The Press Box - Mark Guiducci Grew Up Reading Vanity Fair. Now, He's Running the Place.

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan is joined by Vanity Fair's global editorial director, Mark Guiducci. They talk about how he became interested in Vanity Fair, his time at Vogue, his editorial purview at Vanity Fair, his five favorite Vanity Fair covers, and much more.Host: Bryan CurtisGuest: Mark Guiducci Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Jon Jones, and Lucy Brick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox and welcome back to New York Month. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and John Jones. Here at Ringer headquarters in New York this month, I've talked to Richard Brody. I've talked to Frank Miller and MS Now Stephanie Ruhl, but New York is also the capital of that wonderful editorial vehicle we used to call The Magazine. So I wanted to talk to Mark Guaducci, the Global Editorial Director of Vanity Fair. Now, if you're not fluent in Mastead, Global Editorial,

editorial director means that Guaducci not only edits Vanity Fair, like his predecessors Tina Brown and Graydon Carter did, but that he runs editions of Vanity Fair all over the world. Guaducci started reading Vanity Fair when he was a teenager in Southern California. He worked as Aniwin Tour's creative director at Vogue. And then last spring, at the age of 36, he got the big job. Now here's the question that interested me about Guaducci. Can a person who grew up as a fan of Vanity Fair, a person to whom Vanity Fair really meant something? Can that person figure out how to update Vanity Fair for our changing media world. Here's Mark Waducci.

Mark, thanks for coming to ring our headquarters. Brian, thanks for having me. Let's start at the very beginning. Okay. You grew up north of San Diego. Right. In what's called North County. Yeah.

What took your family to North County? My dad grew up outside of Boston. And what he would describe as an unfortunate town on the way to the Cape. He met my mom in L.A. where she grew up, and I think they just wanted to raise their kids in a quieter. My mom went to, you know, was in West L.A. and around Hollywood and whatever that is like. And so I think she wanted to raise her kids in the quieter place. So it was a beach town. Delmar, I went to school in La Jolla, Encinitas, is where I don't know, did junior lifeguards, went to the beach every day. It was like a very nice place to be a kid.

Culture was about surfing and Mexican food and that was about it. And then by the time I was 16, I was ready to go. At their best, magazines are just informative but meaningful. What did reading Vanity Fair in those years mean to you? Oh, it was like magazines in general, but especially Vanity Fair, was like a window into a world that was so far away from where I grew up. I mean, L.A. wasn't very far, but it's 100 miles. It's always the same distance between here and the Hamptons.

It's not very far, but it was like a million miles away. conceptually. So Vanity Fair took me into a place that was very far away from where I grew up. And I think about that a lot, actually. Did you think to yourself, I want to work there someday, or I want to be closer to this world that Vanity Fair is showing me? It wasn't that preconceived. It was like I knew

that I, like so many kids, wanted to get out of my hometown. I went to college. I went to Princeton, New Jersey, moved to New York the day after I graduated from school and started work at Vanity Fair. It was in college that I was going through the masthead one day and came upon the masthead and thought, why not this? I had done internships at Christi's.

I was an art history major. I had even gone to, you know, I think a lot of kids at that time, the 2000s were going into banking and consulting. I remember going to like a Goldman Sachs input session and having what is essentially an allergic reaction to that. I just thought

this won't ever be me and not knowing what I was going to do. I was taking a journalism class for fun and my professor knew somebody who knew Graydon and I ended up in his office

and got an assistant job that way. What'd you do in that first job? I was the assistant to the managing editor this amazing woman called Chris Garrett, who I still know and see I dinner with her a couple weeks ago. She is Welsh by way of London. She wears a black prodig shift every day. I mean, she was like, she taught me so much about how to, she was like the velvet hammer. You know, she could make everything happen. She, and so observing her, I really learned how, not just Condon asked, but just how diplomacy, how to be effective,

I learned a lot, how they're writing the email. I learned a lot from her. Very important in journalism. And I was there for a couple of years before I moved on to Vogue. There was a writing position open at Vogue. I thought I wanted to be a writer. And I was writing about music primarily. I didn't have anyone doing that.

And kind of became a jack of all trades at Vogue in my early 20s. And the features in fashion departments were very secular from each other. And I went between them. always helping the fashion editors who I thought, you know, the Grace Cottington's, Donnie Goodman's of the world, figure out what writer they should cast in their shoot. You know, Vogue was always interested in casting people other than models. So that was sort of my niche. And I found a place doing that, producing the shoot, writing the captions, kind of doing as much as I could outside the job description. I remember years ago working

