Sheila Nevins and Tina Brown - Summer Staff Picks

It’s summer, and every other week, members of the Here’s The Thing staff are selecting their favorite interviews from the archives. This week, we revisit Alec’s interviews with two extraordinary women in media, Sheila Nevins and Tina Brown, recorded in 2017.  Sheila Nevins was the head of HBO Documentary Films from 1979 until 2018 and now leads MTV Documentary Films.  She has overseen the production of literally hundreds of documentaries, which have won dozens of Oscars, exerting more influence on the medium than perhaps anyone in its history.  Tina Brown is a journalist, editor and author, with her work ranging from memoir to biography, including her most recent book, “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - The Truth and the Turmoil.”  As the founder of Talk magazine and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, Tatler and The New Yorker, the British-born Brown brought her fresh observations and sharp wit to both the revered publications she led and New York society. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Summer is here, and that
means along with pool parties and barbecues, it's time for
our staff summer Picks. Every other week, a member of
the Here's the Thing staff will choose their favorite episodes
from our archives and host the show themselves. First up

(00:24):
is our producer Kathleen Russo. Kathleen has been with me
from the very beginning of this podcast. She's chosen to
share with you two groundbreaking women in entertainment, documentary producer
Sheila Nevins and journalist, author, and editor Tina Brown, two
extraordinary women in media, brought to you by another that's Kathie.

(00:46):
Stay tuned for our other staff picks throughout the summer,
and now the legendary Kathleen Russo. Thanks, Alec. I chose
Sheila and Tina's interviews, both recorded in two thousand seven team,
because they are two women I deeply respect and admire.
They are the uber media mavens. I met Sheila in

(01:08):
two thousand five at HBO's headquarters in New York City.
My husband, the monologist Spalding Gray, died the year before
and Sheila contacted me because she was a fan of
his work. She really wanted to produce a documentary on
his life. We got Steven Soderberg to direct, but sadly
it never came to fruition with HBO. We took it elsewhere.

(01:30):
But the meetings we had with Sheila were so lively
and fun in her Leopard motif apartment. It was a
great distraction for me at the time. Let's listen to
Alex conversation with Sheila where she's talking about her childhood.
If you've been moved by a documentary in the past
forty years, there's a chance you have Sheila Nevins to thank.

(01:52):
As head of HBO documentary Films since nine she's exerted
more influence on the medium than perhaps anyone in its history,
so much so that The New York Times says filmmakers
quote fret about her outsized power, but also worry about
what will happen when she's gone. Sheila Nevins has overseen

(02:13):
the production of literally hundreds of documentaries which have won
dozens of Oscars, and she's credited or blamed for being
one of the creators of reality television through nineties hits
like real sex and taxi cab confessions, whether they're shot
in a war zone or the back of a taxi.
Sheila nevins productions are powerful, brazen, and unflinchingly honest, but

(02:38):
when it comes to telling her own story, truth gets trickier.
Her new book, You Don't Look Your Age and Other
Fairy Tales, blends fiction and reality. It's not a bio,
as someone said to me, It's a sly memoir. Who
counseled you want how to write the book? Who? Nobody? Nobody? Nobody?
You knew instinctively to do this this way. I have
no idea what right. I knew when too high, and

(03:00):
I knew when to over here, and I knew the
names of the characters without ever some of them are Sheila,
and some of them are Priscilla or Melissa. And I
was going to do that in my book, and I didn't.
Maybe nicer than me more honest. I just felt that
when I gave the character name, I protected a lot

(03:22):
of people, or when I overheard it, I wasn't in it,
and then I could write more freely about the truth
of it. I don't know that I could have written
certain things if it had been me. In her book,
Nevin's uses a few characters to paint a portrait of
the male dominated world she navigated. Only one of those
characters is named Sheila Nevans, but they're all strong, smart

(03:42):
women who fight and sleep their way to the top.
In a way, the sexual politics of the sixties and
seventies is a side show. Sheila nevins true passion is
to immerse herself in the lives of her subjects. And
like many passions, this one makes you suffer. I mean,
I think if you're a surgeon, the person is ancestized

(04:03):
when you're cutting out their heart, But when you're making
a documentary, the person is alive and kicking and they
stay with you. Um, you know, I can't explain it.
When you go to sleep at night, they they interrupt
counting sheep. You know, you see, you see sadness all
the time. There's a lot of suffering in this world.

(04:24):
There's a lot of people who have no way out.
I mean, we have a way out, We have a
way out, we have more options, and without empathy, there's
no humanity. And I think docus are the last resort
for effective if that's the right use of the word
feeling for someone you didn't know. That's a great thing
about a document You turn it on, it's in your

(04:46):
living room. Okay, you didn't invite it. You thought I'll
try it, and then suddenly you're crying for someone you
never knew before, and they're not It's not an actor
playing apart. It's not something that was scripted. It's another
human being trying to live in this country or another country,
and it stays with you. It's very difficult. I mean
you really, you really agonize. I agonize. I'm not happy.

(05:12):
Just walk into that closet full of Emmys and oscars.
You have them. Maybe that make you happy that you
fall on your foot and down their doorstoppers. For most couple,
I don't have them. But pick one if you can,
and tell us a bit about one that really really
just crushed you. What was the one that was an
extraordinarily difficult experience for you to bring that film to

(05:32):
the public. Maybe the one about Tourette's even though it
was by far not the best documentary on HBO. But
because I had been there twenty five years before, I
was willing to come out as a parent of a
child who had Tourette's and your son, my son David. Yeah,
and so I think that with his permission, I was
able to write about it my book. But mainly I

(05:54):
was able to make a film for schools so that
kids that had turets would not be bullied because it was, um,
you know, if you're a fat you were bullied, If
you studied, you were bullied. But if you had Tourette's,
nobody knew what you had. They thought you were dopey.
They push you, they'd imitate you. This one was tough
because I had to go to my bosses and say,
I want to make this film about Tourette's doesn't affect everybody.

(06:17):
I want to do it from my kid and this
is a big place called HBO, And they said, do it.
You've earned it, And I did it. Now for people
who don't understand Tourette's beyond you know, the outbursts, the
vocal outbursts and so forth, when did you when do
you first become aware of a child having that? At
what ages it exhibit itself? Well, the vocal outbursts are

(06:39):
less than five percent. So the fact that that's called
copper alien and um, that means that you yell four
letter words. Can I say them on this show? I
think our answers, well, if you're here, they know, Okay.
So the kid who yelled funck ship this, fuck your fuck,
you ask your motherfuck. That is less than five percent,
but the media has it's the most. It first of all,

(07:01):
gave the media chance to use the words and bleep
them and make it exciting. And certainly it was unfair
to the kids to amy, but people like Robin Williams.
There's also a very interesting part of Tourette's which is
called Ekilalia had that yes, where imitative behavior is part

(07:22):
of the affliction. So in other words, you go to
a movie, you come back. The kid does the whole
almost the whole movie, and does the actual sounds of
the voices of the different people. But the film is difficult,
fe painful. It was very painful because, for one, I
had to tell David we were going to do it too. Um.
He had to be willing to come out as a
kid who had tourette. We both agreed that it was

(07:43):
a necessary film. It wasn't great, but it was useful.
You know that there are different kinds of docums. What
about a filmmaker meaning you have people coming in. They all,
you know, many of them want something from you. They
want you to help. But I cast I cast the
films the way you would cast a movie, you know,
and I try to find filmmakers who have a passion
for a subject, and then I try to put them

(08:05):
together with that subject. So if it's me and maximum
culpa about abuses, let's say in the Catholic church, I'll
find someone who is a renegade Catholic to be able
to go after it both with the passion of being
a kid who's brought up that way and at the
same time someone who's able to look at it with
with the right amount of subjective involvement. And in that

