celebrity gossip, academic style

I realize I’ve complained at length about Vanity Fair and the celebrity profile. But that doesn’t mean that Vanity Fair doesn’t offer the biggest, lushest, juiciest, and all-encompassing collection of Hollywood stories every year — and this year is no exception. As my brother has lectured me, VF is actually quite respected in all of their non-Hollywood reporting — especially the financial expose stuff that interests me far less than it probably should. And the Hollywood industry reporting, while not necessarily groundbreaking, is expansive, gossipy, and equal parts historical and contemporary. The choice of this year’s cover models has been a hot topic and thoroughly debated elsewhere, so I’m going to stick with what’s inside — and much of it is very, very interesting, and probably touches on aspects of Hollywood history and industry with which most are unfamiliar.

Having read the issue in its entirety, I’d like to alert you to the best of the bunch. I will say, however, that you should definitely fork over the measly $12 for a year subscription — this is a magazine that’s best consumed in print form, as the interwebs simple does not to do the luscious photography justice.

Which segues nicely into the most compelling (and visual) aspect of the magazine, This Year’s Hollywood Portfolio, which features compelling shots of directors and their actors. The pairing of Cameron with his camera is particularly hilarious, but I most love this one of Jeff Bridges and Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper.

If you’re interested in power rankings, this list of the Hollywood’s Top 40 will provide food for thought. Most interesting: that all three of the Harry Potter leads broke the top fifteen, that the director of 2012 (Roland Emmerich) gets to hang out at #4, and that Ben Stiller and Tom Hanks are both making ridiculous amonts of money and rounding out the top ten. Apparently I’m forgetting the fact that everyone else in America went to go see Night at the Museum.

But look at this smutty/industry-minded look at Relatively Media, the hedge-fund-funded production company headed by the “brash, glamour-loving Ryan Kavanagh.” The kid’s 35, he thinks big, imagines he has the business mastered, but also released some of the biggest bombs of the season, including State of Play, Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, and this week’s The Wolfman But he’s also behind Paul Blart and Dear John, so he must be doing something right. Right? The piece starts out laudatory and subtly turns into a quiet study of hubris and its place in Hollywood today….fascinating.

The retrospective of John Hughes, building on the notes and scribblings of the late scribe and the comments of his sons, is interesting, if a bit fluffy. Die-hard Hughes fans will undoubtedly enjoy.

Best of the bunch, though, is this profile of Ali McGraw, who, for a brief moment in time, was the hottest female star in Hollywood. Studying for my comps led me to appreciate the brilliant marketing of Love Story, which was basically the Twilight of the early ’70s, only it featured a hot dying Ivy Leaguer instead of hot vampires.

To my mind, McGraw is as unique as she is fascinating: she graduated from Wellesley, worked as a stylist/photography assistant, and found her way into pictures relatively late. Her star burned bright and fast, quickly marrying Robert Evans, producer of Love Story and then-head of Paramount, before falling for Steve McQueen on the set of The Getaway and retreating from Hollywood. The interview doesn’t reveal as much of McGraw so much as what it must have felt like to be a gorgeous woman in Hollywood who was at once intelligence and romantic.

But the story that I really wanted to tell you about is unlinked and unavailable — a detailed if fawning history of how De Niro and Scorsese brought Raging Bull to the screen. Having spent many hours in the De Niro archive at the Harry Ransom Center — and certainly counting Raging Bull amongst my Scorsese pantheon — the story was delectable, even if it rehearsed many historical points with which I was already familiar. And perhaps that’s the function of the best pleasure reading: it reinforces things that you already know, yet fleshes out your understanding in ways that make you feel smart and informed and satisfied.

Because that’s the thing about this Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue: it’s not challenging, nor is it necessarily groundbreaking. But it’s the apotheosis of pleasure reading for a media scholar.