“Call me Caitlyn”

By BUZZ BISSINGER Photos by A N N I E L E I B OV I T Z

J U LY 2015
JULY 2015
 JULY 2015 No. 659 VANIT YFAIR.COM

FEATURES
50 HE SAYS GOODBYE, SHE SAYS HELLO
By BUZZ BISSINGER Meet Caitlyn, who gives V.F.
her coming-out exclusive—the first look at the person
Bruce Jenner has become—along with the full,
behind-the-scenes story of how an icon of American
masculinity finally became the woman she needed
to be. Photographs by Annie Leibovitz.

70 THE GOOD SOLDIER By WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE

In Baghdad in 2007, an Alpha Company patrol took a
wrong turn. With four Iraqi detainees dead, Staff Sergeant
Jess Cunningham faced the most dangerous decision
of his war. Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson.

78 TCHAIKOVSKY’S NEW QUEEN

Spotlight on American Ballet Theatre’s Misty Copeland,
vaulting another barrier in Swan Lake. By Heather Watts.
Photographs by Patrick Fraser.

80 PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE By SARAH ELLISON

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and activist
Sean Eldridge seemed the perfect power couple. Hughes
had bought The New Republic, while Eldridge was
planning a run for Congress. How did it all go wrong?

84 FOLLOW THAT WOMAN! By JUDD APATOW

Writer and star of this month’s Trainwreck, Amy Schumer

SCHUM ER P HOTO GR A PHE D BY MA R K SE L IGE R ; PA J A M A S F RO M P EA R L R I VER MA RT. PHOTO GRA PH S © PARAMO UNT
is the hottest comedienne in the business. Her director,

PI CT URE S /P HOTO F E ST (S I LVER STO NE ) , BY L AC EY TE RR EL L /H B O ( VAUGH N) . F O R DE TA I L S , G O TO VF. CO M/C RE DI TS

in an adaptation from his new book, reveals she’s in it for
more than just laughs. Photograph by Mark Seliger.

88 DETECTIVE STORY By RICH COHEN

Nic Pizzolatto provided HBO with a dazzling new hit,
True Detective, then upped the ante for his second season,
beginning this month. A former writers’-room
colleague charts Pizzolatto’s rise and the risks he’s taking.
Photograph by Art Streiber.

94 YOUNG AND CLUELESS By JEN CHANEY

Twenty years after Clueless gave a Valley Girl some
Jane Austen DNA, it remains a cultural touchstone.
In an adaptation from an oral history of the sleeper
hit, cast and crew recall the adventure.

FROM LEFT: Amy Schumer (page 84); Vince Vaughn (page 88);
22
Alicia Silverstone (page 94).
VANITIES
CENTER SAGE
Kate Greathead and Teddy Wayne introduce
NPR Weekly; Scott Jacobson, Mike Sacks, and
Ted Travelstead on pickup lines for Deadheads.

6 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 JU LY 2 015

 JULY 2015 No. 659 VANIT YFAIR.COM

CON TI NUED FROM PAGE 6

FANFAIR & FAIRGROUND

27 31 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF THE CULTURE
The Chicago Athletic Association Hotel. Muriel
Brandolini’s pop-up shop in Southampton, New York;
Hot Type. Korean beauty: the future of grooming is here.

33 AROUND THE WORLD, ONE PARTY AT A TIME

V.F.’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner
party, at the residence of the French ambassador, hosted
the Hill’s finest and Hollywood’s brightest.

COLUMNS
40 BLACK AND BLUE By JAMES WOLCOTT
After decades of police killings of unarmed black
men, America must face up to a bias—beyond
racism—that runs deep in the national psyche.

44 THE SUNDANCE KIDS

Spotlight on the stars of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
By Richard Lawson. Photograph by Williams & Hirakawa.

BY RN E A ND S CHR EI B E R PHOTOG RA PH E D BY PAT RI CK E CC LE S IN E. BY RN E ’S DR ES S BY A LTU ZA RR A ; N E CKL AC E BY

46
DRE S S BY CH RI ST IA N DI O R HAUT E CO UTUR E . IL L UST RAT I ON BY R IS KO . F OR DE TA I L S, GO TO VF. COM / CREDI TS
WHAT DO THE SIMPLE FOLK DO?

J E NN IF E R M EY E R. S CHR EI B E R’ S CL OT HIN G BY BO S S. S AGE P HOTO GR A PH ED BY MI G UEL RE VE R IE GO ;

By MICHAEL KINSLEY From gay marriage to abortion,
the G.O.P.’s “wedge” issues have lost steam. In 2016,
expect a new strategy. Illustrations by Barry Blitt.

48 MOORE THE MERRIER

Spotlight on Shameik Moore, whose breakout
role in Dope is just the beginning. By Krista Smith.
Photograph by Lauren Dukoff.

ET CETERA
16 CONTRIBUTORS
18 EDITOR’S LETTER CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
36 IN THE DETAILS LIEV SCHREIBER
FROM LEFT: Halston Sage (page 22); Liev Schreiber (page 36);
Rose Byrne (page 38); Stephen Fry (page 118).
38 OUT TO LUNCH ROSE BYRNE
118 PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE STEPHEN FRY

10 VAN IT Y FAIR www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2 015

 ®

Editor GRAYDON CARTER

Managing Editor CHRIS GARRETT Design Director CHRIS DIXON

Executive Editor DOUGLAS STUMPF Features Editor JANE SARKIN Photography Director SUSAN WHITE
Deputy Editors AIMÉE BELL, PUNCH HUTTON, DANA BROWN, MARK ROZZO Fashion and Style Director JESSICA DIEHL Associate Managing Editor ELLEN KIELL
Legal Affairs Editor ROBERT WALSH Director of Special Projects SARA MARKS Copy Editor PETER DEVINE Research Director JOHN BANTA
Beauty Director SUNHEE GRINNELL Executive West Coast Editor KRISTA SMITH Art Director HILARY FITZGIBBONS
Photography Research Director JEANNIE RHODES Articles Editor LENORA JANE ESTES Deputy Director of Special Projects MATT ULLIAN
Fashion Market Director MICHAEL CARL Associate Legal Affairs Editor AUSTIN MERRILL Associate Copy Editor DAVID FENNER Production Director PAT CRAVEN
Research Editors MARY FLYNN, DAVID GENDELMAN Assistant Editors JAIME LALINDE, LAUREN CHRISTENSEN Deputy Research Editor ALISON FORBES
Reporter-Researchers BRENDAN BARR, SIMON BRENNAN, SUE CARSWELL, BEN KALIN, WALTER OWEN, MICHAEL SACKS Research Associate HANNAH SAFTER
Assistant Copy Editor ADAM NADLER Associate Art Directors LEE RUELLE, PALOMA HUERRE, KAITLYN PEPE Editorial Finance Manager GEOFF COLLINS
Editorial Business Manager SARAH SCHMIDT Senior Photography Producer KATHRYN MACLEOD Senior Photography Research Editors ANN SCHNEIDER, KATHERINE BANG
Associate Photography Producer RACHEL DELOACHE WILLIAMS Special Projects Manager ARI BERGEN Art Production Director CHRISTOPHER GEORGE
Copy and U.K. Production Director CARLA ZANDONELLA Copy Production Manager ANDERSON TEPPER Senior Executive Assistant to the Editor ANNA HJALMARSDOTTIR
Assistant to the Editor DAN GILMORE Assistant to the Managing Editor LUCY FELDMAN Market Editor ISABELLA BEHRENS
Associate to the Fashion and Style Director RYAN YOUNG Fashion Associate DUNCAN GOODWIN Assistant Features Editor ANDREA CUTTLER
Features Associate MARISSA EISELE Editorial Business Associate CAMILLE ZUMWALT COPPOLA
Editorial Associates CAT BUCKLEY, MARY ALICE MILLER, LUCIE SHELLY, LOUISA STRAUSS Editorial Assistants MARLEY BROWN, LEORA YASHARI

Editor-at-Large CULLEN MURPHY Special Correspondents BOB COLACELLO, MAUREEN ORTH, BRYAN BURROUGH, AMY FINE COLLINS
Writers-at-Large MARIE BRENNER, JAMES REGINATO Style Editor–at–Large MICHAEL ROBERTS International Correspondent WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE
London Editor HENRY PORTER Paris Editor VÉRONIQUE PLAZOLLES European Editor–at–Large JEMIMA KHAN Editor (Los Angeles) WENDY STARK MORRISSEY
Our Man in Kabul TOM FRESTON Our Man in Saigon BRIAN MCNALLY Architecture Consultant BASIL WALTER
Editorial Consultant JIM KELLY Senior Editorial Adviser WAYNE LAWSON
Editor, Creative Development DAVID FRIEND

vanityfair.com
Director MICHAEL HOGAN Editor KATHERINE GOLDSTEIN Deputy Editor MATTHEW LYNCH Projects Editor KELLY BUTLER Photography Editor CHIARA MARINAI
Staff Photographer JUSTIN BISHOP Video Editor JEREMY ELKIN Social Media Editor JEFFREY TOUSEY Hollywood Editor KATEY RICH Hollywood Columnist RICHARD LAWSON
Senior Hollywood Writer JULIE MILLER Hollywood Writer JOANNA ROBINSON News Editor KIA MAKARECHI Staff Writer JOSH DUBOFF Associate Editor ALEXANDRA BEGGS
Line Editor STEPHANIE HORST Associate Line Editor AMIRAH MERCER Producer ELISE TAYLOR Editorial Associate MAREN M. QUIGLEY Photo Associate BENJAMIN PARK

Contributing Editors
HENRY ALFORD, KURT ANDERSEN, SUZANNA ANDREWS, LILI ANOLIK, ROBERT SAM ANSON, JUDY BACHRACH, DONALD L. BARLETT, CARL BERNSTEIN,
PETER BISKIND, BUZZ BISSINGER, HOWARD BLUM, PATRICIA BOSWORTH, MARK BOWDEN, DOUGLAS BRINKLEY,
ALICE BRUDENELL-BRUCE, MICHAEL CALLAHAN, MARINA CICOGNA, EDWIN JOHN COASTER, WILLIAM D. COHAN, RICH COHEN, JOHN CONNOLLY,
STEVEN DALY, BEATRICE MONTI DELLA CORTE, JANINE DI GIOVANNI, KURT EICHENWALD, LISA EISNER, SARAH ELLISON, BRUCE FEIRSTEIN,
STEVE GARBARINO, A. A. GILL, PAUL GOLDBERGER, VANESSA GRIGORIADIS, MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS, LOUISE GRUNWALD, BRUCE HANDY, DAVID HARRIS,
JOHN HEILPERN, REINALDO HERRERA, CAROL BLUE HITCHENS, SARAJANE HOARE, A. M. HOMES, LAURA JACOBS, SEBASTIAN JUNGER,
DAVID KAMP, SAM KASHNER, JON KELLY, MICHAEL KINSLEY, EDWARD KLEIN, BETSY KENNY LACK, FRAN LEBOWITZ, ADAM LEFF, DANY LEVY,
MONICA LEWINSKY, MICHAEL LEWIS, GEORGE LOIS, DAVID MARGOLICK, VICTORIA MATHER (TRAVEL), BRUCE MCCALL, BETHANY MCLEAN,
PATRICK MCMULLAN, ANNE MCNALLY, PIPPA MIDDLETON, SETH MNOOKIN, NINA MUNK, ELISE O’SHAUGHNESSY, JAMIE PALLOT,
EVGENIA PERETZ, JEAN PIGOZZI, WILLIAM PROCHNAU, TODD S. PURDUM, JOHN RICHARDSON, LISA ROBINSON, DAVID ROSE, RICHARD RUSHFIELD,
NANCY JO SALES, ELISSA SCHAPPELL, MARK SEAL, GAIL SHEEHY, MICHAEL SHNAYERSON, INGRID SISCHY, SALLY BEDELL SMITH,
JAMES B. STEELE, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT, MATT TYRNAUER, CRAIG UNGER, DIANE VON FURSTENBERG,
ELIZABETH SALTZMAN WALKER, BENJAMIN WALLACE, HEATHER WATTS, JIM WINDOLF, JAMES WOLCOTT, EVAN WRIGHT, NED ZEMAN

In Memoriam FREDERIC MORTON (1924–2015), CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (1949–2011), TIM HETHERINGTON (1970–2011), DOMINICK DUNNE (1925–2009),
DAVID HALBERSTAM (1934–2007), MARJORIE WILLIAMS (1958–2005), HELMUT NEWTON (1920–2004), HERB RITTS (1952–2002)

Contributing Photographers
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
BRUCE WEBER, JONATHAN BECKER, MARK SELIGER, PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, HARRY BENSON, LARRY FINK, TIMOTHY GREENFIELD-SANDERS, SAM JONES,
JONAS FREDWALL KARLSSON, DAVID LACHAPELLE, MICHAEL O’NEILL, NORMAN JEAN ROY, SNOWDON, MARIO TESTINO, GASPER TRINGALE, FIROOZ ZAHEDI
Photographer-at-Large TODD EBERLE Contributing Artists HILARY KNIGHT, ROSS MACDONALD, ROBERT RISKO, TIM SHEAFFER, EDWARD SOREL, STEPHEN DOYLE

Contributors
Fashion Market Director (Menswear) HEATHER SHIMOKAWA Accessories Director DAISY SHAW
Senior Photography Producer RON BEINNER Accessories Editor JACLYN COBOURN Special Projects Art Director ANGELA PANICHI
Associate Photography Editor CATE STURGESS Digital Production Manager H. SCOTT JOLLEY Associate Digital Production Manager SUSAN M. RASCO
IL L USTR AT IO N S BY MA R K M ATCHO

Production Manager BETH BARTHOLOMEW Associate Editor S. P. NIX Associate Art Director TONYA DOURAGHY
Beauty Assistant AUDREY NOBLE Photo Associate JAMES EMMERMAN Photography Production Assistant ELIZABETH ROBERTS
Stylist DEBORAH AFSHANI Art Assistant LILY NELSON Video Associate EMMA GRADY Editorial Assistant EMILY TANNENBAUM

Public Relations
Executive Director of Public Relations BETH KSENIAK Deputy Director of Public Relations LIZZIE WOLFF
Associate Director of Public Relations/Contributing Style Editor, vf.com RACHEL TASHJIAN Public Relations Assistant ANDREA WHITTLE

12 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2015

 ®

Publisher, Chief Revenue Officer CHRIS MITCHELL

Associate Publisher ALICE MCKOWN

Associate Publisher, Marketing JENIFER BERMAN
Associate Publisher, Luxury AMBER ESTABROOK POGGI
Executive Director of Brand Development SARAH KREFTING MURPHY
Executive Advertising Director JENNY GLASSBERG
Director of Finance and Business Operations MARC LEYER
Executive Director, Retail and Fashion EMILY DAVIS Advertising Director, Luxury Partnerships GINA GERVINO
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Business Director MARTINA NAVRATIL
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14 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2015

 PROMOTION CONTRIBUTORS

vanityfairagenda.com ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

In her home, in Malibu, California,
over the course of two days, Bruce—
now Caitlyn—Jenner sat for Contributing
Photographer Annie Leibovitz for
a portfolio (“He Says Goodbye, She
Says Hello,” on page 50). “There
was no one else to do this but
Annie,” says Features Editor Jane
Sarkin. “She has photographed some
of the most important and iconic
moments for the magazine.”

BUZZ BISSINGER
In February, Contributing Editor
Buzz Bissinger began visiting Bruce
Jenner at Jenner’s Malibu home,
while the Olympic gold medalist was
transitioning into a woman. In “He
Says Goodbye, She Says Hello”
(page 50), Jenner presents herself to
the public as Caitlyn for the first
time. “I watched a man I was with
for several months disappear and
become a woman,” Bissinger says.
“It’s the most remarkable story I’ve
ever worked on as a journalist.”

SARAH ELLISON
With a distinct skill for reporting on
media, Contributing Editor Sarah Ellison
writes this month about upwardly mobile
millennial couple Chris Hughes and Sean
Eldridge and Hughes’s controversial
takeover of The New Republic (“Portrait
of a Marriage,” on page 80). “They are
precocious in their achievements and in
their ability to attract outsize media
attention,” says Ellison. “In person, they
struck me as more three-dimensional and
thoughtful than they have been given
credit for. I have hope that these two will
become the people they want to be.”
V I S I T.
D I SCOV E R. JUDD APATOW
Director, producer, and screenwriter
Judd Apatow recently took over
SHARE. the office of V.F. editor Graydon Carter
to shoot a scene for Apatow’s
forthcoming film Trainwreck, which was
FOR THE LATEST NEWS, HAPPENINGS, written by and stars comedian
PH OTOG RA P HS BY PAUL GI LM O RE ( L E I BOV IT Z) ,

( A PATOW) , DA N IE L L A Z A L CMA N ( E LL I S ON )

PHOTOS, AND VIDEO, FOLLOW Amy Schumer. “I’m always fascinated

DO M SAVI NI ( BI S SI NGE R ) , M A RK SE L I GE R

@VFAGENDA ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, with people’s insecurities,” says

PINTEREST, AND YOUTUBE. Apatow, who speaks with Schumer
(page 84) in an adaptation from his
book Sick in the Head: Conversations
About Life and Comedy. “If you
have 100 percent confidence, you’re
hard to connect with.”

16 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2015

 EDITOR’S LETTER
CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS
I n the spring of 2007, at the height of
the bloody “surge” in Iraq, members
of an American platoon drove in
convoy to a wasteland on the edge
of Baghdad. Night had fallen, and when the
ramp of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle was low-
ered, a shaft of light shot through the dark-
ness. A handful of Iraqi men, blindfolded
and bound with flex-cuffs, were led down the
incline and taken to the edge of a weedy ca-
nal. They had been captured earlier in the day
and may or may not have been insurgents.
The detainees were made to line up alongside
the canal, and then one by one they were shot
by First Sergeant John Hatley and two of his
men. Hatley, according to one of his soldiers,
later explained to his troops that what had
been done was “retaliation, and we won’t have to face these guys again.
It stays in this group, this brotherhood, and we’re all on the same page.”
But as Vanity Fair International Correspondent William Lange-
wiesche reports in “The Good Soldier,” on page 70, not everyone was
on the same page. Three times that day, one of the soldiers, a staff ser-
geant named Jess Cunningham, had tried to prevent what he feared
was coming. Cunningham did not immediately report the murders, for
complicated reasons, but he was shattered. Only much later was he able
to inform the people who had the power to act. Langewiesche writes,
“Thus began a process, rare for our era, in which a serving soldier—not
families, not victims, not the press—dragged the army into confronting a
war crime.” And confront it the army did: Hatley and the two others are
today serving long sentences at Fort Leavenworth.
This epic account, written by a correspondent with long experience cov-
ering Iraq, is remarkable on many levels. It makes vivid the fabric of life
and leadership in the U.S. military. It lays bare the impossible task the U.S.
gave to its young soldiers in Iraq. It plumbs the intricacies of military justice.
“This is a story that should be taught in army schools,” Langewiesche writes.
“What happened here? How could it have been detected in advance? What
are the dangers of esprit de corps?” It is a story that should most surely be
taught. But it hasn’t been. As Langewiesche points out, the army prefers
that the memory fade: “wrapped into a bundle and dropped out of sight.”
F
rom the suburbs of St. Louis to the streets of New York, from
Cleveland, Ohio, to Baltimore, Maryland, Americans have wit-
nessed one episode after another in which unarmed black men die
at the hands of very well-armed police. Sometimes it is a shooting out in
the open, caught on someone’s cell-phone camera. Sometimes the vio-
lence occurs in the shadows—for instance, in the back of a police van. In
his column this month, “Black and Blue,” on page 40, contributing edi-
tor James Wolcott points out that, “for all of the country’s racial progress,
the killings of black men (and boys) by police officers haven’t dwindled
… they’ve appeared to accelerate.” He attributes this grim reality both to
America’s continued history of racism (“Black lives matter in America,”
Wolcott writes, “but white lives rule”) and to the nature of police culture
(which is built on the badge’s “power, authority, status, and prerogative”).
Police work is a brutal line of business, and the quotidian violence experi-
enced on the job can numb even the most levelheaded professional. The
18 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
police as a whole have a long history of killing
N I GE L PAR RY
innocent people in the course of their duties—
by accident, on purpose, or in callous disre-
gard. We know about so many more of these
fatal confrontations because of the ease of sur-
veillance afforded by the digital era—as Wol-
cott puts it, “technology has democratized
eyewitnesshood.” By our count, in the last
year the national news media have reported
on the deaths of at least 20 unarmed mem-
bers of minority groups as a result of police
shootings—but this is surely only a fraction
of the killings that have occurred. We may
be “deep in the second term of the country’s
first African-American president,” Wolcott
writes, but too many of the nation’s police
precincts seem to inhabit another America.
O
ne of the hallmarks of the early stage of political campaigns—and
the early stage tends to come earlier and earlier—is the attempt
by candidates to establish that they are ordinary people. Those of
us who actually are ordinary people don’t find this a particular challenge.
But politicians, most of whom are anything but ordinary, have teams of
advisers to help them at least give the impression of being ordinary. And
still they can’t get it right. It was painful to watch John Kerry, a decade
ago, order a Philadelphia cheesesteak and then ask the person at the coun-
ter if he could have it made with Swiss. (For you non-ordinary people,
it’s generally made with Cheez Whiz.) Scott Brown, running for the Sen-
ate in Massachusetts, went everywhere in a pickup truck, as if that were
what everyone up there drives. You start hearing a lot more “gotta”s and
“lemme”s from the lips of people who went to Wellesley or Yale.
As columnist Michael Kinsley writes in “What Do the Simple Folk
Do?,” on page 46, we have entered the “competitive normality” phase
of the 2016 campaign. And there may be something different about
it this time around: it may be all there is. It used to be that the basic
Republican strategy was to use “wedge” issues such as abortion, gay
marriage, public prayer, flag burning, and the like as a way to mobilize
the base up through Election Day, after which, if they won, they would
“govern like the pro-business, rich-people’s party that they are at heart.”
This has been the case at least since 1992, the year in which George
H. W. Bush—whose reputation has been retrospectively burnished by
the appalling example of his progeny—allowed the far-right wing to take
over and run the entire G.O.P. convention in return for letting him have
the nomination. But a funny thing has happened, Kinsley writes: those
wedge issues aren’t so sharp anymore. Gay marriage seems to be on a
victory march from sea to sea. Abortion no longer gets much traction.
“If wedge issues are blunted, what will take their place?,” Kinsley
asks. “My guess is it will be class warfare of the most pathetic kind.” The
opening salvos have been fired, with Wisconsin governor Scott Walker
suggesting that Hillary Clinton has never stepped inside a Kohl’s de-
partment store, and with Hillary, countering aggressively, making a “se-
cretly” recorded visit to a Chipotle in Ohio. We will soon be heading
toward the main event of the competitive-normality competition. The
irony, of course, is that this contest is unwinnable: a truly normal person
wouldn’t be in the race in the first place. —GRAYDON CARTER
JU LY 2015
 JULY A l l I s VA N I T I E S . . . N o t h i n g I s F a i r 2015

OFF the AIR

An exclusive peek at NPR Weekly magazine’s
first cover, PAGE 25.
‹ THIS
MONTH ‹ KNOCK
’EM DEAD {
“Wanna take a hit on my ceramic asthma
inhaler?” GO-TO PICKUP LINES for this
summer’s Grateful Dead reunion show,
PAGE 25.
}

S AG E WEAR S
A D R ES S
BY P R A DA.

F RA N CI S ; M A KE UP BY SE RGE HO DO N OU; MA N I CUR E BY MA R IS A C A RM ICHA E L ; PHOTOG RA P HE D AT

HA I R P RO DUC TS BY SUAV E PRO F ES SI O N A LS ; MA KE UP P ROD UCTS BY CH A NE L ; H A I R BY MA RCUS

S MA SH B OX ST UDI O S, IN C ULVER CI T Y, C A LI F O RN IA ; F O R DE TA I LS , GO TO V F.CO M /CR E DI TS

HALSTON SAGE
AGE : 22. PROVE NANC E : Los Angeles. C L ASS ACT: The blonde beauty, whose breakout role was in Nickelodeon’s
2012 How to Rock series, started acting professionally in high school. “I would be in science class studying lines
for my audition later that day, which isn’t great, but it was way more fun.” RIDING HIGH: The actress is a champion
equestrian. “It was the best thing I ever did for myself growing up. It taught me responsibility and gave me an athlete’s mentality—competitive but also
appreciative of where hard work can get you. I carried that over into acting.” BAC K TO SC HOOL: Sage plays Lacey Pemberton in next month’s Paper
Towns—the film adaptation of John Green’s beloved coming-of-age novel, which stars Cara Delevingne. “I went to an all-girls school, and I always felt
like I missed out on a traditional high-school life. So when I was filming, it made up for that.” HOME , SWEET HOME: “I am excited when I get a movie and I
get to move somewhere for a certain amount of time. But I am a Cali girl. My family is here. The sun is here. It’s kind of hard to leave.” — KRISTA SMITH

22 P H OTO G R A P H BY MIGUEL REVERIEGO • ST YL ED BY JESSICA DIEHL JU LY 2015

 VAN I T IE S

TOUCHES GRAY
Ten pickup lines for the
of

July Fourth Grateful Dead

reunion show at
Chicago’s Soldier Field
B y S C O T T JAC O B S O N, M I K E SAC K S,
A N D T E D T R AV E L ST E A D
I llu s tr atio n b y R A M I N I E M I

“Apologies if I appear a
bit glassy-eyed.
I just dropped five tabs
of antacid.”

“I hear there’s a bad

batch of Sauvignon
Blanc floating around,
so be careful.”
“I was there in ’71 when
they went from ‘Dark Star’
to ‘Wharf Rat,’ then
back into ‘Dark Star.’ Hey,
where are you going?”

“Check out my
carpal-tunnel splint!
It’s tie-dyed!”

“Are those homemade falafel

balls in your fanny pack or are
you just happy to see me?”
“I’ve got a
nitrous balloon
© J A ME S J ACKS ON /A L A M Y ( VO LVO ) , BY J EF F MA L E T/ N EW SCO M (I N SKE E P’ S HE A D) , © GE O FF MA R SHALL/
A L A MY ( I NS KE EP ’S B ACKGRO UND ), © O J O I M AGE S LTD./ A L A MY ( IN S KE EP ’S B O DY ) , BY ROB I N PL ATZER/

with your name

PH OTO GRA P HS BY CHA RL E S E SHE L MA N / F IL MM AG IC ( GA R RI SO N ) , BI L L GR E EN BL ATT /P OL A RI S ( DI A NE),

on it in my
Navigator.”

“Want some
Mexican grass?
No? How about
Mexican Cialis?”
“Technically I can fit
T WI N I MAG ES ( GRO SS ) , A STR ID STAW I A RZ /G ET T Y IM AG ES ( I RA )

three more guys

Introducing under this sundress.”

NPR WEEKLY MAGAZINE

“Wanna take
a hit on my
ceramic asthma
inhaler?”
“I’m not
Mr. Natural, but
I am nude and
my beard
is thigh-length.
You still fertile?”

B y K AT E G R E AT H E A D A N D T E D DY WAY N E | Ph oto illustration by S E A N MC C A B E

JU LY 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 25

 3 1 DAY S i n t h e L I F E o f t h e C U LT U R E JULY 2015

 Æ MURIEL BRANDOLINI’S LIFESTYLE LAUNCH p. 28 AN EPIC OF MODERN INDIA p. 28 BODY AND SEOUL: THE KOREAN BEAUTY TREND p. 30

The second-floor-
lobby lounge.

The bar area

of a guest room
at the hotel.

CLUBBY RETREAT
Built in 1893, the Venetian Gothic–
style Chicago Athletic Association building
long towered over Michigan Avenue and
PH OTOG RA P H COU RTE SY O F TH E PR IT ZK ER FA M ILY ( L O GO )

served as a luxurious sporting bastion

A custom-designed Roman
and Williams bedframe and pommel
horse; inset, the association’s logo.
Cindy’s, the rooftop
bar and restaurant.
for the city’s elite gentlemen. Shuttered since
1997, it’s about to become Chicago’s most
in inn. The 241-room architectural gem,
christened the Chicago Athletic Association
Hotel, has been deftly restored by the
N.Y.C.-based design firm Roman and Williams,
which has given it a contemporary spin.
The prestige remains—Hyatt heir John Pritzker’s
company Commune Hotels and Resorts is one
of the partners—but private membership
is now obsolete. (ChicagoAthleticHotel.com)
—JAMES R E G IN AT O

JU LY 2 015 P H OTO G R APH S BY AL AN SHORTALL VAN IT Y FAIR 27

 High Life
International interior designer
Muriel Brandolini has tapped into her French,
Venezuelan, and Vietnamese heritage to
conceive and create the eccentric treasures featured
in her debut lifestyle collection, Life. The line,
which includes loungewear, furniture, and accessories
for the home, is playful and modern and works
well in a city residence or at a seaside retreat.
Brandolini will introduce Life at her Southampton,
New York, pop-up shop, which opens this
month—perfect timing for summer hostess gifts.
From the Life by Muriel Brandolini (42A Jobs Lane, Southampton,
collection, clockwise from above: engraved- New York; murielbrandolini.com)
marble table set with porcelain dish
and glass bowl; Murano-glass cup; shoes;
—PUNCH HUTTON
straw hat; cotton sun hat and silk-taffeta
djellaba dress; print throw pillow.

my Hempel and Jill Ciment, writing
as A. J. Rich, give life to their late
friend Kathy Rich’s unfinished
thriller in The Hand That Feeds You
(Scribner)—an unnerving, elegant
page-turner. Couples in a heartland
Gangsters and dreamers own the streets of Jerome
Charyn’s Bitter Bronx (Liveright). Emily Bingham toasts GREAT THINGS
her great-aunt, the Irrepressible (Farrar, Straus and Gi- he Way Things Were
roux) Jazz Age pleasure junkie Henrietta Bingham. Pho- (Farrar, Straus
tographer Raymond Cauchetier’s New Wave (ACC) and Giroux), Aatish
est formidable. Marvelous Bob Morris sees his parents Taseer’s panoramic novel

PH OTOG RA P HS: TO P, BY F R A NCE S CO L AGNE S E ( A L L E XCE P T PI L L OW) ; B OTTO M , BY T I M HO UT; F O R DE TAI LS, GO TO VF.CO M/C REDI TS
town wilt under the heat of exis- off in Bobby Wonderful (Twelve). of modern India, takes its title
tential meltdown in Dean Ba- Lidia Yuknavitch burns through from the literal meaning of
kopoulos’s Summerlong (Ecco). sex, art, and war in The Small the Sanskrit word for history,
Anne Kreamer preaches a radi- Backs of Children (Harper). Itihāsa. And it is, indeed,
cal daily practice of Risk/Reward Scott Sherman rebuilds the New a novel where characters are
(Random House). The reclusive York Public Library with “encircled by history.” When
Harper Lee sets To Kill a Mock- Patience and Forti- Toby, an exiled Sanskrit
ingbird fans a-twitter with a sequel of sorts, Go Set a tude (Melville House). Petra Collins scholar, dies, it’s left to
Watchman (Harper). Jeff Gordinier and Marc Wein- cherry-picked the work of fe- his son, Skanda,
garten edit Here She Comes Now (Rare Bird), essays on male artists for Babe (Pres- to return to India
women musicians. Eric Bennett’s deceitful Iraq-war tel). Etgar Keret to immerse
memoirist tells A Big Enough Lie (TriQuarterly). Joshua is happy for The his ashes. Meanwhile,
Cohen plumbs the mysteries of human connection in Seven Good Years Skanda ponders not just
Book of Numbers (Random House). Stephen Witt (Riverhead). his father’s intellectual
drops the needle on How Music Got Free (Viking). — ELISSA SCHAPPELL disillusionment but also his
parents’ failed marriage set
IN SHORT
against the violent flash points
Luca Dotti cooks with Hepburn in Audrey at Home (Harper Design). Rinker Buck travels The Oregon Trail
(Simon & Schuster). Poet Nick Flynn exposes My Feelings (Graywolf). Jesse Browner asks, How Did I Get Here? of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.
(HarperWave). Clifford Thompson shines in Twin of Blackness (Autumn House). Milan Kundera revels “Our literature is crammed
in The Festival of Insignificance (Harper). Brenda Bowen escapes to Maine in Enchanted August (Pamela Dorman). full of big events. Of riots, and
Exiled sisters land on The Star Side of Bird Hill (Penguin), by Naomi Jackson. Fred Goodman spins Allen Klein (Eamon
partitions, and emergencies,”
Dolan). Shaun Usher compiles Lists of Note (Chronicle). Al Hirschfeld illustrates The Hirschfeld Century (Knopf).
Murder haunts Robin Kirman’s Bradstreet Gate (Crown). Kevin Kwan is back with China Rich Girlfriend Skanda says. Taseer’s great
(Doubleday). David Black spies a Fast Shuffle (Forge). Charles Kaiser tallies The Cost of Courage (Other Press). gift is to locate the fault lines—
David E. Hoffman fingers The Billion Dollar Spy (Doubleday). Anthony Quinn punches up A History of British Magazine of both individuals and
Design (V&A). Peggy Freydberg draws Poems from the Pond (Hybrid Nation). Film critic Richard Schickel
screens his Keepers (Knopf). Andi Teran raises Ana of California (Penguin). Penny Vincenzi plots A Perfect Heritage
a nation—in the midst of epic
(Overlook). Matthew Quick warns, Love May Fail (Harper). A family shatters in Julia Pierpont’s upheavals. — A N D E R S O N T E P P E R
Among the Ten Thousand Things (Random House). – E . S .

28 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2015

 MID-LUXURY $$ TRENDS BORN IN
SOUTH KOREA

Æ
DAVI
Currently available only at daviskin.com. Safety razor
Expansion coming soon. Key ingredients: grapes to rid the
and fermented-wine extracts. Price range: $45–$185. face of peach
fuzz.
BEST - SELLER : UP NEXT :
Anti- Le Grand Cru Cream
Oxidant ($185). Masks to
wear while
Active
sleeping.
Essence
Cream
($98).

One-sheet
face
AMARTE and body
masks.
Created by dermatologist Dr. Craig
Kraffert and available at amarteskincare.com. Key
ingredient: retinol. Price range: $37–$102.
BEST - SELLER : UP NEXT :
Eyeconic Overnight
Eye Cream Express
($60). Therapy—
a sleeping
Korea mask

A LL F RO M GE TT Y IM AGE S; BY CHRI S G OR MA N ( O NE - S HE ET B O DY MA SK S, TO NY MO LY O NE - S HE E T FAC E MASK S, SAFET Y RAZO R); FO R DETAI LS, GO TO VF.CO M/C REDI TS
($79).

PH OTOG RA P HS BY J I M BA L L A RD ( KOR EA N F L AG) , F RO M I M AGE S O URC E ( E YE L A S HE S, L E F T) , BY J O E PE TERSBURGE R (SNAI L), C ARLO S. E. SE RRANO (E YE L ASHES, RI GHT),
The Hyper-market for Beauty
BY SUNHEE GRINNELL
Crème
LUXURY HIGH-END $$$ MASS-MARKET $ d’escargot! Snail
secretions are the
Æ
Æ

latest anti-aging
ingredient.
AMOREPACIFIC LANEIGE
First Korean brand to enter the U.S. luxury market with Entered the mass market at Target last year.
an impact, in 2003. Available at us.amorepacific.com. A runaway hit at an affordable price. Key ingredient:
Key ingredient: green tea. Price range: $35–$750. purified mineral water. Price range: $28–$50.
BEST - SELLER : UP NEXT : BEST - SELLER : UP NEXT :
Time Response Eye Resort BB Cushion ($34). Water Bank Moisture Lash
Renewal Creme Collection— Cream ($32). extensions
($260). three sun-care and lash
products perms.
($40–$75).
AND, WAIT, THERE’S MORE ...

Additional South Korean

beauty brands are coming west,
SULWHASOO DR. JART+ such as Belif (Korea’s answer
Launched in the U.S. at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman The cool, no-fuss brand debuted its BB cream to to Kiehl’s), exclusively at Sephora.
in 2010. One of the fastest-growing brands from much fanfare at Sephora.com in 2011. Key Other K-brands like Iope
Seoul. Key ingredient: ginseng. Price range: $36–$420. ingredient: medicinal herbs. Price range: $6–$58. and Mamonde will come via
BEST - SELLER : UP NEXT : BEST - UP NEXT :
Aritaum, which has
Concentrated Perfecting Cushion SELLER : One-sheet face masks opened stores in San Francisco
Ginseng Renewing S.P.F. 50+ ($60). Premium (nine options; $6–$12). and Canada. New York
Cream ($220). Beauty gets its first one this month.
Balm Think: mini Korean Sephora!
S.P.F. 45 And other Korean beauty
($39). emporiums such as
Tonymoly and Holika Holika
have just arrived in N.Y.C.

30 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2015

 A R O U N D t h e WO R L D, O N E PA RT Y a t a T I M E JULY 2015

Katie
Couric
and
Karlie
Kloss

Michael Beschloss, Leon

Wieseltier, and Jim Lehrer

Georgette Bradley
Mosbacher Timothy Simons Cooper and
Nancy Pelosi

Residence of the
ambassador,
Embassy of France.

Michael
Bloomberg and
French
ambassador
Gérard Araud.

Maureen Dowd,
Charlie Rose, and Eden PATRIOT GAMES
Rafshoon
Michael R. Bloomberg and
Graydon Carter hosted a swanky soirée
at the residence of the French
ambassador following the White House
Correspondents’ Association Dinner,
in Washington, D.C.

Lorne Susan Rice

Michaels and Valerie
Jarrett

Cecily
Strong
E XT ER I O R) , DI MI TR I OS K A MB OU RI S/ WI RE I M AGE
( COO P ER ) , H A NN A H THO MS O N ( A LL OTH ER S)
PH OTO GRA P HS BY J UST I N BI S HO P ( CO UR IC ,

Gayle
King
and
Ray Kelly and Laverne
Chrissy U.S. Attorney Cox
Teigen Preet Bharara
and John
Legend
VAN IT Y FAIR 33
 I MAGE S (S CAL I A), HA N N A H THO MS O N (A L L OTHE R S )
WI R E I MAGE (CARTE R ), A N DR E W H. WA L KE R / GE TT Y
PHOTO GR APHS BY JUSTI N B I S HO P (FAVR E AU,
KAL AN I CK, S MI TH), DI MI TR I O S KA MB O UR I S /
Jon Favreau
and Emily Black

George Eric
Stevens Jr. Stonestreet
and Jane
Fonda

Foyer of the
French
ambassador’s
residence.
Susan
Nemazee
Westmacott Shane
and Huma Smith
Abedin

Naomi
Campbell

Travis Tina
Kalanick Tchen

U.S. secretary
Andy of defense
Lack Ashton Carter and
Stephanie Carter.
Neon lights.

