Innholdsfortegnelse for Oct-14 i Vanity Fair

1 1 Roald Dahl Perhaps the most celebrated children’s author, Roald Dahl wrote James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and, maybe most memorably, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In this month’s issue, to celebrate the book’s 50th anniversary, is a never-before-seen chapter of the 1964 classic (page 254). “His amazing, exaggerated, pure characters and trademark language are all on full display,” says Luke Kelly, Roald Dahl’s grandson and managing director of his literary estate. 2 Quentin Blake In a Vanity Fair exclusive, on page 254, illustrator Sir Quentin Blake brings an unpublished chapter of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to life. For many readers, Blake’s drawings—which appeared in nearly all of the author’s books—are as integral to the beloved stories as Dahl’s words. “Drawing the factory…

This month’s survey concerns what Americans think about royals, nearly 240 years after we thought that was all settled. Our opinions, while perhaps not as radical as they were in 1776, are nevertheless still strong. We claim that if we were to find ourselves in the position of Great Britain’s Prince Harry—fourth in line to the throne—we’d know how to handle it: follow our own path, and not take our royal responsibilities too seriously. The “craziest” thing we’d do, if we were royal, is marry a commoner. (Four percent of us would consider— purely as an acting-out alternative, of course—beheading our spouse.) In the showbiz world, we have views regarding our favorrite portrayal of a royal figure (Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra), and we agree overwhelmingly with Mel Brooks that “it’s…

He was just another gangly Web 2.0 kid with a good job in Silicon Valley (at PayPal) and a big dream: in his case, to launch an online successor to the Yellow Pages. But something funny happened shortly after Jeremy Stoppelman’s proj ect, Yelp, went live: its users embraced the site’s “Write a review” feature to a degree far greater than anticipated. A few weeks of hasty re-coding later, Yelp was reconfigured to make reviewing its raison d’être, and Stoppelman has never looked back. Ten years after its founding, Yelp is the Web’s premier site and app for customer reviews—not just of restaurants, but of shops, kiosks, food trucks, parks, bus lines, funeral homes, D.M.V. offices, and even human attractions. (The Naked Cowboy in Times Square was averaging four stars…

The album cover depicts Frank Sinatra standing on the tarmac at an unspecified airport, his head cocked under his Panama hat. His left hand jerks an insouciant thumb toward the plane behind him; his right gently tugs on the slender hand of an otherwise unseen but no doubt comely young woman. The sky is cloudless and cerulean. As the record’s title song puts it, echoing Sinatra’s pose with buoyant melody and jaunty lyrics, “Weather-wise, it’s such a lovely day/Just say the words and we’ll beat the birds/Down to Acapulco Bay.” Who could resist the invitation? Sinatra’s 1958 LP, Come Fly with Me, is one of the foundational artifacts of the jet-set era. No matter that the album was released in January 1958, 10 months before commercial jet travel began in…

1 RUPERT MURDOCH 21s t Century Fox, News Corp. STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Could this be the greatest comeback in modern business history? Murdoch, who several years ago seemed just as likely to lose control of his media empire amid the British phone-hacking scandal, was instead on the cusp of cementing his legacy this summer with a bid to take over Time Warner. Though his opening salvo, an $80 billion buyout offer, was rejected, many think deal talks between the two companies could resume at some point despite Murdoch’s emphatic declaration to the contrary. Earlier this year, Murdoch elevated sons Lachlan and James to expanded positions at News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, setting them up as his clear successors. SIGN OF RENEWED VIGOR: News Corp. announced in May that…

After an epic drama of destruction and redemption—worthy of, say, a Marvel in theaters this month: The Judge, the debut feature from the production company and (soon) their daughter, the world’s highest-paid star talks with RICH COHEN super-hero—Robert Downey Jr. is figuring out what he’s learned. Exhibit A, Downey has started with his wife, Susan. At the Malibu home he shares with her, their son, about his lowest point, his genetic legacy, and the new aphrodisiac in his life Every now and then, you just need to ride. I’m shotgun with Robert Downey Jr., the world’s highest-paid actor, strapped in the passenger seat of his black ’65 Corvette, which, top down, flashes through the sparse weekday traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, Point Dume jutting into the sea. He’s talking…

I’ve been fortunate to play some strong women in my career—protectors, guardians, leaders. The no-nonsense Ellen Rip ley in Aliens. The chain-smoking xenobotanist Grace Augustine in Avatar. The real-life zoologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist When casting about for the right mix of intellectual rigor and emotional toughness to portray these women, I have often taken inspiration from my former roommate and highschool classmate, Frances Beinecke. Frances has always had a clear vision of what’s important, and she doesn’t allow herself to be thrown off course by the frenzy and noise of the debate. Standing up to bullies and never backing down are all second nature to her. But Frances is no actor. In her four decades on the front lines of environmental advocacy, she’s been the real…

