Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul-14 i Vanity Fair

It’s a courtroom saga that restores your faith in the American judicial system: two of the country’s finest lawyers, epitomizing opposing philosophies—David Boies, the supremely accomplished trial lawyer and ardent Democrat, and Theodore Olson, solicitor general under President George W. Bush—forgoing partisanship in the name of civil rights. Boies and Olson joined forces in the legal battle to overturn Proposition 8, California’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage—ultimately prevailing last year in a landmark Supreme Court case, Hollingsworth v. Perry. My esteemed colleague Financial Times editor Lionel Barber pays homage to their fight for marriage equality in this month’s V.F. Portrait, on page 66. The unlikely allies recently teamed up again to write an account of the case, Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality. They are also featured in…

The inspiring talent of Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt is on display inside this 6,800-squarefoot penthouse atop the Greenwich Hotel—owned by Robert De Niro, Ira Drukier, and other partners—in Tribeca, New York City. Vervoordt’s signature palette of earthy tones, refined taste, and flair for assembling a mélange of antiques and art make the recently opened suite one of the most desirable properties in town. Problem is: you’ll never want to check out. (thegreenwichhotel.com)—PUNCH HUTTON…

For 50 years, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird—one of the most influential novels of the 20th century for its depiction of racism, provincialism, and the American justice system—has evaded curiosity seekers. Had the famously sharptongued Lee a form response to interview requests, she has said, it would be “Hell no.” In 2004, however, she said yes to Marja Mills’s request to become her neighbor in The Mockingbird Next Door (Penguin Press). The former Chicago Tribune reporter relives the year and a half she spent in Monroeville, Alabama, riding shotgun with Lee, then 78, and her sparky 93-year-old sister, Alice, through the Deep South, hitting exercise class and McDonald’s for coffee, as well as conversing about the effect To Kill a Mockingbird had on their lives, Lee’s childhood…

When a gov ernment taxes a certain level of income or inheritance at a rate of 70 or 80 percent, the primary goal is obviously not to raise additional revenue… It is rather to put an end to such incomes and large estates, which lawmakers have for one reason or another come to regard as socially unacceptable and economically unproductive.” Reading Thomas Piketty’s famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, after all the fuss about it, is a bit of a shock. It’s both much more radical and much less radical than its reputation. The above quotation, one of many I could have chosen, makes it sound as if he favors the expropriation through high taxes on all large fortunes. I can’t believe that many of his enthusiasts, some of…

They are America’s odd couple: two superlawyers, one Democratic, the other Republican, who teamed up to overturn Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, in a Supreme Court ruling which made civil-rights history. David Boies and Theodore B. “Ted” Olson are living proof that bipartisanship is not (yet) dead and buried in Washington. Back in 2000, they faced off in Bush v. Gore, which decided the election. Nine years later, they set aside their party allegiances in favor of a common principle: that equal rights for gays and lesbians to marry was not a liberal or conservative issue. It was a basic human-rights issue. Last summer, I heard firsthand the story of their unlikely partnership. A group of us were cruising off the Amalfi coast, one of the most stunning…

How did a 26-year-old cocktail waitress end up running a private weekly the likes of Leo, Ben, and Tobey? In an adaptation from her new memoir, MOLLY break, at the infamous Viper Room; the millions that crossed her poker game for some of Hollywood’s highest rollers, including BLOOM, who has since gained notoriety as “the Poker Princess,” recalls her lucky table; and the biggest winners—who could also be the worst losers A 6:45 p.m. I stood by the front door and waited. I fdgeted with my dress. I started to feel insecure about how to greet the players. I knew their names, but did that mean that I should introduce myself? Stop it, I said in my head. I closed my eyes and tried to calm down by imagining myself…

Getting a massive retrospective this month at the Whitney, preparing to install his balloon sculptures at the Louvre, lecturing at the Frick—has Jeff Koons, taboobusting rebel, become a pillar of the art establishment? With a look back at the simultaneous implosion of Koons’s career and personal life in the 1990s, INGRID SISCHY examines the creative risks that power his recordbreaking prices and pop-culture supremacy If the walls at Manhattan’s Frick Collection could talk, they would have been uttering tiny gasps of shock and awe this spring at a lecture given by Jeff Koons for a small, mostly professional-art-world crowd. Koons was sharing his ruminations on the Renaissance and Baroque bronzes from the Hill Collection then on view in the galleries, and it was one of the artist’s classic performances: no…

