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25 Articles

EVGENIA PERETZ “I started out thinking that Melania was a bit of a victim—a bird in a gilded cage,” says Contributing Editor Evgenia Peretz, who, in “He Comes First,” on page 92, scrutinizes the reticent First Lady’s relationship with Donald Trump and her possible plans for her White House tenure. “But over the course of reporting, her complicity in her own fate became apparent.” Peretz is currently revising a film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel Juliet, Naked, filming in London this summer. NICK BILTON For Special Correspondent Nick Bilton, the story of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Internet drug hub Silk Road, is one, quite literally, close to home. “He was arrested in a tiny public library just a few blocks from my house,” Bilton says. “I was so amazed that someone ran…

TRUMP FAMILY VALUES

It hasn’t been a particularly good month for the grandiose hothead in the Oval Office. Just as the chaos within the West Wing was starting to resemble the economy section of a United Airlines flight, the president dipped into the nation’s pocket and blew $60 million worth of Tomahawk missiles on an attack on Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad after Trump was shown images and TV reports that Assad had used what was later determined to be sarin gas on civilians, including children. The gas attack was horrific; the U.S. response, impulsive and ineffectual (and a reversal of Trump’s own stated policy). It told the Syria-Russia coalition that Trump was unpredictable and given to showy gestures—a description all too familiar to most Americans these days. More to the point, it diverted…

TRUMP FAMILY VALUES

What an amazing, heart-stopping, smart, crisp, and clear article. Almost a song unto itself, Sheila Weller’s beautiful piece “It Happened in 1967” [March] captured the moment, the feelings, and the breaking-away freedom for the women of the times—and most of us are still here, with our iron and lace! JUDY COLLINS New York, New York I am now 66 years old, but just a minute ago, in 1967, I was 16. Sheila Weller’s article is everything it should be, with its gorgeous photos, evocative memories, and great perspective. In 1967, Judy Collins’s “Both Sides Now” touched me deeply (as it still does). I was being treated for anorexia nervosa at the Payne Whitney clinic, in Manhattan. That hospital seemed to be a collective of the pain of those times, despite the Summer of…

JUST THE NEWS, PLEASE

Talk about ambivalence! We have a president who tweets about “failing” and “lying” news outlets—but then calls up two of his biggest targets (The New York Times and The Washington Post) when he desperately needs to get a point across. Ordinary Americans betray their own contradictions. We just want the facts, or so we say—don’t waste our time packaging the news as entertainment. (That explains why the PBS NewsHour is the mass-market juggernaut it has become.) While Democrats believe that freedom of the press is fundamental to democracy, more than a third of Republicans believe this First Amendment right does “more harm than good.” As for “alternative facts”: although a majority of Americans see through the political doublespeak, 50 percent of Republicans regard alternative facts not as lies but as…

JUST THE NEWS, PLEASE

AGE: 27. PROVENANCE: Greenwich, Connecticut. FULL HOUSE: “I’m one of five kids. I derive all my confidence from my family.” BOYS’ CLUB: Following her father’s lead, Rohrbach started golfing at four. “My team was all guys, but I didn’t care.” BALLS IN THE AIR: After competing in national tournaments, Rohrbach was recruited to play Division I for Georgetown University, where she tried acting. “I started doing plays and loved the warmth and the community, and soon realized my heart was in it.” She graduated with a theater major. LEFT COAST: On moving to L.A.: “I don’t believe in waiting for the phone to ring. I Googled ‘How to get an agent,’ and went from there.” SWIMSUIT ADDITION: Noticing the trajectories of other models turned actors, she cast a wide net…

PICTURE PERFECT

Maurice and Paul Marciano, two brothers behind the Guess empire, have found a home for their contemporary-art collection: a former Masonic temple, which sat empty for years on L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard near Hancock Park. The Marciano Art Foundation, opening May 25, will showcase their 1,500-piece-plus collection, including Doug Aitken’s light-box photograph Rise, seen here. Admission to the museum is free, so Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Prestel), a lavish book that accompanies the inaugural exhibition, is a worthy souvenir. (marcianoartfoundation.org) Hot Type It was probably very old-fashioned of her, but she did not like to see a grown man cry.” There is something practically trademarkable about Elizabeth Strout’s characters and their cadence. Fans of Lucy Barton will clock a familiar constellation of personalities in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s exquisite new novel, Anything Is…