Elon
Musk
and
Timothy
Hutton

Brandon
Marshall
and Michi
Nogami- The
Marshall Honorable
Jeff
Antonin
Zucker
Chris Dodd Scalia

34 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
 IN THE DETAILS

What You Should Know About

LIEV SCHREIBER
A PA N O PLY O F E C C E N T R I C B I O G R A PH I C A L DATA R E : A M E R I C A’S N I C E - GU Y V I L L A I N

A FORMER bike messenger, Schreiber regu-

L
iev Schreiber, the Lower East
Side–raised stage-and-screen larly totes his sons around New York
actor lauded for roles ranging on his beloved black Dutch work bike,
from Shakespeare’s Macbeth which the boys call “Thunder.”
to Marvel’s Sabretooth, grew up fasci- HOME BASE for the family and their 13-year-
nated by another distinctly handsome old Yorkie, Bob, is in N.Y.C.’s NoHo.
Tony Award winner known for his acting However, while Schreiber is filming Ray
duality—Basil Rathbone, the stage actor Donovan, the family lives between Brent-
and 14-time Sherlock Holmes of 30s and wood and Santa Monica, just close
40s cinema. But it wasn’t Rathbone’s enough to the Pacific for frequent beach
defining detective role that entranced trips. (A boxer on and off for 15 years,
the future Yale School of Drama and Schreiber also surfs, although “not well.”)
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art–trained HE CO-FOUNDED the ad agency Van’s Gen-
actor—it was his swashbuckling villains. eral Store in late 2012 with advertising
“Everyone says villains are thankless vet Scott Carlson. Schreiber helps scout
parts, but those are really the best roles,” business and pitches in with copywriting.
says Schreiber, who, at 47, has himself O NE H A B I T from his days in ashram
evolved into a Tony Award–winning ac- school—a chapter in his “eclectic” child-
tor and professional malefactor who can hood—is meditation. He tries to practice
both swing a sword (he loves fencing) every day for 20 minutes.
and carry a series. In anticipation of HE LIVED on vegetarian meals and black-
July’s third-season return of Showtime’s and-white movies at the insistence of
Ray Donovan, in which Schreiber stars his mother until around the age of 12,
as the eponymous Hollywood fixer, we review the bio- THE SCENE-STER when pastrami and Star Wars broke both spells.
Schreiber,
graphical dossier of America’s foremost Bard devotee. HIS DRINK is a gin martini—up, dry, with olives.
photographed in Culver
City, California.
HE SPEAKS a little French (learned in school), a bit
HE IS so committed to Shakespeare that he has of Russian (learned for a role), and some Spanish
schemed as Iago, sleazed as Iachimo, dreamed of play- (learned “because I live in America”).
ing Richard III—alas, at six feet three, Schreiber fears he is too tall— THE BEST gift he’s ever received was a black Steinway mini grand piano
and “can’t imagine dying without getting the chance to play Lear.” from Watts. Piano-playing ability, sadly, was not included. “I’ve prob-
THE LEADING man of Schreiber’s early life was his maternal grandfather, ably spent the last eight years trying to learn the first page of the aria
Alex Milgram, a stoic gentleman whose influence was so profound to the Goldberg Variations.”
that, Schreiber says, “every character I’ve ever played is in one way HE PAID off approximately $70,000 in student loans after playing a
or another modeled after him.” suicidal transvestite in Nora Ephron’s 1994 comedy, Mixed Nuts, his
BLOOD REL ATIONS include half-brother Pablo Schreiber, the Tony- first movie and the site of one humiliating memory: while rehearsing
nominated actor best known as Orange Is the New Black’s “Porn- a dance scene with a co-star, a nervous Schreiber remembers fixating
stache.” Schreiber has four other half-siblings from his bohemian on how “inappropriate it would be if I got an erection while I was do-
HA I R BY DA NI E L E RDMA N ; MA KE UP BY FA BI O L A ; F O R D ETA I L S, GO TO VF.CO M /CR ED I TS

mother, Heather, and his father, a Dartmouth-educated acting teacher. ing the fox-trot. … Sure enough, it happened.”
ST YL E D BY A SH LE Y W E STON ; CLOTHI N G BY B O S S; PO CKE T- SQ UA R E BY T HE T IE BA R ;

HE CREDITS his Russian and Eastern European heritage for what he HE CR AVES another comedy project, although @vf.com
calls his “Slavic fat pads”—i.e., his pronounced cheeks. maybe not one involving the fox-trot. To see a V I D E O

THE DOWNTURNED arch of his eyebrows gives him a villainous resting ex- DESPITE HIS intensive drama training, he had no interview with Liev
Schreiber, go to
pression. In real life, he laments his menacing visage because people qualms about appearing in the mainstream hor- VF.COM/JULY2015.
“think I’m a lot meaner than I am.” ror movie Scream. “For Shakespeare roles, I was
WHAT SHOCKS Schreiber is that he sired “such beautiful children”—his making $300 or $400 a week. And suddenly Bob Weinstein at Dimen-
blond, blue-eyed sons, Alexander (named for Schreiber’s grandfa- sion says, ‘I’ll pay you $20,000 to walk down a flight of stairs.’ ”
ther and called Sasha), seven, and Samuel (known as Kai), six. “But HIS FIRST brush with the Bard came during a sixth-grade production
then, of course, they look like their mother,” he of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was in the
says, referring to his partner of 10 years, Oscar- band, playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March
nominated actress Naomi Watts. on bass clarinet, and, he recalls, “I was think-
THE SETTING for his first date with “Nai”—his nick- “I THOUGHT I ing how ridiculous it looked onstage and how I
name for Watts—was outside Magnolia Bakery
in the West Village, where the two chitchatted
COULD DO thought I could do better.”
MORE COMFORTABLE onstage than in front of a camera,
over cupcakes (Schreiber prefers “the white
ones”) on a park bench. “It was all very above-
BETTER.” Schreiber says, “There’s nothing more exciting than
that conversation you have with a live audience.
board,” assures Schreiber. It’s the best feeling in the world.” —JULIE MILLER
36 VA NI T Y FA I R P H OTO G R A P H BY PATRICK ECCLESINE JU LY 2015
 CONVERSATION

Out to Lunch with

ROSE BYRNE
THE AUSSIE ACTRESS RELISHES BEING ON THE CUSP OF LOW-KEY, BIG-TIME STARDOM

R
ose Byrne, whose imperson-
ation of the laughing kooka-
burra bird of her native Aus-
tralia on The Tonight Show
Starring Jimmy Fallon made her an
instant YouTube hit, met me for lunch
at Morandi, her local hangout in New
York’s West Village. “Nice to meet you,
John,” the actress said in her breezy
Aussie accent. “Are you hungry?”
I’ve yet to meet an Australian who
revealed any snobbery or attitude, and
the fun, refreshingly unstarry Rose Byrne
didn’t let me down. In repose, she can
sometimes appear on-camera like a mel-
ancholic porcelain beauty. But in her jeans
and Kenzo Paris sweater that day, she was
more her natural, disarming self. She lives
nearby with Bobby Cannavale, who de-
clared her “the love of my life” while ac-
cepting an Emmy Award for his gangster
role on Boardwalk Empire. “He’s a real ro-
mantic, isn’t he?” she said. “I’m a very lucky girl.”
A waiter came by. “You’re not doing break- By JOHN HEILPERN
fast, are you?” she asked him hopefully. “No,
but we do have a frittata. If you like eggs, it’s
pretty good.” So she ordered the frittata, with a comforting side
of toast and a decaf cappuccino. “Great! Thank you.”
Her latest movie is an anticipated blockbuster for the sum-
her helpless with laughter, Byrne says.
In spite of her success, comparatively
little is known about Mary Rose Byrne.
Unusually in the acting biz, she’s up-
front about her age. Though she eas-
ily passes for a woman in her 20s, she
told me unself-consciously that she’s 35.
She’s the youngest of four siblings—all in
the arts—and the daughter of a statisti-
cian and a longtime administrator of an
Aboriginal school. Her parents live on a
farm in Tasmania, and she visits them
quite frequently. Her somewhat eccen-
tric dad has always enjoyed gambling on
the horses. “Never marry a punter,” said
her mom. The children were restricted
to watching TV only half an hour a day.
But her dad loved watching reruns of
John Cleese’s irresistibly insane Fawlty
Towers, the eternal BBC sitcom from the
70s. She can still quote the lines.
When I asked her what she misses
most about home, she listed her folks, the
beaches (she swims most days at a Y.M.C.A. in
New York and has practiced yoga since she was
15), the limitless supply of Vegemite (“It’s an ac-
quired taste, John. Heaven!”), and the Australian sense of humor,
which for her is not taking yourself too seriously. “You can be the
punch line of your own joke.”

ST YL E D BY PE NN Y L OVE L L; DR ES S BY A LTU ZA RR A ; J E WE L RY BY J E NN I F E R M E Y ER ; H A I R P ROD UCTS BY OR I BE; MAKE UP

mer silly season, Spy, released this month and directed by Paul Phenomenally, she’s already made some 40 films—in addition

PRO DUCTS BY CHA N E L; HA I R BY R ICHA RD M A RI N ; M A KE UP BY KATE L E E; F O R DE TA I LS , GO TO V F.CO M/C REDI TS

Feig (Bridesmaids). The broad—very broad—comedy is Mr. Feig’s to her five seasons with Glenn Close on the applauded FX legal
James Bond send-up, starring Melissa McCarthy, ever the lady, thriller, Damages. Her motley movie roles range from her first, when
as a frumpy desk-bound C.I.A. operative who’s besotted with she was still a schoolgirl, in Dallas Doll (starring Sandra Bernhard, if
Jude Law and goes incompetently undercover to save the world. you please, as a golf pro), to a handmaiden in one of the Star Wars
(Spoiler alert: she does.) Rose Byrne plays the Bond villain—a films (“My finest hour,” she says. She had one line, which she re-
delusional Bulgarian nuclear-arms dealer with a cut-glass British members as “My lady, are you O.K.?”), to the captured princess
accent, a wig that has a levitating life of its own, and the fashion Briseis in Troy, including a love scene with Brad Pitt’s bronzed Achil-
sense of “a slutty dolphin trainer.” les (“I’ve had worse,” she said at the time). The liberating turning
Feig is the populist director whose underdog mission is to fly the point in her new persona as a comic actress was Jackie Q, her
flag for women in movies. (His next comedy is the all-female reboot raunchy female version of her co-star, Russell Brand, in Get Him
of Ghostbusters, with Kristen Wiig and McCarthy.) “He breaks con- to the Greek, produced by the king of film comedy, Judd Apatow.
vention,” Byrne says of him admiringly. “He did it with Melissa and Rose Byrne describes herself, with typical self-effacement, as
Sandra Bullock in The Heat.” And crucially in her own career, he “a jobbing actor.” It is the honorable, yeoman reverse of being a
also cast her in her breakthrough role, as the perfect know-it-all an- star and all that goes with it. She remains driven, however, never
tagonist in his 2011 Bridesmaids (in which Byrne quite trusting whether she’ll work again, as all
notably held her own with S.N.L. alumnae Wiig, actors do. What does the future hold for her?
Maya Rudolph, and the rampant McCarthy). “Life’s pretty simple if you just relax,” she re-
What does she think of Feig’s muse? “To say “IT’S AN plied—happily quoting the line from Kaufman
Melissa is funny is obvious. She works incred-
ibly hard, she never complains, she’s stayed very ACQUIRED and Hart’s vintage comedy of family dysfunc-
tion, You Can’t Take It with You, in which she
grounded—and she’s just hysterical! She can turn
anything into ‘a bit.’ ” She improvises off the
TASTE, JOHN.” made her widely admired, too belated Broad-
way debut only last year, while secretly channel-
script—leaving everyone shooting a scene with ing her inner John Cleese. 
38 VANI T Y FA I R P H OTO G R A P H BY PATRICK ECCLESINE JU LY 2015
 E
JAMES WOLCOTT

ven for a
radical magazine in a radical decade with Mo-
lotov cocktails on its mind, the cover of the
July 1969 issue of Ramparts was, shall we say,
arresting. Breaking the fourth wall in a big way,
it cried Halt! with a helmeted, face-shadowed
policeman pointing a revolver square at the
reader’s head, and offered the following boun-
ty: “$10,000 for Information Leading to the
Arrest and Conviction of any Cop who has
Murdered a Black Man.” Many of Ramparts’
insurrectionist covers have dated into coun-
tercultural relics. Not this one. Here we are,
46 years later, deep in the second term of the
country’s first African-American president,
and, for all of the country’s racial progress,
the killings of black men (and boys) by police
officers haven’t dwindled into a few grievous,
rogue-cop incidents; they’ve appeared to ac-
celerate and hemorrhage into a Rorschach
blot of blood pools. Were any magazine to
tout a similar wanted poster today the inun-
dation would immobilize its in-box. Ramparts
felt compelled to step up to the plate with its
graphic proposal because, back in those ana-
log days of Mad Men yore, documentation of
police brutality was sketchy, sporadic, heav-
ily dependent on eyewitness accounts. Digital
technology has democratized eyewitnesshood,
made it less subject to the Rashomon
effect. All it takes to record law
PLUS ÇA CHANGE officers in the act of firing on
Top, Michigan state- an unarmed suspect or execut-
police officers round up ing a beatdown is a bystand-

BLACK AND
suspects during the er with a cell-phone camera
Detroit riots, July 25,
1967; above, men mourn
or a surveillance cam in just
the death of Freddie the right spot. Yet the vor-

BLUE
Gray in West Baltimore, tex impact of viral footage of
April 28, 2015. killer cops—the outrage, pro-
B OTTO M, © Y UN GHI KI M/ CO N TACT PR E SS I M AGE S

test marches, criminal charges—

PH OTOG RA P HS: TO P, FRO M A F P/ GET T Y I MAGE S ;

doesn’t seem to have inhibited lethal-

Racism hasn’t been the only force behind
the increasing slaughter of black men (and boys) by
the police. There’s also a long-ingrained culture
that glorifies law enforcement—Dirty Harry, Cops, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. It swelled into
Dallas SWAT, etc.—and now, thanks to the War
on Terror, a domestic glut of Pentagon hardware
40 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
forcers. Each week a new victim seems to go
up on the scoreboard.
Black Lives Matter was the protest message
adopted after the acquittal in 2013 of George
Zimmerman in the shooting of the unarmed
a movement as open season seemed to be
declared on black males and tragedies mul-
tiplied. Black lives matter in America, but
JU LY 2015

white lives rule. Self-styled, homegrown,
beef-jerky Red Dawn “Wolverines!” Open
Carry showboats can preen about with AR-
15s strapped to their backs without meeting
kingdom come, and a psycho-killer such as
James Eagan Holmes can be apprehended
in one piece after conducting a massacre in
an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater that left
12 dead and 70 wounded, while a black fa-
ther of four, Rumain Brisbon, can be shot for
holding a vial of pills mistaken for a weapon,
another can be shot for handling a pellet gun
at Walmart (John Crawford, aged 22), and
a 12-year-old black child can have his future
erased for playing with a BB gun, shot by an
officer who may not have been aware the boy
was holding a toy gun. (The victim, Tamir
Rice, died the next day at the hospital and six
months after his death had still not been bur-
ied, denied even that dignity. His family finally
decided to have him cremated.)
The latitude of response allowable to a
black suspect is razor-thin to nonexistent. Re-
sist, like Eric Garner, surrounded by a scrum
of cops for the quality-of-life offense of alleg-
edly selling individual cigarettes, or “loosies,”
and you can find yourself in a choke hold that
leaves you gasping, “I can’t breathe,” until the
last breath goes. Flee and you may get shot in
the back, like Walter Scott, felled by a South
Carolina officer whose fairy-tale account of
the incident collapsed when video showed
him performing his fatal marksmanship, or
like Eric Harris, who uttered, as he lay dying
from a gunshot wound, “My God, I’m losing
my breath,” to which one of Tulsa County’s
finest responded, “Fuck your breath.” Or you
may get tossed into a van and reduced to a
bag of broken body parts, like Freddie Gray,
whose death ignited a raging tempest in Balti-
more. Seemingly surrender and you can still
get killed point-blank, as happened to Jerame
Reid, who emerged from the passenger side
of a car at a traffic stop in New Jersey with his
hands raised. Six shots later, he was history.
I
t’s no great revelation that racism is rife in
many police departments, even those in a
city renowned for its liberal cosmopoli-
tanism such as San Francisco, where a toxic
spill of text messages between policemen (the
most flagrant offender shared this handy
health tip: “Cross burning lowers blood pres-
sure! I did the test myself!”) led to officer dis-
missals and the review of thousands of cases.
Such slur-slinging is sometimes defended as a
combination of gallows humor and fraternal
hazing, a Friars Roast on squad-car wheels
that expresses camaraderie and releases job
pressure, but the torture claims of nearly 200
black men at the hands of a white police com-
mander and detectives in Chicago over the
course of decades show that racial slurs
emerge from embedded supremacist attitudes.
No matter how unabashedly the novels of
Joseph Wambaugh and James Ellroy or tele-
42 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
WOLCOTT
vision series such as The Shield and True De-
tective unscrewed the skulls of the armed and
dangerous guardians of law and order and gave
us a tour of their lusts, greeds, paranoia, preju-
dices, and borderline-psycho compulsions, it’s
the Dragnet ideal that dominates our political
discourse and editorial pieties, a cardboard
knighthood of fallen heroes and a few bad
apples. But beneath the lip service, in the dirty
rooting section of our limbic brains, we’ve been
cultured to identify with the sentinels at the ex-
pense of those in the crosshairs, because that’s
where power, authority, status, and prerogative
suit up every day for duty. We may pity the vic-
tims, but pity is a watery emotion compared
with the blood rush of a good chase and a
vigorous takedown. The long-running success
of Cops derives its voyeuristic fascination from
this valorizing of the figure in the foreground,
the camera riding sidekick on the night shift
and allowing the viewer to share the cops’
windshield view of the world, which is often
a pretty skanky panorama of sketchy behav-
ior, so many of the perps appearing to opt for
the pants-less look. Cops spawned a genre of
police-perspective procedurals that make up
the meat of the programming lineup of cable
channels such as CI (Crime & Investigation),
with its heavy rotation of Manhunters: Fugi-
tive Task Force; Jacked: Auto Theft Task Force;
and Dallas SWAT and its spin-off, Kansas City
SWAT. Yes, this is a country that treats its ur-
ban SWAT teams as if they were Real House-
wives, though in fairness the SWAT members
behave far more admirably between Starship
Trooper raids in full battle gear than those
table-flipping divas in their gauche finery.
Beyond the confines of reality-TV conven-
tions, the picture is much uglier. The Cato
Institute features a handy “interactive map of
botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids”
as a supplement to Radley Balko’s book Over-
kill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in
America—raids described as “needlessly sub-
jecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders,
and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror
of having their homes invaded while they’re
sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed
paramilitary units dressed not as police of-
ficers but as soldiers.” A reality almost never
reflected in Hollywood films, where SWAT
units are either anonymous centurions back-
ing up the overpaid hero or fodder for some
drug kingpin’s or super-villain’s booby trap.
T
his marriage of outlaw-sheriff mys-
tique and a militarized warrior class,
where Dirty Harry meets RoboCop,
has been a long time bulking and armoring
up. In The Second Civil War, published in
1968, Garry Wills reported on the prepara-
tions for containment and suppression of
racial uprisings—ghetto control—to prevent a
black militant guerrilla insurgency from turn-
ing American cities into The Battle of Algiers.
It wasn’t a work of alarmism. In 1968, Civil
War II wasn’t some prototype Tea Party/neo-
Confederate wet-dream Nightmare on Elm
Street scenario, but a plausible irruption after
Detroit’s “12th Street Riot,” the year before—
which left 43 dead, hundreds injured, and an
estimated 1,400 buildings burned—and the
nationwide conflagration ignited by the as-
sassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Race
relations would improve in the following years
and decades, but the domestic arms race,
like the international military overstretch,
never quite abates. After 9/11, the date from
which so much of our hulking entropy can
be marked, the War on Terror revived police
militarization with a righteous vengeance.
State and local law enforcement in commu-
nities that didn’t have a mouse squeak of a
threat risk from sleeper cells could roll out
hardware worthy of a Pentagon yard sale.
As our twin theaters of operation in Afghani-
stan and Iraq tapered down, military equip-
ment was re-deployed Stateside, courtesy of
the Department of Defense, even such vital
peacekeeping machines as the Mine Resistant
Ambush Protected vehicle, capable of with-
standing bomb blasts. Because, as we all are
aware, this country’s rotting infrastructure is
pimpled with I.E.D.’s. North Little Rock, Ar-
kansas, even retains a couple of armed robots
formerly used in Afghanistan, robots being
especially attractive acquisitions because they
don’t put in for overtime or expect pensions.
Much of this hardware has been rolled
roughshod over citizens’ rights in the War on
Drugs, but with the decriminalization of mari-
juana trending, it will have to be put to other
wasteful uses, since adults in authority never
want to give up their toys. It will be oiled and
ready to quell civil disorder, which we’re likely
to see more of in chronically poor regions and
urban sectors now threatened with resource
scarcity due to drought and environmental de-
struction. Thousands of citizens in Detroit and
Baltimore have had their water turned off ow-
ing to nonpayment of bills, an excellent way to
foster a powder keg. Part of the premonitory
hold of The Walking Dead is the sense that it
may be a preview of coming attractions.
To preserve black lives and the lives of ev-
ery vulnerable shade, body cams, indictments
of officers, and the A.C.L.U. of Missouri’s
“Mobile Justice” app (for videoing police en-
counters) are all to the good, as is the social-
justice crusade that has mobilized (see Jay
Caspian Kang’s profile of
activist DeRay Mckesson,
“Our Demand Is Simple: @vf.com
To visit James
Stop Killing Us,” The New Wolcott’s B L O G ,
York Times Magazine, May go to VF.COM/
WOLCOTT.
10), but what’s also re-
quired is a concerted roll-
back of police-statism and penal-colony prolif-
eration—a genuine libertarian movement, not
the mostly frat-bros version we have now. Be-
cause what looms behind this country’s gun-
slinger mentality is a prison-gray machine. 
JU LY 2015
 Spotlight

The SUNDANCE KIDS

‘S
HA I R BY S A SCHA B R EUE R ( COO KE ) ; MA KE UP BY DA RL E NE J ACO B S; GRO O MI NG BY MI R A CHA I HY D E;
Olivia Cooke, Thomas Mann, and RJ Cyler, co-stars of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, photographed in Los Angeles.

( CY L ER , M A NN ) ; MA KE UP PRO DUCTS BY L AU RA ME RCI ER ; GRO OM IN G PRO DUC TS BY DI OR HO MME ;

COOKE WEARS A TOP BY HERMÈS; CUFF BY DAVID YURMAN. MANN WEARS CLOTHING BY BERLUTI; SHOES BY ST Y L E D BY DE BO R A H A F S HA NI ; HA I R PRO DUCTS BY WE L L A PRO F E SS I ON A L S (CO O KE ) A ND O R IB E
A. TESTONI. CYLER WEARS A SHIRT BY SALVATORE FERRAGAMO; PANTS BY BURBERRY LONDON.
PRO DUCE D ON L O CAT I ON BY A LI CI A ZUM B ACK ; F O R DE TA IL S , G O TO VF.COM /C RE DI TS

undance is ruined for me now,” says Thomas Mann,
the 23-year-old star of Me and Earl and the Dy-
ing Girl, the wistful teen weepie that had audi-
ences cheering at the film festival back in January.
“Even if I have other movies there, it’s not going to
be the same kind of explosive experience that this was.” Mann’s
21-year-old co-star, Olivia Cooke, who plays the dying girl, had
a similar reaction. “I’d never been to Sundance before and now I
feel like I can never go again.” The feeling is understandable: Al-
fonso Gomez-Rejon’s film won both a Sundance Grand Jury Prize
and an Audience Award and was snapped up by Fox Searchlight
in a high-profile seven-figure sale. When it finally opens, on June
12, expectations will be high.
The transition from Sundance smash to mainstream hit can be
tricky—for every Little Miss Sunshine there are dozens of festival favor-
ites that flopped—but the disarmingly poised young actors who play
the three title characters seem unfazed. They believe in the movie, a
cancer tearjerker that’s leavened by an abundance of wit and whim-
sy. (Overheard at Sundance: “It’s like The Fault in Our Stars if Michel
Gondry directed it.”) “Some movies are entirely too heavy, and some
movies have no meat in them,” says 20-year-old RJ Cyler, who plays
Earl. “But this movie is like the perfect balance of both.”
Commercial success or not, the film has already provided its
cast with more than a few never-gonna-forget life experiences. The
day he got the job, his first major role, was maybe the most memo-
rable for Cyler. “The day [my brother] graduated from military [ba-
sic training] was the same day that they called me and told me I
booked the part,” he reminisces. “I was just like, O.K., this day is
gonna be very emotional for RJ.”
Here’s hoping a lot of moviegoers are looking for their own very
emotional days right in the middle of blockbuster season.
— RIC HARD L AWSON

44 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com P H OTO G R A P H BY WILLIAMS & HIRAKAWA JU LY 2015

 G
MICHAEL KINSLEY

overnor
Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, who is running
for president, says he is personally opposed
to gay marriage but takes the position that
this is a matter for each of the 50 states to
decide for itself. Nice try, Governor, but
that train has pulled out of the station. The
country has already accepted gay marriage,
and it’s too late for half-measures. “Leave it
to the states” is a hoary evasion for national
politicians who want to duck a troublesome
issue, but it’s not available to Walker, be-
cause governors of states can’t duck an issue
by saying it should be decided by the states.
Well, they can try, but they shouldn’t be al-
lowed to get away with it. You are the gover-
nor, Governor. Man up (as Sarah Palin used
to say) and tell us where you stand.
It’s remarkable that a Republican running
for the Republican nomination for president
should need to be evasive about marriage
equality, as opposed to using it as a cudgel.
There were days, not long ago, when Repub-
licans used to fabricate issues like this in
order to embarrass the Democrats.
MEDIAN TRIP Elderly readers may recall 1988,
Clockwise from when George H. W. Bush beat
driver: Walker,
Michael Dukakis in a vicious

WHAT DO
Bush, Clinton, Paul.
Who’s the
campaign almost entirely
most “normal” about artificial issues concoct-
of them all? ed in the G.O.P. laboratory, like

THE SIMPLE
the urgent need for an amend-
ment to the Bill of Rights against
burning the American flag. Twenty-seven
years later the Bill of Rights remains pristine,

FOLK DO?
there has been no serious effort to pollute it
with an anti-flag-burning amendment, and
yet there has been little if any flag burning
going on. It will not be an issue in the 2016
From marriage equality to abortion, campaign. There may be some vestigial sen-
many of the social “wedge” issues used by the G.O.P. tence in the Republican Party platform, but
no podium time will be wasted on it.
have been losing steam. What will take Regarding abortion—a genuine social is-
sue—something similar has happened. Few
their place in the 2016 race? Prepare for class people have actually changed their minds
warfare of the most ridiculous kind about the morality or legality of abortion, but
46 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com I L L U STR ATI O NS BY BARRY BLITT JU LY 2015

Republicans don’t look forward
to arguing about it on the cam-
paign trail. They wish it would
just go away. They may hon-
estly believe that human
life begins at the moment
of conception, or they
may have adopted that po-
sition cynically, but in most
places the candidates would
just as soon not dwell on it.
Abortion, marriage
equality, gun control,
drugs, prayer in the
schools, affirmative ac-
tion, the “War on Christ-
mas”: these are all classi-
fied as “social issues” (as
opposed to economic and
foreign-policy issues) and have
generally been regarded as “wedge issues”
too—issues that the Republicans can use like
a wedge to pry voters away from the Demo-
crats. But the wedge isn’t what it used to be.
KINSLEY
ian who has no time for laws
imposing one person’s idea of
appropriate behavior on another
person who disagrees. Paul and
Mephistopheles meet once a week
paign. The Clintons, for ex-
ample, have been attacked
from both directions. At
first they were portrayed as
hillbillies from a small and
backward state, trying to
rise above their station. Now
they’re portrayed as globe-
hopping elitists, observing
the real America from
30,000 feet. (Both views
have some validity. Both
are tremendous exag-
gerations.) To me, this
sounds like the Ameri-
can Dream—from hillbil-
ly to world leader in one
generation! Hillary Clinton’s
2000 Republican opponent in
POWER ELITE? the race for senator from New
Absurd class York, Rick Lazio, charged that
arguments have she rode around in limousines,
marked every
recent presidential
whereas he, a normal guy, took
contest. the subway. Then, unfortunately,
someone asked him how much a

I
n 2004, a writer named Thomas Frank
wrote a terrific book called What’s the
Matter with Kansas?, which immediately
became a classic. It was an attempt to solve
a puzzle. Why, when people are upset about
the economy, concerned about their jobs,
resentful of growing income inequality, tired
of watching industries move overseas, and
generally sullen about money—why, with all
this, do they nevertheless keep voting Repub-
lican? Frank’s answer was, in short, that the
Republicans use social issues in a bait-and-
switch routine: people are enticed into voting
Republican over social issues like abortion
or gay marriage, and then Republican pols,
once elected, ignore all that and govern like
the pro-business, rich-people’s party that
they are at heart.
Frank’s book is a bit of a cartoon, and
this is a bit of a cartoon summary. But the
Frank Thesis seems basically right. Or at
to discuss how far Paul will have to subway card cost. He wasn’t sure.
go in compromising his libertarian values in This year, an early lead in populist dema-
order to have a shot at the nomination. But goguery has been taken by Scott Walker, who
even though Paul has been compromising declared in April that Hillary Clinton “prob-
like mad lately, his very presence onstage will ably” has never shopped at Kohl’s. That
drive opponents toward the libertarian side of may be true, although I’m sure she’s been to
the Republican spectrum. China, which is “probably” much the same
Fourth, and finally, there is gay marriage thing. I have shopped at Kohl’s many times—
(or “marriage equality,” as its advocates pre- in the sense of examining the merchandise, if
fer to say). It used to be something Republi- not in the sense of actually buying something.
cans deployed in order to taunt Democrats. (“Darling,” says Arianna, “I love Kohl’s. I al-
Now it’s the reverse. In terms of “hot but- ways go there for anything I can’t find at Cost-
ton” issues—ones that work for fund-raising co, Target, J. C. Penney, Sears, or Kmart.”)
and getting out the vote—marriage equality Expecting accusations of elitism, Hillary was
is off the list. In fact, it’s on the other list: the ready when the accusations arrived. She did
list that can get you (and your business) os- what any American would do: she hopped in
tracized if you don’t support it. her van and headed for Iowa. Road trip! She
If wedge issues are blunted, what will take stopped for lunch at a Chipotle restaurant in
their place? My guess is it will be class war- Ohio, a state famous for its Mexican food. So
fare of the most pathetic kind. there! Your move, Governor.
It’s obviously more important that our

least it seemed right until this year. Times
have changed. It’s unlikely that the fall cam-
paign in 2016 will be dominated by social is-
sues. Why? A few possible reasons.
First, people have finally come to under-
stand that many of these issues were phony
distractions from what’s really important and
what a president can do something about,
which is primarily the economy. In other
words, the Frank Thesis no longer applies.
Second, although objectively the next
four years look better economically than
the four years after 2004 turned out to be,
people sense correctly, as they did not back
then, that something more dramatic than
the business cycle is going on—that those
midwestern middle-class jobs that went away
probably are not coming back.
Third is the presence of Rand Paul in
the Republican primaries. Paul is a libertar-
JU LY 2 015
S
ince at least 1988, with George Bush next president shop at Kohl’s than that she
the Elder’s impressively demagogic or he have any notion of what’s going on in,
campaign against a stunned Michael say, the Middle East. And Walker is no neo-
Dukakis—that was the year of the infamous phyte at this game of competitive normality.
“Willie Horton” ad—and arguably back to What will he do now? He might invite the
1968 and Nixon’s “southern strategy,” an at- media to watch him washing his car on Sun-
tempt at class war has been a part of the Re- day (after church, of course). In response,
publican playbook. It wasn’t always easy to Hillary might bake some cookies, which she
persuade people that white males in business once, long ago, back in 1992, said she would
suits and other Republican-looking types were not do. Hey, it’s a flip-flop! How will Hillary
the oppressed of our society and that black overcome this setback?
single mothers and pointy-headed professors After consulting half a dozen advisers,
were the oppressors. But the Republicans she may decide to do a load of laundry in
managed to do it—at least in 1988, when they public. This raises the troublesome issue:
repositioned George Herbert Walker Bush as should we separate the lights from the darks?
a pork-rind-chewing cowboy Everyman and “I personally oppose a ‘separate but equal’
Michael Dukakis, a barely-off-the-boat ethnic, or ‘two load’ solution, but I will leave that
as his Establishment overlord. sensitive matter to be decided by the states,”
Since then, absurd class arguments have Hillary will say. “That’s what normal people
been a feature of every presidential cam- do, isn’t it?” 
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 47
 Spotlight

MOORE the MERRIER

Shameik Moore,
photographed in
Los Angeles.

MOORE WEARS
A SUIT BY HERMÈS;
SHIRT BY
DIOR HOMME.

W
LOCATION BY MEGHAN GALL AGHER; FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS
ST Y L E D BY A S H L E Y F U R N I VA L ; H A I R P RO D U C TS BY DAV I N E S ; G RO O M I N G
PRODUCTS BY KIEHL’S; GROOMING BY SANDRA GANZER; PRODUCED ON

ord spread quickly about Dope when
it premiered at Sundance, last January,
and its star, 20-year-old Atlanta native
Shameik Moore, suddenly became a
hot commodity. “My whole world lit
up,” Moore says. “Everything really changed at that point.”
Written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, and with songs by Pharrell,
Dope features Moore as Malcolm, a 90s music- and style-obsessed
Moore’s breakout is reminiscent of Tom Cruise’s in Risky Business.
But instead of taking place in the affluent Chicago suburbs, the ac-
tion moves to the tough section of Inglewood, California, known as
the Bottoms. “I hope it gives a new perspective on the black commu-
nity,” Moore says. “I just want people to leave
the theater with a positive mind-set.” @vf.com
To see more from
Moore is capitalizing on his moment. He THE SHO OT, go to
plans to release an album of his own music this VF.COM/JULY2015.

nerd navigating his senior year of high school and his application to
Harvard. Moore’s talent is standout in this comedic coming-of-age
fable, in which he not only acts but dances and sings. “Music was al-
ways heavily involved with my spirit,” Moore says. “My entire family is
Jamaican. It’s nothing but reggae music and those kinds of vibes.”
summer, and director Baz Luhrmann has cast
him as a lead in his new Netflix series, The Get Down, set in 1970s
New York City. “I didn’t expect that was going to happen,” Moore
admits. “I expected new jobs, but for me to get something like this?
It’s such a blessing.” — KRISTA SMITH

48 VA NI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com P H OTO G R A P H BY LAUREN DUKOFF JU LY 2015

He Says Goodbye,

Few recent stories have gripped the public imagination

as much as Bruce Jenner’s journey from Olympic icon to transgender
woman. And no one has had the unfettered access that
Jenner and her family gave BUZZ BISSINGER, who chronicles the fears
and doubts, love and courage, and tensions and traumas
involved in the transition. ANNIE LEIBOVITZ shoots the first
portraits of Caitlyn, the person Bruce has become

50 ST YLED BY JESSICA DIEHL

 She Says Hello
HA IR BY OR IBE ; MA K E UP BY MA R K

D E BOR A H LI PP MA NN ; SE T D E SI G N

D E TA IL S, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E DI TS
BY MA RY HOWAR D ST UD IO ; F OR
C A RR A S QU IL LO; MA NI C UR E BY

Caitlyn Jenner, photographed in her

Malibu home. “If I was lying on
my deathbed and I had kept this secret
and never ever did anything about it,
I would be lying there saying, ‘You just
blew your entire life,’ ” she says.

