Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Vanity Fair

NICOLE HOLOFCENER KNOWS she’s not the first person who comes to mind for a medieval action movie. For more than 20 years, the indie-film icon (Lovely & Amazing, Enough Said) felt perfectly content directing her own screenplays, biting slices of life in which rich dialogue was the main attraction. Then Ben Affleck came knocking. “He emailed me a strange request: Would I want to write a sword-fight movie with him and Matt Damon,” says Holofcener. Specifically, it was an adaptation of Eric Jager’s 2004 nonfiction book, The Last Duel, a 14th-century revenge tale about a knight named Jean; Jean’s best friend, Jacques; and Jean’s wife, Marguerite, who alleges that Jacques raped her. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” says Holofcener. Her film is part of an encouraging…

DAVID ZASLAV’S FACE lit up as the SUV approached the lot. It was around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, June 1, 70-something degrees and sunny in Burbank, California, where Zaslav was arriving for his first-ever visit to one of the world’s most storied entertainment studios. After Zaslav flashed his negative COVID results for the security guards, the car rolled onto the 110-acre property, an ersatz metropolis in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains. Zaslav gazed out the window and looked up at the iconic Warner Bros. water tower, looming over him like some ancient shrine. If reality hadn’t already sunk in, it was sinking in now. “Can you believe this?” he gushed. “It’s really happening.” Two weeks earlier, Zaslav, the president and CEO of Discovery since 2007, had pulled off…

TIM CARPENTER DREAMS of places he’s never been. He’ll find himself somewhere deep in China, gazing at a Buddhist temple, posing as if he’s being photographed. Or sometimes he’s on Easter Island, near its carved human figures with oversized heads, outside centuries-old burial caves, almost like he’s unearthing something. Then he wakes and realizes none of it was real. He’s never visited China, never seen Easter Island. His dreams are someone else’s trips and memories that exist in weathered photos and grainy films, strung together in his mind like a phantom reel, images he’s looked at so many times—too many—that they’ve invaded his psyche. One evening years earlier, in October 2013, Carpenter—an FBI agent—heard his phone ringing at his home in Indianapolis. His supervisor was calling to tell him of…

ON AN UNSEASONABLY hot day in the fall of 2017, four dozen dancers descended on the small city of Charleston, South Carolina. Seasoned soloists from major companies as well as students fresh out of dance school, they were lucky members of the newly formed American National Ballet. Their new jobs, they believed, represented not only the fulfillment of their own dreams, but a revolution in the field of ballet. ANB’s husband-and-wife founders, businessman Doug Benefield and Ashley Benefield, herself a former dancer, appeared to have deep pockets and a noble mission: to highlight racially diverse and physically unconventional dancers. Their first hire was Sara Michelle Murawski, a stunning five-foot-10 dancer who said she had lost her previous job because of her aboveaverage height. “I want dancers who aren’t the cookie-cutter…

Mark SELIGER “THE PASSION OF DWAYNE JOHNSON,” P. 44 “ALL THAT ZAZ,” P. 54 Longtime Vanity Fair contributor Seliger describes Dwayne Johnson as larger than life. The photographer first worked with the actor in 2001, when they bonded over country music and denim, according to Seliger. “There is a one-of-a-kind quality of a familiar friend and gentleman dressed in humor and tattoos,” the photographer says. “His infectious smile is just as impressive as his biceps.” Brian STAUFFER “FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE FOREVER WAR,” P. 40 Stauffer is a San Francisco Bay Area–based illustrator whose work often addresses issues surrounding human rights and political conflict. He found himself particularly drawn to his assignment in this issue, on the end of the war in Afghanistan, while reflecting on the notion that “revenge…

“SHOULD LIKE TO do a novel,” wrote 20-year-old Patricia Highsmith in 1941. “Something brilliant of course.” Nine years later she’d publish her first, Strangers on a Train, with The Talented Mr. Ripley and nearly two dozen more to follow. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, out from Liveright and compiled by Highsmith’s longtime editor Anna von Planta, provides stunning access to the mind of a notoriously secretive author. In youth, Highsmith juggled parties and mercurial love affairs (“I almost kissed her when we left but not quite”) with a desire for literary greatness. “Got very good work done,” she wrote at age 22, “even though my hair was flat.” She befriended Truman Capote and Jane and Paul Bowles, lauded her pet snails, and eulogized her cat with a poem. Appetite…

