Vanity Fair May 2013

A HOTEL IN TEXAS, AND ONE IN D.C. It’s a staple not only of brainteasers but also of classic detective fiction: the “locked room” mystery. A crime—generally a murder—has taken place in a secure enclosure. There are few clues and no ready solution. It’s the sort of story that has long intrigued Vanity Fair’s Mark Bowden. When he was at The Philadelphia Inquirer years ago, he specialized in juicy crime mysteries—“dirtball” stories, as they were called at the paper. Reporters competed to get the best ones, if only because they were often billed over the masthead of the Sunday edition. Don’t let a throwaway description fool you: in the hands of a writer like Bowden, “dirtballs” are pure pleasure. In the December 2010 V.F., he reported “The Case of the…

ALMA MATTERS ’Bright college days,” sang Tom Lehrer long ago, “carefree days that fly.” Do they ever. And how easily we forget them. Most of us probably take a more generous view of the S.A.T.’s than we did in our school days. A majority of Americans consider them either a “necessary evil” or a “successful equalizer”; only a third of us regard them as a waste of time or a “failed ideal.” And a whopping 86 percent don’t care—one way or the other—if someone we know was a member of a fraternity or a sorority; as undergrads, most of us almost certainly cared—one way or the other—a great deal. It gets worse: two-thirds of us don’t know what state Northwestern University is in. And it certainly gets worse for those…

1 Luca Dotti Luca Dotti was born in Rome in 1970. His mother, Audrey Hepburn, had married his father, psychiatrist Andrea Luca, the year before. “By falling in love with him, she fell in love with Rome,” recounts Luca, the author, along with journalist Luigi Spinola, of the forthcoming book Audrey in Rome, adapted for Vanity Fair on page 144. “The city is very much still in love with her.” 2 Tom Brokaw Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News, counts himself fortunate to have been a White House correspondent during Watergate 40 years ago. “It was the greatest constitutional crisis in the history of the American presidency,” says Brokaw, whose Spotlight on Robert Redford’s forthcoming documentary, All the President’s Men Revisited, can be found on page 154.…

WITH ANDREW SULLIVAN Illustration by TIM SHEA FFER Andrew Sullivan, whose renegade Daily Dish has made him one of the most influential bloggers in America, arrived a little late at August, a nice, welcoming bistro close to where he lives, in downtown Manhattan. “Sorry,” he apologized. “A blog waits for no man.” Having left the safe sanctuary of his freedom at the Daily Beast, he was in the frantic midst of launching his newly independent site, which quixotically refuses backing from both corporate moguls and advertisers. In search of perfect, enviable freedom, and a potential avatar of a media revolution, his Daily Dish will live or die by readers’ support alone. “It’s an insane time,” he said. “We’re sort of laying down the tracks as we’re driving the train.” He…

THE PAST TYCOON Thank you for your excellent and sensitive article on Merv Adelson [“Remembrance of Wings Past,” by Bryan Burrough, March]. Merv and I became friends more than 20 years ago when I taught him to scuba-dive in the Red Sea. He, along with then wife Barbara Walters and a group of distinguished friends, came to dive from my yacht. That yacht was later stranded in hostile waters of the Sudanese coast, and Merv and other guests had to be saved by the Israeli Air Force in a daring helicopter rescue. But that is not the story I wish to share about Merv. He is truly a very kind and caring man. Shortly after we met, my wife was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, which the Israeli…

@VANITYFAIR’S hashtag-happy following sang the praises of our annual HOLLYWOOD ISSUE and OSCAR BASH—while some found themselves lost in the whirlwind of Bruce Weber’s “Adventures in Hollywood.” @IJASONALEXANDER Vanity Fair cover shot has EMMA STONE in bed w Ben Affleck & Bradley Cooper. BIG DEAL—like we haven’t all been. @SHEEWRITES BRUCE WEBER’S Adventures in Hollywood in this month’s Vanity Fair is phenomenal. Sometimes images can say so much more than words. @ALYS SAROSENBERG Vanity Fair both marginalizes women of color AND makes Emma Stone unrecognizable. @POPE STEVERINO Ben Affleck’s eyes keep moving on the cover of Vanity Fair giving me the creeps @NICOLEOCRAN Dying at Eddie Red mayne as FRED ASTAIRE in @VANITYFAIR’S 2013 Hollywood Portfolio! Hearts in my eyes. @JOHANNACOX What in hipster hell happened to Vanity Fair’s Hollywood…