The Press Box - 25 for 25: The Future of Celebrity Profiles With GQ’s Zach Baron

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan is joined by GQ’s Zach Baron to discuss every aspect of celebrity profiling: how they are “brokered”; the process of interviewing; some of his past subjects, including Martin Scorsese, Brendan Fraser, and Tilda Swinton; and more. Then Bryan asks the following question: “Is the celebrity profile dead or dying?” Host: Bryan CurtisGuest: Zach BaronProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It's producer Kyle Crichton. David, we've been using our 25 or 25 series here at the press box to look at the future of little corners of the media world. Today we have a particularly interesting corner.

it's the celebrity profile. Yeah. And when I think of celebrity profiles, I think of one man, Zach Barron of GQ. Now, Zach's official title is Senior Special Projects Editor, but he is more properly known as the last living person who writes celebrity profiles more or less full time. Yeah.

And let me tell you, what a treat it was. is to put together all of his work and just read everything that I'd read in real time back to back to back. Tilda Swinton, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Ben Affleck, David Letterman. Mm-hmm. And a couple of things stood out about Zach's prose. One, fantastic writer. Two, fantastic writer who is genuinely curious about the people he's writing about. Mm-hmm.

He is not someone to let a fancy sentence get in the way of a genuine insight. So many times when you and I've read celebrity profiles over the years, someone comes in, they clearly see it as a lesser art form. Yeah. Or as the celebrity is being inaccessible or someone they don't particularly want to understand. And they do this writer thing. Yeah.

Where you get a piece that's satisfying, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about the person. Yeah. It's more of like a creative writer. writing exercise or whatever as opposed to actually like an informative piece. Yes, Zach manages for all these people who've been interviewed over and over again, who are often very, very guarded with journalists, always to find something interesting. And I think that proceeds directly from his curiosity.

We talked about all kinds of things, what he likes about writing celebrity profiles, how these things are brokered, what the future of these things looks like in a world of Instagram and podcasts. Here's Zach Barron on the future of the celebrity. celebrity profile. All right, Zach, what do you like about writing celebrity profiles? Oh, man. Everything. I remember I was interviewing Christian Bale. And we were in some diner in Santa Monica. And he was like trying not to answer a question, basically. And he was like, what do you really want to do with your life? And I was like, I'm doing it right now.

And he was like, no, but like, what's your, what's like your, what's like your, what was your soul yearn for? You know, I think, I think there's like a perception that people who do what we do are frustrated artists in some sense. And it's like, actually you have a screenplay or actually you want to be an actor. Actually, I don't even know what. And, and, uh, and he just couldn't believe it. And I was, I was like, this is the widget I like to make. It's a weird widget, very specific widget. I happen to like making this widget, you know.

Celebrity profile, it's like, these are people who live incredibly interesting lives. In ways that are like obvious and then kind of not obvious. Like, like, I don't think people can really

comprehend like what you know, Brad Pitt's life is like. But it's really interesting. And also he's been in so many interesting rooms in his life because of who he is. and then has made it a lot of amazing art. It's a very rich subject.

I think there's a tendency to look down on the art form as frivolous in some ways. And I think that is mostly a byproduct of like any other crafts. You know, 95% of the people practice it are absolutely terrible at it. But the good version of this thing is awesome. In an ideal world, what do you want to get out of it?

encounter with a celebrity. How their brain works, you know, is the best way I can put it. I'm not sure if that was always the case, you know, and you and I can like, this is a very press box subject. You know, I think my understanding of these things has evolved through time, and I also think some of the norms around them have changed. I think when I was starting out, at least in my world, I don't know if this is true across the board, it was a more combative experience.

It was like two men enter the arena and one man leaves, you know, and the other is a bloody broken body that hopefully you leave behind. And I don't know if that was about proving the seriousness of the work, proving the journalistic integrity of it, or just sort of this assumption that, okay, on the one hand, there's this person and they don't want to talk about X, Y, and Z, but I'm going to make them talk about X, Y, and Z. And as I've done it more, I've kind of arrived at the place of, again, these are really interesting people leading really interesting lives. And a lot of them are authentic, like great, A, amazing world historical artists. And their brains work in really interesting ways. And I think a successful one of these, a successful encounter, you come back and you can replicate for someone else how this person thinks, how they talk, how they feel.

how their brain processes information, how they turn that into art. That, to me, is like success. It's interesting because sometimes I'll read these, and I feel there's almost two ideas. One is I want to understand something about this person or understand how their brain works. The second idea is, I want to write a great piece about this person. Sometimes those ideas connect together, and sometimes they're almost at odds with each other. Yeah, I remember, and again, this is another place where I've evolved. I remember when I was relatively early doing this, I did a piece called 50 Cent is My Life Coach.

And the idea behind this was I really wanted to write about what it was like to be past your pinnacle. Which is kind of a rude thing to write about. But it's like I feel like in magazines and media in general, we do a great job of this person's blowing up. They're young and exciting. And it might be, it might really happen for them. And we're very good at, like, the top of the mountain, you know, this person's all the way at the top of their profession. You know, they just won the NBA finals or whatever. That's a, that's a classic, classic journalism moment.

And there's even a kind of classic journalism moment where it's like this person's surrounded by empty bottles and they haven't worked in two decades. You know, that's another classic of this form. But I was like, there's not a lot of, like, pieces about someone who's, like, just past the peak. And they're not among the empty bottles, but they're not where there were. So I got a 50 cent and I basically lied to him. I say, I'm just turning 30 because I was just turning 30 at the time, I think. And, you know, I feel like I might be like a little washed up. I feel like I might have already done the best work I was going to do.