JENNER WEARS A GOWN BY BADGLEY

MISCHKA; BRACELET BY
J ULY 2015 NORMAN SILVERMAN DIAMONDS.
O
n March 15, the
day of the Los Angeles Marathon and myriad
street closures, Bruce Jenner left his bunker-
style home above Decker Canyon in Malibu
at 4:15 in the morning to avoid any possibil-
ity of being late. Detection seemed unlikely
this early in the day; even the paparazzi go
back to their wormholes for a few hours’
sleep before the body count begins again.
But anything could happen, as it had in
January of 2014 in the space of roughly five
feet from the back door of a medical office to
the car, with Jenner’s neck in a bandage from
a tracheal shave, his picture snapped and dis-
seminated into the Internet infinity of insatia-
ble gossip at warp speed. So the more nonde-
script the car the better, which is why the black
2014 BMW sedan, in the conspicuous con-
sumption of Los Angeles, was inconspicuous.
Jenner had already been taking hor-
mones. The hair on his body and his facial
hair had been removed. He had had his
nose fixed twice and the tracheal shave. On
this Sunday his destination was the office
of a surgeon specializing in what is known
as facial-feminization surgery. Pioneered in
the 80s and 90s by San Francisco plastic
surgeon Douglas Ousterhout, it can involve
such procedures as hairline correction, fore-
head contouring, and jaw and chin contour-
ing. There would also be a procedure to aug-
ment his breasts.
The car made its way to the surgical cen-
ter in Beverly Hills without incident. Jenner
was nervous. He knew there would be pain,
and he hated taking any kind of drug to al-
leviate it because of the way it made him
feel. But there was more than just physical
dread. Several days earlier I had walked with
him as he played golf at the exclusive Sher-
Bruce Jenner was “always telling lies.”
52 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
wood Country Club, in Thousand Oaks. He
has been a member there for 15 years, ever
since Kris Jenner, feeling generous toward
her husband, paid the roughly $225,000
initiation fee. He played by himself because
he almost always played by himself, a loner
who said he wasn’t lonely, although it was
hard to see the difference. He didn’t take
his game very seriously: he could have been
a scratch golfer if he had. He often played
two balls at a time, voicing the usual golfer
epithets of “Sit!” and “Get down!” He liked
the peace of it, the Santa Monica Moun-
tains safeguarding the holes like a cupped
hand. It was perhaps the only open space
he could go to without getting besieged by
the paparazzi, not only with their cameras
hanging from their necks like evil eyes but
also with their questions: “Are you a woman
yet?” “Do you still have a penis?”
“You wonder if you are making all the right
decisions,” he said as he played in the anony-
mous uniform of blue sweater and gray slacks
and hat and sneakers, parring the 517-yard par-
five second hole because he, as usual, drove it
at least 280 yards off the tee, being the kind
of athlete who can pick up anything instantly.
“I wish I were kind of normal. It would be so
much more simple.
“The uncomfortableness of being me nev-
er leaves all day long,” he continued. “I’m
not doing this to be interesting. I’m doing
this to live.” Given his sense of humor, he
couldn’t resist adding, “I’m not doing this
so I can hit it off the women’s tee.”
After all the confusion and shame and
self-conflict and dishonesty for virtually all
of his 65 years, was this the right decision?
Could he go on living as he had?
He was not having genital surgery. There
are an estimated 700,000 transgender women
and men in the United States; only about
a quarter of transgender women have had
genital surgery. There is a common misper-
ception that such surgery is somehow “re-
quired” to be a transgender woman or man,
akin to a certificate from the Transgender Li-
censing Board. The transgender community
for years has been trying to get the public to
understand that genitalia are not a determi-
nant of gender: you can be born a woman
with male genitalia, just as you can be born a
man with female genitalia. In any case, under
the World Professional Association for Trans-
gender Health’s “Standards of Care,” formed
by a consensus of leading psychologists and
medical specialists, genital surgery is not ad-
vised for at least a year after transition.
Jenner had actually gone through vari-
ous stages of transition once before, in the
mid- and late 1980s. He took hormones
that resulted in breast growth and had his
beard removed through an incredibly pain-
ful two-year regimen of electrolysis that he
withstood without any medication because
“pain is kind of, for me, part of the pain for
being me … this is what you get for being
who you are. Just take the pain.”
The physical changes had been so notice-
able that rumors started, including a call
from The New York Times about what was
going on with Bruce Jenner, in particular
Bruce Jenner the winner of the gold medal
in the decathlon in the 1976 Olympics, a
symbol of masculinity as interwoven into
American culture as the Marlboro Man.
Jenner had once talked in jest about go-
ing to Denmark and coming back to his
four young children as Aunt Heather. It was
obviously a bizarre thought, indicative of his
terrible confusion. It also could be seen as a
precursor to the fractured relationship that
would occur when he essentially lost contact
with the four children from his first two mar-
riages, eventually in favor of yet another new
family, with values that had once seemed so
alien to his, the Kardashians.
H
e was living in a one-
bedroom house in the
Malibu hills in almost total
seclusion after he started to
transition in the 80s. Dishes
piled up. His career was in
limbo after an income of half a million dollars
the first year after the Olympics. Everything
had seemed perfect then, or as close to per-
fect as it can be when you are pretending your
way through life, conforming to the vision of
millions because that’s what they expect, and
that’s exactly what you give them because you
are good at it, scary good. ABC executive Ir-
win Weiner had offered him a broadcasting
job the very same night as his Olympic victory,
in Montreal. He tried out for the lead role in
the film Superman, which was too much of
a stretch without acting experience, although
Jenner was actually one of the great actors of
our time. He adorned the front of the Wheaties
box. He drank orange juice for Tropicana and
took pictures for Minolta. He gave speeches
about the 48 hours of his Olympic win all over
the country to enthralled audiences. He was
red, white, and blue. He was Mom and apple
pie with a daub of vanilla ice cream for extra
deliciousness in a country desperate for such
an image. He had a tireless work ethic. He had
beaten the Commie bastards. He was America.
“Jenner is twirling the nation like a baton;
he and his wife, Chrystie, are so high up on
JU LY 2 015
the pedestal of American heroism, it would
take a crane to get them down,” wrote Tony
Kornheiser in The New York Times in 1977.
He also secretly wore panty hose and a bra
underneath his suit so he could at least feel
some sensation of his true gender identity.
He stopped transitioning in the late 80s.
He was scared of what the reaction would
be. He decided he could not do this to his
four children, Burt, Cassandra, Brandon,
and Brody. He needed to jump-start his
career. He needed credibility to squelch the
rumors, and he told me marrying Kris Kar-
dashian, in 1991, helped give him that along
with compatibility and love.
In March, he had been living on his own
for about a year and a half since his and
Kris’s separation, which would ultimately lead
to their divorce after 23 years of marriage. It
gave him the opportunity to live more freely
as a woman. It wasn’t enough. He worried
the most about how the two daughters whom
he and Kris share, Kendall and Kylie, would
react to his transition. But Kendall was a
19-year-old supermodel, and Kylie, at 17,
already had endorsement deals for various
beauty products, in addition to what they
make from Keeping Up with the Kardashians,
on the E! network. They were each indepen-
dent enough to have bought homes, Kendall
a condo for $1.4 million in the area of West-
wood, Kylie a house in Calabasas for $2.7 mil-
lion. Now that he felt the two girls could pro-
cess the change, there was only one step left.
Bruce Jenner went to the office in Beverly
Hills, thinking the facial-feminization surgery
would take about five hours. Caitlyn Jenner
left the office in Beverly Hills after the proce-
dure had taken roughly 10 hours.
D
Comfort in Isolation
uring the first full day of re-
cuperation, there was a mo-
ment when Caitlyn Jenner
lay down on her bed as best
she could, hoping to get
some sleep. The pain was
such that she had no choice but to be on large
amounts of medication. She had ice packs
over her eyes. She closed them for a little bit,
then suddenly shot up, causing the ice packs
to slip. She was undergoing something that
had never happened before in 65 years of life:
a panic attack. She told the 24-hour nurse on
duty she had to get out of bed. Caitlyn asked
her to turn on the television so the sound would
be a distraction. The recently purchased $3.6
million home—built with concrete slabs like
the artillery batteries you can still see on the
Pacific coast, put there in case of a Japanese
Caitlyn “doesn’t have any lies,” she says.
JU LY 2 015
attack during World War II—was one floor
on top of an aboveground garage. There were
three bedrooms off the long hallway and then
the kitchen and dining area and sunken living
room in an open floor plan. It offered remark-
able views of Catalina Island and the Pacific
and glimpses of whales through the floor-to-
ceiling windows in her bedroom. Because of
its literal mountaintop location, you could see
everything but not hear anything except the
flapping-flag sound of the wind. No nearby
neighbors. No cars pulling up. It was encapsu-
lated in silence, and maybe that was the point
of living there, comfort in isolation.
Caitlyn went into the long hallway and
paced back and forth on the dark wood
floor, where not even the footsteps made
a sound. The panic attack lasted about 15
seconds, but a single thought continued to
course through her mind: “What did I just
do? What did I just do to myself?”
A counselor from the Los Angeles Gender
Center came over to the house so Caitlyn could
talk to someone with professional expertise.
The counselor helped ease her mind. She said
such reactions were often induced by the pain
medication. She also said such second-guessing
was human and temporary. The thought has
since passed and has not come back. There
is no buyer’s remorse. Not that it matters any-
way, because there is no turning back.
“If I was lying on my deathbed and I had
kept this secret and never ever did anything
about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You
just blew your entire life,’ ” she told me.
“ ‘You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t
want that to happen.”
Bruce Jenner, she said, was “always telling
lies.” Caitlyn Jenner, she said, “doesn’t have
any lies.” Bruce Jenner caused hurt to four
children who loved and idolized him before
he gave his love and total attention to another
family. Caitlyn Jenner has the possibility to
make it right and close the fissure as much
as she can. “I have high hopes that Caitlyn
is a better person than Bruce,” said his oldest
son, Burt, now 36. “I’m very much looking
forward to that.”
T
“It Ain’t Bruce”
his is the most remarkable
story I have ever worked on
in 38 years as a journalist,
the only writer in the world
with unlimited access to
Jenner for a story of global
interest, witness to the final months of one
of the most iconic male athletes before he
disappears and a woman appears in his
place. I spent hundreds of hours with the
man over a period of three months. Then
I spent countless hours with the woman. It
was initially weird, and virtually anyone who
says it isn’t weird is giving themselves far too
much credit. It was initially surreal, having
seen Bruce Jenner set seven personal bests
as he won the decathlon in 1976 with that
perfectly buff body, and seeing him now
in an elegant black dress with fine-looking
breasts. With apologies to members of the
transgender community, who are rightfully
sensitive about the use of language, I con-
stantly used “he” instead of “she,” and at
one point called Caitlyn “dude” out of force
of habit, and closed conversations with “All
right, man, I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I don’t really get hung up,” she told me.
“A guy came in the other day and I was ful-
ly dressed—it’s just habit, I said ‘Hi, Bruce
here,’ and I went, Oh fuck, it ain’t Bruce, I
was screwing up doing it.”
My miscues have nothing to do with in-
tolerance—I have been a cross-dresser with
a big-time fetish for women’s leather and an
open critic of the often arbitrary delineation
between men’s and women’s clothing—but
because it is a strange story regardless of all
the important inroads that have been made
by transgender men and women into the cul-
tural mainstream. Just as it is a tragic one,
and a painful one, and a harmful one, for so
many years, not just to himself but to others
he should have been closest to, and a lonely
one, and a brave one, and a funny one, and
maybe, just maybe, because it is far too early
to tell, a triumphant one.
O
The Show Must Go On
r maybe, given Jenner’s
past, it’s all just fodder for
a “docu-series” (i.e., real-
ity television in a fancy
suit) that, in May, Caitlyn
started shooting for the E!
network, debuting this summer. Can you
hear the thunder of a Kardashian spin-off?
The same four children whom he lost con-
tact with for years at a time, none of whom
have the last name Kardashian, fear exactly
that. They also fear that the spectacular way
in which she came across on the ABC 20/20
special two-hour interview with Diane Saw-
yer (Caitlyn had completed her transition by
the time the show aired, on April 24) will
endanger what she can do for the continued
momentum of the transgender movement.
Instead they worry that the whole narrative
will devolve into spectacle and shenanigans
intercut with a little dash of social cause and
the use of paid consultants who are experts
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 53
 Caitlyn in her bedroom. Brandon
Jenner says he was a little taken aback
when he met Caitlyn for the
first time and she pulled up her top
to reveal her new breasts.
“Whoa, I’m still your son,” he said.

JENNER WEARS A GOWN

BY ZAC POSEN; BRACELET BY NORMAN
SILVERMAN DIAMONDS.

“I’m not doing this to be interesting. I’m

54 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
 on transgender issues as a cover for social re-
sponsibility. She is also someone who in the
past has been easily influenced by the opin-
ions of others. Caitlyn insists that will not
be the case since, as an executive producer,
she has full creative control. Her insistence
is real.

T
he children, collectively
known as “the Jenner side”
and all in their 30s and as
grounded as the Kardashi-
ans are not, feel otherwise.
Through the portal of their
television show, the relationship of the Kar-
dashian children to their dad has unfolded
publicly for eight years. The relationship
of the Jenner children with their dad has
gone untold: unless you were a Keeping Up
with the Kardashians fetishist, you might
not even know that he had four other chil-
dren. Given the pressure placed on them
to participate in the upcoming E! series, it
became clear to me that their story is more
germane than ever.
They disagree with their father’s deci-
sion to use not only the same production
company that made Keeping Up with the
Kardashians but many of the same people,
including several original executive produc-
ers. The E! network, with such shows as
Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Total Di-
vas, The Royals, and Botched, is not known
for its subtlety. In the hope of repairing their
relationship with their father, they—Brandon
in particular—have supported Caitlyn, and
that support has been inspiring to her.
The last thing the Jenner kids want to do
is reverse the rebuilding of the relationship.
But despite numerous entreaties from their
father as well as the head of E! program-
ming, the Jenner children refuse to partici-
pate, forgoing financial gain and exposure
in the process. At first their decision did
not seem to register with Caitlyn. She kept
hoping they could be persuaded because
she knows from eight years on Keeping Up
with the Kardashians the necessity of a fam-
ily dynamic for ratings success. When she
realized the decision was final, she became
increasingly frustrated and on one occasion
F OR DE TA I L S, G O TO VF. CO M/ C RE DI TS

hurled profanities. She told me she felt “ter-

ribly disappointed and terribly hurt.”
Caitlyn neither understands the tragic
irony of those words nor recognizes her his-
torical tendency toward self-victimization.
Based on hours of interviews with the Jen-
ner children, as well as his two ex-wives, a
picture emerges of a father who had been
absent for years at a time, insensitive, hurt-
ful, and weak in no longer making an effort
to keep up contact after he married Kris
doing this to live.” Kardashian. Caitlyn openly acknowledged
to me mistakes made with them as Bruce
JU LY 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 55
 In the 80s, Jenner joked
about going to Denmark and
coming back to his four
young children as Aunt Heather.

JENNER WEARS A CORSET BY

AGENT PROVOCATEUR.

F OR D E TA I LS, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E D ITS

J ULY 2015 www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 57
 Jenner. The regret is genuine. Juggling two
ex-wives with a third wife was at times very
difficult. But not seeing his children for long
periods, beginning around the time of their
adolescence, not acknowledging birthdays,
not going to graduations, and intentionally not
being there for the birth of his daughter were
Jenner’s own decisions.
The wounding only went deeper, given
that Bruce Jenner was an exemplary father
to the so-called Kardashian side, including
Kendall and Kylie.
In the course of their father’s journey,
the Jenner children have gone through their
own journey as well. “Love has nothing to
do with gender,” said his daughter Cassan-
dra. She paused for a moment and added
this: “There’s no way to separate what he’s
going through, the trap he’s been in for the
past 60 years and how that has affected his
choices around love and relationships. It’s
impossible.”

A
Light and Shadow
bout two weeks after the
surgery, I sat on a stool at
the kitchen counter opposite
Caitlyn. She had listened to
Monica Lewinsky’s powerful
TED talk on what it is like to
be the ceaseless target of cyber-ridicule. The
talk had struck a chord with Caitlyn because
of the similarities with how she had been
dealt with on the Internet. She had in front
of her five pages of notes. It dawned on me
that she was going to give her version of a
TED talk to an audience of one: me.
It went on for nearly 40 minutes. My
heart bled for Caitlyn. She was so earnest,
trying so hard: you could feel the essential
goodness in Caitlyn, and Bruce Jenner be-
fore her. Mistakes had been made, ones that
caused terrible scars, but as many others had
said about him, they emanated from follow-
ing a path of least resistance as well as from
a hatred of confrontation.
Bruce was instantly likable, a singsong lilt
in a voice of amusement and bemusement,
shades of sweet goofiness. It was how he
liked to interact, bouncing along the surface.
But it seemed like he often used the method
of communication as a guard against emo-
tional connection.
“If he had emotional legs he’d get up and
walk to you,” Jenner’s second wife, Linda
Thompson, remembers telling her son Bran-
don after his father had not attended his
high-school graduation. “But he doesn’t. He
just doesn’t have that capability.”
It was late afternoon by the time the
simulated TED talk ended. Light streamed
in through the kitchen bay windows, slant-
ing through the bottle of handwash onto
the porcelain sink and the Wolf stove and
58 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2 015
F O R DE TAI L S , G O TO V F.CO M/C R ED I TS

“Underneath my suit
I have a bra and panty hose …
thinking to myself,
They know nothing about me,”
Jenner remembers.

JENNER WEARS A GOWN BY HALSTON

HERITAGE, EARRINGS BY
NORMAN SILVERMAN DIAMONDS;
JU LY 2 015 STOLE BY HELEN YARMAK.
60 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015
 Caitlyn in her 2011 Porsche
911 GT3 RS. The $180,000 car was
a gift from Jenner’s wife Kris.

JENNER WEARS A DRESS BY DONNA

KARAN NEW YORK, SUNGLASSES BY
DITA, EARRINGS BY VHERNIER;
CLUTCH BY SALVATORE FERRAGAMO.
F OR D E TA I LS, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E D ITS

J ULY 2015 www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 61


the Sub-Zero refrigerator. The clarity was
piercing, only adding to the stillness, relics
of an archaeological expedition, a remod-
eled kitchen untouched by human hands
discovered in the hills of Malibu. The light
then suddenly shifted. It angled on her face
in a perfect dissection of brightness and
shadow down the centerline. Caitlyn looked
gorgeous in the light. Her features were ac-
centuated and popped. Just as her features
were obscured in the shadow. I did not
know which way it would go. Only where it
had already gone.
W
“Nature Made a Mistake”
hen Jenner’s sister
Pam was a young girl
she noticed some-
thing puzzling one
day on the book-
shelf of the family’s
house, in Cornwall, New York. It was the
mid-1950s, and like millions of other Ameri-
can families in the 50s the Jenners had a set
of encyclopedias. What was odd to Pam
was the way in which her brother Bruce, 16
months younger, had arranged them: from
A to Z, right to left. She noticed how her
younger brother spelled “saw” as “was” and
“was” as “saw.” Pam concluded, as would
just about any older sibling caught up in her
own world, that Bruce was just “a stupid
younger brother.” Their mother, Esther, was
puzzled. When she worked on spelling with
her son she noticed that he spelled every
word right one day and then completely for-
got the next. “Bruce, you’re not concentrat-
ing. You’re daydreaming,” she said to him.
In second grade, since he still could not
read, he was held back. Teachers thought
that the child, whose father, William, was a
tree surgeon, was just lazy.
It was only later that Jenner was diag-
nosed with dyslexia, a learning disability
marked by difficulty in processing language.
He wasn’t lazy or stupid. He could spell
every word right the first time because he
had memorized them. His self-esteem as a
child was understandably poor. Dealing with
his dyslexia was enough of a challenge for
Bruce Jenner. It was enough for any young
boy trying to navigate the rock-rimmed shore
of peer acceptance. Jenner is fond of invok-
ing God in setting out the challenges of his
life. If that is the case, then God had a daily
double in store.
When Bruce was around 10, he would
sneak into his mother’s closet, sometimes his
sister’s. He would put on a dress and maybe
wrap a scarf around his head and walk
Jenner insists that he was a “good solid
62 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
around outside. Without knowing the clini-
cal term for what he was feeling—gender dys-
phoria—he found himself “fascinated by it
all,” just as he felt “scared to death some-
body was going to find out.” Because there
was nobody he could talk to about it. He
didn’t tell anyone until the early 1970s, when
he told his first wife, Chrystie.
In the context of the late 1950s the very
concept of a transgender woman in the Unit-
ed States was foreign, the only publicized
experience that of Christine Jorgensen, a for-
mer World War II G.I. from the Bronx whose
name at the time was George Jorgensen Jr.
She underwent gender-reassignment surgery
in Denmark because it wasn’t done in the
United States. The story became public on
December 1, 1952, after the New York Daily
News got ahold of a letter Jorgensen had writ-
ten to her parents in which she said, “Nature
made a mistake, which I have had corrected,
and I am now your daughter.” The result-
ing publicity was astonishing but the interest
largely prurient and centered on someone
with a penis going to a foreign country and
coming back with a vagina.
In fifth grade Jenner ran in a race, per-
haps the most important sporting event in
which he ever participated. He turned out
to be the fastest kid in school. His athletic
ability led him to football and basketball at
Sleepy Hollow High School, and then New-
town High School, in Sandy Hook, Con-
necticut, after he moved there in the middle
of 11th grade. It also exhibited itself out of
school when he won the Eastern States water-
skiing championship. “Sports saved my life,”
Jenner said. He became popular because
jocks are always popular. He became deter-
mined in sports because he was gifted, but
also because it helped to prove his masculin-
ity, since, as he told me, “that’s what every-
body wants to believe.”
He went to tiny Graceland College, in
Lamoni, Iowa, on a football scholarship. He
hurt his knee, ending his football career. But
a coach there, L. D. Weldon, who happened
to be an expert in the decathlon, saw some-
thing in Jenner, and Jenner responded to it.
He came out of nowhere in April of 1971
to win the decathlon at the Kansas Relays.
He made the United States Olympic team
in 1972 and finished 10th in the decathlon in
Munich. After the end of the competition,
10 different events in two days, Jenner went
on a long-distance run through the streets
of Munich. It was the beginning of a train-
ing regimen in which he would practice
eight hours a day, every day, for the next four
years, leading up to the 1976 Olympics.
T
Going for Gold
he decathlon was perfect
for him, not just as a sport-
ing event and the ultimate
in he-man-ism but also as a
years-long diversion from the
awareness that he identified
as a woman. He hoped for much of his life
that the gender dysphoria would somehow
go away, be stamped out with enough diver-
sions, or at least not occupy his thoughts:
decathlon training, other sports after the
Olympics such as professional car racing
and tennis, becoming a pilot, marrying and
having a family. “You always think in the
back of your mind, I can live with this. I can
fix this… If I just do this it’s going to be
O.K.,” he told me.
On July 30, 1976, in Montreal, Jenner won
the decathlon, the most grueling event of the
Olympics, at the age of 26, with a world rec-
ord 8,618 points. Because of the times, a coun-
try struggling with the aftershock of Vietnam
and the oil embargo and Watergate, he be-
came a supercharged hero. The United States’
performance at the 1976 Olympics—where it
won only one individual gold medal in men’s
track and none in women’s track and was em-
barrassed by the Soviet Union and East
Germany at the peak of the Cold War—only
heightened the need. Tens of millions watched
Jenner on television, buff and with that mane
of hair flowing like a lion’s, running through
the Olympic stadium holding a small Ameri-
can flag which had been handed to him by an
overjoyed spectator.
He was six two and 194 pounds of mostly
muscle, perfectly proportioned. “Bruce Jen-
ner of San Jose, Calif., wants to be a movie
or television star. After his record-breaking
victory in the Olympic decathlon today, he
probably can be anything he wants,” wrote
Frank Litsky in The New York Times.
Although Litsky did not know it at the
time—no one did, except for Jenner’s first
wife, and she did not know the full ex-
tent—falser words could never be written.
Becoming a woman wasn’t going to hap-
pen, because he had won not simply a gold
medal but a gold medal in the decathlon,
which carries with it the title of “the world’s
greatest athlete.” Litsky went on to list the
usual descriptive suspects—“a handsome,
cheerful, outgoing man with long, straight
blond hair.”
“People say, Oh my God, what a body—
you look great. That wasn’t what I was look-
ing for,” Jenner told me. “I could not really
cross-dress. I tried to grow my hair out as
much as I could without getting yelled at.”
JU LY 2 015
 The night of his Olympic win Jenner and
his wife, Chrystie, stayed in a penthouse ho-
tel suite in Montreal. It was arranged by his
lawyer at the time, Alan Rothenberg, after he
realized that the Jenners, typically, with their
innocence and lack of lavishness, had made
no plan for a place to stay.
After Jenner woke up the next morning,
he walked past the grand piano into the
bathroom. He was naked. The gold medal
was around his neck. He looked at himself
in the mirror. The grand diversion of win-
ning the decathlon was finished. Everything
would change. Nothing had changed. He
didn’t see a hunk. He didn’t see success.
Instead of reveling in the accomplishment,
he diminished it in his mind because he had
done it, the stupid little boy with dyslexia.
The little boy who knew he had been born a
girl and was now just trying to put one over
on the rest of the world.
“Now what do I do?” he said to himself.
He was too irresistible for the starved
nation, too perfect. He almost immediately
signed a contract with ABC. He got taken
in the seventh round of the National Basket-
ball Association draft in 1977 by the Kansas
City Kings. He did the endorsements and
the speeches. He knew he was bullshitting.
“Underneath my suit I have a bra and panty
hose and this and that and thinking to my-
self, They know nothing about me.
“I walk off the stage and I’d feel like a
liar. And I would say, ‘Fuck, I can’t tell my
story. There’s so much more to me than
those 48 hours in the stadium, and I can’t
talk about it.’ It was frustrating. You get mad
at yourself… Little did they know I was to-
tally empty inside. Totally empty inside.”
J
Chrystie
enner had married Chrystie
Crownover in 1972. They had met
in college. She was the daughter
of a minister from southeastern
Washington State. She suggested
the marriage, in part because her
job as a flight attendant for United Airlines
gave her access to free tickets for herself and
her spouse, so they could fly to decathlon
events all over the world. In stark contrast to
the Kardashian period, they drove under the
redwoods of California with Beethoven blast-
ing and grabbed a rope swing to drop into
the Russian River. Chrystie was the bread-
winner, a devoted partner in his journey to a
gold medal.
In 1973, early in the marriage, Chrystie
noticed a rubber band attached to the hook
of one of her bras. She asked Bruce about
B cup” when he met Kris Kardashian.
JU LY 2 015
it. She remembered him telling her, “Gee, I
don’t know.” Subsequently he gathered the
nerve and brought up the mystery of the bra
again. “That’s why the rubber band. Because
I’ve been wearing your clothes.”
“He told me he always wanted to be a
woman,” Chrystie said. “He told me as a little
kid how that felt. He told me [of] different fan-
tasies that he had, related to loving women.”
Chrystie felt immense gratitude that he
was sharing something so intimate with her.
“If he had been wanting to dress up when he
was with me or any of those things it would
have been different. But he was still mascu-
line. He was still my hero. He was still pursu-
ing this goal of being the greatest athlete in
the world. It wasn’t like it was a hard thing
to handle. It was like a piece of information
he shared with me and then he went back to
being a real guy… He had a strong, healthy
sex drive and seemed like pure man.”
Bruce Jenner as Bruce Jenner had a sex-
ual appetite exclusively for women. Caitlyn
has no idea what the future will hold as Cait-
lyn Jenner. But, she adds, it is not important
to her right now. “If you have a list of 10 rea-
sons to transition, sex would be number 10.”
It should also be emphasized that sexual
preference and gender identity have nothing
to do with each other.
In September 1978, Chrystie and Bruce
had Burton, or Burt for short. He was named
after Jenner’s younger brother, who had died
in a car accident shortly after the Olympics,
on the day he was supposed to fly to Califor-
nia to live with Bruce and establish residency
in hopes of attending a state university.
The marriage began to fissure. They sepa-
rated for a period of time, then got back to-
gether. Chrystie became pregnant; in an in-
terview in Playboy in 1980, Jenner said, “My
first reaction was that I didn’t want it,” and
he asked her to consider an abortion. They
separated permanently when Chrystie was
still pregnant with their second child, Cas-
sandra, who is now 34. She has two young
children with her husband, Michael Marino,
who is in private equity.
“I never knew he wasn’t at my birth until I
was about 13 years old and we were arguing
on the phone about money,” Cassandra, a
2001 graduate of Boston College and stay-at-
home mother, told me. “He kept saying, ‘You
don’t know the whole story.’
“I hung up the phone and was asking my
mom what he was talking about until she
confessed the history behind my birth.”
Jenner told me he was in the middle of di-
vorcing Chrystie when he found out she was
pregnant. He said he brought up the idea of
an abortion but rejected it after 30 seconds.
He was in a hotel room in Kansas City when
Cassandra was born. He cried, but “under
the circumstances I could not even see my-
self being there.”
J
Linda
enner started seeing Linda Thomp-
son, a performer on the syndi-
cated country-music and variety
show Hee Haw who would go on
to have an accomplished career as
a songwriter. (She and her second
husband, David Foster, co-wrote the song “I
Have Nothing,” made famous by Whitney
Houston.) Bruce and Linda had met at the
Playboy Mansion during a tennis tournament.
Jenner divorced Chrystie in 1980 and married
Thompson several months later, in January of
the following year. She was pregnant at the
time with their first son, Brandon.
He appeared on the cover of Playgirl with
Linda Thompson in May of 1982. He was
shirtless (but not hairless). Linda, in what
looks to be a low-cut leotard, has her lips and
nose pressed sensually against his cheek. In a
question-and-answer interview he talks about
his “masculine qualities” and their healthy
sex life and the fabulousness of their marriage
after a year. It appears obvious in hindsight
that he was desperately trying to maintain his
cover in a society that still largely condemned
transgender women and men.
They had been married for more than
four years and had two children, Brandon
and Brody, when he told Linda of his gen-
der dysphoria. She said she was shocked and
devastated. Brandon was about three and a
half at the time and Brody 18 months.
They went into counseling, but, Thomp-
son told me, the therapist said the condition
would never go away. “ ‘You can live with him
as he transitions and you can have what you
might consider a lesbian relationship because,
you know, you can stay married to him. You
will both be women, but he’s attracted to you.
He would like to stay married to you. Or if
that doesn’t appeal to you, you can move on.’
“And I opted for the latter because I
married a man… As much as I felt my
life and my dream were destroyed and I was
going to have to get a divorce, and then my
kids, I was going one day to have to explain
to them—I thought my pain doesn’t com-
pare to the pain that he’s in. At least I’m
comfortable living in my own body.”
Jenner describes the period of the mid- to
late 80s as “the dark years.” He had no so-
cial life. Professional opportunities dwindled,
in part because he had no motivation to work
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 63
 “You don’t go out and change your gender

F OR D E TA I LS, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E D ITS

64 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015

for a TV show. It ain’t happening.”

“There’s so much more to me

than those 48 hours in the stadium,
and I can’t talk about it,” Caitlyn
says, thinking back. “It was frustrating.”

JENNER WEARS A CORSET BY AGENT

PROVOCATEUR, BRACELET BY NORMAN
SILVERMAN DIAMONDS;
WRAP BY DONNA KARAN NEW YORK.
 “That was a good day,” she says
of winning gold, in 1976. “But the
last couple of days”—being
photographed as Caitlyn
by Leibovitz—“were better.”

JENNER WEARS A TOP AND

SKIRT BY HERVÉ LÉGER; EARRINGS
BY MONICA RICH KOSANN;
RING BY VHERNIER.

F OR D E TA I LS, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E D ITS

66 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015

 “I made a lot of mistakes raising the four
and didn’t seem to care. He had moved from
ABC to NBC, and around 1983 his contract
was not renewed. He was tired of giving
speeches. His acting career had resulted in
one feature film, back in 1980: Allan Carr’s
frantic Can’t Stop the Music, a thoroughly
bizarre film with Steve Guttenberg and Val-
erie Perrine and the Village People trying to
capitalize on the disco era. Its campiness is
so bad that it’s sociologically fascinating to
watch today. But it received the 1980 Razzie
for worst picture and screenplay; Jenner was
nominated for worst actor but lost out to Neil
Diamond, for The Jazz Singer. A made-for-
television film, Grambling’s White Tiger—star-
ring Jenner as a white quarterback on the
otherwise all-black Grambling State Univer-
sity football team, with Harry Belafonte as
legendary coach Eddie Robinson—was well
received. But it did not propel him anywhere.
He was running out of the diversions that
had guided his life. But the gender issues
were not going away; if anything, they were
intensifying. “The gender issues were big at
that time,” Jenner told me. “I had ignored
them for so long, but I was aging.”
I
“I Don’t Want to Be This Way”
t was during that first attempt at
transition, in the mid- and late 1980s,
that he went on hormones, had his
beard removed, and had plastic
surgery on his nose. The changes
were noticeable. Brody Jenner, now
31 years old and a reality-TV staple with a
new show called Sex with Brody, debuting
on E! this summer, was somewhere around
4 when he said to his mother, “Mommy, we
saw Daddy get out of the shower and he’s
got boobs.” Rumors began in the media and
were squelched. “I was terrified of being dis-
covered,” Jenner said. “I was not at a point in
my life where I was comfortable with myself.
“ ‘I don’t want to be this way’ was the
bottom line. Who would want to be dealing
with all these issues… I look at men and
say, Oh my God, would it not be so wonder-
ful to be comfortable in your own skin, male
or female, so when you wake up in the morn-
ing you get dressed and go to work and this
identity issue is not even present?
“You’re happy being who you are. You
have a beautiful wife and this and that…
I look at women and think the exact same
thing: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up
in the morning and be able to get dressed
and go out and live your life?”
But the context of the times made Jen-
ner scared. There were only a handful of
well-publicized transgender cases. The at-
mosphere for transgender men and women
68 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
was still extremely difficult. Johns Hopkins
Hospital had come to public attention for
championing sexual-reassignment surgeries
in 1966 but stopped doing the procedure
13 years later, after a controversial study by
a psychiatrist there reported that recipients,
in making psychosexual adjustment, were
no better off than those who didn’t have the
surgery. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist in chief
for the medical school, whose stance against
gender-reassignment surgery borders on reli-
gious zealotry in the eyes of activists, was in-
strumental in the decision, concluding that
the only surgery as radical and misguided
was the lobotomy.
The same year, 1979, Professor Janice G.
Raymond published The Transsexual Empire:
The Making of the She-Male. She wrote in the
book, “I contend that the problem of trans-
sexualism would best be served by morally
mandating it out of existence.”
Enormous strides are being made today
in the acceptance of transgender women and
men, thanks, in part, to the Golden Globe
Award–winning Amazon series Transparent
and such transgender spokeswomen as the
writer Janet Mock and Orange Is the New
Black star Laverne Cox. (Last year Cox ap-
peared on the cover of Time magazine with
the headline THE TRANSGENDER TIPPING
POINT.) Yet only 19 states have laws to pro-
tect transgender workers.
A
Kris
round 1990, Jenner stopped
his transition. He decided he
needed to “get back in the
game.” He was in Ketchikan,
Alaska, finishing a celebrity
fishing show with former Los
Angeles Dodgers first-baseman Steve Garvey,
when Garvey’s wife, Candace, raised the
idea of fixing him up with Kris Kardashian.
She was divorced from Robert Kardashian,
who went on to fame—or perhaps infamy—
as a friend and attorney of O.  J. Simpson’s
and died of cancer in 2003, at the age of
59. Candace mentioned that Kris lived in
Beverly Hills with a marvelous sense of style
and great shopping skill. Jenner at first was
not interested. “I’m thinking the last thing I
need is a Beverly Hills shopper,” Jenner said.
“I don’t need that. No offense to shoppers.
It’s the perception of this woman who sits
around Beverly Hills and goes shopping all
day.” On second thought, Candace said, it
would never work since Kris, like Jenner, had
four children. Then Jenner was interested:
“She comes with as much baggage as I do.”
They hit it off immediately and seven
months later, in 1991, were married.
The issue of how much Bruce Jenner told
Kris of his gender-identity issues is a mat-
ter of dispute: neither side wants to appear
rancorous, but the two sides agree on virtu-
ally nothing. Breast growth as the result of
hormones is irreversible. Jenner insists that
he was a “good solid B cup” when he met
Kris. She said it was comparable to a “little
bit of a man boob situation” but that there
was “no B cup going on.”
The issue goes to the core of how much
moral obligation Jenner, or anyone with estab-
lished gender dysphoria, has to tell a prospec-
tive spouse of his or her condition. “When I
met Bruce,” Kris said, “he told me that he had
done hormones back in the early 80s. This was
a conversation that took place in the early 90s.
So, what he was telling me happened a dec-
ade earlier, and he never really explained it.”
As far as Kris Jenner was concerned, “there
wasn’t a gender issue. Nobody mentioned
a gender issue. Somebody mentioned that
[he] at one point in his life liked to dress up.”
Jenner is emphatic that he told Kris he
had taken hormones in the late 1980s up until
the year they met, and was equally emphatic
in saying there were other side effects besides
breast growth. He finds it implausible for her
to suggest she was not aware of his gender
struggle. But he does concede that “prob-
ably a mistake I made was maybe not having
her understand—not the severity of it but that
this is a condition you cannot get away from.
From that standpoint maybe I blew it away
a little bit, sort of ‘This is what I do.’ ” He
said he did cross-dress in front of her. But ul-
timately, he said, she set down rules: he could
cross-dress when he was traveling on his own
but not at home.
Kris said he never cross-dressed in front
of her, the only evidence “a few times I
would see a suitcase or things lying around
the house.” She also said she never set down
any rules.
At first, based on interviews, the merging
of Jenner’s children from the first two mar-
riages with the four children from Kris’s
first marriage—Kourtney, Kimberly, Khloé,
and Robert junior—was a happy one. The
eight of them performed together at the Jen-
ners’ wedding as “the “Jennashians.” The
Jenner children continued to live with their
mothers, but they said that they frequently
went over to their father’s house and that
Kris embraced them. Then it all stopped.
The children maintain that Kris essentially
turned on them. Kris said she and her hus-
band stopped seeing the children “because
you just got to a point where it became ex-
hausting to be embattled all the time. We
weren’t getting anywhere with constantly ask-
JU LY 2 015
Jenner kids.… There was a lot of turmoil.”
ing to see the kids and not getting a yes. And I
think the kids really didn’t hear that side of it.”
Relations became further strained when
Linda Thompson, after waiving child support
at the time of divorce, took her ex-husband to
court to get it. Jenner told me that the suit
had a very negative impact on Kris’s willing-
ness to integrate the families.
Jenner acknowledged that his focus was on
Kendall and Kylie and his four stepchildren
and that he thought, “I can hopefully build a
relationship with the Jenner side once they’re
old enough and mature enough and they’re out
from under the apron of their mothers.”
Burt Jenner, who owns West LA Dogs,
a day-care center for dogs, said he does not
remember seeing his father more than twice
a year for a period of roughly 10 years.
Brandon Jenner, who is 33 and in an ac-
complished indie-pop duo with his wife,
Leah, still maintained a sporadic relationship
with his father. But even he went through
stretches of two to three years without ever
hearing from him. The other two children
also went through long periods of never
seeing their father at all. Jenner said he was
not invited to such milestone events as high-
school graduations and would have gone had
he known; the children and their mothers say
he was invited and in some instances did not
even respond.
When the Northridge earthquake hit the
Los Angeles region, in 1994, Brandon, then
12, told his mother that his father had called
to see if the family was O.K. His mother was
delighted that Bruce had called. “Mom, I’m
just kidding,” Brandon told her.
“I think the nail in the coffin for the rela-
tionship was the beginning of the TV show,”
in 2007, said Burt. “There was a you-aren’t-
part-of-this kind of thing. Kris made the
choice to make a good TV show that was in
their image and brand.” As she put it in a
book she wrote called Kris Jenner … and All
Things Kardashian, the title “Keeping Up with
the Kardashians and the Jenners just didn’t
have the same ring to it.”
B
Family Matters
urt wonders now if it would
have been better for him if his
dad had not been an Olym-
pic champion. “It’s very hard
to have a father to idolize,” he
told me. “It would have been
much easier if he hadn’t won the Olympics.”
Burt is a formidable racecar driver, as
his father was, winning the Octane Academy
competition on NBC in 2013, which netted
him $50,000 in prize money and a car.
“My father taught me on the athletic field,”
JU LY 2 015
Burt said. “The confidence in yourself to
go out and win.”
But Burt, notable in the family for being
bluntly candid, also said, “I was very fortu-
nate to have an awesome stepfather to fill the
void… At the end of the day there’s no way
I can get around it. I am ungodly thankful
and I feel very fortunate to not have had my
father in my life… I learned how to open
doors and shake hands and look people in
the eye. Things that my dad never would
have taught me.”
Jenner does have regrets. “I have made
a lot of mistakes raising the four Jenner
kids. I had times not only dealing with
my own issues but exes. [It was] very trau-
matic and there was a lot of turmoil in my
life, and I wasn’t as close to my kids as I
should have been.”
It was actually during one of the most
difficult periods of his life, the attempted
transition in the late 1980s, that they found a
caring and loving father. As Cassandra put
it, he was a better parent when he “was mov-
ing towards his authentic self.” As she said
of her dad, “I would happily have traded a
distant father for a loving, involved mom.”
K
Keeping Up with Bruce and Kris
ris Jenner took over her
husband’s foundering ca-
reer after they were mar-
ried. She got rid of Jenner’s
handlers. She renewed his
speaking engagements. He
appeared in infomercials for Eagle Eyes Sun-
glasses and for a piece of workout equipment
called the SuperStep and other products.
They did an infomercial series called “Super
Fit with Bruce and Kris Jenner.” The efforts
were financially successful.
But after Keeping Up with the Kardashi-
ans started and became a runaway hit, the
dynamics of the relationship changed, Jenner
told me. “The first 15 years I felt she needed
me more because I was the breadwinner…
Then really around the show, when that hit
and she was running this whole show and get-
ting credit for it and she had her own money,
she didn’t need me as much from that stand-
point. The relationship was different.
“I think in a lot of ways she became less
tolerant of me. Then I’d get upset and the
whole relationship kind of fizzled.”
One has to watch only a sampling of the
show to see the interaction. “A lot of times
she wasn’t very nice,” Jenner said. “People
would see how I got mistreated. She con-
trolled the money … all that kind of stuff.”
Kris Jenner acknowledged that her work-
load quadrupled as the result of the ever-
expanding Keeping Up with the Kardashians
empire and she “didn’t have the kind of
time she had in the past.”
She also said Bruce was often angry and
upset during the last years of the marriage.
“He was married to me and he wasn’t who
he wanted to be so he was miserable… All
I was doing was working very hard for my
family so that we could all have a wonderful
future, and he was pissed off.
“At the end of my relationship with Bruce
he definitely had a lot of social anxiety,” Kris
said. “That was one of the reasons we were
in a struggle at the end. We fought a lot be-
cause we would go out together and before
we got to the end of the block we were in a
fight because he started saying, ‘When can
we go home?’ ”
What strikes her now is how her hus-
band, after fully embracing life for much of
their marriage, “just decided I’m done now”
without explaining his gender dysphoria un-
til after they were divorced. “It was like the
most passive-aggressive thing I think I’ve
ever experienced.”
As she asked rhetorically of her former
husband, “Why would you want to be mar-
ried and have kids if this is what you wanted
since you were a little boy? Why would you
not explain this all to me?”
Jenner said that from his perspective the
disintegration of the marriage had far less
to do with gender issues and far more to do
with the way Kris dealt with him: “Twenty
percent was gender and 80 percent was the
way I was treated.”
They separated in June 2013. He rented
a house in Malibu. They were amicably di-
vorced last September. The agreement was
completed with no lawyers, an indication,
Jenner said, “of 23 great years together.”
He said that he retained the contracts that
were his and she retained the ones con-
sidered hers. The agreement, filed in Los
Angeles County Superior Court, states that
they aimed to divide their assets evenly,
but Kris almost certainly emerged much
wealthier than Bruce, since she kept sole
possession of all the business interests and
intellectual property in her name—includ-
ing Keeping Up with the Kardashians and
its spin-offs.
Jenner knew that at some point he would
have to tell his children of his gender identity.
But any right to privacy he should have had
was irrevocably lost in December of 2013
when he got a call from TMZ asking him if
he had just had a medical consultation for
the tracheal shave. Jenner remembers pulling
his car to the side of the road. He pleaded
that nothing be C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 5
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 69
The NEVER-ENDING WAR

THE GOOD
70 VA N I T Y FA
A II RR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015
 COMING FORWARD
Jess Cunningham,
who tried to
stop the murder of
Iraqi detainees,
at his home,
in Bakersfield,
California.

