EDITOR'S LETTER

For Your Consideration...

Washington in the age of George W. Bush has entered, as Mark Danner pointed out in The New York Times, its postfactual period. As one White House official told a reporter at the end of the presidential campaign, journalists were still living “in what we call the reality-based community.” The administration, you see, has moved on to a more convenient playing field, one that it and its followers can see but that few others can even comprehend. It is a place where facts are passe, old hat; last year’s news. It is a place far from the ancient weapons of tiresome realists; a place where administration members can keep their heads high in the clouds or deep in the sand. It is a place where a calamitous war and subsequent occupation are declared a success, and where a Social Security program that not only works but works well is branded a failure. It is a place where a president at first pledges $4 million in relief for victims of a tsunami—the worst natural disaster in history—knowing that $40 million was earmarked for his inauguration festivities in a month’s time. It is a place where the war avoider gets to strut the world stage like a bemedaled bantam rooster, and the war hero was made to crab-walk to the wings of the Senate like a wimp.

You would think that Los Angeles, as a community, would Tm thrive in this post-factual age. And for the most part it does— I ask people out there how old they are, what they do for a living, if they’ve had work done, and so forth, and you will see what I mean. Yes, people in Hollywood love to live in their manicured, fictional world. Except when it comes to actually making movies. Here Hollywood has entered a post-fictional period, where almost every story worth telling is one that has already been lived. Think of the movies made over the last year. So many were fact-based: The Aviator, Ray, The Motorcycle Diaries, Hotel Rwanda, Alexander, Finding Neverland, Kinsey, Beyond the Sea, Friday Night Lights, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, The Sea Inside, De-Lovely, and on and on. Even The Terminal was based in part on a true story.

For young actors setting out on life’s road, my role in the re⅜ make of that pre-factual classic Alfie might prove instructive. In I mid-2003, I received a letter from Mindy Marin, a relatively well-known casting director. The letter said that she was working on a remake of Alfie, which was to be directed by Charles Shyer. Her letter said that they were looking for a “Graydon Carter type” to fill the part of Wes, a wealthy businessman with a mistress, to be played by Susan Sarandon. Although I couldn’t quite figure out what a “Graydon Carter type” was—a balding, overweight, wage ape?—I do admit to being flattered by the offer. I read the script, by Shyer and Elaine Pope, and thought they had done a superb job of updating the 1966 Michael Caine original. And besides: they had Jude Law playing Alfie.

I said I was interested.

A week or so later, during a casual conversation with then CBS chairman Les Moonves, he mentioned with some degree of pride that he had been offered a part in a movie.

I became suspicious.

“AlfieT’ I asked.

“Yes!” he replied with some amazement.

“The part of Wes?”

“Yes!!”

I went out on a limb. “Did they tell you they were looking for a ‘Les Moonves type’ for the part?”

“Yes!!!”

We both felt deflated. And, indeed, after a bit more digging we discovered that the producers had also been looking for a “Barry Levinson type,” a “Morgan Entrekin type,” and goodness knows what other types who could spin an Oscar-worthy performance out of seven lines of dialogue. This wasn’t the first time I had been in competition for a role. Some years ago, Dick Wolf was looking for an editor to play a bit part in H.E.L.P., a television series he produced prior to creating Law & Order. I asked Wolf if I was his first choice. “No,” he said. “[Harper’s editor] Lewis Lapham said it was beneath him, and [Paris Review editor] George Plimpton wasn’t available.” H.E.L.P. went off the air shortly after I appeared on it. Law & Order has apparently met with some success. And Alfie, alas, didn’t live up to expectations. Me, I’m still waiting for my close-up—any close-up. A long shot will do.

I'm deeply saddened to have to report that Vanity Fair contributing editor Marjorie Williams died earlier this year following a three-and-a-half-year battle against liver cancer. She was only 47 and is survived by two young children and her husband, Tim Noah. A master of the political profile, Marjorie had that rare combination of old-school reporting smarts and newer-school social and psychological insight. On top of this, she was a witty and graceful stylist—in short, what I’d like to think of as the beau ideal of a Vanity Fair writer. She came to the magazine in 1992 from The Washington Post (where she also wrote an op-ed column, beginning in 2000) and caused an immediate stir with a tart, unsentimental profile of Barbara Bush. (Her lead: “Even Barbara Bush’s stepmother is afraid of her.”) The Clinton years, with their parade of Balzacian (or was it Faulknerian?) characters, were a feast for Marjorie, and her analysis of A1 Gore’s testy, mutually suspicious, and ultimately self-defeating relationship with Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign was definitive and one of the best things written about that election, period. Her illness kept Marjorie from working much over the last few years, and I can only imagine what she would have made of such eminently dissectible Bush II figures as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice. Her fight against her cancer was not easy, as you can imagine, but I never knew Marjorie to lose her quick sense of humor, her unsparing intelligence, her empathy, or her passion—the very qualities that made her a wonderful writer as well as a treasured friend. As a journalist, and as a lunch companion, she had few peers and no betters.

GRAYDON CARTER