And could you help me? You know, he was writing, it wasn't out of nowhere. It was like he was sort of writing like, you know, 50 laws of power or whatever type books and has a motivational vibe to him. But, you know, it was kind of a bad faith approach. And he took the exercise really seriously and was trying to help me. And I remember halfway through that being like, I want to write a cool piece about this abstract idea. And there's this real human being in front of me who's not trying to be a little pawn in my game,

who's not trying to be a prop in a story that I'm telling or a performance that I'm doing for a reader's he's just a real guy trying to engage with me in good faith. And so I, well, of course, I am always trying to write a great piece. I'm also trying to never lose sight of the fact that I'm writing a bad, a real person. And they don't get to be like a prop or a toy and a cool sentence that I write. You know, they are, they are human. And that doesn't mean that everything needs to be positive. It just means that it has to treat them like they're a living, breathing human being.

One often hears that celebrity profiles are brokered. To what extent are they brokered? Oh my God, to a crazy extent. To an extent that people will not, can't even imagine. What is brokered? Well, so what is brokered is kind of, it depends, but certainly access. Well, brokered is like, okay, do you say yes or no? When you say yes, what are you saying yes to?

For stories that I do, there's basically a minimum amount of access that I'm willing to do it for. And so part of what you're brokering is like, will you give me that much access? If you won't, then we're not going to do it. But there's a lot of like details and nuance to that. And once you've agreed on, let's say, the amount of hours you'll give me, there's still a question of like, what are we doing with those hours? in what city, in what location, how will we be spending our time together?

All that stuff is talked about in advance. And how many hours are we talking for a minimum here, for you to be interested in really doing it? I got to see you more than once, and I got to see for like, you know, more than more than two or three hours each time, you know? And then it's like I've had experiences where I did a Kevin Costner's story, I think last year where I'd been on the set of his movie Horizon two years

prior to that for a couple days. And then I was at his house in Santa Barbara. And then I was scouting locations for Horizon 3, which is a film he still hasn't even made with him in another time in Utah. And I've spent, you know, a week with Idris Elba and Abiza while he DJed 19 different clubs. And but I've also, you know, had the kind of bare minimum of like, we meet on Tuesday and we meet on Wednesday and we do this on Tuesday and we do this on Wednesday. But that's probably where the line is drawn, at least for me. And meet them twice because it gives you two different scenes essentially for a story or because you want to be able to follow up on things that they said the first time around? Both. Primarily a second these days. I mean, it is helpful. You don't

want to just be in like one room the whole time. You have nothing to describe, nothing to talk about. So there's like a practical concern there. But a lot of it is like, yeah, just about. being able to follow up, but also people are not the same day to day. So if I just meet you for like an afternoon, I can kind of guess at what you're like. But weirdly, if I can meet you on one afternoon and then maybe two weeks later on a different day, it gets closer to quote-unquote reality. It just feels more real. And also, there's a comfort. I remember, I like, I probably like shouldn't use this analogy, but I remember, do you remember when Neil's, you remember, Strauss is the game, that like very gross pickup manual.

I had a lot of friends try to force that book on me. Yeah, yeah. It was really an atrocious document. But one of his like gross strategies was if you're trying to seduce a woman, take her to a second location. The logic being, and again, not co- assigning any of this, but I think it's somewhat relevant. It's like, well, now you have history. Because you were at this one place and now there's this other place. And I do think human psychology, there's something true.

about that. And so this idea of like, okay, well, you know, we, uh, we're, we're sitting and talking over dinner a couple weeks ago. Now I'm seeing you again. It feels like we know it. You know, the, the second conversation is a different quality in the first one. That's interesting. So you'll, you'll have profiles or Q&A is like the one you do with Ben Affleck where they will be addressing what they said the first time around. You're almost saying, was that stuff you said about J-Lo? Was that okay? Like, did you, does that sit in your mind? is that sits somehow differently with you now that we're sitting down and talking about it again? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Specifically, the question I asked him was just, how's the last conversation sitting? And that's, he went to a thing he had said about J-Lo, and specifically wanted to talk that out, you know. But I like that too. I'm big on accountability. I think there's this notion some practitioners in my work will, like, go in and steal what they can and run. And I'm just like, here's my phone number. Here's my email. If you have any doubt or second thoughts about anything you've said,

I'm here. I'm not hiding. I'm available. I am accountable for the stuff I write. And so, you know, in some ways, like, I think probably a publicist would have told Ben Affleck, like, maybe don't talk about J-Lo twice, but I thought that was a great moment where he was like, all right, I'm not sure if I totally made my point the first time. Let me see if I can like make it better the second. And that's in his interest and it's also in mine. Like, I don't want to print the wrong thing. I want to print the thing that most accurately summarizes the way. someone thinks, and to the point they were making earlier, I like to see how people's brains work. In that moment, you see how Ben Affleck's brain works. It's very revealing. Yeah. If the encounter with the celebrity is going to be contrived just by its nature, this is not a boy in his notebook kind of piece,

do you want to write about the contrivance in the story? Do you want to try to hide the contrivance from the reader? I want to make it feel uncontrived in between the two of us first. and then for the reader secondary. I think, well, I'll just be honest. I think it's very whack when people are like, let me talk about how contrived this experience is and how weird it is.

I don't think readers care. I think it's kind of boring. I also think it's just like table stakes of this. Yeah, like it's an arranged encounter. You were a journalist. Like I often use this sort of reality TV phrase, like, I'm not here to make friends. Again, it doesn't mean I'm trying to like win a

competition, but I'm not trying to create the illusion that we're just hanging out. At the same time, people will make a huge deal about how the fact that there might be a publicist somewhere involved at some point and that this person's there because they're getting something in return, a magazine cover, a cool photo shoot, or just PR for their movie or whatever it may be. I just think all that stuff is like boring. But I also don't want to air so far on the other side where it's like, oh yeah, I just happen to be documenting this experience between two people who are actually quite close. Like, no, you're not, you know? And that's okay.

