MY LIAR
By Rachel Cline
Random House, 252 pages, $23
In my experience, New Yorkers tend to be bipolar when it comes to Los Angeles: Either they love it—love it!—after visiting once or twice, and quietly nurse dreams of living there at some point, or they hate it—really hate it—and look with Read More
It Takes a Pillage, Part V
The U.S. Senate building, Washington, D.C. Late night. An office, dark except for a pool of light from a knockoff Tiffany lamp. Rain slashing against windows.
THE AIDE: Edwards continues to climb, I’m afraid. He’s at 21 percent in New Hampshire to your 27 percent. He’s getting a Read More
Hell’s Kitchen Is Too Pretty For Reality TV
Hollywood screenwriter Bobby Moresco spoke in Dickensian terms about growing up Irish in Hell’s Kitchen, back in the mob-ruled pre-condo era. “For me, it was the greatest life on the face of the earth,” he told The Observer. “It turned into the worst life on the Read More
Fasten the safety belts: After standing ovations on the festival circuit, cult director Paul Verhoeven’s eagerly awaited Black Book is finally here. The Dutch filmmaker’s dazzling and spectacular new cinematic triumph about World War II is his first movie in six years, and it marks his first return since the 1983 thriller The 4th Man Read More
The night of April 8 is going be a big, big, BIG one for HBO. The Sopranos return (finally) for the beginning of the end of the eight-year-old series; parties will be given, volumes will be written, and hand-wringing will ensue over the prospect of a David Chase–free television future. But before we fall to Read More
L.A. Times May Have Dumped Grazer, But It Could Have Been Rummy
One evening in November of last year, Andrés Martinez, the editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Times, found himself sitting on Dean Baquet’s back porch, smoking a cigar and contemplating his future.
Mr. Baquet’s 16-month tenure as editor of the newspaper had just Read More
LOS ANGELES—On this Wednesday, April 12, some 30 people will gather in a cramped West Hollywood apartment for the raucous Passover Seder of Jeffrey (Z-Dog) Zarnow, a former producer who now owns the liquor company Starr African Rum. It is, Mr. Zarnow said, a “debaucherous affair” that begins with a “blaring rock ’n’ roll song”—usually Read More
On Thursday morning, Dalton Conley, chair of sociology at New York University, sent out a pair of emails, one to the Los Angeles Times and one to the office of Hollywood producer Brian Grazer. He wanted to confirm something, which he had just heard about in a voice mail from the Media Mob.
Was the Read More
The current cover of Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue—the biggest wet smackeroo possible from media land—features members of what’s commonly referred to as the film industry’s comedy mafia: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Jack Black, all striking faux-serious poses in white-tie tuxes, as chubby penguins (another major Hollywood crush) wobble off to the side. But Read More
It was a kind of ritual offering: Told that a neighbor on Riverside Drive was forsaking the Hudson’s boulevard for Brooklyn, a friend of mine bought him two books as a parting gift, a hipster blessing: the Not for Tourists Guide to Whitman’s borough and a copy of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
What if Read More
