Bill Skarsgard in Hemlock Grove (Netflix)

"So, what's it like living on abandoned island with your vampire family?" The Observer asked 22-year-old Bill Skarsgård, star of the new Netflix original series Hemlock Grove. (Out today! Consume it!) We were at No. 8, where the lanky Mr. Skarsgård was partying with his co-star, Landon Liboiron, and the show's co-creator, Brian McGreevy, who also wrote the book on which the series is based.

Mr. Skarsgård looked slightly offended. "We don't live on an island," he said.

Our bad: We thought we had read it somewhere, like in the 2011 GQ interview that described father Stellan Skarsgård as follows:

Think George Clooney—if George Clooney was the only internationally famous actor in an entire country with a tradition of revering actors.

This was mostly a set-up to explain why the eight Skarsgård children spent their vacations on a private family island (try not to think about Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) in Öland, next to the Baltic sea.

"It's connected to the mainland by a bridge," Mr. Skarsgård said in his defense.

"That still counts as an island," we told him.

It says something that the heavy-lidded, thick-lipped actor chose to argue semantics over the whole island thing, we thought. Especially because his older brother, Alexander Skarsgård, happens to be one of the most famous vampires in the world right now, playing Eric Northman on True Blood. On Hemlock Grove, Bill follows in his brother's footsteps, playing the aristocratic, Oedipal (and a lot of other things) teen vampire Roman Godfrey.

When pressed, Mr. Skarsgård revealed his true form. "Yeah, we're a family of vampires, Swedish vampires, being bred on a secret island," he said.

Finally, the truth! But here was the real test of whether he could go toe-to-toe with his brother and father: how was his American accent?

"Pretty bad. I have this kind of bullshit accent that I've made up," he said, sounding vaguely European. "Swedish is a sexy language, but the Swedish accent is the most unsexy thing in the world."

Still, a family of tall, brooding, Swedish vampires? One could find a worse family to marry into.

Eve rocks DSquared2. (Paul Bruinooge/ PatrickMcMullan.com)

Although Nemo assailed our city with buckets of snow, threatening to grind Fashion Week to an unfashionable halt, The Observer would not be stopped. Shindigger was front and center at all the best New York Fashion Week had to offer. Who could forget Jason Wu’s billowy evening wear? Or Prabal Gurung’s must-buy Cesare Casadei military knee-high boots with python? What about Moncler’s stunning Star Wars-inspired fashion presentation?

Between the fabulously overpriced couture and the Oscar-worthy production values, the circus that is Fashion Week doesn’t just entertain us, it makes us whole again. With the desperate posing and the mere pleasure of sitting next to some of the most heinously obnoxious fashions mavens ever to breathe, it’s just consummate bliss! 

Still, Shindigger needed a break from the hustle and bustle every now and again. On Sunday, we took in the runway shows of Diane Von Furstenberg and Ralph Rucci in the American Express Skybox, far above the frenzy of Lincoln Center, with stylist Cameron Silver and FIT’s Valerie Steele. Perched high above the catwalk, Shindigger enjoyed healthy pours of red wine and bubbly, served alongside gourmet grub.

“What’s on the party schedule tonight?” a well-dressed yet curiously uninformed brunette asked us after Ralph Rucci.

“Dsquared2!” Shindigger screeched. We explained that the brand’s designers, Dean and Dan Caten, were hosting a private screening of their spring 2013 ad campaign video, “Behind the Mirror,” shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and starring two surprise female models, who turned out to be the identical twin designers in magically convincing drag.

Regrettably, we had no additional room for hangers-on, so we gulped our merlot and danced down the Lincoln Center steps so our waiting car could whisk us off to the Copacabana on West 47th Street. (Fighting every impulse in our booze-addled brains, we did not start singing that old 1970s favorite, though we wanted to, especially when we learned that Barry Manilow was putting on a solo show just a few blocks away.)

Luckily, we made it to the club in relative quiet. And the Copa, quite frankly, may never have seen a better list of revelers. There were the super attractive and fashionable: models Carolyn Murphy and Chad White, Anh Duong, Riccardo Tisci and rapper Eve. The fun and freaky: Susanne Bartsch and Amanda Lepore. And of course, the powerful scenesters: Russell Simmons, Mia Moretti and Vikram Chatwal.

“I’m inspired by all the designers for some reason or another,” Mr. Simmons told us. We had eyed him from across the runway at Hervé Léger and a few other shows. “I love all the bandage stuff that they do. It’s inspired a lot of what I’ve designed.”

And the business magnate’s biggest inspiration? “Tommy Hilfiger, period. He helped me get started 20 years ago, helped me build what would ultimately become a billion-dollar brand.”

