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averyrogers83writes · 5 years ago

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When A Hero Falls

Title: When A Hero Falls Authors: @shield-agent78 & @averyrogers83 Pairing: Steve Rogers & Andy Barber Rated: NC17 Warnings: Angst Summary: Captain “Steve Rogers” America is on trial for treason so the team hires the only guy they know who can get him off. The best defense attorney around Andy Barber. Words: 2535 Prompt: An anon ask: Someone give me a fanfic where Andy Barber gets hired as Steve Rogers’ lawyer. Squares Filled: On the Run: Avengers Bingo/ @shield-agent78, “this is the fight for our lives”: Star-Spangled Bingo SSB2020/ @shild-agent78, Steve: Withoutadoubt Bingo/ @averyrogerswrites83, In Pain: Avengers Bingo/ @averyrogerswrites83 Author Notes: Another collaborative work by @averyrogers83 and @shield-agent78, anything can happen when these two get together.

@shield-agent78 @averyrogers83 @asthearrowflies @star-spangled-bingo @avengersbingo @withoutadoubt-bingo

Day 1: Opening arguments

Andy Barber: Steve Rogers aka Captain America, a man that has put his life on the line for this country more times than we can count. Doing things most men wouldn’t even dream of doing now sits before us accused of treason. How can anyone even think that a man with such high moral integrity be capable of treason? As his lawyer, I will prove to you that this man before you is not just a superhero, but also a man that loves this country more than most. I will prove to you that Senator Ross is falsely accusing this American Icon for his own selfish ambitious reasons.

The prosecuting attorney glances over to his client Senator Ross who is sitting with his back firmly against the wooden chair. As opening arguments continue, Senator Ross frowns at Barber’s allegations. He mumbles something quietly to his attorney which only can be guessed however he is waved off as Barber continues.

Murmurs could be heard in the background as Barber accuses Senator Ross of abuse of power amongst other things against Captain Rogers that can only be heard in bits and pieces as the courtroom crowd grew rowdy, causing the presiding judge to call for order in the court.

Prosecutor: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury while we all agree that Captain Rogers has served his country faithfully it does not allow him to break the laws and statutes set forth by the United Nations. Therefore, the United States Government is asking for you to take these accounts into consideration. The Sokovia Accords lays out a course of action if and when the Avenger team is called upon. Steve Rogers did not take this into consideration when he gathered his team members to his side in order to save the war criminal James Barnes. Yes, this man sitting before you is capable of treason and much more.

Andy can see the veins in Steve’s hands’ contract as he squeezes them together in anger at the mention that Bucky is just a common war criminal. His jaw is set hard enough that it ticks with frustration. More mummers erupt again throughout the courtroom as jurors exchange glances between them. The sounding of a loud gavel erupts again over the gallery as the judge demands order in her courtroom and effectively ending the first day of the trial.

Court TV Reporter: Smooths hands over outfit as makeup assistant touches up red lipstick “Today’s trial proceedings in the case of United States v Steve Rogers began with opening arguments. Andy Barber who is the hot attorney for Rogers called his client a man of high moral integrity, while the prosecutor pointed out Rogers aided and abetted the war criminal James Barnes whose trial is slated to begin later this month.”

Day 2: Prosecutor’s Witnesses:

The Prosecutor had started the day with calling their list of witnesses against Rogers. Those that had suffered some kind of loss from the actions taken by Captain Rogers and his team who ignored the sole purpose of what the Accords stood for. Protecting the people of the world from rogue superheroes.

Court TV Reporter: Wearing navy sweater “Day two of the trial against Captain America started off with the prosecution calling their witnesses. First to the stand being the mother of Charlie Spencer; the young man who was killed while in Sokovia doing volunteer work. Miriam Sharpe blames the loss of her son on the arrogance of the Avengers and their lack of realizing the consequences of their actions.

Their next witness Helmut Zemo went on record to state that due to the arrogance of the so called superhero Avengers he lost everything. His wife, his son, his father, and his home; despite having them evacuate to his father’s home outside of the city caused by the level of destruction.

However, Defense Attorney Andy Barber questioned Zemo about his involvement in implicating James Barnes. He stated that because of Zemo’s actions he had led Mr. Barnes; an innocent man to be brainwashed by the very enemy that he and Captain Rogers fought during the great war. Questioning the integrity of this witness as well as revamping the events he had set forth in action made the count room buzz with activity. The judge had to regain control several times thus causing Mr. Barber to ask for a recess which has been granted until tomorrow. It was evident from today’s proceedings that Andy Barber has his work cut out for him.”

***

It was evident that the day's proceedings had worn heavy on Steve’s mind and heart. Some of it made him rethink his own involvement in Sokovia and the loss it had caused. Then a voice in the back of his mind perks up. A familiar voice that reminds him of why he took on the moniker of Captain America in the first place.

“The strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows... compassion. Whatever happens, stay who you are, not just a soldier, but a good man.”

Steve looks at the window of the meeting room and blows out a frustrating breath. “You thinkin’ about jumping out the window?” Andy’s voice is both full of sarcasm and concern. Steve does not take his eyes from the window but decides to look down at the city street itself watching the cars pass.

“Naw, just thinking we are in the fight for our lives, at least mine. Do you think we have a chance at winning this case especially with the media circus?”

Andy straightens his brown tie and strides toward Steve. “The media might actually be helping your case. You have a lot of people that believe in you and what you stand for.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Steve watches as a crowd begins to gather outside of the courthouse holding signs. Some say ‘Free Captain America’ others are not as kind.

Steve really didn’t care about what the public thought of him, really he just wanted the trial to be over so he can either go on with being Captain America or be stripped of all responsibilities of being a superhero and just lead a normal life.

Day3: Prosecutor’s Witnesses/Defense Witnesses:

Colonel James Rhodes was the last witness for the prosecutor. A hush fell over the chattery courtroom as Rhodes entered the room walking with the use of special designed braces made by the only Tony Stark.

Steve’s heart sank the moment he saw his friend. Rhodes was a good and honorable man and didn’t deserve the fate that he was served. Looking at his friend and how he was now partially paralized made him wonder if he shouldn’t be found guilty for treason. The two teams were pitted against each other because both he and Tony were too stubborn to try and work through a compromise.

He was more concerned for his lifelong friend and keeping him safe and it didn’t occur to him how his actions may affect the rest of his family.

Court TV Reporter: smooths red dress and then begins report “The prosecutor has just rested his case against Steve Rogers, now it is up to the esteemed Andy Barber to defend Captain America to the jury. Natasha Romanoff was the first witness who spoke on behalf of Rogers. The famous Black Widow explained in detail how she had supported the Accords at first, but soon her mind was changed when faced with the idea that a war hero such as James Barnes could be guilty of the assissianation of Wakanda’s king. She went on to explain how Steve had always placed the needs of others in front of his own.”

***

As the day ended on the third day, all Steve could think about was how his actions had hurt those most important to him. Seeing Rhodes in braces come into the courtroom was too much for Steve to handle.

“Maybe we should just forget the case and I just turn myself in and accept the consequences.”

“No! We’ve come too far to just give up now.” Andy tried to reason with Steve to reassure him that he did the right thing. He placed his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Piercing blue eyes staring into the other man’s identical eyes. It was almost like looking in a mirror.

Before they left the courthouse Andy made Steve agree to sleep on it and not make a rash decision to give up.

Day 4: Defense Witnesses/Closing Arguments

The next day began as any other, however a somber mood had fallen over the courthouse. Andy had spent an hour reasoning with Steve about if he should take the stand. “It will either hurt your case or make them see the actual hero and man you are. There’s no inbetween. As your attorney, I think we should let the last witnesses testify and then decide whether or not to bring you to the stand.”

“Right now I’ll go with what you say, but if the jury needs to know I turned myself in and agreed to go on trial only as long as the rest of my team were released and their records erased,” Steve states pulling his long frame up from the chair.

“I’ll handle it in closing arguments. They will know where you stand.”

Court TV Reporter: sporting red, white and blue blazer “The fourth day of the trial has begun with hot Andy Barber leading the defense for Steve Rogers. The first witness being called today is Nick Fury, Commander of SHIELD. Commander Fury went on record defending Captain Steve Rogers’ impeccable service record. Fury eyed the prosecution critically as he spoke about the numerous times Rogers had led his team through the dangers that the American public had no idea about due to national security. While the procustion tried to pressure Fury in answering detailed questions regarding specific cases, he calmly and tactfully told them in true Fury fashion that it was none of their business based on national security.

Based on the information Andy received he was fully prepared to handle Tony Stark as a hostile witness.

Tony walked up to stand and as he was sworn in he looked over at his long time friend and ally and took a deep breath. Steve was and will always be his friend, no matter what happened in the past. He could now see from Steve’s point of view after everything that has happened that the Accords would need a lot of fine tuning in order or any of them to continue to do what they did best. Save the world.

He had based his assessment of the Accords due to the attack at the U.N., Sokovia, Washington, and New York. Yes maybe at the time they needed to have some accountability. Someone to keep them in check, but after seeing what the division had done to him and the rest of the team; the family. His anger fueled by the knowledge that The Winter Soldier was responsible for the death of his parents. Not understanding that Bucky had no control over what he’d done. The look on his face showed that. Showed the regret and guilt for what he had done.

***

Closing arguments Prosecution: Ladies and gentlemen the only question in front of you today is if Steve Rogers is guilty of breaking the laws outlined within the Sokovia Accords. Whether he signed it or not has little consequence in this matter. The law is the law for humans and enhanced individuals. I employ you to look past his good nature and only at the facts. Captain Rogers helped cause a conflict among his teammates and aided and embedded James Barnes. With this information at hand you have only one choice to make, what should be done with this former American Hero.

Closing Arguments Defense: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury the only crime that has been committed is hindering this great man from doing his job, that of protecting the people of this nation as well as others from the threats of this world. We have seen attacks brought upon us in forms we cannot imagine. Now, Steve Rogers sits on trial for treason. Treason for what? Helping others and protecting them from the unrighteousness set into play by individuals and organizations who would harm our nation? Captain Rogers willingly turned himself into the government to be placed upon trial so the rest of his team would be released and their records erased. This is the sacrifice made by not a soldier but a good man. Overall, the prosecution has provided no evidence that this man should be found guilty of anything. This trial ladies and gentleman has been a joke, a witch hunt against a superhero defending the country and world.

A mummbring could be heard throughout the courtroom as the trail was turned over into the hands of the jury for deliberation. Steve now could only wait with Andy to see where his fate lay.

Day 5: Verdict

“Is it normal for a verdict to come in so soon?” Steve asks the guard as he quickly straightens his tie. Andy runs into the courthouse and meets Steve outside the courtroom once he heard the news that the jury had already come back with a decision. With bated breath the two sat silently waiting for the jury to enter.

The foreman handed a piece of paper to the judge and the whole room went silent, it was like there was no one else in the room but him. His heart raced and his palms sweat with anticipation. Whatever the outcome he would take his licks like had always done. He was a man of honor and integrity. He had a deal. His life for that of his team; his family.

***

Court TV Reporter: Sporting a red blazer and sharp blue paint suit. “Breaking news: a verdict has been reached in the trial against Captain Steve Rogers. We are waiting in anticipation for Andy Barber to address the press.” The camera pans to the courthouse steps where Andy walks out onto the steps.

