The endless stream of controversy and scandal – culminating most recently in an alleged crack-smoking video – surrounding arch-conservative Mayor Rob Ford inspired one Toronto editor to devote an entire issue of her magazine to new fiction about him.
Category: people
Susan Sarandon: “Take Some Of The Jessicas And Rename Them Susan”
“I met a girl named after me at the Toronto film festival. I thought her mother was going to say she was called Susan but she said: ‘This is Sarandon.'”
Bert Stern, 83, Photographer Who Captured Marilyn Monroe Weeks Before Her Death
Stern was “an elite commercial photographer who helped redefine advertising and fashion art in the 1950s and ’60s but is perhaps best known for his painfully raw and poignant photos of Marilyn Monroe.”
Zing! Orson Welles Hated Damn Near Everyone, Newly Discovered Tapes Reveal
“Laurence Olivier was ‘stupid,’ Spencer Tracy ‘hateful’ and Charlie Chaplin ‘arrogant,’ and he could not even bear to look at Bette Davis.” (But John Wayne was cool.)
J.D. Salinger, Hindu Mysticism, And World War II
Ron Rosenbaum considers the reclusive author’s decades of correspondence with the swamis at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center and what those letters might tell us about all the late-life writing Salinger kept hidden. Then Rosenbaum begins a campaign for Salinger’s estate to tell us something about that work. (Hey, it worked when he did it for Nabokov.)
Igor Stravinsky Outed As ‘Ambisexual’ In His Younger Days
The composer had an “ambisexual phase” during the Ballets Russes period in 1910s Paris, according to a new book by Robert Craft. the composer’s longtime assistant. Craft goes so far as to say that Stravinsky “was in love with” the son of Rimsky-Korsakov.
À La Recherche De Roberto Bolaño
The myths: “He was a heroin addict. He never did drugs. Hepatitis C, contracted from dirty needles, damaged his liver. He was arrested under suspicion of terrorism in Pinochet’s Chile … He was never in Chile.” The reality? “It’s also obvious that he never used heroin and that his drink of choice was tea.” Lisa Locascio looks at a new exhibition of Bolaño’s archives and recounts her own research trip to the Catalan town he called home.
The Passion Of Vasily Grossman
Sam Sacks on the two stages of the Russian writer’s career: peerless chronicler of the Second World War and careworn Soviet outcast.
Richard Matheson, Science Fiction Author And Father Of The Zombie Apocalypse, Dead At 87
“In addition to publishing twenty-eight novels and well over a hundred short stories, Matheson enjoyed a successful career as a screenwriter, and many of his literary works were adapted for the screen, inspiring such diverse motion pictures as I Am Legend, Real Steel, Somewhere In Time, Stir Of Echoes, and The Incredible Shrinking Man.”
Russell Brand’s Messiah Complex Middle East Tour Canceled
“The 38-year-old had been due to perform his new show The Messiah Complex in Abu Dhabi and Lebanon as part of a world tour. However, organisers raised concerns regarding the possibility of negative reactions to material that will cover figures including Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus.” (Meaning Brand’s safety could not be guaranteed.)