When Michael Solomon got the position of Editor-In-Chief of Première magazine in November of 2000, I was terrified. I had been working there since 1996, under Jim Meigs as head man, and while Jim and I had an often tumultuous relationship, on balance he really cut me a whole lot of slack in terms of my being an overdrinking, coming-in-to-the-office-at-11‑a.m.-on-a-GOOD-DAY, quarrelsome querulous asshole. Whether my reputation had preceded me or not, I had a sense I was gonna have to straighten out a bit, or at least show a Willingness To Perform, for the new guy.
Didn’t take me long to get my chance. As it happened, Michael, who despite my intimidation I took an immediate liking to when I saw that one of the first things he installed in his office was a sliver tray bearing two large tumblers and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, had an idea that he wanted to make a BIG splash with his first issue. Investigative reporter John Connolly (with whom I had done some stuff at Première during the Meigs era; I won’t go into it here, as I need to save SOME material for a memoir that I’ll actually get frigging PAID for) had an idea: Schwarzenegger, who was a well-known woman-chasing-and-pawing dawg with—ew!— pig valves in his heart, and whose oft-speculated-upon political ambitions were showing signs of stirring again, and who Connolly had excellent materials and/or sources on. Just put me on a plane, Connolly pretty much said.Looking very serious, Solomon asked me, “Can we do this?” I practically jumped into his lap and started drooling. “Sure, I mean four weeks isn’t that long if you want it for the January issue, but it shouldn’t be a problem.” The last big piece I had worked on with Connolly had taken eight months of reporting and vetting and long meetings with lawyers and publicists from pitch to actual publication. What can I tell you guys? I wanted to keep my job.
So out John went. We had worked out that as speed was of the essence, we would write-as-we-go. That is, Connolly would fax me notes or just tell me shit over the phone and I would craft prose based on them; not in my customary conversational piling-up-subordinate-clauses style, but in a terse, sometimes mildly ironic, slightly moralistic tone during the setups leading to just-the-facts-ma’am passages of scandal data. John was a real pit bull in terms of pursuing individual stories, and would go after any lead, so another part of my job was narrowing his focus. There were a number of different Arnold-behaving-badly themes he wanted to pursue, and just to keep the fucking thing moving, or because I didn’t much care, I would discourage this, encourage that. I remember having a devil of a time having PAL videocassettes of Arnold copping a feel off of a British morning show hostess converted to NTSC, but once that happened, well, there he was. “Playful,” I think his claque referred to this sort of thing as.
Of course Arnold’s legal representatives, once word got out that Connolly was turning up at greater Los Angeles body-building hangouts got out, took umbrage, and their pushback approach was two-pronged; first, they tried to remind the Première editors what a Bad Person John Connolly was (there had been some stock market shenanigans in which his name had been mentioned, back in the Golden ’80s), and then, rather peculiarly, coming right out and telling us just which bits of Arnold scandal they considered actionable, as in, “if you say [X], we’ll sue.” Almost a roadmap, one of our own lawyers noted, a bit bemusedly, as it turned out to be an incredible helpful document as we vetted the finished piece.
I remember being at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2001, having two-to-three hour conference calls with Connolly and Hachette’s legal team and Première’s fact-checkers (and let me mention that Hachette’s legal people were always incredibly helpful and encouraging to us whenever we did sensitive stories, which you wouldn’t necessarily think if you know certain aspects of the history of U.S. Première at Hachette) and thinking, “Holy crap, we’re really pulling this off.” We had a GREAT headline (“Arnold The Barbarian”), Matt Mahurin did a really creepy photo-illustration, and our stuff was fucking airtight. What it all meant in the larger scheme of things was completely beyond my ken at that moment, but at least I wasn’t going to get fucking fired.
You know who did get fucking fired? Michael Solomon. Before he had even served out a year as Première’s editor-in-chief. And believe it or not, the Arnold story represented the first couple of nails in his coffin. Yeah, we got A LOT of Hollywood blowback from Schwarzenegger’s claque: irate letters from very big-name collaborators, many of them women, complaining at how disappointed they were that Première was trucking in such baseless garbage and what a great guy Arnold was. (And I do believe, incidentally, that the protestations of Schwarzenegger’s great-guyness were entirely sincere; after all, don’t we all have friends who are generous and kind to us and may be less than entirely gallant in other respects, about whom we tend to say, “Oh, that’s just X?” when we hear stories of them doing things that aren’t so cool?) Every day for like two weeks there were a bunch of new letters, and the names: James Cameron, Jamie Leigh Curtis, Emma Thompson (whose verbal wrist-slapping was hand-written; I remember thinking she had the most beautiful handwriting of any living person that I had ever seen) and so on. But there was no black-balling, no “We’ll never work with Première again” grandstanding. From any of them. It was just due-diligent noise-making. Because, as much as they liked the fellow, they really did know what was up.
No, the blowback that counted actually echoed that which we got from our readers, many of whom were up in arms that we were “picking” on Arnold. It wasn’t just a matter of people thinking highly of Schwarzenegger; because of his rags-to-riches story and Terminator awesomeness, people actually had quite a bit invested in the idea of thinking highly of Schwarzenegger, and they just didn’t want that messed with. Quite a few of the bigwigs at Hachette, both French and American, apparently looked at “Arnold the Barbarian” and said “Why are they/is he doing this?” Hachette had acquired U.S. Première in order to unify it with the international editions of the book; aside from that, the company never really had much of an idea of what to do with it. THIS, however, they did NOT want to do. So the fellas upstairs all of a sudden got a little bit skeptical of the young man who had been their exciting new fair-haired boy just about ten weeks before. Michael was out in October, I think. And now when people cite the history of reputable Arnold scandal-mongering, all they talk about is the 2003 Los Angeles Times piece. Well, Première was there first, and we didn’t get sued. Next time I see Michael Solomon, I think I’ll buy him a drink.
