The Bill Simmons Podcast - Smart-Gal Wednesday: Publishing Maven Janice Min on Us Weekly’s Heyday, The Hollywood Reporter’s Rejuvenation, and the Harvey Weinstein Fallout (Ep. 281)

Episode Date: November 1, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by publishing power player Janice Min to discuss Us Weekly's heyday (6:00), the increased intimacy of celebrity coverage (14:00), the "Brangelina" coverage (19:00), the relatable act upheld by the Kardashians (25:00), working with Jann Wenner (33:00), the end of the celebrity era as we know it (50:00), revamping The Hollywood Reporter (57:00), and how the Harvey Weinstein saga has flipped Hollywood on its head (1:10:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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publishing industry, Janice Mann. But first, Pearl Jam. This is exciting. We've done a couple Smart Guy Wednesdays. I've been dying to do a Smart Gal Wednesday. Janice Min. Hi. One of the smartest.

What's your title now? I don't even know how to describe it. Okay, so I was running The Hollywood Reporter for a long time, and now I work for the parent company, The Owner, which also, my owner also owns The Dodgers, so today is a good day. Oh, wow. Yes.

I bet you can get decent seats. I'm going tonight. It's one of the perks, going tonight to game seven. So my title is I'm a strategist with Eldridge Industries. Strategist. Strategist, which sounds very strategic, right? That's exciting. But you're also running Billboard though too, right? I was running Billboard.

So I did Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, and both of them required some renovation work to be brought up to speed. So that was the job I had for seven years. So you take over Us Weekly like 2002? Yes. Us Weekly, which I grew up with, was always like the ugly stepbrother of People Magazine. People Magazine was like the awesome magazine. Us Weekly was like kind of the stepbrother that came with it

it moved in like later and it smokes in the backyard kind of stay away from it it's got some pictures and then over that decade it became one of the great reads I was judged by magazines by reads which is why I like the Hollywood Reporter

you've been involved in two of my favorite magazines which is why I wanted to have you on. But I like to get like 30 minutes out of my magazine. Totally. And so many of them aren't like that anymore. Us Weekly in its heyday was like, man, I got 35 minutes here with this Us Weekly. I'm ripping through it. I think the thing that was so fun about Us Weekly at the time, I mean, it was just like spot on in the zeitgeist, right?

But it wasn't in 2002. No, it wasn't. And so it became, it became, so what happened? Uh, let's see. So you go in and you say, how do we be different from people magazine? How do we stand out? And, and there's a void here. How did you see the void? Um, so this is the void I saw it was, so I, you know, I had worked at People and it was always, even when I worked there in my early 20s and even when I was there, you know, it was like, oh God, I'm never going to read this. It was just very, it always felt like something your mother would read.

It was a lot of like children falling into wells. And really earnest and, you know, I hate earnest. Earnest is one of my least favorite things. But then like the 50 best looking celebrities, that would be an issue. They would kind of straddle both worlds. They tried. There's a lot of Americana. Yes. And it's very broad and hugely successful.

So I'm not demeaning anything that they've done. It's still working. Even to this day, I would still think of it as a magazine my mom reads, even though I'm now like the mom in the demographic of that publication. But at Us Weekly, you could just sort of see the tide shifting and you could see this relationship with celebrity completely changing where, you know, I think the 90s were built on this whole idea of access journalism for publications.

And, you know, models don't go on magazines anymore. Celebrities do. So this whole competition to get celebrities on covers and some of them being, you know, forced on by Harvey Weinstein, but whatever. We'll talk about that later. We're going to talk about that later. And so then this access journalism, as I think people in media now know, there are so many compromises with that, right? That you, oh my God, can you not mention the DUI?

Can you, you know, let's not talk about the divorce. And it becomes, so all the sort of rough edges. She'll do the photo shoot, but you can't mention that she broke up that guy's marriage right so leave that out totally so all the rough edges are get sanded off and so then you know you get this sort of picture perfect you know julia roberts served up to you you know from your interview in the lobby of the beverly hills hotel where it's amazing she doesn't eat she no she a hamburger, but she's so thin and beautiful. I know. How does she do that? How does she do it? She had two cheeseburgers. And she's not wearing makeup, but she's so beautiful.

She's so naturally pretty. Yeah. So that kind of journalism, I felt like in the world of publishing really dominated in the 90s. But hold on though. Right. That changed near the end of the decade because the early part of the decade, there was good stuff going on. Like Vanity Fair having a resurgence.

Spy was still there for the first part of the decade. Entertainment Weekly was really good. Premiere was good. I agree. But then it shifted. And I never understood why it shifted. I think it shifted. I think the access game got hard.

And I also think that this is not blaming anyone but i think that um i think that editors get co-opted too i think that i think that it's hard to stay the course when someone when all these powerful famous people want you know they want to befriend you whatever their motivations are they want and this is again going back to wine so much we'll talk about they want to maybe give you money they They want to option your stories. Invite you to parties and dinners that you couldn't have gone to five years ago. I think it's very, very hard.

I think Kim Masters, who's one of the writers of The Hollywood Reporter, who you couldn't corrupt, even if you put like $5 million in front of her. She always said there's almost no editor who cannot who hasn't been corrupted and that and and that she's someone who will tell you tales often about her stories when she worked uh at various publications vanity fair premiere time that that that got killed or were sort of softened and managed into non-existence um she

did have a funny story and i'll get back to what we were talking about she told me this funny story and i think she wrote about it once for us when um um she did a story about michael ovitz throwing a fit i can't remember which restaurant in in la at the time and it was the thing and he was at the top of his power and rupert murdoch uh rupert murdoch owned premiere at the time and and so Ovitz knows this story this item is coming about him throwing a fit one of these little gossip items and he calls Susan Line who was then the editor

of Premiere and Susan Line went on to run ABC Entertainment and Guilt Group and a bunch of other stuff and so he's trying to get Susan Line enraged and so anyway it becomes this whole behind the scenes drama as as these stories often do, over, you know, Michael Ovitz complaining about where he's sitting in a restaurant. And so then Susan Line calls Rupert Murdoch and just says,

and then Ovitz is threatening to call Rupert Murdoch. And so Susan Line calls Rupert and reads the item to him. And Rupert said, wait, can you read it to me again? Because it's so hilarious. I have to know how I can retell it to my friends. And that was it. And so, you know, so he's one of those people. I mean, maybe he's obviously Fox News is a whole other situation. And that can be used as an exception. But you know, he's one of those people who I think has let his journalists, you know, do what they need to do. But so the access game, yes, it changed things. And then

also the culture of celebrity was changing. I always say it's no coincidence that reality TV and Us Weekly rose at the same time. And it was a it was a sort of, you know, breaking through of what we considered celebrity and also this idea. And you can think of it as a precursor to social media. Now, this intimacy that celebrity is just within anyone's grasp, right? And so it's this familiarity that younger people were beginning to feel that you could call Britney Spears is not Britney. And as an Us Weekly former reader, you would know she's Britney, you know, she's one name, she's Christina Aguilera is Christina. And this this idea that they were somehow these these young celebrities

were part of a young, young person's own social world and this intimacy that you felt and also and then you saw these celebrities also participating in that that the whole breaking through into stardom wasn't just about the glossy photo shoot, but also doling out your person, you know, your personal stories in a way that got you more attention. So it was it was the sense of it was a sense of that being able to, you know, package those people in a way that made them interesting to a young audience. And also to get people excited about them, right. And I always feel like the 90s, where there's a separation between fans and celebrities, right? Yes.

So like, for example, the Pam Anderson sex tape comes out in 1996, pre-internet. Right. This was like this massive moment for guys in their 20s. Right. Pam Anderson's having sex on tape? Right. This is incredible. And now 20 years later, people would be like, eh.

You might not even click on it. And it's been this gradual push in 20 years. And I think what you mentioned with that beginning of the 2000s, because I was working at a Jimmy show at the beginning of that. And it was right when the reality craze was starting. So it started with Survivor in 2000, but then it started to go and The Bachelor and all these shows. But then all of a sudden, I remember Whitney and Bobby had a show.

Remember that? All of a sudden, these people were on TV and they were famous celebrities. Right. It's like, you have a reality show? And it just seemed like we started moving closer to the celebs. And now into that comes Us Weekly. Yes, right. With the pictures and stars.

They're just like us. Look, there's Ben Affleck getting coffee. He's taking his garbage. He's just like us. Look, there's Ben Affleck getting coffee. He's taking his garbage. He's just like me. Who knew he had garbage, right? I had no idea Ben Affleck had garbage. And I can't tell you the number of times people still use that phrase today, right? Stars, it just encapsulates.

Genius. Well, and also, you must have started Stars Like Us, right? No, my predecessor, Bonnie Fuller, did. I was her deputy at the time, but she started it. The Fashion Police was from the 90s, right? Yes. Yes, and it was not funny. And then it became funny.

Became super funny. And people were like, it was, I thought, a real breakthrough moment. There were several breakthrough moments there where I thought this was moving the needle ahead for us. When we would have big names come to us wanting to do it, right? What about big names getting mad that they were in the Fashion police? You must've had that all the time, right? Not really. I think it's like, it's one of those things. And this is the shift of that decade was, is any attention better than no attention? And usually the answer is probably the name, right? Right. It's probably yes. Right. I think that, um, uh, you know, you think about, I always say this about celebrity in Hollywood, like it's probably yes right i think that um uh you think about i i always say

this about celebrity in hollywood like it's like being elected to political office you have to the second you're in the second you have that hit show or a movie you are trying really hard to you're thinking about your midterm election and maybe you know 2020 like you have to keep that alive and going and how do you stay front of mind? How do you have people care about you? I mean, all their anxieties. And you see this again in all the Weinstein stuff, all their anxieties. There is so much fear around all of that, that your last job was your last job. And so Us Weekly and that whole machinery around that sort of fed into the front of mind.