(08:27):
case it turned out to be Alex Gibney. But it's
very different. I mean, Alexander Pelosi is doing a film
for us. Now on everybody says, let's do an anti
Trump film. Okay, I must get five pictures a day
about let's do this, Let's do who voted, Let's do
the Democrats who voted, Let's do the women the college graduated.
Every day, there's something. And so it occurred to us
that maybe what we should do is go back to

(08:48):
the Founding Fathers, maybe we should go back to the
dream of what democracy was. And so this film is
about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence in the Bill
of Rights. And I watched it last night, pretty late,
and I found myself getting weepy over the dream, you know,
not laughing at it, but weepy over the original beauty
of it, the beauty of it, the beauty of being

(09:10):
free from the king. And in the descriptions of breaking
away from the king, it was as if it was
on you know, CNN that night, the king had just
transmigrated into somebody else, and it was terrifying and also
illuminating about the prophetic vision of the Founding Fathers. It's
really extraordinarily interesting and at the same time, you know, complex,

(09:34):
but you know, this whole country was founded on getting
away from from a dictatorship. Let me ask you this,
which is maybe some kind of a stereo track you
can um you can try to paint a picture from
me what the what the company was like when you started,
because when I I always joke with people that HBO.
When I was first living in New York in the

(09:55):
early eighties, HBO would come on and they had that
theme song that sounds like an Israeli FA play the
same like MTV and they played Billy Idol and Flock
of Seagulls all day long. And so in that time,
how has it changed and how was it changed for
you as a woman in the business since in your time.
I'm not sure how much has changed, I really argue,

(10:16):
I don't think so. I don't really think so. I
think I was an anomaly. So I was not a
threat because who else was going to work twenty hours
a day, have a sick kid, take all the jokes,
do the whole thing. I've had nine bosses in thirty
five years. It's pretty hard because each one was a
magic slate, so anything you've done before was unknown or

(10:36):
not necessarily valid to them because they had to re
establish themselves. So it was listen, I'm not complaining. I've
had the greatest job in the world, but I was
an anomaly. Who what woman wanted to work twenty hours
a day? Who wanted to do docues? Anyway? It was
an eight hour services So it was tough for you
as a woman. What was hard not getting pinched. That's

(10:56):
the great advantage to getting older. You're there from the
next hanky panky. So it's nick up now, but I
don't do with that in the early days. Maybe, okay,
I want to keep my job, okay, but not even yes.
Of course I had to do deal with that. Of
course I did, and I dealt with it readily and
aggressively and happily because I didn't know any better. And

(11:18):
I I mean, I've discussed this with Gloria Steinham. It
was the only thing I knew. I wanted that job badly.
I wanted to make something of it. And if it required,
you know, a hand on a knee or whatever else,
you overlooked. I looked, but then I turned away. I
wouldn't say I overlooked. I felt it deep down, but
I you weren't compromised in some find some extreme way.

(11:41):
People just took it was the rules of the game.
I thought it was the rules of the game. Why
would I know it was like shooting a gun. You know,
I don't like it, but I need to learn how
I knew that was the way I did what I
had to do. You didn't want me to not get
this job, did you. I'm glad that you were as
open minded as you were to do better. Documentary happily, slutty,

(12:04):
happily so because I didn't know anything else. The job
was worth more than my sexual identity. There were no
human resources to protect me. There was nothing, and I
was pretty You had no exactly, you had no protector, no,
no protector, And I wanted to do it and I
didn't want them to give it away. Yeah. I just

(12:25):
had just gotten married. Yeah at the time, would you
go home and like, did your husband know that you
were enduring all this groping? But no, because I could
brush it off. You know, I've done a lot of
shows with hookers, and I've done a lot of stuff
at cat House in Las Vegas. Were the men being
taken advantage of over the women? Have you ever seen
our Cathouse show? They bought a hundred books the cathouse,

(12:46):
you see, I don't have anyone else probably giving it
out now, the book. When you make films and you
get involved, you're giving notes, you're telling them. I'm watching
the clip of you from Alexander's Thing where you're saying
I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored. And what you were
looking for in a film, what you're expecting of a

(13:09):
filmmaker of a film. Did you expect the same of
yourself when you wrote this book? You did? Okay? Talk
about that? Why? Because, in a strange way, I wrote
the book in a very selfish way, and when I'm
in an editing room, I don't think I'm particularly selfish.
I wrote it because I didn't want to be the
legend of documentaries. I didn't want to be a docut diva.

(13:30):
What did you want to be? I wanted to be
a person like everybody? Are you in this book? I
think so? Would you say that there's some writing here
that's the equivalent of the plastic surgery of writing without questions?
There's a lot of plastic surgery in this lot. There's enough.
I mean, you said I looked good, so it must
be enough. And if the book sells, good for you.
If if the book doesn't real as well as you look.

(13:53):
So the plastic surgery in the writing is part of it,
That's only part of it. Why does everybody pick up
the plastic surgery? I remember the lawyer from um McMillan
asking me if there was someone named Melissa. Melissa van
Holden boss sleeps with her boss. It's the sixties and
she can't get ahead any other way? And um he called,

(14:14):
and he said, do you know anyone named Melissa? And
Mr Penny Broth is the name of the boss? Now?
Who is named Mr Penny Broth? Let's be real, he said,
is but it just came. The name came, Um, Mr
Penny Broth, you know, fuck Melissa, and Melissa got a
promotion and it was three. It wasn't her fault and

(14:35):
that's the way that was. Were the rules of the game? Right? Well,
I mean they drove me crazy. Is there anyone named Melissa?
At HBO? I said, I'm sure there are a number
of women named Melissa here? Is there? Mr Pennybroth? Have
you ever worked for Mr Penny Broth? I said, nobody
would have the name Mr Pennybroth. They said, you never know?
So then I looked in the you know, I typed
it into my iPad. I couldn't find a Penny Broth similar.

(14:57):
But I don't know where those names from. So is
it really am I hiding? If there's nobody by that name,
then who is it? There must be me? Right, I
don't know the answer, but I mean I don't still
don't know. It might not be the bravest riding in
the world. But it's very interesting. I never would say

(15:18):
I was grave. I'm honest. It's about adultery. It's also
about I don't care about rolling in and out of love.
It's also about anti Semitism. It's also about your heart
being broken. Can we pick let's stop there. Can we
pick one topic? That are you talking about? Adultery? Who's adultery?
Certainly not my own? Okay, not your own? How do

(15:38):
I know those eyes of yours? We've got those wonderful
eyes and they're in the morning. They don't look I
don't want to know what they're looking at the more,
that's not my business? Is that my business? You've been
happily married to Sydney all these years, of course, And
did you ever describe what it's like for you to
fall in love? Because you're pretty tough broad, You're pretty

(15:59):
no nons sense woman, you're tough. We would it like
to pall in love? Love redefines itself as you get older,
when you fell in love with him? What did you
fall in love with? Sydney? Or my heartbreak? In my
book both take sax to Sydney first. No, my heartbreak first,
My heartbreak? This is my show. It's my show now.

(16:20):
I mean, where would you be without me sitting here?
You'll be talking to yourself. Heartbreak happens once, I believe
real heartbreak. What happened? You don't repair describe the situation.
We'll do what you do in your book. The woman
in the third person meets who. Sometimes I'm myself, sometimes
I'm not. I'm really quite crazy though. It's a young

(16:43):
girl who goes to the eld drama school. She falls
in love with a guy. She goes home to his
very fancy house in Connecticut with initials on the thing
and Gilbert Stewart pictures and all that. He goes to Harvard.
They meet at a law school moot court thing, and um,
the mother says to her, aren't there any interesting Jewish
men in the law school? And you never see him again?