Revealing that the public is there, revealing the tradeoffs, that feels like a writer being sheepish. Yes. About writing a celebrity profile. Totally. Also, the publicist is not there for the record when I do these things. But, yes, they're being sheepish. They're being sheepish and they're being scared. And they're also like, they're telling you, they're almost like making excuses.

You know, they're saying, well, the reason this doesn't. feel more real is because it was artificial. It's like, well, I think you've got that actual backwards. You know, the reason this doesn't feel more real is because you fail to make it more real, you know, and now you're basically trying to telegraph to the reader that you have an excuse for why. Let's say you're writing about an actor or director that you really admire and their new movie or television show, the ostensible peg for the story, is awful. It sucks. Can you say that in a celebrity profile? You can, but I never think the peg is the most interesting thing. It's always an excuse to talk to something.

You know, and I specifically, I mean, I've written about all kinds of people. An actor often is, accepts a part in a script, goes to work, and reads their lines. They didn't conceive of the character. They didn't direct the movie.

They didn't set, decorate it. They didn't produce it. You know what I'm saying? Like, they just went to the job. So whether the thing is good or not, almost has nothing to do with them. Which also, when it is good, is also limiting. Because you're like, I'm excited about this thing, but there's only so much that you contributed. You know, maybe you contributed an amazing performance. But then what I really want to talk about, this performance,

or you as a performer in general, and how your personality and your psychology intersects with your art. Like, that to me is more interesting than the specific peg. Pags are the things that kind of make this world run because someone is by nature more inclined to talk to a journalist when they have something to promote. But beyond sort of them doing their part to promote the thing and you doing your part to open the door for them to do that. And, you know, like, if you're talking to Scraese about Killers of the Flower Moon, A, that's more personally directing it.

And B, it's just a lens into 50 other things that are interesting about Scorsese. You know, so it's not that the peg doesn't matter, but that the quality of the peg doesn't matter much. Although occasionally you will, I have had the experience of with a director or something catching someone that you love

on a kind of medium work and you're like, all right, I actually want to talk about this movie made two movies ago or something like that. And that's never ideal. But in general, I don't really care about the quality of the thing. I formulated something once

called the Tad Friend Rule, which states that the quality of the celebrity profile is inversely proportional to the quality of the movie or show that it is pegged to because he would write this great piece about Ben Stiller and he'd be like, wow, what was that about again? It was, oh, the secret life of Walter Middy. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And it's almost like they were more available sometimes when it was something a little bit iffy rather than something they knew was just going to crush it at the box office. Yeah, I mentioned that customer piece. The Horizon 1 and 2 did not work out

as cinematic experiences. And I had, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, knew that it wasn't working.

But that, there was fascinating drama in that. He wanted so bad for the work. He was doing everything, his power to make it work. He had gambled his money and his time and his reputation on making it work. And it wasn't working. And he kind of knew it wasn't working.

And studios knew they weren't, so it provided drama and, and intrigue and, and emotion. And I would much rather that than just be like, oh, cool, man. Like, you know, you're making a Mickey Rourke style

comeback in the wrestler. And like it's top of the world again. Yeah, exactly. Like who cares? These people that you're writing about, most of them have done tons and tons of interviews.

They've all spent a lot of time avoiding interviews. How do you prepare to talk to somebody like that? I read everything and generally just shake my head the bad job that everyone else has done, if I'm being honest. But yeah, I read every interview they've done.

Increasingly now there's like a lot of podcasts. appearances that you can listen to. If they're, you know, an actor, watch everything that they've done. If they're a director, watch everything in the directed. Just kind of try to see everything. And then at this point, I've done this enough that you can kind of see the gaps in the holes and the places where someone said something and the prior journalist failed to follow up, you know.

Or there's this sort of gap part of their career that they've never talked about. or someone like Scorsese, who I used as a example before, but he loves to talk about movies. So every journalist that got in front of him inevitably ended up talking about movies. You know, I talked to Scraisezi about God and death, you know? He hadn't talked about God and death before. But also, like, it's partially because it's not easy to ask Corsese about God and death

because he wants to talk about, you know, William Wiler, you know. Michael Powell. Yeah, exactly, the red shoes. Like, but I was like, man, you don't hear much of it. You know, he's got a, his wife is very sick, you know, it has been for some time. Like all that stuff is in there. It's just never been asked about it. Fine whenever I read lots of interviews with famous people, they have like 20 answers in their head.

And it's almost a control V kind of thing. They'll get asked a question and they'll just start giving one of those answers. Yeah. And sometimes it's not even an answer to the question, the appropriate question. just start going into that. Do you find yourself trying to steer around things like that that that they've said over and over again? Yeah, I always think about that as the needle drop, meaning like you drop the, they pick the needle up and drop the needle on the part of the record that, you know, like, oh, I like track three. This is like drop it on track three. Yes. It's a good way to say.

One, I try not to ask questions that will like trigger that. And then two, I've developed a slightly rude technique where when they start telling the story, I would, gently tell them the end of it. And thus let them know that I am familiar with the story they are telling and save basically both of us the five minutes that they would spend telling it, which I think is a respectful way to hit the fast forward button on something like that. Which famous person were you intimidated or nervous about talking to? Oh, man.