We’ve heard a few debates about Phat Farm’s actual value, but Shindigger let it go, as we were suddenly forced to hit the deck—some drunk dancing passerby nearly spilled Veuve Clicquot on our Hermès! We returned to our feet only to find ourselves staring right into the face of TV personality Carson Kressley.

“What are you enjoying most about this party?” Shindigger asked the ex-Queer Eye guy, who’s about to appear in Broadway’s NEWsical The Musical as a four-week guest star.

“Who is this for?” he demanded.

“The Observer,” we replied.

“Is that the pink one?”

“Salmon,” we corrected. He laughed, continuing to sway his hips to the beat.

“I love The Observer!” he said, and then gave us his assessment of the party: “There’s free liquor, hot guys and did I mention free liquor?”

“Are you single and ready to mingle?” Shindigger said.

“I’m totally single! Are you asking me out?”

Shindigger sadly had to turn him down and get back to business. We ordered three more glasses of champagne for our posse and then found some space on a banquette next to billionaire Renzo Rosso, founder of Diesel and owner of holding company Only the Brave, which controls Staff International, the firm that manufactures and distributes Dsquared2, Maison Martin Margiela and Viktor & Rolf. Recently he also bought a majority stake in the quirky luxury brand Marni.

“A new baby on board!” he sang in his Paduan accent, over a thunderous bass line, about his major investment in the label. “I’ll try to do the best to give it good visibility, because [it is] so beautiful!”

Of the Caten twins, Signore Rosso said, “They are unbelievable. They are like me! Crazy, rebellious, funny, enjoyable. It’s so nice to work with them.”

And speak of the devil ...

“We arrived last night at 3 in the morning,” Dean Caten chimed in, just a few feet from Signore Rosso. “We started in London with a pit stop in Miami.”

“A party or a tanning pit stop?” Shindigger asked, noticing the designer’s tenné flesh.

“A day of tanning,” he giggled.

“Why did you choose the Copacabana?”

“I dunno. Maybe the drag ad campaign?” Mr. Caten responded.

“You looked great in drag!” we said.

Speaking of looking great, the Dsquared2-clad siren Eve suddenly appeared, her décolletage ornamented with her signature paw-print tatouage. We moved to talk to the actress/singer and quickly learned that she loves a fashion parade.

“Yesterday I went to the Prabal show and after-party at Bow! It was so fun,” she said. “The day before, I was at Nicole Miller, Monika Chiang. Tomorrow I’m going to The Bonds.”

We couldn’t help but notice her impressive level of fitness, and Eve confessed to an elaborate regimen. “I do everything,” she said. “I have a trainer that comes, but I do elliptical. I do a lot of body weights.”

Shindigger decided that we would meet her at the gym some time. If we could get up in the morning, that is.

blehay@observer.com

Author George Saunders

A few weeks back, the author George Saunders, who is blond, with the shaggy beard of someone who has better things to think about than his appearance, was sitting in a Murray Hill hotel with The Observer, playing Jishaku, a Japanese strategy game involving magnets. Several rounds in, he abruptly announced that he would have to stop playing. He was “too competitive,” he said, and couldn’t “concentrate on winning and talking” at the same time.

Putting down his magnets, he launched into an explanation of his parodic use of idiomatic language in his fiction.

The concept had gestated during his years as a geophysical engineer and technical writer for Radian International, an environmental engineering company. There was a lot of on-the-job jargon.

“I got the idea that technical language isn’t necessarily nonpoetic language,” said Mr. Saunders, 54, whose sixth book, the story collection Tenth of December, came out last week from Random House. Eventually, he left Radian to pursue an M.A. in creative writing at Syracuse University. “I’d understand it,” he said of his Radian-speak (though he could have also been telling of his fiction), “but to the outside world it would sound like this nonsense language.”

Nearly every piece of fiction Mr. Saunders has written—in his collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, In Persuasion Nation and the novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil—exists in its own self-contained world. The elements of his dystopic landscapes have aged well. The Verisimilitude Inspector, from CivilWarLand still feels wonderfully original. And the Chill ’n’ Pray cooler—it projects a hologram of saints as it cools your beverage—from the story “The 400-pound CEO” will doubtless endure.

These images tell us about as much about Mr. Saunders’s characters as the characters themselves. With their ICANSPEAK!™ baby masks and carnival-barker lingo, his antiheroes describe their lives in a self-reflexive doublespeak, which turns reading into a game of context-Clue. Then there’s Mr. Saunders’s fondness for manipulating syntax, in which he plays quite dirty indeed. The longest story in the new collection, “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” is narrated through journal entries by a hapless family man, which contain virtually no articles. The style is based on extreme shorthand from Mr. Saunders’s own former journals. Hard to read? Yes, but it’s even more difficult to write.