for Tina Brown. And one of our first days together, I wrote a funny headline and she laughed or maybe short old is a better word, but she had a reaction to it. And I thought, okay, here's this person. We are very, very different people, but we have an editorial connection that allows us to work together. What did you first connect with Anna went to or over? That's a good question. I think that so many people in fashion see it as an insular industry. It is an insular industry. Oftentimes it speaks to itself, and fashion magazines are speaking to their own cohort and Anna never sees it that way. She sees Vogue's role as to bring fashion into life and life into fashion and so did I. I thought that, you know, I wasn't the kind of person who was going

to get obsessed about the stitching on the ham of a dress. I was the person who was thinking about fashion as a cultural sphere just like Hollywood or politics is a part of life and especially a part of pop culture. And so I remember I submitted ideas to her, probably unsolicited, and maybe one or two of them caught her attention. These are actual memos or emails you sent to her? Memos. I remember it was paper and four times square in an inbox. She liked paper memos. I still do. And there's some gumption in sending a memo to somebody like that. Probably. Right, because what does she want an idea for me, but you were sending ideas to her? Maybe. Yeah. You'll accept that.

I think with the Devil Wars Prada sequel coming, had a lot of people just conflate Anna Winterer and Miranda Priestley now. What is her real-life editorial superpower? She doesn't see her role as just... She's a journalist, and she comes from her journalistic family, obviously, but I think she sees her role as, I didn't coin this. Sally Singer said this, as like an editorial intervention

into the fashion world. And she understands that it's the job of an editor to, convene people and to use her position to help make things happen to help people and that's the, you know,

so much of what she does, that's the driving ethos. You go from Vogue to Garage magazine, which you edit it. And then back to Vogue where you were a creative director. Yeah, yeah. So take me back to last spring before the Vanity Fair job. I came back to Vogue in 2020 at the inauspicious time of like

early March 2020. And so basically started that job on Zoom. And it was a bit undefined. I think that what it ended up being was that my job was to help her figure out what Vogue was going to be in addition to a print product, a website, social channels. What else could it be? So film and TV, podcast, live events, how to think about what Vogue was going to be in addition to what a magazine meant in addition to those. more obvious things. So go back to last spring

before the Vanity Fair job came open. What would you want to do with your life at that point? I wanted to edit Vanity Fair. You were waiting. Yeah. For the possibility. You know, you can never predict those things, but I did think that would be a pretty

good gig. So Radica Jones announces she's stepping down in April. Sure. And then you do what? that night it was a Thursday that night I remember my phone like melted because the whole I'm sure yours did too it was a topic of conversation and I had a dentist appointment the next morning and I remember a friend called me and said so you're going to do this and I thought oh my god I have to get out of this dentist chair and go home and start writing ideas down and just like a word document ended up becoming a member that I took to Anna that Monday, I think, after, and she called me in and said, you need to apply through proper channels. She was like, not even going to look at it. She was so professional about it. And so I did. This memo was 57 pages long?

How do you know that? You said it in other places. Okay. Yeah, it was lengthy. And it had cover ideas, story ideas, writer ideas. writer ideas, but also, I don't know, like what markets I'd like to expand into, what other business ideas. I mean, I started with thinking about, and this has been something that has informed, I think, the past year, and now a year into this job. And it was really going back to the roots of the magazine, not just from the 80s, 90s, and that era, which, you know, I love Tina too. But even the 20s, the 10s, 20s and early 30s,

thinking about the DNA of the magazine, I feel like everything, I look at it as a blueprint and how to think about the future of the magazine rooted in the past. So that was the, that, I think, just from the, everything from the ethos of that memo, but also just like even the imagery that I used was always about how do we think about what it was

to think about what it can become. How'd you find that you were going to get the job? It was a long process that they probably don't want me to tell if we went about. And I found out on a Tuesday, and I think it was going to be announced a week later, but I couldn't tell a single soul. So I didn't even tell my family. though I did tell, I think the day before,

I was on a shoot in L.A., and I asked the photographer as a friend, I said, I had brought a suit, and I said, I need you to take my picture. This is going to be important in a couple of days. So I imagine you felt honored to get the job. You felt a great responsibility when you had the job, but you had read Vanity Fair as a young person.

It had been important to you. So what did it feel like to become its editor? An overwhelming amount of responsibility. and I just wanted to get started. You know, I mean, on my first day, I said a couple of, you know, address the team and said a couple of things, one of which was that we were going to, I thought, for too long, magazines in general, but especially our magazine,

had been, become a platform, quote-unquote platform for people and ideas that we wanted to support. and I thought that that was a fairly uninteresting way of approaching journalism that actually said I said we would be, you know, we were at that point six months into the new administration and I said we'd be going to Washington and Palm Beach and knocking on the doors of the people that run our country and saying, can we take your picture, can we talk to you, and doing that in good faith. It ended up being a pretty controversial idea, even though it feels pretty rudimentary to me about what we should be doing. And I also said that we would, I really believe in in-person collaboration. Like, I think this is a lot better than if we were on Zoom, and I think that's the same with magazine making, whatever platform you're working on. And so I said four days a week, 9 a.m.,

that's where we'll be here together. And those were two very clarifying statements, I think. There were a lot of people who just said, tap out. And that was very helpful, honestly. Part of the old Sy Newhouse formulas. as he wanted his editors to be public figures, just like the people they were covering. How many nights a week are you a public figure?