PICTURE PERFECT

The Right Stuff

The malignant condition of the political right in America has already made William F. Buckley Jr., who died in 2008, seem like an antique. The harpsichord-playing Lat in ist, who cherished Burke and Bach and friendships across ideological lines, was a bit of a throwback even in his prime—championing a conservatism that “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” But as Alvin Felzenberg shows in this fine political biography, A Man and His Presidents (Yale), Buckley was far ahead of his time when it came to promoting his views: cross-pollinating every form of media, leveraging relationships behind the scenes, and blending all this with the allure of lifestyle (his own) and entertainment (that celebrated wit).…

The Right Stuff

Francesca Segal pushes a modern family through The Awkward Age (Riverhead). Susannah Meadows pulls back the hospital curtain to reach The Other Side of Impossible (Random House). Readers will rejoice for My Life with Bob (Henry Holt) by Pamela Paul, a book collector’s book collector. Richard Rothstein divvies up the history of segregated America in The Color of Law (Liveright). Holger Hoock plucks at the sutures of the American Revolution in the Scars of Independence (Crown). Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley celebrate the centennial of the birth of JFK (Harper). In You Don’t Look Your Age (Flatiron), famed documentary producer Sheila Nevins reflects on her reflection. Leading Lady (Crown Archetype) and studio head Sherry Lansing shines in Stephen Galloway’s biography. Neil deGrasse Tyson makes a big bang with Astrophysics…

BORN THIS DAY By the time Elton John turned 70, on March 25, it had been nearly a month since he’d last raised a seven-figure sum for his Elton John aids Foundation— at his annual Oscars viewing party—so he rounded up his nearest and dearest and decided to do it again. John’s birthday dinner, at Red Studios, in Hollywood, also celebrated the singer’s five-decade songwriting collaboration with Bernie Taupin and benefited ejaf and the Hammer Museum, at U.C.L.A., to the tune of $2.8 million. PROTECT AND DEFEND The N.R.D.C. and Discovery Communications hosted a panel discussion, moderated by Graydon Carter, on the future of the environment in the Trump era, at the Tishman Auditorium, at N.Y.U. School of Law.…

A fearless comic performer, Megan Mullally is best known for her Emmy-winning portrayal of the mesmerizingly unhinged, hungrily carnal socialite-sociopath Karen Walker on Will & Grace, the early-aughts NBC sitcom that will return to TV this year for a limited, 12-episode run. Mullally is equally celebrated for comprising one-half of a national-treasure comedy couple, having been married since 2003 to kindred spirit Nick Offerman, who played the burly, meat-loving Ron Swanson on the same network’s Parks and Recreation. Ever in demand, Mullally has popped up in all manner of TV comedies, from her husband’s program (in which she played one of Swanson’s two ex-wives named Tammy) to Children’s Hospital to Bob’s Bur gers. This month heralds the release of Nancy And Beth, the highly enjoyable eponymous debut album by the…

For the first time since the ancient mists of the Chester A. Arthur administration, back when presidents had whiskers and posed for daguerreotypes, the country finds itself without an active, gracious, fully engaged First Lady, one half of a matching set. Melania Trump, the nominal First Lady, has been teleported into the Phantom Zone, that hazy limbo for living ghosts who may observe earthly affairs but not participate. It is a gilded Phantom Zone, maintained and Secret Service–protected at an unconscionably high cost to the taxpayers, but it is no glowing East Room to preside over. Melania’s maternal duties to young son Barron can’t entirely explain her semi-exile and negligible footing, a comedown from the majestic wingspan and marquee stardom of Michelle Obama. We’ve had First Ladies who were seen…

THE BERET BUNCH

There is a defining moment in every star’s career when he or she real izes that nothing will ever be the same. For 14-year-old Jaeden Lieberher, it was a breakout role alongside industry heavyweight Bill Murray, in 2014’s St. Vincent; for 10-yearold Jacob Tremblay, a leading part in Room, for which co-star Brie Larson (this month’s cover subject) won an Oscar; and for 14-year-old Maddie Ziegler, the former Dance Moms darling, an appearance in the music video for “Chandelier,” the first of five dance collaborations with the pop star Sia. These impressive young power players are already reaching milestones most Hollywood hopefuls spend their entire careers striving toward—and they’re doing it all before high school. This June, Colin Trevorrow directs the talented trio in The Book of Henry, a hauntingly beautiful…