(17:06):
That's heartbreak, that's heartbreak. You liked him, care about him,
I loved him? How long were you with him? Semester
a year of you know, sort of make believe in
thinking that life made sense. Semesters a big chapter of
your life when you're young, big chapter of your life,
especially when you've never really been in love before. You

(17:27):
don't get over that. You don't get over that hurt.
It takes a long, long, long What did you fall
in love with? About Sydney? Comfort? Kindness and good partner
good partner friendship intelligence. But I'm not sure he could
have ever broken my heart. I think you break your
heart one time, do you. I think if you're someone

(17:51):
who becomes other people, then you become capable of other
stes of a rocket and saying, I'm pretty the same,
much the same, So you mean you change. I'm the
same person I was fifty years ago. I'm just old,
coming up. Sheila Nevans talks about being raised by a communist.

(18:11):
Sheila Nevins has nurtured many documentary filmmakers. Joe Burlinger, creator
of HBO's Paradise Lost, is one of them. His films
tell a shocking story of justice denied three boys in
the Bible Belt wrongfully convicted of ritual sexual abuse and murder.
Burlinger said the story haunted him. You know, my first

(18:33):
kid was born while we were editing this film, and
I would be sitting, you know, at the editing bay,
looking at the most horrific autopsy photos and crime scene footage.
You know, I would go home at night after having
these images like emblazoned on your brain, and I would
drop the you know, the door of the crib and
pick up my new infant who has just arrived a

(18:55):
few months ago. And every hallmark that my child would
go through, you know, kindergart in middle school, high school,
I think, my god, these guys are still rotting in prison.
I just felt we had a you know, we had
a moral obligation to keep telling the story. Listened to
the full conversation and here's the thing, Dot Org. I'm

(19:25):
Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to here's the thing.
Sheila and Evans. Nearly four decades stewardship of HBO documentaries
has helped usher in a golden age for the form.
But when she started, the very word documentary could doom
a project to obscurity. I think that docums have become hot.

(19:46):
When I began in this business, we didn't even want
to use the word documentary. When we did promos for films,
we would call them docutainment. We invented this lutic word
because we're afraid that if we said documentary, people would
feel that it was for the lead and that it
was about politics, and that it was not going to
be about human stories, and so we we hid behind

(20:07):
this word docuertainment. And then slowly but surely it took
a good years, we began to say, well, maybe it's
not such a dirty word, and reality programming sort of said,
real people can be interesting in a trivial way. Now,
how do we take that real people think and bring
it back to real stories that have heart and soul.

(20:29):
So then somehow it went docutainment, reality TV. Yea documentary,
go for it, say that real people, people without celebrity,
people who are trying to survive in a complicated world,
and say it in their own words and not either
have to have scripted or apologize for it, but let

(20:51):
it go for itself. So if a woman would be
living on a minimum wage, for instance, um, we would
almost cast that woman to be someone who could tell
that story. I got three kids, I'm working in a
nursing home. I'm making seven dollars an hour. I gotta
have three jobs. My husband is on drugs, he's left me.
We we felt we could tell those stories with real people.

(21:13):
We didn't have to use narrative. I'll due respect, but
we could we could elevate the common man's story and
use the word documentary, and I think they became somewhat
precious and difficult um and and had parody at festivals.
Began to have parody at festivals with narrative. So suddenly

(21:34):
Toronto would have a whole section on documentary. Sundance was
actually the first. But Docus at that time were hot docs.
They had their own festivals. They were not part of
festivals that had actors and famous people, and you know,
they were sort of an offshoot. I think now docums
have gotten parody. But is it safe to say, I'd
love to hear your viewpoint about this that, and not

(21:55):
that it's a seller's market now, But is it tougher
for you to find what you want? It's so petitive, horrifying.
Your job is harder than it was. Job is much
harder because first of all, a lot of people have
monopoly money and I'm still playing with real cash. So
I really can't play the well. Netflix has tons of
dollars and they don't. No, not for docues. No. Why

(22:19):
why is that the company is the company's mission or
what happened? I can't speak for the company. A peon.
I would say that it's not a high priority stars
rule and series still feel themselves as almost like a studio.
I think so. I think the development of a series
is where the money's at. It's where the sales are

(22:41):
at one shot, they're chasing that. That's where they're there.
They're not there. If you took docues off HBO, I
think they have a million places to go. Ten years ago,
if you took docues off HBO, you wouldn't have a
place to find them. So it's tough. It's really tough.
Let's talk about your childhood and how you grew up.
Movie or No. I was allowed to watch television. No, no, no.

(23:04):
My mother was a Communist. She had gone to school
with Ethel Rosenberg. And so when Ethel Rosenberg was assassinated
or whatever the word is, in the electric chair, I
thought any minute they were coming to take my mother.
My best friend was Billy and his father was the
editor of the Daily Worker. And I came home one day,
Second Avenue in sixth Street. My father was a postman

(23:27):
on the lower side. Yeah, I'm a poor girl. See
that's why I wrote the book. Because everybody thought I
went to Barnard. I went to Yale. I went to
performing Arts. Ritzi Titsy Titsy TITSI Doorman. You clawed your
way to the top the Jewish Eve Harrington. Wow, No,
I was very good. I didn't call my way. I
was fucking good. And I'm still. I'm really smart, and

(23:49):
I'm smart about what people might watch, and I'm smart
about self criticism, and I'm happy to be wrong as
long as I'm right. So how did you end up
in this business? What did your father do for a living?
My father a postman in a bookie. Why did you
end up in this business because you went to drama school? No,
but I made you directing it. Yeah, because I knew

(24:09):
I was not a good actress. I thought that I
would and I was a terrible to answer. I thought
that I would have been good at storytelling and knowing
when it was wrong and when it was right. I
had a great teacher at Yale who we also had
to take acting classes, and she said to me, you
had the perfect director because you're always watching. And I thought,
that's true. I'm always I'm always looking in, I'm always watching.

(24:32):
Taxicab Confessions, which we did, was an example of a
show that came from observations like I found that when
I was in a taxi, I knew I never see
that person again. I could tell them things I wouldn't
tell anybody else. I thought, if I'm doing this, other
people can be doing this. Why don't we do taxicab
confessions and take the car out at five and go

(24:53):
through the night. And then we did it. And they
were great stories, great secret stories that people tell and
we would ask them to sign a release, and very
often they didn't. Some of the best stories are hidden
in the lock and key. Now here's the last thing
I want to say to you. You went to Barnard
and you went to Yale, and you've had this great
career and you've won all the awards and your name

(25:15):
is synonymous with the highest level of documentary filmmaking them
the last you deliver my memorial service. If I'm available,
you have to get paid. Now. I appreciate your career. No,
that's why you're here. Okay, But but last, but at least,
there's something about you. There's this woman thing about you.
You go when you make this effort in the the

(25:36):
beautification and the kind of corrections and all this other stuff,
and you look phenomenal, by the way, but I just
want to say, there's a thing about you. You know,
you bathe in this world of the stark and the wheel,
but there's a part of me that I think you
want to be in love again. I see you in
a bathrobe on a terrace in Paris and you're just
having the longest kiss in the world. Is that what

(25:57):
you want? Is you do want to fall already that
I don't really want to be in a bathrobe on
a terrorist and it took good to get out my psychiaty.
You don't know you don't want to be in love
again and have a passion. No romance, No, you don't.
I want to make the best documentary in the world.
That's it. That's it, that's it, that's all I want.