I don't think of myself like that, Brian, but I go out a lot, probably. I live alone. I live in New York City. If I'm not out, what am I doing? I think that it's really important to, last night I saw a screening. I think it's important to go out. do you actually get from going out, going to parties, going to screenings, going to stuff like that?

Well, whether it's a fashion show, a movie screening, in any line of work, or in any topic that we cover, I think you have to see a lot of not great stuff to recognize when you're seeing something that's really good, and then you have to go get on it. And you get out of it. What do I get out of it? I see the things before I find stories. I heard you actually drive yourself to work. Every day? I do. Yeah. Is there an empty Lincoln town car following you?

No. No. I have an old, I have an old range rover that I love and drive everywhere. And lately I have started to, if I have to finish reading something in the car, I will leave it at home. And, but often, yeah, most often I drive myself. There's a lot not far away from here. If you drive, I can let you know where it is.

They take cash. We always hear that, you know, Condé, it's not going to be like the 90s, not going to be like the early odds. We need to watch our expenses in some way. What's an example of cost cutting you've overseen? I think that that's such a, with all due respect, I think that that's such a, we've talked about that a lot, like the idea of budgets and cost cutting. And, you know, I think, I like to think about it as a business. And I want to be profitable. I want everything that we do to make money.

I don't think that that's a I don't think that's sad and I don't think it's I've spent plenty of time thinking about the the old days. I just don't think of it that way. Do you still like to use the word magazine

when thinking about Family Fair? I do actually, regardless of whether it's a, you know, we're working on a podcast right now if we're thinking about the website, if we're thinking about new social platforms, obvious ones, whatever. I think of it, you know, at one point in,

Vanity Fair, there was a sign on the wall. This is like maybe 15 years ago, I would imagine, 10 years ago. There was a sign that said, think like a startup. And if I had a sign, I don't. But if I had one, it would say pretend it's a magazine. Like Fran Lee Buett says pretend it's a city. I just think that if you approach any story that you're doing on whatever platform, thinking like a magazine, using whatever tools you have,

even if it's a digital story, pull quotes, imagery, a lead that is going to drop people, it's a different thing than a blog, a newspaper, a substack, it's a magazine. And that extends to design, that extends a presentation, all those things? All of those things. What's the editorial purview of Vanity Fair in 2026 as you see it? It's a good question because I think that, you know, at Condé Nast even, there was a question of, okay is Vanity Fair a Hollywood magazine? You know, if Vogue's a fashion magazine,

Wired is a technology magazine, and yes, of course, we cover Hollywood. But I think of it as a magazine about the most interesting people, like the characters of our time. You know, the covers of Vanity Fair, if you put them up, they should look like a pantheon

of characters that are influencing in our society, for better or for worse, by the way. I don't think it should necessarily, be a judgment, a positive judgment on someone to cover them. And so I think of, you know, in a few words, Hollywood, the arts and culture, money, politics, obviously, and the world of style. But Fannie Faire was founded in the jazz age. And I think often about how we're living through another gilded age. And in referencing the way that Crown and Shell,

the founding editor, talked about the stockbrokers at the time who were making obscene amounts of money, you know, overnight millionaires. Now we have overnight billionaires. And they kind of talked about these guys like, these stockbrokers, like pirates who had, you know, were making fake money or something. It's really similar to the way that I think about

how the world covers crypto and the prediction markets, and it's, you know, the way that you had Carnegie at an inauguration is not dissimilar to the way that our tech founders are at, I mean, the parallels are actually uncanny when you start to break them down. So I think the purview of Vanity Fair is to tell that story. Let me give you some of the component parts of Vanity Fair and ask you about how you see them evolving in this new media universe that we're in. Let's start with reporting. So if I think of the great subject of Vandyfair,

in the 80s, it was the new money culture. 90s, dot-com boom, financial scandals, the Iraq war, among other things. What are the great subjects for Vandyfare now other than insta billionaires? So we are, actually at this moment, like I was just saying to you before we started, we're putting together the new establishment list.

The new establishment list was started in 1994, as a way to think about how the internet and telecom had totally disrupted what the establishment was. That the manufacturing and industries like that. Yes, exactly. How the old white guys at the Knickerbocker Club had been replaced by the younger white guys at the Sun Valley. And Sun Valley obviously is still relevant, but it's really interesting to look at, right now, I think, and then the new establishment list covered, as you said, Web 2, and you saw Google and Sergey and Larry and Facebook and all of those changes come to pass.

