By Month:
July 2010
This may be the best feedback I’ve ever received
“The maximum intrigue to be found on the August newstand is in GQ’s x-ray of Garry Shandling. Reads like Philip Roth directed by David Chase.” — from @shinangovani
When I looked him up on Twitter, this is what it told me:
Shinan is the social columnist for Canada’s National Post, and author of the novel Boldface [...]
Please look out for the August issue of GQ
I have a lengthy profile of Garry Shandling, the actor and comedian, in GQ this month. It’s not online yet, and won’t be for a while. But please go take a look. He’s a fascinating guy. Oh, and as well as being hilarious, he’s wise. I’m not kidding. If the challenges of work-a-day existence haven’t [...]
Prototype column: Whose Idea Was It, Anyway?
Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 9, 2010
Whose Idea Was the Dry-Cleaning Bag Anyway?
By AMY WALLACE
LAST month’s Prototype column — about a company that makes reusable dry-cleaning bags — began: “Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor.”
The day it appeared, [...]
Los Angeles magazine answers the burning question: ‘What is Burn Notice?’
While shopping at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan, the star of USA Network’s hit Burn Notice, opens up about his early struggles as an actor, doing his own stunts, and the right way to make vegetable soup
By Amy Wallace
Los Angeles magazine, July 2010
On this sunny morning at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan isn’t booby-trapping a doorway or [...]
June 2010
The Ice King: Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Special Frozen Needs
A former Hollywood production assistant dishes on how the DreamWorks executive takes his meetings on the rocks
Originally appeared in Los Angeles June 2010
As told to Amy Wallace
At DreamWorks Animation, they have free lunch. So as a PA there, you don’t have to pick up food. But you do have to get Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ice. At [...]
“I Said Dressing on the Side!” – Confessions of a Hollywood Grunt
Lunch is anything but a break for Hollywood’s production assistants. A former PA tells what it’s like to battle traffic, tickets, and spills
As told to Amy Wallace
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine June 2010
When you move to L.A. to work in Hollywood, there’s no clear path. But if you don’t get broken down and [...]
Prototype: Take Them to the Cleaners, Again and Again
Originally appeared in the New York Times 6/13/10
By Amy Wallace
MAN or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor. He would be in his clothes closet, running late, wrestling with the plastic bags that encased — and the twist ties that entangled — his dry cleaning. [...]
May 2010
Kenneth Starr = Mini-Madoff?
Today’s criminal complaint against Kenneth Starr, the financial adviser to many a Hollywood A-lister, made me dig out a story I wrote last year about business managers who serve the entertainment industry. It ran in the March 2009 issue of Portfolio (the now-defunct business magazine where I was a senior writer). The complaint, as outlined [...]
Stone gets heat
The Huffington Post sums up my Sharon Stone story:
Sharon Stone is on the cover of the June MORE magazine and in the interview the actress, 52, talks about her dating life and the plastic surgery disaster that happened six years ago after her divorce from newspaper editor Phil Bronstein.
On why she got lip injections:
“Nobody loved me. [...]
Sharon Stone is Shameless
A friend just told me she just received her June More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe):
Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She thinks [...]
Musings on a purple crayon
This morning I received a wonderful note from a woman who’d just read my More magazine piece about Harold, his purple crayon and me. She said she’d never written to a journalist before, but that the piece, which appeared in December, “struck me deeply… I feel exuberant!”
Harold always makes me feel exuberant. So glad to [...]
International Herald Tribune runs Prototype
My sartorial NYT column is in the International Herald Tribune today.
Share and Enjoy:
Blank-Label no more
Here are a few images of the shirt I designed via www.blank-label.com — complete with my own made-up label, “Live Free or Die.”
The handsome model is related to me. And he likes the shirt, even though his mom made it.
Share and Enjoy:
Prototype: Putting Customers in Charge of Design
Originally appeared in the New York Times
By AMY WALLACE
THE idea was never to try to supplant retail, says Fan Bi, the 22-year-old chief executive of Blank Label. Sometimes you need a dress shirt right now, and at those times, Mr. Bi says approvingly, “you can get it right now at Nordstrom.”
But what about those times [...]
April 2010
Dana Delany: Sex & Sensibility – More magazine
She’s neither desperate nor a housewife, and that’s just the way she likes it. Dana Delany sounds off about her single status, why lovemaking gets livelier after 50 and the male star who’s her surprising role model.
Originally appeared in April 2010 More
By Amy Wallace
Photographs spill out of big manila envelopes, making a mess of Dana [...]
Conspicuous, Consuming: A few images
In his 1899 book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen (who I quote in tomorrow’s New York Times) coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe how people, rich or poor, acquire cool stuff to impress and to establish a pecking order.
Here are a few pictures of the cool stuff (specifically high-end cell phones) [...]
Prototype: Crème De la Cell: Six-Figure Phones
Originally appeared in the New York Times
April 18, 2010
By AMY WALLACE
IN 2006, Frank Nuovo was 45 — “boom!” he says, “five more years to 50!” — and at the top of his game. Except for one thing: “I’d kind of lost my soul.”
As chief of design at Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone supplier, Mr. [...]
March 2010
Best Science Writing 2010
Just got word that “An Epidemic of Fear,” my Wired story on vaccines, will be in “Best American Science Writing 2010,” to be published soon… Very exciting.
Share and Enjoy:
Prototype: The Wit that Breeds Wisdom
Originally published in the New York Times 3/21/10
By AMY WALLACE
JEN BILIK sells wit for a living.