(26:17):
I just offered you romance bath you'd rather I want
to make a document wins a prize. We're going to
stop right there, because that's why you're the greatest. I
don't want that going to make I want Alexandre's docu
to win awards. I wanted to make people know about
the beginning of the founding fathers and the dream of

(26:38):
the country. That's what I want to do. I mean,
I'm not square and stupid and idealistic more than anything,
More than anything, What do I want? What do you want? Us?
To make great movies? Yeah? I think that's true. It
makes me almost want to cry when you say that.
Now let's turn to Alex conversation with Tina Brown. After

(26:58):
Tina came in for the Standard You, I approached her
about doing her own podcast. She loved the idea, and
one thing led to another. Our first meeting was at
her infamous town house in New York City, and I
was let in and waited for Tina in the dining room.
In the distance, I could see her husband, Sir Harold Evans,
working in his office, and then I began to look

(27:20):
at all the photographs in the wall of Tina with
people I had only read about. We got a deal
with Wondering to produce a podcast for the year and
called it TB D with Tina Brown. I learned so
much from working with Tina. She was tough, but she
was by far the best editor I've ever worked with,
not to mention her interviewing skills. We only worked on

(27:43):
TBD for a year, but it was truly an honor
to produce a podcast with this trailblazer. Crime and unemployment
were still high, but it was morning in corporate America.
The Dow was up by a third in six months,
and the og eighties had begun. Among the many who

(28:03):
landed in New York to make their fortune that year
was a hot shot magazine editor from London who would
chronicle and then shape that decade like no other. Tina
Brown was twenty nine years old. Her story became inseparable
from that of her creation, a relaunched nineteen twenties glossy
that came to define the Reagan era Vanity Fair. Brown

(28:27):
was a decisive boss, an instinctive editor, and a pioneer
of layout. But that's only a part of what secured
her place on top of New York society. She brought
to her dinner parties and outsider's power of social observation
and a wit so sharp you didn't know you were
bleeding until you were halfway home. But Tina Brown can

(28:48):
tell her own story. She did, in fact, in real time.
Her new book, Vanity Fair Diaries, as a series of
diary entries, starting the day she first landed in New
York for Vanity Fair. Wednesday made the first Thursday, January tenth,
Monday Wednesday of Sunday, April tenth three. I am here

(29:11):
in NYC at last, brimming with fear and insecurity, getting
in late last night on British airways, I suddenly felt
the enormousness of New York City. And she made it
to the big leagues because four years earlier, barely out
of Oxford, Tina Brown landed the editorship of a languishing
old magazine called Tatler after everyone else turned down the job.

(29:34):
And I turned it into this very buzzy little glossy
and signed new House, who was then the chairman of
connyn Ass. Then after two years and me editing it
three years, he came in and he bought it for Connynas.
So that's how I joined conn asked, was that I
was really brought into the family of Connynas with Tatler
and you over there off when I was in London,
And how long did you do that under his ownership? Well?

(29:57):
I left actually after about a year because the Tatler
had been the kind of scrappy little startup, and when
Connynas bought it, I missed the insurgent nature of the public.
You know. I I loved having my little team of insurgents,
these young turks that I had out of college. And
then when Connie Nas brought it, I felt it had
become a sort of stately thing, and I just, you know,

(30:17):
I love being in the kind of the rebel band,
you know, so I left. Actually, people don't normally put
you in the rebel band. Well, I know, some pretty
ivory towers, right, but rebel band is where I began,
and I love that. And I had a very brilliant
young group who all went on to do great things
of Connas. So I left. And then as I left,

(30:38):
I kept hearing that Connin Asked had launched this new
magazine in America, Vanity Fair, that this was they were
bringing back this icon, this old magazine of the twenties
and thirties that hadn't had all these amazing you know,
people like Claire booth Loosen and Dorothy Parker and so
on writing for it. And I was very attracted to
that because I'm a sort of magazine romantic. So I

(30:58):
never thought I would get to edit it, but I
you know, we heard it like the music in the
other room. Then Conyan has launched Fanity Fair in eight three,
and it was a complete debarkle, you know, the first
two arts. But it was one of those things where
the sort of the pre hype sort of almost killed
the magazine. It was a complete dissonance between the magazine
they were advertising and hyping and the magazine they put out.

(31:21):
They what was the chasm between the two. The chasm
between the two was that they said, great magazine comes
back from the dead, legendary magazine. You'll never see anything
more exciting, more glamorous, more important than this magazine. And
then they had a very bookish, very you know, a nerdy,
smart guy from the New York Times who'd never been

(31:41):
a magazine editor. His name was Richard Locke, and you know,
on paper he was a good hire. He was a
brainy guy, but he never done a magazine. And magazines
it's it's all about the chemistry of the words and
the pictures and the headlines and the you know, and
the captions and all the things that make a magazine dance.
He didn't know how to do that. So it was
a very boring magazine. It after him, and then they

(32:01):
had they fired him and brought on Leo Lerman, who
was the former editor of features editor Vogue He was
a kind of seventy five year old, you know, culture
maven old, kind of gossipy old guy who you know
who was the sort of the darling of the ladies
who lunch completely antique, had absolutely no concept of how
to do this thing at all. He then flamed out,

(32:23):
and when he was there, I was asked by by
Connyan asked to come in and sort of consult because
I then left out and they thought, all of this
young turk who you know who then split, let's bring
her into American contyn asked to see whether she can
help old Leo kind of get the thing right. And
they paid you to consult. They paid me to consult,
and I spent three months there and I realized that
Leah was never going to get this right, that it
was a complete fiasco. He was fiercely jealous of me

(32:46):
anyway and didn't want me anywhere near it. And I realized, Hey,
I could do this thing. Why am I being so timid?
Wanted to? I then really wanted to. Yes, I decided
I had made a mistake not sort of pitching myself
to do it, that I should have myself to do it.
I kind of felt what I had whipped out by
not saying to them at the beginning, I'd love to
do this. And from the time you finished a tattlet

(33:07):
and then your consultancy less, how long before you take
over Vanity Third It was about nine months, not even
not even a year, and yeah, yeah, and I came back.
So my Vanity Fair diaries really sort of begin at
that time because I came in as a consultant in
in the summer of eighty three with Leo, and the
diaries sort of showed the rising realization that I should
be the editor of this magazine. This magazine and I

(33:29):
were made to make musing together. I left New York,
went back to London, and they finally and brought me
back as editor. In so to the extent that you
can say, I mean all people really have in the
popular culture is um devil wears product and all these
very very kind of theatrical representations of the world of publishing.

(33:49):
Is it really that one person has to dominate and
their will has to call the day you had to
sit there with a group of people say it's got
to be this and this, that you took their advice,
what did you do? I mean, a great editor isn't
an autocrat. I mean, you have to have a vision
in the same way the director has to have a
vision of a movie, and you have to have a
world view. Two. I mean, my my feeling was that
Vanity Fair. I knew what I wanted to do with

(34:11):
Vanity Fair. I wanted to combine the elegance and glamor
of the magazine, of the famous magazine of the twenties
and thirties, with some of that narrative grizzle of journalism
that had then become the sort of defining feature of
the great magazines of then the seventies and eighties, like
Rolling Stone, like New York Magazine. So I wanted to

(34:32):
modernize that formula, if you like, and then bring a
kind of real modern spin. And the modern spin I
brought because this was we were in the Reagan era, right,
we just roll Reagan was on a glide path to
re election. I came in as a London outsider who
didn't know really much about America, and I was just
plunged into this world of Reagan's America, which was this

(34:56):
kind of black tie, wildly consumed imorish. You know, Bob,
he was on the magazine. It was just I mean,
it boggles my mind when I when I read the
diaries now and when I started to compile them, how
much we went out. I mean every night. It was
like I had red nails and the long dress, and

(35:17):
it was like the black tie dinners and New orven
Higher New York. You know, Nancy Reagan and her Walkers,
and Jerry Zipkin was this socialite with a face like
a B Day That's exactly. You got those names and
they were out there, you know, and it was enormous
fund to cover it. And then in the meantime in

(35:38):
then in l A there was all this kind of
the rise of the spellings, you know, and Candy Spelling
and the big houses and the monster mansions and the
whole of this thing. So it was a wonderful world
to cover. I sort of felt that our mission was
to dramatize it, make it saying in our pages. And
I had my very first hire as a writer actually