New establishment went dormant in 2017, 2019, somewhere at the end of that decade. And so we're bringing it back, and the stories that we're telling are about AI, obviously. The changing nature of money, the infusion of politics. to everything. That is an extraordinary difference between now and then. And those are the key tenets of that list. Are today's billionaires going to be as eager as yesterday's billionaires to be photographed in front of their sea planes and other luxury items?

It is interesting how there is much more skepticism of the press. And I think that that is... From that tech cohort in particular? From all cohorts, I think. But what I would say is that Annie Leibovitz is photographing our portfolio for the new establishment list, as she did in 1994. And a lot of people were eager to, you know, have Annie photograph their soul. I like that. A dramatic example of reporting was Chris Whipple's great story about Susie Wiles that ran a week before Christmas.

Were you getting month-by-month updates about what kind of material he was getting from the White House? he came to us you know I told you on day one I said we got to do this this is our job and shortly after that I felt like I almost got canceled actually because it became public that I had asked

Melania Trump if she would appear on the cover and and it was covered with the it was covered as if it was a sin or something but it also put out a flag to say we want to do this. And so Chris, who is a longstanding contributor to the magazine, but who I didn't know actually before I started,

came and said, hey, I've been talking to Susie. It was for an update on a book that he had written the gatekeepers about the chiefs of staff, which I think is why she talked to him in the first place. And he said that he had some really amazing material and had addressed with her before, He even came to us, what do you think about doing the magazine story? What do you think about doing Vanity Fair?

She was very interested in that. And so he came with the goods. And he continued to talk to her. They would speak on Sundays, I think. And he recorded everything. She knew it was being recorded. And that story came to pass. There was a moment the morning that it was published,

I got a call from our lawyer at like 4 a.m. I think it was going to be published at 6. And he said that Peter Baker was doing a story about our story and that she had denied to the times that she had said the things that she had said to Chris. And Chris just gave them the tapes. And, you know, that was that. But there was about, I don't know, there was 20 minutes or so there when we were, you know, I thought, well, I gave this a shot.

five months was great. 20 minutes of terror and then the thrill of saying, okay, publish. Yeah, and then I was still home when it hit the news and turned on the TV. And that was an amazing day. The photographs Christopher Anderson took a Trump official's got a lot of attention. How did you want Anderson to shoot them? Well, it came to pass. It came to be really quickly.

When we finally talked to Susie, she chose who. she wanted to be in the portfolio. She said, these are my people, basically. And she gave us the date. It was maybe a week later, six days after that conversation. And so our creative director,

Jennifer Pestor, she called Chris, who has, in addition to commercial work, has a large body of political work and had a whole book called Stump about people on the campaign trail. We sent over Chris's portfolio to the White House. they signed off, including those stump pictures, which are that style, that hyper close-up style that those were all okayed by the Trump administration.

They didn't have photo approval. I mean, they saw his portfolio ahead of time and said, we're still good to go. Let's come on in. I got you. They were very welcoming, and we set up in the Roosevelt room for the day and took everyone's picture. Since you mentioned your near cancellation, do you still want Melania Trump to be on the cover of anything? I still would. If she'd sit for an interview.

if she'd sit for a real interview. The demand is an actual interview and an actual piece. Of course. Yeah. This is not the Amazon. No, no, no, no. Please let's go into business together.

No, I think what we learned from the Amazon doc, though, is that she actually doesn't have that much to say. Or she's not willing to say it, one of the two. Because, so this was before that documentary came out. But the president, I think we're going to look at some covers later, but every president, except for Biden, has been on the cover of the magazine since it was brought back in the 80s. Why did you hire Olivia Nutsi last September?

I met Olivia last summer. I mean, I knew her work, obviously. I think she had done incredible work as a political essayist for New York Magazine, and she would get stuff that you would just like, and then weave it together in a way that was, I mean, just impactful in a way that would stop you and make you think about how she even put that together. So she was a free agent. We had dinner.

We had a lot of ideas about what the magazine can and should be. She's a student in the magazines like I am and love Vanity Fair. And so we gave her the go. We put her on the contract and didn't want to. work out the way we wanted it to, but she's brilliant. Why did it not work out? Why was the contract allowed to expire three plus months later? I think we know why. Why it didn't work out? Because of stuff you learned after the publication of her book? Sure. But I don't regret it. I believe in second chances, and I believe she deserved one. Let's talk about another big part of Vanity Fair,

the celebrity profile. Sure. You're a collector of old Vanity Fair's. Yeah. You've got a pretty extensive collection? Do you have every issue now? I think you have almost every issue between the office and home. So you must go back and look at like a 90 celebrity profile. Yeah, it's a very different thing. Where you have the actor, you have the actor's spouse, you have dad, mom, and then Jack Nicholson coming in for a secondary. Do you look at those and think, okay, we need to figure out a way to do that in 2026, or do you think of those as products of their time and we have