At 26, army staff sergeant Jess Cunningham had a bright

future. He’d been handpicked for Alpha Company—nicknamed
“Wolf Pack”—by its hard-driving, charismatic first sergeant,
John Hatley. Then, in Iraq, during the surge of 2007, Hatley changed
the rules. Dissecting a cold-blooded war crime, and the
military’s response, WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE reveals how a warrior
fought to become something more: a better man

J ULY
SOLDIER
2015 P H OTOG R AP H BY JONAS FREDWALL KARLSSON VA NIT Y FAI R 71
 J
I. Wolf Pack
ess Cunningham was a staff sergeant in a
mechanized unit of the U.S. Army—Alpha Company, First Battal-
ion, 18th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division—during the in-
tensified fighting that accompanied the surge of American troops in
Baghdad in 2007. This was his second tour in Iraq, and his first with
Alpha Company. He had been a high-school football star in Bakers-
field, California, before heading off to war. He had excelled in the
army, rising rapidly through the ranks. Now 26, he was strong, alert,
and accustomed to battle. He had a bright future.
But he also had a problem. Although Alpha Company appeared
from the outside to be like any other infantry unit, neatly integrated
into the larger American force structure, on the inside it revolved to an
unusual degree around a single personality—that of an imposing first
sergeant, a hard-charging 18-year veteran named John Hatley, who
dominated the company. Hatley was a burly Texan who spoke with a
drawl. He carried his 240 pounds on a six-foot frame, and at the age
of 40 still achieved a perfect 300 on the army’s physical-fitness test. He
had been the company’s first sergeant for three years and had delayed
a promotion to sergeant major in order to return with his men to the
fight. He reveled in his power. He made it clear that the rules of en-
gagement that mattered were the ones he alone defined. Cunningham
had never encountered such a sergeant before. He himself was a team
player and not immune to Hatley’s leadership qualities, but over the
first few months in Baghdad he began to struggle privately with doubts.
The company called itself Wolf Pack and sometimes seemed to act
like one. Cunningham did not question the war itself, but he wondered
about the treatment of Iraqi detainees and the actions of certain gun-
ners who seemed to be playing loose with their justifications for killing.
Alpha Company’s area of operations lay in southwest Baghdad,
one of the most active battlefields in Iraq. Sunnis and Shiites were
fighting over the neighborhoods, and insurgents from both groups
were warring on American patrols. The U.S. mission was to promote
stability. This boiled down to convoys of recent American high-school
graduates lumbering around in Bradley troop carriers and armored
Humvees from which they could barely see, struggling to distinguish
combatants from civilians in an indecipherable city, and waiting to
get attacked. Cunningham served as a squad leader in the company’s
Second Platoon. They were based with Hatley’s headquarters pla-
toon at a fortified combat outpost called Angry Dragon, which also
housed the company’s Tactical Operations Center, an office and brief-
72 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
ing room known as Wolf Den on the radios. Wolf Pack, Wolf Den,
Angry Dragon—the bravura was probably useful, given the youth of
the soldiers. The engagements were frequent and anything but child’s
play. They resulted in uncounted numbers of Iraqi deaths. By con-
trast, the accounting of American losses was carefully done. During
Alpha Company’s 14 months on the ground, six soldiers were killed
and three were gravely wounded—a toll that amounted to a casualty
rate of about 15 percent in Cunningham’s platoon alone. The first sol-
dier died four months into the fight, on February 27, 2007. He was a
tall, 22-year-old staff sergeant named Karl Soto-Pinedo, who was shot
in the head by a sniper after he rose too high above the hatch of his
Bradley. Three weeks later, on March 17, 2007, a 30-year-old specialist
named Marieo Guerrero was lost to a jerry-rigged land mine, an I.E.D.
T
hen, in late March or early April, on a date lost as
much to obfuscation as to the blur of war, Cunning-
ham was given a training task, to serve as the leader
of a routine “presence” patrol. The patrol consisted of
a pair of lead and tail-end Bradleys, with three Hum-
vees in between. Around noon they rolled out of the
combat outpost carrying about 20 soldiers and multiple top-
mounted guns. Cunningham occupied the first Humvee, along with
a crew that included the unit’s civilian interpreter, an Iraqi called
“Dennis.” The second Humvee was the one that mattered. It be-
longed to Hatley, who had decided to attach himself to the patrol to
evaluate Cunningham’s performance. Along with his regular driver
and gunner, Hatley was accompanied by the two men closest to
him—the company’s chief medic, Sergeant Michael “Doc” Leahy,
27, who rode with Hatley wherever he went, and the Second Pla-
toon’s senior NCO, Sergeant First Class Joseph Mayo, 26, a careerist
whose eagerness to impress Hatley seemed to know no bounds. In
the privacy of Alpha Company at war, these three men—Hatley
flanked by Leahy and Mayo—formed the unit’s triumvirate of power.
Their presence on the patrol frustrated Cunningham’s authority
from the start but did not lessen his formal responsibility for the mission.
The patrol rolled west. The patrol rolled south. It rolled into a neighbor-
hood where Cunningham got out with the interpreter and asked about
life on the ground. People said times were tough, and the patrol rolled
on. Two hours after leaving the combat outpost, the patrol came under
small-arms fire. The vehicles had stopped on an empty street between
shuttered houses. The rounds clanged against the armor and caused
the top gunners to hunker down. Hatley radioed to Cunningham,
“What’ve you got?” Cunningham suspected he had the usual—angry
locals who could melt away at will. He did not get excited. He radioed,
“Does anyone have anything? All White elements respond. Direction?
Distance?” The gunner on the tail-end Bradley spotted the gunfire
coming from a rooftop in a cluster of buildings to the south. He an-
swered with a burst of his own. The shooting stopped. Cunningham
ordered a move toward the position. With some difficulty the convoy
turned around, but it was blocked by marshy land and had to detour
to the east before navigating back to the vicinity from which the attack
had come. By then the attackers had gone.
The soldiers continued with the patrol, working westward through
a succession of neighborhoods with guns at the ready, spoiling for a
fight. Word of the earlier engagement must have gotten around, be-
cause the streets were deserted. Then, after more than an hour and a
mile, the patrol came upon an Arab man in the street. The encounter
did not occur in the heat of battle. It had no obvious connection to the
confrontation earlier that day, and was in a different part of town.
The man was alone. He may or may not have been a fighter. He
could have just stood there, waved in a friendly manner, or held up
JU LY 2 015
his hands to demonstrate that he was unarmed. He could have shout-
ed, “Mister, I love America!” Four years into the occupation, he
probably knew that much English. But he was stupid. Startled by the
patrol, he dashed across the street and disappeared into a doorway.
Don’t run if you want to look innocent. The convoy splayed into
defensive positions, and soldiers sprang out. Hatley, Leahy, and Mayo
were the first to go through the doorway, followed by Cunningham and
others. On the inside they found a group of frightened women and chil-
dren and five men of military age with their hands raised in submis-
sion, saying, “No, mister.” It was an ugly scene: the women were bab-
bling and pleading in Arabic, a language known to some of the soldiers
as “their native tongue.” The men were positioned facing the wall,
professing their innocence. None was armed. A quick search turned
up a single Kalashnikov assault rifle with two loaded magazines—the
standard household allowance in Iraq. Unconvinced, the Americans
began a more thorough search, lifting the carpets, pulling a refrigera-
tor from the wall, shifting furniture, opening drawers and containers
and spilling the contents onto the floors. They called this “flipping” the
place. Eventually they discovered a green bag containing a bulletproof
vest, a cell phone, some electrical wire, and belts of 7.62-mm. ammuni-
tion. Then, a few doors down the street, in an otherwise empty shop,
they found the matching weapons—several machine guns.
The captured men denied any knowledge of the weapons, but
it seemed obvious that they were lying. Whether all or any of them
were insurgents was a more difficult question, particularly in a neigh-
borhood riven by sectarian violence, but Hatley and his soldiers—
including Cunningham—assumed that they were. The women plead-
ed for mercy in their native tongue. The men were flex-cuffed with
their hands behind their backs, and were blindfolded with ACE ban-
dages. At about that time Cunningham thought he heard Hatley say-
ing to Mayo, “How do you feel about offing these guys?” Cunning-
ham was not sure he had heard correctly. He was standing beside
another sergeant, Charles Quigley, a quiet but articulate soldier from
Rhode Island. Hatley and Mayo walked up. According to Cunning-
ham, Mayo said, “You guys have an issue if we take these guys out?”
Cunningham said, “What?”
“Offing them. Killing them. It’ll prevent us from seeing them again.”
Cunningham said, “No, man. I’m not going to do that.” Quigley
also declined.
Mayo peered at them with disdain. Hatley said, “No one’s forcing
you. I’ll do it myself.” He turned and walked away. Cunningham and
Quigley exchanged looks. Hatley and Mayo began surveying the other
soldiers, pulling them aside one by one; Cunningham doubted wheth-
er any of them would dare to refuse. He decided to put a stop to it.
He ambled over to his Humvee and quietly asked the driver to call in
THE GUNSHOTS
TORE CUNNINGHAM’S
WORLD APART.
JU LY 2 015
HE SAT IN SHOCK.
a formal situation report to company headquarters—to include their
location, the weapons seized, and especially the fact that they had
taken prisoners. The report would be entered into the company log,
and this might calm things down. Cunningham returned to Quigley’s
side as if nothing had happened. A few minutes later, company head-
quarters radioed back, asking for an exact count of the detainees and
an expected time of arrival at the combat outpost. The man who
took that call was Hatley’s driver.
Hatley angrily demanded to know who had called in the report.
When he got the answer, Cunningham says, he and Mayo stormed
over in a rage. Mayo shouted at Cunningham, “What the fuck are
you doing? You can’t fucking control your soldiers? Why’d you call
up a sitrep? You fucking pussy! You piece of fucking shit!” Cun-
ningham looked at him. He had never been good at verbalizing his
thinking. That does not mean that he was not good at thinking. He
thought, You’re supposed to be my platoon sergeant. You’re sup-
posed to be the one shutting Hatley down. Why am I doing it? But
Cunningham said none of what he thought. He stood there silently
and, in army tradition, sucked up the abuse.
The rear ramp of the lead Bradley dropped down, and the five
detainees, blindfolded and bound, were led into the troop compart-
ment. The Bradley was commanded by a sergeant named Daniel
Evoy. It had a driver and gunner as well, but otherwise was empty.
The detainees were seated face-to-face on steel benches. Mayo as-
signed the job of guarding them to a private named Joshua Hartson,
who was a newcomer and the lowest in the hierarchy of the patrol.
He gave Hartson a nine-mm. Beretta pistol and said, “It’s your word
against anyone else’s if something were to happen.” The message was
clear, but Hartson was not the type to shoot these men. He sat in the
back with them as the rear ramp clanged shut and the convoy set off
through the streets.
B
II. Band of Brothers
akersfield, California, is an uneasy city, a gang-infested
boom-and-bust oil town where a fast-growing Hispanic
population is overrunning an established country-and-
western core. Jess Cunningham and a nearly identi-
cal twin brother were born anchored into the Anglo
community, with two sets of grandparents who were
next-door neighbors and a large number of uncles, aunts, cousins, and
friends constituting a network of what is locally known as good fami-
lies—those instilled with the traditional values of athletics, honest work,
and love of home. Cunningham’s father is a Caterpillar mechanic and
former rodeo rider. His mother is a medical-billing clerk and devout
churchgoer. The two were divorced when he was young, but they par-
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 73
 1

JULY 2 015
 2 ticipated equally in his upbringing and provided him with a happy
childhood, full of team sports, outdoor activities, and moderate studies.
In October 1997, however, the dark side of California caught up
with him. Cunningham was a junior in high school at the time. The
star of his football team, a senior named Chad Yarbrough, who was
the handsome scion of an outstanding family, was waylaid by two
Mexican gang members after an argument at a party. They intercepted
him after he had driven his girlfriend home, then forced him at gun-
point to take them to an orange grove, where they executed him with a
shot to the head. One of the killers was soon arrested and subsequently
sentenced to life in prison; the other was captured nine months later,
and in 2001 was sentenced to death. His appeals continue, but, what-
ever his fate, he has been dealt with decisively—and good riddance.
Yarbrough was 17 years old when he died. The horror of his murder
marked Cunningham profoundly. He never mentioned the episode
while in the army, but it was part of him every day in Iraq.

C
unningham graduated in 1999 and enrolled in Bakers-
field College, where he played football for a year and
flunked a course in American studies while earning an
A in Mexican history, to the amusement of his friends.
His horizons were near: he wanted to complete enough
college to qualify for a civil-service job as a policeman,
firefighter, or prison guard; he wanted a house and a family; and he
wanted to stay in Bakersfield. He got a job as a maintenance man at an
4 agricultural processing plant, and was there on the morning of Septem-
ber 11, 2001, when he watched the terrorist attacks unfold on television.
Afterward he began to think about joining the fight—not in a patriotic
rush but out of a growing curiosity about war. He had always liked John
Wayne and had recently been impressed by the HBO series Band of
Brothers and the movie Black Hawk Down. By the spring of 2002, with
U.S. forces engaged in Afghanistan and the first reports of local boys’
dying in action, he began to see this as his generation’s war—the epic
of his time. He did not want to become yet another regretful old man
thinking, Darn, I wish, I wish I woulda. He visited an army recruiter,
and three months later, after aptitude testing and the offer of safer
military paths, opted for the boots-on-the-ground experience of in-
fantry, because he wanted to know what the thick of things is about.
His parents were dismayed, but they learned too late to stop
him. He was nearly 22 years old. He joined the army on June 18,
2002, and the next day flew off to basic and infantry training at
Fort Benning, Georgia, where he
flourished. After graduation he was
WARRIORS assigned to a base in Germany. Five
(1) Cunningham and months later, in March 2003, he
Michael “Doc” Leahy
at Camp Slayer,
went to war in Iraq. His first unit was
in Baghdad. (2) Some Bravo Company, Second Battalion,
members of Second Infantry Regiment, of the
Alpha Company. Two
First Infantry Division. It consisted
shown here were
accused of murder—the largely of volunteers who had stepped
charismatic first forward after the 9/11 attacks, and in
sergeant, John Hatley sufficient numbers to allow the army
(second from
left, rear), and Joseph
to set a relatively high standard for
Mayo (third from recruitment. In Bravo Company the
left, rear). Cunningham quality showed. The soldiers were
is at far right. well intentioned, collaborative, and
(3) James D. Culp, the
Texas lawyer who serious about their jobs. They did not
defended Cunningham. hate Arabs and were not out to target
(4) Hatley after a raid in people or inflict pain. Furthermore,
western Baghdad.
they were led by a crew of pragmatic,
evenhanded sergeants, and were over-
J ULY 2015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 75
 THE SOLDIERS
START WITH DENIALS,
THEN WAVER, THEN
BARE THEIR SOULS.
seen by junior officers who were much the same. The mission was
a fairly quiet one—to help secure an air base in Kirkuk, a city about
150 miles north of Baghdad, at a time during and just after the inva-
sion, when the population was still subdued.
It was a one-year stint. The men camped on the tarmac for the
first few months before being provided with shelters and a chow
hall. They ranged widely beyond the perimeter, walking through the
streets, operating traffic checkpoints, and unearthing vast quantities
of munitions from hidden stockpiles that littered the countryside.
Some of the munitions they handled may have been chemical weap-
ons, with long-term consequences to themselves. But they came un-
der fire perhaps only twice, and they suffered no losses. So, it wasn’t
like the movies. But it was war nonetheless.
Cunningham turned out to be good at it. His evaluation sheets rated
his performance as excellent in every category and repeatedly recom-
mended that he be promoted ahead of his peers. He rose rapidly to
specialist, and soon enough to sergeant. By then the company was
back in Germany, training for the next deployment. The war in Iraq
was heating up. In June 2005, Cunningham came to the end of his
initial commitment and re-enlisted for four more years. He thought he
would remain with Bravo Company, but two months later the army
deactivated the unit. Cunningham and several friends arranged to get
themselves assigned to the First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment—
the 1-26—which was based at a garrison in Schweinfurt, Bavaria, about
three hours away. They got there after nightfall and mustered among
other inbound soldiers. Suddenly a voice called Cunningham’s name.
A senior sergeant came up to him and said, “Sergeant Jess Cunning-
ham? First Sergeant Hatley sent me to get you. You’re now in Alpha
Company, 1-18.” Cunningham protested that he had to meet the morn-
ing roll call for the 1-26. The sergeant said, “Negative. That’s all been
taken care of.”
I J
n retrospect there is a whiff of destiny here. The drafting of
Cunningham was entirely Hatley’s work—a fate he went out
of his way to inflict upon himself. He had recently brought
Alpha Company back from a year in Tikrit, Saddam Hus-
sein’s hometown, where they had encountered determined
resistance and lost some men to the fighting. In Germany,
he was preparing the company for a scheduled return to Iraq, de-
termined to make it the best infantry unit in the field, expressly as a
reflection of himself. Within the U.S. Army in Europe, Hatley had
his ear to the ground. When he heard of new arrivals, he called his
network of friends, the first sergeants and sergeant majors who knew
the score. He had a sergeant slot to fill in his second platoon, and he
wanted the best soldier for the purpose—a go-getter, a team player, and
76 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
a “P.T. stud” whose dedication to physical training could match his
own. He said, “I want the pick of the litter.” And that is what he got.
Cunningham was surprised by the cult of Hatley and felt a little un-
comfortable with it, but he was impressed by the man—and for good
reason. Hatley was the alpha of alpha males. He was physically impos-
ing and would get into people’s faces if he had to, but intimidation was
not primarily the basis of his power—not yet. He was hard-charging,
hands-on, versatile, verbal, experienced, politically connected, and
obviously intelligent. He knew when to be serious and when to relax.
He knew how to approach each individual soldier, and how to ap-
proach the group. Every morning, when the men assembled, he would
stand in front of them and shout a war cry, and then “P.T.!,” and the
company would enthusiastically reply. Because of Hatley, the esprit de
corps was high. The mentality was “We’re the best!” Hatley preached
it every day. And he gave credit easily. He said, “I’m the best because
you’re the best! I’m the best because you platoon sergeants make me
look good! You platoon sergeants are the best because your squad
leaders make you look good! You squad leaders are the best because
your soldiers make you look good! Wolf Pack!” Cunningham bought
into it as all the soldiers seemed to. Hatley was invincible. He was the
great protector who would keep everyone safe. Cunningham thought,
What is not to love about this man? Because Cunningham was not
clairvoyant. He did not anticipate the effect of the coming battle, where
the power of life and death would be placed in Hatley’s hands.
Then it was early spring 2007, Iraq was up in arms, the fighting
in Baghdad had become the sort of war that movies show, five Iraqi
men had just been loaded into the back of a Bradley, and Hatley
had voiced his intention to murder them. Cunningham was still
nominally responsible for the patrol, but he had lost practical au-
thority, and Hatley was now fully in charge.
III. Beside the Canal
ohn Edmond Hatley was born in 1968. He was raised
in a dismal town in central Texas, where his father was
a Baptist preacher and connections to the world were
thin. He was disadvantaged by definition. He played some
sports. He chased some girls. He dropped out of high
school, then worked some menial jobs. He was appar-
ently headed nowhere in life. But in 1989, when he was 21, he drove
to Dallas and joined the army. The army was good for him. It did
not care about his caste. It found in Hatley the material from which
career soldiers are formed, and it gave him the means to elevate him-
self to a degree that civil society probably would not have allowed.
Hatley was hungry for it. He turned out to be better, tougher, and
smarter than his peers. At some early point he must have realized
JU LY 2 015
this about himself. A certain insecurity never left him. He remained,
for instance, painfully proud of his every decoration. Nonetheless the
once inconsequential boy became a man who could not be ignored.
The unlikeliness of his rise may help to explain his inordinate pride.
His rise looked like this: he went from rifleman to armored-vehicle
crew member, to squad automatic-weapon gunner, machine-gunner,
radio operator, team leader, squad leader, section leader, brigade mas-
ter gunner, platoon sergeant, division master gunner, and divisional-
operations sergeant before becoming the imposing first sergeant of his
beloved Alpha Company. He was stationed in the United States, Ko-
rea, and Germany, saw combat in the Gulf War, did peacekeeping in
Bosnia and Kosovo, and returned to straight-up combat twice in Iraq.
Along the way he completed airborne- and jungle-warfare training,
excelled in multiple leadership and war-fighting schools, won a Ranger
tab, completed high school with a general-equivalency diploma, and
earned a year’s worth of college credits through a University of Mary-
land extension program, where he performed at a nearly straight-A
level. The man was better than West Point. He seemed unstoppable,
on a path to becoming a command sergeant major, and perhaps the
senior NCO for all of the U.S. Army in Europe—the enlisted equiva-
lent of a three-star general. He was married at the time to a Korean-
American orphan named Kim, who was raised in New York and
came to the marriage with a son. Hatley never had children of his
own, but he loved his soldiers paternally and saw himself as their pro-
tector—there is no question about that.
I
t was at that stage in his life that Hatley came up with the
idea of killing the Iraqi detainees. He was fighting a futile war
against enemies who dressed in civilian clothes and routinely
professed their innocence when captured. Furthermore, if he
hoped to ensure their long-term detention—and thereby pre-
serve the lives of his own men—he was saddled with stringent
evidentiary requirements that generally could not be met. That was cer-
tainly true in this case, where the machine guns had been discovered in
a separate house. Here was the deal: you could hold the detainees for
“tactical questioning” at the combat outpost for 24 hours, after which
you would have to release them to the streets or turn them over to the
Iraqi or American authorities, who likely would release them a few days
later. During their confinement at the combat outpost, you would learn
nothing from them, and they would be subjected to petty abuse (some
slapping around, some spinning around, perhaps a bit more) of the sort
that was simply dumb. About the most you could do—though in viola-
tion of procedures—was to drop them off in a hostile neighborhood
on the remote chance that their sectarian enemies would eliminate
them on your behalf, which some units were rumored to have done.
Hatley was sick of the game. Over the years he had lost too many
friends to America’s wars. Despite a lack of sufficient evidence, he
was convinced that the five detainees were enemy combatants. Per-
versely, it may have been the very lack of evidence that turned him
toward thoughts of murder. Later he was accused of having done
something similar before, and without immediate consequence, but
this time he had a problem, and it came unexpectedly in the form of
Cunningham and the situation report that had been called in. The
existence of the detainees could not now be denied, and Hatley had
little choice but to return with them to the outpost for processing. The
patrol moved out for the purpose. Little is known of the ride. Hatley
sat in his Humvee, accompanied as before by Mayo and Leahy—all of
them seething at Cunningham’s interference. Cunningham followed
along in his own Humvee, assuming that he had succeeded in thwart-
ing Hatley’s plan but worrying about the reprisals he might face.
Private Hartson sat in the Bradley’s troop compartment, guard-
JU LY 2 015
ing the bound and blindfolded men, holding Mayo’s pistol. The
light inside was dim. He could not see out of the vehicle and neither
knew nor cared where he was headed. He assumed that the detain-
ees were going to be shot. He did not give it much thought. As the
junior soldier on the patrol, he deferred to Hatley’s experience and
judgment. Nonetheless, as it turned out, he was the only soldier with
a chance to develop a sense of the detainees as individuals. Directly
across from him sat a boy who seemed impossibly young. Next to the
boy sat an ancient man who seemed impossibly old. Next to him sat
a military-age male who could not stop crying. In his mind, Hart-
son called him Crybaby. Across from Crybaby on the opposing
bench sat an unusually large man. He became the Big Guy. Next
to him sat another military-age male, beside whom sat Hartson, the
circle completed. At one point the boy and Crybaby put their heads
against the ancient man between them and prayed.
T
he convoy pulled into the combat outpost and came
to a stop. By then Hatley and Mayo had appar-
ently decided on a solution. They dismissed two
vehicles and ordered the remaining crews—of Cun-
ningham’s and Hatley’s Humvees, and the Bradley
containing the detainees—to prepare to depart again.
Cunningham asked why. He says Mayo answered, “Because we’re go-
ing to go drop these motherfuckers off.” Cunningham hesitated.
Mayo read him correctly and yelled, “Just get in your fucking truck!”
Hatley and Mayo went into the Tactical Operations Center and
stayed there for about 10 minutes. What happened inside remains
unknown. Did they fix the paperwork to indicate their intention to
release the detainees? If so, Cunningham was that easily circum-
vented. Inside the waiting Bradley, Hartson took it upon himself to give
the detainees water. To do this he had to reach across them and hold a
bottle to their lips, one at a time. He then lit a cigarette for himself, where-
upon the Big Guy spoke up in broken English, asking for a smoke. Hart-
son reached across and gave him a puff, the first of several. Hartson grew
curious. He asked the Big Guy if he made bombs and killed Americans.
The Big Guy laughed in response, whether out of insolence or fear. The
Bradley lurched into motion. Hartson continued to speak to the Big
Guy and learned that he had two sons and six daughters. After a while,
the Big Guy twisted his torso and offered Hartson a string of prayer
beads that he had been fingering with hands bound behind his back.
Hartson accepted the gift, but that was all he had the capacity to do.
The three-vehicle convoy moved slowly to the west, the Bradley in
the lead, followed by Cunningham’s and Hatley’s Humvees. The Brad-
ley’s commander, Sergeant Evoy, radioed Cunningham for directions.
“Where are we going?” Cunningham had no idea. He answered, “An
I.P. checkpoint.” “I.P.” stood for the Iraqi Police, to whom the patrol
could turn over the detainees. This would have been standard pro-
cedure. Evoy radioed, “Which checkpoint?” Referring to Mayo and
Hatley, Cunningham answered, “I don’t know. Call White 7, call Wolf
7.” At that moment the transponder for Hatley’s Blue Force Tracker
switched off. The trackers were G.P.S.-based moving maps in certain
Humvees that showed the location of friendly forces. After Hatley’s
was switched off, only Cunningham’s remained visible to represent
the mission on the army’s screens. Cunningham reacted in anger with
repeated calls to Hatley, none of which were answered. The silence was
unusual. When finally Hatley had to get on the radio to give directions,
he did so with brevity—go left, go right, push forward—and without
identifying himself.
The ride lasted 30 minutes. Darkness gathered. Some of the sol-
diers switched to night-vision goggles. At the edge of the city they
passed through a farming village called C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 1 3
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 77
 Spotlight
TCHAIKOVSKY’S NEW QUEEN
M
isty Copeland is making history. During American Bal-
let Theatre’s current season at the Metropolitan Opera
House, Copeland will alight on that storied Lincoln
Center stage, making her New York debut as the Swan
Queen in the iconic masterpiece Swan Lake—a crowning achieve-
ment for any dancer, regardless of the color of her skin. But Cope-
land is not just any dancer, and she knows it: “To be the first African-
American woman to dance this role with American Ballet Theatre is a
huge step for the ballet world,” she says, “and I take on this opportu-
nity with tremendous care and understanding of what it means for the
growth of this art form.” At 32, she is the first crossover star the ballet
world has seen in decades, with a guest-judge stint on Fox’s So You
Think You Can Dance, an Under Armour campaign that went viral,
78 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com
www.vanityfair.com
special appearances on Prince’s Welcome 2 tour, and a feature film
in the works. Copeland is a member of the President’s Council on Fit-
ness, Sports & Nutrition, and she recently performed at the Kennedy
Center Honors—all of this while dancing at A.B.T. in repertoire rang-
ing from Alexei Ratmansky’s Firebird to Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite.
Her success in the almost all-white world of classical ballet has shat-
tered biased conventions and traditions, and she has become a pow-
erful voice for diversity as well as awareness of women’s body-image
issues. In her best-selling memoir, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Balleri-
na, she wrote, “They came to see things my way, that my curves are
part of who I am as a dancer, not something I need to lose to become
one.” With her grace and grit, and the will to lead change, Misty
Copeland is truly a ballerina for our time. — HE ATHER WAT TS
JULY 2 015
 ST Y LE D BY JU LI E R AG OLI A; HA I R PROD U CTS BY BU MBL E A N D BU MBLE ; MA K E UP PRO DU C TS BY L A NCÔME;
HA IR BY C AS H L AWLE S S; MA K E UP BY I N GE B ORG; P ROPS ST Y LE D BY L IS A GW IL LI AM; CHA I SE L ONG UE F ROM
HOST LE R B UR ROWS , N .Y. C . ; PHOTOG RA PH E D AT SOHO LO FTS ; F OR D E TA IL S, GO TO V F. COM/ C R E D ITS

J ULY
To see more

2015
@vf.com
BY HEDI SLIMANE.

P H O T O S, go to
BY DONNA KARAN
opposite, the dancer

VF.COM/JULY2015.
performs a developpé.
Ballerina Misty Copeland,

NEW YORK AND, OPPOSITE,

A GOWN BY SAINT LAURENT
COPELAND WEARS A GOWN
photographed in New York City;

P H OTOG R AP H S
BY
PATRICK FRASER
VA NIT Y
FAI R
79
 PICTURE PERFECT
New Republic owner
and Facebook
co-founder Chris
Hughes (below) and
his husband,
the activist Sean
Eldridge (opposite).

Portrait of
By their wedding day, in June 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and
power couple: wealthy, young, and handsome. But Hughes’s controversial
run for Congress would soon tarnish that glamour. SARAH ELLISON looks at
80 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015
PH OTO GR A PHS BY G RE G E NDRI E S/CO NTO UR/GE TT Y I MAGES

a Marriage
political activist Sean Eldridge had become the ultimate gay
stewardship of the venerable New Republic magazine and Eldridge’s failed
everything the two men achieved—and what knocked them off their pedestal
O
had bought the house and the 80 acres
around it in 2011, for $5 million. The 50
guests made their way to seats outdoors in
wooden pews transported to the country-
side by Bryan Rafanelli, the wedding plan-
ner. Rafanelli had organized the weddings
of other prominent couples with Washington
ties, such as Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mez-
vinsky, and Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton’s
longtime aide) and Anthony Weiner (the
soon-to-be-disgraced crotch-tweeting con-
gressman).
David Neidorf, president of Deep Springs
College, performed the ceremony. Neidorf
had known Eldridge at the famously remote
and unusual school in the California desert
where Eldridge spent a year before enroll-
ing at Brown University. In their vows, the
young men promised to be patient, faithful,
and honest, and to challenge each other. Af-
ter lunch, guests traveled back to the city.

n the morn-
ing of June 30, 2012, the line of black Sub-
urbans outside the Mandarin Oriental hotel,
on Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, was longer
than usual. The drivers waited for their pas-
sengers: out-of-town guests heading to a wed-
ding that was the capstone to the years-long
transformation of two ambitious, hardwork-
ing, and lucky young men. Chris Hughes,
the sandy-haired Facebook co-founder and
an online organizer for Barack Obama’s first
presidential campaign, had recently bought
a majority stake in The New Republic, a
century-old, Washington, D.C.–based maga-
zine that had been founded in Theodore
Roosevelt’s living room and had come to
define a certain strain of modern liberalism.
I
f the morning ceremony was inti-
mate, the celebration that night, for
about 350 A-listers from New York,
Washington, and Silicon Valley, felt
like a Bonfire of the Vanities for the
millennial set. In front of the im-
posing neoclassical columns framing the
entrance of Cipriani Wall Street, an army
of mostly young women, armed with iPads
1
and a guest list with photos, scrutinized each
new arrival and ushered guests in for cock-
tails and then dinner and dancing under the
elaborate Wedgewood dome in the main hall.
New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, placed the editor, Franklin Foer, and there-
huddled with House minority leader Nancy by caused most of the top writers and edi-
Pelosi (who danced with The New Republic’s tors to leave, the Daily Beast Photoshopped

A ND RE A S L A S ZL O KO NR AT H/T RU NK A RCH I VE (3 ), © PHYLLI S M C C ABE (2)

He was marrying his longtime boyfriend, a literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, among others, a picture of Hughes’s face onto the body of

PH OTO GR A PHS BY M E L B A RL OW ( 1, 5) , R ICK F RI E DMAN/PO L ARI S (4),

tanned and chiseled Sean Eldridge, who had
worked as hard as anyone for this day as the
political director of the marriage-equality ac-
tivist group Freedom to Marry. Hughes and
Eldridge were a golden power couple.
Several of the guests described the week-
end to me. They had dined at a private
rehearsal dinner on Friday night—a nine-
course meal at Per Se, the three-Michelin-
star restaurant run by the Napa Valley chef
Thomas Keller. Then, on Saturday morning,
they were transported up the Hudson Valley
to a converted 19th-century farmhouse in
Garrison, New York. Hughes and Eldridge
during the after-dinner dance party). Senator
Kirsten Gillibrand was there, as were two of
Hughes’s fellow Facebook founders, Dustin
Moskovitz and the company’s C.E.O., Mark
Zuckerberg. It was a celebration that was both
unbridled and self-conscious. It was also,
without a doubt, New York’s biggest and
most elaborate gay wedding ever.
Yet, in the space of two and a half years,
the glitter has dulled. The Daily Beast in one
article called Hughes and Eldridge “Ameri-
ca’s Worst Gay Power Couple.” In another,
focusing on Hughes’s recent actions at The
New Republic, where he had abruptly re-
Prince Joffrey from Game of Thrones—im-
mature, incompetent, deadly, and a king
too young. For his part, Eldridge had run
for Congress in upstate New York, losing
badly and, in the process, acquiring a repu-
tation as a carpetbagger. Hughes and El-
dridge had been lucky beyond any reason-
able expectation, and had worked very hard.
They had seemed destined to become one
of those Washington couples whose dinner
table drew a diverse array of the best and
the brightest (not that they voiced such an
ambition). But inexperience and a high pro-
file are a chancy mix, and the two young

HUGHES SAYS HE HAS GONE FROM

“KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR” TO
“THE ANTICHRIST.”
82 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com JU LY 2 015

4
MATCHED PAIR
(1) Eldridge and Hughes on the day of their
wedding. (2) Eldridge concedes defeat,
2014. (3) Hughes, far right, with members
of his original New Republic team,
including editor Franklin Foer (center) and
literary editor Leon Wieseltier (standing,
right). (4) Hughes with Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg, 2004. (5) An engagement photo.
men were now widely viewed as entitled brats.
They are still coming to terms with what
has happened. After the mass resignations at
The New Republic, last December, Hughes
spoke with Annie Augustine, who had worked
closely with him as his communications direc-
tor at the magazine. Augustine had been as
surprised as the rest of the staff when Hughes
forced out Foer, and she attended a gather-
ing of writers and editors mourning Foer’s
departure (and contemplating their own).
Hughes learned about Augustine’s attendance
at the meeting and confronted her in a teary
exchange in which he begged her not to leave
him or The New Republic. A former staff mem-
ber said to me of Hughes, “He cried a lot.”
Months later, when I sat down with him
JU LY 2 015
3
5
at his Manhattan office, where The New Re-
public now is published, Hughes acknowl-
edged ruefully that he had gone from being
a “knight in shining armor” and “the greatest
thing since sliced bread” to “the Antichrist, or
something pretty close to it.” And he should
know. Both Hughes and Eldridge, whom I
met with separately, displayed a casual but ex-
haustive knowledge of pretty much everything
that had been written about them. If they are
creations of the media, they are also careful
curators of their own image.
S
“Caffeinated?”
ean Simcha Eldridge was born
in Montreal, Canada, to two
physicians who moved to Ot-
tawa Hills, Ohio, a prosperous
suburb of Toledo, when he was
four years old and entering kin-
dergarten. The town is known for its excellent
public schools, and Eldridge spent his child-
hood there. He attended Ottawa Hills High
School, where, according to a 2005 newsletter
from Deep Springs and an interview he gave
to the Toledo Blade, he starred in several of
the school’s musicals—once as Billy, who falls
in love with the wealthy Hope in Anything
Goes—ran varsity track, and graduated in the
top 10 percent of his class. He was the youth-
committee representative for the city of Tole-
do’s Board of Community Relations, and with
his fastidiously clean-cut appearance he must
have looked the part. Eldridge today has short
dark hair, an athletic build, and a perfect smile
that would be appropriate in Smallville. Those
who have spent time with him socially say he
is harder to know than Hughes, and appears
calculating and driven in a way Hughes is not.
When I sat down with Eldridge recently,
he was friendly and likable, and even cracked
a few jokes. When the subject of his inten-
sity arose, he didn’t dispute the description
but gestured toward himself, as if to leave
the decision up to me, and said, “What do
you think? Caffeinated?” The five months
since the end of the campaign had clearly af-
forded the most time he had had in a while
to consider what came next. One thing was
clear: “I’m not going to run again,” he said.
Instead, he is focusing on advocacy—for
L.G.B.T. rights, C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 9
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 83
 Follow That

84 VAN IT Y FA IR P H OTOG R AP H BY MARK SELIGER JULY 2 015

 Woman!
FUNNY GIRL
Amy Schumer,
photographed
with dragon
dancers in
New York City’s
Chinatown.

