QUEENS OF DENIAL

Letters

Marjorie Williams's article "Clin ton and Women" [May] was wonderfully wise. Feminist leaders have accomplished much, but it is disheartening to witness the squandering of their moral authority for political expediency. President Clinton has granted women more autonomy, but sadly the old adage about power corrupting seems true here. The irony is that Clinton needs women more than they need him.

ARLINDA WILLKIE

Old Greenwich, Connecticut

MARJORIE WILLIAMS EXPERTLY cut through all the rhetoric surrounding the president's extramarital activities and exposed the convoluted reasoning of the feminists. As a pseudo-soccer mom, I find that explaining oral sex to my children is not as disturbing as confirming that the leader of the free world can't keep his pants zipped.

CHRIS ELLIOTT

Ketchikan, Alaska

FOR TOO MANY YEARS these noisy feminist leaders have claimed they were championing women's rights. The ugly truth is that they were always elitist and never intended to represent Everywoman. They remind me of the early Marxists who claimed to represent the workingman but who had about as much in common with them as Gloria Steinem has with a soccer mom.

JUDY WOODARD

Brooklyn, New York

I TAKE GREAT EXCEPTION to Marjorie Williams's view that Hillary Clinton is a dubious feminist role model because "she married her power." Mrs. Clinton is the strongest First Lady whom this country has seen since Eleanor Roosevelt, who likewise chose to look the other way from her husband's infidelities.

PATRICIA A. SMITH

Burbank, California

WITH THE STRENGTH of the feminist movement behind me, I raised my son to treat women as equals and behave respectfully toward all people. Now what do I tell my boy? "Oh, well, presidents will be presidents." Not only is the right happy about the president's misbehavior, ordinary guys are chortling over his getting away with this stuff, wishing they could, too.

ANN SINGER

Berkeley, California

WHAT HAPPENED to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty"? Is it possible that Marjorie Williams's feminist affiliations have superseded the journalistic standard of fairness?

BETTY WASSERMAN Rolling Hills Estates, California

YES, WE WOMEN should protest— against the likes of Kenneth Starr, who is demanding book-purchase records, forcing a mother to testify about her daughter's sex life, and searching for ugly truths among personal secrets.

ELOISE ROSAS Washington, D.C.

I HOPE MY FANTASY is true: that as Hillary smilingly walks hand in hand with her husband across the White House lawn for the press, she secretly has a sharpened fingernail pressing into his palm.

EMILY JENNISON Cross Plains, Wisconsin

The Godfathers

I ENJOYED Peter Biskind's "Raging Days, Boogie Nights" [April]. He truly exposed the rivalries, insecurities, and outsize egos of the upstart film directors from the 70s that ran rampant during the making of their seminal films. Clearly, the action was happening not just on the screen but also behind the scenes.

KENNETH L. ZIMMERMAN Huntington Beach, California

I WAS DISTURBED by the salacious and ungentlemanly tone of Peter Biskind's article "Raging Days, Boogie Nights." Remarks such as "This woman slept with every man in town," as well as his unkind policy of naming the women, are very revealing of Mr. Biskind's attitude toward women.

Throughout his piece, quotes are attributed to me which are totally false, such as "This woman was so great in bed." I think a man ought to be shot for making a comment like that about a woman, especially one he cared for and respected.

The article is rife with untruths and misrepresentations—done to make it sensational and sleazy. Mr. Biskind was offered the opportunity to have the manuscript checked for accuracy. That he declined is indicative of the fact that he was more interested in sensationalizing this era than in chronicling it accurately. This was an exceptional period, when many friendships and collaborations flourished among filmmakers. None of that reality is reflected in this article. Anyone who reads this piece or buys the book from which it was excerpted should regard it more as a work of fiction than as history.

FRANCIS COPPOLA San Francisco, California

PETER BISKIND REPLIES: Mr. Coppola's response to the excerpt from my book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is a classic case of killing the messenger. Although the directors I wrote about, now older and presumably wiser, who are looking back from the vantage point of the sober 90s, may wish to deny it, Hollywood in the 70s was a "salacious" and "sensational" time, in which people routinely behaved in ways that today appear shocking. I did not fabricate this behavior; I merely reported it. Indeed, it is impossible to understand why so many of these directors crashed and burned without looking into the extremities of abuse—directed at themselves and others— into which they too easily fell. Rather than sensationalizing this decade, I have underplayed it. I did decline Mr. Coppola's offer to fact-check the entire manuscript because I felt his true desire was to read it before publication, which no reporter could allow. I did, however, check portions of it with him over the phone and through exchanges of E-mail.

Re-creations of conversations were based on interviews with at least one of the conversants, and every single quotation in this book is sourced.

The Rudi Revolution

UNLESS YOU WERE THERE, and in the moment, you can't imagine how important Rudi Gernreich ["The Shock Heard Round the World," by Cathy Horyn, May] and Peggy Moffitt were, and forever will be. My girlfriends and I never noticed a model until Peggy Moffitt. We copied her makeup meticulously, had our hair cut at Vidal Sassoon, and just tried to be that cool. To us she was so much more than a model. She was the embodiment of an attitude which bore no resemblance to that of our parents' generation.

STEPHANIE TYRELL

Los Angeles, California

THE BLURB heading Cathy Horyn's article on Rudi Gernreich—"Today he's being honored as a pioneer by the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute"—is not true. "American Ingenuity," the show that just opened, does not contain a single piece by Gernreich.

For the record, Rudi and I were "married" both professionally and aesthetically, yet Horyn represents me as some weird interloper coming in on the third act, which is not only insulting, it is inaccurate. In order to be granted a trademark, I had to prove to the trademark office that a very special relationship existed between me and my work with Rudi Gemreich. I did this by sending them the book about him, The Rudi Gemreich Book, which I wrote with my husband, William Claxton. I included a letter explaining my devotion and our years of collaboration that had turned me into a virtual symbol of Rudi Gemreich.

What is so "preposterous" about bringing his designs back? I am told that in Beverly Hills the two vintage designs that appeared on the cover of Time in 1967 were for sale for $5,000 and $7,000. Recently, Sotheby's auctioned off a Rudi swimsuit for $2,875. There is obviously a market for Gemreich designs. If they were brought back, he would be credited for his genius, and they would be more affordable than the knockoffs with other designers' names on them that are currently available. I think it would be wonderful to bring his designs back, and so does every person I have mentioned it to, with the one exception of Ms. Horyn.

By the way, dear Rudi did know how to set a sleeve, and never wore a cravat a day in his life. Oh, I could go on.

PEGGY MOFFITT Beverly Hills, California

CATHY HORYN REPLIES: It is true that, in the end, the exhibit at the Costume Institute included no pieces by Rudi Gemreich. Through press time, however, the institute was intending to make Gemreich a substantial part of the show, his clothes were pulled at the last moment.

Nowhere in my article do I imply that Peggy Moffitt was a "weird interloper" in Gemreich's life. In fact, she was described as the designers "most sensational-looking model" and "the model most associated" with his work. As for the trademark matter, I questioned Moffitt on two occasions about her right to use Gemreich's name without informing Oreste Pucciani, Gemreich s executor and longtime companion. She told me she had not consulted Pucciani and saw no reason to do so. As Moffitt correctly states, Pucciani has known for many years of her "dream" to bring back Rudi's designs. It is also true, however, that he has opposed it. Moffitt neglects to point out that Gemreich himself made no attempt in his lifetime to reissue his designs.

Finally, Gemreich did occasionally wear a cravat, as photographs on pages 11 and 80 of Moffitt's own book show.

CORRECTIONS: On page 114 of "A Night to Remember" (June), the last names of the creators of South Park were transposed. They are Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In David Margolick's article about the von Holtzbrinck media empire, "The German Front" (June), the amount paid for author Paul Auster's multi-book deal was misstated. It was approximately $775,000.

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