(35:59):
was Dominant Done and Dominic Dunne. I first met when
I came as a consultant in the summer at the
dinner party of Marie Brenner, who was a vanity affair,
and he was this out of work film producer, and
he was next to me, and he was so great,
and he was so entertaining and dinner and then he
told me this horrendous story that his daughter had been
murdered and he was on his way out to l

(36:20):
A to the trial of his daughter's murderer. And I said,
why don't you keep a diary? Being a great darist myself,
I said, you know, keep a diary. Maybe you would
make it into something to read, and I'd love to
publish it. So he his eyes lit up, and off
he went. And the piece that he brought back, which
was published in the magazine, was an absolutely epic piece
of sort of narrative personal journalism. So my very first

(36:42):
high when I came back, and as editor at eighty four,
I said to Nick, you know, I want you to
be my first higher. I want to get a chowd
of writers who can define the magazine. And that's, of
course what he helped to do. Now, for those who
don't know this, you kept copious diary entries. What is
it about you that you're such a dead a can
of diarist. I've tried that myself. I've got boxes when

(37:03):
have books in them, and notebooks, and some of them
have those little diary like looks them and you open
and doesn't mean maybe like a week's worth of entries.
And then Scotte, Well, I think I'm a compulsive reporter. Actually,
I mean I have what I think of as observation greed. Right,
most of the time I'm propelled to go out, not
because I actually want to go out, but I think
I got to see that, you know, I need to

(37:25):
see that. Curious, I'm really curious, and I have a
great desire to report on on on the action, if
you like. So I I've always done that. I've always
because I was alone. My husband at that time, Harry Evans,
was actually in Washington working. It was a predigital era.
So I would come back from these blacks I dinners

(37:46):
and I would be on my own. I hadn't got
kids at that moment, and I sat down and just
it was like wanting to talk to a friend. And
so it was literally sort of dear diary almost you
know that, I just gushed it all that. Plus I
was from London and so I it was all new
to me. Everything about this place was wild. I had
never seen such excess, such money as such you know,
I was fascinating both in a sense so that it

(38:07):
was a little decadent. My dad was a movie producer,
he was there. My mom was Lawrence Olivier's assistant. No,
she was Are you kidding me? Oh my god, I'd
love to be Lawrence. How long was what a peasant? Rogan?
Peasant slave? Am? I? She was about five years and

(38:28):
then she married my my dad when she was a
young woman. She was when she married when he was
assistant when she was young and she then met my
father at Pinewood Studios and and they got married, and
then she became you know, he could have been your dad,
as she played her card smartly. Actually more In o'harror
could have been my mother, because my father married more
In o'harror first. Yes, And it's very funny when when

(38:52):
I found about ten years ago that More after my
father just died and I was feeling particularly connected to him,
I saw that Morgan her Horror was signing books, uh
at some bookstore or wasn't it was the opening it
was it was her movie, the famous Christmas movie right
which I I Miracle onto Street, Miracle on thirty fourth Street.

(39:13):
So she was there at the movie house. So I
said to my little girl, you know, then we're going
to go and see more in O'Hara because she was
married to Grandpa, and you know, I've never met her,
and I really wanted to produce myself. So I went
to this thing and there was a big line. I
interested myself was a miss O'Hara. I'm George Brown's daughter,
and I thought she was going to say, how wonderful
to see you, I mean George, and she turned around

(39:34):
and she said to me that man had absolutely nothing
to do with me. I have no desire to meet you. Goodbye.
Oh my goodness. It was tragic. How sad, you know,
I mean I was. I was aghast, but I have
no idea. The backstory made me immediately think, what the
hell really? So before your dad obviously was married to
your mother and you and you were born to that family,

(39:56):
your father had been married to O'Hara, divorced her, and
then there's no so station with her whatsoever. What are
some of the pictures your father produced? Um, he produced
Guns at Batasia, the ms, Mark Marple's movies. You know,
with Margaret Rutherford, you had no desire to go into
the film business. No, because I kind of your father's
making films. He's married Tom to Tatler. To me, editing

(40:21):
and producing are very very similar. Do you ever want
to make movies? The Vanity Fair Diary has been bought
by has been optioned by Bruno Papandro, who did Big
Little Lies, So we might see, you know that as
a streaming video, which would be great for Maybe that's
a sort of a toe hold in. I have lots
of ideas for films, actually a lot. They're the same things.
It's all about wrangling the story, storytelling, storytelling, tracking them

(40:43):
the material, making the writer do the story you want,
casting the thing. So I always felt actually the producing
and writing were very similar. The story was the prism
into an interesting world. I mean, Dominic Dunn's stories were
particularly in that vein. I mean, he did a wonderful
story about Betsy Bloomingdale, Alfred mistress Alfred Bloomingdale, the founder

(41:05):
of a dinos card. His mistress, Vicky Morgan, was found
murdered and they blamed this guy Marvin Pancost who beat
at a death with a baseball back. But obviously the
tension in the story was was she bummed off? Because
there had been this huge palimony case, and so it
allowed Nick Dunn to sort of get into the world
of the Betsy Bloomingdale society around Mrs Reagan and tell

(41:28):
the story of the sort of slightly dark side if
you like, of Beverly Hill society. What would you describe
Nick Dunn? Though? I mean I I sensed in my
tracking of Nick Dunn's career that he was kind of
a certain type of writer. Then he became after that
with his own the murder of his daughter and his
articles like the Bloomingdale when he becomes like Tales of Hollywood,
he gets a little pulpy. Well, actually he brings a

(41:50):
kind of passionate pursuit of justice to it. Actually, so
when for instance, he did the story of the class
Form Bulah murder case in which class Form Bulah been
accused of trying to kill his wife who was then
in a coma from Sonny von Bulow, that was a
way for him to get into the world of Newport
and that high society. But it also allowed him to

(42:12):
to sort of pursue justice on behalf of the children.
So what actually did motivate nicko did make him better
than pulpy, was that he he was always trying to
plead to solve things for the victim because you know,
he felt himself with the victim's rights crusade victims, and
that's what gave his pieces such hard So when you
say you want to go into a world which one

(42:33):
to dis intrigued the hell out of you, you said,
there a God. I love this piece, and a lot
of the foreign stories we did, I absolutely loved. I mean,
we did a wonderful piece about baby Doc that got
into the strange sort of voodooe atmosphere of Haiti at
the time. We did wonderful stories about Africa. Alex Schumutov
was a fantastic right of us. He did the sort

(42:54):
of definitive piece about the murder of Diane Fossey, the naturalist,
and what he was so great about that pieces. Everyone
was writing about her as a great environmentalist who had
been sort of kill uh, you know, because of her
pursuit of against the poachers, But what it really came
out was how troubled she was herself as a woman,
and how actually she she really hated the poachers more

(43:15):
than she loved the animals. That this woman was a
really disturbed woman actually as a tree and it was
and it was a very interesting sort of look at this,
but how what makes a woman live on the edge
like that? So these are the kind of stories that
drove me and to make me a sign of story,
I have to feel this abiding curiosity is like what
is the real story here? Like what are we missing

(43:35):
in all of this? And there are some stories which
just grabbed my imagination. I mean I look at someone
like Rex Tillerson now and I just think what a
great story. Rex Tillerson is not because of the obvious things.
He's Secretary of State, like what's happening? But I see
him as a hugely comic character, you know. I to me,
the story is big corporate ceo whoeveryone is saluted, you

(43:56):
know who, who's God in the bad room? And now
he stumbled into this completely insane mess, this looniar ban,
and he's still playing it as a straight man to
be going somewhere where he's just dismissed or ignored or
he's und control. Now, somebody said about about Tennison, who
knows him to meet he Rex runs a very crisp meeting,
And I was just thinking, like a crisp meeting is

(44:17):
the opposite of what he's in. I mean, he's now
in this rambling, insane asylum, and it's like the message
has gone completely off. I just can't imagine him working
for someone else. Wasn't somebody that he had just that
he thought was impeccable Tillerson working for him? It just
seems like inconceivable to me. Uh so you're at Vanity
Fair for what length of time? I was ever eight

(44:38):
and a half years, and you know, when I took
it over, they had twelve pages of advertising. And by
the end, of course you didn't turn into this juggonnaut
We had one point two million circulation to on fifty
pages of ads. But you know, about a year and
a half in new house was actually about to close it.
And he was almost like a kind of James Thurber
character because he was this short, nervous never she a
little man. Yeah, if you you know, he was completely shy.