to do something completely different? I think of the celebrity access interview as something really different now because celebrities can reach their audience through their own social media. They can go on YouTube shows that they have approval on the questions. They sometimes have

edit approval. They have very multifarious safe ways to get to their audience. And so the Vanity Fair interview becomes something really different. I think that they know that they're not going to

have approval on the questions. They know it will be fact-checked, and they know it's going to be a real observation, and in some cases, criticism. So I think people come to Vanity Fair when they want to be taken seriously in a way, knowing that their audience is sophisticated enough to know that it's achieving a different thing

than a chat show podcast. That's what's in it for the celebrity now, Not taken seriously. To have some measure of, to know that some measure of scrutiny means it's a, the higher bar is in their favor. When I read a celebrity profile in the before times like you did, I think the question I would ask is, what's this famous person really like? Do you think readers, given all the Instagram posts, all the chat shows out there now, are asking a different question? Are we still after what is this person really like? I think that I'll give you an example.

For our style issue, which we're putting to bed right now, we had been talking to a celebrity about who style I much admire, and we were all set to go, and it became clear through the process that the photographer, the stylist, even what they were wearing, was going to start to be on their terms,

that they weren't going to provide an interview. And we just ended up walking away. We said this is not what this is going to be. You know, we can't be an extension of their Instagram. And so I would like the great Vanity Fair covers, whether it's the story itself or the photographs, are when you see someone in a different way and not necessarily just how they see themselves.

and I think our audiences are interested in seeing how we are going to take on the subject. Another element of Vanity Fair was retro. You know, the old Vanity Fair, once a year on the cover, you would find Jack Kennedy or Jackie O or Princess Die, almost without fail. Yeah, Graydon, part of his, I mean, so much of the way he ran the magazine was just all of a genius. one of those, you know, one way that he, one thing he did is that he had drawers of stories that were commissioned, shot, edited, laid out, ready to go

of different page lengths to swap in for something that didn't quite work out. And some of those include cover stories about the great figures of the American 20th century. I think that we, I preferred original photography. I think about, you know, I'd like to be looking ahead and to be thinking about what's modern. It's not to say that I don't look to the past a lot like I was saying. And even in the way that we're treating these subjects, you know, my references are oftentimes from that same great American 20th century. But I think that our subjects will hopefully always, in fact, by the end of the year,

this year, everyone that's on the cover will have never been on the cover before. Maybe that's a good way of thinking about it. Does retro play differently now that the media has changed so much? Do you think, oh, there's a podcast for that? If I'm bringing, let's say you were bringing back the 90s or the early odds, whatever your Jack Kennedy would be.

Sure. Do you think, oh, there's already a podcast that's done that 9,000 times. We're not adding anything. Well, we live in remix culture. You know, you scroll Instagram and you're seeing you're like, at least my algorithm is cutting between like a Renaissance

painting to the 70s photography to something that happened this morning on the news. It's cutting between those things all the time. And I think audiences are really literate in various, especially visual languages from different times. So, yeah, I think that retro plays in that way. That I think audiences are sophisticated enough that they will get the reference. Another element of anti-faire theme issues. You mentioned bringing back the new establishment

from the dead or the nearly dead. You also edited your first Hollywood issue last year. What stamp did you want to put on the Hollywood issue? I think about the themes a lot. So we publish eight print issues a year. Four of them are seasonal and four of them are them them are thematic. The Hollywood issue is always going to happen. This is a sports issue.

This was probably a one-off thing, but we just decided that the world of sports. Sports have become Hollywood. It started, this originated, because a Hollywood type, like a semi-retired mogul, told me who was involved in politics, he told me that I asked him, I said, do you think we're going to get like a Reagan type from Hollywood again?

Like, do you think an actor could become a Democratic nominee? We were talking about 2028. And he said no, straight up, but he thought that a sports star could, that sports were that overwhelming in our culture. And I thought that was right. So we put together a sports issue that attacked the subject from media. We have a Roger Goodell profile from we have four different covers,

from every angle that politics, every angle that Vanity Fair covers, we did that. So Hollywood is a perennial subject for Vanity Fair. The first Hollywood issue was in 94, I believe. And so my first, actually my first issue that had my stamp on it, as it were, was the Hollywood issue last year. And I thought about it is instead of trying to capture all the people that were going to be up for the Oscars,

that's where they become is like, everyone that's up for an Oscar should be on the cover. And then we include a couple of people to round it out for one reason or another. A couple of wild cards. A couple of wild cards. Or people that say yes, I guess. And I wanted to approach it with an idea.

I was like, let's just think about something. So this was a half a, half an idea about where Hollywood was and half an idea about like an aesthetic idea about doing a shoot with all the young actors and talk to Theo, one of the photographer, a lot about it. But, you know, it's interesting that cover got a lot of attention. People questioned why they were all guys. Does Hollywood need to be supporting men?

