By Charles Bowden GQ October 2004 She stands in the small kitchen of the ancient building by the canal. The stove rides at a right angle to the wall so that she can look out while she cooks in her fourth-floor aerie. She cannot stand to cook if she must stare at a...
By Diane K. Shah GQ January 1986 “Yeah,” I said into the telephone. “Diane Shah?” “Yeah.” It was ten-fifteen in the morning. I was in the office filling out an expense report, a chore that always makes me grumpy. I am never in the office at this hour, so I figured...
By Marcelle Clements From The Dog Is Us 1985 Fred Astaire is my hero, and I don’t care who knows it. “Gimme a break!” sneer the technocrats, the pseudo-dandies with the punk haircuts, all those who favor business lunches and open relationships. Yes, they will mock,...
By Elizabeth Kaye Smart May 1990 Old bodybuilders fade away, open gyms of their own, or become religious fanatics. These are grim potentials, indeed, and unsuitable to Arnold Schwarzenegger, a dubious icon who determined, at age ten, to be “one of the top percent in...
By Gail Sheehy Rolling Stone July 14, 1977 November 20th, 1976, a Saturday night, Clay Felker, the New York magazine publisher, invited Rupert Murdoch, the Australian publisher, to dine at Elaine’s to celebrate the announcement that had hit New York by surprise the...
By Pauline Kael The New Yorker October 5, 1987 It’s hard to believe that a great comedy could be made of the blitz, but John Boorman has done it. In his new, autobiographical film, Hope and Glory, he has had the inspiration to desentimentalize wartime England and show...
By Harold Conrad Smart July/August 1989 “In the end, everything is a gag.” —Charlie Chaplin It is 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday in January. Bill Murray has just driven his Jeep from Malibu to Palm Springs. I am waiting in his suite at Maxim’s de Paris, an ultrafancy spot in...
By Peter W. Kaplan Playboy January 1983 Eddie Murphy, a man of 21 years, has a check for $45,000 in his back pocket, a manager with tinted sunglasses standing near the bar, a producer from a Hollywood studio watching him from the door, a sound-and-video crew recording...
By J. Anthony Lukas GQ December 1984 Anonymous in their green Ford Fairmont, the plainclothesmen pull to the casino door and beckon three men into the backseat. Nosing into midday traffic, they head for the Italian community along North Georgia Avenue. “That’s where...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I’d heard nothing but good things about Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Morgan Neville’s new documentary about Fred Rogers. Plus, our pal Tom Junod is a featured talking head in the movie and I was excited for him to be a part of it. Tom, if...
By Lucy Sante Threepenny Review Winter 1994 We know from photographs and eyewitnesses that René Magritte, throughout his entire career, did his painting in a corner of the dining room, and that he went about his work invariably dressed in suit and tie. The dining room...
By George Malko The Distillery Winter 1998 Originally published as a short story in The Distillery, Vol. V, No. 1, in the Winter 1998 issue, it is all true, everything happened as I describe it. The movie star in question is no longer alive. Nor is the producer. I did...