SCHUMER WEARS
PA JAMAS FROM
PEARL RIVER MART.
SE T D E SI G N BY ROB STR AU SS STU DI O; PRO DU C E D ON L OC ATI ON BY R U TH L E V Y; F OR DE TAI LS , G O TO VF.COM/ CR ED ITS
ST Y LE D BY J A R ROD L ACK S; HA IR PROD UC TS BY K É R ASTA SE PA R IS ; MAK E UP PRO D UC TS BY YV E S S AINT L AUR ENT; NAIL
E NA ME L BY CH AN E L; HA I R BY CHA R LI E TAYL OR ; MA K E U P BY CY ND L E KOMA ROV SK I ; MA N IC UR E BY R ACHEL SHIM;

Baby-faced and razor-tongued, Amy Schumer

has emerged as a force of comedy, with her award-winning
TV series in its third season and her first big
feature, Trainwreck, out this month. Her collaborator and
director on the film, JUDD APATOW, shares an
adaptation from his new book, Sick in the Head, in which he and
Schumer discuss sex, stand-up, and other serious stuff
J ULY 2015 VA NIT Y FAI R 85
I
was sitting in my car one
day, listening to The Howard Stern Show, when
Amy Schumer came on. I think I had seen her
do a little stand-up on television once or twice
before, or maybe just some jokes at a roast,
but that’s about it. I didn’t have a clear picture
in my mind. But sitting there in my car, listen-
ing to her talk to Howard, I was blown away by
how funny and intimate and fresh she was. You
could sense that she had stories to tell and was
a lot more than just a comedian. I instantly
thought: I need to make a movie with her.
So we did.
Amy and I spent the next few years work-
ing on Trainwreck, and I found that she was,
indeed, so much more than just a comedian.
She is someone who is willing to go emotion-
ally deep, as well as work obsessively hard,
and there’s a frankness to her work that I find
inspiring. The stories tumble out of her. She
is able to make important points about our
culture and feminism and relationships and
what it’s like to be a woman in America right
now, and to do it in a way that is consistently
insightful and hysterical. Here is someone at
the beginning of a very exciting career.
JUDD APATOW: I was watching a movie about
women in comedy recently—I think it was
called Are Women Funny? And I noticed
that you weren’t in it. Was that by choice?
AMY SCHUMER: I got cut out. Actually, I am
in one scene. But I don’t talk.
J.A.: Oh, I thought maybe it was a political
choice, a way of saying, We shouldn’t even
be debating this anymore.
A.S.: No, that debate is insane to me. It
doesn’t even make me mad. It’s like asking,
Do Jewish people smell like orange juice?
It’s just such a weird question. It’s not even
Adapted from Sick in the Head: Conversations
About Life and Comedy, by Judd Apatow, to
be published this month by Random House, a
division of Penguin Random House LLC;
© 2015 by the author; reprinted by arrangement
with the Wylie Agency.
86 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
a question. The thing that gets to me is the
question “Isn’t this a great time to be a
woman in comedy?” I mean, all the TV I
watched growing up featured funny women.
J.A.: People said the same thing when Brides-
maids came out. We never thought about that
when we were making it. I just thought, Kris-
ten Wiig is funny. It would be fun to make a
movie with Kristen Wiig. And then she had
this idea to make a movie about bridesmaids.
We never thought of it as a female movie. At
some point, in the middle of it, it occurred
to us: Oh, it’s kind of cool to have so many
funny women in one movie. But it wasn’t con-
scious or anything. At the end of the process,
we realized that it meant something to peo-
ple. But what is shocking to me was that, even
after the movie did well, there was almost zero
follow-up in the culture.
A.S.: In terms of what?
J.A.: In terms of funny movies that are domi-
nated by women. The studio system didn’t
embrace them. They don’t know how to do it.
A.S.: In my experience, there will be a script
and you’ll be like, This is funny—I think I’ll
audition. And you’ll know other women,
who are hilarious, are auditioning, too. And
then they give it to, like, some beautiful mov-
ie star. They’re great actresses and they’re
really pretty, but they’re not funny.
J.A.: When we did Undeclared, the note from
Fox was: You need more eye candy.
A.S.: Do you think that’s true? Do people
really need more eye candy?
J.A.: I have thought about that a lot. I don’t
know. But what if people do want it?
A.S.: I’m not above that. I want to look at
Jennifer Lawrence eating cereal.
J.A.: Are you someone who believes that life
is easier if you’re attractive?
A.S.: I think that beautiful people are not any
happier than people who are not as beautiful.
Even with models—there’s always someone
who is more beautiful or younger. So no mat-
ter what realm you’re operating in, it’s all rela-
tive. I didn’t develop my personality, or my
sense of humor, because I felt unattractive.
I thought I was attractive until I got older. It
was probably a defense mechanism for what-
ever pain was going on around me. But I
don’t think that people who feel beautiful feel
like “I don’t need to do this other thing.”
J.A.: You’re in a weird area. I would describe
it as: Everyone thinks you are beautiful, but
maybe you don’t agree with their opinion.
A.S.: Um.
J.A.: I’ll talk about me for a second. I always
thought I was right in the middle, looks-wise,
and that if I had a good personality it could
put me over the top. But it wasn’t like, behind
my back, everyone thought I was handsome.
I get the sense that you feel like some days
you’re looking great, some days you’re not,
but the audience sees you in a certain way
that maybe you don’t agree with. Does that
make sense?
A.S.: I think that’s probably true. I think that’s
probably dead-on. I feel, like you just said, that
some days I am like a real monster, completely
unlovable and unfuckable, and then there’s a
moment, every now and then, when I’m more
like Elaine on Seinfeld: “Is it possible that I’m
not as attractive as I had thought?” Or maybe
it’s the opposite of that. Anytime I start feel-
ing better about myself, physically, someone
will say something that pushes me right back
down. I think every woman feels this way.
J.A.: I ask about it because it is about who
you think you’re speaking to.
A.S.: That’s a really good point.
J.A.: I was a year younger than everybody
in school. I was the youngest kid in class,
always. But I only realized later in life that I
was much smaller than everybody.
A.S.: Physically?
J.A.: Yeah. And by the time I caught up a little
bit, in sixth or seventh grade, I had been de-
fined. On some level, I guess it made me feel
less masculine. And as a result I always
feel like a fucking nerd. I have a beautiful
wife, I’m successful, but I still feel like the kid
who’s picked last in gym class. And that
shaped my idea of comedy, being about out-
siders. It was a way for me to attack all of
these systems that I thought were unfair to me.
A.S.: I would say the same for me.
J.A.: What was your version of that? What
happened to you as a kid that made you
think and defined your sense of humor?
A.S.: I would say, with the physical stuff, that
I was always pretty but not beautiful. And
that was something that you were punished
for. I was very aware of this stuff early on.
J.A.: With girls, it’s weird because it changes
dramatically. In high school, girls don’t look
anything like they looked in third grade. Where-
as with guys, the handsome third-grade dude
is still handsome in high school. Girls blossom
and change. That was the kind of girl I always
tried to date: the girl who, near the end of
high school, got pretty but still acted insecure.
A.S.: Well, that’s the jackpot. That’s my
favorite kind of guy too. The guy that blos-
soms but still sees himself as the fat kid.
J.A.: Al Roker.
A.S.: Al Roker is the perfect example.
J.A.: He lost the weight, but he’s still nice to you.
A.S.: Because he remembers.
J.A.: At what age did you become aware of
comedians?
A.S.: Really young, when we would watch
the Muppets. And then I discovered stand-
ups. I loved Gilda. I was so drawn to funny
chicks. I remember watching Rita Rudner
and George Carlin and Richard Pryor. My
dad must’ve had it on. And Letterman.
J.A.: How old were you?
A.S.: Ten or younger. Stand-up trickled in
JU LY 2 015
 “I’M NOT INTERESTED IN JUST SAYING
SOMETHING FOR
SHOCK VALUE ANYMORE.”
over the years, but it wasn’t until I was in col-
lege, early college, where I discovered Marga-
ret Cho and got really into it.
J.A.: At what point did you think, Stand-up is
something I can do?
A.S.: After college. I was 23.
J.A.: What did it take for you to think, O.K.,
I’m going to try this? Because it’s a crazy leap.
The need to show up at an open mike—to
even write your first joke. I was a lunatic about
it. I was trying to write those jokes at 12.
A.S.: How old were you when you got up for
the first time?
J.A.: Seventeen. I had wanted to do it really
badly since 14, but I was afraid to admit it
to anybody.
A.S.: My experience was like this: I was in
an abusive improv troupe after college. This
guy set it up to get 50 bucks a month from
each of us, but it was not really improv—it
was a crazy, schizophrenic, delusional situa-
tion. I went one night to see one of the girls
do stand-up at Gotham, Bring Your Show. It
was like at six P.M., and she was bombing. Ev-
eryone was bombing. I thought, I want to try
this because I’m not digging the improv, but I
like it when I say something and I get a laugh.
J.A.: That’s interesting. Because it’s not
about being inspired by watching someone
murder. It’s like: Oh, this is as bad as it gets.
And I can do better.
A.S.: I still think that all the time. It’s not that I
feel like what I’m doing is so amazing, but it’s
pretty good compared to what other people
are doing. So that same week, I was walking
past the club, and it was my birthday, and I
was like, I’m from New York, so I can get peo-
ple in the seats. I had three hours to prepare.
J.A.: You wrote it in one day?
A.S.: I wrote it in two hours.
J.A.: How did you do?
A.S.: Pretty good.
J.A.: Do you remember any of it?
A.S.: I have a tape of it. I remember it. I talked
about how skywriting annoys me. Don’t you
find that when you talk about your early jokes,
even though you know they were bad, you’re
still trying to sell them? Like, I still want you
to think this is funny shit, but I know it’s not.
Anyway, I talked about skywriting, how it’s an-
noying and it fades and you can never read it.
I was like, If somebody proposed to me that
way, I’d be like, Fuck you. And so like, this
summer, do me a favor, keep it at eye level
or whatever. So horrible. But it went O.K., I
JU LY 2 015
think. People came up to me and asked how
long I’d been doing it, which suggested that
maybe I could do this if I wanted.
J.A.: What were you doing for a living back then?
A.S.: Waiting tables at Michael Jordan’s
Steakhouse.
J.A.: Trying to get acting work?
A.S.: Yeah, auditioning. But one day this wom-
an came into the restaurant and she really liked
me. She was like, I’m going to hook you up
with my agent. So I went in and I did a one-act
play to audition for the agent, and he was like,
You’re pretty mediocre, and I have too many
girls like you that are better than you.
J.A.: That happened to me and I never acted
again. Do you think you have a much dif-
ferent experience, as a woman on the road,
than guys are having?
A.S.: Not in terms of the audience or anything,
but in terms of fun? Yeah. Like, I’ve never
hooked up with somebody after a show.
J.A.: I did.
A.S.: You did?
J.A.: Once. It lasted eight seconds and I
looked in her eyes as she realized what a
horrible mistake she had made. And then
we had sex again, and this time it lasted six
seconds, and she really looked like—if she
became a nun after that, it wouldn’t have
shocked me.
A.S.: Oh my God.
J.A.: And I thought, I’m never going to do
this again. This is terrible.
A.S.: I’ve had one one-night stand in my life.
J.A.: And yet people see your act as very sexual.
A.S.: Right.
J.A.: So is that a character you’re playing?
A.S.: Well, it’s a part of me, too. Because
the stuff you’re copping to and the saddest,
worst moments of your life—that’s the stuff
people connect to and appreciate. In reality,
I’ve almost always had a boyfriend. Every
year, if I have like one or two sexual experi-
ences, they might both be hilarious.
J.A.: And then they add up, and people
think, She must be doing this all the time. I
have maybe six experiences from my whole
life. But if I go onstage and tell three of them,
it sounds like I have hundreds of them.
A.S.: Right. But you can get up there and do
that, and you’re not the Sex Guy. But if I
do it, I am. So I just embraced it.
J.A.: But those experiences are funny. That’s
the thing. Your worst sexual experience can
be so humiliating and hilarious, both in
movies and in stand-up. They’re always the
best stories. A guy who has got a lot of ter-
rible sex stories is the best dinner compan-
ion of all time.
Not too long ago, you gave a speech at
Gloria Steinem’s birthday party. Did people
have a strong reaction to that?
A.S.: Yeah. I got asked to do a monologue the
year before for some event—I can’t remember
what it was called. It was me and all these tiny
actresses, and I just felt like I needed to joke
about it because we looked like an evolution
chart or something. I felt like a big, blonde
monster, standing with a bunch of girls who
had never seen semen before. But my speech
really came off strong because I was actually
talking about some real things, bad things that
had happened to me—and the other speeches
weren’t as hard. And
so Gloria asked me to @vf.com
To see VIDEO from the
come talk the follow- Chinatown shoot, go
ing year at her birth- to VF.COM/JULY2015.
day party. So I wrote
this speech about losing all my self-esteem in
college, and a kind of painful night that I tried
my best to make funny.
J.A.: What about it do you think connected
with people?
A.S.: Just the feeling of losing all your confi-
dence and feeling like you’re worthless be-
cause of how other people are treating you.
And then having to realize that the real issue
is actually how you’re treating yourself. I think
that’s something most people have experi-
enced, feeling like they don’t deserve love.
J.A.: Do you ever go back and read your
own speech, to cheer yourself up?
A.S.: Yeah, and my friends will quote it to me.
J.A.: That must be a big change, to go from
doing stand-up, just trying to get laughs, to re-
alizing that people are paying attention to what
you’re saying. And that they’re moved and in-
spired by certain things you say. It’s not just
about being funny.
A.S.: I’m taking this responsibility seriously.
I’m looking at it as an opportunity. What do
I want to say? What have I really learned?
Where am I, really? I’m not interested in just
saying something for shock value anymore. I
do feel more of a weight about the message
that I’m sending because I know what it’s like
to be on the other end of that and I don’t
want to be in denial about what success
means—and like how many people I’m reach-
ing now. I want to make people feel better. 
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 87
 THE WRITE STUFF
True Detective creator
Nic Pizzolatto,
photographed on the
set of the show’s
second season, in
Pasadena, California.

PIZZOLATTO’S SHIRT,
BOOTS, AND BELT BY
JOHN VARVATOS; JEANS
BY RAG & BONE.

88 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015

Detective
Story With True Detective, Nic Pizzolatto proved he
was more than just another talented writer
and show-runner. Then he threw out everything that
made the acclaimed HBO series a hit.
As the second season, starring Vince Vaughn,
Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch, debuts,
RICH COHEN explores the uncompromising
vision behind Pizzolatto’s challenge to his audience,
to his cast—and to himself
ST YLE D BY SHA RON WIL LI AMS ; FO R DE TA IL S, G O TO VF. COM/ C R E D ITS

P H OTOG R AP H BY ART STREIBER 89

W
hen I first met
Nic Pizzolatto, he was teaching creative writing
at DePauw, a small liberal-arts college in Indi-
ana. He was a young professor at work on his
first novel, seemingly just another member of
the academic multitude, but there was some-
thing different about him, something edgy and
strange you noticed right away. He registered
as bigger than his moderate size, powerful,
with a wicked grin. He had an old-fashioned
intensity. We spoke for a few minutes, then, a
few minutes later, I forgot all about it. That was
in 2008, two days before yesterday.
The next time I met Nic Pizzolatto was
in a bungalow in Hollywood. I’d been hired
to work in the writers’ room of Magic City,
the Starz show about Miami Beach in the
late 50s and the scene around a hotel much
like the Fontainebleau. The show’s creator
and executive producer, Mitch Glazer, was
introducing me to the other writers when
a young man in jeans and a leather jacket
smirked from the couch, saying, “I know
you. We had a serious conversation once, in
Indiana. We talked about God. Don’t you
remember?”
I spent the ensuing weeks across a table
from Nic, hashing out plotlines. It gave me a
chance to study him at close quarters. No one
was more vehement about character and mo-
tivation than Nic. Now and then, he’d do the
voices or act out a scene, turning his wrist to
“I WRITE BEST ABOUT
PEOPLE WHOSE SOULS
ARE ON THE LINE.”
90 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
demonstrate the pop-pop of gunplay. He was
37 but somehow ageless. He could’ve stepped
out of a novel by Steinbeck. The writer as cru-
sader, chronicler of love and depravity. His
shirt was rumpled, his hair mussed, his man-
ner that of a man who’d just hiked along the
railroad tracks or rolled out from under a box.
He is fine-featured, with fierce eyes a little too
small for his face. It gives him the aura of a
bear or some other species of dangerous ani-
mal. When I was a boy and dreamed of litera-
ture, this is how I imagined a writer—a kind of
outlaw, always ready to fight or go on a spree.
After a few drinks, you realize the night will
culminate with pledges of undying friendship
or the two of you on the floor, trying to gouge
each other’s eyes out.
Working on a television show is surpris-
ingly intimate. You talk and argue and make
up day after day. Such relationships usually
end gradually—this one ended abruptly. I
won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just
say Nic slammed his hand on the table, then
stormed out, vanishing in a cloud of exple-
tives. I was on the porch a few minutes later
when Nic screeched out of the lot in his beat-
er, an angry man in a small car, the interior
filled with his fury. That was in 2012, the day
before yesterday.
The last time I saw Nic Pizzolatto was just
a few months ago, in downtown Los Angeles,
on the set of the second season of his brilliant
and astonishingly successful HBO crime se-
ries, True Detective. I stood outside his trailer
like a supplicant, surrounded by handlers,
as anxious as a pilgrim. The critical acclaim
for his show, its noir-ish mood and cult-like
aura, the way its heroes seemed to shamble
after some esoteric, Pynchon-esque truth had
turned Nic into something more than just an-
other TV writer or show-runner. He’d become
an auteur, rich with wisdom, packed with an-
swers. Stepping out of the trailer, he enfolded
me in an all-encompassing hug. He was the
same but different, having joined the upper
echelon of the upper air, knighted by showbiz.
What had been rumpled was now smooth;
what had been dirty was now clean. He led
me inside, where I watched as he polished
dialogue for a scene he’d shoot later that day.
An assistant quietly placed what looked like a
power drink at his side, the top pre-loosened,
then stepped away. When I first met Nic, in
Indiana, I thought he was in my life. I now
realized I’d been in his life. I was just anoth-
er one of the technicians at ground control,
watching the rocket make its way from launch-
pad to deep space—corduroy-coat-wearing
professor to writers’-room hack to Orson
Welles—in three blips across the radar screen.
W
e sat and talked—
about the show and
its success, writing
and its rewards, in-
nocence and sin.
Nic has an over-
ripe, slightly highfalutin way of talking that I
might attribute to the suddenness of his rise
if it were not how he spoke from the begin-
ning, which always made him such a pleas-
antly anachronistic figure. “I wouldn’t say
True Detective is even a show about ideas as
much as it’s a show about intimacies,” he
told me. “The forced intimacy of two people
sharing a car, the intimacy of connections
you don’t get to decide. I write best about
people whose souls are on the line. Whatever
we mean when we use that word. I certainly
don’t use it in a religious sense. But the es-
sence of who you are—that’s on the line. At
its simplest level, everything I’ve ever writ-
ten about, including this and Season One,
is about love. We transpose meaning onto a
possibly meaningless universe because mean-
ing is personal. And that question of meaning
or meaninglessness really becomes a question
B OT TOM , BY MI CH EL E K. SHO RT /© HBO /E VE RETT CO LLE C TI O N
of: What do you love? Nothing? Then you’ve
P HOTO GR A PHS : TOP A N D CE N TE R, BY L AC E Y TE RRE LL/HBO ;
got a good shot at a meaningless existence.
But if you love something—how do you love
within the necessities of life and the roles you
have to play? I can see that that’s been one
of the defining questions of my adult life and
work: How do you love adequately?”
Nic’s assistant rapped three times; the ac-
tors were ready. We went to a soundstage, part
of which had been made into a dive bar and
part of which had been made into the sort of
basement where beefs are settled. The second
season of True Detective dispenses with just
JU LY 2 015
 CHARACTER
STUDIES
From top: Pizzolatto
and Vince Vaughn
on the set of Season
Two of True
Detective; Vaughn’s
co-stars Rachel
McAdams and Colin
Farrell; Season One
stars Matthew
McConaughey and
Woody Harrelson.

www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 91

 about everything that made the show a hit:
character, plot, setting. Though Nic pitched
it this way from the start—each iteration will
be a new story with new actors—the success
of Season One makes it all seem a little nuts.
Obsessive fan interest in Season Two be-
gan immediately after the finale of Season
One, last March. Web sites sprang up; pon-
tificators proliferated. Last spring, in what
was probably a throwaway line, Pizzolatto told
a reporter that the coming season would be
about “hard women, bad men, and the secret
occult history of the United States transporta-
tion system.” Pressed for details—Nic and his
partners are tightfisted with even the smallest
plot points—he told me Season Two is con-
nected to Season One, but only in the vagu-
est way. “It’s very flattering, that ‘#truedetec-
tiveseason2’ thing people were doing with just
two actors together and stuff,” he said, “but
why would I do another buddy-cop show? I
think whatever I had to say about the buddy-
cop genre I said. Do you really just want to
see two stars riding around in a car talking?”
He described the new season as a detec-
tive story in the manner of Oedipus Rex, in
which “the detective is searching and search-
ing and searching, and the culprit is him.”
If you’ve thrown out everything else, why
even stick with detectives?
“It puts you in everything,” he explained.
“That’s why they’re great engines for stories.
They go everywhere. A detective story is really
just the way you tell a narrative—you start with
the ending. At the end, this person is dead.
Now I’m going to go back and piece together
the story that led to it… It’s about the final
unknowability of any investigation.”
When I pushed for specifics—Season Two
features Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel
McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch—Nic suggested
I look into the history of Vernon, California, a
tiny industrial city a few miles south of down-
town Los Angeles. Vernon, which, as of 2013,
had just 114 inhabitants, is home to factories
of the polluting variety, slaughter houses, and
chemical plants. Used as a dodge and a tax
haven, it’s been controlled by just two fami-
lies for most of the last century and recently
came under intense scrutiny, with press and
prosecutorial interest in public officials who
seemed never to stand for election. “Colin
plays a former L.A. County sheriff’s deputy
who made a fateful decision in his path that
intimately linked him and Frank”—a career
criminal played by Vince Vaughn—“and start-
ed him on a spiral away from the type of man
he was supposed to be,” Nic told me. “At the
point we run into him, he’s a detective for this
city within L.A. County that’s almost entirely
industrial. He’s indebted to, employed by, and
somewhat friends with Frank. They get drawn
together because of various collusions around
the murder of this figure, this city manager.”
92 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
Nic is sitting in a director’s chair before
a bank of monitors. An executive producer,
Scott Stephens, is at his side, but Nic is run-
ning the show. Vince Vaughn enters—in a suit,
tall and dapper. Light on his feet, lithe. Nic
nods; cameras roll. Frank, a thug who tried
to go straight but feels himself pulled back
in, argues with a Mexican cannonball with
silver teeth. In take after take, the cannonball
delivers the same line: “You ain’t that thing
you used to was, Frank.” Then the men fight,
Frank twisting the Mexican’s lip, riddling
him with blows, and finally going to work
with a drill that just happens to be at hand.
Early in the history of film, when the
big-time writers of the day, Fitzgerald most
famously, were offered a role in the movies,
they decided to write for the cash, forswear-
ing deeper participation in a medium they
considered second-rate. Perhaps as a result
of this decision, the author came to be the
forgotten figure in Hollywood, well paid but
disregarded. According to the old joke, “the
actress was so stupid she slept with the writ-
er.” This situation began to change with the
emergence of a new kind of television show
and a new kind of auteur—a writer who takes
on the role of the big-time director, involved
in every aspect, from casting to editing. What
probably started with David Lynch and Twin
Peaks, in the early 1990s, continued through
a run of great shows—The Sopranos, The
Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men. Pizzolatto is now
attempting to take the next evolutionary step.
Some part of the success of The Sopranos is
attributed to James Gandolfini. As some part
of the success of Mad Men is attributed to
Jon Hamm. As some part of the success of
True Detective is attributed to Matthew Mc-
Conaughey. Credit and power are shared.
But by tossing out that first season and begin-
ning again, Nic has a chance to finally undo
the early error of Fitzgerald and the rest. If he
fails and the show tanks, he’ll be just another
writer with one great big freakish hit. But if he
succeeds, he will have generated a model in
which the stars and the stories come and go
but the writer remains as guru and king.
W
Landscape with Figures
hen I talked to Vince
Vaughn, he alluded
to early difficulties
in Pizzolatto’s life:
After what he over-
came, you know he’s
got character. At first, this did not register. I
suppose I thought what Vaughn meant was
simply childhood in the impoverished South,
which, to a kid from Lake Forest, Illinois, like
Vaughn, can count as a trauma. But after a few
such allusions, I thought to myself, How much
do I really know about Nic? When I asked
Pizzolatto about it by e-mail, his response was
sharp in the way of a curtain coming down.
“That’s not something I am willing to share.”
In the writers’ room, I’d argued with Nic
about motivation. Simply put, I don’t believe
in it and he does. I don’t believe that a single
event can explain the way a person behaves.
But in Nic’s conception, every character is
driven by a particular engine. Well, maybe
this was why. Maybe Nic himself is driven by
some early trauma. Though I never discov-
ered its nature, it remains a blank spot in his
story that might explain everything.
P
izzolatto grew up on the
outskirts of Lake Charles,
Louisiana, a mean little oil
city between New Orleans
and Houston. Squeezed by
the banks of the lake and the
banks of the interstate, this chemical land-
scape has served as the backdrop for his best
work. The I-10 corridor, ramshackle towns,
Pentecostal churches, fishing camps trapped
in an eddy of the uneven flow of time. “My
house was near an inlet of Calcasieu Lake
that looked out on the refineries, not far
from the intercoastal waterway,” he wrote in
an e-mail. “My mom was a schoolteacher
until I was six, and my dad was an attorney
in a state overfilled with them.”
His stock is Italian. He descends from a
tough lot. There were few books in the house.
Like the rest of us, he was raised by TV. The
flickering light, the cicadas outside the win-
dow, the freeway roaring like surf. Saturday
Night Live. Cheers and Seinfeld. Whatever
was on. On weekends, he played football, his
imagination fueled by images. “I was a paint-
er and a visual artist before I started writing,”
he told me. “I went to college on a visual-arts
scholarship. So I think visually; the sensibil-
ity for me was always married to storytelling.
Even my artwork often implied a narrative.
It wasn’t Abstract Expressionism—that’s for
sure. It was heightened realism.”
At Louisiana State, he found the canvas
too confining. His best pictures were like
stills from films that had never been made.
He learned to write in order to finish the sto-
ries glimpsed in his art. Action and violence,
the gun moll, the cheap wisdom—it was all
there from the start. He got a creative-writing
M.F.A. at the University of Arkansas, which
led to teaching, fooling with phrases between
office hours—the wild young prof who is a
shade too intense. He took jobs at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina and the University of
Chicago, selling stories on the side, small liter-
ary magazines, big literary magazines, The At-
lantic Monthly. After publishing a collection in
2006—Between Here and the Yellow Sea—he
began work on a novel. Soon after it was fin-
ished, he had the first of a cascade of epipha-
nies: I hate this book! It’s lifeless and nowhere
JU LY 2 015
 “I TEND TO
BE INFLUENCED BY
PLACES AS MUCH AS
ANYTHING.”
and dead. Scribner was ready to publish, but
Nic killed it. Because screw this and hell no.
At that moment, he decided to take the life he
wanted rather than settle for the life he had.
“After I pulled that novel, I had this atti-
tude: I don’t give a fuck if I’m a success or
not,” he told me. “What the fuck does that
even mean? Who cares? I can live under
that goddamned bridge and I’ll be fucking
fine. Then my wife got pregnant. When she
was in her third trimester, I wrote the first
draft of Galveston in four weeks. I felt the re-
sponsibility and stakes in the world I had not
felt previously, [when] I didn’t owe anybody
anything and who gives a shit? But the idea
that I was going to bring somebody into this
world, who didn’t ask to be in this world. I
was at her delivery and she was holding my
pinkie when she was being washed up. I re-
member thinking, You poor kid, of all the
dad dice you could have rolled, you got me.”
Galveston, which was published in 2010, is
the auteur as we still know him—hard-boiled,
as new as this season and as ancient as Da-
shiell Hammett. It’s the story of Roy Cady,
a torpedo on the run from the Mob, “a bad
man who tries to go from being a soldier to
being a shepherd and suddenly has mean-
ing thrust into his life by virtue of two female
presences,” Nic said. “Its main character has
the same initials as the main character in True
Detective.”
Like True Detective, Galveston is as much
about place as people. If it were a painting,
he’d call it Landscape with Figures. In Amer-
ica, fate has always been determined by ter-
rain, the first explorers overwhelmed by the
mountains and rivers. “The descriptions in
Galveston are what we filmed in True Detec-
tive,” Nic told me. “That’s one of the rea-
sons I consider the works so connected. The
[characters] inhabit a poisoned dystopia. It’s
literally toxic… These stories take place in
areas where the revelation has already hap-
pened. The apocalypse has come and gone,
and no one’s quite woken up to that fact.”
JU LY 2 015
It was Dennis Lehane’s review in The
New York Times that really established Piz-
zolatto. He mentioned it to me, seemingly
offhand, soon after we started working to-
gether. According to Berkeley professor and
Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, the first words
spoken by a figure in the Bible tell you every-
thing. It’s the same with people—straight off,
they give you all the information you need to
piece them together. I went right back to my
hotel and looked up Lehane’s review. Here’s
the money shot: “Galveston, in its authentic-
ity and fearless humanism, recalls only the
finest examples of the form. Jacques Tour-
neur’s Out of the Past and David Goodis’s
Down There, Carl Franklin’s One False Move
and James Ellroy’s Black Dahlia. It’s an el-
egy to the broken and never-weres … ”
Of course, artistic approval is not the
same as commercial success. As good as
it was, the book did not sell. I mean, what
are we talking about? Four or five thousand
hardbacks? Not enough readers to fill the
loge deck at Wrigley Field. Which led to
Nic’s second epiphany: if you want the big
audience, you have to go where the people
live, which is in front of the TV. Nic had fall-
en under the spell of a new kind of show by
then, the cable epic that unfolds in chapters.
TV was experiencing a renaissance. Florence
in the 1500s. They were building cupolas
and domes. “The Sopranos was the first shot
across the bow,” he told me. “Deadwood
and The Wire continued that upper trend
of layered, textured, ambitious, character-
driven, adult storytelling.”
In this world, David Milch, who wrote for
Hill Street Blues and co-created NYPD Blue
before creating Deadwood, is the master.
TV writers speak of him as Shiites speak of
the Hidden Imam, a storied figure who will
set the world back on its axis at the end-
time. “For me, it has nothing to do with the
culture of personality,” Nic said. “He’s a
big deal because of the work. Long before
Deadwood, he was producing excellent work
within the network system. You can tell a
David Milch anything. He absolutely stands
the test of time. The body of work articulates
a vision. He’s managed to make deeply per-
sonal things that appeal to a wide audience
because of this great equalizing medium of
television. I always liked the wide spectrum.
My favorite movies are Seven Samurai and
Andrei Rublev. I love Tarkovsky. I love Kuro-
sawa. At the same time, I see a lot of value in
Bad Boys II. And Hooper! Hooper is great. I
got a Burt Reynolds thing.”
Dennis Potter was the true progenitor, Nic
told me. “He did The Singing Detective and
Pennies from Heaven and Lipstick on Your
Collar and Karaoke and Cold Lazarus and
Blackeyes, all this great
@vf.com
stuff. That was your TV For M O R E on
auteur right there, and True Detective
Season Two, go to
there’s still never been VF.COM/JULY2015.
any TV like it. The Sing-
ing Detective is not for everybody, but it’s still
the best thing ever done on television. Before
we had a notion of a show-runner, that’s the
guy who wrote a different mini-series every
couple years. That was somebody making art
as ambitious as any art being done but using
this popular fallen medium of TV.”
I
The Writers’ Room
n the months that followed the
publication of Galveston, Nic
was like a man walking around
and around a building he loved,
the building of big-time showbiz,
searching for a way in. He finally
found his open window in 2010, when
producer Jean Doumanian optioned his
novel and hired him to write. “Scriptwrit-
ing came easily,” Nic said. “I found it lib-
erating because of its constraints. [With a
novel] you’re staring at this infinity of pos-
sibilities; even though you take a point of
view, you can describe anything you want,
be as discursive as you want. Drama brings
everything down to C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 7
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 93
 Young and
VALLEY GIRLS
Alicia Silverstone as
Cher, Brittany
Murphy as Tai, and
Stacey Dash as
Dionne. When she
learned she
had gotten the part,
Dash says, she
jumped for joy in
the street: “I almost
got hit by a car.”

Writer-director Amy Heckerling knew that her coming-of-age comedy was

its heroine, a shopaholic Beverly Hills teenager with some Jane
adaptation from her new book, an oral history of Clueless, neither the movie’s
expected it to be the sleeper hit of 1995, much less a fashion template
94 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015
 Clueless
PHOTOG RA PH © PA R A MOUN T PIC TUR E S/ P HOTOF EST

special, and that 18-year-old Alicia Silverstone perfectly embodied

Austen DNA. But, as JEN CHANEY makes clear in an
young soon-to-be stars nor the Hollywood veterans who cast them
and a cultural touchstone for generations to come
www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 95
 I
n mid-July of
1995—when American culture was fixated
on such matters as O. J. Simpson’s ill-fitting
glove—the fact that a modestly budgeted teen
movie called Clueless was about to arrive in
theaters, become a major box-office hit, cata-
pult the careers of its stars, influence fashion
for two decades, and become a permanent
cultural touchstone for multiple generations
… well, let’s just say it was something most
people couldn’t have predicted at the time.
Executives at Paramount Pictures—the
studio that took on the film after others had
passed on the project—had great confidence
in writer-director Amy Heckerling’s comedy
about a shopaholic Beverly Hills teenager with
a few Jane Austen DNA molecules in her ge-
netic code. Sherry Lansing, then the head of
the studio, liked it so much that after screening
it she didn’t have a single story note.
It’s not as if Clueless had been flying entire-
ly below the public’s radar. The comedy ben-
efited from some serious promotional juice
courtesy of MTV, which, like Paramount, was
part of the Viacom family and pitched the
Adapted from As If!: The Oral History of
Clueless, as Told by Amy Heckerling, the Cast,
and the Crew, by Jen Chaney, to be published
next month by Touchstone, a division of Simon
& Schuster, Inc.; © 2015 by the author.
“IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I’D SEEN
ANGELINA JOLIE....
BUT SHE WAS TOO KNOWING
FOR WHAT WAS NEEDED FOR CLUELESS.”
96 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
film heavily to its Real World–addicted Gen
X and Y audience. Media buzz about the
breakout potential of Alicia Silverstone—then
best known for her appearances in a trio of
Aerosmith videos and the thriller The Crush—
also started to build well before the film’s
release. But in Hollywood, even a gorgeous,
on-the-rise young starlet and a director with
a track record for making profitable hits (see
Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
European Vacation, and the Look Who’s Talk-
ing films) do not guarantee success.
Then Clueless made its debut, on July 19,
1995, and became the No. 1 movie in the
country that day. The weekend of July 21–23,
it generated $10.6 million and immediately
was branded as one of the summer’s most
unexpected triumphs. The movie went on to
earn $56.6 million in the U.S. and Canada
(a figure that the movie data-tracking site Box
Office Mojo equates to $105.7 million in con-
temporary, inflated dollars). That’s a nice re-
turn for a film whose production budget was
$12 to $13 million.
More important, Clueless touched a chord
in the culture that was clearly primed and
ready to be struck. Pre-teen and teen girls
raced to malls in search of plaid skirts and
knee-high socks. Almost immediately, Para-
mount began working with Heckerling to
develop a TV adaptation. Within a year, the
movie’s soundtrack would sell enough cop-
ies to be certified gold, and would eventually
reach platinum status. The success of Clueless
also would defibrillate the barely breathing
high-school movie genre, resulting in a flood
of teen movies in the late 90s and early 00s.
What’s even more remarkable is that, 20
years later, Clueless is still as omnipresent in
American culture as it was back then. Thanks
to its presence on cable, DVD, and streaming
services such as Netflix and Amazon Instant
Video, Clueless is still watched on a regular ba-
sis by longtime fans as well as young people
discovering the film for the first time. Tributes
to the movie—in the form of Twitter accounts
and Buzzfeed listicles—are ubiquitous in the
digital sphere. Fashion designers and labels
continue to riff on the costumes created for
the film by Mona May.
The idea of molding Jane Austen’s nar-
rative structures and themes into something
more modern? That has been everywhere
post-Clueless, from Austenland to Web series
such as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Emma
Approved. The influence of the film can be
seen in the pop-cultural creations of some
high-profile influencers of today’s girls and
young women, including Katy Perry, Lena
Dunham, Tavi Gevinson, Mindy Kaling, and
Iggy Azalea, just for starters.
Clueless, then, isn’t merely a touchstone
for the 90s generation. It’s a teen movie that
continues to be passed from one generation
to the next and is just timeless enough for
every generation to think it’s speaking di-
rectly to them.
So, how did it all happen?
I
How Clueless Got off the Ground
n 1993, Heckerling began developing
a TV show for Fox that focused on
the popular kids at a California high
school, including a central female
character fueled by relentless reserves
of optimism. At that point, the proj-
ect was called No Worries, one of several
names used (I Was a Teenage Teenager was
another) before Clueless got its official title.
Given Heckerling’s established skill and suc-
cess with coming-of-age comedy, it seems as if
No Worries should have easily come together.
But that wasn’t the case.
In its formative stages, the project eventual-
ly known as Clueless went from potential Fox
TV show to potential Fox feature film, and
then—for a short but frustrating period before
landing at Paramount—almost didn’t happen
at all. Its path to the big screen is a tale about
a filmmaker inventing a very positive charac-
ter, then dealing with frustration and rejection,
but ultimately finding the support to make
her movie by staying true to her vision.
Amy Heckerling, writer-director: I remember
reading Emma and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Those characters: what I gravitated to was
how positive they could be.
Twink Caplan, Miss Geist and associate pro-
ducer of Clueless: After Look Who’s Talk-
ing, Look Who’s Talking, Too, and a couple
TV shows that we tried to do [together],
JU LY 2 015
 SUPERMODEL
When Cher insists
that her life
has direction, Josh
replies, “Yeah,
towards the mall.”
F RO M T HE N EA L P E TE RS CO LL E CT IO N

www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 97

 1

3
2

5 KIDS IN AMERICA
Makeup supervisor
Alan Friedman took Polaroids
of the various looks of
the principal actors and extras
throughout the shoot,
including (1, 2) Silverstone,
(3) Justin Walker, (4) Twink
Caplan, (5) Dash, (6) Murphy,
(7) Elisa Donovan,
(8) Wallace Shawn, (9) Donald
Faison, and (10) Paul Rudd.