I've had, at this point, I don't get too nervous. weirdly, maybe not weirdly. The pieces I think I get the most nervous for are the kind of like artistic heroes ones, which are also, I think, the hardest ones to write and the ones that I kind of am like least pleased with always, you know? And for me, unsurprisingly, that's like a Paul Thomas Anderson piece or Quentin Tarantino piece. And your head is almost like so full of all the associations you have with it, personal and professional, that it's just kind of a mess on tangle and you're more, you know, like, I don't, I generally don't, like, I'm like, oh, I'm with so-and-so.

I don't generally feel that way, but like, I'm at Tarantino's house or something. Like, that will throw me. And then there are people who are, like, genuinely challenging interviews, you know, in a very different era I interviewed Connie West. I think it was like 10 days after he got married to Kim Kardashian. He was probably the most famous person on the planet. And he also was, like, famous for having these incredibly combative interviews and, and equally famous for just monologing.

Speaking of people, like, not listening to question and just dropping the needle somewhere. I mean, he's just like, I want to be Walt Disney. I want to be Steve Jobs. I mean, that was his thing then is where he drops the deal now is far worse. But, and I remember just being like, this is going to be incredibly challenging to look this person in the eye and constantly interrupt them and cut them off and redirect them. But that's what it's going to take to get something different than what they've done before. Who did you find was different in real life than their public persona?

Oh, man. You know, again, I've done so many of these that I don't know if I have any expectations as far as, as far as that goes. I think you have hunches based on kind of like what you read and what you see. But the difference between real life and persona, I basically expect a difference, you know? Or let me rephrase that. I think I try not to have any preconceived notion at all and just like kind of see. I do remember I did Justin Bieber piece actually now that it comes up. And I just, you know, everything that you would read about him was like, this kid is absolutely terrible.

And that was a COVID-era piece. So it was like I did not. I was like on Zoom with him. I was not spending time with him. I know nothing about Justin Bieber. I still don't. But the person I talked to was like incredibly open and vulnerable. And I just was like, what?

Like there's nothing, nothing I've ever seen or read that led me to believe that you would be this way. I couldn't really tell given the circumstances. Was that a different kind of performance for me or whatever? But that one surprised me. You were talking about Kevin Costner. Here at the ringer, we spent a lot of time thinking about the aggregators. I don't know if you've heard that come up in a podcaster too. So in your Costa profile, he tells you he spent $38 million of his own money

to make the Horizon films. And that fact, as soon as you publish it, is printed by everybody on the internet. Yeah. How much is that in your mind? Am I going to have a piece of reporting? Am I going to have a quote that's going to play on social media? Very much in my mind. And hopefully not in a gross way or bad way, but these pieces need to get read.

you know, and generally there's, I'll put it two ways. There is a strategic thing about when you're making this widget, as I called it earlier, there ought to be something that puts a battery in its back, you know, just a quote like that, you know, which I don't think is like nefarious or evil or makes him look bad, but the fact that I gleaned that information allows basically more people to like find the story and read it. So you're always kind of searching for something like that just to make sure the thing gets read. On the flip side, I will say that I become more and more aware of like anything you tell me. And it's just the two of us in this room now.

But then I will print it. And then if it's sufficiently interesting or salacious, it will go on to your Wikipedia page and it will be there forever. And not only will it be there forever, but if you ever stand in front of another journalist, they're going to ask you about it. So you've confided to me what may be the worst moment. of your life or something very vulnerable and maybe even have deemed me worthy of the responsibility. But once it gets printed Wikipedia, I got a drunkie to be like, oh, I heard you were sexually harassed by this person. What was that experience like for you? We met five minutes ago. Do you want to talk about it, you know? Or, oh, you thought you had a son and then you found out that the kid wasn't

his. How do you, you know, I'm more and more conscious of the second and third person who we're going to ask that person about it after they tell me. And I've had experiences where I've even said, like, hey, if I print this, this will follow you around to some degree. How do you feel about it? You know, because I don't, and again, that's not giving people veto power over the stuff I write. But I do think there's like a difference between this and like Watergate and Deep Throat.

You know, you're not going to take down a government. So you want to make sure that someone's like not unintentionally like ruining their life. So you can get a cool quote. Let's talk about a few profiles here. Martin's course says you mentioned 2023. You spent time with him as his office and in his study at his townhouse. And as you say, the subjects here are the many of most of the subjects are getting old, his eventual death, God. Does you find it hard to ask those questions?

No. I think that if you are authentically interested in what you're asking about, then no question is hard to ask. And I think where other journalists get into trouble and you and are talking about before about this sort of excuse making that people do, you know, there's a version of a celebrity profile. It's really common, which is like, hey, man, you know, I just, my editor really would want me to ask about, you know, this girl that you dated that's saying me and stuff about you in public right now. You know, and I'm sorry I have to ask about, but I have to ask.

First of all, you don't have to ask. You don't have to do anything. Second of all, if you're interested in it, own your interests. And I've asked people plenty of questions like that, but it's come from a place of authentic, genuine interest. And with someone like Scraise, it's easy. I'm fascinated with him. But part of my prep for any story is like,

I have to talk, you know, I used to use like, I'm like, I, I don't know what I'll do if I'd like, say, have to like go interview Chris Evans or something. You know, I don't have a lot of natural curiosity by Chris Evans. Then I got Chris Evans assignment. I learned everything I could about Chris Evans. I got really into Chris Evans. By the time I was in front of Chris Evans, I was like, you're the most interesting man on earth. Let me ask you all the questions like I can think of. And maybe that feeling doesn't always last.