“Mr. Barber, what was the outcome of the trial? Was Steve found innocent? Where is he? What is your impression of the prosecution? Will you appeal?” Questions rain down upon Andy like a storm.

***

The trial was a whirlwind that seemed to end quickly. Speculations could be heard throughout the crowd that the outcome could not have been good for the jury to have come back with a verdict so quickly. A hush fell over the crowd of reporters and onlookers from both sides.

“Captain Steve Rogers has been found innocent.” Andy began. “Thank you to all the men and women of the jury that has found this man innocent of treason. They found no evidence that Captain Rogers could be remotely capable of betraying his country. Once again they have shown that this man is a man of true heroism.”

From the crowd you can hear one last question shouted towards Andy and Steve. “Either or both of you gentlemen free tonight?” Steve and Andy smirk.

#avengers bingo #star spangled bingo #steve rogers #andy barber #anon-ask #angst #steve rogers x andy barber #chris evans #captain america #tony stark #mcu #mcu fanfiction #ssb2020

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marzipanandminutiae · 5 years ago

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What do you think about the costumes in the movie Chicago?

I didn’t, much, until now. They’re mostly in-universe costumes that owe a bit more to 1990s Broadway dancer fashion than actual 1920s stage-wear, and the few historical looks you see have always been Good Enough™ in my eyes. Roxie’s dress in We Both Reached For the Gun is appropriately shapeless and below-knee-length; the outerwear features enough cloche hats and slouchy coats to keep me satisfied. Velma’s courtroom dress is a bit too fitted for the time period, but show me a 1920s movie that doesn’t play fast and loose with the admittedly unflattering silhouette.

The iconic black and white stage costumes, like I said, don’t look overly 1920s. Fringe wasn’t nearly as popular back then as we think nowadays, mostly because it was all real silk, expensive, and heavy. Not great for energetic dancing. The short, tight-fitting dresses were pretty on-brand for the era, though, as far as showgirls’ costumes went.

(This is a pretty typical example of what I found. Maybe the fringe started as a way to mimic feathers? You see a lot of feathers in burlesque dancer outfits from the ‘20s. As you can tell, the fit wasn’t always quite as precise as we can get now with modern stretch fabrics, but the idea was still clearly to show off the figure as much as possible.)

The rest of the costumes for the musical numbers are about the same: not strictly accurate, but not appalling either.

Overall nothing takes me out of the setting, costume-wise, and I’m satisfied with that.

#ask #anon #chicago #Anonymous

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roseisread · 6 years ago

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My Year in Movies: Favorite Non-2018 Feature Films (Part 3)

In case you missed it, check out part 1 and part 2! Now picking up where we left off...

28. My Cousin Vinny (1992, directed by Jonathan Lynn, country of origin: US)

I know, I know. I can’t believe it either. But I really hadn’t seen this one til just a few short months ago. Marisa Tomei is, of course, a megababe in it; and Joe Pesci wears the hell out of some ridiculous outfits as he portrays a very unconventional defense attorney trying to help his cousin and a friend beat a murder charge. I laughed and laughed and cheered and laughed some more. Best courtroom scenes I watched all year, (and I watched A Few Good Men this year so that’s saying something). If this is still a blind spot for you, or you just want to revisit it, you can rent it on Amazon for 99 cents right now.

27. After Hours (1985, directed by Martin Scorsese, country of origin: US)

Talk about things that escalate quickly: In this movie, Griffin Dunne’s character Paul meets a fellow book lover/manic pixie dream girl type (Rosanna Arquette). However, when he accepts her invitation for a late night rendezvous at her place, she quickly turns into a manic pixie nightmare girl. By morning, Paul finds himself a fugitive on suspicion of burglary, sex crimes, and murder in a neighborhood it’s safe to say he will never visit again. It’s a more heightened, comedic take on the classic “wrongfully accused” genre, and Dunne plays every note of desperation perfectly. You can watch this for free on Vudu, or rent on other streaming platforms.

26. The Big Clock (1948, directed by John Farrow, country of origin: US)

The Big Clock actually has a few things in common with the aforementioned After Hours--hardworking New York City guy agrees to drinks with possibly sketchy woman and winds up the prime suspect in a murder. The whole thing takes place over a 36-hour period, and as you might guess the Clock of the title is ticking. The cast is great--Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan--and the film balances humor and suspense with ease. Fun fact, the movie is directed by John Farrow, father of Mia. The movie is available for online rental through Amazon, Vudu, and iTunes.

25. The Doll (1919, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, country of origin: Germany)

I adore Ernst Lubitsch, who directed The Shop Around The Corner, To Be or Not To Be, Trouble in Paradise, and Design for Living. Before his English-language talkies, however, he got his start in Germany with silent films like Die Puppe (The Doll). Starring the effervescent Ossi Oswalda (basically the silent era’s Greta Gerwig), this comic fantasy skewers romantic conventions.

Lancelot is a young prince who must marry in order to receive his inheritance; but he’s afraid of women (or possibly gay... it’s easy to read it that way). He buys what he think is a life-like doll to deceive his family and avoid marriage to a real girl; but little does he know Ossi is actually a real girl pretending to be a doll. It’s all very silly and over the top and winking, and also one of the most hilarious and charming rom-coms this side of the Hallmark channel. The physical comedy is outstanding, the social commentary is scathing, and Ossi is the hero we didn’t know we needed. There are a few versions floating around on YouTube or you can rent it for a few bucks on Amazon. I caught it on Filmstruck during a Lubitsch spotlight, and my life has never been the same.

24. Talk To Her (2002, directed by Pedro Almodovar, country of origin: Spain)

Pedro Almodovar can take the most seemingly absurd situation or plot contrivance and draw out something truly human and moving. He excels at shining a light on damaged but compelling characters, and doing everything with such style and panache that you let your guard down completely and before you know it you’re rooting for someone you ordinarily would scoff at from a distance. This movie’s story focuses on two comatose women and their caretakers, and delves into the limits of love and consent in fascinating, disturbing ways. I had no idea where this film was going but I was with it every second. Available for rent on most online platforms.

23. Crash (1996, directed by David Cronenberg, country of origin: Canada)

From the king of body horror, David Cronenberg, comes a movie about people who find eroticism where most people would find repulsion. Based on the controversial book by J.G. Ballard, this film follows a group of people who are aroused by car accidents and the injuries that result from metal and flesh colliding. It sounds macabre and at times it is, but under the surface are deeper themes that question what is considered “normal” versus “fetish” and why bodies that are whole and untarnished are worshiped while those that have distinguishing marks are tossed aside. There’s also certainly a critique of consumerism and cars as status symbols, and probably a lot more I missed on first viewing. Who better to portray a sexual deviant than James Spader? He’s joined by Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas (you’ll never think of Casey Jones the same way again), Deborah Kara Unger, and Rosanna Arquette. This is a tough one to track down--nowhere online right now, and it’s out of print on physical media; but if you see it at a thrift store or your local library, check it out.

22. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, directed by Robert Wiene, country of origin: Germany)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of those movies that gets referenced a lot but I still wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this silent German Expressionist film. Sometimes watching such a revered classic can be a little daunting--will I like as much as I’m “supposed to”? Thankfully, I did. Basically all of goth culture could probably trace its lineage back to this weird, creepy, twisty film. The elaborate, off-kilter set design and mind-bending story got under my skin in the best way. I won’t say much about the plot--just watch it (on YouTube unofficially or rentable on various streaming services).

21. Duck Soup (1933, directed by Leo McCarey, country of origin: US)

My introduction to the Marx Brothers was A Night at the Opera, and I went gaga for their rapid-fire verbal gymnastics and their gonzo physical comedy. This film takes it to the next level and throws in some political satire for good measure. So many incredible, iconic routines; song and dance sequences; and dialogue that you have to watch at least 4 times to catch all the jokes. I’m officially a fan of the Marx Brothers after this. You can rent it on most streaming sources, but I’m guessing if you have a male relative over the age of 50 you could probably borrow it from their collection. It’s very popular with Dad/Uncle demographic, and I can see why.

20. They Live by Night (1948, directed by Nicholas Ray, country of origin: US)

Nicholas Ray is quickly becoming one of my all time favorite directors. Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, The Racket, and now They Live By Night--just stunning movies about troubled souls who don’t quite fit in with the rest of the world. This film lays the template for so many that would come after it: Young couple, good girl falls for bad boy, they go on the run from the law, love is not all you need.

When things are good, they’re really good and lead characters Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) and Bowie (Farley Grainger) are rapturously crazy in love. But they also bicker believably when the past begins to bleed into the present, leading to one of my favorite exchanges in the film. Bowie confronts Keechie about her whereabouts, and when she informs him she’s been to the doctor “about the baby we’re gonna have,” he bursts out, “That’s all I need!” She fires back, “You don’t see me knittin’ anything, do ya?”

This is a Criterion film, so you may have to get it from the library or catch it on TCM until the Criterion streaming service launches later this spring. Either way, it’s a must-watch, especially if you love movies like Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde.

19. Paprika (2006, directed by Satoshi Kon, country of origin: Japan)

Look, I love Inception as much as the next person, but now that I’ve seen Paprika I must admit Christopher Nolan owes a major debt to Satoshi Kon for the way he portrays dreams and reality intersecting in uncanny ways. The difference is Satoshi Kon did it with much more weirdness and color and unsettling body horror. Don’t ask me to explain this movie, I’m not even 100% sure it can be unraveled all the way into a linear structure; but it is zany and wonderful in the best way. There’s no Tom Hardy but there is a girl who turns into a butterfly and a band of frogs and a creepy clown and a really fat guy who’s in love with the smart scientist lady... I’m telling you, you gotta see this thing. You can stream it for free on Crackle; otherwise it’s a $2.99 rental from Amazon and Vudu.

18. Good Time (2017, directed by the Safdie Brothers, country of origin: US)

If you missed this in 2017, PLEASE watch it now. Robert Pattinson gives his career best performance as a fast talking petty criminal trying to get his mentally handicapped brother out of jail after making him an accomplice to his own crimes. The soundtrack by Oneohtrix Point Never combined with the Safdie Brothers mesmerizing cinematography make for a hypnotic, propulsive viewing experience. Newcomer Taliah Webster delivers an excellent supporting performance as an unwitting sidekick partway through the film. Watch for free on Amazon Prime or rent on Vudu or YouTube.

17. Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962, directed by Agnes Varda, country of origin: France)

My first foray into the filmography of Agnes Varda, and I loved it. Cleo, a French pop singer, spends a couple hours trying to distract herself from anxiety and dread as she awaits the results of a biopsy. She buys a hat, plays with her kittens, and argues with her male collaborators over song choices.

Eventually she meets a stranger and they walk around Paris in a vignette that almost certainly influenced Richard Linklater’s entire milieu. Cleo mulls her possible fate and concludes “as long as I’m beautiful, I’m alive”--a notion Blondie would later reference in their tongue in cheek tune “Die Young, Stay Pretty.” But as much as she is fixated on her appearance, she finds herself struggling to be taken seriously by men who dismiss her because of her beauty.

Special shout out to Michel Legrand, who we learned today has left the mortal plane: He composed the lovely score for this film and also appears in it as Cleo’s pianist.

I watched this on the now-defunct Filmstruck, but it’s part of the Criterion Collection so your best bet is probably getting it from the library or waiting for it to show up when Criterion’s streaming service launches later this spring.