8 10

7
CR ED ITS HE R E

JU LY 2 015
 WHEN PAUL RUDD READ THE
SCRIPT, HE THOUGHT “MURRAY WAS KIND
OF A WHITE GUY WANTING
TO BE BLACK.”
Amy came up with this idea of Clueless, that
was a takeoff of Emma.
Amy Heckerling: Sometimes you’re working
on things and you think, Oh, I have to write
this, or I’d better look at my notes. And
other times you just want to. That was how
I felt writing Cher. I just wanted to be in that
world, and in her mind-set. All of [the main
Clueless characters] were in [the original TV
show]. [Eventually] the TV people put it in
turnaround. That’s when Ken Stovitz be-
came my agent, and I showed him that pilot,
and he was like, “This is a movie.”
Ken Stovitz, Amy Heckerling’s agent: When
you get into business with someone, you
find out what really is the home run, dream
come true. And early on she told me about
this project. So I said, All right—if I can do
anything for her, I’m going to do what I can
to get this made.
Amy Heckerling: Then Fox movies bought
it from Fox TV… During the development
there was a concern that it was too much about
one female, and that I should make Josh a big-
ger part, and he should be living next door, and
his mother [should be] in love with her father.
[Josh and Cher] weren’t ex-stepbrother and ex-
stepsister. They thought that was incestuous.
Twink Caplan: So we went into turnaround.
And we started working out of Amy’s house,
actually.
Ken Stovitz: We couldn’t get it going. What
we submitted was the screenplay and [one
of] the [Aerosmith] music videos [with Alicia
Silverstone]. I told everyone it was a $13 mil-
lion movie. I gave them the budget; I gave
PH OTOG RA P HS BY A L A N F RI E DMA N / CO URT ESY O F S IM O N & S CH USTE R
them Amy’s track record… We got rejected
so many times it was a joke.
Adam Schroeder, Clueless co-producer and then
president of Scott Rudin Productions: Teen mov-
ies were just not happening. It was almost like
a relic of the John Hughes movies in the 80s.
Amy Heckerling: Everybody passed on it.
Then Scott Rudin liked the script. That
stamp of approval was enough for the town.
Barry Berg, co-producer and unit production
manager: Just having [Scott’s] name on the
film meant so much to so many. It became
an important film the moment he signed on
to produce it.
Amy Heckerling: When Scott read [the
JU LY 2 015
script], his notes were pretty much what
brought it back to the way it was [originally].
Ken Stovitz: Rejection can either be the thing
that kills you or the thing that inspires you to
just say, “I’m not going to take no for an an-
swer.” We chose to do the latter. We chose
to say, “We know we’ve got something good
here. We’re not going to take no.”
O
The Fox Sessions
nce Fox had decided that
Clueless should be a theatri-
cal feature rather than a TV
show, casting got under way.
Carrie Frazier, Clueless
casting director at Fox: I brought in Alicia Sil-
verstone—I sent Amy a videotape of a young
actress [who] I felt was really terrific.
Amy Heckerling: I was watching an Aero-
smith video of “Cryin’.” That was the first
video she was in. And I just fell in love with
her. Then my friend Carrie Frazier said,
“You have to see this girl in The Crush.”
And I was like, “No, I want the Aerosmith
girl.” Well, it was the same girl.
Carrie Frazier: That is exactly what hap-
pened—totally.
Amy Heckerling: [Alicia] came in with her
manager at the time. She was like 17, and
she was just so adorable and sweet and real-
ly innocent.
Alicia Silverstone, Cher: I remember when I
read the script the first time, thinking, Oh,
she’s so materialistic—that I was judging
[Cher] instead of being delighted by her. I re-
member thinking, This is so funny and I’m
not funny. But once I was playing her—I just
had so much fun being her.
I loved how seriously she took everything.
That’s essentially how I played it… I felt like
that was [who] Cher was. She was so sincere
and so serious. And that’s what I think makes
her so ridiculous and lovely all the time.
Carrie Frazier: After Alicia did [the] screen
test, as I remember, it went to Fox and they
were kind of like, “Oh, she’s O.K.” You
know, it wasn’t like “Oh my God, this girl’s
fabulous.” I was like, “This is the girl! If you
don’t grab her, you’re nuts.”
Amy Heckerling: I had my heart set on Ali-
cia. [But] Fox … wanted me to explore all the
[options]… I saw Alicia Witt, the redhead-
ed [actress]. And who else? Tiffani Thiessen.
The one that—she was in that show and she
cut her hair and everybody was mad? Keri
Russell, yes. Then they go, “You’ve got to see
the girl in [Flesh and Bone].” I never got to
see her. I guess she was off on other things.
That turned out to be Gwyneth Paltrow.
Carrie Frazier: It was the first time I’d seen
Angelina Jolie… But she was too knowing
for what was needed for Clueless. Angelina
never came in [to audition] for the project.
I was just looking at her tape. I remember
an agent pitching her, and I’m going, “No,
no, no, this is exactly the opposite of what I
need for this.” Later on, when I started head-
ing up the casting department for HBO, and
I got the script for Gia, I said, “I’ve got the
girl.” That was Angelina.
Amy Heckerling: I met with Reese [Wither-
spoon] because everyone said, “This girl’s
amazing. She’s going to be huge.”
Carrie Frazier: I had [Amy] meet Reese over
at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, on
Doheny, in the bar.
Amy Heckerling: I saw some movie where
she had a southern accent. Maybe it was on
TV, a movie of the week. But I did see some
scenes of hers and went: Wow. She’s amaz-
ing. But Alicia is Cher.
Carrie Frazier: So much of casting is about
catching the actor or actress at the right time
in their life. And even though you end up go-
ing, “So-and-so can do the role,” there was
something about Alicia that was a little bit
younger and a little bit more naïve in a way
that we felt was really the right girl.
I brought in [Brittany] Murphy. She was
just so similar, again, to the character. She
was really sweet. Who else did I bring in that
ended up in the movie?
Amy Heckerling: Ben Affleck told me [later
that] he read. But I don’t remember that. He
might have read for a casting director.
Carrie Frazier: I brought in Ben Affleck,
for the role of Josh. I thought he would be
fabulous for it. I was really trying to get Ben
Affleck the part.
Then, when I got the call that it was go-
ing over to Paramount, they wanted to have
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 99
 1

100 VAN IT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com JULY 2 015

 2

ROLLIN’ WITH MY HOMIES

(1) The cast around director Amy Heckerling (front, left). (2) Cher, Dionne, and Amber
in the tennis-court scene, in which Dionne says, memorably, “Well, there goes
your social life” (of all of Dash’s lines, her favorite). (3) Actor Breckin Meyer with Silverstone
and Murphy during a break from shooting the Val-party scene. (4) Friedman observes
Silverstone as she shoots the scene in which Cher prepares for the “brutally hot” Christian
to come over and watch “Sporadicus.” (5) Heckerling on the set.

5
OF S IMON & S CHU STE R ( 3 ) , © PA R A MOUN T PI C TU RE S
( A LL OT HE RS ) ; F OR DE TA IL S, GO TO V F. COM/ C R E D ITS
PHOTOG RA P HS BY N ICOLE BIL DE R BACK/ COU RT E SY

J ULY 2015 www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 101

 me work on it for no money… And I said I
wouldn’t do that—they’d have to pay me, and
they said, “Oh, well, we really can’t do that.”
I was heartbroken about that on every level.
W
On to Paramount
hen Clueless eventu-
ally landed in the
hands of producer
Scott Rudin and
Paramount Pictures,
Frazier was off the
project, and Marcia Ross was brought on as
the new casting director. With Ross, a new
set of producers—including Rudin, Adam
Schroeder, Robert Lawrence, and Barry
Berg—and Heckerling, Caplan, and Para-
mount executives all now at the decision-
making table, the second attempt to cast
Clueless began in the fall of 1994.
Amy Heckerling: [Casting Josh] was the hard-
est. I had a vision in my head and it wasn’t
jelling with people out there. When I’m
writing, I usually have little pictures of what
I imagine the guy looking like. And I had
the Beastie Boy: Adam Horovitz. There was
something smart and funny about him.
Marcia Ross, Clueless casting director: Be-
cause I was always reading actors, I knew a
lot of young actors, and I was able to come
up with a bunch of thoughts for parts and
sort of come in with ideas and show her.
Paul Rudd was one of those people.
Paul Rudd, Josh: When I auditioned for it,
I had also asked to read for other parts [in-
cluding Christian and Murray].
I thought Murray was kind of a white guy
wanting to be black. I didn’t realize he was
actually black. Also I thought: I haven’t seen
that character before, the white guy who’s
trying to co-opt black culture. But, well: that
character is actually going to be African-
American. Oh, O.K.
I think I read for Elton as well. But Amy
said, “What do you think of Josh? Do you
want to read for that?” So I did.
Amy Heckerling: I remember I saw Paul, and
I really liked him. There were still more peo-
ple to be seen [though].
Adam Schroeder: He needed to be older, and
[Alicia] was young, but we didn’t ever want
“I REMEMBER [BRITTANY MURPHY’S]
AUDITION,” SAYS SILVERSTONE. “IT WAS
JUST LIKE: OH MY GOD.
STOP THE PRESS.”
102 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
it to feel not natural when they ended up
together. There was the whole stepbrother
thing, even though they weren’t related at all,
so we really wanted to be careful and cast
that perfect person. We read a lot of actors.
Twink Caplan: Amy and I loved [Paul] right
off. He hadn’t done that much, but he was
cute and he was sweet. He reminded me of
George Peppard. Not in his acting, but the
nose. He was very engaging.
Adam Schroeder: We tested him, and we
knew he was very, very top-of-the-list.
Paul Rudd: I knew that they must have been
kind of interested, because they had me back
a few times. Honestly, what I remember when
I was auditioning and meeting Amy for the
first time is making some joke about Shake-
speare preparing something from a mono-
logue. I’m sure it was not a very good joke or
anything. But I remember she really laughed
at it. Almost more than anything else, I re-
member, in talking with Amy in the auditions,
I was like: Oh, she’s cool. I click with her.
Marcia Ross: We had him on hold for a long
time, but they weren’t really ready to decide.
Then … finally, they decided—they cut him
loose actually. And it was hard. They really
liked him, but they just couldn’t commit to it,
and he was offered another movie. He took
this Halloween movie. I remember he cut his
hair for that.
Paul Rudd: That Halloween movie was my first
movie, which I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do.
I had a manager at the time who was like,
“You should do this.” And then I remember
I got Clueless, and he’s like, “You shouldn’t
do this.” That’s how good that manager was.
I remember really vividly where I was, just
kind of walking down the street, and I was
like, “Man. I don’t know. Why don’t I just cut
off all my hair?” And I just walked into a bar-
ber shop and they just buzzed my head. Then,
I want to say a week later or something, I was
in a restaurant and Amy Heckerling was there.
Amy Heckerling: I went, “What the fuck did
you do?” He said, “I didn’t think I had the
part.” I said, “Oh my God, hardly any time
went by—I didn’t finish seeing everybody.
Yeah, I want you. You cut your hair?”
Paul Rudd: I was weirdly cavalier about it.
In a way, it wasn’t really on my radar. And
I remember I said, “Well, you know: if it’s
supposed to work out, it’ll work out.”
Marcia Ross: We kept seeing more people
and [were] not sure we had it…
I’m fairly sure Zach Braff read for Josh.
I had hired a casting director in Chicago to
put people on tape for the role while I was
still searching for an actor to play the role.
He was going to [Northwestern] at the time.
My note was that he was good.
We screen-tested several guys with [Ali-
cia] on film, and she and Paul—he really was
good with her. From the minute he came
in to the minute he got the part—and it was
such a long journey, really, that one in par-
ticular—there was always this sort of harking
back to: remember Paul? I can’t explain it to
you. He never went out of consciousness.
Paul Rudd: I don’t remember the actual call say-
ing I got the part… I wasn’t sure about [Hallow-
een]. But Clueless: no, I wanted to do that one.
Donald Faison, Murray: I met Paul [during au-
ditions]. I met Breckin Meyer; I’d seen him
in [Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare] or
some shit like that. I thought that was really
freakin’ cool.
Adam Schroeder: You know, it was also
funny when Breckin Meyer and Seth Green
came in, and it was down to the two of them
for Travis. And it turned out they were best
friends… But I’m sure each wanted the part.
Then one of the top contenders for Tai
was an actress named Alanna Ubach. Alan-
na was Seth Green’s girlfriend [at the time].
So there was a version of Seth Green and
his girlfriend playing Tai and Travis at one
point. But obviously they cast Breckin and
Brittany, and we were so happy…
Brittany [Murphy] came in, and she was
such a standout. She naturally had a funny
spirit. Which was great, because Alicia had
a different kind of comic spirit. She had a
much more sardonic thing. And the chemis-
try between the two of them was really lovely.
Amy Heckerling: When I met Brittany, I was
like: I love her. I want to take care of her.
She was just so bouncy and giggly and
just so young. I mean, when you saw her,
you just smiled.
Twink Caplan: Right away Amy knew she
surely had the part.
JU LY 2 015
 Adam Schroeder: It was the second time she
was coming in, and we were doing the mix-
ing and matching. We had her stay in the
casting with us and Alicia… She never had
been involved in that end of it. I remember
there was just a joy. Everything was very
exciting to her, and it was fun to be around
her. I think she knew it was a really big deal
for her. I think all the actors did.
Alicia Silverstone: I remember her audition.
When she came in, it was just like: Oh my
God. Stop the press. This is the girl.
Stacey Dash, Dionne: I actually didn’t get
the whole script at first. I just got the sides
[an excerpt from the script]. I went in, and
I mean, just from the sides, I knew it was
mine. So I went in. I nailed it. They called
me back in, again, to read with Alicia. We
had great chemistry. So that was in the bag.
As soon as I met [Alicia], she was as
sweet as can be. Of course, I was nervous
because it’s an audition process. But she just
made me feel so at ease, and so did Amy …
she made everything just about having fun.
Amy Heckerling: In my brain, Dionne was like
royalty. I wanted someone that felt like they were
part of a royal family in some country some-
where. So they weren’t acting snotty—they were
just in a different realm. [Stacey] had that. She
didn’t have to act like “I’m a snotty bitch”—
she just had that feeling of power and grace,
as though she was ready to wave to the public.
Stacey Dash: I went back and read with Ter-
rence Howard and Donald Faison, [who were
auditioning] to play Murray. And of course
Donald got the role. And then that was it.
Amy Heckerling: I do remember that I saw
Mel Brooks’s movie [Robin Hood: Men in
Tights]. And I loved Dave Chappelle. I met
with him in New York.
Donald Faison: I didn’t [know that Chappelle
was considered for Murray]. That would have
been awesome, too.
Amy Heckerling: Donald had a much more
kid-like energy. And Dave [had] a very cyni-
cal, grown-up, funny, comic kind of thing
that I felt was maybe a little too edgy.
Adam Schroeder: Donnie Faison came in
and became one of our favorites for Mur-
ray. Terrence Howard
also was one of the top @vf.com
To see more Clueless
contenders. P O L A RO I D S, go to
Donald Faison: We grew VF.COM/JULY2015.
up together pretty much.
I’ve known Terrence since … I was nine—
you know what I mean?
Right before I went to Los Angeles, I don’t
know what happened. They wanted me is
what I was told. He was like, “Yeah, go get it,
man. Go do your thing.” But he never told
me [earlier] that he was up for the role. I didn’t
find out he was up for the role until after my
final audition in New York, when I was about
to go to L.A.
I remember when they called me and told
me I got the part, and me telling all my friends

AN ORAL HISTORY of SELECTED

CLUELESS TERMS
By A M Y H E C K E R L I N G
As told to J E N C H A N E Y

Amy Heckerling’s Clueless screenplay pulled off a rhetorical magic trick: it captured the way 1990s kids talked
while also telling them how they were going to sound before they even knew it

“AS IF” “AUDI” “BUGGIN’” “KEEPING IT “WAY HARSH” “WHATEVER”

I had done a pilot
with my friend Meredith
Scott Lynn [an actress].
She was in New York
when I was writing
[Clueless], and we’d hang
out and do stuff [with her
gay best friend, Andrew].
I think a lot of [sayings]
come from the gay
community and then get
spread to kids and then to
the general public.
Ë DEFINITION: It’s
the Cher Horowitz way
of saying, “No way!” The reference, obviously,
Ë USE IT IN A
CLUELESS SENTENCE:
I LL UST RAT I ON S BY S A M I S L A ND
AS IN REAL” PREFERABLY WITH
“Audi” … where did “TOTALLY BUGGIN’” Using “way” as a W HAND GESTURE
I hear that? That must I think “I’m keeping it qualifier—like “very.”
have been from “Buggin’ ” was around; real” was in the script. That’s the other one you I remember that there
[students at] school. “totally” has (Donald Faison kind of have to was a lot of this
Ë DEFINITION: The been since the 80s. disagrees: No, that’s not have a lot of in your [Heckerling makes the
phrase also appears in Ë DEFINITION: It’s true. It was not in back pocket. traditional W sign]. Then
U.C.L.A. Slang 2, just another way the script. I put that in the “Harsh” was just “harsh.” sometimes we’d both
the 1993 edition of the of saying “freaking out.” script. Some kid in my That wasn’t like hold our hands up like
university’s slang Ë USE IT IN A neighborhood said, “Just a new word. this—[Heckerling makes
dictionary. There it is CLUELESS SENTENCE: keep it real. Just Ë DEFINITION: Pretty a bigger W sign, with
defined under Cher, describing make sure you keep it self-explanatory, all fingers outstretched]—
“be Audi / be Audi her father’s 50th- real.” And I was like, but it’s another way because we’d
5000 / be 5000: birthday party and Oh, that’s what the kids of saying make a big “whatever.”
v. to be leaving making a pro- are saying now. “extremely hurtful.” Ë DEFINITION: You
immediately. I’m Audi.” immigration argument: Heckerling replies: It Ë USE IT IN A think this requires an
“People came that, might have been CLUELESS SENTENCE: explanation? Whatever.
is to the car, which like, did not R.S.V.P. [Donald]. It could easily Cher, after Tai calls Ë USE IT IN A
sounds like “outie.” So I was, like, have been.) her a virgin who CLUELESS SENTENCE:

Cher, pushing away an
amorous high-school boy
that she would never
date: “Ew, get off of me!
Ugh—as if!”
Ë USE IT IN A
CLUELESS SENTENCE:
Both Cher and Tai exit
scenes by announcing,
“I’m Audi.”
totally buggin’.” Ë USE IT IN A can’t drive: “That was Amber to Cher, after
CLUELESS SENTENCE: way harsh, Tai.” Cher makes a flimsy
Murray himself debate point about the
just did. Because he still Haitians: “Whatever.”
keeps it real.

JU LY 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 103

 that I was going to be kissing Stacey Dash, and
them chasing me around the complex that I
lived in.
Stacey Dash: I was crossing the street [in L.A.].
I’ll never forget it. I got the phone call that I got
the job, and I almost got hit by a car. I was just
jumping up and down in the middle of the
street, screaming because I was so excited.
Marcia Ross: What often would happen in the
sessions is [Amy] might like somebody, but
then she wanted to see them again for another
role. So somebody I remember, like Jeremy
Sisto, might have read easily for three roles.
Jeremy Sisto, Elton: I could have read for a
couple of different characters, and then I decid-
ed to read for Elton because I thought he was
funny. It just seemed like more fun to do the
more extreme character—like the worst of
the bunch, as opposed to the romantic guy.
Marcia Ross: He read for Josh and Elton that
same day, and [Amy] said, “No, he’s an Elton.”
Amy Heckerling: Well, that voice is very dis-
tinctive. It felt very entitled. I felt like that would
go better with Elton than with a more insecure,
angry-at-the-world kind of person [like Josh].
Adam Schroeder: I really loved Sarah Mi-
chelle Gellar, who was on All My Children at
the time. She played Erica Kane’s daughter,
and she was just kind of wicked, beautiful. I
showed Amy tapes of her. We ended up offer-
ing her the part of Amber. There became a big
negotiation for All My Children to let her out. It
was just for a couple of weeks, and they abso-
lutely stuck their feet in [and] wouldn’t let her.
Elisa Donovan, Amber: I had no idea about
Sarah being a front-runner for the role of Am-
ber. I do remember reading all of the smaller
female roles for Marcia.
Adam Schroeder: [Elisa] was really funny,
really beautiful. I remember she reminded us
of Ann-Margret. It’s an old-school reference,
but she had that kind of sexy, ginger beauty.
She got the wit and cynicism of Amber. You
want her to be one of those characters you love
to hate. But you don’t really hate her.
Marcia Ross: The Justin Walker part is a great
story because we were really having a tough
time casting. You had to find a person who kind
of was gorgeous that she could have the crush
on, but you didn’t want: “Oh yeah, he’s gay.”
He had to be different than the other guys.
Amy Heckerling: That guy had to be cute
[and] had to be in a different time period from
everybody else. He had to have his own style.
He had to be reminiscent of another kind of
50s, 60s kind of thing.
Adam Schroeder: Jamie Walters. He came in
[to read] for Christian.
Amy Heckerling: I remember thinking he had
an interesting look.
Justin Walker, Christian: This thing for me
was like pulled out of nowhere. My career was
really kind of floundering. I was in between
agents; I was working with somebody on a
freelance basis; I was between apartments;
I was sleeping on someone’s couch. I got a
104 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
phone call to come in and read for this film,
and I was given the choice to read for Josh or
for Christian, and when I looked at the mate-
rial, the way the rhythm, the vocabulary, and
everything else about the part [of] Christian—
it was a no-doubter.
Marcia Ross: He read for me in the morning
for Josh, when I was in New York. I had Amy
in the afternoon for callbacks, so it was a short
period of time. I gave him the sides. I said,
“When you come back this afternoon, I don’t
want you to read Josh. I want you to read
Christian. Can you prepare it?” And he came
and he did it and that was it.
Twink Caplan: It was this unique part that
somebody had to be so many things and had
to have a little bit of a foot in another era. And
these were young kids. I don’t think they real-
ly related that much to Frank Sinatra. … We
couldn’t find it and then we finally found the
guy to do it. And he was very sexy.
Justin Walker: I will never forget—I was man-
aging a bar called the Overtime Bar and Grill
[in N.Y.C.], right next to Madison Square Gar-
den, basically. I was speaking to my agent on a
pay phone—a pay phone, mind you! And she
told me that I got it, and I dropped the phone
and started sprinting south on Eighth Avenue.
Amy Heckerling: I wanted somebody [for
Mel, Cher’s dad and Josh’s ex-stepdad] that
would feel like the normal parts for [him] to
play would be a hit man. And I loved Jerry
Orbach in Prince of the City. And I also
loved Harvey Keitel. I wanted it to be some-
body that could be really scary, and anybody
else would be [frightened] of him, except
Cher. It would never occur to her that he was
being anything but funny.
Marcia Ross: Jerry Orbach—we made an of-
fer to him. I remember [Amy] really loved and
wanted [him] to play Mel, and he couldn’t get
off his [TV] show.
Amy Heckerling: Jerry Orbach—the dates
wouldn’t work. Harvey Keitel we couldn’t af-
ford. And then … my friend told me about
Dan Hedaya.
Dan Hedaya, Mel: I didn’t audition for it.
Scott Rudin was the producer, and I just was
offered this job. I know I liked it. I especially
liked the relationship [between Mel and Cher].
I’m an uncle to quite a number of nephews
and nieces, and I don’t have my own children.
But I’ve been close to children my whole life. I
liked how it was written and how the character
was written. The tough love.
Amy Heckerling: I wrote [Mr. Hall] for [Wally
Shawn]. I know that we auditioned people be-
cause we had to. I was not allowed to just say,
“This person’s doing this and that’s it.”
Wallace Shawn, Mr. Hall: That is Hollywood.
The director is far from being the sole decision-
maker. Even if she’s also the writer, she’s not
the financial backer, so … I think you have to
cooperate with a lot of other people. If all the
Paramount executives had said, “We don’t like
him and we want you to use so-and-so,” she
would have had to do that. I don’t think I was
brought into the process. She was certainly not
keeping me posted—she probably did all that
and then said, “Come play the part.”
Nicole Bilderback, Summer: When you’re
reading the script, when you see dialogue on
paper, you think, Oh, O.K. This is fun. But
back then, before the movie was released,
when you read lines like “What-ever,” you’re
like, O.K., what is this?
I actually read for two parts: I read for Sum-
mer and for Heather, and they liked me for
both, but they ended up casting me as Summer.
The girl who ended up getting the role of
Heather may have been in the waiting room
[when I auditioned].
Susan Mohun, Heather: I had a few different
auditions, and I don’t think I’m supposed to
name names, but my final audition was with
Paul Rudd and a famous actress’s daughter
who seemed to be very good friends with
Amy Heckerling. I had a 104 fever and had
gone in the hospital, but decided I was just go-
ing to go for the heck of it to the final audi-
tion. I was sure that I wasn’t going to get it
because I was really sick, and this other girl,
who looked exactly like her very famous moth-
er, seemed to have it in the bag. So that was a
surprise to get the role—and very exciting.
I didn’t realize, obviously, that 20 years
later we’d be talking about it.
Paul Rudd: After the table read we all went
and got a bite to eat. We went to a place
not far, around the corner, that I used to go
to, which was kind of a bar. They probably
should not have let some of those kids in. I
do remember all of us sitting around saying,
“How cool is it that we’re all going to do a
movie about kids our own age?” And hav-
ing that conversation about the John Hughes
movies to our generation. It had been a while
since there was one of [those]—“How cool
would it be if this thing had legs?”
Then it kind of did.
The Critical and Box-Office
Success of Clueless
D uring its opening weekend, in July 1995,
the film played in 1,653 theaters across
America and quickly proved that Paramount
Pictures had a sleeper hit on its hands.
After that first weekend, Clueless would go
on to earn $56.6 million. It was, without ques-
tion, a game changer for every single person
who worked on it, both on-camera and off.
For members of the cast and crew, the film
placed a noteworthy credit on their résumés
and, often, swung open the doors to oppor-
tunities in Hollywood that they could not ac-
cess before. When a film becomes a hit and,
as Clueless did, a cultural phenomenon, the
actors and artists behind it quickly realize that
their association with it will attract a lot of at-
tention. What those same actors and artists
couldn’t possibly have known in 1995 is that
20 years later attention would still be paid. 
JU LY 2 015

Caitlyn
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 6 9 published be-
cause it would “destroy lives.” The pleas were
unsuccessful. The item appeared online. Pac-
ing the hallway of his rented home in Malibu
that night after publication, he contemplated
suicide with a gun he kept in the house. He
decided not to go through with it. But he also
realized that, with the story now out there,
he was going to have to tell his children. He
also knew he would now need a strategy for
eventually going public with his transition. The
TMZ disclosure had robbed him of any right
to his own timeline.
He told each of his children individually,
starting with Brandon, whose reaction was
unequivocal: “I’ve never been more proud of
you than I am at this moment.” The rest of the
Jenner children reacted much the same way.
They were already aware of their father’s iden-
tity as a woman. Their mother had told Burt
and Cassandra roughly 20 years earlier, when
they were 13 and 11. Brandon had assumed
it because of the obvious physical changes.
Brody was not told by his mother until he was
29. “As soon as I heard it, it was almost a re-
lief. Because it just made a lot of sense grow-
ing up,” Brody told me. “Reasons and things
like why he wasn’t there. Not around. I finally
realized he had his own issues he was dealing
with at that time.”
About a year ago, Brandon and Brody got
a sobering glimpse of their father’s life when
they went over to the Malibu rental house to
surf. As they put on their wetsuits early in the
morning, they saw that lights were on inside.
Brandon went over to say hello, then quickly
came back and told his brother they needed
to leave immediately because he had just seen
their father at the computer in a gown and
earrings. Because they knew their father iden-
tified as a woman, they were not shocked. But
they also knew he did not want them to see
him dressed like this. “He wakes up at 4:30 in
the morning probably because he’s not tired
but [also] because that’s the [only] part of the
day he actually gets to be” what he wants, said
Brody. “That’s so sad, when you can’t be like
that always.”
The Jenner children feel both happiness
for their father and inspiration at his bravery.
They also feel that their relationship with their
dad will now have an opportunity to grow.
JU LY 2 015
“I feel like he’s been the closest to us and
the best parent when he’s been moving toward
his true identity,” said Cassandra.
As part of the transition, Jenner started
hosting intermittent and small gatherings
called “girls’ nights,” casual occasions with
wine and food in which Jenner could dress as
desired and feel natural and comfortable in
the presence of women. It was at a girls’ night
that Cassandra met Caitlyn for the first time.
“I was just nervous that I wouldn’t make her
feel comfortable,” Cassandra said. “I was
worried I wouldn’t say the right things or act
the right way or seem relaxed.” But almost
all of it melted away when she got there. “We
talked more than we ever have. We could just
be girls together.”
It’s Her World Now
F or the Jenner children the issue of the
transition has become a non-issue. They
all still see their dad as their dad regardless
of any gender label. Brandon said he was a
little taken aback when he saw Caitlyn for the
first time after surgery and she pulled her top
up to reveal her new breasts. “Whoa, I’m still
your son,” he gently reminded her. But the
moment easily passed. After so many years
of non-contact and hurt, one of the most
stirring parts of the transition has been the
renewal of the relationship of the Jenner chil-
dren with their father.
Except that disagreement over the up-
coming E! docu-series has posed yet another
hurdle. The children believe that with the right
producers the show could be wonderful on
multiple levels, including elevating public con-
sciousness of the issues surrounding the trans-
gender community, much the way the Sawyer
interview did.
The docu-series will be produced by Bunim/
Murray, the company responsible for such
shows as The Real World, The Simple Life,
Bad Girls Club, and, of course, Keeping Up
with the Kardashians. Bunim/Murray is cred-
ited with inventing reality television: nobody
does it better. But this is not your typical re-
ality show. Their father’s adamant decision to
use some of the same producers and much
of the same crew who have produced the
Kardashian episodes for 10 seasons only en-
hanced their concern that the show would de-
volve into maximum mayhem and minimum
social awareness. The children said they were
interested not in their own financial gain but
in ensuring the legacy of their father as per-
haps the most socially influential athlete since
Muhammad Ali.
At a meeting at the Jenner house with an-
other prospective producer, who was not cho-
sen, Brandon laid out his concerns succinctly:
“You go on E!’s Web site, the Bunim/Murray
Web site, and you look at all the shows, every
one of them is a circus.”
“With Bunim/Murray and E! it’s been
the opposite of inspiration,” he said during
ON THE COVER
Caitlyn Jenner’s
hair by Oribe. Makeup
by Mark Carrasquillo.
Manicure by Deborah
Lippmann. Set design
by Mary Howard
Studio. Styled by Jessica
Diehl. Photographed
exclusively for V.F.
by Annie Leibovitz
at Jenner’s home, in Malibu, California.
For details, go to VF.com/credits.
the meeting. “Oh my God, we’re diving into the
lion’s den—they’re gonna make a show about
the Jenners versus the Kardashians.”
Brandon Jenner wants his father to know
this is simply the kind of disagreement that
happens in families. He wants his dad to
know he loves and admires her, as do all the
Jenner children, just as he hopes that his fa-
ther’s love will not become conditional, as it
has been in the past.
“This is the fourth quarter of [her] life.
But within our relationship this is the first
quarter, the relationship that [she] has with
the kids. Regardless of the show and all that
stuff, there will be a fourth quarter of the re-
lationship. And I envision the fourth quarter
as having a 15- or 16-year-old daughter who
knows her grandparent as ‘Mapa’ or whatev-
er Dad wants to be, and loves that grandpar-
ent for who she is.”
E!’s head of programming, Jeff Olde,
hopes the children will decide to participate
once they see the quality and tone of the
show. He respects their decision and knows
it is “coming from a place of pure love.” He
also said this will be a quality show with a
totally different feel from other E! offerings.
“It’s not at all a Kardashian spin-off… We
will not resort to spectacle. That doesn’t mean
we can’t have fun with it.”
“We all love ratings,” Olde said, “but we
understand the power and responsibility to
be able to share this story.” Olde, who is gay
and married, said he and his husband have
been in the trenches for almost 20 years
fighting for equal rights. “This is so far be-
yond television, on a personal level. If I get
one thing right in my professional career, it
will be this.”
Jeff Jenkins, the executive vice president of
development and programming for Bunim/
Murray, echoed Olde’s sentiment and said
that “ratings are not the goal” of the series.
“It is to tell Bruce’s story the way he wants it
to be told.” Bunim/Murray has produced sev-
eral well-received shows on members of the
L.G.B.T. community, including Pedro Zamora,
whose groundbreaking participation in 1994’s
The Real World: San Francisco made him one
of the first openly gay H.I.V.-positive people to
be depicted on prime-time television.
There are many out there who think the
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 105

Caitlyn
E! series, while slightly more elegant perhaps, is
just a stunt to make money. Caitlyn Jenner
is prepared for the criticism just as she is also
prepared with an answer.
“ ‘Oh, she’s doing a stupid reality show.
She’s doing it for the money. She’s doing
this, she’s doing that.’ I’m not doing it for
money. I’m doing it to help my soul and
help other people. If I can make a dollar, I
certainly am not stupid. [I have] house pay-
ments and all that kind of stuff. I will never
make an excuse for something like that.
Yeah, this is a business.
“You don’t go out and change your gen-
der for a television show. O.K., it ain’t hap-
pening. I don’t care who you are. It ain’t
happening, O.K.? You don’t do it.”
Caitlyn’s 89-year-old mother, Esther, while
enormously proud of her son’s courage, is
among those who have wondered about mo-
tive. “I woke up one night and all I was think-
ing about is: Why is it necessary [for Caitlyn]
to go through all these surgeries?” Esther said.
“Is this all about making money? And that
was bothering me. He’s lived a life the last
25 years—and I don’t know if it was both he
and Kris or mainly Kris—it seemed like their
lifestyle was about money; that’s why it came
to my mind.”
The lifestyle was the materialistic equivalent
of morbid obesity, but Jenner never was a
part of it. I can say unequivocally that he ac-
tually hates to spend money. The recently pur-
chased house did cost $3.6 million, but that is
low by celebrity standards, and it has a mort-
gage on it. The big-ticket items, a 2011 Porsche
911 GT3 RS that cost somewhere around
$180,000 and the country-club membership,
were birthday gifts from Kris. I watched with
fascination as he fetched golf balls out of the wa-
ter hazard on the sixth hole at Sherwood with
a pole so he would never have to buy any him-
self, honorably returning the ones stamped with
“99” to fellow club member Wayne Gretzky.
The Legend Becomes Her
I t was early May, and Caitlyn had just got-
ten three letters from transgender women
thanking her for the interview and the digni-
fied way in which ABC and Sawyer had han-
dled it. One of them was addressed “Bruce
Jenner, Malibu, California,” as if she had
become her own country. An incredible 16.9
million had watched on a Friday night.
“Honestly, since the Diane Sawyer piece
every day it’s exciting to go to the mailbox, be-
cause I get letters every day from all of these
people from all over the world,” she told me.
“I’ve gotten a lot from trans women, telling
their story, and how excited they were to see
the Diane piece.”
She first watched the Sawyer interview on
ABC’s East Coast feed with the Kardashian
106 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
klan, sitting between Kendall and Kylie. The
two youngest children worried that the re-
action would be negative, only to be put at
ease by the Twitter messages rolling in from
famous people—Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus
and Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Fallon and a
dozen others. Caitlyn then watched a second
time at nine P.M. with the four Jenner children
and their mothers. Brandon called the experi-
ence “one of the best nights of my life.”
“Was it tough to watch? Of course it was,”
Caitlyn told me. “I never thought in a million
years I would ever have to divulge such pri-
vate, intimate feelings I’ve had all my life… I
was also excited to get it off my chest. Scared
but excited.”
The reaction from the celebrity community
was overwhelmingly positive, perhaps because
Caitlyn Jenner is a fellow club member. The
estimated 700,000 transgender women and
men in the country are virtually all anony-
mous, too many of them suffering from job
discrimination and violence. A 2013 report
co-authored by a variety of equality and
human-rights groups, including the Human
Rights Campaign, said that transgender work-
ers have a 14 percent rate of unemployment,
double that of the general population; 44
percent are under-employed; and 15 percent
have a household income under $10,000, as
opposed to 4 percent in the general popula-
tion. The National Transgender Discrimina-
tion Survey Report in 2010, based on roughly
6,500 responses to an extensive questionnaire,
determined that the attempted-suicide rate for
transgender women and men was a staggering
41 percent, compared to 1.6 percent in the
general population.
I can report that Caitlyn seems immensely
happy, relaxed, with a shiny sense of pur-
pose and confidence. She can’t wait when
she goes out now to tell the paparazzi to
“make sure it’s a good shot,” instead of ask-
ing patrons to help shield her from them in
the parking lot of the local Starbucks. She
looks forward to re-creating the atmosphere
of “girls’ night” on a more regular basis,
“where everybody is treating you the same
way. You can talk about anything you want
to talk about. You can talk about outfits.
You can talk about hair and makeup, any-
thing you want. It becomes not a big deal.”
She is aware of the appalling conditions
in which many transgender women and men
live, and said that in her E! show she will fo-
cus on ways of lowering the rates of suicide
and attempted suicide, among other issues.
Caitlyn also plans a segment in which she
sees if she can still hit a golf ball 300 yards off
the tee, even with those very ample breasts.
There is a road trip planned, in which Caitlyn
and several transgender women will take an
R.V. from the Los Angeles area to San Fran-
cisco to visit a center for transgender youth,
and then on to Napa Valley.
She said she now accepts the children’s de-
cision regarding the E! series. “I think it’s bet-
ter for the show right now. It keeps me on point
and doesn’t distract with all the family issues.”
As a possible peace offering, Caitlyn went
over to Brandon and Leah’s house recently,
not to make one last charge to persuade but to
help plant a garden. “I think the relationship
will take a new shape,” said Brandon. “My
hopes that the relationship would blossom,
that we would turn over a new leaf, has kind
of turned into, I just want a relationship that is
sustainable. I just want to have the best parts
as possible.”
On July 15, Caitlyn’s first major public
appearance, she will be awarded the Arthur
Ashe Courage Award at ESPN’s ESPYs in
Los Angeles. Its past winners include Mu-
hammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, and Billie Jean
King. All 10 of her children and stepchildren
are expected to be onstage when she accepts it.
A Different Kind of Gold
I last saw Caitlyn on May 6. It was the end of
an emotional photo shoot with Annie Lei-
bovitz for Vanity Fair in which, at one point,
Leibovitz teared up. “I felt like I saw the mak-
ing of Caitlyn,” she said. She was right. Posi-
tioned lengthwise on the couch, she had the
look of an elegant starlet with only a cigarette
holder and dark oval-shaped glasses missing.
Mixed in was a pinch of Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard, as if it were Caitlyn making
love to the camera and mouthing the words
“All right, Ms. Leibovitz, I’m ready for my
close-up.” The fear that she would not be com-
fortable with herself had already evaporated.
Which also meant that the comfort of others
with her was effortless.
The house was filled with production as-
sistants and makeup and wardrobe people
for the shoot, giving it vitality that just a few
weeks earlier seemed impossible. She really
should move. She doesn’t have to be alone on
the mountaintop anymore.
After the last picture was taken, Jenner
thanked all those who were there. She had
been primped and pampered to look gor-
geous, and the reaction had been equally
gratifying. The gold medal for winning the
decathlon, which Caitlyn had left in the safe
in the home in Hidden Hills where she and
Kris had lived, had finally been retrieved. It
was on the table in front of her. “That was
a good day,” she said as she touched the
medal. Then her eyes rimmed red and her
voice grew soft. “But the last couple of days
were better.”
Cassandra was there. As she heard Caitlyn
speak, she saw a vulnerability and authentic-
ity she had never experienced before. She went
to the couch and sat next to Caitlyn. The mo-
ments of the past were still there, there was no
way of knowing the moments of the future,
but in the space of that single moment was all
you could possibly hope for, a daughter with
her dad, a dad with her daughter. 
JU LY 2 015

