Nanette Varian

On magazine endings, beginnings, and whatever the hell is going on at Condé Nast. “The studios have closed down. There are very few pictures in production. Where there used to be 50, there are 18 now.” When I read those words, written by the mother of a child star in 1948, when the movie business was imploding, I gasped. Because that 70-year-old sentiment sounded eerily familiar. So did this observation, from Lana Turner: “My last few years at Metro were like working amid

One thing I always looked for when assigning or writing a story for More was the holy shit factor. Not necessarily an over-the-top tabloid ride, though these can be fun, too. I mean the unexpected detail, even a nugget, that would make readers’ goosebumps sit up and take notice. Take Sheila Weller’s heart-stopping account of war-correspondent Clarissa Ward, indefatigable witness to the horrors unfolding in Syria, who risked death sneaking into the country with memory cards

I was utterly unprepared for the heartbreaking but ultimately life-affirming story of Karolyn Grimes, aka Zuzu from It’s a Wonderful Life . I have loved this “intensely soul-shaking film” (as Grimes biographer Clay Eals so aptly puts it) for a very long time. My eyes start to leak during the cemetery scene—“Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn’t there to save them because you weren’t there to save Harry”—and I’m a wreck for the duration. When I heard what Grimes has

I might as well face it. Bill Cunningham is never going to take my picture. For the longest time I’d walk to work and as I neared the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th street, I’d smooth my jacket, square my shoulders, tug my pants hem out of the heel of my sneaker and hope that something, anything, in my colors or patterns would catch the eye of the octogenarian New York Times “On the Street” photographer . Yeah … nah. I watch him scan the scrum at the corner

OK, so what does a hit Broadway musical about a lesbian cartoonist have in common with a magazine article about a successful anti-abortion, pro-abstinence activist? Timing. Or, rather, time shifting —a challenge that sometimes arises when writing or editing a magazine story. Among the many glories of Fun Home is the seamless way in which the story shuffles time frames and perspectives among what we could call the Three Ages of Alison—precocious kid, gawky college student an

“Here’s her office info, just contact her directly.” That’s what the beleaguered-sounding publicist told me after I requested an interview with Roseanne Barr for Penthouse magazine. I was a senior editor there, and while I’d written for the magazine before, this would be my first major interview. I was a big fan of this brash, ballsy comedian whose hit TV show, Roseanne , was as boundary-breaking as she was. I said as much in my interview request, adding that her sensibility