16. Happy Together (1997, directed by Wong Kar-Wai, country of origin: Hong Kong)

Wong Kar-Wai captures unfulfilled romantic longing on film better than just about anyone. If you’ve seen In the Mood for Love or Chungking Express you already know this. Happy Together turns the director’s eye once again toward people on a collision course of love, lust, and disfunction. Leslie Cheung (RIP) and Tony Leung portray a couple hoping their toxic relationship will hit the reset button with a change of scenery when they relocate from Hong Kong to Argentina. At times their passion manifests as tenderness, as in a moving dance sequence; other times, volatility erupts into violence. When one of them meets someone new, the possibility of a simpler, sweeter kind of love offers an alternative to the cycle of codependency and betrayal. This one is out of print right now on DVD, but check your local library or used movie store and you may get lucky.

15. La Dolce Vita (1960, directed by Federico Fellini, country of origin: Italy)

You’ve got sumptuous Italian vistas, Marcello Mastroianni being gorgeous, Anita Ekberg dancing in the fountain, and a bunch of hedonism that leads down a path of inevitable emptiness and/or destruction. Personally, I prefer this one to Fellini’s 8 1/2--it’s filled with so many scenes that could work as stand alone short films; and there’s more humor and exuberance here than in his better known, meta film experience. The 174 minute runtime may seem intimidating but for me it flew by. Available with Filmbox on Amazon right now, also part of the Criterion Collection.

14. Cooley High (1975, directed by Michael Schultz, country of origin: US)

If you’ve enjoyed movies like Dazed and Confused, American Graffiti, Boyz N the Hood, or even Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you should really watch Cooley High. Filmed in Chicago, it follows a group of friends in high school as they skip class in favor of visiting the Lincoln Park zoo, recite poetry, go to parties, make out with girls, get into fights, and navigate the tenuous border between youth and adulthood. Full of laughs, heart, and clear-eyed realism in place of the occasional sentimentality that seeps into movies about “young folks,” this must-see of Black cinema influenced independent filmmakers like Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino. You can rent it on Vudu, or pick up a physical copy on Blu-ray or DVD.

13. Poltergeist (1982, directed by Tobe Hooper, country of origin: US)

Out of all the major blindspots I caught up with in 2018, this is the one that both impressed me the most and made me wonder why it took me this long to see it. I think I just assumed that it would be super cheesy or super scary or somehow both? Needless to say, I was wrong. It’s a blast! Funny, scary (but in a way I loved), original, and one of the best portrayals of family I’ve seen on screen. I now plan to watch this at least once a year to celebrate Halloween the same way that I watch Independence Day on July 4th, Elf/Jingle All the Way/Christmas Vacation at Christmas, and Nightmare Before Christmas/Donnie Darko for Halloween. I’m sure that everyone else in the world has seen it, but if you by some chance have not, go watch it right now! It’s available for rent on YouTube, Amazon, and GooglePlay.

12. Arthur (1981, directed by Steve Gordon, country of origin: US)

This one really surprised me. I became vaguely aware of its existence around the release of the terribly reviewed Russell Brand version; but no idea what to expect when I impulsively clicked the “watch now” button on Filmstruck. At first, Dudley Moore came across as an obnoxious drunken boor, but as I kept watching I realized the levels to his character went much deeper than it seemed at first. John Gielgud immediately won me over as Arthur’s butler Hobson, who loves Arthur like a son despite his many shenanigans. Then Liza Minnelli shows up on screen and isn’t she cute as a button! If you only know her as Lucille II from Arrested Development, you really owe it to yourself to see her in her heyday. You might not think Buster is so crazy for embracing “our nausea.”

This movie became one of my favorite romantic comedies, in some ways a Cinderella story and in some ways a coming of age story and in most ways something wholly original. It’s a very special film, and deserves a wider audience among today’s movie fans. It’s a $1.99 rental on most platforms right now, so you have no excuse.

11. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, directed by Robert Altman, country of origin: US)

I knocked out a few Altman films last year, and they were all good but this one was my favorite. I’m not always a fan of Westerns, but this one, which finds Julie Christie’s Madam teaming up with Warren Beatty’s Gambler to open a brothel, well, it’s different. I have a feeling Altman (and maybe his cast) watched Johnny Guitar, an earlier entry on my list, because this is another case in which a powerful woman with a mind for business upends the natural order of things (aka men being in charge).

The writing here is wonderful, especially the dialogue, which includes such gems as “You know how to square a circle? Shove a four by four up a mule’s ass!” but also some more gentle, sweet exchanges and voiceover. There are also some gorgeous shots in this film, unsurprising with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond on board (who also shot Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Deliverance, and Blow Out just to name a few).

Watch it via rental on Amazon, GooglePlay, or iTunes.

Next up: The Top 10! Stay tuned!

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johnfkennedyjunior · 6 years ago

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Citizen Kennedy On the run from the press all his life, John F Kennedy Jr. joins the media pack. (September, 1995)

It is an overcast, chilly Friday, but the crowd in the ballroom of Detroit’s Westin Hotel is feverish. In the Adcraft Club’s ninety-year history, only Lee Iacocca has drawn more people to a speech. But today’s guest has set pulses revving faster than even Iacocca ever could.

Sighs (“I made eye contact with him!”) and whispers (“His jawline is perfect!”) and four burly guards accompany John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. as he circles the room to the blue-swagged dais. Women creep forward, their cameras flash-framing to capture that famous, evocative face.

After lunch, Phil Guarascio, the sleek advertising master of General Motors, takes the podium and ticks off the handsome young speaker’s accomplishments: his education at Brown University and NYU Law School; stints with the United Nations in India, with economic-development outfits in New York, and with the U. S. Attorney General’s Honor Program; his role in founding a group that helps educate health-care workers; and, most notably, his four years as an assistant district attorney in the office of New York City crimebuster Robert Morgenthau.

But it’s not his resume that’s brought this mob out to hear the thirty-four-year-old son of the country’s thirty-fifth president and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the eternal icon. It’s not even their moist interest in his celebrated romances with Daryl Hannah and other beauties. Nor is it to stare at the buffed pecs and thighs, often captured in Central Park grab shots by New York’s tabloids but today hidden under a dark, conservative suit. No, this crowd has come to learn about the future of the man they still think of as John John.

“I’m well aware of the expectation that sooner or later I would be giving a speech about politics,” he says. “So here I am, I’m delighted to say, fulfilling that expectation.” He speaks a bit more about his career, his prospects, his hope that he’ll do the right thing. Finally, the excitement building, he tells the crowd what it wants to hear.

“I hope eventually to end up as president,” says John F. Kennedy Jr. Three beats. “Of a very successful publishing venture.”

The nineteen hundred car and ad people explode into laughter and applause. They know that this charmer has come to their city to flack the riskiest venture of a pampered life indelibly marked by tragedy: a magazine he’ll launch in September about the family business-politics. More than a few of them will buy ad pages in the publication curiously named George (for George Washington), gambling that Kennedy’s sizzle will attract readers to a subject that Americans love to hate and have never much wanted to read about.

What they don’t fully realize is that they are present at the creation of the latest and most dramatic chapter of the Kennedy saga: a rite of passage of the family’s-if not America’s-crown prince. For much of his life, John F. Kennedy Jr. has been what he seemed-a dilettante, unable to commit to a woman or a career. Now he thinks he has found a way to fulfill his daunting genetic destiny-one that shows his sure grasp of what being a Kennedy is really all about. In his grandfather’s day, money was power. In his father’s day, politics was power. In his own day, media is power. By charging boldly into its realm, John Jr. may prove to be the most genuine Kennedy of his generation.

* * *

“DON’T LET THEM STEAL your soul,” Jackie Onassis would warn her children. John has seemingly spent the last dozen years trying to distance himself from the family legend. Until his full name turned into an advertising draw, he preferred to style himself simply John Kennedy, like at least a half dozen other New Yorkers.

For most people, the montage of images,, triggered by mention of this John Kennedy begins with the picture of a little boy saluting his father’s coffin on a gray November day barely within his memory’s reach. Ever since, he’s held himself a little apart. At the fashionable parties he frequents, he’s had a way of inching his back around to fend off the approach of strangers. That practiced self-protective instinct, the flip side of the intense attention he pays when he does decide to engage someone, has usually served to wall him off from unwanted overtures.

That wall was constructed, solidly and with great difficulty, by his mother. From the moment of her son’s birth by cesarean section on November 25, 1960, two and a half weeks after his father was elected president, the new First Lady tried to shield him and his older sister, Caroline. But President Kennedy didn’t play that way. He plainly understood how the image of a happy family could protect him, as it had his own father, from the consequences of his own philandering. So when Jackie was out of town, he’d contrive to sneak photo opportunities with the kids in the Oval Office.

President Kennedy was assassinated three days before his son’s third birthday. Within a year, Jacqueline Kennedy had created a new life for herself and her offspring in New York, where she later enrolled John and Caroline in private schools. The children became independently wealthy in 1968 when their mother married the squat Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. By the terms of President Kennedy’s will, a trust fund he’d inherited from his father passed to his children upon his widow’s remarriage. John H. Davis, a Bouvier cousin, believes that trust fund doubled in value during the sixties, leaving John and Caroline with about $10 million each.

Onassis helped shield the Kennedys from prying eyes and provided them with the money to support a lifestyle even more lavish than the one they’d experienced in the White House. But the billionaire degraded Jackie by blatantly continuing his longtime affair with diva Maria Callas. And when he died in 1975, he showed his contempt for her by leaving her, John, and Caroline a pittance in his will. An ugly legal battle with Onassis’s daughter, Christina, ended with a settlement that gave Jackie more than $20 million. Maurice Tempelsman, the diamond merchant who became Jackie’s consort in later life, helped her invest that money and plump her estate to somewhere around $100 million, Davis estimates.

The money didn’t free John Jr. from his family’s past and expectations-at New York’s Collegiate School, he was shadowed by Secret Service agents and regularly saw a psychiatrist-but his whispery lioness of a mother raised him to sidestep the family’s darker edge. His cousins might act like a pack of druggy Keystone Kennedys, Uncle Ted might screw and screw up, and Aunt Lee could wind up a fashion flack, but John and Caroline kept their heads down and emerged as decent, intelligent, modest, and good-natured young people.

* * *

POLITICS BECKONED early; public service had a strong plan on John. “He has a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility” his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a few years ago. “Whenever any of the cousins need help on one of their projects-whether it’s the Special Olympics or the RFK Human Rights or journalism awards or the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation awards John participates.” He helped his cousins Joseph and Patrick Kennedy win House seats and pitched in on cousin Kathleen Kennedy Towns end’s successful bid for lieutenant governor in Maryland. He showed up in court for his cousin Willie Smith’s trial on rape charges. “He’s got a very strong sense of responsibility, but he’s not overwhelmed by it,” said Bobby Jr. “He’s very comfortable with it.”

Comfortable, perhaps, but strangely without passion. When Kennedy went to law school, he was following his sister and six cousins who had studied or were studying to become attorneys. Even his mid-1989 decision to become an assistant district attorney in New York tracked the family record: His uncle Ted had prepped for his first Massachusetts Senate race by serving as an assistant DA in Suffolk County. “John said his heart was never really in it,” says someone who served in the DA’s office with him. “He was doing it for his mother.”