True Detective
C ON T I N U E D F ROM PAGE 93 character and ac-
tion. That’s it. I found that those constraints
freed me from the paralysis of the full menu.”
In the process—and here’s a crucial bit—
Nic acquired a Hollywood agent, who, in the
way of any such agent, asked if he had any
ideas for shows. Do I? Thus began a fevered
period in the life of the writer, who churned
out product like Detroit, scenario after scenar-
io, including a rough outline for True Detective.
Talky and idea-driven, it was unlike any police
show: two detectives wandering the waste in a
gas-guzzler, trailing a killer whose pattern of
victims, living and dead, might describe the
nature of the universe.
The agent sent Nic’s pages around. Matthew
McConaughey’s interest would prove crucial,
enabling the show to attract other actors, includ-
ing Woody Harrelson, which meant pitching it
as a can’t-miss package instead of as a show by
an academic in love with nothingness. Because
these things take years to set up, the agent used
Nic’s pages to get him work in the writers’
rooms of other shows. It would fill him in on
the process—because it is a process, just as es-
tablished as the auto assembly line.
The Killing, Veena Sud’s AMC series about
detectives on the job in Seattle—that was Nic’s
first gig. Just like that, he found himself at a table
in a room on the edge of America, talking
through character motivations and story arcs.
The history of TV is older than the history of the
writers’ room, but perhaps by only a few sea-
sons. It began with the live comedy shows that
needed an endless stream of gags, Milton Berle
or Sid Caesar talking through an unlit cigar:
Funny, goddammit, I want funny! The mood of
most shows is determined by the culture of their
rooms, where a handful of veterans work from
can till can’t, laying out scenes and tangents,
then breaking up to write episodes. It’s called
writing, but is closer to kaffeeklatsch yammering,
hours of spitballing, building up and tearing
down. Nic loved and hated the strange rooms,
where everyone dreams of breaking away to cre-
ate his or her own show, where every briefcase
holds a pilot. In this one, the detective is trans-
gender. In that one, the amusement park is
haunted, but the ghost is unaccountably kind.
“Bad habits come out of writers’ rooms,” Nic
told me. “This whole idea of the twist, ‘Let’s flip
this character,’ that’s Writers’ Room 101 for ‘We
JU LY 2 015
never had a plan. What do we do? Let’s make
somebody you thought was good, bad, or some-
body you thought was bad, good. What a neat
reversal.’ … It’s almost a workshop mentality.
Everybody’s got to raise their hand to feel in-
volved, to validate themselves. You get into tug-
of-wars between egos. I’ve seen story points de-
cided wherein the discussion had gotten so far
away from character you wonder what’s driving
the story other than a pair of ideologies arguing
with themselves in a room.
“One of the great, great things about The
Killing was that the creator, Veena Sud, allowed
her writers to go on set and effectively produce
their episodes,” Nic continued. “That was the
greatest TV school because it’s sink or swim. If
you’re going to swim, you learn very quickly
what everybody does. You learn how the lines
of communication work. You learn the lan-
guage of the business and what has to happen
to make a television show. She was a very gener-
ous boss. I got to do that for two episodes. I felt
like, ‘O.K. I can do this.’ ”
I asked Nic if the experience was terrifying.
After all, some people become writers because
they’re too awkward, introverted, low-talking,
unsightly, and non-communicative to deal with
fellow humans. But watching Nic on the set, you
realize he has two personas: the guy in the room,
churning out pages, and the guy in the action,
with cameramen and actors, more akin to a
bandleader, or wizard, working levers that send
puppets across the scrim. “I thought it was
thrilling,” he told me. “I’m passionate about the
medium. I like thinking on my feet. I prefer ac-
tion to the periods of deliberation that often pre-
cede action. I really enjoy relationships with the
actors because the actors are the only people
who care about characters as much as I do.”
Magic City
P izzolatto wrote two episodes of The Kill-
ing, then went away from there. A few
months later, he was across from me at an-
other table in another room, piecing together
Season Two of Magic City. Each day started
with food and ended with food. In this way,
life in the room resembled life aboard a cruise
ship. In the hours between, we filled in a
whiteboard, which had been divided into eight
squares, each representing an episode. We’d
invent the arc of each character, then break
the arcs into scenes and place them beside
other scenes. An episode was solved in the
way of a crossword puzzle, with every beat de-
termining or revealing every other beat. Now
and then, someone had a good idea. It was
written on the board. Now and then, someone
had a bad idea. It was written on the board.
It was unnerving, being on the other side of
this process. I didn’t become a doctor, because I
enjoy having a body and fear knowing too much
about its functioning will make me self-conscious
and ruin my life. Same with TV. I’ve never really
been able to lose myself in a show since working
on Magic City. Every time a plot takes an obvi-
ous or stupid turn, I can hear the writers arguing
in the room. I admired Mad Men because the
main characters did not all tumble into bed—for
example, Don never slept with Joan. A charac-
ter list is, after all, a collection of dolls. If you’ve
ever owned dolls, you know that every doll will
eventually press faces with or fight every other
doll. It’s the nature of probability plus time: ev-
erything that can happen will.
Nic was younger than the other Magic City
writers, and clearly on the rise. Opinionated but
open, a first-class listener. Funny. Occasionally
sweet. He made you feel O.K. even when your
idea sucked. He seemed perfect for TV, as his
thought process unfolded like a show—action
and color, dark turns and surprising reveals. His
eyes turned hot and visionary as he spoke. He
sat back and sneered. His phone flashed. His
phone flashed all the time. Big things were hap-
pening for him elsewhere. Even so, Nic kept his
focus, determined to crack each character. O.K.,
O.K., but what’s really driving this guy? If you un-
derstand what he wants, you’ll understand what
he does. I’ve never met a less sentimental person
than Nic. His worldview is brutal. The metaphys-
ical is dismissed with a wave of the hand. People
are driven by hunger and need. There’s only
right here, right now. It’s unclear if this is how
Nic experiences life or if it’s just how he writes
television, or if there’s a difference.
Season One
A s I said, everyone in that room had a pi-
lot in his briefcase.
What makes Nic different?
His show got made. His dream came true.
Soon after he left Magic City, notices began
turning up in the trades. Pizzolatto’s True De-
tective picked up by HBO. Harrelson was at-
tached to play Detective Hart. McConaughey
had been hooked by the crazy philosophizing
of the other detective, Rust Cohle—
We are things that labor under the illusion
of having a self, this accretion of sensory experi-
ence and feeling, programmed with total assur-
ance that we are each somebody when, in fact,
everybody’s nobody.
“Hart was someone—and territory—closer
to what I had done in previous work,” Mc-
Conaughey told me by e-mail, “but this Rustin
Cohle guy was someone I couldn’t wait to turn
the page and hear what came out of his mouth.”
I think the honorable thing for our species to
do is deny our programming, stop reproducing,
walk hand in hand into extinction, one last mid-
night, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.
Nic wrote the remainder of Season One in
Sherman Oaks, where he lived with his wife and
daughter. “I read a lot of police manuals,” he
told me. “I read true crime accounts by cops. I
read the fucking—it’s over 1,000 pages—Practi-
cal Homicide Investigation textbook. I read about
how you go about solving crime, procedure.
When I write, it tends to be that kind of method
thing where I am descending into the character.
I’m walking around talking to myself like the
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 107

True Detective
character. I’m imagining, When this person
wakes up in the morning, what’s the first feel-
ing they’re having? Do they wake up hot? Do
they wake up and punch their father in the face?
How does this go for them? Do they wake up
fighting old battles? I start inside the characters
and it all goes outward—everything about him is
a projection of what’s happening internally. The
world is a projection. A sad, frustrated man is
going to look at a tree in a field in a much dif-
ferent way than a happy man. If you recognize
everything’s point of view, everything starts in-
ternally and extends outward.”
To a viewer, the show is about people—two
types, two ways of living. Woody Harrelson’s
detective lives by a code but is willing to accom-
modate himself to the world when necessary—
your basic skeptical, sin-ridden, struggling-to-
be-good American. McConaughey’s detective
is besotted by philosophy and believes in noth-
ing at all. That structure made True Detective—
which was really a long conversation imposed
over a standard procedural—sing. It was Andy
and Barney patrolling Mayberry as reimagined
by Lovecraft or Camus.
Nic was at first startlingly open about his in-
fluences, extolling writers and books that stood
behind Cohle’s soliloquies. Laird Barron, John
Langan, Simon Strantzas, Emil Cioran. He urged
fans to read Robert W. Chambers’s The King in
Yellow and Karl Edward Wagner’s “The River
of Night’s Dreaming.” He seemed to play with
the legend of Carcosa, a mythical city first
chronicled by Ambrose Bierce. He cited the
horror writer Thomas Ligotti, especially the book
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, all of
which gave the show pedigree, a mystical
sheen. He’s since become touchy on the sub-
ject, Ligotti fanatics having accused him of too
much borrowing. It’s a bullshit charge. You
can’t steal a cast of mind. But when I asked Nic
about influences, he bristled. “I tend to be influ-
enced by places as much as anything,” he said.
“You look around and notice details and it
starts to form a world and then you find char-
acters to inhabit this world.”
True Detective was a hit from the start. This
can be credited to a number of factors. There
was the look of the show, for one thing, the weird
landscapes and streets, the first season having
been filmed around New Orleans, on the bay-
ou, in abandoned churches and inlets, the
strangest part of America, everything south of
New Orleans having been built by sediment
carried down the Mississippi. Not land, fill.
The innards of the continent vomited into the
Gulf of Mexico. From the air, the islands look
like green suds. There was the cast and crew, all
the storied professionals HBO assembled
around the fledgling show-runner. They made
True Detective play less like TV than a film circa
1975. And, of course, there were the stars, espe-
cially McConaughey, who became Rust Cohle.
108 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
Here was the McConaughey we’d dreamed of
since Dazed and Confused—poetic, over the
top, camp. Nic brought out what had been im-
plicit but hardly ever realized. McConaughey,
as he exists today—the man in the Lincoln com-
mercials—is Pizzolatto in the writers’ room.
Me: “Is Louisiana as scary as it seems in
the show?”
McConaughey: “I don’t find it scary, I find
it mysterious. It lurks. Mother Nature is the
four-dimensional queen—she encroaches from
every direction. Where many civilized cities
and states use a vacuum cleaner to define
their structure, Louisiana used a broom or
merely a rake. Everything merges there. If you
wear your morals on your sleeve you’re liable
to get your arm burned.”
But the writing is what really makes True
Detective. Nic might be the best in the busi-
ness today. “They sent me a 600-page script,”
T Bone Burnett, the show’s musical direc-
tor, told me. “I read it and thought, This is a
Faulkner novel disguised as a TV show.”
“Milch and Nic are very similar,” said ex-
ecutive producer Scott Stephens, who worked
on Deadwood and True Detective. “Nic’s writ-
ing inflames people’s passions just like Milch’s
writing. It’s hard to quantify. I don’t under-
stand it. But it’s a visceral feeling when you
read it. It affects you emotionally.”
Season Two
Y ears ago, I met a record executive who’d
auditioned and rejected MC Hammer.
The rapper accosted the executive at a ban-
quet as his song “Can’t Touch This” was top-
ping the charts.
“You fucked up, man, turned me down, and
now I got the biggest hit in the world.”
“That’s not a hit,” the executive said. “It’s
a freak.”
“What’s a freak?”
“A hit is a hit. You follow it with other hits.
But no one knows what to do after a freak.”
The first season of True Detective was a
freak. It ushered Nic, without prelude, to the
first rank. Everything depends on what he does
next, the second season, terrible or sublime. He
actually referred to it as his “second album.”
Nic’s temperament, which is old-school
fiery artist, suits the task. He’s not a trimmer,
nor a hedger of bets. He’s a big personality, the
crazy fuck who, having won a pile of chips—
and it’s two in the morning and the casino is
filled with sharks—pushes it all back to the cen-
ter of the table.
“What even makes it the same show?,” I
asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got new actors, new characters,
new plotlines … ”
He thought a moment, head in hand, fin-
gers drumming on his temple. “Sensibility,”
Nic said. “Me. Crime, detectives, intimacies,
and ideas … but it’s all just me. That’s what
makes it the same show.”
Nic does not say exactly where the idea for
the second season originated, but it seems to
have grown out of the news, the B section of
the paper, where reporters chronicle crime
in places like Vernon, where immigrants toil in
the factories of the rich. He established a few
simple conflicts—a killing and a cop, a gang-
ster who wants to go clean—then started writ-
ing. Casting began after he wrote the first two
episodes. “Once I have my actors,” he ex-
plained, “I find myself writing towards what I
see in them, the strengths I think they have—
even strengths that may have gone untapped.”
Colin Farrell would be the detective. Taylor
Kitsch would be an Iraq-war veteran turned
cop. Rachel McAdams would be a tough-
minded sheriff. The most surprising choice
was Vince Vaughn as the criminal, the dark
heart. Though Vaughn’s career began with
serious roles, he’s made his name in the broad-
est kind of comedy. Nic recognized something
else—the flip side of all that manic energy, the
threat beneath the energy of a film like Swing-
ers. “I saw power and a fierce intelligence that
you could imagine going unhinged,” Nic ex-
plained. “I remembered his earlier dramatic
work and knew people don’t lose that stuff.
It’s just that they get pigeonholed.”
Here is Nic Pizzolatto, the movie-star whis-
perer. He’ll do for Vince Vaughn what he did
for Matthew McConaughey: bring out what’s
been obscured by the kind of movies he’s
made. “I felt like I could do a lot with the
guy,” Nic told me. “I could show people stuff
from Vince Vaughn they hadn’t seen before—
the Vince Vaughn they always wanted, without
knowing it.”
Other than sharing credit with novelist Scott
Lasser on two episodes, Nic wrote the second
season by himself in Ojai, California, 80 miles
northwest of Los Angeles, where he moved not
long ago. Most show creators assemble a writ-
ers’ room for that all-important second season.
Nic does just about all the writing himself—he
wrote the whole first season. (“Nobody does
that,” Vaughn told me, laughing. “That’s in-
sane.”) “I work more efficiently on my own,”
Nic explained. “I suppose it’s that ingrained
authorial sensibility: if I’m making a movie or
a show or whatever, I’m expressing something
on a personal level or else it doesn’t mean any-
thing to me. If I’m doing that, it works better
without a committee.
“I had a big whiteboard which I covered in
Post-It notes,” he went on. “Every character
was a different-colored note. I did horizontal
bars for eight episodes. Some days, I set myself
a certain number of pages or a specific scene. If
I finished early, great. If I didn’t finish on time, I
had to stick around. I’ve learned to take care of
myself. I get lunch, put on Seinfeld, and do 45
minutes of yoga. I become very raw emotionally
[when I’m writing]—a good steak could bring
me to tears. I’m very porous. My membrane
isn’t solid. And then I gradually come out of
that. And it’s time to join the circus.”
JU LY 2 015
 City of Industry
I n this case, the circus is a collection of sets
and trailers in the City of Industry, on the
eastern edge of Los Angeles, an industrial
park where I watched Vince Vaughn and Tay-
lor Kitsch work their way through a handful
of scenes. Nic was the most interesting char-
acter out there, racing from here to there, run-
ning lines with actors, explaining mood and
the meaning of each exchange. Text, subtext.
He stood with Vaughn almost out of earshot,
discussing the difference between what is said
and what is implied. In the evening, he briefed
Kitsch, explaining the psychosis of a trauma-
tized soldier. You want it but don’t know how to
say it … so you say this instead.
As the crew set up cameras beneath the
bleachers of a dirt-bike track, Nic retreated
Hughes and Eldridge
C ON T I N U E D F RO M PAGE 83campaign-finance
reform, and liberal-arts education. (He keeps
two complete sets of the Loeb Classical Li-
brary, a collection of the most important
Greek and Roman works.) He seemed as if
he had been dropped off the end of a con-
veyor belt into a bout of impeccably dressed
free time. “Few things have such a clear end-
ing as a campaign,” he told me.
Eldridge’s mother, Sarah Taub, was born in
Israel, the daughter of Holocaust survivors who
had met in a refugee camp in Italy after World
War II. According to a campaign interview
Eldridge gave to Tablet, an online Jewish maga-
zine, his mother insisted that his father convert
to Judaism before they married, in Montreal.
The Tablet article was headlined “CONGRES-
SIONAL CANDIDATE SEAN S. ELDRIDGE WANTS
YOU TO KNOW THE ‘S’ STANDS FOR ‘SIMCHA.’ ”
As a high-school freshman at Ottawa Hills,
Eldridge heard about the elite, insular Deep
Springs College, a two-year school located on
a cattle ranch in California. Deep Springs at-
tracts a highly self-selecting group of students
(there are only 26 at a time), people drawn to
its mixture of isolation, intellectualism, and
husbandry. Students are responsible for grow-
ing their own food and for butchering the ani-
mals they eat.
At Deep Springs, Eldridge served as a
dairy boy, rising at four A.M. to milk the cows.
Later in the morning he studied philosophy,
JU LY 2 015
to his trailer to punch up dialogue. When it
works, his keyboard goes like a tommy gun.
When it doesn’t, he sits back and stares out
the window. The San Gabriels. The evening
wind. Big trucks groaning in the passes. In
a few hours, he’ll return to his family in Ojai.
Meanwhile, he’s here, entirely present in this
interregnum between seasons, the show-
running auteur a moment before the next
moment. You can taste the danger. A hint of
mercury in the water. Nic will have to pay for
the sin of his success, as everyone pays for ev-
erything. He raised the bar too high that first
season. People want answers from a show like
that. They want to be told what to think and
how to live. Of course, a show can’t give those
kinds of answers, because even a great show
is made not by God but by a TV writer with
literature, and classics. In the afternoon he
farmed alfalfa and herded cattle. In the eve-
ning he was the school’s trustee for budget
and operations, and managed alumni giving.
After that, presumably, he rested. It was dur-
ing his time at Deep Springs that Eldridge
came out to his family and his classmates.
Eldridge loved the academic rigor of the
school, but he found the social environment
intensely claustrophobic. For one thing, stu-
dents are not allowed to leave campus. Histori-
cally, the intensity of the experience tends to
create two types of Deep Springers: the “mean-
ies” and the “touchy-feelies.” The meanies are
students who become somewhat Nietzschean
in outlook—strong laborers and community
leaders with a borderline authoritarian attitude.
The touchy-feelies are more laid-back and cre-
ative, take fewer classes, and tend to sit around
talking about alternative realities. The way El-
dridge tells it, by the time he arrived, Deep
Springs was all meanies. “When I was there,
the social dynamic prized a very stoic, sort of
uncaring intellectual—that was the Platonic
ideal. And so I was probably a little bit more
extroverted, and maybe warmer than other
people.” Whatever labels the students attached
to one another, a year was enough for Eldridge.
He packed up his car and drove east, becom-
ing one of the very few students who have left
Deep Springs early.
One alumnus told me, “Part of the experi-
ence is showing up and being reasonably in-
competent at everything and then becoming
deeply competent at something.” That breeds a
feeling among many alumni that they are able to
overcome obstacles in the real world that, in re-
ality, they perhaps cannot. “They aren’t smarter
or dumber than the average person,” the alum-
nus told me, “but they have more confidence
than the average person.” And maybe a touch
of intellectual arrogance. Two people told me
separately about Eldridge quoting Seneca—one
in admiration, the other with a roll of the eyes.
Eldridge arrived in Cambridge, Massachu-
black pens, whiteboards, take-out menus, and
research. Instead of answers, you get rever-
sals, reveals, and special effects. That is, more
TV. You feel empty. With time, this emptiness
turns to frustration. The better the show, the
greater that frustration. In the end, nothing
satisfies. There should be a term for that spe-
cial kind of melancholy that follows the finale
of your favorite show.
“What kind of things do you wake up
thinking about?,” I asked.
“I have to rebuild myself every morning,”
Nic told me. “ ‘What’s happening? Where am
I?’ I’ve got to locate myself in time. I wake up
raw and have to put myself together and focus
and be like: ‘All right, Pizzolatto, where are you
at today? Are you ready to go? Are you ready
to do the things you need to do?’ ” 
setts, where he had once attended summer
school. He spent a year working for a mov-
ing company in nearby Somerville. It was in
Cambridge that he met the man who would
become his husband.
The Empath
C hris Hughes grew up in Hickory, North
Carolina, a small industrial town best
known for manufacturing wooden furniture,
about an hour northwest of Charlotte. The son
of a traveling paper salesman and a school-
teacher, Hughes, at age 14, applied to boarding
schools and was accepted by Phillips Academy,
in Andover, Massachusetts, on a scholarship.
Friends there remember him as a quiet and
friendly southern boy, smart, and maybe a little
lonely. With his accent and his modest back-
ground, he wasn’t a typical Andover student.
Hughes told Fast Company magazine in 2009,
“I went to boarding school Southern, religious,
and straight, and I left boarding school not being
at all religious and not being straight.” He also
began to shed some of his accent. Hughes went
on to Harvard, where he met Mark Zuckerberg,
and the two decided to room together their
sophomore year. In February 2004, Zuckerberg
launched thefacebook.com, with Hughes as
user No. 5. (Zuckerberg was No. 4.) Hughes
had equity in the company and became its
spokesman. That summer, when Zuckerberg
moved to Palo Alto to immerse himself in the
tech scene, Hughes didn’t follow. He had, ac-
cording to the book The Facebook Effect, al-
ready paid for a summer program in France,
but he agreed to go to Palo Alto once that was
over. Similarly, when Zuckerberg dropped out
of Harvard to work on Facebook full-time,
Hughes stayed on to finish his studies. He didn’t
have the kind of money to just drop out of
school, and he wanted to get his degree. He ma-
jored in history and literature and spent a se-
mester in Paris. He rejoined Zuckerberg and the
other co-founders in Palo Alto after graduation.
Hughes’s main contribution was to trans-
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 109

Hughes and Eldridge
late Facebook to the real world, and to bring
some human, or “user,” experience to his tech-
minded co-founders. He tested features of the
site to see how a real person would experience
them. Hughes gets credit for being the least so-
cially awkward of the bunch. They called him
“the Empath.” The impression that Hughes
has lucked into his wealth—he is reportedly
worth about $700 million—is something that
he both embraces and abhors. Hughes has
always been straightforward about the seren-
dipity that brought him his fortune, but at the
same time he chafes at the perception that ser-
endipity is what he is all about. As his career
path suggests, he has also often been caught
between the worlds of technology and human-
ism. When I ask him which defines him more,
he rejects the dichotomy. “I think you can
be both,” he told me, and then defined him-
self as a member of an exclusive club: “I just
don’t think there are that many people who
are both.” He seems to regard his perspective
as distinctive, and includes the fact that he is
gay as one reason why it is. “It sets you up nat-
urally as an outsider,” he said. “It makes you a
little bit more skeptical of people who say, ‘I’ve
got it all figured out.’ ”
The Boys Next Door
E ldridge met Hughes, then a senior at
Harvard, in November 2005, for a cof-
fee at Veggie Planet, in Harvard Square, an
introduction arranged by a mutual friend who
was both a Deep Springs alumnus and a Har-
vard student. Facebook had launched the year
before. Eldridge asked Hughes out a week
later, and their first date was at Temple Bar, in
Cambridge. Hughes pointedly told The New
York Times, in an interview for their wedding
announcement, that Eldridge didn’t drink
any alcohol; he was only 19. The two quickly
became a couple. The young out-of-towners
had come to an elite, East Coast environment
having overcome, each in his own way, a pro-
vincial background. Both of them were intel-
lectual, earnest, and interested in Big Ideas.
It’s easy to see how they would appeal to each
other. “He was different than all the other
people that I knew and was hanging out with
at Harvard,” Hughes told me about Eldridge.
“He was working at a moving company—he
was very grounded. That definitely appealed
to me, given the pretension that goes with a
lot of these New England boarding-school or
college institutions.” When Hughes graduated
and moved to Palo Alto, in 2006, Eldridge
moved with him and worked briefly at a start-
up software company until it was time for him
to continue his studies at Brown.
In the fall of 2006, Facebook had just be-
gun allowing political candidates to create
profile pages, and Hughes helped the staff of
a freshman senator from Illinois, Barack
110 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
Obama, with his Facebook page. Hughes was
inspired by Obama and left to work on the
campaign in Chicago. He is credited with
helping to develop My.BarackObama.com, a
networking site for volunteers. Hughes’s con-
tribution was very real, but the Facebook
connection made it seem outsize. By April
2009, Obama was in the White House
(Hughes would attend the very first state din-
ner), and Hughes was on the cover of Fast
Company, along with the breathless headline
THE KID WHO MADE OBAMA PRESIDENT.
When Hughes moved to Chicago to work
for the campaign, Eldridge was volunteer-
ing with Students for Barack Obama, and he
flew most weekends from Providence to Chi-
cago to see Hughes. Eldridge graduated from
Brown in 2009 with a degree in philosophy,
and then started at Columbia Law School. In
December of that year, according to The Ad-
vocate, a news and opinion magazine with a
largely gay audience, Eldridge watched on his
laptop during a first-year seminar as the New
York State Senate voted against extending
marriage equality to same-sex couples.
Eldridge had been looking for ways to get
involved in the marriage-equality movement
and approached Evan Wolfson, an adjunct
professor at Columbia Law and a leading gay-
rights advocate, who had founded the group
Freedom to Marry. Soon Eldridge was its com-
munications director. He worked tirelessly as a
fund-raiser and activist and quickly became the
political director of the organization.
As Eldridge was throwing himself into his
work, Hughes was looking for a next move.
He became a consultant to a progressive
political-communications firm, GMMB,
based in Washington, D.C. In 2010 he
launched Jumo.com, a site that was de-
signed to help index charities so that people
could find and compare them, and invest in
them. Hughes said that the site was to be
for charities what Yelp was for restaurants;
it turned out to be more like what MySpace
was for the music industry. So far, Hughes’s
own business ventures were proving lacklus-
ter. But the personal side of things could
hardly have been going better. On New
Year’s Eve 2010, in Thailand, Hughes pro-
posed to Eldridge.
The Democratic political establishment
was besotted. “Everyone was talking about
Facebook and Obama and gay marriage, and
here were these two people who represented
all of those things,” says Jon Barrett, who was
the editor of The Advocate at the time. Bar-
rett, who had met Eldridge through his work
with Freedom to Marry, asked the couple if
they would be interviewed for the magazine’s
“Forty Under 40” cover story, and they read-
ily agreed. The cover photo, in April 2011,
featured Hughes and Eldridge, both in black
sweaters, looking like the boys next door. In
June, New York State legalized gay marriage,
paving the way for a wedding in Garrison.
The Perfect Steward
H ughes and Eldridge bought a 4,000-
square-foot condominium on Crosby
Street, in SoHo, in 2010, for $4.8 million. The
loft is divided by a row of wood columns, with
exposed brick. Like the house in Garrison, the
apartment is “pretty aggressively decorated,”
according to one visitor, with dark leather and
dark wood. There are piles of books tastefully
arranged. A former senior staffer at The New
Republic remembers Tony Judt’s Postwar: A
History of Europe Since 1945 displayed almost
as a decorative object. A long carved-wood
dining-room table stands off the open kitchen,
and leather couches form a sitting area where
issues of The New York Review of Books are
stacked. Another visitor recalls that, except for
one iPad, there was not a single electronic de-
vice in sight. Hughes and Eldridge each have
their own offices, lined with books. A grand
piano dominates the living area, and Hughes
still takes lessons. “Chris would have things
arrayed in a way that seemed he was trying to
send you strong signals about his taste,” says
the former senior staffer.
His purchase of The New Republic can be
seen as another strong signal. In late 2011, the
magazine was in danger of going out of busi-
ness, and the financial consortium that owned
it, including Marty Peretz, the magazine’s out-
spoken and longtime benefactor, began look-
ing for a potential buyer. The goal was to find
someone who could help the magazine survive
the digital era. Hughes, still drifting from project
to project, was receptive. Though various other
media organizations held early discussions, it
was Hughes, in January, who emerged as the
likely buyer. He seemed to be the perfect stew-
ard. He was young and wealthy, the thinking
went, so he could afford a magazine that had
never turned a profit, and with his experience at
Facebook and his tech-savvy contacts, he would
infuse the magazine with just the right amount
of digital magic. In March 2012, Hughes an-
nounced the acquisition, whose price was undis-
closed. In a note to readers, he wrote: “It seems
that today too many media institutions chase su-
perficial metrics of online virality at the expense
of investing in rigorous reporting and analysis of
the most important stories of our time.”
Hughes’s enthusiasm came as a relief to The
New Republic’s supporters, but his role was not
a new one. Wealthy buyers of prestigious news
organizations are in many ways alike. “They all
think this is a very wonderful part of American
culture or American politics and all it needs is
a sprinkling of hard-nosed business experience,”
Michael Kinsley, a former editor of the magazine
(and now a Vanity Fair contributing editor), told
me, “and ‘I as a businessman know how to fix
these things, and I will do it as my contribution
to the world.’ ” The problem, he added, is that
“it turns out that maybe these things need more
than a sprinkling of business sense.” Kinsley
went on, “There are only two things an owner
can do when he buys a publication like this. One
JU LY 2 015
is fire the editor and the other is do a redesign.”
Hughes had promised to keep the existing
editor, Richard Just, but he soon dispensed
with Just and ordered a redesign of the maga-
zine and the Web site. He hired Franklin Foer,
a talented young editor who had in fact run The
New Republic for four years, until 2010, when
he left because of a souring relationship with
Peretz. Hughes invested heavily in the maga-
zine, moving it to new headquarters in Wash-
ington, D.C., and in New York, and supported
an expansion of the staff by aggressively recruit-
ing new writers and editors: people like for-
mer New York Times Magazine editor and
former New Republic Web editor Greg Veis;
Washington City Paper editor Michael Schaf-
fer; City Paper reporter Lydia DePillis; novelist
and former GQ contributor Walter Kirn; Wash-
ington Post reporter Alec MacGillis; and New
Yorker contributor Julia Ioffe.
Carpetbagger?
M eanwhile, Eldridge was seriously con-
templating a career in politics, and he
eventually decided to run for Congress as a
Democrat in New York’s 19th Congressional
District, up the Hudson from Manhattan but
on the other side of the river from the home
he shared with Hughes in Garrison. It is a
district that includes New Paltz and Kingston
and wide stretches of conservative, rural New
York—not anyone’s idea of a Democratic
stronghold. In 2013, the couple bought a third
residence, in Shokan, New York, about an
hour-and-a-half drive from Garrison, that en-
abled Eldridge to establish residency.
In September 2013, Eldridge officially an-
nounced his intention to run for Congress.
While he tried to use his wealth as evidence
that he couldn’t be bought by corporate inter-
ests, his campaign fund-raising and spending
were widely mocked. The National Republi-
can Congressional Committee had prepared
the battlefield by running television ads featur-
ing Eldridge in photos with Nancy Pelosi and
Anne Hathaway, painting him as a wealthy
carpetbagger out of touch with regular people.
(His list of contributors didn’t help: Hollywood
mogul David Geffen, Project Runway’s Tim
Gunn, hedge-fund manager and New Republic
investor Bill Ackman.) Glenn Thrush, a Politi-
co columnist, wrote, “Meet Sean Eldridge, the
first human genetically engineered to be shaken
down by political consultants.” His Republi-
can opponent was an army veteran who had
served four tours in Iraq and had grown up in
the town of Kinderhook. “I was struck by how
people characterized Sean’s candidacy as disin-
genuous,” says Urvashi Vaid, the former execu-
tive director of the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force, who is friends with the couple. “He
took stands that were very strong for an upstate
community.” Vaid added that Eldridge is cer-
tainly not the first political candidate to move
to a new district and run for office.
In an interview with the Daily Freeman, a lo-
JU LY 2 015
cal newspaper, Eldridge laid out his platform.
His main enemy was a “do-nothing Congress.”
He would be independent; he supported abor-
tion rights; he supported campaign-finance re-
form. His interviewer kept returning to whether
he and his husband would stay in Shokan, even
if he lost. Yes, he said, they would. Didn’t he
have another home in Garrison? she asked.
Eldridge admitted that the press had written
about such a house, but that his home was
now in Shokan. In 2011, Eldridge had started
Hudson River Ventures, a venture-capital firm
investing in local businesses, which had drawn
the attention of his political opponents, be-
cause it seemed to some that he was trying to
buy votes in the district. (The impression was
strengthened when Eldridge moved the head-
quarters of Hudson River Ventures to Kingston.)
No, he told the Daily Freeman, he was not try-
ing to buy votes. Eldridge invested $250,000
in a 3-D-printing technology center at SUNY
New Paltz. That investment wasn’t universally
well received—there were concerns that 3-D
printing could destroy manufacturing jobs.
Eldridge’s campaign, overfunded and
stacked with expensive consultants, couldn’t
have been farther from the spirit of the first
Obama campaign. In the last quarter before
the election, according to campaign records,
$500,000 of the $875,031 Eldridge raised came
from his own pocket. Eldridge worked the
crowds and campaigned tirelessly, but there
were missteps. He was not a natural, easygoing
campaigner. In one early campaign video, he
introduced himself to voters by talking about
himself in the third person. His marriage to a
high-profile Facebook zillionaire didn’t help.
“I think, when most people run for Congress,
their spouse is not mentioned in the first para-
graph of every article,” Eldridge told me.
Hughes was openly disdainful of the de-
mands of the campaign. “He didn’t personally
like going to the house parties and the rubber-
chicken dinners that he was subjected to,” recalls
one friend. He had a calendar on his phone that
marked the days until the election would be over.
Hughes was “embarrassed to have three houses
and embarrassed to have one of the houses so
explicitly bought to situate Sean in the district,”
says another friend. (Hughes disputes this char-
acterization.) Despite being cagey with the press,
Hughes was disarmingly open with others. “He
talked about things that aren’t going great in his
life to people he doesn’t even know that well,”
one former New Republic editor told me.
Eldridge lost by 30 points. All told, Eldridge
spent more than $4 million of his and Hughes’s
money on the election. “Look, we didn’t win—
we weren’t that close,” Eldridge told me. “Ob-
viously, I wish we’d won and I wish it had been
closer. But it’s hard, despite having lost, despite
having put a lot of resources in it—it’s hard to
regret it because I learned a heck of a lot along
the way.” Had the race been a personal strain?
Eldridge said, “I highly recommend running
for office in the first year of marriage.”
“Superficial Metrics”
T o his friends, Hughes has long betrayed a
deep awareness of the position he holds
owing to his wealth, and he spends a great
deal of time thinking about how best to use it
wisely. This attitude has exaggerated an intro-
verted, earnest quality that was long present.
For his 30th birthday, Hughes threw a party
at the Queen Anne–style Brooklyn Histori-
cal Society, with a piano quartet that played
Brahms. It was something a rich man would
do, but it was also something that an old rich
man would do. That was part of Hughes’s ap-
peal. He had entrée to the world of technolo-
gy, but he still preferred to read French novels
in French. The birthday party could not have
been more different from the wedding bash.
Hughes was also preoccupied with prov-
ing himself to be a good technologist. He was
only too aware of the perception that he had
been endowed with great wealth by the literal
luck of the draw—being Mark Zuckerberg’s
roommate at Harvard. To be regarded as
technologically savvy in his own right, not by
proxy, “was always something that was on his
mind,” says a friend.
Over time, one of the big flash points that
developed between Hughes and his New Re-
public writers was their productivity. What that
sometimes meant—despite Hughes’s stated
contempt for “superficial metrics of online
virality”—was productivity measured in Web
traffic. Hughes came to feel, ultimately, that
Foer was an obstacle to change—too aligned
with his writers. He also viewed the staff itself
as recalcitrant. “It was like ‘How many times
do I have to tell these people to write more for
the Web?’ ” says a former New Republic staffer.
From Foer’s perspective, Hughes had set a
goal of more than doubling traffic in 2014,
which Foer viewed as ambitious. The site’s
traffic did indeed double, but never got beyond
that. “It was not just about traffic,” another
former staffer told me. “It was really about
him kind of feeling, These writers are taking
my money, and they’re coasting. They’re sit-
ting around in their office, intellectually mas-
turbating, while I’m paying them.”
The fall of 2014 was a sour one: Eldridge’s
campaign was faltering badly, and Eldridge
himself was being widely mocked. As a busi-
ness proposition The New Republic was con-
tinuing to lose money. Hughes’s attitude
seemed to change profoundly. “Chris became
increasingly cynical about Washington jour-
nalism and the people who worked at The
New Republic at this period of time,” one for-
mer magazine staff member told me, “and I
think that had something to do with the fact
that Sean was being pilloried in the press.” In
the end, all of Hughes’s friendly interactions
with the staff—his late-night drinking, his dis-
cussions about politics and big ideas—fell to the
wayside when it came time to decide what
the future of The New Republic would be.
Hughes hired a new C.E.O., Guy Vidra, from
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 111

