CONTRIBUTORS

In 1988, after years of writing profiles for Time magazine on everyone from Mae West to Elizabeth Taylor, Los Angeles native Gerald Clarke published Capote: A Biography, which spent 13 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was translated into 11 languages. Since then, Clarke (here, at his home in Bridgehampton, New York) has been at work on Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, excerpted on page 278, and due out this month from Random House. Determined to capture "the real Judy," Clarke conducted some 500 interviews, examined court documents, discovered Garland's unfinished autobiography, and even stood onstage at the London theater where Garland made her 1951 comeback. "The Palladium is a huge theater," Clarke says, "but from the middle of the stage, it looks very homey. It sounds corny, but that told me something I wouldn't have known otherwise."

In the August 1999 issue of V.F., Michael Herr offered an intimate remembrance of Stanley Kubrick, his longtime friend and colleague, who hired him to co-write Full Metal Jacket. When the late filmmaker's final project, Eyes Wide Shut, opened to less than favorable reviews, Herr felt that, "instead of responding to the movie, critics were responding to the hype." The author of Dispatches, the acclaimed 1977 book on the Vietnam War, Herr regards Kubrick's last work as "a masterpiece." On page 260, he re-examines the psychology of the movie and its maker. His two VF. articles on Kubrick will be published as a book this June by Grove in the U.S., Picador in the U.K.

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Since 1991, director of special projects Sara Marks has been making Vanity Fair events affairs to remember. But of all the magazine's parties, which have taken place in New York, Washington, D.C., London, and Paris, her favorite is the Academy Awards party at Mortons in L.A. "Every year I try to do something different, making it a challenge for myself, and for the people who work with me on this project," says Marks, who last year helped architect Basil Walter transform Mortons' parking lot into what The Hollywood Reporter s George Christy called "Los Angeles's hottest club."

For more than 50 years, William Frye has been entertaining company with tales of his famous friends. But his story this month about Greta Garbo marks his first foray into print. Too bad he didn't start earlier. Frye, a television and movie producer (The Trouble with Angels, Airport 77), has worked and played alongside Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Reagan, Boris Karloff, and Bette Davis, to name a few. "I never went to movies as a kid," says Frye, "but when I got out of the service after World War II, I thought, Oh God, I don't want to spend the rest of my life with my uncles growing lettuce. So I came to Hollywood."

Peter Lindbergh, whose photographs have been a staple of fashion magazines since the 1980s, started out as a painter. And though he retains an artist's sense of purpose, he plays it down. "You don't have to be stupid to be a fashion photographer," he insists. "My secret is that I love women, and if you love something, you can make it look good." His shots of Ashley Judd and Hilary Swank in this month's Hollywood Portfolio attest to that. Lindbergh's eponymously titled book of photographs was published in January, and his first film, Inner Voices, a short documentary about an acting teacher, was released in February. He is now at work on a book about "memory and photography," set in India.

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If you've heard of V.F.'s Oscar party, it's probably from one of the journalists wearing a press pass that Beth Kseniak gave them. "For the month leading up to the party, you become the most popular person in L. A. if you work for Vanity Fair, " says Kseniak, who has been V.F.'s director of public relations for almost eight years, and who on each Oscar night manages to squeeze 45 camera crews and 100 photographers into a few square feet at Mortons' driveway. As for the stars who show up, Kseniak has lost composure only once. "I had just stuffed a cookie in my mouth when I saw Brad Pitt. Without thinking, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and gave me this killer smile. All I could do was give him the A-O.K.' sign."

When contributing editor Peter Biskind began calling Hollywood producers for his story this month on former superagent Sue Mengers, he was stunned to be asked, "Can you spell that please?," by the assistants who picked up the phone. "She was a giant in the 70s," says Biskind, "so smart, dynamic, and funny, and a real pioneer for women in the industry." Now at work on a book on the 90s' independent-film scene, Biskind says that, even though Mengers's days as an agent are behind her, the business is still in her blood. "She was even giving me advice about my VF. deal, and second-guessing my agent about my book contract," says Biskind.

To features editor Jane Sarkin, who has overseen Vanity Fair's covers and celebrity shoots for 15 years, this Hollywood issue stands alone. "This portfolio immortalizes both youth and great legends," says Sarkin, whose work for the project began one year ago with a 150-name wish list. On pages 390 and 391, Sarkin's pictorial dream came true: "Every year we've tried to get Pacino and De Niro. This year, we got them." Sarkin says that the eleventh-hour hero of the portfolio was Tom Cruise, who posed for Annie Leibovitz just before winning a Golden Globe for his work in Magnolia. "We had eight minutes of his time."

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"Producing Annie's cover shoots is like making mini-movies," says V.F. associate style editor Kathryn MacLeod, who for five years has been assembling the A-list crews, finding the perfect locations, and managing logistics for Annie Leibovitz's V.F. work. This year's cover was shot in Coral Gables, Florida, a locale MacLeod discovered while flipping through a landscaping book. As for the young actors, "they were all soaking wet due to an unexpected downpour, so we coped by whipping up pina coladas."

"I've been taking pictures in Hollywood since I began," says Bruce Weber, who contributed to this year's Hollywood Portfolio, "and things kind of never change out there." But one portrait gave him a new thrill: Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe with their new child. "It's nice when you get a chance to do a generational thing with the people you photograph," says Weber, who had shot them both, separately, before. Weber is finishing work on his film The Chop Suey Club.

Contributing editor James Wolcott admits he was on a crusade this month with his tribute to the romantic comedies of Rock Hudson and Doris Day. "I have long felt that Doris Day is underrated and that she's used as a cultural shorthand," says Wolcott, referring to Day's iconic status as a "50s woman." A critic of art, film, television, and literature for more than 20 years, Wolcott cherishes the diversity of the media he reviews. "If you limit yourself to being a movie critic, you're stuck with whatever comes out. I never wanted to get into that situation—like a patrolman pounding the beat."

Paris-based Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who photographed the three former child actors from The Red Balloon, The Bicycle Thief, and 400 Blows for the Hollywood Portfolio, found it a treat to contribute to an American article-driven magazine. Although he shoots for such publications as French Vogue and The Face, Mondino admits, "Strangely enough, I like to read magazines more than look at them." He also fears that readers may be a dying breed. "With the Internet and all the new technologies, we have to bring the pleasure of reading back." Mondino has recently published Deja Vu, a collection of his work from the last 15 years.

With the help of a chimpanzee, Francois Nars, who has photographed for such magazines as Visionaire and British Vogue, turned actress Kirsten Dunst into "a very 1930s Jane" for this issue. "Kirsten was a great sport, even though she went home with bruises from the chimp pinching her," says Nars, who also photographed actress Connie Nielsen. Nars's book X-Ray was published this winter. He is now at work on two more books—one linked to his Nars cosmetics line, the other a collection of portraits and still lifes.