KILLED - Episode 10: The Magazine

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

The brief, wondrous life of George Magazine—and the Gore Vidal essay deemed too risqué by John F. Kennedy Jr. Featuring Hugo Lindgren and RoseMarie Terenzio.To submit your KILLED story, visit www.KILLEDStories.com.

Way back in the mid-90s, when magazines practically grew on trees, an American prince had an idea. John wanted to establish George Magazine early on as like a real editorial, you know, kind of powerhouse. You know, it was JFK Jr. obviously, but it was also like this new genre of magazine that no one had ever done before. In the beginning, everybody wanted to be edited by John. I mean, partially because they wanted to see what kind of editor he was for the more season writers.

But, you know, it was like, of course, it's JFK Jr. I want him to look at my piece. I want to hear what he has to say. I want his handwriting on my piece. I want his edits on there. We had Norman Mellor write for us. Nicholas Lemmon, I think, wrote for us. So it was trying to get that New Yorker level writer

to participate. Which is why, for the very first issue, it made perfect sense to recruit a marquee writer. Someone synonymous with both political heft and style. To wax rhapsodic about the magazine's namesake, George Washington. No matter the price tag. I remember like we were just hearing whispers because this was like supposed to be the centerpiece. You know, they paid some crazy amount of money for it. Let's say it was like $50,000 was something, right? Just insane. And it had been broker by, you know, some big agent.

And they get it and it's crazy bad. It was unpublished aable and it got killed. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, Back to Life. Episode 10. The magazine. The inaugural issue of any magazine is hectic. There are dashed cover tries, skittish advertisers, and the tacit agreement between all staffers that this is full stop, the most important thing any of us will ever do. But the inaugural issue of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s super secret vanity project,

a publication intended to bridge the gap between politics and pop culture, was an absolute shit show. I just remember chaos. For five years, Rose Marie Terenzio was John's assistant. Her book, Fairy Tale Interrupted, a memoir of life, love, and loss. Retraces how she went from being a publicist at his friend Michael Burman's PR agency, to becoming the icons Girl Friday. Our original office was on 26th and 5th.

And I just remember we had a conference table. And I wasn't quite sure yet what Michael and John were doing because we were still running Michael's PR firm out of there. I just remember seeing photos, like unretouched photos with like markings all over them, mostly black and white photos of like tons of celebrities just like spread all over the conference table. I have like this crazy old Xerox of it and he and Michael Berman were going around pitching it. You know what's really funny is like, it feels like a magazine that you could score with today,

like if you were starting with a sub-stack or whatever. That handsome voice sound familiar? That's Hugo Lindgren again from episode five. The man who would go on to deliver the news that Jono Sarah's story about his dangerous doctor neighbor had been killed. Holy shit. But we're talking about the mid-90s here.

Back when he Hugo was just a baby editor. Back when magazines were flush with cash and the world was an absolute oyster for white guys with petty cash counts. So I had worked at a little architecture magazine. It was big size, but it was little in stature. It was called Metropolis. And I worked there, I guess it ended up being four years, it was my first real job out of college. And I felt like I would never ever,

and I applied for every magazine job that, like, I mean, it was even hard to find out about jobs back then. Like, I didn't know anybody worked at magazines, and I worked there, and I't know anybody worked at magazines, and I worked there, and I was actually looking back on it, like an incredibly great place to work. But I was just dying to be in real magazines, because like you mentioned metropolis,

and people would be like, I don't know what that is. Most of the magazine was about fancy sofas and stuff, and it was just a very weird magazine, and I just wanted to be anywhere. I wanted to be at New York Magazine, or I wanted to be weird magazine. And I just wanted to be anywhere, you know, I wanted to be at New York Magazine or I wanted to be at Rolling Stone or I wanted to be, you know, like in the big leagues. Hugo was a man with a plan.

Step one, get to a big time magazine. So when George started, I wrote John a letter right away. And I guess I found out where he was and I wrote him a letter. And he wrote me back. I still have a letter he wrote me back. I still have a letter, he wrote me back. He wasn't handwritten, but it was hand sign, but it was like kind of like typewritten.