While he waited for the verdict on his New York State bar exam, which Caroline had passed on her first try a few months earlier, John started work as a $30,000-a-year prosecutor. Although this was a competitive position, Bob Morgenthau’s office was also a hiring hall for famous sons. Andrew Cuomo, Cyrus Vance Jr., and Dan Rather Jr. have worked there, as have the sons of Rhode Island senator John Chafee, labor leader Victor Gotbaum, and New York City Council speaker Peter Vallone. So had John’s cousin Bobby Jr., before his resignation amid charges of drug abuse.

John was assigned to the Special Prosecutions Bureau, which handles low-level crimes ranging from corruption, fraud, con games, and check bouncing to arson and car theft. Kennedy was placed thereat first because “we clearly didn’t want him in the trial division,” says Mike Cherkasky, then chief of the DA’s investigative division. “We didn’t want the attention to distract him.”

That fall, John learned he’d failed the bar exam. “John didn’t take the test seriously,” says a fellow assistant DA. He learned he’d flunked a second time (by 11 points out of a needed 660 at the end of April. Although more than half of the other twenty-five hundred aspirants failed as well, only Kennedy was ridiculed on the front pages of the New York tabloids, all three of which used variations of “Hunk Flunks.”

Even so, John kept his cool. “I’m clearly not a major legal genius,” he said.

“He held up under unbelievable pressure,” says Owen Carragher Jr., his officemate at the time. John even kept smiling when a maitre d’ with wobbly English accosted him while he was having a consolation beer, and said, “I heard news you failed! I’m glad!”

Kennedy played his part in the public perception that he was a lightweight. He made his first courtroom appearance as a witness in a case against an immigration officer who’d been charged with making illegal raids and pocketing confiscated money only to have to admit that he didn’t know the title of the landmark Supreme Court case that made the Miranda rights part of every cop’s lexicon. Even after Kennedy laid out $1,000 for a six-week bar-review course, it wasn’t clear that he cared about the exam, especially after he was photographed “studying” poolside at a Los Angeles hotel. But he did pass, earning a $1,000 raise and the right to try cases in court. In his first solo prosecution, he went up against a burglar who was caught asleep in his victim’s bed, his pockets stuffed with her jewelry. He eventually graduated to bigger cases involving Mafia families, labor racketeering at a big newspaper, and construction fraud, but one state-supreme-court judge before whom he’d appeared said, “I don’t think he had the potential to be a great trial lawyer. His passion lies elsewhere.”

Eventually, he won a share of respect from bosses and coworkers. “There’s a premium on certain intellectual as opposed to advocacy skills in investigations,” says Cherkasky. ` John fit that.” Working on what’s called “intake” once a month, interviewing complainants off the street, he proved a natural at getting people to open up and at judging when they were telling the truth.

After two and a half years in the DA’s office, Kennedy transferred to a trial bureau. “He wanted something quicker,” says Carragher. “He wanted the action. He wanted to do a trial where the defendant wasn’t asleep.”

In his first case in the trial bureau, he prosecuted two men who’d run a chicken stand in Harlem that burned down just after they took out fire insurance. An accelerant had been lit with a match in the store, but the evidence against the owners was circumstantial, and the only witness was a felon who didn’t want to testify. Kennedy extracted the testimony he needed during a complex, three-week trial. “It was a loser and John won it,” says Carragher.

That, and others. In four years as an assistant DA-a year longer than the normal term of service-Kennedy had a perfect 6-0 conviction record. A political career now seemed logical. When Kennedy had introduced Uncle Teddy at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, he’d electrified the delegates by invoking his father’s name. “So many of you came into public service because of him,” Kennedy said in a prime-time speech. “In a very real sense, because of you, he is with us still.” The two-minute ovation that followed seemed a fitting kickoff to his first campaign.

During John’s law-school years, he and several friends had convened weekly “issues meetings,” sessions that Bobby Kennedy Jr. characterized as “just a private thing that he does.” Might they lead to elected office? “It’s something that, you know, you never say never and it’s obviously a source of interest, but I’ll just see,” John equivocated shortly before quitting the DAs office. “I don’t really know.”

* * *

JOHN MAY HAVE OWED at least some of his indecision to a more pressing interest in the Kennedys’ other familial pursuit: sexual conquest. A glorious mosaic of women threw themselves at John Jr. At the district attorney’s, a cleaning woman who’d squabbled with Carragher and stopped cleaning his office began spending hours a day in it once John moved in. “She dusted the underside of the desk,” Carragher says. “She just wouldn’t leave.” Paralegals had to screen deliveries and open John’s mail, which often contained unsolicited pictures of women. Once, an admirer sent a cappuccino machine.

Kennedy is a gentleman. “He doesn’t pick up girls and screw them and dump them out of the car,” says a woman who has known him a long time. “He’s pretty tame for a guy who’s that good-looking.” But at the same time, he’s no innocent. Womanizing-and pride in it-is, as historian Garry Wills has pointed out, “a very important and conscious part of the male Kennedy mystique.” John, blessed with looks almost as stirring as his name, was an early enthusiast. A prep-school classmate, when asked what he thought young Kennedy would be doing in ten years, answered plainly: “Dating.”

As an old friend puts it, “He got around a lot. He didn’t capitalize on it. Things just came his way.”

John’s one foray into filmmaking, a 1990 coming-of-age movie written by, produced by and starring college friends and called A Matter of Degrees, played on the young man’s studly proclivities. Identified in the credits as a “guitar-playing Romeo,” he had a tiny role as a fellow consumed with coupling. In one scene, he strums his instrument and tunelessly proclaims to an adoring paramour, “Oh, baby, I can’t live without your love.” Moments later, he is shown quarreling with the woman.

“What does it matter what we do when we’re not together?” he pleads with her.

“Because when we’re not together,” she answers, “you’re fucking Alison,” referring to another of his love interests.

Like his grandfather, who used to keep Gloria Swanson around even while his wife, Rose, was on hand, and his father, who pursued Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, and Gene Tierney. John Kennedy Jr. has long favored actresses. His longest and most notable liaison was with Daryl Hannah, herself rich and social. They first met as youngsters on vacation with their families on St. Martin. They met again after John’s aunt Lee Radziwill married Herb Ross, who had directed Hannah in the film Steel Magnolias.

That this affair-and numerous others-was carried on in public showed John to be more like his mother than his father. Just like Jackie O., her son can be a furtive exhibitionist. When he strips off his shirt to play Frisbee in the park, when he smooches girls on street corners or coaxes them into shorts at sea, he’s cruising for the cameras, just as his mother was when she unknowingly “posed” for her famous topless photos on Ari Onassis’s island, Skorpios.

Kennedy has kept his voice out of the public record except in carefully crafted snippets, but he puts himself on view with insouciance. He can afford the privacy and luxury of limousines, yet he propels himself around town on Rollerblades and a bicycle. “Aristocrats are dangerously uninhibited men,” writes Nelson W Aldrich Jr., a chronicler of the American upper class. “Like David the King and [Fitzgerald's] Tom Buchanan, they are sensual, ruthless, and intemperate.”

The story is told that John used to walk around the campus of Brown in gym shorts so brief they emphasized an endowment almost as impressive as the university’s. In New York, he has continued to flaunt himself. When he lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, even after he was declared the sexiest man alive, he used to sprawl at an outdoor table at the Jackson Hole hamburger joint, shirt off. One neighborhood woman says Kennedy would stop her to ask for the time. “My sense was that he was dying for attention, dying for people to look at him,” she says.

* * *

JOHN KENNEDY DEVELOPED a public image as a dilettante and nourished it as he grew. As early as 1983, he was dubbed “the least competitive Kennedy” in a book about the family. Once, asked whom he had admired as a child, he said, “I guess I have to answer that honestly. My role models were Mick Jagger and Muhammad Ali, actually.” Even as he spent his days prosecuting petty thieves and swindlers, he seemed to pour his heart mostly into partying and exercising; at one point, he belonged to three Manhattan health clubs at once. “If I had to pick a defect on him, I’d be hard put to find one,” Bobby Kennedy Jr. once said, “except that he pays more attention to his clothes than the rest of us.”

The effect wasn’t always salutary. He showed up at his thirtieth-birthday party in a custom-made maroon zoot suit and leopard wing tips.

His one consistent interest apart from women-acting-heightened the impression that he was unserious. By many accounts, he was a natural and precocious actor. “He’s got an incredible ear for mimicry, and he used to tell us all stories in an Irish brogue or in Russian character or Scottish,” his cousin Bobby once recounted. “This is starting when he was nine or ten years old, and he’d have all the grandchildren listening to him … A lot of us were a lot older than him, and he could keep us entertained.”

It didn’t take long for Kennedy’s hobby to bloom into a potential career path. He was only eighteen when the film producer Robert Stigwood offered him a role playing his father as a young man. That. didn’t happen, but other professional parts did.

Jackie Kennedy soon showed the world how iron her will could be when it came to her son’s future. “Jackie was a loving but extremely demanding mother,” says her cousin John Davis. “John wanted to be an actor, and she dissuaded him. She didn’t think it was a dignified profession. She didn’t like Hollywood at all.”

But Jackie’s friend Rudolf Nureyev criticized John for giving up the stage. “Show some balls!” the ballet star told him, according to author Diana DuBois. “Do what you want!”

One of John’s closest friends heatedly denies that his mother’s influence steered him from his own chosen path. “John has a compass,” he says. “He’s usually pointed in the right direction. Did Jackie guide him? Probably. But he went to law school because he likes to learn and law was a natural thing for him to do.”

Whatever the reason, John abandoned acting for membership on the board of Naked Angels, a society-oriented company that produces plays in Manhattan and benefit galas in the Hamptons.

With an acting career out of the question, John left the district attorney’s office in mid-1993 and seemed to plunge ever deeper into triviality. A very public manwithout-anything-special-to-do, he grew a goatee, showed up at parties for rock groups, and appeared at the opening of a technology installation created by his brother-in-law, Ed Schlossberg, that was held in the lobby of an office building.

He glided around the city like a tomcat. He moved from the Upper West Side to an apartment he shared with Daryl Hannah, then bought a loft in TriBeCa. It looked as if he was finally going to marry the big blond starlet: She was spotted buying an antique wedding dress at a flea market, and the couple went on a scuba trip to the South Pacific and Asia. “Daryl really liked him,” says Chicago gal-about-town and novelist Sugar Rautbord. “She was desperate to marry him.” But John couldn’t, or wouldn’t, commit. Only two months after tabloid reporters descended on Cape Cod, expecting a Kennedy-Hannah wedding, John was seen kissing Carolyn Bessette, a PR woman for Calvin Klein, near the finish line of the New York City Marathon.

* * *

FOR ALL HIS LESS THAN ZERO gadabouting, John was still struggling with the driving Kennedy will to succeed. “You don’t want to be a passenger on the liner,” he’d told Carragher when he quit as an assistant DA. Would he enroll at Harvard’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, or join the Clinton administration, or perhaps even run for Congress? Nothing came of any of it. (He turned down a House race, says Carragher, because “any semblance of privacy John has ever had, he’s had to fight for. The only claim he has to keep it is to remain a private citizen.”)