“You’re taking kind of a gamble with that tactic,” Mr. Saunders said. “If you get it, it brings us that much closer as reader and writer. We are kind of in a simulation of a relationship, and I’m trying to be respectful and intimate. So the more I suggest intuitively, the more you’re going to bond with me, if I do it correctly. I use a lot of omission, a lot of implication.”

That relationship with the reader is paramount. “I don’t care about the thematics, or the characters, the syntax, or the intellectual content. But I have a sense when writing of a reader that is out there, and I really want them to get me. I want them to feel respected. Those other parts are all secondary characteristics to the larger end: to try to get the reader to take notice and feel respected by the writer in some deep way. To feel that we are in a relationship.”

And so Mr. Saunders works slowly. By his count, he writes two stories a year.

Talking about his path from geophysical engineer to MacArthur Fellow, he came across as lucky. Not everyone has had the benefit of growing up in a Chicago suburb as a Reagan-supporting, Ayn Rand-reading Objectivist, or of experiencing a revelation while working in a Sumatra oil field, as he did on an exploration with a geophysics crew.

Most protagonists in a Saunders story are what Regina Marler once described in this paper as “a sad sack with a humiliating job (often involving a costume), a hot-to-trot wife, a sick child and the threat of a pink slip looming.” In Murray Hill, Mr. Saunders described those characters as stand-ins for himself “on a slightly worse day.”

Tenth of December can feel at times like a collection of slightly different drafts of earlier work. In the new story “Escape From Spiderhead,” the protagonist, Jeff, is a teenager kept in a corporate lab/facility where he is perpetually stoned on drips of synthetic drugs like BlissTime™ and Verbalace. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the titular character in “Jon” from the earlier collection In Persuasion Nation (he also appears in The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil) is a teenager kept in a corporate lab/facility where he is perpetually stoned on a drip of synthetic drugs like Aurabon©.

In contrast, Mr. Saunders’s journalistic work is wide-ranging and invariably out of left field. His essay collection, The Braindead Megaphone, published in 2007, has subjects ranging from Esther Forbes to Huck Finn. Since that book, though, he has more or less given up journalism, which is probably for the best. He doesn’t like the part where you get in trouble or people yell at you. It makes him feel like a bad person.

In a piece included in The Braindead Megaphone, Mr. Saunders writes about a religious leader who had once been a pimp. He had stabbed a man’s eye out, but turned his life around. He was a good guy with a nice wife, kids and a respectable home, and also, now, Jesus. Mr. Saunders thought: what a great story. But when he called the pastor to fact-check, the reformed criminal begged him not to include any gory details.

“He knew he had been on record, but said that he had forgotten, that he had gotten carried away,” Mr. Saunders said. “He was like, ‘You can’t print this, my family will read this, it will ruin my life.’” So Mr. Saunders cut out that part of the history. “I know that I could have included it ... that ethically, I should have. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I would have regretted it.”

“I think I can tell my truth much better in fiction,” he added. “There aren’t those moral or ethical issues.”
Morality is a tricky subject in his stories. The defining trait of his protagonists is a total lack of self-awareness. They stumble onto the profound as if it were a banana peel. He pointed to the Chekhov quote, “Art doesn’t solve problems, it only formulates them correctly.”

The notion that art should be truthful rather than corrective became particularly important when, in the late ’90s, Ben Stiller’s film production company bought the rights to CivilWarLand. Mr. Saunders wrote a script—but it never saw light of day. In a recent New Yorker article about Mr. Stiller, Mr. Saunders said, “I would have absolutely sold out to get the movie made—added a car chase, a puppy cluster, whatever—and Ben always insisted on returning to the darkest, oldest version of the story.”

In Murray Hill, he said he had been “being facetious. I would have changed the story, but only to do service to the film’s reality.”

For Mr. Stiller, Mr. Saunders only had the highest praise. “Ben taught me that movies are not about purple or beautiful language,” he said. “It’s about structures.”

Speaking of which, he would like to try his hand at a novel. But the “trying” part is complicated. “I found from bitter experiences that if I decide to do something and do it, the thing doesn’t agree to be done. But if I wait, if I’m patient ...”

James Franco (Getty Images)

While conducting a new Interview chat with Mila Kunis, James Franco indicated that another costar of his is something of a diva:

The movie is a comedy, but it's kind of an outrageous one, and this actress—I won't say who, but she had a smaller role in the film—walked off the movie in the middle of a scene. [...] It's not as if the scene wasn't in the script, though. In any case, I didn't see any of this go down, but I guess she basically went up to the directors, Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg], and said, "I don't think I can do this." She, by the way, didn't have to do anything crazy in the scene. But what was going on around her was, I guess, too extreme for her. So Seth was like, "Well, what can we do to fix it?" And she said, "There's nothing you can do to fix it. It's just everything."