(45:02):
I mean he wants, you know, very touchingly kind of
We were riding home in the car and you know,
he said to me, I don't think that I don't
really think I have any power. You know, I have
no power, And I was thinking wodom and I said,
but say, you know, you own Random House, you know.
He said, yeah, but if I told publishers what book
to buy, they wouldn't pay any attention to me. And
I said, well, well, look at all the magazines. He said, yes,

(45:23):
but you know the magazine editors don't really, I mean
I don't think that they don't. Could stop me and
he said actually, and then he mentioned Mr Shan, who
was the editor of The New York at the time.
He said, and I find it very hard to get
Mr Sean on the phone. So I thought it was
so touching in a way because here was this huge
mobile but he never started his company, and he did

(45:46):
love his editors to be stars. I mean, in a
way it was great because you know sometimes corporate people
are sort of don't like their employees to have attention,
and they're sort of you have to be careful because
you don't get too much attention. And he loved it.
He loved he said it as being started. And you
know there was me that was Anna Winter there was
I mean, you know, he liked that, and he saw
us as his studio. Really, where's all the big money

(46:08):
come in? Does her own billboards, TV stations, radio? Well,
the money. Really there was him and his brother Donald,
and his father Sam, who was another tiny, never shoot,
little fellow with a lot of drive, you know, built
this huge newspaper empire from this New Jersey newspaper he
began at the beginning, and then he bought naples in
every town and soon they had this huge newspaper empire.

(46:30):
So the cash cow was the newspapers actually, and his
brother Donald ran the newspaper company, and then Sam, the
old man, began to get social aspirations and one day
his wife, legend says, says, you know how much she'd
like him to buy a copy of Vogue. And he
came back and he bought her. He miss in you
how she bought the company, bought her conin us essentially

(46:53):
because she had decided she wanted to now be a
lady who lunches a little bit, you know, and nothing
was better for that than glossy magazines. So the lost
the magazines began sort of that way. S I basically
decided he loved magazines. He always had it. He was
the east Field in the family. Actually, you know, he
appreciated art. He was fascinated by glamor and magazine a

(47:13):
culture so he was much better fit for the magazines,
for the newspapers, and he became a really great magazine publisher,
and Vanity Fair in Vogue were enormously profitable. They were
in the end. Yeah, we took it from I mean,
at the beginning Vanity Fell lost fourteen million dollars and
then I came in and by the time I left,
it was in profit. And now, of course, you know,
after years, it's it's a big cash because that his
gift that he placed the bet, and he stayed with

(47:34):
the bet. He didn't he didn't falter. Yeah, that was
what was so great. He stayed with it, and he
really backed me. I mean, now there was a moment
of tremor there. I mean a year and a half in,
you know, we were very much liked by readers, but
the advertisers were lagging and it was still losing money.
And I was off in the West Coast about to
go on the MERV Griffin Show to talk about this

(47:55):
great cover we had on the Reagans Dancing and Kissing,
which was one of our great colors. I suddenly realized that,
you know, everybody I was trying to hire I was
getting installed. And I called up the office and I said,
what's happening? And they said, well, you better come back
and talk to Mr. Newhouse, which I did. Only did
discover that he was on the point of folding the
magazine and I had to really surprise you. I was
a ghasp. I said, you can't and I showed him

(48:17):
everything I had on the verge. We're on the verge,
and he gave us another He said, okay, you've got
another year. And in that year we really pulled it
out because that's when we had the big class form people.
Do you think, what do you think it is about you?
The guy new House to give you another year? What's
it about you? What's your gift? Actually? What is it
about him? Really? Because well I showed him what we had.

(48:37):
You know, I believe, Do you believe? I believed? And
I you know, I called everybody in the company. I
just galvanized everybody to just work on him. And I said,
you've got to give us. Actually, he said, you've got
two years, and I always knew that was really a year.
You know, when they say two years, it is really
a year. So when the magazine blasts off under your
tenure and becomes this must read for everybody. When does
it become a parenty, that's time to go. Well, I'm

(49:00):
very restless type. I mean in the same way I
left Tatler After Vanity Fair. I've been there for it
in a half years. I had two children. I didn't
I didn't want to. I was actually feeling a little restless,
but I had the young kids, so I didn't want
to be married to Harold. By now married to Harold,
I had a child of three and of war one
of one, and I was willing to get restive. I
was also kind of tired of the celebrity culture stuff.

(49:22):
Actually that well, I got tired of the conversation, which is,
what can Madonna do Thursday or can she do Friday?
You know she doesn't like the photographer. It was Cadys
began to kind of which was your stock? And you
had to kill They were all bread and butter, and
you know they saw the magazine. Of course, Vanity Fair

(49:43):
editor Tina Brown. The second half of our conversation covers
live after Vanity Fair. Her first stop was The New Yorker.
She was succeeded there by David Remnick, whom she hired
on Here's the Thing. Remnick told me there's no official
system for develop up in future New Yorker contributors, so
you might get lucky. The farm system is the mail.

(50:06):
The farm system is whoever sending us stuff. You know,
people think I'm kidding around. People email me every day.
I probably get fifteen emails a day that go directly
to me, because my email is not that hard to
figure out. I have an idea. Here's my short story.
Now most of them are not going to work. Once

(50:28):
in a while, though, it happens. Here more stories from
The New Yorker's David Remnick had Here's the Thing dot org.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
the Thing. Tina Brown retired of catering to celebrities at

(50:50):
Vanity Fair. She was in the running to be transferred
to the New Jewel and Condie Nass Crown the New Yorker.
Things weren't going well there, but the old guard didn't
want rescuing. By the likes of Tina browns were flying
rather like the beginning when when I kept hearing about
Vanity Fair, so I had bought The New Yorker. In
the meantime, sign new house. He had got rid of

(51:12):
Mr Shawan, the great legendary editor, and put in Bob
got Leeb who's a fantastic book editor, but a bit
like his mistake at Vanity Fair. It didn't make him
a great magazine Edity. The fact that he was a
great book is a different thing. And those people who
would disagree with you are those people who they were
pretty happy with Bob gottleieb as the editor. Because we're
going to get to the subject of the resistance. You agree, No, Actually,

(51:32):
I think the people at the New Yorker. I mean
Bob Gotley was unlucky because he followed a great legend,
had been there for thirty years, forty years, right, Mr
Shawn was one of the great legends. It was Mr Shawan,
Mr Shwan, and you had put on white gloves to
speak to him. And so Paul Boal Gottley then came
into the situation where everybody was very upset about now.
But then he didn't really know how to do a magazine.

(51:53):
And you know, he did some good things, but so
but when I came in, he said, I'd just done
a cover with the Vanity Fair with Demi Moore, Nick
and pregnant, and it was something of a sensation. Was
the least wonderful thing we ever worked with. And so
they thought, here comes this the girl who did. I'm
under the impression that the New Yorker it was divided.