“…not in my customary conversational piling-up-subordinate-clauses style…”
Without wanting to appear too much of a suck-up, I just wanted to say that your conversational piling-up-subordinate-clauses style is one of the things I like best about your criticism (among other, more substantial things, of course), no matter what some fuckwad with a tumbler has to say about it.
That PREMIERE story was the first thing I thought of when the Arnold story broke– I remember those photos, and just how horrifying the whole piece was to read (I mean because of what he did, not because of how it was written or edited). Thanks for the backstory on how it all got put together.
It’s A Man’s World After All.
Thanks for the backstory! I remember when the Première piece came out too, and I’ve been wondering (and still am) why everyone seems to think the L.A. Times broke the story.
Yes, this rang some significant bells. I don’t remember the article quite as clearly as the rest of you seem to, but yeah…I think I mainly remember the blowback from Schwarzenegger’s showbiz pals. Didn’t some of that get printed in a subsequent issue?
Yeah, there was almost a whole page of standing-up-for-Arnold letters; usually responses to pieces would run in the issue two numbers after the piece ran, but the response was so vociferous and immediate that we started putting letters in the next issue, AND the response bled into the issue after that. Don’t even get me started, lest I start condemning the clowns who didn’t digitally archive Première’s print run. Whatever website had it would be getting some big hits now.
The recall of Gray Davis – pushed by Darryl Issa and other fatcats to prevent Enron from being billed for the rape of Kaleefornia – and the pimping of Arnold is the greatest recent scam in the state’s recent history. And Arnold was enabled by the “liberal media” and a populace of media lemmings. Still can’t believe this slime was voted in TWICE.
And now, all those folks who voted for him are looking away, whistling.
Here you go Kenny…
http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/000300.html
Wow, thanks, and thanks Brian Flemming, whoever you are. I DO like that one quote, “In America Icould go all the way to Speaker of the House. I think I could bring a little spice to the job. I think I could put a little fire up their asses.” Yeah, that’s ONE way of putting it. I also remember the way I shoehorned in the film-geek reference to Arnold Stang and “Bloody Pit of Horror.” Good times. Or memorable ones anyway.
Even in 2000 this was old news. As far back as the early 90s I often heard this one:
Q: What does Arnold always say after sex?
A: “Remember–Maria must never find out.”
Ah, yes. Many is the time when I have told folks the “Eating is not cheating!” story. I actually remember reading about the blowback to this story, but didn’t realize it was so pronounced.
Thanks Bilge. Not to pat myself and Première and John on the back TOO much, but I’m reminded of A.J. Liebling’s observation: “Journalism is what somebody doesn’t want you to print. The rest is publicity.”
When the issue in question came out, I remember being impressed that Première was so prepared to burn some pretty big bridges in order to tell the story. And I recall that in the next issue’s letters page, Michael Rapaport rather childishly ranted that Première will be sorry when Arnold won’t give you a cover story for Terminator 3! And in response to those letters you added a bit about how the writer stands by his story.
Good work, Glenn – then and now.
Thanks Owain. Gotta tell you, back in the day, there were few better feelings than putting to bed a statement that ended, “Première stands by its story.”
Remember the story well, and the letters page a few editions later. (I think I’ve still even got those issues lying around the flat somewhere, must look them out.) Going further back, I also remember a terrific and very revealing Première article (from 1991 I think,) which detailed the making of the mostly-forgotten Disney film The Marrying Man and the behaviour of its two stars Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin who only got together near the beginning of that movie’s shoot. Anyone else remember that one?
Neil, I remember the piece on “The Marrying Man” quite well, not because I was there at the time but because it came up every time the magazine wanted to approach Alec Baldwin, as in “Alec Baldwin won’t talk to us because of…” and so on. I seem to recall Kim Basinger forgiving the magazine at one point or another. I also remember Bruce Willis having a bit of a grudge against us because of a Demi Moore piece. These protective husbands, it’s kind of touching…
Son of a gun. I didn’t know they still had “rewrite men” in the early 21st Century! I am tickled by the idea of a reporter phoning you stories, and you giving them the Kenny Touch. (In my imagination they’re candlestick phones, of course, and you’re all wearing sleeve garters and derby hats.)
Hollywood buddies will always stick up for each other. It’s not an ignoble impulse, but certainly not conducive to journalism.
The Hollywood buddy network seems to pale in the face of the French rapist defender network, although there is some overlap in that set regarding Polish directors.
@ Edroso: Thanks. It certainly helped that John Connolly was (and remains) what you call a genuine team player. And yeah, when we got all those letters we certainly understood it was all part of the industry-town give-and-take. I believe it was the sheer volume that gave us pause. Anyway, I don’t see Jamie Leigh Curtis or Emma Thompson saying anything now.
@ Pinko Punko: I’d ask “what’s your point?” only I already get it.
CNN interviewed Connolly for a story they posted this afternoon:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/21/schwarzenegger.times.story/index.html?hpt=C1
Correction – no interview (sorry), but they discuss what happened with Première’s story…