VANITY FAIR 

PUNCH HUTTON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Graydon: 

Just to update you on our Oscars-week crisis . . .

What I'm told is that we've asked for more rooms than the hotel can give us, so some of us will have to double up. Dominick is rooming with Sebastian Junger; I will be sharing a room above the garage with Matt Trainor; Marie Brenner and Amy Fine Collins have graciously agreed to bunk together, and Amy is bringing along some vintage Beene scarves to create a lovely partition. Ed Coaster, as usual, is being difficult—says he won't share with anyone. The most agreeable proposal we could come up with is to have him spend nights in the War Room suite, where Jane and Sara will be planning the Mortons party by day. Ed's been told that he has to be up by 7:30 each morning and out by 8 to make way for the gang; he said O.K. 

Let's keep our lingers crossed . . .

EDWIN COASTER 

3/11/03 

Dear Graydon: 

Just to let you know—the kids in the V.P. back room are trying to talk me into sharing a room at the hotel with Bob Colacello or some such. The old Ed would have tossed a shit fit, but the new Ed wants to be helpful. So—get this—I'm sleeping in the girls' planning room, and scramming in the mornings. I will, however, need the room for one important meeting I'll be having with Brad Grey. I guess I should have told you about this sooner: Some sharp young writer kid in N.Y.C. contacted me, told me he'd heard the media—land scuttlebutt about our ups and downs, and suggested that this could become the stuff of an HBO series. I've never been one for comedy, but the kid flew up to see me in Maine and wrote up a damned funny pilot, and his agent sent it to Grey, who's interested. So me and this kid—whose name is Josh Freelantzovitz, by the way-are setting up a reading for Grey in the hotel, and we've gotten Rip Torn to play me and Conrad Bain to play. Anyhoo, we'll raise a dram of Blanton's to each other in L.A., and I promise I won't lay a finger on Kelly Lynch this time.

VANITY FAIR 

JANE SARKIN, FEATURES EDITOR 

March 18, 2003 

TO: Graydon 

FROM: Jane 

You're in transit as I write this, but as soon as you get here. I need you to authorize Ed Coaster's expulsion from the War Room. This job is hard enough as it is, and it's even harder when you've got a septuagenarian creep lingering in his bathrobe and telling all of our girls that they look tense and giving them neck massages. And then yesterday, while I'm dealing with about 600 phone calls and Gray Davis's office asking why he didn't get his invite, Coaster strolls in during the prohibited hours with some loser goateed writer and Rip Torn, who's asking. "Where's Conrad? Where's Conrad?" I have no idea what's going on, and then Brad Grey walks in, and Coaster starts acting all obsequious and orders Lauren, my assistant, to get him some coffee! Coaster's getting nervous, and Rip Torn keeps asking, "Where's Conrad?," and Brad Grey's looking at his watch. Then some guy shuffles in, and it's Conrad Sam in an Anderson & Sheppard suit—dressed as you! Coaster says, "Let's begin," and suddenly Torn and Bain are calling each other "Graydon" and "Ed" and hurling profanity at each other and knocking over chairs and coffee cups while I only happen to be on the tone with the office of THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA. Which is thing compared with this morning, when Lauren turns the key and finds Coaster still asleep, and there's a NAKED WOMAN in the BATHTUB! Graydon, this man is defiling our workplace and putting your reputation at risk. I want him out. Now. do have to say, though, that Conrad Bain was really good-he has own to a T.