'Now you just keep holding on to my hand, Charlie,” Mrs. Bucket said as they moved on down the corridor to the next room. “I’m having a lovely time!” Charlie said. “I think it’s exciting!” “Well, just you behave yourself,” Mrs. Bucket told him sternly. “There’s five of them gone already just from getting into mischief and there’s no telling who the next one will be.” Mr. Willy Wonka stopped outside a door on which it said: THE WARMING-CANDY ROOM “Warming-candy is a grand new item,” Mr. Wonka said. “We’ve just started making it. We’ll be putting it in the shops next week. It’s going to cause a sensation. Come in, please, and have a look.” So in they went. The Warming-Candy Room looked more than anything else like the…

JUST ONE MORE THING Sam Simon and his Cane Corso, Columbo, at home in Pacific Palisades. It’s 8:30 on a Friday morning at the Van Nuys airport, in Los Angeles, as a Gulfstream IV is preparing to take off for the two-hour flight to Denver. The passenger manifest sounds like the setup to a joke, or a road movie: There’s Tyson, a tattooed dog trainer, seated on a couch with his pit bull, with whom he communicates using nonsense syllables and telepathy. On one side of a polished wood table that holds a fresh-fruit basket and a backgammon board is the actress Jennifer Tilly, glamorous even in torn jeans and a pair of Converse All-Stars. The tousled-haired guy in the window seat beside her, wearing a Bruce Lee T-shirt and…

Top, the cast of Days and Nights: front row, from left, Cherry Jones, William Hurt, Mark Rylance, writer-director Christian Camargo (with script), Juliet Rylance (Camargo’s real-life wife and one of the film’s producers), and the late Russell Means; back row, Michael Nyqvist, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, Ben Whishaw, Katie Holmes, and producer Barbara Romer. Photographed on South Spectacle Pond, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Inset, Anton Chekhov, center, and members of the Moscow Art Theatre, circa 1898. An ensemble cast of eccentrics has become a cinematic trope—thank you, Christopher Guest, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach. But in the new indie feature Days and Nights—the directorial debut of actor Chris-tian Camargo (Dexter)—the star-studded troupe turns into a master class, and their performances serve not comedy but tragedy. The film, for which Camargo also wrote…

This issue marks the 20th anniversary of Vanity Fair’s New Establishment, a special report that, like so many things in life, was born out of equal measures of inspiration and desperation. The inspiration part gestated during a long, boozy lunch I had one day with David Halberstam. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and a legend to us younger bit players, David was a longtime friend and a wise and generous adviser. I was foundering in those early years at Vanity Fair; advertising and circulation were down, and I was looking for a big idea that might help right the ship. David took me to lunch in the hope of cheering me up a bit. Over the course of our meal, he mentioned that, to his mind, America…

In the 70s, Gail Sheehy’s classic Passages shepherded readers through adulthood. In Daring: My Passages (Mor row), Sheehy (a V.F. contributing editor) recounts her own struggles on the rocky journey from 60s reporter to celebrated journalist, wife, and mother. Mandy Aftel’s seductive Fragrant (Riverhead) plumbs the power of ancient and exotic smells to ignite desire, discovery, and transcendence. Jonathan Darman’s Landslide (Random House) argues that the dueling mythologies of L.B.J. and Reagan in the 60s triggered the death of consensus politics. Matt Bai nails the Gary Hart affair as the moment politics went tabloid in All the Truth Is Out (Knopf). New Republic editor Franklin Foer commemorates 100 years of Insurrections of the Mind (Harper). Poet Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf) presents a radical portrait of our “post-racial”…

Sir Tom Stoppard, England’s leading playwright of champagne wit and ideas, stands loftily alone in theater, Oscar Wilde not having written much lately. The great man met me for a light lunch at Orso, the showbiz hangout in the heart of Broadway, during a break from rehearsing the revival of his Tony Award–winning 1982 play, The Real Thing. (It’s opening next month and starring Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Cynthia Nixon, who played the teenager in the original production.) A congenial, reserved, charming man, he still loves the unequaled, frenetic excitement of Broadway, less so its pneumatic drills. “It will be lovely once it’s finished,” he said. It would be perfect, one suspects, if they let him smoke. “Tut-tut, Tom,” I ventured. “You still smoke?” “I know. It’s very tut-tut,…

Just as the Industrial Revolution was driven by combining the steam engine with ingenious machinery, the Digital Revolution has been driven by two great innovations: the personal computer and the Internet. The relationship between the two was standoffish at first, and it was only after their development became intertwined that the digital economy began to transform our lives. The result was a shift in influence from an old establishment led by bankers, wise men, and a corporate elite to a new establishment led by the pioneers of technology, information, and entertainment. This digital inflection point occurred in 1994, the year that this magazine began publishing its New Establishment list. The first personal computers had sprouted two dec ades earlier, led by the Altair, a solderit-yourself kit created by Ed Roberts,…