But the dynastic imperative can overwhelm an American aristocrat. “If society as a whole is to gain by mobility and openness of structure,” a former Harvard president, Charles W Eliot, once said of his class, “those who rise must stay up in successive generations, that the higher level of society may be constantly enlarged.” As Aldrich puts it, this craving for success follows a set pattern. For the founding generation, it’s all about money, ruthlessly acquired (by, say, bootlegging. For the next generation, public service (serving as senator, attorney general, president, for example becomes the vehicle, because nothing better highlights the freedom money conveys than selflessly boosting the commonweal.

The third generation, though, is often swept away by the liberties unsheathed by trust funds. They “exert a terrific centrifugal force on the spirits of their inheritors,” writes Aldrich, “constantly threatening to shoot them out into trackless space.”

Young John Kennedy has certainly seemed more trackless than most. But he was actually trying to keep his end of what Garry Wills calls the “Kennedy contract,” a compact whose components are “power, money, fame.” John Jr. had the latter as a birthright. He had enough of the second to keep him comfortable. All he lacked was the first.

* * *

JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS died of lymphatic cancer at 10:15 P.M. on May 19, 1994, in her Fifth Avenue apartment, with John, Caroline, and Maurice Tempelsman at her bedside. “John was at his desk at 8:30 A.M. the day after the burial,” a friend says. “He did exactly what Jackie would have done. He went back to work.”

What he was working on was a magazine. It was the first real risk of his professional life.

The idea had come to him a year and a half earlier, on a night shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president. Over dinner, John and a pal, Michael Berman, started talking about how the way people looked at politics had changed. “Politicians have taken their cue from the entertainment industry” is how John puts it. “Al Gore on David Letterman was that show’s number-one-rated show for that year.” He pauses and shakes his head in wonder. `Al Gore.”

Was there something in this for them? No one is sure who said it first, but the question was asked that fall night: “What about a magazine?”

The idea was intriguing. Existing political magazines, Kennedy believes, haven’t “caught up with the moment.” Then there were the other, larger issues a publication could capture-”power and personality, triumph and loss, the pursuit and price of ambition for its own sake and for something larger,” all subjects with which John has more than a nodding acquaintance. Despite the irony inherent in running precisely the sort of venture he’d been running away from all his life, he and Berman decided to give it a try.

They’d been friends for years. The son of a real estate developer from Princeton, New Jersey, Berman had prepped at Lawrenceville, earned a degree in history from Lafayette College, and then gone. into public relations. He met Kennedy through mutual friends on the city’s party scene in the early 1980s.

When John entered law school in 1986, he stayed in touch with Berman, and in 1988, they first went into business together. Kennedy had gone kayaking and come home raving about some handmade boats he called “the Rolls Royces of kayaks.” John wanted to buy out the small company in Maine that made them, manufacture kits, distribute them nationally, and teach others to make the kayaks. Nothing came of the plan, but the two men never abandoned the corporate entity they’d established to do the deal. It was called Random Ventures, which for the next six years seemed an apt description of John’s approach to life.

After Kennedy became an assistant DA, Berman evolved into John’s Sancho Panza. “The press became an issue,” says a close friend. So whenever a media problem came up, John suggested that the DA’s overworked press office hand it off to Berman. “At first, it was once every three months,” John’s friend says. “Then it was every three days.” After John failed the bar exam for the second time, the calls started coming every couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Berman was building his own PR business, representing clients like Cointreau, Pfizer pharmaceuticals, DuraSoft, and the Mexican tourist board. Although he was and remains a Democrat, he also helped run the annual White House Easter-egg roll throughout George Bush’s presidency. But by mid-1993, Berman was as eager to move out of PR work as John was to find a direction, so when the men came up with the idea for a magazine, they threw themselves into it with equal fervor.

Working first at a desk at Kennedy Enterprises and later from space in Berman’s office in New York’s Flatiron district, John used his name to secure meetings with potential backers, including Edgar Bronfman Jr., who, like young Kennedy, traced his money to the liquor business but wanted to make his own mark in the world. “Every door was open to them,” says a friend of John’s. “But that was good news and bad news. Did these people believe, or did they just want to meet John?” Berman and Kennedy would joke about charging a million dollars for a first meeting with potential investors, because that was really all many of them wanted.

Kennedy’s mother set up a meeting between John and her friend Joe Armstrong, who’d worked in magazine publishing for twenty years. “John was determined not to do what people expected,” Armstrong says. Soon, he, Kennedy, and Berman were meeting regularly.

The impulse behind the magazine, at least at first, was high-minded. Berman and Kennedy wanted it to be populist, nonpartisan, and centered on process instead of personalities or party politics. They thought that would appeal to people aged twenty to forty who felt disenfranchised by politics but still wanted access to the circles of power. The magazine would have a small circulation based more on subscriptions than newsstand sales. “Publishing,” says Armstrong, recounting his meetings with Kennedy, “looked like a way to approach public service and keep a balance in his life.”

Unfortunately, few of the people they talked to were interested in helping young Kennedy work it all out. When Jann Wenner, a longtime Kennedy-family friend, heard of the project after reading about it in a media newsletter, he was irate. “What’s this about?” he allegedly asked John. “You better see me immediately. Politics doesn’t sell. It’s not commercial.”

Using some of the family’s media contacts, Kennedy and Berman wended their way through the tight inner circles of the New York-based magazine industry, a gossipy enclave whose nervous denizens simultaneously pray for new publications that might employ them and denigrate any new idea that isn’t their own. In connect-the-dots fashion, they talked to several former editors at 7 Days, an upscale New York weekly that flamed and then flopped in the early 1990s. “It was very much amateur hour,” says one of the many people whose brains were picked.

* * *

BY FALL 1994, BERMAN AND KENNEDY were getting dispirited. “People didn’t get it,” a friend of John’s says. “It wasn’t an easy sell.” They’d won the promise of about s3 million in funding, but their advisers warned that it wasn’t enough. Finally, to scare up more interest, they leaked the venture to the gossip columns.

Some were surprised that Kennedy was joining the very craft that had hounded him so mercilessly throughout his life, forgetting that his grandfather had palled around with journalists-had even chased skirts with New York Times Washington columnist Arthur Krock-decades before. His mother, too, had built a sweet career in patrician publishing, editing celebrity and art books at Doubleday, and President Kennedy, so his son was told, had hoped to run a newspaper after leaving the White House. “I think the idea was somewhat inevitable,” John says of the magazine he’d started calling George. “Both my parents not only loved words but spent a good part of at least their professional lives in the word business.”

Undeterred by the naysayers, Berman and Kennedy decided in late 1994 to test their idea by mailing solicitations for the nonexistent George to 150,000 people whose names were drawn from other magazines’ subscription lists. The offer, for a twenty-four-dollar-a-year charter subscription, was aimed mostly at media junkies; the copy said less about George than about other magazines. “George is to politics what Rolling Stone is to music. Forbes is to business. Allure is to beauty Premiere is to films,” read the piece. It was a “soft” offer that didn’t require a check, but the response was encouraging. Mailings that didn’t mention Kennedy’s name got a solid 5 percent response; those that did attracted even more, 5.7 percent.

Sensing, finally, that something might happen with their project, Kennedy and Berman also began changing. The high-mindedness with which they’d originally approached the venture began slowly giving way to a desire to succeed, whatever changes in tone, look, or content that required.

George Lois found this out shortly after he got involved with George.

The rumpled veteran adman, whose Esquire covers in the 1960s set the pace for international magazine design, was one of the many approached by the duo for input. “I’m the kind of schmuck, I got excited,” he says. “And suddenly I was designing his magazine.” Lois designed a logo-a truncated version of George Washington’s signature, pared down to his almost unreadable initials. Beneath it, Lois put the words WE CANNOT TELL A LIE.

Using his own money, Lois also produced a series of outrageous covers. Richard Nixon had just died, so he got Alger Hiss to pose for one, over a headline derived from a classic Esquire line about Nixon: WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING? A photograph of a torso in a pinstripe suit was captioned, TOTALLY NEW ADVICE TO FUTURE CANDIDATES: KEEP IT ZIPPED! A photograph of Barbra Streisand with a smudge on her nose ran with the line BROWN-NOSING: HOLLYWOOD DOES WASHINGTON, WASHINGTON DOES HOLLYWOOD.

Kennedy and Berman loved the covers-at first. “A week later, they’d tell me, `Everybody says you can’t do that,”‘ said Lois. After a few more meetings, he gave up. “If you want a safe magazine,” he told them, “you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Eventually, the notion of using George to stimulate involvement in politics joined irreverence on the sidelines as John and Berman started talking about politics as theater and their magazine as a glossy journal for the not entirely engaged.

“The basic concept,” says Roger Black, the design director of Esquire, who was consulted by the pair at that point, was “to be a half-fan, half-insider magazine, not a New Republic or a political-science journal. They felt people were ready for a magazine treating politics like entertainment.”

“Michael positioned it as a Vanity Fair-ish product,” says one of their consultants. “That wasn’t necessarily John’s first instinct.” But Kennedy quickly got with the program. “They wanted Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, nonpolitical writers,” says John’s close friend.

They edged even closer to glitz after Hachette Filipacchi Magazines got involved. The American arm of a giant French media company, Hachette is the nation’s fourth-largest magazine company, with twenty-two titles and $750 million in revenues. The company, which owns Elle and the successful but unglamorous Car and Driver and Road & Track, has expanded mainly via high-profile acquisitions. Here was an opportunity to get credit for starting something hot and turn America’s crown prince into a corporate hood ornament.

Hachette CEO David Pecker had been pursuing Kennedy and Berman ever since he’d heard about George at a benefit dinner in June 1994. After several months of unrequited messages and letters, John finally called him back. “I just want you to know we have a lot of interest, and not just in having lunch with John Kennedy” Pecker told him.

They finally met in December. Pecker subsequently studied the George projections and called some key potential advertisers, concentrating on the Detroit automobile manufacturers he’d dealt with in his fifteen years as a publisher of car magazines. Other meetings were arranged, with Jean-Louis Ginibre, Hachette’s editorial director, and then, over lunch at Le Bernardin, with Daniel Filipacchi, its chairman.

A fifty-fifty agreement was signed in mid-February between Hachette and the duo’s company, Random Ventures. Their venture wasn’t random anymore. Berman, now George’s executive publisher, sold his PR business and, with editor-in-chief Kennedy, moved into a conference room on the Hachette floor where Elle is produced. Not long afterward, they moved to a floor they share with, among others, the staffs of Elle Decor, Family Life, and Metropolitan Home.

Hachette, a company with a strong newsstand emphasis, isn’t interested in an earnest subscription-based magazine about issues and ideas. “Suddenly, the struggle over the direction of the magazine is very serious,” says someone who’s been inside George. “There are different conceptions. John is smart, but he lacks an edge. He’s one of the least assertive people you’ll ever meet; he’s never had to assert himself-he’s John Kennedy! Now, suddenly, he’s in a huge corporation. He wants a magazine of ideas with a sugar coating. They want a political People.”

Early on, Ginibre suggested renaming the magazine Criss-Cross, after the lines of power, money, and culture that circumscribe the fluid boundaries of its beat. Then, when some of the initial designs seemed to resemble Elle Decor and one of the editors expressed’ his doubts, the art director assigned to the project supposedly snapped, “I was hired by Hachette-I work for Hachette!”

