Atlantic. April 08.

"Conservatives hoped that 9/11 would bring back the best of the 1940s and 1950s, playing Pearl Harbor to a new era of patriotism and solidarity," writes Ross Douthat. "Many on the left feared it would restore the worst of the same era, returning us to the shackles of censorship and conformism, jingoism and Joe McCarthy. But as far as Hollywood is concerned, another decade entirely seems to have slouched round again: the paranoid, cynical, end-of-empire 1970s. We expected John Wayne; we got Jason Bourne instead."

Related online viewing: Douthat talks about "Hollywood's Vietnam Moment."

Also in the new issue of the Atlantic:

"The evolution of Hollywood paparazzi from a marginal nuisance to one of the most powerful and lucrative forces driving the American news-gathering industry is a phenomenon that dates back to March 2002, when a women's magazine editor named Bonnie Fuller took over a Wenner Media property called Us Weekly," writes David Samuels, who profiles X17, "the biggest agency in the Hollywood paparazzi business." Their bread and butter is a hefty chunk of "Britney-related product [which] easily exceeds $100 million a year."

Related slide show: "The Celebrity Hunters."

"[Joan] Crawford's was a life less lived than produced, a joint venture undertaken by herself and MGM, and though it's been much better recounted in previous biographies (one by Bob Thomas, another by Lawrence J Quirk and William Schoell), the chance to gawk at its sad closing and then work backward, peeling off the layers of metallic maquillage, remains a sordid thrill." Thomas Mallon on Charlotte Chandler's Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography.

Posted by dwhudson at March 18, 2008 11:12 PM