The last of Mrs. Astor
"When I was 40, I used to wonder what people thought of me. Now I wonder what I think of them," said the saucy philanthropist Brooke Astor when she was...
All Stories
Bob Dylan on voting, touring and being ‘misunderstood’
"SHOULD WE vote?" "Uh..." "Should we do that? Should we vote?" "Yeah, why not vote? Respect the voting process. Everybody ought to have the right to vote. We live in...
Fashion, Art, and Gloria Vanderbilt
"DON'T you think fashion is basically over?" asked the humorist and expert Cynthia Heimel, back in 2004. Well, fashion happens to be the biggest item in what we laughingly call...
Will ‘The Master’ command an Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix?
"WHY NOT go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?" -- Frank Scully, the late Variety scribe IN DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson's latest full-length film, "The Master"...
The legacy of Ben Bradlee
"THE WINNING party will be the one that is more optimistic about America -- even in the midst of a struggling economy," writes one of my heroes Fareed Zakaria in...
Bond, James Bond, is 50 this year … well, the movie franchise is, anyway
"REMOVE THE exotic touches and what have you got? A dull, prosaic English policeman." That's what Sean Connery said, during the filming of "Goldfinger," in 1964. Sean was already growing...
Conventions are over! On to the debates (and the real teeth-gnashing)
"THE REPUBLICANS left Tampa, Fla., wondering who had invited Clint Eastwood. The Democrats are now wondering who disinvited God," wrote my pal Gail Collins in The New York Times. This...
My ‘Ancient Evenings’ with Norman Mailer
"LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY!" This is the ultimate comment about the tiresome tedium of actually making movies. Despite all the romance, glamour and effort of writing, directing, makeup, costumes and...
How gossip thrived after the French Revolution
"I THINK THAT THE MASS of people are the same, but that they are differently influenced by a small nucleus of leading figures who change and are carried in different...
Ryan Lochte: swimmer, sex symbol, “Aquaman”?
"I CLEARLY see that Paul Ryan has a whole lotta 'rage' in him: a rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a...