“They got off to a bad start,” John’s friend admits. It was worse for Berman than for Kennedy. Walls had to be torn down to make the executive publisher’s office comparable to the editor in chief’s, although Kennedy’s still has the better view of New Jersey Central Park, and all of northern Manhattan. Pecker won’t discuss the reports of internal discord, but he seems to refer to them in one pointed comment: “Normally in business, the person who puts up the money has the last say.”

Pecker is a happy guy these days, and not just because he has America’s prince in his pocket. George has booked 160 pages in ads for its first issue. “We’ve already sold ads for eight issues,” Pecker crows. “We know where we’re going to be.” It’s said that Ginibre has suggested in a memo that the magazine must go all soft and gooey toward the powerful people it hopes to feature in its pages in order to gain their cooperation, and that John must be as public as Tina Brown. How he’ll cope with that expectation is yet to be seen, but he’s already been reported to have interviewed George Wallace and to have requested a chat with everyone’s favorite undeclared presidential candidate, Colin Powell.

* * *

SO IT IS THAT THESE DAYS, John Kennedy has finally abandoned his directionless life, all but vanished from the club scene, and joined the working class. He gets up early every morning and exercises, then bikes from TriBeCa to his midtown office, carrying his front wheel upstairs in elevators where JFK Jr. sightings have ceased to incite hormonal frenzies. In an office decorated with images of the magazine’s namesake (including a blown-up dollar bill on Kennedy’s door, he meets writers, makes ad calls, and often works late. He’s even issued a memo instructing his staff that he expects them there when he arrives at 8:30 in the morning.

Off-hours, he still sees Bessette, but there are others. “We’re talking about John Kennedy!” his friend guffaws. Finally, he has bigger things on his mind than whom he’ll be with at night; he’s made his bed in a much different place than the one he and Berman first imagined that night after Bill Clinton’s election.

Initially Hachette promised only to produce and distribute two issues of George. But soon, the company upped its commitment, pledging to go bimonthly early in 1996 and monthly in September ’96, two months before the next presidential election, at a total investment it puts, vaguely, between $5 million and $20 Million. “I pushed them to do a magazine that connects with a lot of people,” says Ginibre. From Kennedy and Berman’s original idea of a small journal that encouraged participation in politics, George has grown into a magazine its publishers hope will sell three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand copies on newsstands each month-or about what vanity Fair, with its Hollywood covers, manages to sell.

If George does, the magazine will connect not through the language of politics or journalism but through the new voice of success in America: entertainment. John has made this clear in the way he has described George to potential advertisers. It will showcase “politics as miniseries, suspense thriller, comedy, sometimes even great drama,” he’s said.

Examples? George has commissioned an article on Newt Gingrich’s lesbian half sister, a piece by Roseanne titled “If I Were President,” and a review by James Carville of the new A1 Pacino film, City Hall, which a source says will actually be ghostwritten by a George staffer, and it has considered a story by a New York gossip columnist on fundraising benefits. But the biggest tip-off is George’s covers. The first issue will likely feature Cindy Crawford, shot by Herb Ritts and posed like Washington. Anthony Hopkins, made up for his role as the star of Oliver Stone’s Nixon, is in the running for cover number two.

“They don’t even feel the need to pretend to serious intentions,” says rival Martin Peretz, the editor in chief and owner of The New Republic, a magazine that became indispensable for a time when President Kennedy made it a favorite read (right up there with Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels). “A magazine like this will reflect the interest of the public but cannot stimulate it,” Peretz sniffs.

Samir Husni, the acting chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi, has made a ten-year study of consumer magazines. “So far, George has had a great reception in the advertising community because of JFK’s name,” he says. “The danger, of course, is that when you have this high expectation, everyone is going to judge it with a sharp razor edge.”

The big question, concludes Husni, is this: “Is there a magazine behind the hype?”

Even some of the people who worked on the prototype of George are leery about its intentions and prospects. “Glitz is a tightrope walk,” says one. “Run enough stories on Hillary’s dressmaker and Tabitha Soren, and serious people won’t return your phone calls.”

But perhaps they will anyway-showing that John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. may know more about the power of politics and the politics of power than anyone suspects.

By: Michael Gross for Esquire Magazine

#articles

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especially-heinous-ada · 7 years ago

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APG Part 5

photo cred: https://www.pexels.com/search/new%20york%20city/

Here we are! Part 5! Thank you so much for your interest in this series, and I am so grateful for everyone’s comments and love. <3 Part 5 is the beginning of some interesting things to come. I’m so excited, but don’t want to reveal too much as of yet! I hope y’all enjoy it! :) As always, for any new eyes, please read Parts 1-4. I’ve added a page to my blog for all my writings.

You said goodbye to the female detectives who had entered Rafael’s office (it seemed like the right thing to do?) before exiting the room and letting them get to work. Part of you was embarrassed that two respectable members of the NYPD had walked in on you and Rafael making out on his desk like a couple of teenagers, but part of you was excited by it.

When did I become an exhibitionist? You closed the door behind you and let out a little giggle, thinking of how the conversation in his office was going right now. You just hoped that it didn’t affect his reputation at all. You certainly didn’t want to get him in trouble. You looked across the room and spotted the woman whose name placard read Carmen. She looked up from her computer and noticed you.

“Thank you for letting me in without an appointment, Carmen.” You smiled. “I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it.” She said, returning the expression. You made a mental note to ask her out to a lunch date sometime. She seemed like the kind of person you wanted to get on good side of if you and Rafael were ever going to be a thing. You checked your schedule for today as you exited the building. You were booked to dash from one photo shoot to the next for the majority of the day. Your phone rang. It was your manager. You sighed and reluctantly answered as you walked toward the street to hail a cab.

A few hours later, you were on-set for your third photoshoot of the day. This one was bigger than the first two: a women’s fitness magazine that wanted you to do a shot for the cover and a six-page spread, with multiple outfit changes. You were on your second outfit of the shoot as you sat in your chair, while a sweet, redheaded girl fussed over your hair and makeup. She chattered away at you and you gave an occasional nod and answer, but you felt yourself growing drowsy—you always seemed to when someone else played with your hair. Your sleepy mind imagined sitting on your couch, cuddled up to Rafael’s chest, his fingers running through your hair. You sighed peacefully. You hoped that one day your daydream would become reality.

Suddenly, your phone buzzed from its position underneath your thigh, forcibly tearing you away from your reverie. Is it Rafael? No, it can’t be; he’s working. You frowned as you retrieved the phone and read the screen:

Incoming call: Francis.

Your body froze and your mind began to race from one thought to the next. You couldn’t believe his name was on your phone again, after all this time. Francis. The one that broke you. Figuratively, and literally. You began to panic. Why is he calling me? How? How could he know my number? I’ve changed it five times since then. Unable to do anything else, you stared at his name on the screen until the icon switched from incoming call to missed.

“Y/N? Are you ready?” You looked up and saw a perky twenty-something also dressed in athletic clothing. She had introduced herself earlier as the head photographer for the magazine. You shook your head to wrench it free of all thoughts of Francis. You wouldn’t let him distract you from your work. He’d nearly destroyed your career once; you wouldn’t let him do it again.

“Yes. I’m coming.” Two hours and another outfit change later, the photographer finally wrapped the photoshoot and you collected your things while your manager talked at you about an interview with a daytime talk show that she had in the works.

“Sure, sure, Janna. Whatever you think is best,” you say offhandedly, as you pull your phone from your purse to check the time. Three missed calls. Francis. Your stomach wrung itself into a knot and you clicked “block” on his number. Janna seemed to notice that something was wrong and she frowned.

“What’s going on, Y/N?” You looked over at her with a smile.

“It’s nothing,” you lied, not wanting to explain your complicated past with Francis. Janna was an old friend, but you had only been working with her for a year, since you decided to move back to New York, so she wasn’t aware of the history between you two.

You and Janna climbed into her car and she set a course for your last photoshoot of the day. Another smaller one, thankfully. You didn’t think you had it in you to go through the motions of another large production today. You tried to calm yourself. Francis is in L.A. He can’t get to you here in New York. He has no idea where you are right now. You’re safe. You sigh, feeling assured. You’re safe.

****

Rafael propped his feet on the desk, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms. He let out a large sigh and glanced at the clock. 4:00 P.M.

“That time already?” he thought aloud, crossing his arms. He glanced at the pile of documents he needed to finish addressing before leaving, and found it thinner than he’d anticipated, based on the thick piles that had been pushed to the corner of his desk at the onset of his day. Despite the day’s rough start, he’d been especially productive since you had left his office, drafting up summonses, motions, and warrants like a force to be reckoned with. The polished, wooden surface of his desk was nearly empty for the first time in two weeks. He smirked as his mind replayed the events that had occurred between the two of you on that very desk.

Should I call her now? He wondered. Is it too soon? Then again, she’s already been waiting since Friday, he reasoned. He bit back his bottom lip as he weighed his options. Finally, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the notepad you had written your number onto. He entered it into his cellphone and hit “call” before he lost his nerve. His anxious thoughts were so deafening as he held the phone to his ear, he barely heard the dial tone. His heart thumped so rapidly in his chest, it was almost as if he’d just finished running a lap around the courthouse. The phone rang and rang, with no answer, then the sound of your voice came through the speaker.

“Hey, this is Y/N. I can’t come to the phone right now. You know what to do.” Beep.

“Uh, hey. Y/N. This is Rafael… Obviously, you’re busy right now, but I just wanted to call and, uh, make sure you know I didn’t lose your number this time.” He chuckled. God, that was lame. “Also, I wanted see if, maybe, you were free tonight? If so, would you like to maybe get dinner, or something? I should be done at the office around 7…Uh—so yeah, just, when you get this message, get back to me and let me know about dinner, okay? Once again, this is Rafael. Uh. Bye.”

He hung up the phone and groaned at his complete lack of finesse. He was never the greatest at leaving voicemail messages, but that was painfully awkward. Well, at least it’s out there, he consoled himself. Now the ball is in her court. He turned to the small pile at the corner of his desk and picked up another document, determined to leave the office by 7:00.

****

“That was amazing, Y/N! I think we’re going to call that a wrap!” You sighed, relaxing from your last pose. You were relieved to finally be done for the day. Janna went to chat a bit with the photographer and you retreated to your changing room. You slid on a black, silk knee-length dress that Janna had brought you with some matching heels. It felt good to be back in some of your own clothes again. Once you had finished changing, you glanced at your phone. 7:00 PM. Another missed call icon, along with a new voicemail. You didn’t recognize the number. You selected your voicemail.

“You have one new voice message. Saved at 4:08 PM.”

“Uh, hey. Y/N. This is Rafael…” You gasped and listened with excitement to the message he had left you. He wanted to go to dinner tonight? Like a date? You practically squealed with excitement as you saved the message and ended the call.

“Who was that?” Janna asked.

“Remember that guy I told you about?”

“The sexy Cuban prosecutor?” She said with a suggestive eyebrow raise.

“That’s the one.” You smiled. “He left a message asking me if I want to go to dinner with him tonight.”

“Like a date? Oh, my god!”

“I know!” You said, this time letting the giddy schoolgirl squeal escape. Half a beat passed, then, embarrassed, you cleared your throat and tried your best to act cool and collected. “I’m going to call him back and let him know we’re on for tonight.” You tapped on the number he’d called from and selected “dial.”

It rang several times and just as you figured you’d get his voicemail, you heard a click.