Well, you also had your three mad two magical magical stories for us weekly probably the two best of all time african jlo magical magical i mean how many covers and and stories was that like like six nine twelve fifteen months i don't even know at least and that was that was and he's kind of fought he's kind of falling apart behind the scenes a little bit. Yes. So you get those pictures of- I remember my-

I don't even think she was my wife yet, but my future wife was like, I'm worried about Affleck. Us Weekly photo. He just looks like he's in bad shape. Are you sure he's all right? I'm like, I don't know. Is he getting coffee?

But that was number one. And then obviously the motherlode. Brad, Jen, Angelina. I mean, I'll never be ready. It could be a seven-hour documentary. I'll never be replicated. And we still, I mean, you could not have, you know, you couldn't have, no script writer, no writer's room in town could have made those up.

It's the greatest Hollywood celebrity story probably of all time. The greatest. The greatest. The biggest temptress in Hollywood. Right. At the peak of her powers. Yes. Demolishes the world's best celebrity couple.

Yes. On a movie set. Uh-huh. Everyone's at the peak of their powers. Yes. It's unbelievable. And then do you remember how they did, then Brad and Angelina did that W photo shoot? Oh, yeah.

Like, you just like salt in the wound. And I mean, it was really and plus rumors of it for months and months and months so you already had the seeds of that oh it was it was that was quite a saga and i think so that like triple your business i mean it just it just kept yes i mean like the the reverberations of those stories were just huge right people like it was like the crack cocaine of that decade, right? You just had to, you had to have more and more. Everyone took sides.

Yeah. Weirdly, there was Angelina sides, which I never understood. Well, the bad girls. Well, yeah, you can't judge love. I mean, if they love each other, you know, there's that. Or the whole, like, a woman can't break up a marriage. A man does it, too. Like, you know, that argument. But break up a marriage. A man does it, too. That argument.

But when you think about it, think how much celebrity has changed since then. What celebrity story would ever have that scale and scope today? There's nothing. Nothing. Nothing can happen. Nothing. And remember when Britney Spears was melting down and shaving her head and everybody is there. That was a good one.

And I always like to tell this anecdote of when she was shaving her head in the salon and we sent a reporter over. We were second there. The first outlet there was CNN with the camera crew. And that was sort of how much that celebrity stuff had become part of the national conversation. And now, like, I mean, no one can do – it's so hard for anyone to care about anything a celebrity does. Like, try to get attention. It's, you know, you could have, you know, I don't know, who's even a big, you know, Chris Pratt could walk naked across the street. Yeah.

Can't do it. But that's what's eroded over the last 20 years. Right. There's no distance anymore. There's no distance. The Ben, I'm sorry, the brad angelina aniston there was distance i mean they were like the gods of hollywood right it's like it was i mean biggest tv show probably the biggest male movie star right and the best looking actress on the planet who also

seemed like she was going to win like five or six oscars totally it was like zeus harrah and you know uh aphrodite were all duking it out. How has this not been a movie yet, by the way? I don't know, right? I would totally go, if it was done the right way, I would totally go see the Brangelina. Yeah. But I would also watch the Lifetime movie version of that, too. It'd be kind of funny, right?

It's probably happened. Probably with a lot of bad action. And then in 06, well first you had paris hilton oh my god that was more catnip yeah and you know what paris was it's she's the one that has not sort of stood the test of time right she was too early she was too early she missed she missed social media right and now it's it's weird paris hilton's now maybe like the weird older lady right how did and how did that happen she taught the kardashians all her tricks and then they took And now it's weird. Paris Hilton's now maybe like the weird older lady, right? And how did that happen?

She taught the Kardashians all her tricks, and then they took it and made it this nine-figure business. I mean, do you remember that photograph of Kim Kardashian following behind her like a puppy? Yeah, studying. Yeah. Studying the teacher, the tutor. Yes, some of her only schooling probably. But yeah, she mastered that, right? And then just kneecapped her and like, I'll take this.

And that was it. There was this whole time when the celebrities really, really needed us weekly. That has shifted because, I mean, this is inside baseball for Los Angeles, but you go to Robertson Boulevard now and I would say 40% of the stores are empty. Right. And back in the day, Robertson Boulevard was the hottest place. It had all the stores. Completely. And all the celebrities walking up and down hoping to get inadvertently photographed because it would end up in us weekly.

Location marks inadvertently. Yeah. Oh, look, there's Paris Hilton. Right. Happens to be coming out of the Ivy. Right. With seven photographers waiting for her. Right. Wearing an engagement ring. Is she engaged? Oh, what's Paris Hilton happens to be coming out of the Ivy. Right. With seven photographers waiting for her. Right.

Wearing an engagement ring. Is she engaged? Oh, what's she doing? Yeah. Let's turn that into a new cycle. Who's that guy she's with? Right. Right.

And so it was, it was, there was something almost so like Truman show, like meta orchestrated about it at times. And I think, I'm sure you remember, you know, Heidi and Spencer. Right. That's kind of when the wheels started to come off. Yes. When the people who weren't quite big enough celebrities were trying to orchestrate it. Yes.

And that was, yeah, you could sort of begin, you really began to kind of have a bad taste in your mouth about where this was all headed. And Jersey Shore finally killed it. Yeah. I think Jersey Shore was, that might've been the true jump the shark moment. Though I would argue Real Housewives, I would argue, you know, we did a lot of Apprentice coverage too. That's when you really felt like you're, you know,

in the dregs of whatever Hollywood is. And, you know, to this day, people are trying to define what Hollywood is and who are the actual stars. But that's where it really felt like it was, you know, that sort of magical uh you know podium that you put certain celebrities on um was like not really didn't exist it didn't exist you also had you'd put photos of the celebrities reading the s weekly which i was like

because you know they're all reading it they're all pretending they don't care but they're all reading it in the hair salon or something the greatest moment the greatest sort of meta moment of the affleck jlo relationship was they were driving okay they went they went to a mcdonald's drive-in in a pink bentley convertible as one does right and um and so i think she had her big pink diamond engagement ring at the time and so they are and they know they're getting followed and they know they're getting photographed and they deliberately like are reading us weekly like practically like over their faces yeah so i mean it's like i mean it was sort of this ingenious j-lo moment i would say she was she to this day is one of the pros in how to how to manage an image.

Yeah, give me the Mount Rushmore. Who are the best? Who are the ones you admired from afar? J-Lo's got to be in there, right? Yeah, I would say I put J-Lo on Mount Rushmore, Angelina Jolie. Master. Master. She broke up somebody's marriage, and somehow nobody thought of her as a villain.

Yeah, as a saint. Yeah. Today as a saint. And she has done great things. She's incredible how she pulled that off. Incredible. Okay, God, the Mount Rushmore. I mean, Paris filed her application

to be a Mount Rushmore, but failed. Was not admitted. She seemed like almost a lock in 2006. Right. What killed her was the terrible reality show she did. It made her seem less cool for some reason. She just was exposed as there just wasn't anything on the top shelf.

There's nothing there. But I also think she was exposed to the point that we try to genuinely like our celebrities. And she was exposed as sort of a very not nice person. And I think there was a whole, before everyone had an N-word incident, she had her N-word incident. True. She was early on the N-word incidents. An early adapter, you would call her.

And just vicious to her friends and, you know, things that of course sound so silly to talk about today, but, you know. Yeah, the Kardashians are much better at convincing me that they're real, relatable people, which I think is part of the charm of that show. Completely. Anytime my wife is watching it, which she doesn't watch it that often, but I always kind of, I'll watch 50 Minutes and go, Kim, seems like a nice person. And then you go, oh, no, there's 19 cameras on her. Like, there's no way to know. But I think, you you know the enduring theme of

the kardashians that works so well is like it's it's essentially a family show right and they all look out for each other and they they remind people of their own weird families and even you know you know a couple weeks ago there were the pictures of kanye like fat kanye who looks like he put on some weight right and i thought like and i was just reading the commentary around that and it was so different than i mean we we do evolve as human beings right people did the whole fat shaming thing that came out yes yeah and then all but also like people were saying like you know kanye clearly has had some mental health struggles some of some mental health medication can make you put on weight and you know there was this whole level of kind of understanding around it which it was so unusual and but in the mid-2000s didn't have that kind of understanding did not happen i

mean and then think uh then it made that i but to underscore sort of the like some of the reasons why the kardashians persist it made me think kim is kim standing by a probably at times profoundly mentally ill husband right and like so there are things that i think that they've been able to you know and not always contrivance that they've been able to uh demonstrate themes that people relate to that kind of reveal a goodness that makes people like them right i mean whatever forget like the pepsi ad and like they do you know like butt selfies or whatever they do like that's i mean that they do, you know, like butt selfies or whatever they do. Like that's, I mean, that's just a, that's almost like a generational cultural thing. We, you know, that a lot of people are going to butt selfies, right? So, you know, I do think social

media kind of killed us weekly. Not that us weekly is dead, but there's no question, like the accessibility of Instagram and Twitter and being able to just get pictures whenever you want from any celebrity versus relying versus relying on Us Weekly. Well, like Just Like Us. I'll show you my Just Like Us. I'm not going to rely on a third party to do that for me. You could see last night, all these celebrities now, they tweet Halloween pictures of themselves and their kids.

