In this
Vanity Fair profile of Twitter/Square founder Jack Dorsey, he's described as extremely focused ("Dorsey is unusually good at staying focused"), but then it also describes the year he spent learning botanical illustration, the year he spent becoming certified in massage therapy, his interest in fashion design, and his long time interest in transportation logistics. It seems kind of contradictory to me, but really what's being described is the ability to focus intensely on what's interesting at the moment. Not a bad thing, just different than extreme focus.
Seems to me like Randy Quaid's wife is the crazy one in this relationship. Though together,
they're pretty crazy as a couple.
Vanity Fair magazine asked 52 experts to pick the five most important architecture works since 1980. There were 132 listed, and here's a link
to the top 21. See also the
complete results and a slide show on
Gehry's buildings. Kudos to VF for at least making it possible to look at the top 21 buildings on one page. Slide shows are killing the internet.
I've been to 2 of the buildings, what about you?
The Vanity Fair profile on
The Making of Raging Bull reminded me of their profile on
The Making of The Godfather. It might be a series. Anyway, if you don't know a LOT about Raging Bull, but want to, this is a good place to start.
Michael Wolff has a
Future of the Internet piece that's infinitely better than Newsweek's 1995 article about the internet not having a future.
One question I had is, in the article, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter says Twitter would generate "a billion search queries a day in the coming yeah." So how much do you think Google would pay for a little button next to every Tweet that says, "Google This". And you could highlight the terms you want to search on Google.
Wolff also talked about Barry Diller's new media company model which could have brands owning entire shows instead of buying 30 second ads. I've been waiting for that forever. Of course, I think it will only work for a year or so, while the brand can get press for the new type of advertising, but it's worth a shot.
James Wolcott profiles
Alec Baldwin. It's a good read, but nothing new, though I'm interested because Baldwin's career is so interesting. He's absolutely killing TV right now on 30 Rock, after killing Saturday Night Live all those years. He's been great in a couple good movies (as Wolcott notes), but doesn't have a big role in an important movie. How will we think about him in 20 years?
Oh, by the way, he's talking about retiring after 30 Rock...
So perhaps the smoke signals he’s sending up about retiring aren’t a bluff. But I can’t help but think that if he gets the chance to work with Meryl Streep again he won’t say no. That would be like turning down dessert, and he’s a cat who can’t resist cream.
Here's a Sherlock Holmes story
reprinted in Vanity Fair.
The on again, off again movie version of Michael Lewis' book, Moneyball, is
back on. Bennett Miller, director of Capote, has been brought in to steer this ship home. He will, apparently, be taking the movie in a direction different, and more mainstream, than original director Steven Soderbergh.
Here's a video of
Michael Lewis explaining the origin of The Blind Side. There's about 15 people in the theater when he does.
If it's pettiness you crave, here's a bazillion word, 2 part series on
The Forgotten Man Of Moneyball, Eric Walker. In an interesting move assuring a constant bias, the author of the piece is that forgotten man, Eric Walker.
Lastly, I'd like to again ask why Liar's Poker has not yet been made into a movie.
Vanity Fair has a habit of
posting stub abstracts of their bigger articles. This isn't exclusive to VF, Rolling Stone does it, too, but it is an annoying way of using the web.
Barry Ritholtz takes them to task for this, and
then publishes the PDF that they sent him to drum up publicity. If you can't wait until next week to read Michael Lewis' take down of Joe C and AIG that explores among other things:
How A.I.G. F.P. became the first stop for Wall Street banks looking to insure the massive amounts of debt they were buying, packaging, and selling: “We were doing every single [credit-default swap] deal with every single Wall Street firm, except Citigroup,” says one A.I.G. F.P. trader. “Citigroup decided it liked the risk and kept it on their books. We took all the rest,”
click above for the full article.
In other Michael Lewis news, you probably knew that the Siderbergh/Pitt vehicle, 'Moneyball', got axed last week. Here's an insider's
version of events that doesn't make anyone at Sony look very good. Sandra Bullock's 'The Blindside'
continues to truck, and still, for some reason, no one has made any moves to make 'Liar's Poker'.
This is from last week, or the week before, but
James Wolcott's not-too-long take down of the DC hive-mindset is great, each delicious sentence dripping with scorn.
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