Again, it was like that thing. It's like platforming. People were like, oh, to put it on the cover means this is a, statement of support for some cause, like an activist approach to journalism. And, you know, people liked it or didn't, but it got talked about. You were happy with the fact that it got talked about, obviously. Yeah, of course. Speaking of the Oscars, you presided over your first Oscar party this spring. Yeah. How did you want to change up the Oscar party? So I worked the Oscar party when I was an assistant at Vanity Fair. I'd never been as a guest. And I had

had pretty specific ideas about what we wanted to do. I think we knew immediately that we wanted to make it a more intimate gathering and, you know, that meant, of course, people that had been invited for several years previously weren't coming and that makes people unhappy, but we were prepared to deal with that. I also knew I wanted to change the venue and wanted it to feel like I was talking about modernity and looking forward. I wanted it to be in a new place. So we went to LACMA. Michael Govan and his team have just completed an extraordinary construction of a building that expands over Wilshire by Sumthor, the Swiss architect, his first building in the United

States. And so I started talking to Michael pretty early. We looked at other places, but it was always like, if we could make LACMA happen, we knew that that would be a, you know, plant a flag for us and for them. and Michael, against the better judgment of his people who were still in the middle of building this building, it was a construction site, said yes, and because that's the kind of guy he just has vision

and he just takes, he just does things. So how that building got built in the first place. Someone actually won, I believe, a Pulitzer Prize at the LA Times, an architecture critic, for slamming that building, and yet he built it anyway. And so we went to LACMA, and it will be our home for the Oscar party for the foreseeable future, and it was great. So when you trim the list, how many aggrieved actors and or agents reached you directly? I had a pretty lively exchange with one in particular, but that was, I don't want to put them on blast,

but it was, honestly, it's all part of the game. It was fun. I heard your favorite movie is Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Kubrick is my favorite director, and that's probably my favorite movie, yeah. We haven't gotten to that on the rewatchables yet. I think that's going to be season 9,000 of the rewatchables. That movie is famously lit by candlelight. Yes. And there were NASA, Kubrick went to NASA to get the lenses for the cameras because they had to be so sensitive to get the candlelight. Have you ever used a design element from Kubrick in a magazine?

magazine? Not yet. It'd be a good Hollywood issue. There's a free idea. Yeah, there you go. Let's talk about young people, too, since you read Vanity Fair as a young person. How do you get young people not just to read Vanity Fair, but to actually pay to read Vanity Fair? So I like that you brought up paying to read Vanity Fair because the business of magazines is more and more becoming, or at least for our magazine, is becoming more and more about subscriptions.

I think that for a long time, Google told not only the audience, but also the journalists, that the way to make the magazine was to see what was already trending and write to that. So people would come to the office and whatever magazine they were, whether it was advice or wherever, they would write through their lens, like the point of view, the voice of that publication, whatever was already in the news. And the idea of original reporting, picking up the phone,

calling people, getting out in the world, talking to people, going out at night and seeing what's happening and coming back with a story in the morning, or certainly the idea of how to craft a long-form story, like something more than a thousand words, you know, that became like a lost art that these days

as we, as Google faces headwinds from AI and we're going to be just inundated with slop, whether it's, even if it's good slop, even if it's like you're going to have a newsletter that's for you Brian that's like

everything you have, would ever want to read. It's like the perfect aggregation. It still is not, will be unoriginal. Our, I think, calling card has to be originality. And so when we invest in, even in the short term, making a quick few phone calls to make something, to add to the conversation, something that's new,

or longer-term stories that require time, investment, and something that these newer forms of media, can't do or won't do, that it gets to the point where you're like, okay, you have to pay for this. And I think actually what I've learned in the past years that people want to pay for it. They want to be, they want something that they know is quality. They are willing to spend, we quadrupled the entry price for a subscription and our subscriptions are actually up. So that is just a good, I mean, that's a good sign that people are willing to pay for what you put out there if you invest in it.

I was looking at your summer issue. We've got pieces about K-pop in there and pieces about human rights abuses in Sudan. Right. You've got a piece about Collar Daddy in there, an investigative piece. Then you've got a Tanahazi Coates column about Israel. So what you're making as a case to young people

is not just to pay for journalism, but a case for generalism that you're going to want to read lots of different things. You're not just going to want to read the K-pop story and then go to the subreddit about K-pop and read tons more about that. How do you make that case to young people who didn't grow up?

in the magazine era like you and I do. Well, that's like, I mean, the New Yorker's done a pretty good job of it. They have a different point of view and they're doing something else, but it works, I think, for two reasons. One is because the shock of the difference when you're flipping from one page to the other still works. Like that is something that, you know, people have nuance, people have range, and you don't just go pick up a magazine.