The NBA players are even doing that. The NBA players have all learned from the real celebrities, and now they've cultivated their own celebrity. And 10 years ago, that's a whole Us Weekly section of Halloween pictures. There was a photo editor calling around trying to get photos of Halloween costumes, right? So, yeah, it killed it. I mean, so what is – I think when you think about printed publications anymore and why they even exist, there is – and even to some degree, why editors – like, I always, you know, wonder

if how much people actually care about or know about editors. But that whole idea that there is this, you know, at one point, an 80 page thing that people got every week, and they would sit there and enjoy whatever that creation was, because it was very heavily curated, right? Does that experience, can that experience still exist? Is it actually more valuable in the internet economy where like it's just like this fire hose of you know 90 garbage all day right and so um uh or do people read more because they're always reading their iphone their ipad right i mean they're constantly going through stuff i don't read as much as i used to you don't

no yeah because i i always feel like I'm always reading. Right. I'm always reading the internet. Right. Yes, you're always reading like 300 words at a time. It wasn't like, hey, I'll grab a magazine and kick back for a half hour. I do that less than I used to. Right.

Not even on a plane anymore, right? No. I'll read my iPad. I'll go hook up to the terrible go-go Wi-Fi. Yeah. It'll log off 40 times on me. I'll be half reading a story. It'll stop. And the flight attendant will tell you she's resetting it.

Oh yeah. No. Are you sure it's not your iPad? No, I know it's not my iPad. Nobody's on their iPad. No, but I think, you know, I don't think a magazine will resonate like that anymore. I think an internet site could, I don't, I don't think a magazine could. Right. It's just, um, it's, it's almost, you know, and it makes, you know, of course I feel slightly sad about that. There's definitely like a, I mean, it's like a passing of time, right? It's like, you know, how long do we hold onto that eight track player? Oh, you know, that's kind of cool. And then you see, you know, with like the turntables, there's maybe a slight resurgence of vinyl. There's a coolness to that to that because and so maybe in five years i mean it's all happened so quickly maybe in five years it comes to that but you know the economics of us weekly at the time you think about the state of publishing today

oh my god it was so insane like it was it's and so you realize why then all these sort of all these imitator imitation weeklies came along also the so it was um i love how you said that derisively because that's also how i felt yeah right star magazine would suck me in every once in a while because they would have good covers sometimes it was and it was so the other ones are like really i think with star sometimes and even with like inquire today even though like all the trump of honest evoc uh milani's episode crazy that they do the pro stuff but the um um but if you like sometimes with like those star inquirer titles

it's like if you're gonna go there go there and it's you know and it's so preposterously funny right yeah um uh yeah because the word the crazier they get then you get into like brad pitt considering a sex change like come on no it's not wait but let me just yeah look at one thing like aliens found in brad p house. Right, right, right. So how much, what was the most you ever paid for a photograph when you were at West Weekly? I mean, I think they were probably, you know, I'm sure everyone remembers where they were, ha ha, when they saw the Brad Angelina photos together in Kenya on the beach. They thought they were so safe in Kenya. And it was the confirmation thought they were so safe in Kenya and it was, and it was the confirmation they were together.

And, um, and so I believe the price us weekly paid, and I always had to go to Jan Wenner, who was the owner of us. I wanted to talk about him. We can talk about Jan. And, and so, you know, Jan, and so Jan had to say, you know, okay. And so we bought them and they were $500,000. Oh, and you made that money back in like three hours and the and the the funny thing about those photos when so wait some kenyan dude was just walking the beach okay see this is why nothing is ever as it seems

okay you know we were pretty sure that if you're trying if you're trying to have your first public outing as a couple and you know all the scandalals swirling around you like it's that might be one of the ways you set it up right you might be you might want to do it with kids in tow right yeah i think they had but they had that's how i would do it yes lots of kids right adopted children taking a whole first grade first grade class out of fatherless orphans and oh wait there's a photographer here exactly so so you know they're they're some might suspect that that was that there was some arrangement made where you know it's not like there was you know uh a whole paparazzi agency that just happened to be you know on a boat in you know

off the african coast ready to go so yeah doubtful but we don't know that for sure but anyway that that is how some of that, some of the sausage gets made, right? How you sort of, and like, it wasn't like they were, they had to tell the world somehow and come out at some point. And that was one way to do it. So did you always have to get permission from Jan Wenner or just for the biggies? Like anything over 50 grand, you had to at least send them an email? Yeah. I mean, you know, Jan with Jan wanted to be involved and at times wasn't involved at all but for you know yawn yawn is you know when you work for these people when you work for someone who's a single owner right and i mean he owned it with his wife jane yeah but you know

this is my winner in the book jane i'm like 130 pages in she's been the big winner so far. I haven't gotten all the crazy stuff yet. Well, Jane Jane Jane sounds kind of awesome with 130 pages in, right? Okay, yeah. I'm just saying 130 pages in, she's been a winner. The describer is sort of unbelievably beautiful, right?

Stunning. Stunning. Enchanting. More cultured than Jan. Such a catch. So when you work for single owners like that, and he's not running a time ink or a conglomerate. It's like money in, money out of your pocket. It's all, so it's all, you know,

and Jan counted his pennies as as he should that's his business so yes so that but you had the irony though of you know he makes his fortune and fame and everything off rolling stone which in the 70s was the magazine right and then in the 80s still doing really well starting to fade a little, 90s, and by the 2000s had lost some of its relevance. And all of a sudden, Us Weekly, which he also owns and is over here, has suddenly eclipsed everything else he owns. Completely.

And becomes this giant entity for him. That must have been weird for him. I think it was really weird for him. You know, Jan, but Jan likes money, right? And I think when you, when you were just, when you look at the balance sheet of what's, what's supporting what in that organization, I, the power became pretty clear. Not that, not that Us Weekly ever dominated Rolling Stone in his mind, but it, I would say created equal mindshare. And one of the things that Jan,

if you worked at Rolling Stone at the time, it is all Jan. And there was always this moment in the office when Jan was coming back from Sun Valley where he would go skiing. And he'd take his private plane and go skiing. And he had to go for various durations of time. And he would come back. It's hard to believe he lost touch with pop culture a little bit when he was doing stuff like that. Who would have thought? Shocking.

Who would have thought? And so then people would say, oh, shit, Jan's coming back today. who would have thought shocking who would have thought and so and so you know and then people would say oh shit Jan's coming back today and it would meant that Rolling Stone was about to get torn up

that story you were working on for three months Pink Floyd's going on the cover right exactly bye bye right right you totally

like Bob Dylan again Bob Dylan Mick Jagger's doing something totally and so so he that was like all his like that was his, you know, his super ego.

Like every aspect of Jan was projected onto Rolling Stone. Yeah. And Us Weekly. For better or worse. Yes, exactly. Guy's a genius. Yes. I think it's really tough to run a magazine like that once you hit a certain age.

Because unless you're around young people all the time. This is one thing I found at Grantland and The Ringer, too. It's like young people know where stuff's going. If you're not around young people, then you're going to think the Pink Floyd cover is a good idea. Right. And it's not. Well, I think it's also, you know, Jan and I got along incredibly well, which I don't think has always been the case with his editors. That's very generous.

Yes. But I think he also likes, he did not, and maybe he had a different relationship with males at the top. Like he, like you, I, I,

you know, it is a belief that all the males around him had to acquiesce to his opinion and desire. So that becomes off, you know, hard to, I'm sure you want someone, people in this room to tell you you're wrong and like to talk about it. Right. I don't like when anyone tells me I'm wrong. No, you have to, you have to, if people

around you can't tell you something's a bad idea, then you'd be in bad shape. There was a repetitive conversation Jan and I would have about Us Weekly, or he would say, and where he would say, you know, like, so remember, this is mid 2000s, mid 2005, six. And so he would say, you know, you know, you know what I really think Us Weekly needs, you need to show more pictures of Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, and Robin Williams. And then I would say, okay, and then, you know, and then I just not do it. But then it would come up again. Occasionally there, maybe some people remember there was occasionally a picture of Danny

DeVito or like you would sort of, you know, dole it out. Just taking out the garbage. Yes. And then you would sort of buy some time around that conversation. But I think for Jan, he, you know, he really relished that moment in time when he was at the epicenter of pop culture. And he kind of became- And a tastemaker. Tastemaker.

Yeah. I think one of the amazing things that Joe Hagen's book, Sticky Finger, says is he said, I think from 1971 to 1977, Jan was the most powerful editor in America. And you think about that now. That's a long time, too. It's a very long time. Seven years is- Yep.