The actress, per Mr. Franco, walked off the set; for her part, Ms. Kunis says "What?" then indicates she never would have walked off a set. Per IMDb, the movie directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is The End of the World; the female costars with seemingly prominent parts (which is to say, not playing "Party Goer" or the like) are Emma Watson, Rihanna, and Mindy Kaling. Ms. Kaling has exposed all different parts of her sometimes-raunchy sense of humor in her memoir and the pilot for her upcoming sitcom; Rihanna is certainly a diva, but not one who seems to be frightened of the extreme. And so it is that James Franco let Interview readers know that Emma Watson is difficult to work with.

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe

If you’re a visitor to New York, here’s a little trick to play on your hotel concierge: Slip him or her a nice tip, say $100, and let it be known that you’d be so eternally grateful for a pair of tickets to Elective Affinities, the new one-woman show starring Zoe Caldwell.

It’s not going to happen.

You’ll have no better luck if you’re a New Yorker, but the experience will be less fun, because the abject failure will be yours alone.

Elective Affinities, you see, is a very tough ticket, probably the toughest in town. Following a few preview nights, it opens December 2 and will run a mere 12 performances, with an audience of just 30 individuals for each show—which means that over its entire run, the production will play only to about as many people as fit into a small Broadway theater on a single night. The venue is a gracefully appointed Fifth Avenue town house on the Upper East Side. Its precise location is being kept secret, revealed only to the lucky holders of those magic little tickets by email, approximately 48 hours before curtain. (Not that we’re saying there’s a curtain.)

The reason for this bit of subterfuge has nothing to do with art. That would be precious, you see, and Ms. Caldwell, who is 78 and has been a professional actress since the age of 9, detests such pretensions. The reason is practical. Should the address be widely disseminated, a desperate mob might descend on the place, and things could become unpleasant.

Human unpleasantness—the cruelties we inflict on one another, in the name of protecting those we love, or defending our way of life, or simply because we can—is the subject of David Adjmi’s play, an extended monologue in which Alice Hauptmann, a very rich, very civilized old lady, treats a few visitors to tea, lady fingers, and some very uncivilized political views on human rights, genocide and the torture of prisoners.

When she was first approached about the role, Ms. Caldwell turned it down flat. “A one-woman show? Oh no, no, no, no,” she recalled thinking. Dressed in a black long-sleeved scoop-neck top and jazz pants, her hair cut short and fashionably mussed, she was sitting in a beige arm chair in the Theater District pied à terre she has kept in the city for some 40 years. “A one-woman show? I couldn’t do that. I did it once with Lillian”—the 1986 play based on the life of playwright Lillian Hellman—“who was a very difficult woman to have in your bloodstream. But my son Charlie said, ‘You might at least read it before you dismiss it.’ And so I did.”

Ms. Caldwell was floored by the play, she said. But there was a problem. “I rang and I said, ‘It’s terrific, and I’d love to do it but of course I can’t, because I can’t remember my lines anymore. But I find what you’re doing thrilling, and I’ll be there in the audience.’” Soho Rep artistic director Sarah Benson, who directed the show, suggested they place written prompts around the room. “No, no, no, I couldn’t act doing that,” Ms. Caldwell said. What about an ear piece? “I couldn’t possibly—no, no, no,” she responded. A few days later, Ms. Benson came back to her again and asked if she’d simply read it. “And I said, well yes, if you would like me to.”

“I just kept stalking her,” Ms. Benson told The Observer. “I’d seen her in Master Class when I was a teenager, and I was like, ‘Who is this amazing woman?’ I’ve had a theater crush on her for years.”

So here she is. “Oh dear, oh dear, I am very nervous,” Ms. Caldwell said, her accent bearing strong traces of her native Australia. “I’m always nervous, but more so now because I’m older and more likely to be a little frail. I’m right to be nervous!”

Still, Ms. Benson’s persistence is not hard to understand. Alice Hauptmann—by turns girlish, gracious and monstrously self-centered—seems a classic Zoe Caldwell role. The recipient of four Tony Awards, Ms. Caldwell specializes in complicated women: Lady Macbeth. Cleopatra. Miss Jean Brodie. Lillian Hellman. Maria Callas. Mary Tyrone. Medea.

Her approach to each role is deeply experiential. She began swilling vodka and took up smoking to play Lillian Hellman, walked around Manhattan with an awkward stoop to help her relate to the hunchbacked nun in The Devils, and practically destroyed her feet wearing the precise heels Callas favored.