If you're talking about the print product, because you want to read only about one subject, I don't think. And then the way those stories all work online is that they're all their own cover stories. They all find their audience individually. So it might be true that people that are interested in reading about Lisa might not

necessarily be looking out for a Janine DeJivani story about Sudan. But that is the beauty of the print is that it puts those things together. We like lists at the ringer. You like lists too. You have the

establishment. It's the oldest trick in the book, but I don't think it's cheap. I think it's like, it still works because it creates an interesting amount of conversation around, uh, who's where. I like that. That's a high-minded defense of the assignment that I gave you, which is your five best Vanity Fair covers. Okay. Um, this is very exciting. And you, you said yes to this. I did. Yeah. In, in no specific order, let's see if I can remember them. Uh, there is a July 4th, cover from 1933 that shows Uncle Sam as the number four, crouching with head and hands, sitting on the globe. I've never seen this one before.

It's amazing, no? It's really striking. It's an amazing cover, and I think that does, why I love that cover, I was looking at it recently and actually inspired us to do a July 4th cover. But I love that cover because it captures the mood of the whole country. It captures a moment. Covers can do a few things. They sometimes can create a moment,

but I think that one does the other function, which it captures the moment. I was looking at that with the team a few weeks ago only and thinking, okay, we have to do something for the 250th. I actually asked Jasper Johns a couple months ago if he would paint a new flag. He declined. Aiming high, though.

Well, you know, you got to. I mean, still paints. And so we started, we actually had let the idea go, but looking at that cover and thinking about the 250th, we said we have to do something. We happened to be shooting Anakiai, who is an Egyptian-born, Sudanese, Egyptian-born model,

who was raised in New Hampshire to Sudanese parents, who were refugees to Egypt and then America. and we thought, who better to embody America and the American dream and, like, what a great story to have as our 250th anniversary edition. So we were shooting her in a couple days. Our creative director lives upstate, and she got a flag from somebody as big, beautiful American flag. And we photographed the photographer is Haitian.

There were many immigrants on the team, and they put together this shoot that ended up being a digital cover. We put out the week of the 250th. And now, because we've heard so much from readers and even magazine stores in the city, we're doing a print run for it. So anyway, I love that cover, particularly because it inspired this recent one.

Very cool. Okay, what's number two in your list? I put all together all the presidential covers. A little subcategory. A little subcategory. See, this is a good, this is a veteran list maker here. Yeah. You want subredits of the main list.

Exactly, exactly. The Powers That B is the sub list on the new establishment. Anyway, so the, I think I included, there were several FDR covers in the 30s because he was around for a while. But there was one right after, he's elected in March 33, I think, and the one that we were just talking about was July 33. I think this is from 34. And it has him to strive to the United States as like a horse taking up. by the reins, the New Deal,

et cetera, et cetera. And then it picks up in the 80s when Tina had a couple of Reagan covers, but the one I included was the Reagan Stomp at the end of their, I mean, it's just like, she writes about that in the diaries

as like holding her breath as the pictures were being taken. Great story about that too. Harry Benson putting on a Frank Sinatra song and Nancy saying, come on, Ronnie, let's dance. Yeah, it's perfect. And then you have a great cover.

Yeah. Into Annie shooting, Clinton and his administration Bush and I think that story was called oh the cover line is war and destiny war and destiny that's it historic portraits of the White House in one time

that genius war and destiny and it was right as Iraq was they were leaning in to say to say the least Bush Cheney and Colin Powell there's more too when you open up the they're in the Roosevelt room when they open it up it's the whole. And that's your model for knocking outdoors.

That's right. What Vanity Fair was doing there. Yeah, absolutely. These are the people leading us to war. We may not agree with that. And obviously, Graydon would famously not agree with that in the coming years. But he allowed, he published Hitchens, who was agreeing with it, which I think is another

interesting twist in that story is that even in his magazine, his, Graydon was writing, I mean, the most brilliant editor's letters that he turned the editor's letter into something else. Maybe we should do a book of his editors, like, because, It was like they were no longer introducing the issue. They were polemical and they were about what was happening in Iraq. And then you had a few pages later Hitchens using his column to justify it in some ways, becoming like taking this left turn and becoming a neocon or a war hawk. Or right turn, as it were.

A right turn. Yeah, an extraordinary thing that was happening. Anyway, then you have Annie shooting Obama. and that he's alone on the cover, but then inside was everyone else. And anyway, I think it makes the case for not only going to photograph Susie Wiles and Co. But maybe for a Trump cover still.

The amazing thing about the Obama 2009 cover is that was also the Hollywood issue. The Hollywood issue got put inside for, I think, the only time in the history of the magazine. That's right. That's right. The portfolio got put inside, but how could you deny the... world-changing.

I mean, they didn't have a digital cover at the time, right? They didn't print two covers. And he was bigger than... He was bigger than Hollywood. Than any actor at the time. Yeah. All right, what's next on your list? He's certainly a star.