And I bet half your staff might not even know who jan is today right i mean yeah that that or they might know him from his three second almost famous cameo right in the limo i love when camera crow just throw jan winter in his movies right he's in jerry mcguire yes he never has a line he's just always kind of lurking for three seconds or john travolta perfect do you remember yeah another one yeah oh he had lines in perfect though did he yeah that is a terrible movie um so i so i think there are certain people who get stuck and not through any fault of anyone's but in the in the contemporary in the in the in the contemporary past where they felt most sort of at home right the biggest issue magazines sports illustrated had the same thing where people trying to protect the way it worked in the past because that was the model that worked for

them instead of being like we got to move yep they're no no no we got to keep it this way and that's when you really get in trouble and it's the story of every failed media venture basically like to think to think that the past defines who you are is and you know i think he has pins on that spot right now completely trying to keep sports center and all these things that worked and it's gotta move forward right and i think they don't know what the way forward is and i'm not sure i'm not sure a ton of people do i mean i could tell you like you know the jameel hill thing is probably not the way forward it's like no i you know to me and just i don't i'm not i'm not a huge sports person i don't watch sports religiously um and just as an outsider who sort of sees how it's being

represented that was like what the fuck is that like oh my god you just like what are you doing to this woman like and like you the sports? Sports people shouldn't have opinions. They should just have opinions about things, balls being moved around. These were all conversations I used to have with them when I worked there. It's like, we can be human beings too. It doesn't reflect on ESPN.

It's weird. It's also so anathema to, I feel like what people want today, which is they want a feeling of authenticity from personalities, right? That's why I wrote about Jamel three weeks ago. And that was my point is the authenticity is more important than it's ever been. Right.

And if you're asking people that work for you and represent you not to be authentic, you're in rough shape. But also like, I mean, forget all that, the optics of it. Yeah, the optics. But like, oh my God, you have an African-American female sports. Right. This is why you're paying. Oh, my God.

Like what? Like, don't do don't do it. Don't do it to her. Yeah. Like you're going to get slaughtered. Yeah. And like and also like, was she really wrong? I mean, like, yeah, like the whole everything about it was so tone deaf.

And I think but I think that's what happens in large corporations too, right? Like safety is, you always revert to safety, right? That is like, you know, I think one of the failures in leadership you see all the time is the safest way to never get in trouble, whether it's green lighting a show or green lighting a story or whatever, is to not make a decision, right? Yeah. And that I think people, you know, paralysis is easier than risk. Well, the more people you have running a corporation, the longer the paralysis goes before the decision

happens because you got to get everybody. Right. Oh, we got to call Bob. Well, Bob's skiing in Colorado. He's not off the mountain yet. Right. And your three hours pass. Right.

But then also the thing, what will Bob think? What will Bob say? And usually people don't get it right. Right. They usually don't actually accurately know what someone's going to say. And like, I remember there were all these, I mean, on a much smaller level at a Hollywood reporter and billboard, like these crazy things would come back to me. Like, you know, we heard you hate the color pink and no one should ever wear pink.

I'm like, I've never said that in my life. And so I think the way that these things get communicated through organizations can have, and this was a small organization, can have, you know, this sort of chilling effect on everything, right? So then I'm sure you have all these people in ESPN now who are like, oh my God,

I shouldn't even comment on that player's hair because what if it's racially insensitive? And I just want to say that i like his hair today and i like freezing yeah and so then it creates this like lack of um expression from the people on air who and that's exactly what you want right you want like expressive people to sort of get you excited and thinking about the game and i think this whole notion also that sports is are just sports i mean it's like like It doesn't exist. That can't fly anymore. Nothing is what it is anymore.

Hollywood is not about Hollywood, right? Especially this month. Oh, my God. Jesus. Quick break to talk about Bluehost, a top-rated website provider powering over 2 million websites. For bloggers or small business owners,

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is bluehost.com slash bill simmons back to janice yeah with yawn last yawn question yeah you can ask me more yawn questions i don't care you found out there was a book coming what was your reaction well so i know joe hagan a little bit and he is like he is a vicious is not the right word but he is an uh uncorruptible reporter honest and unmerciful like lester bangs and the most famous second almost famous reference yeah well done he is um. He is, and I remember one of the last stories he did before he started working on this book was a story I think he did for New York Magazine about NBC when they had fired Ann Curry. And it was like, it was so like raw and like- I remember that story.

Yeah, it was so good. That was rough. It was rough. Made me feel bad for Ann Curry. Made me feel bad for everybody. Right. But it made you feel that Joe Pagan was a really good reporter. Yeah, he is. That's why I was good. That was rough. It was rough. Made me feel bad for Ann Curry. Made me feel bad for everybody. Right. But it made you feel that Joe Pagan was a really good reporter. Yeah, he is.

That's why I was good. Yeah. So Joe, to me, it was like a classic Yawn thing. Like Yawn is probably flattered by Joe's attention. They're neighbors. I mean, the awkwardness of them being- But then they had the falling out, which we're not sure if it was orchestrated or not to sell the book. I don't think it was-

It worked, but I don't think it was orchestrated or not to sell the book. I don't think it was, I, it worked, but I don't think it, I don't think it was orchestrated. Like Jan, like I knew the second I knew John, the second I knew Joe Hagan was doing Jan's book. You were like, you're making popcorn. Yeah,

totally. Like, this is going to end badly, but like this, you know, it'll be, it'll be good. And like Joe,

Joe just killed it. He got like everybody to talk. Phenomenal reporting. And I think it's sort of the, I think David Geffen said about biographies, because he said once you give it up to someone, you have to accept the consequences. But I do believe, and I said this to Joe the other day,

I said now that the book's been so well received, Jan will come around to liking it and liking you again. He'll want to own that part of it. Well, between that and the doc, he's going to have this moment of re-relevancy. Well, and I think you see this with a lot of guys, largely guys in their 70s in Hollywood, like they're trying to set their legacy, right? And you want, like Steven Spielberg had that, had that HBO documentary. Yeah.

Oh, documentary. Sorry. Documentary. That was a documentary. Yeah. Okay. But that is, but that's the same thing. Like, okay, who's going to tell my story?

And it's, you know, the Hamilton line, right? Like, like who lives, who dies, who tells your story. And so he is like, these guys want that and they need that, right? Or else like, it's your last grasp of greatness. And I think that if you're Jan, you know what you don't want your legacy to be? Like I whiffed on selling Us Weekly

for $750 million to Hearst. I was engulfed by a UVA rape story that was fake. And so like legacy setting. The problem is giving up the action, though. And you see this in good ways and bad ways, because I look at someone like Jan. You look at Lorne Michaels. You look at Graydon, who was just on my podcast a couple weeks ago.

You give up that Vanity Fair editor-in-chief job. You're not just giving up the job. You're giving up this power that you have. You're giving up, you run the Oscars party and all these things. And for a lot of people, they don't want to give up the action. I'm sure Jan was like, if I sell this for $700 million, now what do I do? I'm just skiing? I jumped to the end of the book.

And so I read that part. I can't do that. And that's exactly what he says. I mean, he said, and for Jan, Jan is a little bit like Donald Trump in that he's I can't do that. And I have to live with what that decision was. And that's a difference between retiring with, I guess it would have been after the Disney investment. It's really hard. Athletes are in the same boat. They never know when it's time for them to wrap it up.

I'm sure Michael Jordan, in retrospect, probably wished he'd gone out in 98. Right, right. But no one ever- You didn't get that reference. I kind of got it. He made the shot in the finals. Yes.

But then he came back and played for the Wizards. Right, well, he also did baseball. He did that too. Yeah, he did a lot of- Michael Jordan did a lot of things. This is good. So you got your sports. Yeah, I'm making it, right?

This is good. Yeah, okay. But I think knowing when to exit, because nobody, it's one of these sad realizations like nobody exits gracefully at the end right it's like who really gets to exit gracefully i think trump has a chance i still i still have hope i think yeah he's 74 75 i think he's gonna start hitting his stride yeah like year older he gets i think he's gonna get better. Wiser. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's how I feel.

He's going to be great. It's a good prediction. A couple years, he's got to get his feet wet in that job. He'll be good. The right people around him. Well, you know, I think that you see with everything. Today's a conversation about men and women. But I think men cannot, like that power is so much of your identity as a male, right?

Yeah. And, you know, the ability to shit on people who don't have power is part of the identity. And, you know, the ability of people, you know, it's like, it talks about. Well, it's also how they, you talk about people like over 65. Right. They just grow up a certain way. Right. And at some point, people just become who they are.

Right. And the way that they were used to doing things. Right. They don't understand that. No, no, no, no. become who they are. Right. And the way that they were used to doing things, they don't understand that. No, no, no. Things are a little different now. Right. They just don't see it.

No, they don't see it. And I think there's certain, I mean, I think, you know, it was interesting when you saw that with Donna Karan with her stupid comments she made after the Harvey Weinstein scandal came out about, you know, well, how are the women dressed? And I, you know, the. Right. That's like a classic old person comment. Totally. And, you know. Somebody would say that at the Thanksgiving table, like your 78 year old aunt would make that comment. Well, in fact, as a relative who is in her seventies, you know,

one of the things that she replied when an email was sent around to different family members about Weinstein, like how the response was, how desperate would these women have to be for attention? I mean, you know, and so it's okay. So we're never going to reach consensus on this particular issue. But, you know, that's why you see, that's why you see, I thought it was no coincidence that you had the two people who broke the story at the New York Times were two women, right? And who were, I think i think like early 40s or late 30s um and then the other person at the new yorker is ronan barrow who is you know he's like an annoying child prodigy who's like you know 28 or whatever but he and you know went to yale law school but he um personal experience but

yeah i mean this is someone who you know family yeah who has been trying to write that wrong in various ways and this is one way to write that wrong is to go after this story and it's one reason why actresses could trusted him right because he wrote about woody allen and his sister yeah in a way that they related to um so anyway so that you know these stories aren't getting broken you know i, if you're. Well, now it's like every day you feel like there's. I mean, we don't have to name the list of 30 people that we've all kind of thought, oh, I wonder if that person's next. But kind of a perv. It's yeah.