She has changed her weight drastically, depending on the role. “That’s why I’m such a mess right now,” she said, though she didn’t seem it. “When I played Emma Hamilton in London, I was 180 pounds. That was very big. But then as Medea, I thought, I can’t be going through all these problems fat and healthy!”

Ms. Caldwell has a very specific pre-performance ritual, she said. “I arrive at the theater three hours before curtain, and I take everything off of myself. And then I put everything of them on.” She laughed. “It’s a bit creepy.”

She looked down at her nails, Alice’s nails, which had been painted a flaming red. “The last time I had nail polish on was when I was 16,” she recalled.

Ms. Caldwell has also had an influence on the production, Ms. Benson said. “Everything from what kind of chocolate she would have to what art books would be on the coffee table—Zoe has really informed that.”

Becoming these characters can wreak havoc on one’s relationships, Ms. Caldwell noted. “I mean, it’s not good for husbands and boys and dogs and stuff.” Her husband, Robert Whitehead, the legendary Broadway producer who staged signature works by Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams, among many others, died in 2002. When he produced Medea on Broadway in 1983, with Ms. Caldwell starring, they had two young sons at home—“two little boys whom I simply adored...before I set off each night to kill them,” she said with a devilish smile.

Ms. Caldwell said her performance as Alice was influenced by a close friend, Gladys Pulitzer Preston, better known as Patsy, who was the granddaughter of Joseph Pulitzer and whose husband, Lewis Thomas Preston, was the chairman of J.P. Morgan. While Ms. Preston, who died just two weeks ago, was by all accounts a lovely person who shared none of Alice’s terrible prejudices or fears (in fact, was a staunch supporter of women’s rights around the world and once caught a record-setting 1,230-lb. black marlin), she was, like Alice, to the manor born. “The performance was informed by the world Patsy had allowed me into,” she said. “I went to wonderful dinner parties with Brooke Astor and stuff like that because of Patsy.”

Though Elective Affinities was written a decade ago, Alice, an unabashed one-percenter, seems to have been invented with the present moment in mind, as Americans increasingly take to the streets in protest of economic inequality. As Alice puts it, “People say to me, ‘But you’re so rich, you must be spiritually empty.’ And I say, ‘But I’ve managed to find spiritual fulfillment in material things.’”

Ms. Caldwell was asked if she’d been following the demonstrations. “Have I ever!” she replied. “Of course. I’m so admiring of them. Don’t you love the way they do their speeches? So unusual. But I know if I put a big placard around my neck, I’d fall right over.”

She laughed. “The change the world has undergone in the last few years is just astonishing—how they can just pick up a king who’s been there for 37 years. Pop, out he goes! They’re dropping like flies.”

Ms. Caldwell is best known as a theater actress, which is to say that despite appearing opposite such world famous actors as Paul Robeson, Charles Laughton, Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Jason Robards, and Christopher Plummer, outside of ardent fans of the stage, she is scarcely known at all. “Actors idolize her,” Ms. Benson said. “So many of them have contacted me begging just to come watch a rehearsal. She’s an icon.” Ms. Caldwell’s last great role, as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class, was unanimously judged a triumph, but when it came time to turn it into a film, Faye Dunaway was cast in the lead, perhaps because she was also the director. (The film has yet to be released.)

For those who haven’t been lucky enough to witness Ms. Caldwell in action, there is a stunning clip on YouTube of her turn in Medea—deviously sweet-talking Creon one moment, trembling with rage the next. That’s about it, in terms of recorded media. Except for a turn in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, another in the Nicole Kidman thriller Birth, which she called “really a bummer,” and a small role in Stephen Daldry’s forthcoming adaptation of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, she has remained steadfastly loyal to the stage.

“I can do anything in front of 2,000 people,” she insisted, “but I can do practically nothing in front of a camera.”

Ms. Caldwell prefers the theater, she added, because it’s more immediate—and more dangerous. Why dangerous? “Because,” she said rising slightly in her seat, “We...are...alive! Anything that’s alive is dangerous.”

She placed a hand on our arm. “People used to communicate by looking in each other’s eyes,” she went on, doing just that. “I am alive. You are alive. That’s how you communicate.”

Jesse LaGreca (Photo via the Daily Kos)

When Fox News turned their cameras on the 31-year-old Daily Kos writer Jesse LaGreca last Wednesday, they didn't know what they were in for. Not only did Fox producer Griff Jenkins get schooled all over the Internet --  forcing Greta Van Susteren to respond on why they didn't air the footage of Mr. LaGreca's statements  -- but suddenly the somewhat haphazard movement was given a clear and distinct voice.