“Barba.” was his greeting. He must have answered without checking the caller ID, you figured with a giggle. “Y/N?” he asked, hearing the giggle.

“Yes, it’s me.” You smiled. “I, uh, got your message.” Rafael chuckled nervously on the other line.

“That’s good, I think. I apologize for the message. I’m not the smoothest when it comes to leaving voicemails; courtroom banter is really more my forte.” You laughed.

“Well, to answer your question: I would love to go to dinner with you.”

“Oh—great! I just finished up over here, so I could pick you up, if you’re ready?” He offered tentatively.

“Actually, I’m just leaving work right now. It might be easier if I just meet you there. Where did you have in mind?”

“Do you know Angelo’s?”

“That fancy Italian place with the famous desserts?” You ask, impressed.

“That’s the one. Meet me there at 8:00?” He suggests.

“Sounds like a plan.” You smile.

“Can’t wait. Nos vemos un rato.” You had surprised Rafael the first night you met by speaking Spanish to him. Curious, he thought tonight he might test you to see exactly how much you knew.

“Nos vemos.” You reply, ending the call. You loved the way Rafael’s voice sounded when he spoke Spanish. It sounded deeper, huskier. Sexier. You could listen to it all day. Not that his English-speaking voice wasn’t sexy—just not in the same way.

You turned to Janna.

“Let’s go,” you said, motioning in the direction of where she parked her car. Janna nodded and the two of you set off. “Can you drop me off at Angelo’s before you head home?”

“He invited you to Angelo’s?!” Janna asked, looking at you incredulously. “That place is ridiculous. Like, really expensive. And the food is practically god-tier. He’s bringing you there on a first date?”

“Gotta make a good impression.” You shrug. “At least, I assume that’s what his thought process was.” He was a high-powered attorney. Appearances in that world are everything. Much like in mine. You thought. The two of you climbed into Janna’s car and set off.

“Do you want to stop by your place first?” She offered.

“Nah, I’m good. Nothing I do to my face and hair is going to improve on the work of a professional stylist.” You laugh. Janna agreed and joined in the laughter.

“So…do you think you’ll sleep with him? Or are you waiting on that? I don’t know how serious you are about this guy.” You thought about it for a moment.

“As much as I’d love to, it’s probably not the best idea to sleep with him on the first date, right?” You said, unsure of yourself. You’d heard conflicting opinions on whether you should have sex on the first date, and it always left you feeling unsure.

“Well, you just have to do what feels right to you, you know? If you get to the end of the night and you feel like you need to wait, just give him a kiss and tell him you had a good time. But if you look at him at the end of the night and feel like the right thing to do is to jump his bones, then give him the best fuck of his life.” Janna said, in a matter-of-fact tone. You laughed so hard you snorted a little.

“Okay, Janna. I’ll take your sage advice into consideration.” The two of you chatted for a bit about upcoming opportunities before finally reaching your destination.

“Well, here we are. Angelo’s. Have fun tonight, kids. Remember: practice safe sex.” Janna teased with a wink. You rolled your eyes and stepped out of the car.

“Thanks.” You said sarcastically. “I’ll tell you all about the date tomorrow.” Closing the door, you turn around to face the restaurant. You take a deep breath and let it go before heading inside. You approach the host.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m here meeting someone.” You reply. You glance at your phone and it reads 8:03 PM. “He should be inside already.”

“And what name would the reservation be under?”

“Barba.” You say, getting a bit anxious as the host examined the list for an unexpectedly long amount of time.

“Ah, yes. Follow me this way, Mrs. Barba. Mr. Barba has checked in already.” He motioned toward the dining room before setting off. You felt yourself blush as he referred to you as Mrs. Barba. You didn’t see the point in correcting him, and it sounded rather nice, to be honest. The two of you wound through the main dining room and passed through it, entering a hallway of small, private booths with romantic lighting. You could hear a live string quartet playing in the background from somewhere in the restaurant. Wow. You were impressed.

Finally, the host stopped and motioned toward a booth. It took you a couple seconds to catch up—you’d fallen behind while examining the restaurant’s elegant opulence. When Rafael saw you, his eyes widened in surprise and he stood.

“Y/N.” He greeted with a warm smile.

#reader x barba #rafael barba #svu fanfic #a police gala #part 5

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acsversace-news · 6 years ago

Link

COMING OFF THE back of the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning limited series The People vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, producer and director Ryan Murphy knew the bar was set high for a second season.

“OJ was a courtroom show, so this had to be different,” he explains.

Nobody can accuse Murphy of repeating himself as the gripping The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story comes to our screens.

Based on the book by Maureen Orth – Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History – the nine-episode tale begins with serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) murdering Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) on the steps of his Miami mansion in 1997.

It then traces the path of both characters in reverse, including events leading up to Cunanan’s killing rampage and Versace’s earlier brush with death.

“I was living in Miami at the time and [the assassination] felt very personal,” says Latin pop icon Ricky Martin, who plays Gianni’s long-term boyfriend Antonio D’Amico in his biggest television role to date.

“I remember that the atmosphere in Miami changed completely and people were living in fear because there was a man on the streets killing people randomly.” While the Italian designer’s romance with Antonio is explored in the series, so too is his relationship with sister Donatella, played by Oscar-winner Penélope Cruz.

“I’ve worked closely with House of Versace over the last

15 years, and I always liked Donatella,” says the Spanish actress.

“She is a very strong, affectionate and generous woman. I think I knew every single piece from Versace by the time I was 15 because I was a big fan and I dreamt one day I could wear his designs. Being in his mental space as this character is like a dedication to him because he’s present around every corner.”

The enthralling series pulls back the fabric on the rich and famous entrepreneur’s life to reveal what really went on behind closed doors, where the likes of Madonna, Cher and the late Princess Diana were amongst the regular visitors to his house.

“There is a Madonna guest suite upstairs, which was the first place I went to when we came to film [at the house],” Murphy says. “I heard she used to sit in the bathtub and stand up naked to tease them out in the courtyard [where they were] drinking.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a touching tribute that transports viewers into the life of a global icon, and his untimely death that shook the fashion world.

Steps of death

One of the most significant scenes in the series is the tragic murder of Gianni. Murphy admits the gruesome assassination – filmed on the exact steps where he died 20 years ago outside the former beachside Versace Mansion-turned-boutique-hotel – was traumatic for all involved.

“The crew were crying, the actors were crying because it was the spot he was killed and you could feel his presence,” Murphy reveals of the two weeks spent shooting inside and outside of the property.

“Édgar was lying on those coral steps for two days and they were sharp, so that was awful for him, too. Ricky didn’t want to see Édgar until the cameras were rolling. Édgar had on the prosthetics, with part of his face shot off and covered in blood, so it was tough for Ricky to see his friend like that. He was heaving and sobbing and stayed in that state for a long time.”

Dead or alive

Venezuelan actor Ramírez shudders as he recalls the physically and psychologically draining experience of lying on those steps.

“It was an interesting exercise of trust and abandonment, because I spent days with my eyes closed, being handled by all the paramedics and witnessing all the emotions that Ricky put into it, as he was holding my body and screaming,” he reminisces.

The star says it was imperative that he put himself into a meditative state and keep as quiet as possible to play out the scenes. But it came with its challenges.

“When they put me on the gurney for the first time, I did have a panic attack,” he admits.

“My mind knew that it was fine, but my body was reacting in a surprising way to what everyone was saying around me and we had to stop rolling so I could get up and remind myself I was still alive!”

No acting required

For Martin, being cast in his most significant acting role came with all the emotions you’d expect: nervous excitement and exhilaration. A close friend of Ramírez’s, the She Bangs and Livin’ la Vida Loca performer vividly recalls the morning he arrived to film the scenes in which Antonio discovers the body on the steps and holds the dying designer until the ambulance arrives. “It was a luxury to be able to walk into the actual home that Gianni and Antonio shared, because all I had to do was touch the walls and I could feel the emotion; it was vibrant,” he says.

“I got there at five o’clock in the morning on the day we were shooting those scenes and I started working on my emotions inside the home. When I finally got outside and saw my friend Édgar lying on the steps covered in blood, I just started hysterically crying.”

Playing a murderer

At the same time his co-stars filmed Gianni’s horrific death, former Glee headliner Criss was in a different headspace portraying the killer who had been obsessed with the designer for most of his life.

“I can’t tell you how weird it felt for me to be walking around the house dressed as Andrew Cunanan,” Criss remembers.

“I was wearing the outfit that he murdered Versace in and walking around inside the house. But when I took a picture of the pool and saw myself in the reflection, sprayed with blood, I said, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to delete this photo, it’s horrible and irreverent because Andrew never made it inside the house!’”

Being Donatella

Superstar Lady Gaga was originally intended to play Donatella. However, when scheduling clashed with her film A Star is Born, she was forced to pull out. With the other cast already in place, Murphy reached out to Cruz.

“I thought because she was friends with Donatella she could be an advocate for her,” Murphy explains of Cruz’s first TV role.

Meanwhile, the actress admits she was “shocked” when she got the call.

“I was silent on the other end of the phone for a while, wondering what Donatella would think,” she explains of her reaction.

But she embraced the opportunity, which required a three-hour process of multiple wig changes, contact lenses and those unique Donatella snow-white eyebrows to transform her for the cameras.

“In the end, I hope Donatella understands when she sees this that we are showing what a heroine she was. This is a beautiful love story between brother and sister, and what she went through to keep her brother’s dream and the House of Versace alive.”

#acs versace #ryan murphy #ricky martin #penelope cruz #edgar ramirez #darren criss #2.01 #article #interview #foxtel #june 2018

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your-dietician · 3 years ago

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Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare | The New Yorker

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/britney-spearss-conservatorship-nightmare-the-new-yorker/

Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare | The New Yorker

On June 22nd, Britney Spears’s management team started getting nervous. Spears, who is thirty-nine, has spent the past thirteen years living under a conservatorship, a legal structure in which a person’s personal, economic, and legal decision-making power is ceded to others. Called a guardianship in most states, the arrangement is intended for people who cannot take care of themselves. Since the establishment of Spears’s conservatorship, she has released four albums, headlined a global tour that grossed a hundred and thirty-one million dollars, and performed for four years in a hit Las Vegas residency. Yet her conservators, who include her father, Jamie Spears, have controlled her spending, communications, and personal decisions.

In April, Spears had requested a hearing, in open court, to discuss the terms of the arrangement. It was scheduled for June 23rd. Members of Spears’s team, most of whom have had little or no direct contact with her for years, didn’t expect drastic changes to result. Two years earlier, in the midst of health struggles and pressure from Spears, Jamie had stepped down from his duties overseeing her personal life, and now the team thought that perhaps she wanted to remove him as the conservator of her financial affairs. Some of the team told reporters that they believed Spears liked the conservatorship arrangement, as long as her father wasn’t involved.

Running the business of Britney had become routine: every Thursday at noon, about ten people responsible for managing Spears’s legal and business affairs, public relations, and social media met to discuss merchandise deals, song-license requests, and Spears’s posts to Instagram and Twitter. (“This is how it works without her,” one member of the team said.) Spears, according to her management, typically writes the posts and submits them to CrowdSurf, a company employed to handle her social media, which then uploads them. In rare cases, posts that raise legal questions have been deemed too sensitive to upload. “She’s not supposed to discuss the conservatorship,” the team member said.