(52:15):
I mean, I don't I don't have any empirical daddy here,
but it was divided into two groups. Those who were
elated you were coming to kind of save the magazine
and making improve the sales, and those who felt that
you weren't. You know, you'd left the Oxford behind and
you were more tatler than Oxford exactly. And you know,
I understand why they were nervous, frankly, I mean, why
wouldn't they be. But at the very first meeting that

(52:36):
I had at the New York Or there was all
of this when I was the first woman, obviously because
I've only been for it, isn't they all been men?
So I come into this room and there were all
of these men sitting around the table and talk about
the talk about that, what's it like for a woman
who's in charge. Well, it was in a place like
that where I think they were a bit more old
guard at the times. On these places here, women don't

(52:57):
always have a great time well, one of the writers,
and I think it was could an endemic, referred to
me as the girl and the wrong dress, okay, which
really explains in a nutshell the attitude to me, which is, like,
what is she doing coming in here this? You know,
there's a woman who doesn't understand us. And you know,
there was a lot of resistance, and I think some
of it was misogynist, There's no doubt about it. They

(53:18):
really I just blazed through it, you know. I mean
you you just like I just raged through it, uh,
you know, and I want some of them around too,
you know, actually, because what I found was, you know,
one thing, I'm a big believer, and he's really listening
to who's there, right, So I didn't go in and
do stuff like just for everybody. I mean I did
for actually seventy people in the end, but I did

(53:41):
listen to who was there, and I really made quick
distinctions about who I thought had it and who didn't.
And there was some wonderful older people there, I mean,
people like John Updyke and Roger Angel and I mean
Lilian Ross. These people were absolutely fabinous and golden and
they actually did welcome me. The people who didn't welcome
me were the sort of year old actually who felt
our identity depended on the New Yorker. I found that

(54:02):
the Greatest Generation group, like Brendan Gill and Roger Angel
were confident enough not to feel their whole identity dependent
on the fake IVY if you like. Of the William
Shawn commntal, I mean John Updike was up for a venture.
I mean, he was sick of doing book reviews. You know,
he was quite happy to go off and write about
Oscar and Night or something, you know, I mean it

(54:23):
was it was interesting. Then what did you say to yourself?
What needed to change their Well, what I wanted to
do was to hire a bunch of amazing writers who
I felt hiring Hiring was job one, and I did.
I mean, I heard David Remney, you know who succeeded me.
I had Malcolm Gladwell. I had Jeffrey Tubin, I had
Jane Mayer. I had Anthony Lane from London John Lar

(54:46):
wonderful film with John Lar, who I don't like saying
that because film critics are always kind to me in
the point, but Lanes a wonderful writer, wonderful writer, absolutely marvelous.
He was only twenty seven when I heard him. You know,
I had your own group when the great medical writer
and actual Gowandi and Henry Lewis Gates. I mean, I
didn't bring in the most amazing writers and they're all
still there. And I also brought in some amazing editors too,

(55:07):
And I actually brought in a lot of women. I
mean my executive editor, Dorothy Wickenden, who is still my
managing editor, Pat McCarthy was still there. They were all
of these great women that I brought into some people
a lot. When you do that, describe without naming names,
what's what's that process like? Well, no, one, No. As
a matter of fact, I actually think it, Uh, you

(55:27):
really need to be very sensitive when you when you
are hiring people. I didn't always get it right. Sometimes
it blows up and it gets it's wrong or I
didn't do it right. But when I did it right,
I actually think it takes several conversations because what I
learned was the first conversation you have to try to
explain that this isn't working out, but they don't hear it,
and there's a second conversation, and then the third conversation

(55:47):
you want someone else to have the conversation. But you know,
I do feel keeping dignity is incredibly important. Do you
argue on the side of being generous in terms of
seferences and people who they really think they're gonna have
this job for the rest of their lives but don't. Well.
One of the things that was so great about new
House because I couldn't be generous, so that he let
me be. He was generous, He really was, actually, I
mean that was one of the great things about say

(56:09):
he didn't as long. You know, once he decided to
move on, there was never an argument about this person
is having tir a lawyer to say I need more.
You know. He was very generous like that. He would
just say to people when he had my predecessor at
Vantity Fair, he said, look, I'm going to fire him,
but I'll keep him on for life, and I'll tell
him he can go to Europe. Do I see you?
I mean, who does that? Honestly, I mean it's pretty unusual.

(56:30):
And so SI was wonderful, like, very very generous. And
you know, we had a tough time, you know, kind
of getting this thing to work. I mean it was
losing uh twenty million when I took it over was
that why was that? Where have those readers gone? Well?
It aged, you know it simply that they had really aged,
and we just needed to to completely spruce up the end,

(56:51):
windows up on the windows. And actually I brought photography
into The New Yorker, which I had never had. I
brought Richard avan And to take pictures. I had our
Speedlman to be one of the cover artists. I brought
in his wife, frans Wis Mooley to be the art director.
So I really brought my visual sense to them. So
you bring the tools you have for the other magazines
to this with some changes, and I resigned it. I

(57:12):
mean we really sort of facelifted it but kept its
kind of purity. But where you have um where you
talk about coming from Vanity Fair with an abundance if
you will, not exclusively so, but an abundance of celebrity culture,
you come into the New Yorker, do you decide you
have to have some you need to start to insert
a little of that DNA into the New Yorker as well.

(57:34):
A tad friend, actually I did, so, Yeah, he's excellent,
But in fact, the one I would beg to differ
about that well, we're gonna have an argument about that.
That's okay, okay, I'll leave that with you. UM. For instance,
Jeff Tubin, who I had as our legal sort of analyst.
He was an assistant d A at the time, young
assistant d A, and I wanted to cover a law

(57:56):
when the O. J. Simpson story broke, Jeff actually had
had two or three pieces that hadn't worked out, and
I was begin to think, oh my god, I made
a mistake with this guy. Jeff le talk about the
Clintons is one of my favorite books, Such a wonderful water.
But he went off to l A. I said, why
don't you just go and cover this O. J. Simpson
thing and see whether this pants out. That story just
took ahold of Jeff. He broke news on it, and

(58:19):
he became And what was wonderful was he brought his
kind of legal rigor to the story, but at the
same time it was the great compulsively glitzy story of
our time. That's what I think I did bring into
the New Yorker DNA was a sense that, you know,
by doing Jeff Tubin on on on O. J. Simpson,
I kind of set that table which now today where
Rodan Farah can do Harvey Weinstein. It's a legitimate subject matter.

(58:41):
So how long are you with the New Yorker? I
was in The New Yorker for nearly seven years. Did
you keep a New Yorker diary? Less off alas? Because
it was a weekly and I had a kid, and
you know, so it was much harder for me to
do it, and I you know, I regret that I
didn't write it with as much kind of intensity and
detail that I did Vanity Fair diaries. So I didn't
do as much. And then after six and a half
seven years, I've been kind to get frustrated there because

(59:04):
I always felt The New Yorker should be more by
the end, that it should be more than a magazine.
I wanted to see it be a radio show, a
book company. Just described real quickly, how is it different
at the New Yorker? Well, comparing trash the two, it
was much more open warfare against me at the New
Yorker at the beginning, you know, because we had this
huge kind of pushback from the old Guard, expecting that

(59:25):
this was going to be me putting Demi Moore and
in the magazine, I mean, fristus, the cartoonist Bob Mankoff.
He thought that I was going to cancel all of
cartoons and just put pictures in, and of course it
was the reverse was true. I actually gave the car
Bob Mankoff. I made him cartoon editor, and I actually
gave you know, him a whole cartoon issue every Christmas

(59:46):
to do. But he had a documentary out of it,
and he got a documentary, and I started the cartoon
bank and all of these things that he's wonderful. He's
absolutely we became the best of friends. But but for
the first two or three years it was this kind
of what is she trying to do? But then I
think what happened basically was that a lot of the
defective left the new amazing people were so good. I mean,