Like it was like, you know, it's definitely like a personal letter. He's like, your background is of interest to us and we'll be in touch, you know. So I was like, so super pumped. Do you think he typed up that letter? Oh, definitely. Rose Marie, John's assistant,

remembers Hugo well. Well, Hugo and his bestie, another junior editor, named Manny Howard. Hugo and Manny were thickest thieves, and Hugo had a little bit of a man cross on Manny, and I think he probably still does. Indeed. Manny is one of my lifelong best friends,

actually not lifelong, because we met at George. And we were both in the junior editor's slot. And Manny and I have many adventures together in writing and magazines. Mani's the best. So I want to do a television show called I Love Mani, which is, it's I Love Lucy, but in reverse. So instead of the wife being the fuck up,

and the dude is the breadwinner, it's the wife who's got all her shit together. She's a total pro, and then the husband, it's just a piece of shit. And he's just constantly fucking up. So space a little bit on many. They were like the duo who would, you know, they have this like they wanted to try to be like we're real, you know, writer editors. And, you know, we're going to tell you how it's, you know, how it's gonna go down.

Hugo remembers reporting for his first day at George. Yeah, I was 100% stoked, like I felt like I was in the big leagues. Conveniently located at the Hachetville Paki offices, right at the brutal intersection between Broadway and 50th, right at the center of health. Metropolis had been at this little tiny office on the Upper East Side of 87th Street, very funky, kind of like, it's definitely a strange place. And I just was like, had this idea that I was going to be

walking into like the big, you know, some fantastic office and, you know, like, and we went to work at his shed. And so the his shed building, which we call the Death Star on Broadway in 50th, was just like disgusting. So we were like in this terrible, like the worst cubicles. Okay, so it wasn't perfect, but Hugo was legitimately stoked.

It was kind of as if Harry Styles wanted to make a magazine, but then just went to an oppressive skyscraper every day in Midtown Manhattan and actually made one. The heat on George was insane. Everyone wanted to know, could John F. Kennedy Jr., who had famously failed the bar twice, actually succeed? Very big launch and no small part because John F. Kennedy Jr. is editor-in-chief. Certainly, it helps, and it draws attention attention and what any new launch needs is that but ultimately this magazine is going to stand or fall on whether

or not it's a good magazine. And it was fun like Baz Lerman the great Gatsby fun. It was it was blast it was a party every night it was amazing everybody was the same age most of the people were single, and those who weren't ended up divorced. We'd have these big parties, you know? And then the junior staff would always be like, are we invited to the party? Not invited to the party.

The hierarchies were constantly being enforced against the junior staff, you know? But John would always be the one who then let us in, right? So he would find out that like we were being excluded from something, and then he would would make it so we were included. That was his thing. He was like a stuck up for the little people in the office. I remember being at a party for, it was a vanity fair party for, oh god, I can't remember. I think it was the night before the Oscar party party or something and Fiona Apple performed for like 100 people

in this mansion in LA and Brad Pitt and Courtney Cox were like standing right next to me, like watching her perform. And I was like, oh my God, look where I am. I mean, this like mansion in Beverly Hills with like Fiona Apple, like right in front of me. And Brad Pitt standing next to me like hanging out. You'd meet so many people in one night and then you'd see them again and then you'd have drinks with

them and we would all be trampling around the city together and just having the best time. Everyone was so excited about it. The whole city was like buzzing about this magazine and about it, the whole city was like buzzing about this magazine and you know you were kind of at the epicenter of you know, it was JFK, Jr obviously, but it was also like this new genre of magazine that no one had ever done before and there was like one side of people who were like this is amazing, what a great idea. And then the other side was like, this is a shit idea. It's never going to work. I thought you were a lawyer. I was. What happened? There was an opportunity here to change the definition of a political magazine. This is Kilt, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life.

This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. The newly assembled staff at George, a magazine named after George Washington, and run by John of Kennedy, Jr., who is very cute and charming, but is sometimes in high anise or lost your manuscript or whoops something else that's your job now, is quickly hurtling toward its first ever deadline. Kennedy and his partners say launching George has been stressful. The first two issues have more than 100 pages of advertising. They sold so many ads who are right

that they're just looking for anything to stuff in there. We worked on it forever. Like, we worked on it for months and months and months and like, just it got reshuffled, it reshuffled, it reshuffled. There was a lot of scrambling to get good writers, who name writers, who had legitimacy. It was really important that the magazine be taken seriously in both Washington and L.A. What happened was that it became a, well, not every article has to be by a superstar. You know what I mean?

And I think we were scrambling to find our own stars. It wasn't enough for the first issue of George to exist. It had to explode off the new stance. We need more literary muscle. I'm thinking 8,000 words on the O.J. Simpson trial. I have Stephen Maizell on the phone. Can anyone find John? I just remember like assigning stuff.

And then you know, you'd sign to your friends and these freelancers that you'd like call up and then their stories would get killed and you'd have no real good reason because like nobody would even tell you why. And then like you'd just be like, and then you would, also they re-did the page through the magazine.