THE BERET BUNCH

BRAVE NEW UNDERWORLD

I. “You’re Sitting in the Big Chair … ” Ross Ulbricht had imagined that it might all come down to this one day. That at some point during the prodigious rise of his hot tech start-up he would be obliged to make a terrifyingly ruthless decision. Now, in early 2013, the time had arrived. The question was rather simple: Was he ready to kill someone to protect his billion-dollar company? The technology business has long purported to change the world and make it a better place. But, in reality, there is a decidedly more cynical underside to all this euphoria. In Silicon Valley, after all, many founders will often do whatever is necessary to protect their creations—whether that means paying a hefty legal settlement to hush the people who helped hatch the…

BRAVE NEW UNDERWORLD

American popular music had never seen anything quite like the Grateful Dead when they first coalesced, in the mid-1960s. They were five young Bay Area scruffs and Beats (with ranks later increased) variously steeped in bluegrass, blues, jazz, folk, rock ’n’ roll, cowboy songs, and more—who then spiked that gumbo with copious doses of LSD, dissolving boundaries between musical genres as well as, to a sometimes alarming degree, between themselves and their tribal fans. All of this is covered in just the first hour or so of the remarkable four-hour documentary Long Strange Trip, directed by Amir Bar-Lev and produced by Eric Eisner, with Martin Scorsese, whom one wouldn’t necessarily peg as a Deadhead, serving as an executive producer. The film, among the best of its kind, opens in theaters…

STAGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

‘I wanted to write a new play,” explains the playwright at the center of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, “that posed contemporary moral questions, that forced us to face some uncomfortable truths.” Vogel’s inventive portrayal of a 20th-century Yiddish theater troupe struggling with controversial material does just that, as do Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, for which Nottage received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Smith, who famously crafted a new genre out of the one-woman show, seeks to personalize the headlines by making us reflect on our propensity to pathologize. In Notes from the Field, she becomes a young black man from Baltimore who dismantles a police car; the girl who took video footage of her classmate being tossed out of her chair by a security officer…

STAGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

To catch up with Brie Larson, one of Hollywood’s busiest and most indefatigable actresses, I take a trip to a utilitarian postproduction studio in the San Fernando Valley, where she is editing Unicorn Store, her feature-film directorial debut. The temporary office is affectionately decorated like a dorm room—cluttered with photos, drawings of unicorns, a Super Mario backpack, and personalized stationery. (She’s a diligent writer of thank-you notes.) Dressed in ripped black jeans, a bulky sweater, and black boots, her blond hair pulled back in a topknot, Larson looks like a typical young Angeleno. She takes a break to show me some footage of the film, a comingof- age comedy that stars Larson and a constellation of veteran actors, including Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford, and Samuel L. Jackson. It is an ambitious…

THE WESTE ROS WING

I. Buzzing Flies The West Wing of the White House is a cramped collection of tiny offices, some of them windowless, linked by narrow hallways. New inhabitants are sometimes surprised at just how small the physical quarters are. The current configuration results from a Depression-era renovation designed to increase the workspace of the president’s staff without expanding the physical footprint of the building. Parts of the West Wing can feel grungy and old, and look as if they have been repainted far too often. Many of the offices contain mousetraps to fight the inevitable infestation. Because the windows don’t open, for security reasons, large flies buzz near the ceilings. The relentless pressures and close quarters mean that someone in the West Wing always seems to be sick. You’ll hear White House veterans…

THE WESTE ROS WING

J ustifying the unabashed escapism of his opulent ballet, Whipped Cream, which premiered at Vienna’s Staatsoper in 1924, Richard Strauss wrote, “I cannot bear the tragedy of the pres ent time. I want to create joy.” It was this statement by the Romantic composer that persuaded painter Mark Ryden to say yes when Alexei Ratmansky, American Ballet Theatre’s artist-in-residence, sought him out to design costumes and sets for the ballet’s revival, opening on May 22 at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House. Though he initially intended to collaborate with an experienced stage professional, Ratmansky kept musing over a small book on Ryden that he had bought a dec ade earlier in Japan. Only Ryden’s meticulously rendered, “sinister, creepy, disturbing, but saccharine-sweet images of children,” Ratmansky decided, could accurately articulate his vision for…

P erhaps the only thing more challenging than growing up with the King of Pop as your single parent would be growing up in that shadow—and not talking about it. Paris Jackson, the 19-year-old model and actress, is the second of Michael Jackson’s three children, raised in the surreal world of Neverland Ranch, Bubbles the chimpanzee, and the paternal pride of one of the most influential icons in music history. Yet Michael, who died when Paris was 11, is a topic that she would rather not discuss publicly. The few times she has, her words have been misconstrued, like when she was quoted earlier this year telling Harper’s Bazaar, “I was the princess,” and blogs speculated she was calling herself the favorite child. When she posted the magazine on her Instagram…