On the eve of the hearing, according both to a person close to Spears and to law enforcement in Ventura County, California, where she lives, Spears called 911 to report herself as a victim of conservatorship abuse. (Emergency calls in California are generally accessible to the public, but the county, citing an ongoing investigation, sealed the records of Spears’s call.) Members of Spears’s team began texting one another frantically. They were worried about what Spears might say the next day, and they discussed how to prepare in the event that she went rogue. In court on the 23rd, an attorney for the conservatorship urged the judge to clear the courtroom and seal the transcript of Spears’s testimony. Spears, calling into the hearing, objected. “Somebody’s done a good job at exploiting my life,” she said, adding, “I feel like it should be an open-court hearing—they should listen and hear what I have to say.” Then, for the first time in years, Spears spoke for herself, sounding lucid and furious, talking so fast that the judge interjected repeatedly to tell her to slow down, to allow for accurate transcription. “The people who did this to me should not get away,” Spears said. Addressing the judge directly, she added, “Ma’am, my dad, and anyone involved in this conservatorship, and my management, who played a huge role in punishing me when I said no—Ma’am, they should be in jail.”

For the next twenty minutes, Spears described how she had been isolated, medicated, financially exploited, and emotionally abused. She assigned harsh blame to the California legal system, which she said let it all happen. She added that she had tried to complain to the court before but had been ignored, which made her “feel like I was dead,” she said—“like I didn’t matter.” She wanted to share her story publicly, she said, “instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them.” She added, “It concerns me I’ve been told I’m not allowed to expose the people who did this to me.” At one point, she told the court, “All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and for my boyfriend to drive me in his fucking car.”

Spears’s remarks were incendiary but, for people familiar with the creation and the functioning of her conservatorship, not surprising. Andrew Gallery, a photographer who worked for Spears in 2008, attended the hearing, watching the lawyers’ faces on a monitor. “As she spoke, I wanted to scream, and gasp, and shout ‘What the fuck is going on?’ ” he said. “But the lawyers had no reaction. They just sat there.”

The conservatorship was instituted by Spears’s family—in part out of real concerns about her mental health, people close to the family said. But the family was divided by money and fame, and Spears, in an underregulated part of the legal system, was stripped of her rights. She has fought for years to get them back.

As a pop star, Spears sustained a multinational industry of managers, agents, producers, lawyers, publicists, and assorted hangers-on. As the subject of the conservatorship, she has provided for the livelihood of even more lawyers and other court-appointed professionals. Jacqueline Butcher, a former friend of the Spears family who was present in court for the conservatorship’s creation, said she regrets the testimony that she offered to help secure it. “At the time, I thought we were helping,” she said. “And I wasn’t, and I helped a corrupt family seize all this control.”

Jamie Spears, who is sixty-eight, has graying hair and a hangdog demeanor. When he was thirteen, he endured an unimaginable tragedy: his mother committed suicide on the grave of one of her sons, who had died eight years earlier, at just three days old. In high school, Jamie was a basketball and football star; later, he worked as a welder and a cook. Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, grew up with Jamie, in the small town of Kentwood, Louisiana. Sixty-six years old, she has a smile like Britney’s and thick dark hair with bangs. She used to run her own day-care center. Friends describe her as traditional and nonconfrontational. In a conversation in June, she was fastidiously polite as she declined to answer detailed questions about the case. She spoke in a whisper and apologized that she might have to hang up abruptly if other family members walked in and discovered her speaking to a reporter. “I got mixed feelings about everything,” she said. “I don’t know what to think. . . . It’s a lot of pain, a lot of worry.” She added, a little wryly, “I’m good. I’m good at deflecting.” Jamie and Lynne eloped when she was twenty-one, and the marriage was troubled from the start: in divorce papers filed, then withdrawn, in 1980, less than two years before Britney’s birth, Lynne accused Jamie of cheating on her on Christmas Day. Jamie wrestled with alcoholism, going on benders so egregious that Lynne once shelled his cooler with a shotgun.

But Jamie and Lynne worked together to make Britney, their second child, happy and a success. She was a born performer, a scene-stealer at dance recitals starting at age three. Her parents drove her to small dance competitions in Lafayette, then to larger ones in New Orleans. They borrowed money from friends to pay for gas to get her to auditions. Spears snagged an understudy role on Broadway and then a stint in the nineties version of “The Mickey Mouse Club.” When she was sixteen, she signed a six-album deal with Jive Records, thanks to an enterprising entertainment lawyer named Larry Rudolph, who became her manager. A precise and commanding dancer with an unmistakable vocal tone of sugary coyness, Spears emerged as a teen-pop singularity. In 1998, the music video for her début single, “. . . Baby One More Time,” featuring a sixteen-year-old Spears in a Catholic-schoolgirl outfit, exploded across American pop culture like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The pleated skirt and bare midriff were her idea—a fact that’s sometimes cited as evidence of her self-determination but might also suggest an intuition, common among teen-age girls, of the compromised power of sex appeal.

Because Jamie and Lynne had two other children to look after, a family friend chaperoned Spears for much of her early career. But Spears remained close to her mother, and, in 2000, she built a four-and-a-half-million-dollar estate for Lynne in Kentwood. That year, according to “Through the Storm,” a memoir that Lynne published in 2008, Spears urged her mother to divorce her father, knowing that “years and years of verbal abuse, abandonment, erratic behavior, and his simply not being there for me had taken their toll,” Lynne writes. She and Jamie divorced in May, 2002, and Spears told People that it was “the best thing that’s ever happened to my family.”

Spears had just broken up with Justin Timberlake, a fellow teen-pop icon, whom she had met when she was eleven, when they were both cast as Mouseketeers. The breakup destabilized her, people close to her remember; her status as half of a golden couple had become an integral part of her identity, and after the split her sex life became a regular topic in the news. She began going out more and hanging out with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, forming a holy trinity for tabloid culture at its early-two-thousands peak. “The paparazzi were out of control,” Hilton recalled, of one night with Spears at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Fighting over getting the shot, pushing each other against my car, scratching it with their cameras. It was overwhelming and frightening.” The hairdresser Kim Vo, Spears’s longtime colorist, remembers how, one day, as Spears was getting her hair done, a paparazzo scaled a wall and broke a salon window with his fist.

Spears distracted herself with work—a relentless grind of dance rehearsals, studio sessions, photo shoots, stadium performances, long nights on the tour bus, and hotel check-ins before dawn. “The schedule was crazier and crazier,” Julianne Kaye, a makeup artist who worked with Spears in the early years, said. “She would have little breakdowns. She was always crying, saying, ‘I want to be normal.’ ” Spears blew off steam by partying: she smoked weed, used cocaine, took Molly with her dancers and jumped into the Mediterranean Sea. But the machinery around her only grew. When she toured, the crew took at least a dozen buses and filled entire hotel floors.

In the spring of 2004, Spears met a dancer named Kevin Federline at a night club, and they were married within six months. Spears initially did not secure a prenuptial agreement, which prompted panic in her family. A considerable fortune was at stake. “Lynne lost her mind,” Butcher, the family friend, recalled. “They weren’t gonna allow the wedding to be made legal.” The marriage contract wasn’t signed until the month after the ceremony, when Federline legally agreed to limit his stake in Spears’s estate. But Spears seemed thrilled, and commissioned a photo shoot in which she dressed up as a French maid and served drinks to Federline, who wore a trucker hat, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Spears wanted a family. “I’ve had a career since I was 16, have traveled around the world & back and even kissed Madonna!” she wrote on her Web site, two months after getting married. “The only thing I haven’t done so far is experience the closest thing to God and that’s having a baby. I can’t wait!”

Spears’s first son, Sean Preston, was born ten months after the wedding. “Our life was running at 150,000 miles an hour,” Federline later told Us Weekly. “I’d walk into a club and get a table worth $15,000 a night with unlimited free drinking. . . . But everything got so crazy.” Spears had been so sheltered that Paris Hilton had to show her how to use Google, according to a person who was there. She negotiated the hormonal and logistical turbulence of early motherhood while paparazzi, eager to monetize her mistakes, chased her down, pointing flashbulbs and shouting provocations any time she left the house. After she was photographed driving with an infant Preston on her lap, she explained that she had been trying to get away from paparazzi—and besides, she added, she had grown up riding on her dad’s lap on country roads. A few months later, visibly pregnant and holding Preston, she stumbled while surrounded by photographers; the paparazzi kept shooting as she retreated to a café, cradled her baby, and cried.

Spears had her second child, Jayden James, in September, 2006. Three weeks later, Federline took a private jet to Vegas to party with his friends. Spears filed for divorce in November, reportedly notifying Federline by text message. At a night club, he scrawled on a bathroom wall “Today I’m a free man—f**k a wife, give me my kids bitch!” He requested full custody. While the divorce was being adjudicated, he and Spears divided parental duties. Preston was a little more than a year old, and Spears was still nursing Jayden; she wanted to be with them all the time, and hated being at home without them. “I did not know what to do with myself,” she said later, in an MTV documentary. Spears and Federline both went out on their free nights, but Spears was the one who became the target of tabloid blood sport. (“MOMMY’S CRYING,” Us Weekly blared, over a full-page photo of Preston.) In February, 2007, she shaved off her hair, at a salon in Tarzana; five days later, she attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella. The two incidents cemented her image as “crazy.” Both were precipitated by her driving to Federline’s house, trailed by photographers, and being refused access to her kids.

Many people who were close to Spears during her early career suspect that she was dealing with postpartum depression, but none of them remembers anyone bringing it up with her. Some of the same people said that Spears was also struggling with drugs and alcohol. Her mother and Federline insisted that, if Spears wanted to spend more time with her children, she needed to go to rehab. In early 2007, she checked into a treatment center in Antigua, then checked out after just one day. The judge in the custody hearing, who had cited Spears’s “habitual, frequent uses of controlled substances and alcohol,” gave primary custody of the children to Federline, granting Spears four days of visitation per week, under the eye of a court-ordered monitor named Robin Johnson.

Around this time, Spears met Sam Lutfi, a Hollywood operator with a knack for insinuating himself into the lives of turbulent female stars. Spears had recently parted ways with Larry Rudolph, her longtime manager, and she began to entrust her professional and private affairs to Lutfi. Now forty-six, Lutfi cuts a nondescript figure: average height, occasionally goateed, favoring baseball caps and black T-shirts. Over coffee at a Los Angeles restaurant this spring, he said that Spears took to him in part because he told her that she didn’t have to work nearly as hard as she was. “She’d always believed there were massive consequences if she didn’t work, that she’d lose so much, and it blew her mind that she could just call the shots,” he said. “You want to cancel that meeting? Cancel it. You’re gonna lose five grand? Lose it. She’d walk into a car dealership, say she wanted something. I’d say, ‘Buy it.’ Her parents would say, ‘Why would you let her do that?’ But it’s an eighty-thousand-dollar car, not a yacht, and she just got fifteen million from Estée Lauder. Anyway, she’s an adult. I’m not gonna tell her that she can’t buy a fucking yacht.” (Lutfi later assumed a similar role in the life of Courtney Love, who called him a “street hustler,” and he said that he advised Amanda Bynes’s family as they placed her in a conservatorship. He is currently subject to a five-year restraining order filed against him, in 2019, by a conservatorship lawyer, on Spears’s behalf.)

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