It's starting to come. You know, right. Today, as we're taping this, like Brent Ratner. Right. I mean, six people come out and it's like wasn't. Did anyone fall out of their chair? No, I wasn't like keeling over in disbelief. But there are other ones like the NPR guy, Michael Oreskes.

I'm like, oh my God, it's engulfed NPR now. Right. And it's not going to stop. It hasn't even gone into sports yet. It's going to go in all these different industries. Sports, Silicon Valley, right? Silicon Valley and sports, I think, are the two next things. Like really bad, right?

Wait, go back to 2009. So you leave Us Weekly at, you're leaving like the 1927 Yankees, basically. So it was one of these like- You're leaving friends in year six. Totally. So every contract with Yod was always like this agonizing process. And so it was, I think that like, I think that you kind of have to know when to leave. Right. It's,

I just felt like I would say the last contract I did was probably, I knew why I was doing it. I just like, it was just going to be one more and then I was going to be out. Do you think like for CEOs and editor in chief, stuff like that, like seven years is a good length. I kind of feel like it is. I feel like that's like a magic number, right? At some point, you're just going to be repeating the same ideas you already had.

Right, right. There's going to be a freshness that just kind of goes. Right, there is. And I think every organization benefits from a reset, right? Well, sometimes they don't benefit. Sometimes they actually get worse. But most organizations could, you know, but they will right-size themselves usually in some way down the road but i think that bob agger said

that in the disney book because he was talking about how eisner had basically stayed too long and he's like the thing i learned is ceo has and he was very candid about that ceo should move ceo shouldn't be there too long and now he's still there he said all of it it's like he stayed five years longer than he said he was gonna stay which is hilarious it's hard to give up yeah it's hard i mean it's you're the man and like he became not just the man like but the man right i mean it's like it's you know he's done an incredible job um uh so yeah so then so then the second i did i sort of reluctantly and that doesn't that doesn't mean i wasn't going to do a good good job I wasn't enthusiastic about it, but I did the last contract.

And, you know, it paid ridiculously well. And, you know, we talked about the economics of Us Weekly. So phenomenally profitable. But you have two small kids. Yeah. And I'm sort of like, okay, I'll do this again. And actually, it was funny. One of the jobs that I had been offered at that time before that contract, I renewed that contract, was work at Yahoo, which that was a that was a dodge. Can you imagine? So, so, so I did it. And then,

you know, Jan and I, oh, my God. So remember, everything like the world is flush with cash. It's 2000. It's 2007. Jan takes out a $300 million loan to buy back his 50% stake of Us Weekly from Disney. And this was a deal that had gone back to Michael Eisner when Michael Eisner had given him money to keep it alive. So this was almost like all the ego of it really bothered him that he had sold half of it. Totally. For Jan, I'm sure he's thinking, all I'm doing is giving away 50% of my profits. It's driving me insane. And so, you know, I think us, I think Disney had invested $20 million in Us Weekly and got back $300 million. I mean, so, you know, a great return.

Plus all the profit year by year that owning it. Totally, right? That's one of the better deals. I mean, the last, maybe the last time anyone made money in a print publication, right? Yeah. So then 2007, he's happy, delighted. I get signed to this great contract for the last two years. And then 2008, boom. And the market collapses. And there goes everything, right?

There goes his $750 million offer from Hearst to buy them, to buy Us Weekly. Every advertiser is paralyzed with fear. There's not enough discretionary income to buy newsstand publications. And that began his, which has led to today, this excruciating process of trying to get out from underwater of what he owed. It's like owning a house where the mortgage exceeds the value of the home. That's what he has been contending with for the past decade at this point. Anyway, I also

talked a lot about it with people at the time when I was leaving that I feel like the screw is turning. This whole bacchanal of celebrity is done like it's it's just there's you saw it coming yeah and you didn't even really know about Instagram and all the things that were gonna finish it I could just feel like I always use this analogy like you can only go to the dessert buffet so many times like it and there was sort of like it was and some of it was like I didn't like I I feel like I marginally there were times I marginally cared about any of this stuff at all, even when I was there. And, um, and it was getting harder to care about, you know, Jessica Simpson.

25 things you didn't know about Nicolashay. Yeah, it was good. And then, and then that's also where you saw, and I, I'm sure your wife maybe has noticed some of this, like these reality stars where you're like, who? What? Who cares? For me, the death of Us Weekly in my house was Teen Mom, which was my wife's least favorite cultural thing that's happened in the last 15 years. She hates Teen Mom more than anything.

There's just so much ickiness around everything about that. I'm an idiot who had a kid too soon. Here's my reality show. Yeah, exactly. Like, what the? I hate Teen moms so much. But they're not glamorizing teen pregnancies. Oh, no, not at all.

We're not glamorizing at all. But you're a celebrity now. What the hell is that? And we're paying you $500 an episode to exploit your life. It's outrageous. I hate teen moms so much. I mean, is that still on air? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. They even have, like, London teen mom. They moved to other countries to find teen moms with accents. So stupid. Oh, my God. No, it's grotesque. So you took a couple years off, then you went to Hollywood Reporter. Yeah. So there was a guy who, so my husband and I had this plan. We lived in Manhattan. We lived on Lafayette Street. And we had these two small kids. And it's, you know, it it was i just found it increasingly difficult to live in manhattan as did my husband and so we're like okay let's move let's like we can just go anywhere we

want so we we decided we were going to move to marin county um outside of san francisco even like bid on a house and because it was the you know because the real estate downturn lasted like two seconds in certain markets, you know, we got outbid on the house. But right around when we were getting outbid on the house, I get this call from Richard Beckman, who had worked at Condé Nast and had been hired as the CEO of this company. And they had acquired these, you know, dumpy little assets. And, and so Richard Beckman, and there was, you know, since we all learn everything important in page six, Richard Beckman had seen in page six that my apartment had sold and I was moving to. And page six was wrong and said I was moving to Los Angeles and not San Francisco.

So and so then Richard Beckman, there was a day where Richard Beckman's frantically trying to find me and talk to me. And, you know, and, you know, and and he called. So we talk on the phone and he said, do you want to talk about the Hollywood Reporter? I said, you know, no, that doesn't mean like, it's what it's like, what is it? It's like nothing. I've never even looked at it in my life. It's a bunch of like, it's just one of those. It's like poor man's variety, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is saying a lot. Right. I mean, yeah. Studios and executives got variety. And so then he said, no, no, trust me, let's meet. And so I met him at the Bowery Hotel, you know, at the restaurant there.

And we had breakfast. And he just said, so, and he's, you know, very, he's like we, you can jokingly, we jokingly sometimes call him Barnum, Bailey, and Beckman. He's like a total showman, right? Yeah. And British accent. And he's like, you know, you can do, you know, you'd be brilliant. You can do anything you want. And I wanted to be, you know, a hybrid of The Economist and brilliant you could do anything you want and i wanted to be you know a hybrid of the economist and wait the economist and the economist

yeah i know i like i don't he kind of lost me there but the economist and something else i can't remember but he had this whole vision and he's and but basically it was clear i could do anything i wanted and that he said all i want to do is i want to get rid of this it was a daily paper then and um i didn't remember that yeah nobody that paper then. And, um, I didn't even remember that. Yeah. Nobody, that's how little I read it. Yeah. It didn't matter to you. And, um, and it was a daily trade paper. And, um, and so he, he wanted to redo the, like redo the website and redo the publication. And the website was nothing. I mean, it had, okay. So it had a, it had 800,000 visitors a month. It couldn't even be registered on com score, which is what everyone, it was, it was sad capital S. Um, so, so then anyway, I thought about it and he had this idea of doing a weekly

magazine wanting to attract luxury advertisers. And so, you know, so anyways, this long process. So I would say four months later, and I had to think about, I had to think what I would do. I had to think if we would actually move to Los Angeles, because, you know, the Los Angeles, my husband knew was like Paris Hilton land. I, I had just come from West Weekly. It was like the most repulsive, you know, hellscape of all time. You didn't know it was about to become the coolest city in America. Exactly. Right. But it was at that point, especially as, you know, you know, from East Coast bias, like people think L.A. is filled with like illiterates and degenerates and, you know, I mean, the worst part of America. So so so anyway push comes to shove and you know we all

decide i will do this and so we move out here and then it was then it just happened really quickly it was like the craziest you know i had to learn you know i knew la but i had to really learn la i had to learn this crazy movie industry and tv industry and um i have the first person i hire is kim masters we never even meet i'm you know a mutual friend vouches for me i i vouched for her we we i hired her over the phone and then like off we went and i moved out here i knew you knew what you were doing when you hired tim goodman oh tim goodman yeah i was like oh they're actually this could be a real thing this magazine tim goodman had like he'll tell this story where i call him and recommend

you know he was recommended by a bunch of people he has no idea who i am and he's like so rude to me when i call and i'm like okay so do you want to think about it and he wasn't rude really but he just didn't he was confused yeah and i said do you want to think about it he's like okay and then he calls me back like 30 minutes later he's like oh okay like let's talk yeah we're excited and um well i remember when i heard you took over and i didn't really know what a holly reporter was i was like so is it gonna be like celebrity yeah celebrity pictures and are they gonna compete with us weekly right that would be the logical yeah i didn't expect that journalism i basically everything you did i'd not

expect right right and i think i mean i think that's one of the things people very you know very much define people like we're all limited in how we judge people, right? You define people by the last thing they did. Right. And that's it. And that's it. And you know, so like you could, you know, you could end up maybe one day you're a, you know, a cancer researcher, but like, we would never think that because. I'm not a nice enough person to do that. I'm an only child. But you know, so i get you i get you yeah yeah so i think you never know and so it was oh my god it was like this you know and you really realize it's a real test of how thick-skinned you are as a human being right like everyone was like

for starters this was like about the you know 200th relaunch of the hollywood report yeah right and so you know the 199 times before it sucked and so why would the 200th timeunch of The Hollywood Reporter, right? And so the 199 times before, it sucked. And so why would the 200th time be any better? And so so much negative press. And remember, this was Nikki Fink era in Hollywood. Oh, yeah. Well, it seemed like Hollywood coverage was just drifting toward anonymous message board posts

and Nikki Fink and that kind of world. That was sort of one of the conceits I had about reconceiving the Hollywood reporter was like, Hollywood has become so, and I feel like Hollywood didn't know this. And I think as an outsider, I could see it, that Hollywood had become so big in the outside world that like this, and it wasn't just celebrities. It was moving beyond celebrities. It was the stories of the stories.