What Clare Boothe Luce wanted, Clare Boothe Luce got: a man, a seat in Congress, an ambassadorship. A literary star in her own right, she had become half of America’s premier power couple when the Time-empire founder Henry Luce left his wife to marry her in 1935. But, reveals SYLVIA JUKES MORRIS, in an excerpt from volume two of her biography, the woman who jousted with presidents and experimented with LSD wasn’t prepared, in 1959, to find herself the one betrayed When Clare Boothe married Henry “Harry” Luce, the 37-year-old founder of Time and Fortune, she was 32 and already well known, as a former managing editor of Vanity Fair. Born illegitimate to poor parents, Clare was a pretty enough child actress to understudy Mary Pickford on Broadway and to…

The prolific, Oscar-nominated actor—whose career has spanned films from The English Patient to Finding Nemo, and now roles in this summer’s The Fault in Our Stars and A Most Wanted Man—admits he thinks ambition is overrated What is your idea of perfect happiness? Presentmindedness. What is your greatest fear? A crippling accident. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Harry Houdini—we both escaped the “favelas” of Appleton, Wisconsin. Which living person do you most admire? Bob Dylan: his great gift as a poet and musician, his long, incor ruptible career—and he continues to tour constantly. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Punctuality (outside of work, of course). What is the trait you most deplore in others? Selfishness. What is your greatest extravagance? Long afternoon naps with…

What You Should Know About: JASON SEGEL A PANOPLY OF ECCENTRIC BIOGRAPHICAL DATA RE: HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE FUNNY GUY Jason Segel is the affable Judd-Apatow-comedy-troupe alum who has gone on to headline nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother, reboot the Muppets, and co-star with Cameron Diaz in this July’s Sex Tape comedy. Despite his Hollywood successes as a writer, producer, and actor—and his dramatic departure as David Foster Wallace in the upcoming biopic The End of the Tour—Segel seems to identify most with the awkward, adolescent iteration of himself that inspired his first literary effort, Nightmares!: a young-adult trilogy co-authored by Kirsten Miller, the first installment of which arrives in bookstores in September. Here, a compendium of the 34-year-old’s nocturnal memories, everyday preferences, and endearing peculiarities. HE BEGINS each…

The traumatized heroine of Tom Rachman’s ingeniously orchestrated novel The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (Dial) will travel hither and yon to solve the mystery of why a motley band of misfits abducted her from her home as a girl, only to heartlessly abandon her years later. The sinister side of privilege, female friendship, and desire feeds Katie Crouch’s mesmerizing, torn-from-the-tabloids novel, Abroad (Sarah Crichton). Brando Skyhorse survives being raised by an audaciously dysfunctional grandmother, mother, and five stepdads, in his miraculous Take This Man (Simon & Schuster). John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge target ineffective government as the catalyst for The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State (Penguin Press). A screwball author vanishes in Alessandro Baricco’s highminded literary mystery novel Mr. Gwyn (Mc Sweeney’s), translated by…

The Doctor Is In The best procedures, treatments, and healing products in lieu of plastic surgery. Experts weigh in . . . Dr. Amy Wechsler The best quick fix is still Botox. It can open up one’s eyes and give a rested, relaxed look within days. Thermage is an excellent, non-invasive skin tightener in lieu of plastic surgery. There’s also Voluma, a hyaluronic-acid filler that lifts as it fills and re-volumizes cheeks, giving an instantly more youthful appearance. I like fragrance-free, hypoallergenic Cetaphil lotion following in-office procedures, since the skin is more sensitive, as well as Chanel Hydra Beauty Sérum, which is deeply hydrating and also offers antioxidant protection. (dramywechsler.com) Dr. Macrene Alexiades-Armenakas The best treatment option rivaling plastic surgery today is the ePrime, a fractional radio-frequency device, which has…

Have you read The Goldfinch yet?” Consider it the cocktail-party conversation starter of 2014, the new “Are you watching Breaking Bad?” Eleven years in the making, 784 pages long, the book has re-ignited the cult of Donna Tartt, which began in 1992 with her sensational debut novel, The Secret History. When The Goldfinch came out, last fall, recipients of advance copies promptly showed off their galleys on Instagram, as if announcing the birth of a child. Her readings sold out instantly. New York’s Frick Collection, which in October began exhibiting the painting for which the book was named, hadn’t seen so much traffic in years. The novel is already on its way to becoming a movie, or a TV series, made by the producers of The Hunger Games. It’s been…