HE COM ES FIRST

Traditional ly, presidents have at least made a show of having healthy, happy marriages. Even the Clintons, despite marital troubles, appeared to have moments of genuine affection, humor, and bonding. But from almost the first moments of Inauguration Day, during the ceremonial arrival at the White House, it seemed something was amiss with the Trumps. Perhaps you’ve seen the clip: Donald and Me la nia’s black S.U.V. arrives at the White House, where Barack and Michelle Obama are waiting to greet them. Donald bolts from the car and marches up the stairs, leaving behind Me la nia, in her powder-blue, Jackie-esque suit, carrying a large Tiffany box. (Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton all escorted their wives at this moment.) This snapshot of the Trump marriage was soon followed by other…

HE COM ES FIRST

A LIFE IN FOCUS

Should you ever get the chance to live the life of an artist—and it’s something I highly recommend—you’d be hardpressed to conjure up anything more episodic and picaresque than the life of Antony Armstrong-Jones, the man who became Snowdon. A tinkerer, a diarist, a rake, a prince, an earl, a crusader—he was all of this. Did I mention the matinee-idol looks and the devilish wit? Where Tony found the time to become not only the world’s most photographed photographer but also one of its most prolific is anyone’s guess. But he did, and the body of work he produced in his lifetime is a monument to both his talent and his endurance Tony had a sly, mischievous grin that suggested he must have been a handful as a boy (or indeed…

A LIFE IN FOCUS

National Lampo on’s Last Laugh?

When Alan Donnes, the first of the last three leaders of National Lampoon not to be sentenced to prison, joined the company, five years ago, he discovered that it was a magnet for off-the-wall film pitches. One day, he took a call from a guy who knew a guy with $5 million and a script for “the perfect National Lampoon movie.” “It always scares me when they say, ‘It’s the perfect National Lampoon movie,’ ” Donnes said, sitting in his office at National Lampoon headquarters, in Los Angeles This one, called Monkey’s Paw, was about a kid who, after making a wish on a magical monkey’s paw he found in an archaeologist neighbor’s house, gets to have sex with the hottest girl in his high school. “But there’s no limit, because…

National Lampo on’s Last Laugh?

MODIG THE LIANI CODE

ÔIt’s good, bad, ugly, and bizarre,” Kenneth Wayne, one of the world’s leading Modigliani scholars, said at a recent symposium at New York University on fakes, forgeries, and stolen art. “To say that the catalogue raisonné situation of works by Modigliani is a mess is an understatement.” There have been lawsuits, charges of slander, death threats, hoaxes, and thefts. A Modigliani specialist has been convicted of falsely attributing works to Modigliani. A skyrocketing market for works by the artist has been plagued by fakes in Russia, Serbia, and Italy (where Modigliani was born). Perhaps appropriately for one of the world’s most faked artists, there have even been fake fakes. Experts, meanwhile, are jockeying to be recognized as the ultimate authority on what should and should not be accepted as authentic. Jean Cocteau…

MODIG THE LIANI CODE

Under Mi ca’s Spell

There can’t be another nonagenarian today who is as tight with Henry Kissinger and Annette de la Renta as she is with Kid Rock and the members of Led Zeppelin. But, then, Ioana Maria Banu, “Mica” Ertegun, who turned 90 on October 21, is one of the most intriguing senior citizens around. For 45 years she was married to Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish-born cofounder of Atlantic Rec ords, who reigned as the most influential titan of the music industry for five dec ades as he shaped the careers of artists ranging from Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones. All the while, the couple was the virtual definition of sophistication, and they set a new gold standard for fine living at their homes in New York City, Southampton, Paris, and Bodrum, Turkey. Mica’s…

Under Mi ca’s Spell

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Listening to my sons play a piano-and-sax duet. What is your greatest fear? That I’ll die worrying. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Federico Fellini’s wife, the Italian actress Giulietta Masina. Which living person do you most admire? The sewing-machine repairman at the corner of 107th and Broadway. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Standing up while eating. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Their goddamned fucking honesty. What is your greatest extravagance? Flying to Atlanta to get my hair cut. What is your favorite journey? Getting out of bed in the morning. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Cooking. On what occasion do you lie? When I tell people I can get…

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