in
have? Moves like Prince. What is your current state of mind? England who never recovered from his education and therefore
Easy, baby. If you could change one thing about yourself, causes enormous confusion in a corrupt world, and is one
what would it be? I wish I had never smoked. If you were to half of my favorite love story. Milgrim is someone I am deeply
die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it fond of, and I always imagined him played by Sam Rockwell.
would be? I’d like to come back as Pharrell Williams. Who are What are your favorite names? Agnès and Ray. What is
your favorite writers? Ford Madox Ford, Colson Whitehead, it that you most dislike? Nationalism. How would you like
Martin Amis, Virginia Woolf, David Hare, Joan Didion, Walter to die? Asleep in a suite in Le Bristol hotel in Paris. What is
Mosley, Zadie Smith, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Kazuo Ishiguro. your motto? Stay loose. What do you regard as the lowest
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I say “baby depth of misery? Running out of tea. n

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