But when I'm in front of them, I'm so genuinely interested that I'm kind of like, this is fine. I'm curious about it. I'll ask about it. Hopefully you can tell that this place comes from the genuine place, not from a place where, oh, someday I'll be talking to Brian Curtis and I can talk about how Scorsese and I talked about death. In that moment, I'm like, oh, my God, you've made all this amazing work. You're coming to the end of it. You're trying to understand it. You're trying to understand what will last and what won't and what's unfinished and what is finished. And like, I can think of nothing more interesting on the planet. So of course I'm going to ask you another question about it. And I'm very comfortable pursuing what I am interested in knowing, in part because I do know that it's not coming from a salacious place or an exploitative place that's coming from a place of deep, authentic interest, hopefully. Another one of my favorites, Brendan Frazier from 2018. It's not quite the once famous star surrounded by empty bottles. He'd had a little bit of a comeback or a mini comeback by the time you got to him. What led you to Brendan Frazier? Yeah, mostly instinct on that one.

There was a meme. There was like, I don't even remember what it was called this one. It was like sad Brendan Frazier. Because he really had disappeared. He was obviously this big star in the 90s. And then had kind of like been doing these mummy franchises and stuff like that. But had gradually faded from public view. And then was like a tertiary character on a TV show and did some press.

But like it looked real sad when he was doing his press. And it was like, it was a. Prime meme internet too. So there's images of him like sad. We're sort of circulating. And I just remember being like, I wonder,

maybe there's like a story there. And I, that was the case where I reached out and they were like, we're not against doing a story, but not yet. And then I think it was like a year or two later. He came back to me.

I was like, all right, I'm ready to do it. And lo and behold, there was like a fascinating story about there. But yeah, that was just kind of like you got a vibe, you got a sense. Plus people were like, look at the sad man. And I was like, all right, let's find out what's going on there.

And what happens with that story is he tells you essentially, if not why he's sad exactly, about why he disappeared from Hollywood for a number of years. Well, he gave me one answer and then he gave me another answer. And it was interesting, speaking of like how people's brains work, he's a very elliptical thinker and talker. I love him. I think he's such an awesome guy. But he expresses himself in a very hilarious elliptical way.

I have the time I'd be like, what are you even talking about, man? And initially the explanation he gave me was kind of like interestingly practical but anti-dramatic, which is basically like he had hurt himself too many times doing too many stunts on action movies. His body was ruined. He couldn't like get it back together. and sort of like semi-voluntarily stepped away slash like just couldn't physically do some of the stuff he was doing and then the work kind of dried up and disappeared.

And I remember sometimes you get this feeling when you're talking to someone. I remember I think I've been with him at his house in New York, upstate New York, and then we were in London together. And I remember like the whole time feeling like there's like something he's not telling me, which sounds dramatic,

and I don't often have that feeling, or I often have that feeling, but it's usually like, yeah, you're Brad Pitt, you're not telling plenty of things, and you're never going to him. You will never tell me. Yeah.

But this was like, I was like, there's, there's like something else here. And I had written, I had written the story. I'd written, like, what I had. And he called me. Basically, like,

I think it was like a week before the story was supposed to ship. And he called me, And he told me basically a second story about how, again, Philip Burke had allegedly sexually assaulted him at a Golden Globes event. Phil Burke, former head of the HFPA, which used to run the Golden Globes, still sort it as. And talked about what had happened and the psychological ramifications from that,

which is basically like he felt unwelcome and powerless and kind of faded away because of that. And I remember I wrote that section and I just dropped in the piece and I had to change like not another sentence. Like because the piece was circling around this thing that was unsaid. Then he said it and I just dropped like the 800 words or 1,200 words or whatever it was that they added and basically shipped the story. The missing piece that completes the puzzle. Yeah. It's an amazing piece. We'll tweet out a bunch of these.

But I want to go back and encourage people to go back and read it because so many quotes in that where he compares himself to the horse. in Animal Farm, and where he has this very genuinely moving passage where it's all about the movie Looney Tunes Back in Action and his character in there, which sounds absurd and not real, but it's real and it's very genuinely moving. Yeah, yeah. And that's it, that Looney Tunes Back in Action is a great example of what I'm talking about where it is a story that I initially did not understand. And in the process of trying to understand just what he was saying, you're like, oh, my God,

this is like amazing. Tilda Swinton, 2015. She picked you up from an airport in Scotland, and she gave you a big hug, and you wrote this. She smells like wildflowers and wood smoke. Her sweater is chunky and soft. Her profile is the kind of thing you need to work up to looking at directly. And it's so funny, because whenever I get to lines like that in a celebrity profile,

I'm always like, I don't really care what the person looks like or smells like. In this case, I'm intensely interested in what Tilda Swinton would be like. in terms of just tactily and otherwise. Tell me, tell us what happens after she picks you up at the airport and gives you this big hug. Well, I almost couldn't tell you because I have not reread this story. I did send it to you and we were talking about this. But this is such a, people always ask me like, oh, who's the person you like the most or who's the person you like the least? And I'm kind of, again, I told you before, I generally like psyched myself up to kind of be fascinated with everyone.

And then in the aftermath, like maybe you walk away with an opinion or two. But this was like a true magic. experience where I was like on a flight with, that was like three hours late with no way to contact her and had been traveling for God knows how long. And I was like, I just don't know what's going to happen when I land. And what happened when I landed was she was just literally waiting at the gate for me with like a bunch of dogs in a car. And she lives in this magical place called Inverness, Scotland. And I'll tell you a story about this piece. So the way it ends is, I think it's, I think it's a, the way it ends is she, before I'm my flight, she took me to a beach near her house in

Inverness and, you know, beaches in Scotland, rocky, wavy, you know, very windswept and beautiful. And she picks up a rock and she says, like, bring this home to your sweetheart. And I, this is this beautiful, smooth pebble when I put in my pocket and I go home. And I think I did this story. You said 2015. Five years later, it's like the depths of COVID. And I haven't left my house in months. I'm like walking around my neighborhood for the 50th time. And I look at my phone for the 100th,000th time, probably that day.