(01:00:07):
when you have people like Room Nick and Nick Hertzberg
who are brought in and I love him so dearly.
I mean, he's the cleverest and the best, and you
know that talk. It was like a graft. It was
like a skin graph, right. And there was a wonderful
moment actually when I was having a sandwich with John
Updyke in the office and before he came Anthony Lane
the film critics said to me, oh, here having lunch

(01:00:27):
with John Updyck. I am, He's my hero. I just
want to meet him. So I said, okay, well I'm
in the middle of lunch, you know. Just knock on
the door and I'll introduce you to John. Knock, knock
through the and as he comes in, John Updyke jumps
up and says, Anthony Leane, I've been so looking forward
to meeting you. It was a wonderful moment because it
was you saw the blood exchange had happened, you know,
which was the older guarden. And from that moment, really,

(01:00:49):
you know, it all settled down and we were soon
the most amazingly exciting. When the time comes to leave
the New Yorker, I mean, I'm sure, having taken two
magazines and really, well we'll throw a tattler. Yeah, but
but but here in the U s fantity there in
the New Yorker and having tremendous success with them in
a new house behind you, what did you fantasize would
be next? Well, I had this fantasy of an extended

(01:01:12):
media laterally, you see, as I said, I wanted to
do radio's books, TV shows out of the New Yorker
brand sign your house. For all of his wonderfulness did
not get that. That's where he stumbled, actually, because frankly
had he done that twenty years ago. I mean this
was I didn't understand where we were heading. He did
not understand where we were headed. Conn didn't miss the
miss the trick when it came to getting ahead of

(01:01:32):
that curve. I mean, the things that I told side
to do in the nineties were the things that they
should have done because I was I did see it early,
probably too early and too early for him to see
your sound nuts. It was like settled down on do
your magazine and like go back to your knittings, Go
have lunch with updates, Go have lunch with up that.
Yet I was thinking I wanted So along comes a
person who has been in the news lately, Mr Harvey Weinstein,

(01:01:55):
who comes to me and says, I want you to
come and do a magazine with Mirrormax. You can do books,
you can do films, you can do all of these
things that you have. The idea you had want to
back you talk is the magazine Talk magazine. We just
called it. So I said, okay, I'll do this, and
I thought that he was the sort of the missing
piece of entrepreneurial verve that was going to help me

(01:02:17):
develop these thoughts. And you know, I leapt out of
the Ivory Tower into a well. I wanted it to
be a rough and tumble thing. I was ready for that.
I had been at the Court of Louis the fourteenth,
as it were, for seventeen years, and I thought this
would be exciting and rugged. And I'm going to know,
how does a new house compared to Harvey Weinstein? Oh

(01:02:37):
my god, I mean, you know, it was like a
bad dream. New House was always sort of courteous, always warm,
really and difficult, but he was a gentleman. He was
generally he could mean, he could be very difficult, he
could be very irritating, but he was never abusive or
in any way inappropriate. And I find it unbelievable that
Harvey was abusive to you. Well, he was actually I mean,

(01:02:59):
I mean yeah, I mean he basically was. Well he Harvey.
The problem with Harvy is here, and I immediately had
a completely opposed vision of what it should be. I mean,
I wanted to leave the New Yorker and Vanity Fair
to do something obviously different, from either of them, right.
I had this concept of a literary news magazine that
was going to be like in a European news magazine.
I was in love with magazines like Perry, Match and Stern,

(01:03:20):
and I love those magazines, and I wanted to do
a European news magazine with a New Yorker quality type
face and content with amazing photography like Perry Matt. That
was the idea, with a cover with multiple images on
it and all of the things that hadn't been really
done here. I love those magazines. I did the first
couple couple of issues. They were amazingly good. But when

(01:03:41):
within about two months, I mean Harvey immediately started to say,
I want Vanity Fair with you to just a copy
Vanity Fair. I want you to have you know, Matt
Damon on the cover. I want you to say completely
and I you know. And it became so frustrating to
me because I felt that I was being forced into
this kind of celebrity journalism again, but in this wildly
unstable environment where also I was having a very hand
fisted way by the hand fisted when it wasn't what

(01:04:03):
I wanted to do, and I found it very, very
distracting and hiring and firing. Was that another point of friction.
I have my own team at first, but I did find,
of course that Harvey wanted to go around town of
signing things all the time, and I mean that never
happened before. The deals that were made by Harvey for
for Talk and for the book publisher was flight attendance
on private jets, So there was a lot of that.

(01:04:24):
I would run into a person who would tell me
that his piece was coming in on Wednesday, you know,
and I would say, what peace, you know, and how
am I going to pay for it? Because it was
also my budget that was like streaming out the door.
So I, you know, I felt extremely frustrated with it,
but you know, it was having leapt out of the
New Yorker, obviously, it was. It was heartbreaking. It was
heartbreaking really what happened. Of course, then it didn't go

(01:04:47):
well because you know that it lasted for two years
and then actually nine eleven really put the kibosh on
it because then advertising disappeared and then you were going
to have to have deep pockets behind you. Did you
walk away? Just was like you got a car service
and took off and never spoke to him again or
was an actually know, as a matter of fact, you know,
I stayed on perfectly okay terms with Harvey after that.

(01:05:09):
I mean, at the end of the day, it's like,
you know, what happened happened. So you write the thing
about Lady Diana, who I met once in one and something.
She was so much more beautiful and more interesting in person.
It almost didn't do her justice. She was stunning, stunning,
and it was all about the coloring. I mean it
was this piece is gorgeous, peach felvet face and this

(01:05:30):
huge olympid blue feeling eyes. Didn't realize I did. I did,
and I always felt like you did. In fact, I
had lunch with her in New York about six weeks
before she died, and when she walked into the Four Seasons,
it was just so she's so stunning, you know, because
she's so huge. I mean, she's like this gazelle who's like,
you know, six ft something. It felt, you know, in

(01:05:50):
the shoes and the eyes that were just so enormous,
and yet she was so lonely, talked about loneliness and
how you know in August she was dreading August because
the children were going off to stay with Charles and
pal Moral and how she she said, nobody wants me
to have me to stay. And I said, what are
you talking about. Everybody wants to have you know, she said,
you said the paparazzi calm and they go through your garbage,

(01:06:12):
and you know, you just said, it's just horrible to
have me to stay. She said, I am, you know,
I have nowhere to go in August my children. And
I just thought how extraordinary it was that she felt
that lonely. But it also did explain when you learned
of her deaths, you know, six weeks later or whatever
it was, what she was doing in the south of France.
I mean, she was really there because she was so lonely.
And along time the al Fayette family, you have what

(01:06:34):
you call all the toys are either planes and the
bodyguards and you know, and the chauffeurs and stuff. So
Jackie Kennedy marrying on exactly the same. Some of the
most prominent figures, I mean, your peers, if you will,
in terms of their prominence in the publishing world. Graydon
is leaving, Robbie Meyer and Jan sold the business, and
I'm wondering it's just technology. I mean, I think digital

(01:06:57):
disruption has become so intense that for many of them
it was like, look, I had a great time, and
let's leave this now to someone who couldn't just do
this reinvention because I did my stuff. You could have
kept going, did you well? No. I decided to start
a live media company because I felt that it was
no longer about stories and pictures and captions and words,

(01:07:19):
which is what I love to do, and had become
all about how am I going to get the revenue stream?
What is the digital platform? You know, all of that
anguish that is about process as opposed to stories. And
so I now do many of these live events where
I can at least showcase incredible stories and put them
on the stage and have people watching them, which is
what we do with women in the world because just

(01:07:41):
magazines cannot anymore survive. This is Kathleen Russo and that
was my summer staff pick. I hope you enjoyed it.
Here's the thing. We'll be back with Alec next week.

(01:08:03):
Four