And, and I thought of, you know, the few examples that were pretty obvious that then were you know remember when the conan zucker jay leno story was happening and that had like this basically behind the scenes negotiation story became but the thing is though that was there for a while because like the bill carter books yes were the blueprint for hey this could be a magazine that works vanity fair would do it every once in a while right but yeah i was always fascinated by all that stuff. Right, the best stories were about the stories behind the stories here, right? Yeah. And then also, you know, Entourage, of course, like, we sort of peeled

off some of that. But even, like, how Miramax became removing all the current harvest stuff aside, just like that whole indie world and how the movie industry was changing. Nobody was really capturing it week to week. No, and also, you know, and I think as an East Coast guy, you understand this too. Like there was sort of this attraction repulsion to Hollywood also, right?

That like there's not a media person alive who doesn't kind of wish they had like an in in Hollywood who kind of didn't wish they, you know, could write on a show or, you know, have a friend who was a director. And so there was definitely all this intrigue around it, but also the feeling that, you know, I always use this analogy back then, like how come the entire world knows, well, not the entire world,

but so many of the media know who like Lloyd Blankfein is at Goldman Sachs, right? And like Wall Street had broke through and people who might not have a penny invested in the stock market, but, you know, nobody, you know, the outside world couldn't tell you who the studio chiefs were. They couldn't tell you who, you know, who are the people who are delivering the content that occupies really almost all of your time outside of the time you know, that was sort of the main premise of it was, how do you make Hollywood its best version of itself to the rest of the world? And how do you show the world what Hollywood actually is and tell those stories?

So that was, you know, really a base. And how do you be authentic? So I think that was the biggest reason the magazine succeeded was it felt like the conversations people are actually having. Right. Like, how are you on it? And I think i think that was like you know that was like an us weekly thing too like how are you just on the conversation and not on it or following it but like leading it right you did one other thing though what you you you've captured rich person culture right well you're not you're not the editor anymore but when you'd be like, the 30 best places celebrities go for Christmas. And the four hottest lunch spots right now in Hollywood

and all that stuff. And the Hamptons and Malibu, all these places. And you're always there. Here's what's happening in these spots. And the lifestyle. So it's a one industry town, even though people who work in aerospace would tell you that's not the case. But it's a one industry town, you know, that course is having huge financial problems today but if you're shopping at sacks like can you put it in a plain brown paper bag i don't want to be seen carrying this down the street like this whole like trying

to underplay wealth in la the exact opposite who like you know who cares like drive your yellow maserati like yeah yeah let's open another soho house completely you know and and no one has any self-consciousness about over consumption or luxury here and that was a huge opportunity here right and really fun to read about it's it's hilarious and i think there was a and i think there was a tonal thing that i was very self-conscious of so you could read those stories both as you know um you could read those stories as informative and you know, you could read those stories as informative. And, you know, like I can't tell you the number of executives who would be like, oh my God, those $700 shoes,

I bought six pairs of them. Thanks for showing them, you know. Or, you know, I upgraded my plane after you did the private plane story. But you could also read it as entertainment, right? And I think, so it was always, there was this very deliberate non-elitist tone about how those stories were done, right? And I think when you look at women's magazines historically, part of the reason they've struggled and had to recalibrate their tone is that it was always like, you should, you better be, you know, you better like not wear coral lipstick, you know, or, you know, you should be, your hem has to be at your knee this season or mid-length or whatever.

And I think that to be able to present the lifestyle of LA as its entertainment in itself without ever making fun of it, ever making fun of anyone, all those stories definitely walk the line. Good journalism culture. And then the third piece, lists. Good lists. Oh, my God. 30 hottest under 40 executives. I mean, because everyone is going to click on those and read those.

Did my boss make the list? The 40 best assistants. You don't even understand the fear. The lobbying. The amount of lobbying I can't even imagine. I mean, people's jobs truly depended on their boss appearing on a list. Agents, that was another good one. Oh, I mean, like people's jobs truly depended on like their boss appearing on a list. And like, like. Agents.

That was another good one. Oh my God. The 75 best agents. I mean, and. Everyone's losing their minds. Oh my God. I was only 45th. Oh my God.

And if, let's see, like if, if CAA has 10 agents on the list, then, you know, WB, now Endeavor, you know, has to have the same number, if not more. Janice is just in bed with Endeavor. That's the reason they had so many. Completely. Everything is being gamed, right? But I mean, true, like, I mean, crises and meltdowns over lists. And it's so- It's fantastic. It's so smart. It's just so good. It's so funny. Because you wanted everyone in Hollywood hollywood to lock into the magazine and care about what's in it every week what's better than doing that well i remember probably one of the breakthrough covers we did earlier and maybe it was um might

have been like the third or fourth cover we did was in 2010 and it was it was glee it was about glee when glee was like white hot yeah and so you know one of the stories we did um and it was no it wasn't Lacey Rose. Lacey Rose hadn't started yet. But this is why Lacey Rose started. Good writer. Another good hire. Amazing.

But we did a story about the business of Glee, how Glee was becoming one of these shows where you could have a concert tour and, you know, a Broadway, I don't know if they have a touring show. And, you know, all these ancillary products that made it just much more than this you know show that you could sell internationally and so on the cover we put Ryan Murphy the creator of Glee the stars at the time um including Lea Michele but this was sort of like this like breakthrough moment for Hollywood we put on Dana Walden and uh oh yeah the executive yeah executives and they looked were styled. I'm sure they didn't want to do that at all and take credit and be on the cover. Must have been tough to convince them. No exec ever wanted that.

No, I can't. I want the cast to get the credit. I want Ryan to take front and center. But that was sort of like, I think that's where suddenly this thing clicked in people's minds in town where they were like, wait, I am the star i'm not just an executive i can get my credit and i can get my do and i can also be photographed looking

as good as charlie's there on like yeah like i'm going you know like like hot damn this is like my thing and you know and i think that the access to talent and access to the industry comes through i think this this whole misconception in the outside world that the celebrities have power in town, that they're the ones who control everything. They don't, right? They're just like... If we didn't learn that over the last four weeks. Right? I mean, and so they're just the schmucks trying to get a job. And so

the puppet strings are being pulled by these behind the scenes executives. And so the amount that we could work with executives to get things, the stories we want, to get information, for them to feel like we were going to treat it respectfully and intelligently and, you know, they could trust us.

That became like really a huge part of it. But you kept doing real journalism, which made it so it didn't seem like you were in the back for people. Just, yeah. Like that, that was an important thing. Like,

like we had to just like stick it to Hollywood, like a lot. Right. Cause it's cause they, Hollywood deserves it. Right. And, um, um, but unless's, because they, Hollywood deserves it, right? Yeah. And, but unless you, like, I think once you,

then once people smell fear in you, right, you're dead. And there was a story that I think in the second issue we did of the print issue of The Hollywood Reporter where we, you know, we were launching the website at the same time, total chaos. Like everyone's working like 20 hours a day. Kim Masters had done this story about this movie which i'm sure you recall called burlesque that starred share and christina oh yeah oh my god and so it was um and so not on cable not all copies have been destroyed exactly it has been erased it has disappeared um so uh that was a sony movie a sony pictures movie through this imprint they had screen jams

and so kim had this story about the debacle of the making of burlesque how like the budget was over budget the director was dating the executive at screen jams there was like fistfights and violence and like everyone hated each other tears christina aguilera tears it was like one of these fun classic hollywood yards yeah sony is losing it okay so this is like i'm the new person sony calls um sony calls my boss richard beckman and says like you need to kill the story and you know so richard beckman to his credit he calls me he's like well what do you want to do i said well we're not going to kill it and um and then you know they go they go to the publisher threatened to pull all the ads typical trade stuff that had been that had worked to the demise that you know it really eroded the trade business here in los angeles and so you know we ended up standing our ground i told the i told

the publicist at sony at the time i said i will you will not be surprised by anything in here i will walk you through the story you will have a a chance to respond, but it's not going away. And, um, and we ran and it was, you know, people ate it up. It was just like Hollywood candy.

And that was it. But after that, like every single moment, every single moment, like with the staff and so much of the existing staff, they were so willing to, um, to kill things for people.

I'm like, why are you killing them? What are you doing? For who, for who's benefit? Like, and I said, like, if you're not, like, are you doing for who, for who's benefit? Like, and I said,

like, if you're not like, if you are the person you need to be the first, you need to be the person they respect, but also fear that they need to return your call. And if they think you're movable, if they think you are, you know, you can be played like that's it.

