Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Vanity Fair

Event VANITY FAIR FÉTES INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE To celebrate the deliciously decadent series, Vanity Fair and AMC hosted an evening to remember for the show’s cast and VIP guests. The Django at The Roxy Hotel was transformed into a gateway to the series’ universe, where the show’s lead vampires, Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid and Bailey Bass mingled with guests, including Executive Producers Mark Johnson and Alan Taylor. Watch all episodes of Interview With The Vampire, now on AMC+…

FIVE YEARS AGO, #MeToo rattled the entertainment industry down to its tectonic plates. The hope, even in a cynical industry, was that the landscape would be permanently altered. Abusers would be rooted out, policies would change, and far more women would be elevated to decision-making positions. Five years later, how much has really changed? And how much more is Hollywood willing to change? “#MeToo is a bit of a failure in terms of institutional power,” one television showrunner tells me. “They mostly didn’t put women in charge, with some exceptions. The truth is that men still run Hollywood up and down the line, and they don’t care. If anything, they feel that their colleagues have been unfairly maligned.” That doesn’t mean that #MeToo hasn’t had an impact. “I think what…

“The thing to worry about is meanings, not appearances.”—Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip, 1973 CECIL, WISCONSIN—I went back twice to find out what the coffin meant, but though cars came and went in the driveway, nobody ever answered the door. Halloween in June, or a sign? Kitsch, or a warning? I’d been driving for a week, since the first night of the January 6th hearings, listening to them on the radio as I counted the flags. Not the American ones but the Trump ones. Trump 2024, two years ahead of time; and the red, white, and blue of the Confederacy, the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden. There are so many now. There’s new folk art too: hand-painted “Fuck Biden” placards, homemade “Let’s Go Brandon” billboards, and DIY “Never Forget…

TENDING SEEDS IS a time-honored metaphor, from the fruits of Eden to the flowers at Manderley. This month, take a more literal—though no less enticing—look at living with plants: From Vendome, Jennifer Ash Rudick’s Palm Beach Living (1) presents lush images of tropical homes, while Toby Musgrave’s reissued The Garden (2), from Phaidon, surveys more than 200 styles, from bonsai to Frida Kahlo’s Mexican courtyard. In The Garden Politic (4), out from NYU Press, Mary Kuhn views politics through the lens of 19th-century thinkers–cum–amateur gardeners including Emily Dickinson and Frederick Douglass, and Lucy Mora’s The Kitchen Garden (3), from Thames & Hudson, highlights the growing and preparing of edible plants: food and thought.…

“I’LL GO SLOW,” PROMISES CHANNING TATUM. He looks down, his chiseled brow furrowed in concern. “How’s that?” he asks. “Too slow?” As an athlete and a dancer, Tatum is used to contorting his body into exotic positions, and it doesn’t take long for him to find his rhythm. “Oh, yeah,” he says. His thighs are taut. His massive hands are made for stuff like this. “That’s what I’m talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I find myself starting to lose control. “Oh, God,” I say. “Oh, shit.” “Oh, yeah!” Tatum announces triumphantly. “We’re making a baby!” “Oh, nooo,” I shriek. The hunk of clay I have been attempting to make into a vase slips from my grasp and flings itself dramatically off the pottery wheel, which continues to spin madly, splattering…

ON THE MORNING THEY WERE ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY BURNING BODIES AS PART OF A SERIES OF MAFIA MURDERS, Marie-Josée Viau and Guy Dion had already finished breakfast and packed their daughter off to elementary school. A hand-drawn Mother’s Day card hung on the fridge next to family photographs. Viau, 44, didn’t have to go to her shift at the roadside poutine restaurant until later that day, so she tried baking something new: blueberry phyllo puffs. The pastries were still on the stove top when police arrived at 9:56 a.m. on October 16, 2019. “We’re normal people,” Viau swore to the arresting officers, through her tears, after she and her husband were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder. “We didn’t kill anyone.” Undercover recordings made by investigators told a…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being aware and accepting of whatever the state of my mind happens to be at the moment (even if that state is unhappy). What historical figure do you most identify with? Lincoln: a guy who fought against sadness by turning his mind to the needs of others and making filthy jokes. Which living person do you most despise? Fiction writing is the practice of (through revision) coming to despise nobody. Not that I don’t—I’d just rather not. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? I fear I’d be reincarnated as a (still) too ambitious workaholic writer—haven’t quite burned through that one yet. What is your most marked characteristic? A cloying, puppy dog–ish…

George CORTINA “MAGIC MAN,” P. 40 “He allows you to capture strength, vulnerability, and sensuality without reserve,” says fashion stylist Cortina of cover star Channing Tatum. “Overall, for me it’s not about fashion but about style. It’s more subtle. I’m interested in people that do not simply follow trends—unless, of course, you create the trend.” Chris MURPHY “POWER CHORDS,” P. 60 “I felt the conflicting impulses of Gen Z—the ennui and the optimism—when talking to Willow,” says staff writer Chris Murphy, who recalls listening to the youngest Smith’s debut single at a school dance in 2010. “Now she’s on an entirely new path. But, if you listen closely, you can still hear the girl from 12 years ago.” Jessica PRESSLER “MAGIC MAN,” P. 40 Pressler first met Tatum on assignment…

I GOT JOCELYN Benson on the phone the day after last fall’s midterms. I was expecting some exhaustion. It had been a long night of returns and a punishing election cycle, and I assumed that everyone was nursing the same kind of civic hangover I was. But the Michigan secretary of state was ebullient, still riding an adrenaline high from the night before. “Though we’re in the middle of this multiyear effort, this is a significant victory that we never got to celebrate in 2020,” Benson tells me. That year had also been a Democratic (and democratic) success: a high-turnout election, carried out in the chaos of a pandemic, that saw Joe Biden make Donald Trump a one-term president. But it was followed by weeks of challenges and frenzied protests,…

AT AROUND 4 P.M. on a Friday in 1998, Elizabeth Taylor, the most famous movie star of the 20th century, was dressed in her nightgown, applying makeup, and showing her friend Dorothy Flagler, a salesperson at Van Cleef & Arpels in Beverly Hills, a magnificent new yellow diamond ring. Flagler sat cross-legged on the floor of Taylor’s bathroom as they chatted away. But when Taylor’s assistant Tim Mendelson walked in and told them that a friend of a friend had passed away from AIDS-related causes that day, the mood in the room changed dramatically. “He really doesn’t have anyone and he has no money,” Mendelson told them. There was no money even to bury him. Taylor told Mendelson to get her business manager on the phone, because she wanted to…