SOMETIMES OLD WARRIORS are the best peacemakers. George Washington famously warned against foreign entanglements. Dwight Eisenhower steadfastly refused to send American troops into harm’s way. Those generals knew the cost of war, in lives American and foreign, and steered clear of farflung quagmires. More recently, over two decades, four presidents took a different path, waging a star-crossed war in Afghanistan, where the United States military has now joined the British and Soviets in what has come to be known as the graveyard of empires. In his shambolic exit from Afghanistan, the last of those four presidents, Joe Biden, has proved that ending wars can be more difficult than waging them. The U.S. withdrawal that devolved into chaos—throngs of people stranded in the Kabul airport; panicked Afghans falling to their deaths…

ONLY WEEKS AFTER the 9/11 attacks, I flew from New York to Tuscany for the wedding of two dear friends. Afterward I traveled south with my then boyfriend for a weekend stay at the storybook villa in Ravello of Gore Vidal, the American man of letters who once described himself thus: “I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.” I had met Gore earlier that year in New York City when I took part in a reading of his play Visit to a Small Planet. I wasn’t really a fan of the play, but it isn’t every day you get to meet someone like Gore.…

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being a member of the 1992 Dream Team. Representing the United States on a global stage with guys like Michael, Magic, and Larry was beyond special. What is your favorite journey? My own, from Arkansas to the NBA. What is your most marked characteristic? My look. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Superman. I like the big S on his chest. It reminds me of myself! What is your most treasured possession? My college degree from the University of Central Arkansas. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Cooking dinner and hanging out with my kids. What is your motto? Be humble and be kind. Be grateful for your journey. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Not one specific person,…

“I’m a Valley Girl through and through, all day every day,” says Alana Haim. So are her sisters, Este and Danielle—who, with Alana, went from writing music on their family’s unair-conditioned living room floor to signing a record deal after high school and being nominated for Grammys as the band Haim. Along the way, the Haims met Oscar-nominated Valley Boy Paul Thomas Anderson, who would become a collaborator and close friend (along with his wife, Maya Rudolph). Then one day an untitled script arrived in Alana’s mailbox—just hers. It was from Anderson. Two years later, Anderson’s mysterious Licorice Pizza arrives in theaters. Over Zoom (username: BabyHaim), the 29-year-old talks acting debuts and only-in-the-Valley connections. AS THE YOUNGEST HAIM, “I was always their doll—and nothing has changed.” BELIEVE IT OR NOT,…

DURING ONE OF our last conversations, Dwayne Johnson’s five-year-old daughter, Jasmine, comes into his office to ask, a little impatiently, when he will be available to eat some lemon cake with her. She has walked into the middle of a discussion about whether her father truly has presidential ambitions. Earlier this year, after a poll suggested that 46 percent of Americans have some enthusiasm for this recurrently floated idea, Johnson responded on Instagram (where he currently has 270 million followers, the second most of anyone on the planet): “I don’t think our Founding Fathers EVER envisioned a six-four, bald, tattooed, half-Black, half-Samoan, tequila drinking, pick up truck driving, fanny pack wearing guy joining their club—but if it ever happens it’d be my honor to serve you, the people.” Johnson and…

THREE YEARS AGO Tom Cruise set out to cast a new generation of magnetic, and chiseled, pilots for Top Gun: Maverick, the highly anticipated sequel scheduled to land on Memorial Day weekend next year. After scouring young Hollywood, he found his squad: Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro (playing the first female pilot featured in the franchise), and Miles Teller. Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski wanted real stunts with cameras capturing actual flight patterns, so the star curated the training he wished he’d had back in 1986. “In anyone else’s hands, Top Gun is a CGI movie,” says Powell. “Only Tom puts real actors in real planes.” The aircraft were flown by pilots, but the cast were in the cockpit for such long, intense stretches that…