And I have an email from Tilda Swinton. And it's a photo of the exact beach that we had been on, I guess, five years prior. And it just says thinking of you. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, just amazing human being, amazing person. No idea what's in that piece. I'll never find out. What was interesting is you wrote it as much as an encounter as a profile, which is an interesting question about these things. Because do people at home, do your readers really want to figure the celebrity out or understand them? or do they want to know what it's like to spend a couple of hours with this person?

Yeah, and I think, to me, it's like, what do you actually have the goods for? You know, in that case, the encounter was fascinating. And I was like, people should know how magical this person is. Let me just try to convey what it was like to enter this person's world. This is where she actually lives. This is how her brain actually works. This is what it's like to spend time with them. I think to me, when I sit down, it's like, what was more interesting, the encounter or

or the kind of the more classical profile of, you know, what is this person like and has their brainwork and where they come from and what's the arc of their career? So the bar for an encounter for me to do it that way is very high. And I'm just going to continue being rude. I think sometimes people just cop out and they're like, here's what? Here's what happened. You know, the my piece is just what happened, you know? They're not really trying to like find a way to say anything definitive about the person.

They're just like, well, we met here and then we did this and then it was over. That to me is often a cop out, except if the experience that you had is like so interesting and illuminating and special that you, that you do it that way. Let's talk about the future. Celebrity profile has been declared dead more than just about anything except baseball. Yeah. Is it dead or dying? No, not at all. I get frustrated with this narrative, even as I completely understand where it comes from.

Because, you know, you and I were talking about bartering over access before. You know, the arc of there is a, there is a true fact that is the backbone of this, which is that pre-social media and all this, there was a time when if you were a Hollywood star or an athlete or public, figure of any kind, politician, you name it, trying to build your profile the way that you could speak to your quote unquote public and build that quote unquote public, increase awareness to yourself was basically like a magazine or newspaper. And at that time, magazines and newspapers had tons and tons of leverage. And even like when I came into the game, there was a lot of like Leonardo Caprio, you don't want to do this thing, but you're going to do it, God damn it.

You know? And that was just the way the power lay. And it is unquestionably true now that the power balance has flipped in the sense of very few public figures need a magazine. Very few public figures need a guy like me to get their, get their, at least at minimum their quotes across about their new project. They can, but they don't need it. So what you often hear are people kind of coming out of these experiences being like, well, I had no power in that situation and it sucked. Fair enough. I think there are still a plenty of times where interest align.

And lo and behold, you have the access you want and a person who wants to be there. And you have a piece that is as good as any of these things were, you know, at the beginning of the century or whatever. And then, too, I just think there's still some magic in it. still think when it's like pulled off well you can see someone in a whole new light understand someone a whole new light and and can can change um can change the way the public sees them too i we're talking about brenna fraser um i i probably like i don't think he'd mind me sharing this i after he won an oscar for the way i got a nice text from him and it wasn't like bro you did this but it was like a million things had to happen for that for that sort of come back

to be cemented. And one of them, again, one of a million. Please do not, like, I'm not overstating the part of a piece that we did together. But one of them was this piece. And so they still have immense power. And I still, you know, hear from people about all sorts of things I've written, where they're like, that was really cool, you know. And so, no, it's, it's not dead. It's just like, You got to be really good at it and you've got to understand the world. And, you know, maybe only the strong will survive. We should acknowledge that there used to be a lot of people that did this for a living. You know, and then, of course, you'd open the men's magazines.

Fantasy now we're talking about this this morning. You'd open the men's magazines every month. It'd be like, oh, my God, is it one of the celebrity profilers writing about famous people? Or is it Tom's you know, slumming and giving us George Clooney. And it's fantastic because it's Tom's you know and George Clooney. and that's, you know, matchmate in heaven. There aren't many people doing this for a living full time or something like full time anymore.

No. Which may be more decline to the magazine industry, as much as decline to the genre, I suppose. Yeah, I think it's more about the industry than the genre. And in the sense of, yeah, there's just less places to do it at, you know. And also because this is a very specific skill that does take training in time. It sounds ridiculous to say, but it's true.

And because the sort of broader infrastructure got broken, you don't have this thing where you mentioned Sean Fentanycy. I was thinking about this morning as I drove over here how when I was a young writer, Sean and I've been friends forever, I was a music critic like Sean was. And he was the editor at Vibe Magazine. And he gave me one of my first assignments to talk to an actual person.

I've been doing it. I was at the Village Voice and I was talking to people there. But I remember it was a piece about this group of gym class heroes. And it was like a one pager in the magazine. You know, again, like this is all ancient history now. But at the time, it was like the language we spoke. And it was an important page in the magazine, but it was like not so important that I was actually going to get any time with this guy they were going to put like 25-year-old me

or however old I was on a plane or anything. So it was a phone owner. I remember Sean saying to me like, okay, so if you don't have like, if you're not witnessing anything, one thing you might do is try to like extract a story from him so that you will have an anecdote for this piece.

You know, like very like 101 journalism stuff. But important to know that. He's an editor of I magazine. I'm a writer that he's assigning and he's like explaining to me how this thing like might go well. And like, people like Sean and a million other people doing that for me eight billion times put me in a position

where, you know, I can sit in front of the people I sit in front of now and hopefully do a good job. Without that training, it's a wild world out there and it's very hard to do well. And as a result, you don't have kind of new stars coming in by and large in some places you do. because the infrastructure that sort of like trained me up, unfortunately does seem to have mostly vanished. You've done a partial pivot to video at GQ, where you will talk to some of these people as part of a video, video interview.