Two o’clock in the morning and I am standing at the crossroads of the modern world. Like a pinball machine, the arrivals-and-departures board clicks off the names of international cities—Dhaka, Colombo, Damascus, Male, Perth, Manchester, New York, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City—and wave after wave of citizens of the 21st century move this way and that through this massive marble-and-glass terminal. One can’t help staring in wonder. Denim-clad construction workers from the Indian subcontinent are slumped over seats waiting for their flights to be called; Armani-draped businessmen carrying Guc ci leather briefcases head for the first-class lounges; young, loving couples sleep entwined on the sofas that line the walkways. The final call for the Emirates flight to Jidda summons a posse of women in burkas, who scurry to the gate.…

In October 2012, when the Austrian stuntman Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon at nearly 128,000 feet and exceeded the speed of sound during a free fall, five little GoPro cameras were strapped to his suit to record high-definition views of his heroics. At around the same time, GoPro became the best-selling video camera in the United States, and its inventor and chief promoter, a Northern California surfer named Nicholas Woodman, became a billionaire. Woodman is now 39 but seems younger. His success is due in part to his authenticity—he is a genuine member of the extreme-sports crowd, given to whooping and exclaiming “Awesome!” without irony. But he is also an unusually focused businessman. Woodman started with the idea of inventing a wrist strap to which surfers could attach a…

In The Better Angels, a film about the very young Abe Lincoln, Diane Kruger plays the part of Sarah Lincoln, the 16th president’s stepmother, a frontierswoman whose homespun good sense is said to have been formative in his pre-log-splitting days. It was a tough role, says Kruger, with a lot of “improvisation, hanging out in the woods, and scenes playing against amateur-actor children who did not know what the film is about.” The German-born actress (Diane Heidkrüger, originally) was not the obvious choice for such a role. “Actually, it’s one of the reasons they cast me,” she says. “Americans way back then were early settlers with more European looks.” Euro or otherwise, Kruger says that her looks (she’s a former runway model) have been an issue in her career. A…

’Sometimes you start believing the way society treats you. Gypsies are treated like dirt, so you believe you’re dirt,” Israeli-born actress Moran Atias declares boldly. To prepare for her role as Monika in this summer’s romantic drama Third Person (written and directed by Paul Haggis, and co-starring Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde), Atias begged on the streets of Rome and didn’t change or wash her clothes for weeks, experiencing firsthand rejection and disgust as a result. It was while filming a small role in The Next Three Days with Haggis that Atias knew she wanted to be cast in another of the director’s projects. “I hung out on the set of The Next Three Days and just followed Paul around,” she says. “I thought, I have to work with this…

Presidential candid sites—maybe we have one in mind—will take heart to learn that more than three-fourths of Americans would embrace (given sufficiently long arms) a fat president. Thai seems perfectly reasonable. So does the news thai only one in five of us claims to always work out during vacations. From those results, can we extrapolate national enthusiasm for a constantly vacationing (and presumably constantly fattening) president Nevertheless, we also say we would rather "contour" our bellies with plastic surgery than change anything else. Something we suppose, that could be achieved during a "vacation." Interestingly, while we don’t equate being attractive with being in shape, most Americans say they would exercise if it got them 10 more years of life. In theory, we feel we must point out. Finally, we collectively…

Dave Eggers sticks to dialogue in Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (Knopf/McSweeney’s). Elizabeth Mitchell raises Liberty’s Torch (Atlantic Monthly Press). Sarah Payne Stuart grows up Wasp in Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town (Riverhead). Laurence Gonzales reconstructs the crash of Flight 232 (Norton). ABCDCS: David Collins Studio (Assouline) catalogues his influences. Lee Grant battles the blacklist in I Said Yes to Everything (Blue Rider). J. K. Rowling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, spins The Silkworm (Little, Brown). The late C. David Heymann’s Joe and Marilyn (Atria/Emily Bestler) hits a homer. Florence Muller styles Dior: The Legendary Images (Rizzoli). Megan Abbott spreads The Fever (Little, Brown). Jojo Moyes entertains in One Plus One (Pamela Dorman).…