They re-did it hundreds of times. So your stuff would be in and then it would be out. And you wouldn't even know. You'd go to the art department and you'd see the current layout or worse, your 3,000-word story would be 400 words. And you'd be like, what the fuck? I can't make this 400 words. But they'd be like, well, that's what John wants.

And you'd be like, what? And then you'd be like, we're looking for John, and he'd be in high-annice or whatever, like at the movies or whatever. And you'd be looking around for him to be like, oh, they took my 3,000 words, sorry, I made it 4,000 words. Anyways, terrible. It was the best of times and the worst of times.

It was a good time, but we felt important. And we dressed nice and we bought clothes and like, you know, John's girlfriend is new girlfriend at some point in this future life. Carolyn Bessette. She threw out all his old clothes or demanded to get rid of them and she redid his whole wardrobe

and then he gave us all his clothes. So we had all these fancy John Kennedy clothes. Those cast-offs would be like the prizes, you know, because those were like, ascenious to a Gucci shirt, you know, those were the good ones. And I remember that there were these shoes that he got. I think they were from Gucci and they were the wrong size.

And he was too embarrassed to send them back or call and say, hey, they're the wrong size because he's like, I can afford to buy my own shoes. I don't wanna do that. And he, you know, he was trying to give them away to whoever on the staff. And it was like Cinderella, all the guys coming in, trying to squeeze their foot and just Gucci loafers.

And you're like, dude, it doesn't, they don't fit. Like they don't fit, not for you. Who on? He and I were like almost exactly the same size. So like I have, like I still have, I have a bunch of his crazy old suits, like Armanii suits and everything. And then here's the best story.

This is the best story, you ready? He met Tom Ford who was running Gucci at the time. And he complimented Tom's shoes, whatever shoes he was wearing. Tom was like, well, give me your size, I'll send you a pair. So the shoes arrive some week later. And they're not the ones that Tom was wearing. They're some other shoes and they're terrible. And John looks at them and goes, oh, these aren't the one I want. And he goes, you want them?

And I was like, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them, right? I was going to go like return them to the Gucci store. So he gives me the shoes that are like $600 or something. It was like the greatest gift I'd ever been given in my life. And I run over to the Gucci store with the shoes and the clerk comes back and he goes, where did you get these shoes? I came up with an instant lie that I'm still very proud of. I was like, oh, my aunt was traveling in Italy and she bought them there for me. And they're like, that actually answered their problem, which is they were like some European model, but they didn't sell in the United States or something like that.

So whatever, they came back and they gave me the store credit. I got like some crazy sweater and a bunch of other things. And then like a week later, John gets a note from like Tom's Ford's assistant being like, hey, I think we sent you the wrong shoes. Would you send them back? And we'll give you the right ones. And so John comes and goes,

hey, I need those shoes back. I looked at him and I was like, I don't have them. And he goes, what do you, I don't have them. And he goes, what do you mean you don't have them? And I was like, I return it to the Gucci store. He goes, you're such a little bastard. Then he was like, oh no, proud of what he was. Anyway, that was like, John, you didn't care at all. I used to have a 20-foot. It was a motley crew. People were in the wrong jobs. They were partying all the time. So what if there weren't enough desk chairs or trash cans? Or that John would routinely forget

his bike lock key and have to wear his chain underneath his suit jacket. They were doing it, and it was edgy and fun. They'd even booked Cindy Crawford to be on the very first cover, and she'd been totally gay to dress like our very first forefather. And then the creative director, Matt Burman, no relationship to the publisher Michael Burman, had a ballsy idea. Well, if she's going to be George Washington, she was like, yeah, exactly. If I'm going to be George Washington, she was awesome. If I'm going to be George Washington, she was like, yeah, exactly. I'm going to be George Washington. She was awesome. If I'm going to be George Washington, I might as well be George Washington.

And then the photo came in. And I think John said to Matt, Matt, is that a bulge in her pants? And he was like, well, yeah. And he's like, no, no, you got to get rid of that. Okay, well, new stand edgy. And John wasn't afraid to make a tough decision. He'd personally bumped Rosanne, so Madonna could be their very first back page booking

for a recurring column called If I Were President. We had gotten Rosanne Barr to say yes to be the first if I were president. For the second issue, he asked Madonna. And he was away somewhere. I can't remember where he was, but I remember him faxing me. And basically Madonna said,

either I'm first or I'm not. He was like, listen, we gotta make it, we gotta make a splash here. And it's gonna be a much better piece. Fuck it, we won't run the Rose Ann one, we're running Madonna, I don't care if we piss her off. And so we bumped the Rose Ann bar if I were president for Madonna.