You're often doing something with them on camera. I watch you and David Letterman last night. What's the difference between doing something in print and doing something like that? In some ways it's very similar and some ways very different. So this was like an idea that Willowell, the editor of GQ had to basically, it was like, what if we, we did a cover story,

but it was on video. And what would that mean? Well, it would be kind of simulating, like I said, the similar type of access to what we were doing print. So we'll see them over a couple days, and maybe we'll do something together, and then we'll sit down and talk. Anyway, the first one I did was with Andre 3000,

and I remember I was like super nervous, and he's actually, in addition to being a public figure, is an actor. And I remember him just being, well, I can see you're very nervous. Like, just be yourself. And I was like, thanks, thanks, Andre. That's really useful advice. A couple of things are different. One, there's like 40 people watching you while you do it, which is insane.

Normally when I'm doing journalism, it's me in a person or we're talking about something vulnerable. We're talking about saying delicate. So it's the two of us. In this case, there's like a bunch of camera people. There's a bunch of lights people. and then there's like everybody else. There's like 30 people looking at you when you're having this conversation.

So in that sense, you are performing immediately for an audience, even as you were trying to recreate the intimacy of a one-on-one conversation. That part is crazy. And then, you know, just the fact that, and you guys experience this at the ringer too, that now all of a sudden you're on camera too.

And, you know, like, I find that sometimes as a journalist to do a good job, you have to ask a question you know the answer to, but you have to act a little dumb or you have to make a really kind of stupid-looking listening face to let them know that you're really listening. And now it's like, all right, like those are all going to be hits to the kind of vanity, like when I'm doing this on camera. So at least for me, it's an exercise and kind of like letting go of any kind of ego or vanity. almost just trying to pretend like I'm doing the print thing. I do find it kind of puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage. And I say this, I've just watched David Markezy and Andrew Schultz do a big one for the New York Times. These people are performers. We are not performers.

Our performance is going to be on the page when we take these, you know, audio files home and get to write that snazy sentence and that great transition. So matched one-on-one, we don't look good. We just don't. I completely agree with you, although, again, I'm like, I'm like, level up. To me, my answer is always like, we'll figure out a way. You know, like, I'm not going to. Just interview David Letterman, but become David Letterman, that's what you're saying. Not become David Letterman, but, like, get in the ring with David Letterman and, like, hold your own, you know, and find a way.

And that was, like, a great experience because I was like, I've never talked to someone faster, you know, in terms of, like the response and the joke that comes right back at you. And you're asking a question and all of a sudden, he's throwing you off your game and can you get back on it? But I love that challenge. To me, I'm like, I don't accept like, okay, I'm just going to be the sheepish right on there. I'm not trying to look cool, but I am trying to look like I belong. And I feel like that's a challenge I, I like accept. And it's one of the things I've like enjoyed actually about the format is like trying to figure out a way to like actually have presence on there and not just be like a soul sucking void of no charisma. I got something here that has never ended a Zach Barron profile.

It's a lightning round. Are you ready for this? What is the sentence you vowed never to write in a celebrity profile? Oh, man. I mean, there's a million here. Anything that mentions the Chateau Marmont. By the way, I've probably broken every single one of the rules that I mentioned. So never to do again, perhaps.

Yeah. Never, no hotel lobbies whatsoever. This is why I'm surely broken. But like when so-and-so was a kid, you know, slash that whole second section that is just the bio. section where it's like, hey, we're having fun, but let's just slam the brakes on this thing and take you all the way back to the beginning. Every time I read that, I want to throw it in the trash. And I'll add one more. Someone so doesn't really like talking about this or when asked

about this, so and so kind of made a face. Again, like, you try to get something. You failed because you're not great at your job. That's okay. You don't need to tell me. Like, just don't know, no excuses. don't be coward. Like, if it didn't go well, don't put it on them. I hate that kind of like excuse-making midstream slash admission of defeat in the middle of this piece that it's just a turnoff. It's like, oh, okay, so you failed, but you want to make you reading? Cool. What is your favorite way a celebrity has reacted to a story you wrote?

Probably the tilt of the story that I told about sending the email years later. that was that was electric. I have no idea of that's reaction to the story, which you probably never even read, but that, that one will live with me. Who didn't like a story you wrote? I've actually sort of told this story in a ringer podcast before,

but Bradley Cooper was furious for the story I wrote in GQ magazine. And I actually think somewhat justifiably, it was, it was, he was promoting a movie called American Hustle by David O'Russell. And

at a fascinating career moment where he had just done Silver Lange's Playbook, but nominated for an Oscar. But prior to that, had done the hangover and it's various and sundry other, like, roles that I think he wasn't, like, super proud of. And so he had done one prestige role and a bunch of roles he wasn't super proud of. And then for whatever reason, the studio would not show me American House. It was the only time this has ever happened to me.

You were asking, like, does the peg matter or not? No, but I'm also not going to, like, show up and we'll ask people something about questions about something like off the trailer. So I was like, I really need to see American Hustle before me and Bradley get together because otherwise, like, what are we going to talk about? Because there's one other movie that he's proud of and then the rest is this other stuff. And I'm going to have to ask about this other stuff. And they didn't show me the movie.

And so I asked Bradley Cooper a lot of questions about midnight meat train, which is like a movie he had been in. And he was absolutely furious and hated it and hated every minute of it and was not shy about sharing that fact. And you heard from him personally or his people? His people. My boss heard from his people. And then a very funny thing happened, which was then the studio, the same studio that had not shown me, the film got word.