That doesn't make them like you more. That doesn't make them give you things more. And this whole idea that somehow you get things more. If you play nice with them, it's not true. It's not how it works. It's like, that's not how life works. They have to fear and respect you. Right. So, so that was a big cultural shift. And I, you know, and it made me think, and Kim Masters and I were texting about this yesterday. I think the first, before we relaunched this magazine, there was a story we did on Steve McPherson at ABC and he ran ABC. I know who Steve is.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. So he ran the network then and there was, he like suddenly was gone from ABC. Suddenly. Yeah. And, um, and Kim Masters did a story about him having been investigated for sexual harassment, uh, leading up to his sudden resignation.

Yes. And I mean, so like, I think I was probably three weeks into the job. That's a story that might've been killed five years before, right? Five minutes before. We'll do you a favor. You'll get the Desperate Housewives next week on next week's cover. And the staff was, there was the traditional, you know, older staff there was like, oh my God, you can't say that. Don't do that don't do that like why would you do that like they were like panicked that we were going to do this story and we got you know the marty singer letter the marty singer who you know also sent out the brett ratner letters today like you'll get sued yeah and then like and so kim and i were like let's just do it it's true

and so we did and like you know that's what and you know if this probably segues a little into harvey weinstein like people, some people were outraged. Like, how do you, like, why would you ruin this man's career? Why would you say this? Like, you know, it's not fair. Like, you don't need to talk about these things. And I think that that was a real litmus test to sort of the boundaries of conversation people could handle. It didn't mean that we wouldn't do those, that we didn't do those stories again, but it was sort of eye-opening to me that there are things you talk about here and there are things you don't talk

about. And I think we've seen that there are lots of things we don't talk about right now. We're taking one more break to talk about DraftKings. Week nine, football season in full swing. Begs the question, how is your fantasy football team doing? Maybe you drafted a dud in the fourth round. Maybe your first round pick is on the shelf with a bum knee. Maybe you're me. You have Dalvin Cook. You paid $45 for him. Now he's not playing this season.

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Let's keep going. From a gambling standpoint, we're going to remember the 2010s as the decade when live betting took off. Where you're betting is just as important as who you're betting on. Here's an idea. Go to MyBookie.ag. They've been in this business for years. Their reputation is rock solid. They do 50% cash bonuses.

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MyBookie will match your deposit with up to a 50% bonus. Just visit mybookie.ag. Use the promo code Bill Simmons to activate the offer. You play. You win. You get paid. Back to Janice. You come in that decade and all the streaming stuff's happening too.

The industry itself is getting much more interesting. Yes. I mean, it's in chaos. TV's in complete chaos. Amazon, all these big giant internet things are becoming now media brands. Right. They're supplanting the traditional old brands. Right.

Everyone's jockeying for PR, all that stuff. And now on top of it, we have the whole industry basically crumbling from sexual assault stuff. Right, I mean, it's- And nobody knows when it's gonna end. Nobody knows who's next. Right, it's a really- By the way, this is not why I invited you to come on.

Oh, well, that's- I was actually, I'd always wanted to have you on and Tommy and I had been talking about who could, and I was like, I always wanted to have Janice Minow. You think she'd come on? Thank you, thank you. And then you were ready. Here I am. I do feel like we have to talk about it for five minutes. I don't want to talk Janice Minow. Do you think she'd come on? Thank you. Thank you. And then you were ready. Here I am.

I do feel like we have to talk about it for five minutes. I don't want to talk about it for 30. Yeah, that's fine. You talked about it on Bill Maher. I thought you were really good about it. Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, I mean, it is for a magazine like Hollywood Reporter, this could be the next

two years of the magazine. But also, what does it mean? I've thought about this. What does it mean? How does Hollywood move on? Like, so if you're selling this image to the world, like Hollywood is the biggest export of America, right? And so, uh, so this image you're selling to the world, like, what is it and how do you do things? How do you, how do you have an award show? You know, this, you know, you have the Hollywood Film Awards coming up this weekend and followed by, you know, Directors Guild and Golden Globes, Oscars, like, what do you joke about? Like, how do you

like, and who's going to show up that, you know, I know that some executives in town, people are pulling back from doing interviews in press, because they don't want to get asked about it, they don't want to. And I think, you know, it's hard to be, I think, and, you know, you don't want to be the male pinata who sticks out your neck. And then, but you know what, do you remember in, you know, 2002, when you said this in an interview, like, you're disgusting, too. And I think, so there's so many forces that are at work here that put Hollywood in an unbelievably awkward position. And, you know, James Corden is hosting the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday, and he got killed a few weeks ago for joking in an inappropriate way. Yeah, in his monologue, right?

Yeah. Too soon. Too soon. What does that really mean? And I think we see this all the time. There is a fungible set of ethics here in Hollywood, or judgment, right? And at one point, you can do this, but at another point, you can't do that. And Seth MacFarlane can say in his Oscar monologue, you know, we saw your

boobs and make the Harvey Weinstein joke and life goes on. And, you know, um, but, but James Corden can't, who's supposed to be a comedian, can't stand up and make jokes. There's a show on Hulu called different people where they've made like five or six different Kevin Spacey jokes over the course of the show. Just they've snuck them in. Wow. And nobody ever put two and two together.

But I read some blog posts about it yesterday. It was like all the times this show has snuck in a Kevin Spacey joke. Well, I mean, I saw in the LA Times story today about Brett Ratner, Tina Fey at our women's breakfast. Right. Yes. I mean- At your breakfast.

I believe Brett Ratner was sitting there, which is kind of gross to think about now, but Brett Ratner's sitting there at our breakfast for the 100 most powerful women in Hollywood, and Tina Fey makes the joke. Brett Ratner's here because he thought it was the 100 women you could eat breakfast off of. Right.

It's, you know, ba-dum-bum. Everybody laughs and moves on. Yeah, and that's sort of that weird cultural thing that's gone on here, right? Where you kind of laugh and, you know, you're like, ooh, that guy's a perv. Or, like, you laugh about someone being, like, on drugs or a weirdo. And then, like, okay, like, life goes on. But, you know, my husband had worked at the Horace Mann School in New York. Yeah.

They had a big scandal. Oh, my God. Like, really just the most upsetting you know decades long sexual abuse of boys yeah and it really was like a pedophile ring and one of those teachers was this guy joseph samari who was the music teacher there and when my husband was teaching there was joseph samari was you know close to retirement but like i remember my husband joking about him being a pervert like Like, no one should ever be alone with Joseph Samari. And I'm like, oh, my God.

So then Joseph Samari actually is named as one of really the most incredibly troubling, disgusting assailants in all of this. And you think, wow, nobody, nobody for 25 years put it all together and made it happen. Right? I mean, I'm from that generation right and every like i went to prep school we had the two teachers that you knew like don't go if you go camping don't go stay away yeah but we all kind of looked out for each other but we would never thought to have tattled right but it was like yeah stay away from that guy yes and it was same thing with like i had friends who were altar boys and stuff.

And I was like, yes, don't go to that priest's house. Like, don't drink wine with him. But everybody kind of looked out for each other. But now it's like, it seems insane that that's how we acted. It's insane. But also, you know, I think like, you know, think about how we treat like Colin Kaepernick, right? And it's like, you knowernick right and it's like you know like and it's when did when did

when did NFL games become so aligned with American patriotism right and this whole like co-opting by the biggest commercial enterprise that one can imagine yeah like suddenly becoming like like a the fourth wing of the government right and that that somehow like this you know this this ability to whether you agree with colin kaepernick or not like the ability to have to freely express like something very real to peacefully protest something that he was trying to make a point and i think if like i think today if you don't understand that there that like the black american experience has maybe not fully been resolved you know know, then like you're, it's,

it's so weird, but the, the pressure and the, and the desire to not have that conversation and, you know, and it's not just football, it's everything is so overwhelming. Right. Well, it seems there's a, there's a weird overlap because in both instances, you have people trying to pretend that they know why Kaepernick's making the decision he's making, and they're not walking in his shoes. And that's like when we get into trouble, and it's the same thing with this Weinstein thing, where we like, especially with older people, well, why are they going up to his

room? Right, right. It's like, wait a second, that's not the question. Exactly. That's not part of this. Yeah. I mean, I'm guessing Colin Kaepernick probably still wishes he were playing football like i don't think like i don't like i'm guessing like you know also like who who is some white dude in alabama to be like oh kaepernick

should shut up like he doesn't what does he know like right it's like this is how the dude feels right he's speaking out like at least like think about why he's doing it. Right. Right. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, you see this with the Weinstein stuff and like with Kaepernick, like that,

I think that we are totally unresolved about how, like where we really view the pecking order of society. Right. And that like, say whatever you, whatever we say, we think we are that, you know,

at one point, you know, in the constitutional convention, we said African-Americans are three fifths of a white person. Right. And then, and then, but you know, at one point, you know, in the Constitutional Convention, we said African Americans are three fifths of a white person, right? And then, and then, but you know, so we'll have a civil war, which General Kelly says could have been, could have been solved through compromise the other day. Ta-Nehisi Coates like skewered that one.