What is next on my list, Brian, remind me? Hollywood issue. Tom Ford. Okay. March 2006. In 2006, Graydon had been at the Hollywood issue for like a dozen years, and I think was looking to switch it up.

So he invited Tom Ford to guest edit, for the first and only time to guest edit the issue. He actually later did a collaboration with Bono for around AIDS, but for the first time, asked Tom Ford to collaborate with him on the Hollywood issue and to see Hollywood through a totally different lens. And I love that because it's a reminder that sometimes going to the loan isn't best. Like collaboration is a key part of what convening people,

as I said, about what Anna does. She convenes people. That's an example of how collaboration and bringing people in can just make something really interesting. It's like adding a different ingredient to the recipe. On that cover, it was actually supposed to be three actresses in the nude actresses, and one in the end didn't want to do that. And so Tom himself stepped in as the third subject, and isn't it perfect? It's so striking because usually you have the full lineup.

and when you pull the panels out. But it's just Tom Ford, Scarlett Johansson and Karen Knight. Right, and that gives me confidence to do something that's different than just here are all the people that are going to be nominated for the Oscars. It's like that's an idea that made for a cover

that lasts probably a lot longer in the memory than another one of those lineups. This one surprised me a little bit just because it's in my personal collection. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover, very fair, June 1997. Okay, the cover line is amazing, first of all. Right?

Read it. Arnold, the man, the mountain, and the Hummer. The Hummer. But why I love that is because if I tell you, you know that Vanity Fair cover that has Arnold Schwarzenegger skiing at the top of the mountain, you know exactly what that looks like. You know, the arm poses, like the sunglasses, this T-shirt, you can see it. And it itself is based on some Deco-era imagery. but it is when we send people out to photograph certainly covers, but even just portraits inside,

I'm always asking people to come up with a concept or an idea. It doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be prop heavy, doesn't have to be super camp, hopefully not. But I just want people to have an idea of what the picture is going to look like or what they're trying to achieve because too often these days,

young photographers will just throw someone in the studio, give them good lighting, and create a totally unremarkable picture. And, you know, whether it's Sly Stallone, nude is the thinker, or Arnold at the top of the mountain, or, I don't know. If you want to go to leave of it, it's like, you know, Whoop in the bathtub full of milk for a classic one. That's one of the greatest family affair pictures there is. And I think that was shot at Whoopi's house and probably required. The props budget was probably $2.99. Five gallons of milk. That's about it.

And so I'm always encouraging people to, you know, aim for iconicity. And this is a simple idea. Arnold mountain skis. Yeah. I mean, getting to the top of the mountain with Annie and Arnold, it may be not that simple, but nonetheless visually it's a simple idea. I'd love to see the bill for that to get everybody up there.

I would not. All right. Finally, a super iconic Fanny Fair cover for your final choice. Caitlin Jenner. Call me Caitlin. So Caitlin does the opposite of what that 1933 picture of Uncle Sam does, that cartoon, because instead of just capturing the moment it created one, it was an example of the total photographic scoop. And if that picture was released, say we live now,

and she did that on her Instagram, or she did that on, you know, she was, this was, I think it was 2017, if that was now, it would not have the same impact if it weren't on the cover of Enity Fair. And I think it's a great example of how we can use that stage of the cover or a magazine story in general to create a moment that wouldn't be otherwise. If the mission of a magazine cover is to get you to buy the magazine,

that is an enormously successful magazine cover. Who in the world is not going to buy that magazine to open it up and read it? And even in an era when we don't, I don't really look at news, newsstand sales, to be honest. I don't think of it that way. I mean, I talked to the reason we're publishing that it not covers, because I stopped into Kasa Magazine in the West Village and just talked to the guys and they were saying how people were calling in, and then we looked at some data and said, okay, this is something we should do. But I don't really think about newsstand sales anymore as a metric of success because it's just not, I mean, how, where are the newsstands,

right? It's just not the thing. And yet, you're clicking on that story. Absolutely. 100% of the time. Before you go, how much time do you spend in the stacks looking for ideas that can inspire new ideas? Our archive is actually amazingly organized. I spend, one thing that we do is that we have like a magazine club where once a month we'll choose my assistant lately has been doing it where she chooses an issue from the archive and we all read it and well like 30 or 40 people come to this meeting. It's like it works but it's totally optional and the only requirement is that you've read the magazine. go through page by page, including the ads and just talk about it. And I think it's inspired people to be like, oh, my God, they got away with that. And to think about even if it's not that exact kind of story, because let's be honest, a lot of things that happened in the past are not things that we would want to do now. But I think it gives people some gumption.

Mark Waducci, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me. All right, that's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Poodaxi Magic by Isaiah Blakely and John Jones. coming up on the press box, more lukewarm takes about the media. Shoemaker's back in the hot seat next Tuesday, and you know I'll be here. We'll talk to you then.