Maybe his PR team also got word of the fact that this is really not going well. And I remember I was living in New York, but I was in L.A. for some reason, I can't remember why. And my phone just started ringing. and every time I picked it up, it would be like Emma Stone or like Cameron Crow. I'd just be like driving around. I'd be like, man, I don't recognize this number. Like, let me just pick it up real quick. And they'd be like, oh, hi, it's David O'Russell.

And it was like because word had gone out that things are going badly between us. And so then it was like I had all these random celebrities calling to basically like tell me that he was, in fact, a good guy. And by the way, like I said, I do not hold this experience. against them. I think we were set up for failure, but like, man, we failed. That's amazing. Yeah. All right. So you just brought me my next question, which is there's something in journalism for the non-journalists out there called the secondary interview. So if you are writing about Bradley Cooper, David O. Russell, get him on the phone. That's a secondary.

Correct. I call it in the business. What is the best secondary interview you've ever had? Well, David O. Russell actually gave me a killer secondary for that particular story because I remember he said something that stuck with me forever, which was like, I was like, well, why did you has Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings and he was like oh, because I met him at a party and I thought he was the angriest guy ever met in my entire life. Which was like not like it was just like wait,

not the public perception of him then. It's not the public perception of him now. That's a hell of the secondary. But it was like incredibly honest. I think as I've, as I've this is, as you well know, the secondary is like a very low form of journalism. It's like a 15 minute phone call.

call where the person's only job is to tell you positive things about a person. Usually they're trying not to get in trouble. They're doing somebody a favor. So it's like the most texturalist, colorless. They don't want to be interested. They don't want to be interested. So I remember I did a Robert Pattinson story for Tenant before Tenant was out. And I was like, I don't really understand what this movie is. And he was like, I don't either. And I was like, you're in it. Like you've read the script. Do you know? And he's like, no, I really don't. So I called, Christopher Nolan, director of that movie. And I was like,

is Robert Pansohn fucking with me? And he was like, yes and no. But it was like, it was like fun. In some way the more question, I'm more proud of the question than the answer, whereas like I think I started, after I started doing secondaries more like that. Whereas like instead of just being like,

tell me about what it's like to work with Rob. It's like, is this guy fucking with me? I would say probably my favorite recent secondary is I did a story a few years ago with James Cameron, you know, the director of Avatar and Titanic and Terminator, a million other movies. And he, in his civilian life, dives submarines, like very deep into the ocean. And he had become embroiled in a conflict with another explorer.

This guy was not Hollywood affiliated in any way about who had gone deeper in the ocean. And I called this other guy, Victor Viscovo. And I was like, James Cameron says that he's gone deeper than you. And Victor Viscova was just like an explorer, you know, like a like a Jacques Cousteau character is like, I really love James Cameron, but I actually, in fact, have like gone deeper into the ocean. And then I took that back to James Cameron and they were basically arguing through me for like weeks about who had gone deeper into the ocean. Fantastic. Which says something about James Cameron and probably also Victor Viscova, whose career I'm less familiar with. What actor-director has said no to you that you would someday like to say yes?

Speaking of Jaskas still like figures I would love to do a Wes Anderson piece He never says yes He's always directing a movie And then You said director and actor Adam Sandler Just come on Adam Sandler

Say yes Please just say yes It's okay Say yes Finally and this may be the hardest question to answer Why are all celebrity profiles Written in the present tense Oh amazing question

I'm at Chateau Marmau with Adam Sandler and he pulls out his phone great question no idea I think that sometimes how to put this delicately sometimes it's a prop to hide the thinness of your story the present tenseness of it

like you think about the New Yorker you know it always cracks me out the New Yorker they capitalize profile because they want you to know that like that's that's their word you know I was about to say no shots the New Yorker, but I guess that's just a shot at the New Yorker. Too late.

Keep capitalizing it, guys, it's fine. All those are written in the past tense. And partially the reason why is because, and I think this is like totally fair game, is like they're kind of written for posterity. It's like a history. It's like almost like an entry in a history book. So the past tense is like the right tense for that. If your encounter is like thinner,

sometimes present tense makes it sound more. alive. So that would be one. And then for me, I think I flip back and forth. I think I probably do, I don't know. I would say 50-50 and examination probably would say like more present tense. That's something that probably like in 20 years will just look weird and be like, why was there a way doing? It's like that period of time where everyone was doing J. Mcronanamey and it was in the second person, you know? All right, Zach Barron, you're going to read him in GQ, got a new profile coming out that we will not talk about, but maybe Septemberish. That's, is that a, yeah, that's what we should, We should check the website or the web magazine around that time.

GQ.com. Good plug, just like a spoken like the people you profile. Zach, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you, Brian. All right, it's time for a feature that has a future and a present. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Our last headline about Cooper Flagg and his home state was the main, the myth, and the legend. Today's headline, David, comes to us from alert listener, Howard Chai. It's from the Toronto Globe and Mail. It is about a woman in Toronto's Chinatown. And this woman has taken over a family restaurant. I'll reach you the subhead here. By picking up the torch from their parents and taking over the family restaurant, Jeanette Liu and her sister Joanna are working to preserve culture, memory, and identity in Toronto's Chinatown before it disappears. I want you to think of an implement famous in Chinese cooking.

as you consider, what was the Globe and Males Strain pun headline? The piece is about keeping the culture alive? Memory, you might say, yeah. It's got to be walk. Uh-huh. A walk?

A walk to remember? There we go. Is that it? Sometimes it's that easy. All right. Not a walk among the tombstones. That would have been. No, or walk this way.

We also would have accepted. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Please Some Magic by Kyle Crichton. Back Monday with Shoemaker and more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.