Oh my god. That was great. It's crazy. So, and then, you know, and then you have, but it takes 100 years to actually legislate integration of schools, right? And so it's like these, you know, and somehow this thing that people believe that, and then it takes Black Lives Matter, it takes video, it takes people with cameras and phones to like start showing video of largely black men getting killed by police who are innocent, like for this to actually become a

conversation again i think and i think you know you and when obama got elected it was like oh we're good yeah good like let's our racial issues are fine totally and i think that's i think it's so there are these periodic convulsions we need to sort of rethink and reset of you know what is actually going on here and yeah but this is the the concept of an older male executive right using that power to basically try to get laid or whatever they're trying to do right this has been something that's been going on for since the dawn of whatever the first office was created man was like you know doing this way back right i mean especially the bigger the corporation right i know that i've worked at one that you would always hear stories about certain people.

And like, wow. Why was that woman transferred into that department? She had to. Why? Well, something happened. And then it's like, oh, okay. Right. And so then you're you.

What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to inquire about it? Are you supposed to push harder? What are you going to do? And you're going to go, is Bill Simmons going gonna go to the press and be like you know there's this woman situation yeah this is weird yeah where'd she come from yeah i don't get it and um so it's uh yeah i think i think that i'm just blown away by the scope of it not that it happened but like like i think what's stunning is like this has all

been going on and we like we kind of knew but not like this yeah and well i mean think about the casting couch was yes one of the most famous go-to right i don't i don't know what the right word is what people thought happened in hollywood right right and that like producers produce they bring and grow oh how'd that person right i mean there's like the famous 90210 episode about brenda walsh right roy randall she's trying to get the part did she sleep with roy randall or not i mean this casting couch is 80 90 years yeah it's uh but then you see like oh it's the casting couch is actually way worse it's way worse and i i gotta say i'm i'm shocked by very little anymore,

especially after Bill Cosby. Right. Like Bill Cosby was America's dad in the 80s. That one to me, after that, I was like, nothing's going to shock me. But these stories about Harvey Weinstein, the guy's like a serial rapist. If all these allegations are true, he's a serial rapist. I mean, let's say If all these allegations are true, he's a serial rapist. And it's like, oh, you knew he was, yeah, oh, Harvey, oh, that's who he is.

And this is like a hundred times worse than I ever could have imagined. He's like the whole Catholic church scandal in one human being. Running the same play for 25 years. Hey, got a script in my room. Come on up. Hold on. I'm going to take a shower. And this is for 25 years and hey like got a script in my room come on up hold on i'm gonna take a shower like and this is what he's doing this is for 25 years nobody knew it's isn't that amazing that like it's just like i just so creeped out by the whole thing that the sort of influence and power of the actresses who've come forward like like you know what you could have said something then but what would have i don't know what would have happened like i mean you

read these stories at the end about your story and it's like you i mean i always thought she was a really good actress and i was wondering like what happened to her totally like oh that sucks for her remember she showed up in the sopranos like wow i always liked her oh it's annabelle sewer i always assumed she had like kids and stopped acting or something but yeah i mean this is like this story is i i don't know how it gets covered over the next couple of years or where it goes, but it certainly feels like the biggest Hollywood story of the last 15 years. Yeah. I mean, I hope it doesn't die. I don't think it's going to die at all.

I don't think it does either, right? I think it's like a snowball rolling down the hill. I mean, you know, just like on my, when I was on the car ride over here, I spoke to two people who had other stories about other people that I feel like are about to come out. And I'm like, oh my God, like it's, it's everyone. It's like that nice guy, that nice executive you thought was like a really good guy. It's. But I mean, you talked about the fearlessness you had at Holiday Reporter, the printing stuff.

It's hard to print stuff unless people go on the record. And I think what's changed the last three weeks is people are like, fuck it. I'm telling my story. Yeah. And that's why, that's why. Yeah. Fuck my NDA. That's why, yeah. Screw my NDA is a new one. I didn't even know people could do that.

Right. Screw my NDA. And also, like, how, like, and then who's going to be the asshole? I don't, well, like, also how quickly these guys are, like, falling on the sword. Like, Mark Halperin, I did it. Yep, I did it. Like, sorry. You know, and, like, nobody, it's not the whole, like, protracted fight undermining

of the, undermining of the uh of the woman um and you know brett ratner was the only one today you know good old marty singer and they're trying to trying to protect um but it's uh uh it's like i don't but i do think this changes like let's let's remember october i think was maybe the worst box office month in the history of hollywood like it's the you know everything everything is in free fall. So some of this is like fix it. Stranger Things was so much more important than any movie that came out this month. Can you name one movie?

Or in October, yeah. Can you name one movie? Did you go to the movies? No, you did not. No, 100% not. So, you know, so some of this is just how do you market Hollywood going forward? And so you fix it because it's the right thing to do, right? And like, and Hollywood is motivated by public perception and business right so fix it because it's the right thing to do but because that will

also impact your image in the world right well it's also that i mean the biggest immediate outcome is this is going to lead to so much more diversity in high positions well i think that will happen pretty much i mean i think like i think that um you know the amazon job right so right? So Roy Price, the head of Amazon. Three dudes get knocked out. Yes. They're not getting replaced by three dudes. I can promise you that. Yeah.

I mean, they will interview, you know, like every last female on the planet to make sure they get that job. Those jobs filled by females. And, you know, that's a nice knee jerk, right? But, you know, think like the week before hulu had their big like switcheroo of executives like right someone to fox someone to sony and it's all like white guys being recirculated you know there is this list going around hollywood of uh top jobs where women were never contacted to be interviewed right it sounds like nfl had coaches this is they had to create a rule for this the Rooney rule yeah um you know your

sports I think you undersold yourself but you know and but J.J. Abrams has tried to you know he's instituted sort of his own Rooney rule the hiring of um people for his productions yeah um Ryan Murphy has in terms of directing directing uh directors on his shows so it does work right but then you know people like people just lose it and And I think it's, you know, like it's all about, you know, you know, you can't regulate like this is a town of, you know, largely all liberals who are all for regulation of in government. Right. And the second you want to regulate this industry, it's, you know, like like no way. And so it really isn't coming upon the people at top. And you know, you look at the people at top, all men, right, and they report to boards that are all men. And, you know, I think of the of the six or seven studios in town that oversee all the TV networks,

and the film units, those boards are 17%. There's only 17% female representation. And I think, you know, we have this way of congratulating ourselves when we hire a woman or put a woman in one of those jobs. And like, no one ever freaks out saying, well, why isn't it 50%? You know, why? Like, if women are the biggest consumers of your entertainment, and like, especially, let's say, an Amazon, where I'm guessing the prime, the person who buys Amazon Prime is a female head of household, because men would never get around to doing it, right? And yeah, like that, sort of more of this doesn't filter up that way. But I think there was, you know, a lot of people talk in town. I don't know if you remember when there was this

director Colin Trevorrow, who had a breakout movie at Sundance. And it was like this little indie film that cost nothing and made nothing. But Steven Spielberg saw it and he said these words. He said, he reminds me of a young version of myself. And so he hires Colin Trevorrow to be the director of Jurassic World, which is, you know, let's say it's a $200 million, $200 million budget movie that goes on to be this huge blockbuster and at that same Sundance I believe Ava DuVernay had a movie and Ava DuVernay has like I think it was Selma breakout hit like didn't make a ton of money but did quite well huge notoriety got you know was in the Oscar conversation no one comes to Ava DuVernay with that same you know with because there was no one up at top saying Ava DuVernay reminds me of a young version of me right and so she's been really vocal so smart about talking about how um like so she's just had to make her own way like you know partner with oprah which helps and on projects and um that's going to change though the more different types of people that get in power right i think they'll be able to identify people like ava better yeah at least

i'm that's that would be my hope you know this person i was talking to yesterday told us use this great example there were two movies this summer uh that had female protagonists so atomic blonde yeah and wonder woman and uh the person was saying you know atomic blonde like all these guys at the studios thought it was going to be huge it's a female movie and it's not a female movie it's a like a movie with a female lead that dudes would have constructed, right? Yes. Totally. It's a dude movie. And Wonder Woman had Patty Jenkins as the director

and had this authentic female story, and it did huge. And that's sort of the disconnect, right, that's going on where... Charlize was on this podcast. She told a story about when she did Monster, and the executive that funded it was mad because he thought he was funding a movie

about a hot serial killer and they had to like walk him off the ledge. Right, right. No, it's actually, it's not, it's a movie about a serial killer. It's not, there's no, there's not a sex appeal component to this. We have to go.

I could have done this for another two hours. This was fun though. Thank you. This was fun. Congrats on running strategy for stuff, for the Guggenheims. Something good will happen. I'm excited to see what your next giant thing is.

You'll have a giant thing soon. Probably. We'll see. Yeah, I would guess. I'm betting on you. You're very nice. I like my thing right now. So let's see.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks so much to Janice and thanks to the ringer NFL show where Tate and Lombardi graciously allowed me to crash their party this week. You can subscribe to that, to GM, the GM street podcast on the ringer NFL show. Thanks to C geek. Don't forget NBA fans, $20 off your first C geekGeek purchase and NBA tickets. Use promo code BSNBA.

And don't forget about TheRinger.com. As usual, we're loaded with great stuff this week. If you have 20 minutes, I would read Brian Curtis' piece about the Padres and the John Birch Society from the 1980s. It is really kooky, and it's really well done. We have a whole bunch of NBA stuff and Stranger Things, you name it. So check that out. That is also where my column goes on Fridays. And speaking of Friday, the BS podcast, we'll be back on Friday with another

edition. I feel it's within On the wayside I'm a person never wanted I don't have to be