The Night of The Hunter: Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel
Jean-Luc Brunel (pictured) is like Lay’s Potato Chips to the French media. They can’t get enough of him–even though he’s bad for you. FranceTV just aired the latest piece on Jeffrey Epstein’s rabbateur and asked me to describe my experiences with him. Watch it here (but you need to understand French).
Bradford Dillman, widower of supermodel Suzy Parker, RIP
Actor Bradford Dillman has died, says The Hollywood Reporter. Dillman was the long-time husband of the late supermodel Suzy Parker, a central character in both Focus and Model, along with her older sister and fellow model Dorien Leigh. Parker became Richard Avedon’s muse and unofficial studio manager during his heyday as a fashion photographer in […]
Correction: We’ll always have the West Village
A keen-eyed reader writes: “On page 61 [of Focus] you wrote [of the film Funny Face, based on Richard Avedon and his brief first marriage]: ‘Audrey Hepburn plays Jo Stockton, a bohemian bookstore clerk who [Dick] Avery [the Avedon-like figure played by Fred Astaire] ‘discovers’ in the background of a Parisian photo shoot….’ The photo […]
The Rise of the Superspawn
In today’s New York Times, lead fashion critic Vanessa Friedman writes an (overdue) obituary for the overused term supermodel, name-checking MODEL: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women along the way, and coining the term superspawn (which I may have inspired) for fresh-faced second-generation models like the lovely Kaia Gerber. It and its companion book, last […]
Focus Bought For Long-Form Docu
Richard Johnson reports in the New York Post, that Keshet, the originator of the wildly successful series Homeland, has optioned Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers for a long-form documentary television series.
Avedon Exposed! Again?
A new biography of the late photographer Richard Avedon, out next week, “is being described,” Page Six reports today as “expos[ing] the twice-married Avedon’s hidden love life.” But the New York Post report goes on: “He was outed as bisexual in another tome, ‘Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers,’ last year,” […]
Focus: The truth about Terry Richardson
Exposing Terry Richardson and the sexual harassment of fashion models
RIP S.I. Newhouse, Jr.
The rarely interviewed Si Newhouse, who died at age 89 after a long long illness early this morning, “hardly followed the pattern of the self-promoting modern tycoon, and seldom gave interviews to the press,” David Remnick writes in his appreciation of his former boss. I was lucky enough to interview Newhouse several times. The most […]
Some Hocus-Focus on WCBS-FM
Here’s Deb Gordon’s interview with me about Focus, which aired September 7th, just after the book was released in a new paperback edition.
Focus is in paperback August 29th
Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers, returns in trade paperback with a new, hot pink jacket on August 29th. Reviewers and readers raved: Focus is “smart, well researched and written with an insider’s eye… engaging and on point….canny,” (Kim France, New York Times Book Review), “delicious, sweeping, thoughtful,” (The Daily Beast), […]