PARTY CAPITAL Following the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg held a swanky soirée at the residence of the Italian ambassador in Washington, D.C. MUSICAL CHAIRS Graydon Carter and Fran Lebowitz co-hosted a book party in honor of Lisa Robinson and her new memoir, There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll, at the Monkey Bar, in N.Y.C. COURT ORDER Ronald Perelman, Robert De Niro, and Graydon Carter hosted a confluence of writers, movie stars, politicians, musicians, and moguls in the rotunda of the State Supreme Courthouse in N.Y.C. in celebration of the 13th annual Tribeca Film Festival.…

SHAILENE WOODLEY Hometown: Simi Valley, California. Age: 22. Up next: The Fault in Our Stars, with Ansel Elgort. Favorite sneakers: Vibram FiveFingers. Favorite movie to watch with parents: “Y Tu Mamá También or FernGully.” Favorite jeans: Overalls. Last TV binge watch: Top Chef. If you ever lose your way in the hills above Los Angeles, or elsewhere, you’ll want Shailene Woodley by your side. “See all of that beautiful stuff?” the 22-yearold actress says, pointing at a patch of green vegetation just off the hiking trail in Fryman Canyon Park. “It’s called miner’s lettuce. If you’re ever stranded in the wild, you can eat all of that.” Dressed in a white T-shirt and high-waisted skinny jeans, with a cell phone tucked into her back pocket, Woodley would look like any…

Had Ralph Lauren not left his native Bronx, let’s go ahead and assume, he would not be as closely identified as he is today with a polo pony. Taken to its Capra-esque hypothetical extreme, let’s try to imagine a world without Ralph Lauren: no ponies, no picnics or casual beach gatherings attended by sun-kissed kids and the well-turned-out adults who produced them. No sweaters with American flags on them (they made us feel better, warmer, and more patriotic during that first winter after 9/11), no purple labels, red pants, or golden retrievers. If it’s true that clothes make the man, it’s worth celebrating the man who makes the clothes. This month, Ralph Lauren is being awarded the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal, recognizing his lifetime contributions to American entrepreneurship, artistry, creativity,…

‘How do you pronounce this word? En-door? Endure. Endure.” Masha Alyokhina repeated the word several more times. She and Nadya Tolokonnikova were getting ready to give their first speech in English, to an audience of more than 2,000 women at New York’s Lincoln Center. Their biggest applause line was “Be Pussy Riot! Anyone can be Pussy Riot!” Though often called a punk-rock group, Pussy Riot is actually a Russian protest-art collective started by non-musicians a little less than three years ago. By the rules of the group as devised by Tolokonnikova, members are always anonymous: they are Pussy Riot only when wearing their trademark neon-colored balaclavas. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are two exceptions: they were unmasked and arrested two and a half years ago after performing what they called a “punk…

Rock ’n’ roll was never really Clint Eastwood’s jam. “I went through the 50s and 60s,” the 84-year-old Oscarwinning director says, “but I never really dug it. I was always a rhythm-and-blues guy. I was a jazz freak. But it seemed like the Four Seasons’ songs were a cut above.” Now Eastwood is giving Jersey Boys, the Tony-winning musical based on the 1960s vocal group that vaulted to stardom on Frankie Valli’s stratospheric falsettos, the Hollywood treatment. Featuring many of the Four Seasons’ chart toppers—“Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)”—the show opened on Broadway in 2005 and is still running Stateside and in London’s West End, while various productions tour the globe. (On Broadway alone, the show has made nearly $500…

’Iwanna get . . . under your skin-uh; if I get there, I got to win-uh.” As a statement of intent, this couplet, from James Brown’s 1971 hit “Soul Power Pt. 1,” sums up the Godfather of Soul’s philosophy as well as any. No musician insinuated the funk into American pelvises more deeply and comprehensively than Brown, who first charted in the 1950s and kept performing nearly right up until his death, in 2006. But how to get under James Brown’s skin-uh? That’s the challenge that director Tate Taylor (The Help) has undertaken with Get On Up, the long-aborning biopic (whose producers include Mick Jagger) about the familiar yet enigmatic singer, which opens in August. Taylor, a Mississippian, tapped actor Chadwick Boseman, a native South Carolinian, to play Brown, who…