They were pissed. But it was one of those things where it was like, you gotta make a decision, gotta do it fast, we gotta get this thing out the door. And it was the coolest photo ever. She was in a blue robe with a blue towel in her hair, sitting on a diving board in a pool, and she was holding a goldfish like she was going to eat it. I was freaking out at how great that photo was, and her publicist ended up getting me a copy of it, and I have it framed in my

apartment to this day. Now, all they had to do was pin down Gore Vidal, the award-winning essayist who had written multiple best-selling historical novels, the writer, who was once called a treasure of state by the New York Times book review, the one who still hadn't turned in his essay on George Washington. The one, they paid top dollar four. This was like supposed to be the centerpiece. They paid this $1,000,000 for it and like, you know, Gorf-It-All, like this cover one, as if like, as if a magazine buyer be like, oh my god, I better pick this up. It's got Gorf-It-All in it. And then the piece did come in. Though no one can really remember what it was about, just that it was bad.

It's like Gorf-Hydal just doing like a work for hire, like just a, you know, and he's just like, fuck it, like, you know, and I mean, I don't know. I like, I don't know exactly what he thought, but he definitely did something that he did not think for a minute, whether it was like, publishable by the magazine that was hiring him for. It was in nightmare. It was awful. It was shit. I don't know if he didn't agree to the edits or he just didn't think he thought because he was Gouravidal. He wasn't going to do any. He was doing us a favor by even, you know,

participating. You know, he kind of disappeared for a length of time and wouldn't take any edits and how dare you edit me. I'm Gourvidol and John was like, how dare you turn in a piece of shit. Yeah, and John was pretty pissed off about that. And there was a lot of clamoring among the staff on, well, it's Gourvidol. Do we run a piece by Gorvidol that's crap

and just have his name in there? And it was just, it was unpublishable. And it got killed. Kill, kill, kill. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. John F. Kennedy Jr. had done the unthinkable. He had killed a piece by Gore Vidal, rumor to have cost him megabucks, and he didn't bat an eye.

One of the higher-ups came screaming down about how much money we were paying for a doll to kill the piece and John said, I'll pay it out of my own pocket. That was his kind of MO, like once he made a decision, that was it. He wasn't getting a back pedal, he wasn't gonna succumb to the pressure, media pressure, any pressure. He made a decision, that was it. He didn't make it lightly, but when he did make it, that was it. He didn't make it lightly, but when he did make it, that was it. The first issue of George Magazine, with Cindy Crawford on its cover,

Saun's Bulge, sold out on Newstands, moving nearly 500,000 copies, five times more than its competitor, the New Republic. It had a profile on FBI director, Lewis J. Frey, a conversation between Kennedy and his father's political foe, George Wallace, and that sensational photograph of Madonna on a diving board about to swallow a goldfish. Notably absent, a scathing essay on George Washington by Gore-Vidal, who passed away in 2012 and whose representatives did not respond

to Killed's request for comment. The magazine was a cultural phenomenon. You know, Donna called me on the rosy show and invited me to a party at Elaine's Fadehmi, who's on the cover of George, but I don't want to name John. And John did whatever it took to get the word out. Ladies and gentlemen, meet George.

Your mother was a hell of an editor at Double Day. That's why she had liked George. I think she would have. I mean, I think that, you know, when we first talked about the idea, she said, well, John, you're not going to do the Mad Magazine of politics. And I said, well, no. And I thought that was good advice to keep in the back of my mind. What the hell is this?

Well, that's a copy of George. It's a new political magazine I'm editing. I had the guys in the art department mock up a cover with you on it. It's pretty great, huh? That's it? No, no. There's a one-year free subscription with a card. Gee, I hope you didn't have to sell the compound.

But behind the hype, behind the glitz and the glamour and the Murphy Brown cameos, there was something else. The only bad thing about George was that we just couldn't figure out how to make a good magazine. It was super exciting. We were there all the time. It worked like 24 hours a day. But I didn't have no idea what we were doing.

There was a lot of, as you can imagine, a lot of writers who had to sit down with John in the office in order to really have the peace be. So it was, everything was sort of extended out because there was the factor of wanting to be around John and the magazine. Celebrity does weird things to people. Like it really brings out the worst behavior.

