Unlikely Words » vanity fair

Jack Dorsey profile

aaron cohen — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 02:43:15 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

The crazy Quaids

aaron cohen — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:19:07 +0000

Seems to me like Randy Quaid's wife is the crazy one in this relationship. Though together, they're pretty crazy as a couple.

###

Possibly related posts:

21 Best Structures in the World

aaron cohen — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:48:42 +0000

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?

###

Possibly related posts:

The Making of Raging Bull

aaron cohen — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:13:55 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

Google and Twitter Idea

aaron cohen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:23:28 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

Alec Baldwin Profile

aaron cohen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:25:47 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

Sherlock Holmes Story from Vanity Fair

aaron cohen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:12:31 +0000

Here's a Sherlock Holmes story reprinted in Vanity Fair. ###Possibly related posts:Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair on AIG – The Man Who Crashed the World Michael Lewis to Vanity Fair ### Possibly related posts:

‘Moneyball’ Film is Back On!

aaron cohen — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:10:30 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair on AIG – The Man Who Crashed the World

aaron cohen — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:51:03 +0000

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'.

###

Possibly related posts:

Take THAT, DC!

aaron cohen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:52:58 +0000

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.

###

Possibly related posts:

Pirates and Pictures of Pirates

aaron cohen — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:01:24 +0000

I don't know if it was a coincidence, but Monday's Big Picture about Somali pirates works relatively well to illustrate William Langewiesche's Vanity Fair article about... Somali pirates.

Two lengthy excerpts from the interesting article:

If you added up the assets already available, or soon to be, the display of French power was impressive indeed. And it was arrayed against what? A band of barefoot natives, Fuzzy Wuzzies in rags, hip-firing their Kalashnikovs with poor aim, and worshipping some filthy G.P.S. as if it had fallen from the sky. They should have surrendered days before, even to the Canadians...They were not particularly bellicose or arrogant, but they refused to be impressed when they should have been. A warship coming at you is supposed to present an intimidating sight...It raised disturbing questions about the relevance of governments and the exercise of power. More specifically, a suspicion crept in that these pirates knew exactly what they were doing, and that they understood the forces at play with more sophistication than had been assumed. Fuzzy Wuzzies they were, but until Paris decided it could accept casualties among the Ponant’s crew, they had stymied the French national will.

Today, almost one year later, Somali pirates continue to ignore the increasingly urgent displays of national power. One of the ironies of the concern being shown is that the shippers being provided with naval protection are the very same people who for years have made a mockery of the nation-state idea. They know that whatever pirate tolls they pay will always pale in comparison with the taxes that would be imposed if global law and order ever actually prevailed. But there is little danger of that. In its place a convoy system has been instituted for crossing the Gulf of Aden. CMA CGM has ordered its cargo ships to use it when practical... Because of an increase in crew pay, insurance, and other piracy-related costs, the company has imposed a $23 surcharge on every standard-size container that it takes through—amounting to a quarter-million dollars for each trip by the largest ships. Given the margins built in, and despite the need for the occasional payout, this means that CMA CGM, its insurers, and its crews are profiting from Somali piracy.

The pirates are professional and don't typically harm the crews they capture because they know that the ship owners will pay a ransom, covered by insurance companies (AIG in this case) as opposed to allowing the military to mount an attack. This is especially so because everyone is profiting from the current arrangement.

###

Possibly related posts:

The Making of The Godfather

aaron cohen — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:58:47 +0000

Long, informative profile on the making of The Godfather. Can you believe I've never seen it? Here's what struck me:

Brando got the role, over the objections of almost everyone, by nailing his screen test.

Brando emerged from his bedroom in a kimono, with his long blond hair in a ponytail. As Coppola watched through the camera lens, Brando began a startling transformation, which he had worked out earlier in front of a mirror. In Coppola’s words, “You see him roll up his hair in a bun and blacken it with shoe polish, talking all the time about what he’s doing. You see him rolling up Kleenex and stuffing it into his mouth. He’d decided that the Godfather had been shot in the throat at one time, so he starts to speak funny. Then he takes a jacket and rolls back the collar the way these Mafia guys do.” Brando explained, “It’s the face of a bulldog: mean-looking but warm underneath.”

In meeting their idol, Robert Duvall and James Caan were moved to...moon him?

Driving down Second Avenue after dinner, Caan and Duvall pulled up beside the car in which Brando was riding. “Come on,” Duvall said, “moon him!”

“I go, ‘Are you crazy? I don’t do that. You’re the king of that,’” says Caan. “But he says, ‘You’ve got to do this.’ So I roll my window down, and I just stick my ass out. Brando’s falling down. And we went away crying laughing. So that was the first moon of my life, to Brando, and it was on the first day we met. But Brando won the belt. We had a belt made, mighty moon champion, after he mooned 500 extras one day.”

Of the iconic voice he used in the movie, Brando said, “Powerful people don’t need to shout.”

Lastly, Caan's take on Sonny was inspired by none other than Don Rickles.

###

Possibly related posts:

The Jockey and Art Dealer Billy Pearson – Always On

aaron cohen — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:26:40 +0000

This article in Vanity Fair was interesting and amusing, but I post it because, like Tracy Morgan, friends said of Pearson that, “He was always on.”

###

Possibly related posts:

An Oral History of the Bush White House

aaron cohen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:38:29 +0000

This insanely long oral history took HOURS to read, but I did it anyway! ###Possibly related posts:Another Thing the Bush Administration Has Ruined More Political Baseball Cards – Al Gore and George Bush Together Again OK House of Reps Says ‘Not So Fast, Flaming Lips!’ ### Possibly related posts:

Harold T. P. Hayes – Editor of Esquire

aaron cohen — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:17:17 +0000

I'm not sure where or when I got the link to this (I'm just starting to clean out some old links), but it's a gracious and fascinating profile of Harold T. P. Hayes, editor of Esquire. Published in January 2007 - in Vanity Fair, no less - this article is fitting now as Esquire rounds out its 75th anniversary. The article is heavy on the stories from the 60s and includes Hayes' successful battle for power with Clay Felker, the mastermind behind New York Magazine. Check it out.

###

Possibly related posts:

Michael Lewis to Vanity Fair

aaron cohen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:13:58 +0000

Sorry, Portfolio. ###Possibly related posts:Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair on AIG – The Man Who Crashed the World Sherlock Holmes Story from Vanity Fair Michael Lewis on the Draft of Michael Oher ### Possibly related posts: