I received a somewhat worried call from my mother last month. She was fretting about a letter that had appeared in the magazine and that sounded overly hostile toward me; she and my sister were becoming slightly anxious. Since I edit everything in Vanity Fair— Letters pages included—I was at a loss to know what she could possibly be talking about. “The one from Ed Coaster,” she said. “He sounds like he’s out to get you. I just don’t like the sound of him.”

I was taken aback, primarily because I don’t like my mother to worry. She lives a quiet life in Canada (no, that is not redundant) and isn’t up to the thrust and jab of the New York magazine wars. Furthermore, I told her, Ed Coaster is a parody. Of sorts. “Oh, thank God,” she said.

The whole notion of Ed Coaster is a throwback to Spy, a magazine that I co-founded in the mid-80s. We had a whole raft of pseudonyms back then: Celia Brady wrote a column on Hollywood; J. J. Hunsecker did the one on The New York Times; Joe Gillis covered the television industry; and a certain Michele Bennett wrote a review-of-reviewers column in which “she” critiqued the chief critics of the time.

One of the more popular found objects from the Spy days makes his debut in the pages of Vanity Fair this month. Spy fans will recognize the name Walter Monheit™, who reprises his role of movie critic—although at Spy he was billed as our Messenger/ Critic-at-Large. Walter was a raffish old fellow with a mustache, a monocle, and a tea-stained suit who delivered packages for us by day and somehow wormed his way into C-list parties, and even the occasional B-list affair, at night.

Walter didn’t actually write the reviews; a couple of staff members did (one of them, coincidentally, the same person who is behind the Coaster business). And since studios wouldn’t show someone of Walter’s low standing their movies, we had to review the films without actually seeing them, relying largely on press releases as primary research. Walter’s reviews were over the top, parroting the worst pufferies of the film critics of the day. For the 1989 movie Old Gringo, Monheit wrote, “Gregory Peck’s Golden Pond— and don’t be surprised if Oscar takes a dip!” When Michelle Pfeiffer’s The Fabulous Baker Boys came out in 1989, he weighed in with: “Ooofff! Pfour pfoggedup monocles pfor Pfeiffer!”

I drafted Walter into service this month because I wanted to do a little something in Fanfair on a film I’ve produced, The Kid Stays in the Picture, about the life of the legendary studio head Robert Evans, out July 26 from USA Films. And since I wanted it to be an insanely positive review, I couldn’t entrust it to one of our regulars. No, this was a job for Monheit™, who, true to form, gives The Kid five monocles, his highest possible rating. “Bobalicious! Evansescent!! This time, kids, it’s Oscar who stays in the picture!!!” Spectacular review, Walter. Five monocles—for my first adventure in the film trade? Take that, Edwin John Coaster!!!!