"Fox News wants to laugh at us," Mr. LaGreca told us in a phone interview Tuesday evening. "To say that we're unruly, that we're to be laughed at....because that fits into their narrative, which is that only free markets can save us. Only unregulated capitalism can save us. And anyone in opposition to that needs to be attacked and marginalized.'"

Mr. LaGreca certainly does not fit into the media's stereotype of the obtusely disenfranchised ne0-hippies that have been camping out at Zuccotti Park. He's been a freelance writer for the Daily Kos under the name MinistryOfTruth for the last three years and is one of their most frequent writers and commenters. He's a member of various subgroups on the site, including their Anonymous forum, Environmental Foodies, and the Progressive Policy Zone. Mr. LaGreca is no East Coast liberal either: though he currently resides in New York, it's only been for a month. His previous homes were in Colorado and Illinois. He does not (as far as we know) have health insurance. He is subsidized for his writing mostly by a Paypal link he set up on his articles. He is articulate, with framed arguments that have obviously been rehearsed in advanced. Not only is he the face of "The Budding Stars of Occupy Wall Street," according to the Atlantic Wire, but his presence is large enough to inspire its own legion of fans. (We noticed that he had a larger Twitter following than our personal account.) Basically: Mr. LaGreca is Fox News' worst nightmare.

"Their first question was whether we were inspired by Greece," said Mr. LaGreca, referencing the the way the network would lead protesters to inflammatory answers, "Which had a couple of incidents of student violence...It's a running meme in the right wing media: that if we don't do something about our economy we're going to end up like Greece. But the only thing we can do is what Fox News has been showing us since the day Obama was inaugurated."

Mr. LaGreca is not, like the media has portrayed some of the protesters, a brainwashed Obama-ite. His Daily Kos article from August is a scathing critique of Obama's nomination of Sen. Mike Lee's general counsel for U.S. Attorney of Utah.

When asked if he would be willing to go on Fox News and finally get to tell his side of the story, Mr. LaGreca surprisingly demurred. "I don't want to go on with anyone who has a history of misconstruing people's statements. There's certain networks that I have an obvious bias against. But there are people like Keith Olbermann, Dylan Ratigan...Jim Axelrod, who was a total gentleman. I'm willing to give anyone a fair shake. I'm willing to talk."

Despite being a very vocal member down at Zuccotti Park, Mr. LaGreca denies speaking for the Occupy Wall Street movement. "I'm not a spokesperson for anyone but myself," he tells us.

Okay, but does he have any advice for those watching the watchmen; i.e. protesters on the lookout for cherry-picking media reporters?

"One: be camera ready. Have your camera on you so if there is a media slant, you can capture it. Two: have a coherent message. Tell people exactly why you are here...not what other people are doing. The overarching theme here is that people are being screwed, but that can't be summed up in a soundbite-ready statement. However if you tell the media your personal story, it's the most touching, the most effective way to communicating to people why they should be here as well."

The painting was repayment for Mr. Colacello’s brokering a portrait commission for Warhol, which was a standard practice at Interview. As you might imagine, it was bittersweet to sell the painting but, Mr. Colacello says in the video, prices being what they are “it seemed like a really good time to cash in, quite frankly.”

It’s a great first-hand look at what it’s like to take something of personal value to auction. We won’t give away the ending but everything ties together rather nicely. This web video’s got it all!

Before she became famous, Marilyn Minter was a product of much of the same "nightclub kid" scene of the 1970s and 1980s that begot Madonna. And the artist's works--hyperrealistic close-ups of gleaming body parts--were as censored and controversial as some of the pop queen's.

Ms. Minter's drug-addicted, bedridden mother was an early subject, and enormous breasts have figured large in her work, even sex acts. In 1989, she tackled a subject specifically because no other major female artist ever had: pornography. Her giant, glistening, explicit pieces, enamel painted on metal, were rejected by feminists and conservatives alike.

Despite her critics, Ms. Minter was "rediscovered" in the Whitney Biennial of 2006, hailed for Stepping Up, a painting from her skilled series about the seedy side of glamour.

Team Gallery invited her to hang the reviled works from early in her career, along with another series on children from the period, "Big Girls/Little Girls," at a show that runs through April 30. The Observer sat down at the gallery with the flame-haired painter and photographer right before she left for a solo show in Germany and talked to her, ruefully, about her "overnight" success.

The Observer: It's been 30 years since you've shown these works together. Why now?
Marilyn Minter: It was Jose [Freire]'s idea from Team Gallery, the director. I think he saw them in a talk I gave, and pretty soon after that he made a proposition: 'You want to revisit that work?' I said, 'Well yeah, I think we can find it.' And we did; it took us a year to find it. I still don't have everyone, everything--I couldn't find half of it. 

