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Vanity Fair's veteran special correspondent pulls back the curtain on the world of celebrity and those who live and die there
Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth always makes news. From Hollywood to murder trials to the corridors of politics, this National Magazine Award winner covers lives led in public, on camera, in the headlines. Here she takes us close-up into the world of fame-bridging entertainment, politics, and news-and the lives of those who understand the chemistry, the very DNA, of fame and how to create it, manipulate it, sustain it. Moving from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Michael Jackson, the ultimate child/monster of show business, Orth describes our evolution from a society where talent attracted attention to a place where the star-making machinery of the "celebrity-industrial complex" shapes, reshapes, and sells its gods (and monsters) to the public.
From divas letting their hair down (Tina Turner) to Little Gods (Woody Allen and Princess Diana's almost father-in-law Mohammed Fayed), political theater (Arnold's Hollywood hubris, Arianna Huttington's guru-guided gubernatorial quest), news-gone-soap-opera (I Love Laci), and even the Queen Mother of reinvention (Madonna as dominatrix/children's-book author), Orth delivers a portrait of an era. She shows us the real world of the big room where the rules that govern mere mortals don't matter-and anonymity is a crime.
Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth always makes news. From Hollywood to murder trials to the corridors of politics, this National Magazine Award winner covers lives led in public, on camera, in the headlines. Here she takes us close-up into the world of fame-bridging entertainment, politics, and news-and the lives of those who understand the chemistry, the very DNA, of fame and how to create it, manipulate it, sustain it. Moving from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Michael Jackson, the ultimate child/monster of show business, Orth describes our evolution from a society where talent attracted attention to a place where the star-making machinery of the "celebrity-industrial complex" shapes, reshapes, and sells its gods (and monsters) to the public.
From divas letting their hair down (Tina Turner) to Little Gods (Woody Allen and Princess Diana's almost father-in-law Mohammed Fayed), political theater (Arnold's Hollywood hubris, Arianna Huttington's guru-guided gubernatorial quest), news-gone-soap-opera (I Love Laci), and even the Queen Mother of reinvention (Madonna as dominatrix/children's-book author), Orth delivers a portrait of an era. She shows us the real world of the big room where the rules that govern mere mortals don't matter-and anonymity is a crime.
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About the Author:
Maureen Orth's first book, Vulgar Favors, appeared for three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. One of the first women to write for Newsweek, she has reported for many magazines and was a network correspondent for NBC News. She began at Vanity Fair in 1988. Her late husband was Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News and moderator of Meet the Press. She lives in Washington D.C.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
From The Importance of Being Famous:
I tell these stories to illustrate the differences between then and now and maybe to point out a little of what has been lost. In my earlier days, stories about famous people were still mostly about their achievements, the content of their work, and how it got done. Michael Jackson dangling his baby from a hotel balcony would have been considered a tragedy or an oddity, but the scene would not have been replayed hundreds of times a day on TV at a moment when the country was preparing for war. But now, with so much entertainment just pap and politician's insights boiled down to trite sound bites, we tend to hone in on the drama of our stars' and politicians' real lives. Their reality has become the soap opera, the big show. Even if it's clearly a rigged-up carnival. (Would Nicole Kidman, who has now proven herself as a serious actress, be getting all the terrific parts she does if she hadn't also made herself into mass-marketable tabloid fodder as Mrs. Ex-Tom Cruise?) But what parts of these well-crafted little dramas are actually real and which are invented for public consumption?
I tell these stories to illustrate the differences between then and now and maybe to point out a little of what has been lost. In my earlier days, stories about famous people were still mostly about their achievements, the content of their work, and how it got done. Michael Jackson dangling his baby from a hotel balcony would have been considered a tragedy or an oddity, but the scene would not have been replayed hundreds of times a day on TV at a moment when the country was preparing for war. But now, with so much entertainment just pap and politician's insights boiled down to trite sound bites, we tend to hone in on the drama of our stars' and politicians' real lives. Their reality has become the soap opera, the big show. Even if it's clearly a rigged-up carnival. (Would Nicole Kidman, who has now proven herself as a serious actress, be getting all the terrific parts she does if she hadn't also made herself into mass-marketable tabloid fodder as Mrs. Ex-Tom Cruise?) But what parts of these well-crafted little dramas are actually real and which are invented for public consumption?
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- PublisherHenry Holt and Co.
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0805075453
- ISBN 13 9780805075458
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages384
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