Hughes and Eldridge
Yahoo, in September 2014. Born in Israel but
raised in New York, Vidra had previously
worked at The Washington Post’s interactive divi-
sion. He had been talking to Hughes about the
magazine for the better part of a year and had
recently read and become enamored with the
book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Build-
ing a Business When There Are No Easy Answers,
written by Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of the
venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and
the former C.E.O. of Loudcloud, a software
company. The book focuses on the “struggle” of
running a start-up and is largely a collection
of blog posts that Horowitz composed over the
years. It’s not hard to see why the book might
have struck a chord with an owner seeking a dra-
matic change. Horowitz delivers this message
about what the hard things really are: “The hard
thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal.
The hard thing is laying people off when you
miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring
great people. The hard thing is when those ‘great
people’ develop a sense of entitlement and start
demanding unreasonable things.”
The Fear Factor
E ven before Vidra got the job, word was
circulating in media circles that Hughes
was looking to hire a new C.E.O. who would
shake things up, specifically by hiring a new
editor to replace Foer. “In bringing Guy in, we
were making a pivot … to new kinds of digital
storytelling,” Hughes told me. “And that was
not Frank’s strong suit. And he specifically said
that to me.” When I told him that the departed
staffers I spoke to told me they were not afraid
of change and were willing to write for the Web,
he cut me off. “Stop right there—that’s the
problem… Anyone who said that, that really
means: I really want to write for print, but if the
Web editor is annoying enough, then I’ll fire
off a blog post once a week. That can’t be our
starting point.” Hughes himself gave no explicit
sign that he was unhappy with Foer’s editorship,
and with the 100th anniversary of the magazine
approaching—a gala dinner was planned for No-
vember 19—Foer and his colleagues were busy
putting together a special centennial issue. At
one point, in the middle of all this, Vidra gave a
disastrous presentation to the staff, full of Silicon
Valley buzzwords and a reference to “wartime
C.E.O.’s” and “peacetime C.E.O.’s” that was
straight out of Horowitz’s book. Vidra said the
staff shouldn’t be afraid to “break shit.” When
I talked to editors and writers about what had
made the speech so upsetting—was it really just
the buzzwords?—one of them explained that,
yes, it was partly the buzzwords, but it was also
that Vidra appeared to have no familiarity with
the magazine, and that he generally ignored
Foer whenever he could, staying in his com-
mand center behind two giant flat-screens. “He
was just getting people nervous about the future
112 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
without saying anything concrete about what
could be improved,” one former staffer told me.
“People work at The New Republic because it’s
a great collegial atmosphere and our colleagues
are wonderful people and we don’t have to sit in
bullshit corporate meetings where people speak
gibberish.” After the meeting, when staff mem-
bers wondered whether Foer’s job was safe,
Hughes personally reassured them that it was.
He even asked some of the editors to go around
and reassure the staff on his behalf.
It turned out that many things were about
to change, and not entirely in ways that Hughes
had anticipated. Hughes and Vidra had talked
to potential candidates for Foer’s job in Octo-
ber and November. Mere days after the 100th-
anniversary gala, Hillary Frey, now the news di-
rector of the Disney-backed cable-news channel
Fusion, aimed at millennials, told them she was
not in a position to accept the job. Soon after,
Vidra offered the position to Gabriel Snyder, a
former editor at Gawker who was currently at
Bloomberg News, working on building up the
company’s Web presence. Then, on Thursday,
December 4, at around eight A.M., Foer heard
a rumor, which he quickly confirmed, that Sny-
der was replacing him.
Foer spoke to everyone on the staff about
what was happening. He told his wife. Then
he told Leon Wieseltier, who had worked at
the magazine for three decades, and from
there the news of Foer’s imminent firing was all
over the media in Washington and New York.
Before Hughes knew that Foer knew, everyone in
the newsroom knew what was about to happen.
Given how Hughes had socialized with
them, had seemingly bared his soul to them,
and had acted like a peer as well as a boss, the
dismissal of Foer was shocking to the staff. The
D.C. members gathered at Foer’s house to dis-
cuss what had just happened. They talked into
the early morning and agreed that before a
planned 10 A.M. staff meeting with Hughes and
Vidra they would send word to Greg Veis, the
magazine’s executive editor, about whether they
were staying at the magazine or not. In the end,
15 senior editors and at least 13 contributing
editors told Veis they would depart. Many of
them pulled articles they had been working on
for the next issue. Hughes, left with nothing to
publish, had to cancel it. Another print issue
would not appear for nearly three months. By
the time it did, the announced plan was for the
once weekly magazine to publish 10 print issues
a year and to transform itself into a “vertically
integrated digital-media company.” In charac-
teristic cyberprose, Vidra sent a memo to staff
calling for the creation of “improved products
across all platforms.” The Washington office
was largely shut down. Most operations would
now be run from New York. The New Republic
has been transplanted to a recently refurbished
space in the landmark Lincoln Building on the
southwest side of Union Square. There are dark
wood floors, and visitors walk immediately past
a big kitchen with a farm table and a comfort-
able seating area on their way to glass-enclosed
offices and communal work areas. In January,
Snyder hired, among others, Jamil Smith, a pro-
ducer at MSNBC, and Elspeth Reeve, who was
briefly at First Look Media but had worked un-
der Snyder at the Atlantic Wire. Snyder also
hired Peter Stevenson, a former New York Ob-
server editor, and Theodore Ross, formerly of
Harper’s and Men’s Journal, to help edit the
early issues. On the business side, Vidra hired
NewsCred’s Kayvan Salmanpour as chief reve-
nue officer, and Eliot Pierce, formerly of The
New York Times, as chief product officer. The
enterprise is in a state of re-invention, and what
it will look like three or five years from now is
impossible to say.
“Chris did what people have always done
who bought magazines,” says one editor who
knows The New Republic well but is uncon-
nected to recent events. “He wants prestige;
he wants acceptance. And he also wants to do
good for the world… He’s not getting what
he’s entitled to under those rules. He’s become
the bad guy. And I’m sure he lies awake at
night thinking, How did this happen?” Hughes
himself has more than one answer. A topic he
came back to more than once in our conversa-
tion in New York was the difference between
what he sees as a hidebound East Coast and
a more technologically creative West Coast,
and he attributed resistance to change to “fear
on this coast,” meaning the East. That said, he
also understands that his handling of the transi-
tion was abysmal. He said to one colleague as
the magazine began to implode, “I fucked up.”
Happy Birthday
T he 100th-anniversary party of The New
Republic was held on November 19, 2014,
in the neoclassical Andrew W. Mellon Audito-
rium, on Constitution Avenue, along the Mall
in downtown Washington, D.C. Wynton Mar-
salis was one of the honored guests, providing
the music. Former president Bill Clinton deliv-
ered the keynote speech. Supreme Court justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had to be nudged
awake toward the end of the festivities, gave a
congratulatory toast to the magazine. Despite
the celebratory setting, the mood among many
of the attendees was more like a bedside vigil.
Early in the evening, Chris Hughes took the
stage. Framed by 60-foot limestone pilasters,
Hughes looked even wispier than usual. He
should have been marking a crowning achieve-
ment. But he was about to fire the magazine’s
editor, Franklin Foer; just a few months earlier,
he had reportedly described himself and Foer
as “intellectual partners moving into the next
decade.” At a nearby table sat Sean Eldridge,
who had just weeks before suffered a humiliat-
ing landslide loss in his first political race and
now was back to work at Hudson River Ven-
tures. Hughes spoke haltingly about the future
of the magazine. To many of his New Republic
colleagues, he had appeared increasingly distant
during forays to the office, and he had grown
JU LY 2 015
tired of the focus on the magazine’s centennial.
In October, at a panel discussion at the New
York Public Library honoring the magazine,
Hughes declared to a colleague at the end of the
night, “I never want to talk about the history of
this place again.” He doesn’t recall making this
remark. Hughes did not invite former owner
Marty Peretz to the centennial gala—apparent
payback for a Wall Street Journal op-ed, written
by Peretz, that was critical of Hughes. (Peretz’s
The Good Soldier
C ON T I N U E D F ROM PAGE 77 Hamdani, which
was known to them from previous operations.
Hatley directed the patrol into an open field,
where he called for a halt by an irrigation ca-
nal whose edges were overgrown with reeds.
The vehicles fanned out into routine defensive
positions, dozens of yards apart, and waited
there with the drivers at the wheels and the top
gunners scanning sectors 360 degrees around.
Cunningham was extremely edgy. After a few
minutes, his gunner dropped down and said,
“Hey, Sergeant Cunningham, they’re stand-
ing behind the truck.” Cunningham snapped,
“Who the fuck’s behind the truck? You’re the
fucking gunner! Why’d you let them get be-
hind the truck? Why didn’t you pull security?”
The gunner said, “No, it’s First Sergeant Hat-
ley, Sergeant Mayo, and Doc Leahy.”
C unningham got out of the truck and found
them waiting with pistols drawn. Accord-
ing to Cunningham, Hatley said, “This is your
chance. Do you want to help kill them?” Cun-
ningham said, “No, I don’t. I already told you,
I’m not down for this.” The three men turned
and walked away. Cunningham climbed back
into his Humvee. To the soldiers inside, he
said, “You guys better see right now who’s in
this vehicle, and remember who stayed in this
vehicle.” Hatley, Mayo, and Leahy went over
to the Bradley and ordered the commander,
Evoy, to drop the rear ramp. When the ramp
dropped, the light from the inside spilled onto
Hatley, standing outside. Hatley told Hartson
to switch off the light. Mayo and Leahy pulled
the detainees outside. Mayo reclaimed his
pistol from Hartson, who walked over to Cun-
ningham’s Humvee and climbed into the back.
Hatley, Mayo, and Leahy took the detainees a
few feet away to the edge of the canal and lined
JU LY 2 015
daughter, Evgenia, is a V.F. contributing editor.)
Next onstage was Guy Vidra, who opened
his comments by thanking the evening’s spon-
sors: not just Credit Suisse, which had been
The New Republic’s “centennial anniversary
partner” for an entire year, but also BP, HBO,
Diageo, and the Wine Institute. When he intro-
duced Foer, he mispronounced his name, as if it
rhymed with “lawyer.” (It rhymes with “lore.”)
Foer gave a heartfelt speech honoring the
them up facing the water, beyond view of the
soldiers in the Humvees. From atop the Brad-
ley, wearing night-vision goggles, Evoy was the
only one to witness the scene directly. He saw
the men side by side in a line, still bound and
blindfolded, with the company’s triumvirate
directly behind them, raising pistols for the ex-
ecutions—Doc Leahy on the left, then Mayo,
then Hatley. He did not distinguish between
the detainees—which among them was the Big
Guy, or Crybaby, or the boy. He saw Doc Lea-
hy fire first, and the victim slump unnaturally.
Evoy dropped down into the Bradley to avoid
seeing anything else. Sickened, he heard other
shots ring out.
Doc Leahy was a left-handed shooter. As the
event was later reconstructed, he shot the man
in front of him at close range in the back of
the head. Unexpectedly, the man fell backward
against him as he died. The Iraqi to his right
flinched at the sound and turned his head to
the left just as Leahy fired at him. The round
entered his head around his left ear and exited
through his face. He fell onto the ground, where
he lay awkwardly on his back, gurgling and
moaning. Almost simultaneously, Hatley shot
and killed a man, and Mayo shot and killed
another. Hatley then came over, looked down
at Leahy’s gurgling victim, and dispatched him
with two shots to the chest. The fate of the fifth
man is unknown. Did he somehow escape, or
was he, too, shot then and there? All that is cer-
tain is that at least four detainees died that night.
After the shooting ended, Evoy went back up to
see what was happening. The dead men’s blind-
folds were removed, and the flex-cuffs were cut
from their wrists. Evoy watched the three shoot-
ers kick the corpses into the canal.
T he sound of the gunshots tore Cunning-
ham’s world apart. He sat in shock, won-
dering about the consequences. Hartson sat be-
hind him, terrified. He thought of the Big Guy,
with whom he had been speaking just minutes
before; he thought of the prayer beads in his
pocket. No one in the vehicle said a word. The
bloody blindfolds and flex-cuffs were thrown
into the back of the Bradley. Hatley, Mayo,
and Leahy then got into their Humvee. Hat-
ley ordered the patrol to return to the combat
outpost. When it got there, Hatley gathered the
soldiers for a short talk. Memories of his exact
words vary, but only to a small degree. Accord-
staff and former editors and writers of the mag-
azine. Wieseltier spoke about the magazine’s
history. “There are careers that are also call-
ings, and products that are also public goods,”
he said. It seemed that everyone knew what
was about to come, even though they didn’t.
When the speeches were done, Wynton Marsal-
is struck up “Happy Birthday.” It was the only
time he has ever played the song, Marsalis later
said, when nobody sang along. 
ing to Cunningham, Hatley said, “Hey, what
we did was for Soto and Guerrero. For all our
guys who have fallen. This is retaliation, and we
won’t have to face these guys again. It stays in
this group, this brotherhood, and we’re all on
the same page. We dropped them off because
we didn’t have the evidence. And don’t worry.
If anything ever comes up, it’ll start with me
and end with me. I’ll fall on the sword.” Many
of the soldiers were impressed. Cunningham
was not.
Hatley instructed a soldier to remove the
flex- cuffs and blindfolds from the back of
the Bradley, take them to the burn pit, and
destroy them. Cunningham dropped his gear
on his cot, grabbed a Gatorade, and went out-
side to sit on the hood of a Humvee. He was
staring into the distance when Mayo came up
and told him that Hatley wanted him to write
the final patrol report, the so-called debrief.
“Why do I gotta do it?”
“Because you’re the fucking patrol leader.
So get your ass inside.”
Cunningham suspected that they were try-
ing to make him complicit by getting him to fal-
sify the report. He should have refused to obey,
but he was afraid of the fight that would ensue.
He was afraid of unknowable consequences
too. So he was not the Hollywood hero. He
was a normal human being. He did as he was
ordered, and under the close supervision of
Hatley wrote a deceptive report. The report
never went anywhere: apparently it was made
to disappear. The paperwork exercise turned
out to be a manipulative game. Afterward, Hat-
ley may have thought that he had Cunningham
where he wanted him. But Cunningham was
deeply disturbed. The parallels with the murder
of his friend Chad Yarbrough in the Bakersfield
orange grove did not escape him.
IV. Rebellion
T he army takes the high road. It instructs
its recruits on their solemn obligation to
resist illegal orders, and to report war crimes if
they occur. In the field it reminds them repeat-
edly about the rules of engagement—including
that they are not allowed to target civilians, or
to rape and pillage, or, for instance, to execute
blindfolded suspects who have been lined up
beside a canal. Furthermore, it maintains an
“open door” policy, under which any soldier
of whatever rank can go to his commanding of-
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 113

The Good Soldier
ficer to report a violation of any kind. But here
was a catch for Cunningham: as a soldier with
deep experience in the field, he believed that
Hatley’s commanders at both the company
and battalion level had effectively ceded author-
ity to Hatley and would align with him in the
event of an allegation.
In any case, Cunningham was at first too
conflicted to contemplate reporting the mur-
ders. He withdrew into himself, became a
chain-smoker overnight, and began to work out
obsessively in the loneliness of the gym. After
a month of this he asked a battalion medic for
relief, without explaining why. The medic gave
him Prozac, then doubled the dose, then gradu-
ated him to Effexor. He could not shake feel-
ings of anger and anxiety. He became distant
from everyone. He began to confront Mayo in
private. The change was obvious to others, and
a threat to some. Suddenly, Cunningham was
an outcast, whom even lower-ranking soldiers
dared to disrespect openly. The most blatant of
them was Evoy, the sergeant who from atop the
Bradley had witnessed the incident at the canal,
and, according to Cunningham, had since taken
to wising off to him, calling him a pussy to other
soldiers, and saying to Mayo, “Look how I talk
to him. He won’t do shit.” Cunningham finally
had enough. One night, in the heat of an argu-
ment, he yanked Evoy out of the sleeping quar-
ters and punched him full force in the mouth.
Evoy fell back against a wall, and Cunningham
followed, pulling him down and pummeling
him on the ground. Evoy never stood a chance.
Soldiers came out of their rooms and pulled
Cunningham off.
Then came the surprise: Hatley let it slide.
Cunningham received no formal warning or
note in his record. This appears to have been
a strategy intended to avoid a rupture. Even-
tually, Cunningham assaulted Doc Leahy as
well—again with no repercussions. Repeatedly
he asked Mayo for a transfer to another unit,
and each time he was told no. He says Mayo
asked him to consider his soldiers and their
families: did he want to expose them to risk in
the middle of a war by breaking up the team?
Obviously he did not.
S everal months after the murders, in the
summer of 2007, Cunningham came
down with pneumonia. He fought it at the
combat outpost, blacked out, woke up in
the combat-support hospital in the Green
Zone, blacked out, woke up among soldiers in
bloody bandages in the tent hospital at Balad
Air Base, blacked out, and woke up in a U.S.
military hospital in Germany. He lost 30
pounds and nearly died. Once in Germany
he recovered quickly. On the day he got out
of the hospital, a sergeant called him into an
office and gave him some bad news: a Second
Platoon patrol had hit a land mine, killing two
114 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
soldiers and maiming another. Cunningham
took it hard. He called his family in Bakers-
field and said, “I failed. I was one of the
strongest guys in the company, but my body
let me down.” They thought he was talking
about pneumonia. He did not dare to say that
his greatest failure had occurred on the day
of the murders. He had tried three times to
resist the plan but had never gone far enough.
He had allowed Hatley to outsmart him. He
had failed his soldiers, failed himself, and
failed the memory of Chad Yarbrough.
By now, Cunningham had decided to re-
port the crime—but only once the company
was safely clear of Baghdad and he himself was
back in the United States, beyond the reach of
Hatley. Meanwhile, however, there was this loss
of three men in a single day. Cunningham felt
that he should have been with the patrol—that
maybe he would have done something differ-
ently. He wondered what was going to happen
now. Would Hatley dispatch other patrols to
seek revenge? Cunningham strained to get out
of Germany fast, and two weeks later returned
to Baghdad.
It was still summer, and searing hot. Two
more soldiers in Alpha Company had been
wounded, and two others were soon to die.
Morale was low, and the working atmosphere
was ugly. Word of the canal killings had seeped
through the ranks. Hatley was still comporting
himself as if nothing had changed, but among
many of his subordinates the attitude toward
him was drifting from devotion toward fear. A
sergeant in Hatley’s headquarters platoon con-
fided his own worries to Cunningham, express-
ing suspicions about wanton killings, particular-
ly at night, by certain gunners who seemed to
have joined the army for the express purpose of
shooting Arabs. Some of the rumors may have
been the result of ugly bravado, but as Cunning-
ham probed he was disturbed by what he heard.
In particular there had been an incident in
January of that year, several months before the
killings at the canal. The story had come to
him in significant detail. A remotely controlled
land mine had exploded ineffectively beside the
captain’s personal-security detail—a small ar-
mored detachment—and Hatley had rushed to
the scene with Doc Leahy and a quick-reaction
force. By the time they got there, the appar-
ent triggerman had been brought down with
a burst of machine-gun fire that nearly severed
his leg but did not kill him. According to later
eyewitness testimony, Hatley had him put onto
a litter and loaded into the back of a Bradley,
where Leahy worked to stanch the bleeding.
Hatley announced that they would transport
the prisoner to the combat-support hospital.
But rather than taking them north and east
toward the Green Zone, Hatley directed them
west, and after 10 minutes called for a halt on
an empty stretch of road. He then pulled the
prisoner from the Bradley and, with Leahy’s
help, dragged him down an embankment be-
side the road, where he shot him twice in the
chest. He zipped him into a body bag and
delivered him to an Iraqi checkpoint, no ques-
tions asked. In the Humvee, Leahy complained
about the blood on his clothes.
B y late summer of 2007, Cunningham trust-
ed nearly no one. His was not the only
dissenting mind. At around the same time an
Alpha Company private named Scott Thomas
Beauchamp sent an anonymous firsthand re-
port to The New Republic, where his wife was a
fact-checker. The magazine published the re-
port under the title “Shock Troops.” It detailed
various sorts of misconduct, including running
over dogs, the mocking of a disfigured female
soldier, and clowning around with a fragment
of a child’s skull dug up from a grave. But the
report turned out to be impossible to verify,
and the magazine was forced into a retraction.
Hatley sent an e-mail to a reactionary military
blog, the Foxhole, in which he wrote, “I can as-
sure you that not a single word of this was
true… My soldiers’ conduct is consistently
honorable… I’m proud of my soldiers and
would gladly give my life for any one of them.”
He signed it “Sincerely,” and probably did
mean every word he wrote. But Beauchamp’s
allegations paled in comparison to what was
really going on.
Cunningham continued to act out. They
had only a few months left to go before return-
ing to Germany. But after a particularly angry
confrontation with Mayo in the field, he entered
the Tactical Operations Center and told Hatley
he would not serve with Mayo any longer. Hat-
ley must have known that it all went back to the
killings. He ordered everyone out of the room.
According to Cunningham, he said, “You don’t
get to make those decisions. I do. I run this
company, not the C.O., and not you. I’ve been
putting up with your shit for months. And, Ser-
geant Cunningham, are you trackin’ that I’m
not afraid to go to prison?”
“Roger, First Sergeant.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“Roger, First Sergeant.”
Cunningham took it as a threat. He left the
encounter worried about his safety. Recently
he said to me, “Did I think Hatley could have?
Yes. Did I know about other cases of him ex-
ecuting and murdering people? Yes. Did I know
of situations where he was in combat and shot
people down? Yes. So, the temperament was
there. Did I think he would really do it to a U.S.
soldier?” He hesitated. He sighed. He did not
know. He had certainly been frightened.
V. Article 15
C unningham was now a pariah. He says
warnings spread through Alpha Company
to be careful about what was said around him.
Thirteen men had been present at the killings
at the canal site, and Cunningham was the one
who could take them all down. For Cunning-
ham it was a dangerous position to be in. Crit-
ics later blamed him for not coming forward at
JU LY 2 015
once, but the army has no mechanisms in place
that would have whisked him away and protect-
ed him. For precisely that reason, war crimes
are more common than is generally supposed:
they are simply too dangerous to report. A relat-
ed truth is that some number of soldier suicides
in combat zones are not suicides at all—they are
murders committed to cover up crimes. At the
highest level, American military leaders must
be aware of the pattern. They could begin to
remedy the problem if they chose to—just as
they have in the case of sexual assaults within
the ranks, where immediate protections are of-
fered to accusers. But war crimes are different.
The United States takes a serious hit every time
one is reported. It seems that the leadership
would rather not know about them than have
to deal with every one that takes place. The con-
sequence, however unintentional, is that soldiers
who report war crimes are put in harm’s way.
Had Cunningham come forward in Baghdad,
he would have been exposed to a battlefield
where there were a hundred ways to die. Even
silent dissent was tricky for him now.
Cunningham tried but could not contain his
rage. He was angry not just with Hatley and
his sergeants but also with the company’s of-
ficers, whom he held ultimately responsible for
the company’s actions. When the platoon’s new
lieutenant, a fresh West Point graduate named
Benjamin Boyd, pressed him one too many
times about his attitude, Cunningham turned
away from him abruptly, saying, “I have to get
out of here before I rip your head off.” Boyd
reported Cunningham to the company com-
mander. This forced Hatley’s hand. He dredged
up the two prior assault cases, added this case
of insubordination, and drew up formal Article
15 charges. Article 15 is a non-judicial disciplin-
ary proceeding by which a commanding officer
may demote a soldier, restrict him to base, dock
his pay, and require additional duty hours—
potentially with career-ending consequences.
According to Cunningham, Hatley called him
in and showed him the paperwork. He tried to
return Cunningham to the fold. He said, “Hey,
look, I’m going to give you the answers to the
test. You go seek amends. You go talk to Mayo.
You apologize your ass off to Boyd. You’re not
going to be a problem child anymore. This will
all go away.” Cunningham refused. The situa-
tion was getting out of control, and Hatley was
probably afraid. He had no choice but to send
the paperwork up the chain of command.
Alpha Company left Baghdad in Novem-
ber 2007, after 14 months of combat, and re-
turned to the standard hail-the-heroes home-
coming at Schweinfurt. Soon afterward,
Cunningham was summoned to the brigade
commander’s office and formally presented
with the Article 15 charges. Hatley and the Al-
pha Company commander were there. A line
on the form allowed Cunningham to invoke
his right to a full trial at which he could call
witnesses and defend himself—a court-martial.
He signed it. The commander was surprised.
JU LY 2 015
He said, “Do you know what you just did?”
“I demand a court-martial.”
No viable defense existed for the miscon-
duct Cunningham was charged with, and a
conviction would follow him for the rest of
his life. But he was defiant. He told me that
this was “one of those ‘fuck you’ things.” He
was going to force Hatley and Mayo onto the
witness stand and make them squirm. He had
been assigned an army lawyer, an inexperi-
enced young captain named Richard New-
man, to whom he had confided nothing. He
had no intention of bringing up the killings—
not here, not now. He wanted to go to court
for no better reason than to put up a fight.
H atley seems to have assumed otherwise,
and logically so: why else would Cun-
ningham call for a court-martial except to
expose the murders? According to Cunning-
ham, Hatley buttonholed him after they left
the commander’s office and said, “It’s that
fucking lawyer.” Cunningham denied it. In
fact, Newman was as surprised as anyone by
the court-martial request. Cunningham had
a 2005 Chevy Malibu that he kept in pris-
tine condition. He left the garrison and drove
home to an apartment that he shared with an-
other sergeant on the far side of town. Several
nights later he found that two of its tires had
been slashed. He read it as a warning from
Hatley. But if the tire slashing was meant to
silence him, it had the opposite effect. For
Cunningham it was the last straw. He went to
his lawyer and in the strictest confidence ex-
plained that the misconduct charges against
him stemmed from a much larger problem—a
multiple murder beside a canal.
Thus began a process, rare for our era, in
which a serving soldier—not families, not vic-
tims, not the press—dragged the army into con-
fronting a war crime. The path was convoluted.
Cunningham says he had no intention of using
the information to his advantage in the Article
15 case. He was too angry even to consider
making deals with the authorities, and he never
did. But Newman was intrigued by Cunning-
ham’s claims. Amidst all the drunken-driving
and bar-fight violations that junior military law-
yers have to handle, here was a chance for a
war-crimes case. Newman phoned his superior,
a senior defense counsel and army major
named Stephen McGaha, who then contacted
Cunningham. Cunningham said that he wanted
to come forward with the information. Realizing
that Cunningham was at risk of being charged
himself unless this was carefully handled, Mc-
Gaha insisted that he withdraw the self-defeating
court-martial request and take the Article 15
punishments. Newman was to gather the war-
crimes information in writing and then send it to
McGaha for modification into a document that
could be presented without disclosing Cunning-
ham’s identity. They would deal with the war-
crimes allegations, but only after working out
some protection. Cunningham agreed to the
plan. The Article 15 hearing was duly held.
Cunningham was put on probation and given
some extra-duty days—a modest penalty that
allowed him to retain his rank.
Newman, however, had run with the war-
crimes story. In defiance of McGaha’s instruc-
tions, without the approval of Cunningham,
and in violation of attorney-client privilege, he
took a barely modified version of Cunning-
ham’s written statement to the Schweinfurt
office of the army’s Criminal Investigation
Division, the C.I.D. He seemed to think the
agents could give his client immunity—despite
their explanation that they had no authority to
do so. The agents took the written statement
and outsmarted Newman into divulging Cun-
ningham’s identity, with no protection in place.
Newman had blundered. As Cunningham
remembers, Newman came to him and said,
“Hey, I think I fucked you.” McGaha eventu-
ally pulled Newman from the case and took it
on himself, but the damage had been done.
I n January 2008, the C.I.D. began calling in
the Alpha Company soldiers to break them
down and get them to talk. The interviews were
recorded on video and became part of the pub-
lic record. The agents’ tactics were convention-
al: having advised the soldiers of their right to
legal representation, they relied on the soldiers’
naïve reluctance to ask for it and urged them to
man up and confess, which the agents claimed
all the others had done. And the agents were
sympathetic. They said, “Hey, we get it that
those fuckers deserved to die, and Baghdad is
tough duty, and we all make mistakes—so you
might as well explain your side.” The videos
are painful to watch. They show the soldiers
proceeding in line to the slaughter. Only Hatley
is smart enough to demand a lawyer and termi-
nate the questioning. All of the others start with
denials, then waver, then end up baring their
souls. These are authentic records of an Ameri-
can tragedy. They are not for casual viewing.
Mayo is pathetic, his ambitions shattered. Doc
Leahy is forlorn. His initial lies are halfhearted.
He seems to be utterly broken by the time he
describes the killings.
The C.I.D. soon had a clear picture of
the main events—the murders at the canal as
well as the alleged execution of the wounded
prisoner on a roadside. The agents never
tried to question Cunningham, because he
had a lawyer from the start and had already
provided a statement—the original one. And
the C.I.D. could read the winds. Cunning-
ham may have done the right thing by in-
forming the authorities—Army values! Sol-
dier’s creed!—but he was a snitch nonetheless
and had become the most hated man at the
garrison. Ordinary soldiers mean-mugged
him when he walked by. They stopped and
stared. Under their breath they called him
“rat” and “bitch.” In their own way, the
army prosecutors were going to mean-mug
him, too. There was no need for further con-
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 115

The Good Soldier
versation. They thought they had him in a bag.
What they lacked, no matter whom they
went after, was corroborating evidence beyond
the statements they had gathered. The problem
was they had no patrol report from the killings
at the canal, no complaints from Iraqis, no
identities, no date, and no exact location. They
had multiple witnesses and confessions—includ-
ing from two of the people who had done the
shooting—but no bones, no bodies, no remains.
Much was later made of this by Hatley and his
supporters, as if therefore no crime had been
committed. But the likely explanation is either
that investigators were looking in the wrong
place—the killings had taken place in a remote
location and at night, more than a year earlier—
or that the bodies had been retrieved by friends
and family. Beyond that, it is hardly surprising if
residents did not want to cooperate with Ameri-
cans knocking on their doors.
In the summer of 2008, Hatley was
charged with pre-meditated murder for the
killing of the single prisoner beside the road
and the killing of four at the canal. With slight
variations, Leahy was charged with the same
crimes. Mayo was charged with pre-meditated
murder for his actions at the canal. Almost
everyone who had been on that patrol was
charged with violations of some kind. And
Jess Cunningham himself, who had tried to
prevent the crimes, was charged with conspir-
acy to commit pre-meditated murder.
VI. The Man from Texas
I n Germany, Cunningham’s defense counsel,
Major McGaha, was rotated to a new assign-
ment, and another army lawyer appeared—a
young captain named Jessica Bossi, who knew
she needed help. Bossi advised Cunningham
to scrape his savings together and hire a civil-
ian defense counsel—the very best war lawyer
he could find. Cunningham did exactly that.
Within days he had engaged an attorney in
Austin, Texas, named James D. Culp, a former
paratrooper and army defense counsel who
is highly experienced in war-crimes cases and
widely considered to be one of the most effec-
tive military-trial lawyers in the field. Culp works
for pennies on the dollar, defending soldiers in
trouble worldwide. He is an impetuous bear of
a man, six feet four inches and physically pow-
erful, with a rapid-fire mind and a sense of hu-
mor that can be devastating in front of a jury.
He immediately flew to Germany to meet with
Cunningham, whom he took on as much as a
cause as a client. After looking into the case, he
decided that the charge of conspiracy was fa-
tally weak. In legal terms, conspiracy requires a
criminal state of mind, a meeting of minds, and
action in furtherance of the thinking by anyone
involved. Cunningham’s presence at the canal,
where by some measure he had guarded the
killers during the crime, could maybe be con-
116 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com
strued as an “action” component, even if his
presence was imposed from above. But a crimi-
nal state of mind? A meeting of minds? All the
evidence pointed in the opposite direction. Culp
believed that the charge of conspiracy could not
withstand challenge in court. He flew home and
began sharpening his knives.
Late 2008. Hatley had long fantasized about
Norse warriors and had taken on the identity to
the degree of having himself tattooed with Vi-
king symbols and images. But it was hard to
live up to that now. He had his own civilian
lawyer, a longtime resident of Germany named
David Court. Because Hatley insisted on plead-
ing innocent to the murder charges, Court had
a difficult case on his hands. On his advice,
Hatley demanded a speedy trial. It was a gam-
ble. The idea apparently was to go through the
legal process before anyone else, so that the oth-
ers—because of constitutional protections
against self-incrimination—could not be sum-
moned as witnesses. Cunningham was disgust-
ed by the attempt. To me he said, “He showed
his true colors right there. He could no longer
muscle and intimidate and put the fear into
somebody. All the air went out of his balloon.
‘Hey, Hatley, what happened? You were that
big saber-wielding, lead-from-the-front macho-
man alpha male. What happened to falling on
your sword? What happened to it starting and
ending with you? What happened to loving
your soldiers and thinking of them as your
sons?’ But, no, he and his lawyer demand a
speedy trial so he can get through everything.”
I t didn’t work out that way. Cunningham
went first. Culp flew in and joined with Bos-
si, prepared to do battle over definitions of con-
spiracy. The court-martial was to take place at
the Vilseck garrison, near the Czech border.
Culp had already submitted a motion for dis-
missal, arguing that Newman’s unauthorized
delivery of Cunningham’s statement to the
C.I.D. rose to the level of ineffective counsel in
violation of Cunningham’s constitutional rights,
and that therefore the statement and the evi-
dence that resulted from it—meaning every-
thing—could not be used against him. The gov-
ernment had parried with arguments that Culp
thought must have seemed even to the prosecu-
tors to be a stretch. The decision would depend
on the presiding judge, Lieutenant Colonel Ed-
ward J. O’Brien. Culp had tried cases before
him in Korea and knew him from Iraq. He
thought of him as an excellent, no-nonsense le-
gal mind. On Thursday, February 12, 2009,
Culp and Bossi walked in to hash out the argu-
ments in the judge’s chambers. Cunningham
was waiting outside. Judge O’Brien started by
counting the prosecutors in the room. As Culp
recalls, he said, “One, two, three, four. I see four
prosecutors and one James Culp. You guys
need to go out and get another prosecutor.”
The prosecutors smiled at the joke, perhaps
thinly. They seemed to take it as a warning of
O’Brien’s intentions. Culp introduced new evi-
dence that further eroded their position. The
prosecutors conferred briefly and came back to
say that they would ask the convening general
for permission to drop the charges against Cun-
ningham and offer him unconditional immun-
ity, with no quid pro quo required.
It was a retreat in anticipation of defeat.
The move was formalized within an hour. Af-
ter months of maneuvering, Culp and Bossi
had won conclusively before the trial had even
started. Cunningham was stunned. When the
prosecutors asked him if he would have a prob-
lem with testifying against the others, he said
“Nope” without hesitation. For the next four
hours, in the company of his lawyers, he went
over the story again, and in greater detail than
he had previously provided. Suddenly he was
the government’s star witness. Stars and Stripes
and other American newspapers reported that
the charges against him had been dropped, but
without explanation; officially, Cunningham
was an innocent man, but the stain remained.
Soldiers in Germany believed he had cut a deal
to save his hide. This was untrue, but in the di-
vision he was despised.
Leahy’s trial came next. It was a full court-
martial, at which Cunningham and others
testified. Leahy had confessed to his role; his
defense was that he was under immense stress.
The jurors did not buy it. They let him off the
hook for his admitted involvement in the first
killing, but convicted him for the killings at the
canal. He was sentenced to life in prison with
the possibility of parole—a term later reduced
by a general’s order to 20 years. Then came
Mayo. After learning of Leahy’s sentence, he
plea-bargained a term of 35 years—which later
was also reduced to 20 years.
F inally it was Hatley’s turn. He had entered
a plea of not guilty. The trial began on
April 13, 2009, and lasted three days—long for
a court-martial. Security was high, with mili-
tary police positioned around the courthouse.
Cunningham’s was not the only testimony
against Hatley; it was corroborated by a string
of other Alpha Company soldiers, including
Leahy and Mayo. The jury consisted of mid-
ranking officers and senior sergeants, none of
whom looked happy to be there. Hatley sat
straight-backed, chest out, in dress uniform—a
soldier’s soldier for all to see.
He did not testify in his own defense but
summoned about 40 character witnesses to
speak on his behalf. All of them said he was
a great soldier, a great leader, and the best the
army had to offer. This is known as the Good
Soldier defense, and it is unique to military jus-
tice. It allows jurors to hear evidence of good
military character in deciding whether a crime
has been committed. Congress has stripped
this defense from military sexual-assault trials
but has allowed it to remain in cases of mur-
der on the battlefield. Among those who pro-
vided testimony was Command Sergeant Ma-
jor Ralph Beam, the senior NCO of the U.S.
JU LY 2 015
Army in Europe. In the end, after four hours
of deliberation, the jurors found Hatley not
guilty of murdering the single prisoner by the
roadside, though why they did so is not known.
No amount of praise for Hatley, however, could
overcome the necessity to hold him account-
able for the killings at the canal. The jury found
Hatley guilty of pre-meditated murder, and he
was sentenced to life in prison.
He rose to make a statement. The doors
to the courtroom were opened, and soldiers
crowded in. Accounts vary, but Hatley drew
himself up and declared love for his soldiers
and pride for having served with the best
damned infantry unit in the United States
Army. He did not give an inch. He called
out the name “Wolf Pack!” The audience re-
sponded with “Hooah!” Hatley was led away in
shackles. Later his sentence was reduced to 40
years. He joined Mayo and Leahy in the mili-
tary’s maximum-security prison at Fort Leaven-
worth, Kansas, where all three are held today.
VII. Return to Bakersfield
ing American lives by killing terrorists in Iraq.
This may indeed be what Hatley thought he
was doing beside the canal. And he appre-
ciates the support, as he repeatedly says.
The problem with the narrative is that it runs
counter to the story he tells, the starting point
of which is that no crime was committed be-
cause no prisoners were killed. This is what he
T wo months after Hatley’s trial, Jess Cun-
has consistently maintained on an authorized
Web site, and recently in a long letter to me. His
version of events is that the patrol came under
fire, pursued the aggressors until they were cap-
tured, took them back to the combat outpost,
then drove them to the canal and released them
for lack of evidence; that Cunningham was a
violence-prone malcontent; that when Cunning-
ham was threatened with an Article 15 he tried
to escape it by inventing the war-crimes story;
and that the prosecutors entered into a complex
conspiracy so effective that it forced all the wit-
nesses into agreeing about the killing, persuad-
ing Leahy and Mayo to confess to murders that
never occurred, letting Cunningham off the
hook in exchange for his fabricated testimony,
rehabilitation. Rehabilitation means a change
of heart, demonstrative remorse, and owning
up to misdeeds. Because Hatley maintains his
innocence, he cannot provide this.
ningham came to the end of his enlist-
ment. Honorably discharged from the army,
he returned to Bakersfield and civilian life.
The first years back were extremely difficult.
He received volumes of hate mail through
the Internet and found himself isolated from
Bakersfield society—nearly the pariah that he
had been in the army. Social media were not
a help. Women he met looked him up, found
the references to war crimes, and walked away.
Many of his old acquaintances turned their
backs. They no longer knew what to make of
him, and did not have the patience to figure
it out. At rodeos and football games, people
would sometimes take him for his twin broth-
er, then grow awkward when he explained.
“Oh, so you’re the soldier one,” they would
say, before easing away.

T his is a story that should be taught in army

schools. Better yet, it should be studied at a
dedicated center for the study of war crimes, the
equivalent of an aircraft-accident investigative
board where narratives are written, independent
of punitive channels. Alpha Company 1-18,
Baghdad, the surge. What happened here?
How could it have been detected in advance?
What are the dangers of esprit de corps? When
does a brotherhood become a gang? How does
a good soldier turn bad? What is the nature of a
good soldier? Is it the same as that of a war-
rior? What is the balance between narcissism
and pride? And, after the fact, what obstacles
exist to the reporting of crimes? These are es-
sential questions best explored through history’s
examples, but the army is so averse to negative
publicity that it allows the memory of war
crimes to fade, and tries to proceed just as be-
fore. That is what happened here. With Hatley’s
conviction and Cunningham’s departure, the
story got wrapped into a bundle and dropped
out of sight.
The protagonists, however, continue to live it.
Having admitted to their crimes and expressed
regret, Leahy and Mayo won approval in May
for parole and will be released in the fall of 2015.
Hatley is a different matter. He has become an
Internet martyr for reactionaries. They believe
that he has been unjustly imprisoned for sav-
and using their wiles to crucify Hatley.
So, he is innocent and will never admit
to the crime. On that basis he filed a legal
appeal, which was denied. He then filed a
petition to a higher court, which was turned
down, and another to the Supreme Court,
which never stood a chance. If he serves his
full term he will be released in 2049, when
he is 80 years old. Chances are he won’t stay
in that long. He is first eligible for parole in
2019, when he will be 50, still young enough
to rejoin society. Recently he has submitted
a petition to the army clemency-and-parole
board, asking for special relief. He has been
a model prisoner, of course. He has helped
to ease tensions among black, white, and His-
panic contingents, and has earned the respect
of nearly everyone, including the guards. He
has attended the Leavenworth Vocational
Barber College and become a licensed barber
in the state of Kansas. He has successfully
completed 1,080 hours in the prison’s Em-
broidery Technician Vocational Program. He
is currently enrolled in an extension program
of Upper Iowa University and hopes to earn
an M.B.A. by December 2016. There is no
doubt that he has behaved well. But there is a
problem with his petition to the board. The re-
quirements for release are tied to the purposes
of incarceration, which in the military include
Cunningham preferred it that way. He was an-
gry and distrustful. He drank, until he stopped.
He kept to himself, and still largely does. But it is
getting better now. He has a good job as a roust-
about at an oil refinery. He works out at a gym,
shoots at a gun range, and sometimes hunts with
his cousins in the mountains outside of town. He
has an immaculate pickup truck and recently
bought a house. But the problem of misunder-
standing remains. In 2009, CNN ran a short se-
ries on this case, focused largely on the suffering
caused to the families of the imprisoned men.
Cunningham agreed to talk, despite the advice of
Culp. When the reporter came to interview him,
she was so uninformed that as a way of breaking
the ice she said, as Cunningham recalls, “I have
a message for you. Mrs. Hatley would like to say
she forgives you.” To me Cunningham said, “I’ve
never had one nightmare. I’ve never had one
guilt issue about Leahy, Hatley, and Mayo. The
only thing that really upsets me is that three times
that day I failed to stop them.”
Every day he thinks about it. His parents tell
him he has to let it go, but he cannot. He tells
them they don’t understand. He is an extraordi-
narily gentle and courteous man. He loves the
army and is proud to have served two combat
tours. But he carries the killings inside his head.
As long as he does, in Bakersfield he will always
be the outsider, the loner, the soldier one. 

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JU LY 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 117

 PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE
Stephen
FRY
The English actor—whose credits include the 1997 film Wilde and the BBC series
Blackadder—now publishing his third memoir, More Fool Me, confesses
his weaknesses for music, South American powders, and his newlywed husband
W hat is your idea of per-
fect happiness? Lying
in one of two twin ham-
mocks on an English lawn in June. A glass
of something cool and vinous is balanced
on my tummy. A speaker hanging above
the tree plays Glenn Gould. A Wodehouse
novel is spread-eagled on my chest. I will pick
it up in a moment. Oh, the other hammock is
occupied by my beloved husband. What is your
greatest fear? Being found out. Which living
person do you most admire? Probably Daniel
Barenboim. His blend of insane talent, intellect, and
profound humanitarianism is one that comes along
very, very rarely. I would put Martina Navratilova and
Stephen Sondheim in a tie for second. What is your
greatest extravagance? My husband. I’m kidding,
I’m kidding … books, pictures, and a compulsive need
to have the latest version of every shiny smartphone,
tablet, and other digital geegaw. And a degener-
ate reluctance to turn right on entering an airplane.
What is your favorite journey? The drive through
the Alps to Italy. What do you consider the most
overrated virtue? Temperance. Which living per-
son do you most despise? I would say that a man
you won’t have heard of, Paul Dacre, longtime edi-
tor of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, has done more
to damage the Britain I love than any single person.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“I wonder,” “darling,” “yes.” What is your great-
est regret? Wasted years ingesting South American
118 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com I L L U STRAT IO N
powders. What or who is the greatest love of your
life? My exquisite, kind, gentle, patient, and adorable
husband, Elliott. Which talent would you most like to
have? Musicianship. What is your current state of
mind? Ridiculously cheerful. If you could change
one thing about yourself, what would it
be? My laziness. Not in work-related mat-
ters, but social laziness. Thank-you letters,
organization, that sort of thing. What do
you consider your greatest achieve-
ment? Loving and being loved. I know,
treacly isn’t it, but there you are. If you
were to die and come back as a
person or thing, what do you think
it would be? A neutered cat. What
is your most treasured possession? A
signed photograph. “To Stephen Fry, All the
best, P. G. Wodehouse.” I wrote to him when I
was a schoolboy. What do you regard as the
lowest depth of misery? Well, as one who has
suffered episodes of depression that have driven
me to attempt suicide, I cannot think of a misery
more acute than those but the horror of a swift
and sudden bereavement that has left no chance to
say good-bye. What is your favorite occupation?
Watching Joan Hickson as Miss Marple or Peter Falk
as Columbo. How would you like to die? Over two
weeks, in a pleasant fug of palliative morphine if neces-
sary. Just time to say a cheerful good-bye to everyone.
What is your motto? “How can I tell you what I think
until I’ve heard what I’m going to say?”
BY RISKO JU LY 2015