The works weren't well received at the time.
In the late '80s, I think my vision was chasing people out of the room. Nobody else thought like this. I was really this pro-sex feminist. I did think that nobody has politically correct fantasies. And I thought that women should have imagery for their own pleasure. And I thought that everyone thought like that. 

There was censorship?
My New York dealer shut my show down a week early once. And I got kicked out of a couple group shows. I was going to be in group shows, and then all of a sudden I wasn't in them anymore. It wasn't overt but covert; I think the reason was because I was considered a traitor to feminism. Disappointing when you have criticism from the left; you expect it from fundamentalists, but it is a big shock when it comes from the politically correct left. 

What was going on in your life at the time you were making these works? You were collaborating with a team of artists in the East Village ...
It was a big experiment. We were doing lots of drugs and getting high. Once I got out of rehab, these are the first paintings that I made. That painting [she gestures at Big Girls, 1986] was the first one that I didn't destroy. I made these when I got out of rehab. 

After rehab, how many did you actually destroy?
At least 10. Ten pieces of shit. Ten lousy paintings. I was trying to find myself. 

Talk about the "Big Girls/Little Girls" series, which juxtaposes altered images of movie stars with images of little girls looking at their distorted reflections in fun-house mirrors.
My generation saw fun-house mirrors; your generation looks at video games. I grew up in the South, so they'd be at fairs, and they were really fun, they distorted you so much. I thought it made a lot of sense to use that imagery because I grew up with it.

[Early on] I couldn't figure out how to make a contribution to art history as a realist, so I took images that I liked and I [altered them]. ... It is basically a conceptual piece. I was thinking in terms of a little girl in a fun-house mirror, and these two famous movie stars, and I fractured it. ... I just projected [it on the wall] while I was painting and I projected at an angle. So there's this parallel of distortion, and in the middle of that painting is the girl looking into the fun-house mirror. 

How have the responses to you work changed from the '80s to now?
That's hard to gauge. I've been a much more accessible artist to the world since 2006 when I was in the Whitney Biennial. So people are a lot more receptive to what I have to say. 

Has the thinking on sexual imagery in art changed?
The Internet has desensitized people to sexual imagery. But there's still a real glass ceiling. ... I can be an old lady and work with sexual imagery, but as a young girl there is still a glass ceiling. But I'm not sure; it is really complicated, and sexual imagery is so loaded, and male or female, anyone who works with it is going to get criticized [for sexual exploitation]. 

Concerning your porn-inspired work, how did you choose your films or source materials?
All of the porn that I picked--well, at that point it wasn't video. You had to get it from magazines. There were these giant emporiums on 42nd Street, and I was trying to cover everybody. All the different modes of being and sexuality.  

What helped you continue as an artist despite some of the brutal criticism you received?
It is not like I had any choice in the matter. I am not that accomplished. I can hardly spell or add--like, all of sudden I would do anything else. ... But I think I do everything I do because I don't have a choice in the matter as an artist. I have a gift for only one thing. People that are accomplished have choices. I never had a choice.

Is that what it means to be an artist?
They really can't do anything else. Life is so much easier not being one. You can go bowling Friday nights.

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Where do you live?
I am a proud resident of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. I own a turn-of-the-century brownstone on a quaint tree-lined street located in the historic landmark section. I acted as my own general contractor and directed a total gut-rehab project overseeing all aspects of construction. It was really a labor of love and I managed to maintain all of the original details on the inside and sought the assistance of the New York Landmarks Conservancy to oversee the facade work. I love it!

How is work these days? What is your latest deal?
2010 was a great year and 2011 is off to a fantastic start! Due to historically low interest rates, government initiatives for first-time buyers and reduced pricing for properties across the board, this was an impetus for prospective buyers to go out and really explore the possibility of home ownership. I worked with many first-time buyers, and sharing their excitement of the realization of home ownership was a very rewarding experience. I felt like I made dreams come true. I drank more champagne with new home owners in 2010 than I have consumed in my entire lifetime!

My latest deal was a 1562-square-foot garden duplex at the Lineage Condos in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

What was the best meal you've ever eaten in New York?
I have eaten many good meals and the best meal I must say has been in my mother's house. But in terms of restaurants, my favorite Brooklyn spot is Chance on Smith Street. In Manhattan, Robert on Columbus Circle.

What was your first apartment like?
My first apartment was a share on South Pinehurst Street in Washington Heights. I lived in a great 1200-square-foot three bedroom apartment with maid's chamber, pantry, eat-in-kitchen and "space to die for" with amazing views of the George Washington Bridge.  At that time I paid $200 a month for my portion of the rent. How sweet was that! If I could turn back time.