Like anything John Seder did was so amplified. And he was really a benevolent guy. Like I never saw him be an asshole to anyone. Like and he really did nice things for a lot of people. And he was a genuinely approachable, likeable guy. But people got weird about it, you know? And guarded their access to him. I mean, me too, I mean, I don't really remember

what dumb ways I acted, but I'm sure I did, you know, because like everyone did. Try as he might, the magazine's editor-in-chief couldn't get away from his own celebrity, or his own lack of experience, perhaps the only two things that can't be fixed with benevolence. And also, John was not a reader, so he would get these manuscripts in and he would just like he would just get easily bored and and then he would sort of say something kind of critical about a piece just in a like almost like in a bonding way you know he'd be like oh my god I'm reading this thing it's so boring you know he would say like me or like one of my colleagues

or whatever and he he wouldn't mean it like, oh, I'm talking behind this, enters back or something. He was mostly just like kind of like bonding with us. But then it would have the effect of like people be like, oh, John, I like this thing. What the fuck, oh shit. And then the photo, it was a, John had a little bit of a, it was a little too democratic sometimes. So everybody had an opinion about what photo should go where and where the pull quote should be and what the pull quote should be. I mean, it got to the point where you're like, okay, why is the intern telling the art director

where the photo, what photo is better and the one that doesn't work for this piece? And then there was the tone, the irreverence, the bipartisan spirit, the not just politics as usual tagline, all of which felt ahead of its time. It was certainly the beginning of this celebrity, right after George, every celebrity had a political person on their staff.

They had their publicist, they had the agent, their manager, and then their political director. I think the culture actually sort of adapted to George, you know, the whole like Bill Clinton going on MTV type stuff and things did sort of go in the direction of George, but like George was sort of a little too early to the party and also just we just didn't have the editorial sort of courage to be really creative about it. George may have been early to the party, but it didn't stay long.

On July 16, 1999, a small plane John Kennedy Jr. was flying, plunged into the sea off of the coast of Martha's vineyard. John, his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren, all died in the crash. George Magazine ceased publication less than two years later. George Magazine is folding this month. It's final issue attribute to a man who's very life embodied the worlds of celebrity and politics, which George tried to melt. And by then, the original staff, like Hugo and Rosemary, had already moved on from their beloved Death Star.

From the job to which a million others would never compare. million others would never compare. These days, Hugo's still writing, and he still has a man crush on Manny. Mani, best guy, good friend, wonderful guy. He, I just asked him, I saw him today, and I said, oh, I have to talk about killed magazine stories. And I go, so do you remember anything really good? And he goes, oh yeah, that time you killed my story on buying a cow. And I had no fucking idea what he's talking about. And I was like, what? And he was like, he's like, yeah, you killed my story. And I was like, and you know,

man, he is a journalist working in New York. He had a lot of stories killed. And I, I don't, I didn't remember it at all. And it was, it got on pleasant. Like, like, on, and this is like my dearest friend friend and it suddenly opened up this whole wound, like, like 20 years gone. I was like, well, there must have been something wrong with it. I wouldn't, apparently pictures were taken. He had like the meat in his fridge, like from the cow for like years.

I was like, oh my God, I don't, I don't have any recollection of it all. I go see that was the problem. You just lost interest in it and you killed the story and I was like, man, there's no freaking way I did it that way. I'm sure there must be another explanation, but of course I don't know. So anyway, that's how magazine killed magazine stories.

They don't go away. They just stay around and the hurt is still fresh. And Rose Marie, she's her own girlfriend right now. As a senior director at a communications and public affairs strategy firm in Manhattan. Every day she sees the influence of George. There was a girl in my office, she's probably in her mid-20s and I was looking at her phone

and I looked over and I'm like, sorry to be nosy, but what is your screen saver on your phone? Oh, it's the first issue of George Magazine. It was the first cover of George Magazine. It's my favorite. And I was like, what? And she had no idea that I'd worked at George. It was like maybe my first week there.

And she had this Indy Crawford cover, George Magazine on her phone as like the screensaver. And I was like, like wow that is really cool of these years later. Holy shit! Killed is an audio chuck production created and written by Justine Harmon, editing by Alistair Sherman with support from InMant, production by Amanda Fitzsimons, fact checking by Barbara Keane with research from Samantha Leach. If you would like to support independent journalists and protect the work they do while they do it, please consider

donating to the freelance Solidarity Project. Learn more at FreelanceSolidarity.org. You can find links to all the published stories featured on the first season of Killed at KilledStories.com. And if you're a writer with a Killed Story, we'd like to hear from you. Once again, that's KilledStories.com. Thank you for listening to Season 1 of Killed. Be sure to smash that follow button to stay up to date, because we'll be bringing even more dead stories back to life very soon. So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?