There's so much talk about innovation these days that it’s become a buzzword, drained of clear meaning. So when writing a book about the Digital Revolution, I decided to focus on some specific examples of how innovation actually happened in the real world. How did the most imaginative innovators of our time turn ideas into realities? Why did some succeed and others fail? Here are five of the lessons: 1 Connect art and science. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” Steve Jobs told me when I embarked on his biography. “Then I read something … about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It…

As the Ebola epidemic rages, two questions have emerged: How did the deadly virus escape detection for three months? And why has a massive international effort failed to contain it? Traveling to Meliandou, a remote Guinean village and the likely home of Patient Zero, JEFFREY E. STERN tracks the virus’s path—and the psychological contagion that is still feeding the worst Ebola outbreak in history The tiny village of Meliandou, nestled in the Forest Region of southern Guinea, has begun to see flashes of the outside world. A Messi soccer jersey, three sizes too big, on a little boy. A down parka on an old man in the heavy heat, worn as a robe of distinction. You might even come across the occasional teenager on a cell phone, cupping the device…

It was sometime in the fall of 2013 when Frank Farella, the general manager of the Seagram Building, the 38-story Ludwig Mies van der Rohe modernist masterpiece on Park Avenue, first suspected that there might be a problem with the back wall of the building’s lobby. Farella, according to court documents, was on a routine inspection when he noticed the “buckling” travertine wall panels in the passage between the two dining rooms of the famed Four Seasons restaurant. The corridor is known as Picasso Alley because a towering, 19-by-20-foot work by Picasso—the largest Picasso canvas in the United States—has hung on that wall since 1959, when the restaurant, which was designed by the American architect Philip Johnson, opened. Behind the Picasso, on the other side of the wall, Farella said…

TROUBLE AHEAD Inside the automated cockpit of an Airbus A330—like the one belonging to Air France that crashed into the equatorial Atlantic in 2009. I. Info the night On the last day of May in 2009, as night enveloped the airport in Rio de Janeiro, the 216 passengers waiting to board a flight to Paris could not have suspected that they would never see daylight again, or that many would sit strapped to their seats for another two years before being found dead in the darkness, 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. But that is what happened. Air France Flight 447 carried a crew of nine flight attendants and three pilots—their numbers augmented because of duty-time limitations on a 5,700-mile trip that was expected to last nearly…

Sarah Gadon, photographed in the Dior Suite at the St. Regis hotel, in New York. GADON WEARS A TOP BY CÉLINE; NECKLACE BY CARTIER. It’s quite likely you’ve seen Sarah Gadon on-screen at least once or twice in the past few years. In addition to roles in this year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Belle, Gadon has appeared in three David Cronenberg films: 2011’s A Dangerous Method, 2012’s Cosmopolis, and most recently Maps to the Stars, which premiered at Cannes in May. In that film, Gadon plays Clarice Taggart, a late movie star whose ghost is now haunting her living daughter, portrayed by Julianne Moore. In many ways, the 27-year-old actor—who stars in this fall’s Dracula Untold—is very much of her generation: she takes a strong stance on social-media etiquette,…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Unmade bed surrounded by books, writing utensils, and the dog; a plate of demolished toast with butter on my chest; loved ones puttering not too close but not too far. What is your greatest fear? To lose the ability to do my work. Which historical figure do you most identify with? The unfortunate truth is that most of them committed suicide. So let’s just say Betty Ford—she really turned it all around! Which living person do you most admire? My uncle, Edward Wood Dunham. He has Parkinson’s disease and faces every day with bravery, humor, and a gin-and-tonic. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? An “elastic” sense of time (fancy way of saying I am late a lot). What is…

Governor Christie claims he’s not a bully, yet Bridgegate, as the event has been dubbed, suggests that’s not true [“Christieworld,” by Bryan Burrough, August]. Why would members of his inner circle dare to inconvenience thousands of New Jersey residents and place some lives in jeopardy during the fiasco that unfolded on the approach to the George Washington Bridge if they hadn’t been inspired by their boss’s behavior? President Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” in accepting responsibility for actions taken by members of his administration. The governor should man up and accept full responsibility for the events of September 9, 2013. Anything less suggests Christie suffers from a deep character flaw and should not be trusted in high government office. MEL PRAISSMAN Setauket, New York Articles involving Machiavellian…

THINK PINK The third annual “Hamptons Paddle & Party for Pink” was a twofold affair that began with a competitive paddleboard race at Havens Beach, on Long Island, and ended with cocktails and dinner at the spectacular residence of Lisa and Richard Perry, in North Haven. The fund-raiser benefited the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. WILD BEAUTY The inaugural St. Tropez gala, at the Domaine Bertaud Belieu vineyard, and auction, benefiting the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, raised more than $25 million, which will be dedicated to protecting the sea, earth, and wildlife.…