What is your recession war story?
I started my career in real estate during the beginning of the recession so I don't have a specific war story. But challenges in this market include managing the expectations of both the buyers and sellers and understanding the psychological factors that come into play and knowing how to manage those emotions and experiences.  Other challenges include navigating through the ever-changing financial requirements of mortgage lenders.

How do you get around town?
My mode of transportation is an SUV. However, parking in New York is always a nightmare. Couple that with the extreme number of parking tickets I get on a monthly basis, and I must say... my a razor scooter is looking like a great alternative means of transportation!

What is your favorite building in the city and why?
I don't have one.  New York City and Brooklyn have a plethora of amazing buildings that are unique to each neighborhood, period of time and architectural style.

If you weren't a broker, what would you be?
I would be a hostage negotiator. I have a way of working through many challenging and high-pressure situations. My goal is always making sure things turn out according to plan and for the best.

What is your dream home?
My dream home would be to build a villa in St. Maarten in the hill tops overlooking the island.

You just won the lottery. What store do you stop by and what do you buy?
Audi, here I come. I need a new luxury SVU to carry all my new hot fashions from Barney's, Saks and Garmany!!!

If there was one thing you could change about New York, what would it be?
Change the street parking rules to make parking more affordable and readily available.

Read last week's interview here. >>

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Where do you live?
I live in the Village in a two-bedroom corner apartment on the 31st floor of the Georgetown Plaza (60 East 8th Street) Although the Georgetown Plaza is a postwar building, it has nine-foot ceilings and we have the most incredible sweeping Western views:  I never tire of watching the dramatic sunsets or the boats sailing past. When we bought the apartment it had only one bathroom and we knew our 41 year marriage would not survive that! We demolished the existing bathroom and sacrificed the tub and a closet (which we added elsewhere) to build a new bathroom and add a powder room.

How is work these days? What is your latest deal?
Because I have been a broker for almost 30 years I am always busy. Not as busy as I was when the market was on fire, but I wouldn't want to work at that intensity level permanently. I have just closed on a townhouse in the West Village and am about to close on another, also in the West Village.

What was the best meal you've ever eaten in New York?
The best meal I ever ate was at David Bouley's restaurant at 165 Duane Street. The restaurant has been closed for many years (it is now an Italian restaurant) but I have never forgotten the meal. We ordered the tasting menu and each dish was tastier than the last. As we sat savoring the deliciousness, we could hear all the diners ooh-ing and aah-ing as they ate.

What was your first apartment like?
I am English and grew up in a seaside town, Westcliff-on-Sea, about 35 miles from London. My first apartment was in London -- in Notting Hill Gate. But this was before Notting Hill was trendy. In those days it was quite hairy. The rent was 12 pounds a month, about $24. We're talking a long time ago!

What is your recession war story?
I don't have a recession war story. I was very lucky. However like most brokers during the recession, I kept the wolf from the door by doing rentals. Since the renters I was working with were referrals they were loyal -- not the norm unfortunately -- and I got to see many rental buildings that I didn't know.

How do you get around town?
I go everywhere on my bicycle. I have an oversized basket so I never suffer from aching shoulders.

What is your favorite building in the city?
My favorite building is the Jean Nouvel condo at 100 Eleventh Avenue. I recently sold a large unit in the building and was blown away by the views. You feel you are almost hanging over the Hudson. What is so very special about the building is that Jean Nouvel planned the windows to frame the buildings that it looks onto. So the windows are different shapes and sizes -- always at right angles thank goodness. It sounds weird but it totally works and is really dramatic.

If you weren't a broker, what would you be?
If I wasn't a broker I would be a filmmaker. Before I came to the United States, I worked for 10 years as a freelance film editor at Shepperton Studios. I am currently writing a script (who isn't?) and one day I would like to make it into a film.  

What is your dream home?
My dream home is a house on the ocean. I don't like swimming pools and I am learning to surf. The only caveat is that it must also have a private tennis court and be within two hours of Manhattan.

You just won the lottery. What store do you stop by and what do you buy?
I would take myself to the fanciest sports shop and buy the latest ski equipment and a really snazzy ski outfit -- maybe even two! My current ski boots are twenty years old, but so comfortable, and I look like a refugee from the Salvation Army on the ski slopes since I hesitate to spring for expensive ski wear as we ski only about four or five times a year.

If there was one thing you could change about New York, what would it be?
If you had asked me that a few years ago, I would have answered more bike lanes. But the bikes lanes are amazing in New York -- you can now cycle around the entire island of Manhattan. I would ask for a tennis court to be built either in Washington Square or Union Square.

Read last week's interview here. >>

realestate@observer.com