I am an insurance company’s worst nightmare. I have a “pre-existing condition.” It’s serious and incurable, but with a variety of prescription drugs it can be kept under control. The drugs cost more than $10,000 a year (and most of them are generics). There’s also an operation that can ameliorate the symptoms. I had the operation a dec ade ago. It worked well and cost more than $200,000. Every four or five years the operation requires an update. This is a fairly minor procedure: The last time I had it, I was in and out of the hospital in less than three hours. The bill was $26,618.50. (That 50 cents is a nice touch.) I go to various doctors and other specialists to deal with the many side effects, running…

1 ELON MUSK Tes la Motors, SpaceX STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Musk’s ability to combine staggering ambition with a do-gooder sense of purpose has made him revered among his peers. “You know, if I were to get hit by a bus today,” Google C.E.O. Larry Page purportedly once said, “I should leave all of it to Elon Musk.” The sentiment, which Page reiterated in an interview in March, encapsulates Musk’s role as Silicon Valley’s patron saint and perennial coolest kid in class. Tesla, his electric-car venture, makes the ultimate environmentalist status symbol and was also the best-performing stock of 2013. The company is now working on a mass-market car, the Model 3, that many think could turn Musk into the first great American auto baron in almost a century. SpaceX,…

AGE: 26. PROVENANCE: Akron, Ohio. RUSTIC CHARM: Hollywood’s newest darling had an unlikely start, growing up in rural surroundings. “It is so funny because I was always embarrassed because I never had formal training in acting. I basically grew up in the backwoods.” SOUND START: Bennett—whose first screen role was as an up-and-coming singer in 2007’s beloved Music and Lyrics, starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant—credits her mother for cultivating her creative side. “My mom was an artist, and she had this amazing ability to transform everything into something beautiful.” PACKING A CAREER PUNCH: Later this month, Bennett appears in Antoine Fuqua’s action-packed The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington. “It was a complete departure for me. I play a Russian woman in the face of adversity.” BACK TO BASICS: Despite a…

For me, the rapturous impact of MoMA’s Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, which opens October 12 and closes February 8, is surpassed only by a 1951 visit I paid to the artist when he was actually doing them. I was a 26-year-old art critic. A friend who was a collector had got me in. Matisse was 82 and would die three years later. For most of the last 10 years, he had seldom left his bed, the consequence of a series of nearly fatal intestinal problems. Matisse received us regally in his bed, which could be wheeled around his three lofty studios, whose walls were covered floor to ceiling with the cutouts that constitute this amazing exhibition. They had been inspired by a commission to design the windows, walls, and chasubles…

Opera singer Ildar Abdrazakov, photographed in St. Petersburg, Russia. It could almost be the plot of an opera: a dark, dashing descendant of both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane appears and sweeps all before him. But in the case of Russian-born bass Ildar Abdrazakov—“I’m one-fourth Tatar and three-fourths Bashkirian,” he says with a smile—it happens to be true. A native of Ufa, the capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan (also known as Bashkiria), Abdrazakov, 37, has emerged in the past few years as one of the most sought-after young basses in the operatic world. He was pitch-perfect as the brooding prince in the Metropolitan Opera’s production last season of Borodin’s Prince Igor. But what Abdrazakov actually likes best is Italian opera: “I only started singing the Russian roles when I…

There is a direct, discernible link between the young Cam Newton, who spent every free minute of his Atlanta boyhood playing football, basketball, and baseball, and the mature Cam Newton, a quarter-back who led the Auburn Tigers to the 2010 college national championship, won the Heisman Trophy for himself that same season, and was then drafted No. 1 by the Carolina Panthers, for whom he immediately set a number of N.F.L. rookie rec ords. And that was just for starters: last season, his third as a pro, he helped take his team to the playoffs for the first time in five years while making his second Pro Bowl. There is also an obvious link between that sports-loving boy and the 25-year-old athlete who speaks passionately about his Cam Newton Foundation,…

During the long winter of 1963, during the lonely nights that seemed to never end, the wakeful nights that no quantity of vodka could assuage, Jackie Kennedy would relive the sliver of time between the first gunshot, which had missed the car, and the second, which hit both the president and Texas governor John Connally. Those three and a half seconds became of cardinal importance to her. In the course of her marriage, she had constructed herself as Jack Kennedy’s one-woman Praetorian Guard— against the doctors, against the po liti cal antagonists, against the journalists, even against anyone in his own circle who, to her perception, would do him harm. So, again and again that winter of 1963– 64, she rehearsed the same brief sequence. If only she had been…