Since 2002, when she founded her gift and stationery products company, Knock Knock, with a $750,000 windfall from a Manhattan apartment sale, Ms. Bilik, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, has been churning out cleverness in abundance. There are the sticky notes saying [...]
Check out this HOT cover photo from MORE magazine
Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so.
Peggy Sirota took it.
I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…
Share and Enjoy:
Feedback from a reader in Australia
I just got this from a Wired reader in Australia who read my November cover story and was following the legal action that followed. She gave me permission to reprint it here:
My name is Toni McCaffery. I live in Australia and one year ago my beautiful
baby daughter Dana died from Pertussis on 9 March 2009
(www.danamccaffery.com). [...]
$1 million Lawsuit Dismissed!
Last December, two days before Christmas, I was served with a $1 million lawsuit that alleged I had libeled a woman who was mentioned in my November 2009 cover story for Wired magazine: “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement”.
Today, the lawsuit was dismissed. Read the attached ruling here: Memorandum Opinion
Share [...]
Happy Oscars weekend, y’all!
Click on photo below to read about what I saw at the top of Runyon Canyon this morning….
Share and Enjoy:
February 2010
Los Angeles, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down
Noah Baumbach, the writer-director most associated with Brooklyn, explains how he made an (almost) cliché-free movie about L.A.
Los Angeles magazine, March 2010
» The Filmmaker’s Back Story
Noah Baumbach’s first movie was shot in Los Angeles, and you weren’t supposed to know it. The writer-director had wanted to set Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 film about a [...]
Prototype: Building a Better Mailbox
Originally published in the New York Times, 2/21/10
By AMY WALLACE
WHEN Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually.
“It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Mr. Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk.
His wife agrees. [...]
Keep an eye out…
In this Sunday’s New York Times, I begin writing a monthly column called Prototype about innovation and creativity. If you want to hear about the thinking behind the first one, about a Compton couple who invented a better mailbox, Sunday Business Editor Tim O’Brien interviewed me for the Weekend Business podcast that just went online.
Share [...]
January 2010
Welcome to My New Site
Three years ago, I asked my friend Kelly to build me a website — an online archive of my work that would make it easy for people to find stories they were curious about. She designed an elegant portal that divided my stories into categories that seemed to correspond to what people might be interested in: Hollywood Players, [...]
Meg Whitman’s Political Reinvention – More
She has a billion dollars and she wants to be Governor of California. Her critics say she’ll try to buy the election. Her supporters say that as the former CEO of eBay, she has the business chops to salvage a near-bankrupt state.
Originally appeared in More Magazine February, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Ground zero for Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor [...]
Heel, Cesar! – Elle
What most people don’t know is that long ago, before Cesar Millan became TV’s beloved canine savant, the Dog Whisperer, his wife had to teach him how to love women.
Originally appeared in Elle February, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
What, you were expecting peace and quiet,muchachas? Cesar Millan may be known as the Dog Whisperer, but in his [...]
Harold and Me – More Magazine
A chaotic childhood left the author believing she had only herself to rely on. But a painful divorce — and an insight from her young son — led her to a new conclusion.
Originally appeared in More Magazine December/January 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Standing behind her in the supermarket line, I could see the girl was pretty. Slightly [...]
December 2009
Physicist Taps Pop Culture to Explain New Theory of Time – Wired
Originally appeared in Wired Magazine January, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Sean Carroll’s office at Caltech is a jumble of brainy flotsam. There are books with titles like Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology; five empty champagne bottles, one for each of his students who’s earned a PhD; and a NASA-approved blow-up beach ball of the universe. And on the [...]
Viggo Mortensen: Actor, Poet, Publisher, Man – LA Magazine
An email exchange with Viggo Mortensen on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature.
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama A History of [...]
November 2009
Pee-wee Herman Rides Again – Details
After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls?
Originally appeared in Details November, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m still relevant at [...]
One Angry Betty – LA Magazine
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine November, 2009
After she confessed to a young reporter about the murder of her ex-husband and his new wife, Betty Broderick became an icon for women scorned. Twenty years later, that reporter reconnects with the killer who launched her career.
BY: Amy Wallace
She took her gun, entered her ex-husband’s house, tiptoed [...]
October 2009
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All – Wired Magazine
Originally appeared in Wired Magazine November, 2009
By Amy Wallace
To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams [...]
Whispering to Rottweilers, and to C.E.O.’s – New York Times
Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” built a multimillion-dollar company on his skill with pets and their owners. “God was my lawyer,” he says.
Originally appeared in the New York Times on 10/11/2009
BY: Amy Wallace
IT’S a miracle. That’s what the humans believe, more often than not, after watching this compact, 40-year-old C.E.O. do his work. He enters [...]
The Rise and Fall of the Cincinnati Boner King – GQ
Steve Warshak made millions on “natural male enhancement.” Now he’s doing hard time.
Originally appeared in GQ October, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
The ads just ooze intentional cheesiness, none more so than “Enzyte Christmas.”
In the (unlikely) event you’ve never seen it, picture an office holiday party: reindeer sweaters, cubicles festooned with garlands, and antler-headed colleagues engaged in photocopier [...]
July 2009
The Other Baron Cohen: A Narrated Biography – Esquire
Meet Ash, cousin of Sacha, who has quietly been directing not-remotely-funny movies in Hollywood for years – and who told the man behind Brüno to stay away from comedy
Originally appeared in Esquire Magazine July, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Ash Baron Cohen’s father and his uncle — who is Sacha Baron Cohen’s father — were in the shmatte [...]
Holly Hunter – More Magazine
Saving Grace’s Wild Woman
Originally appeared in More Magazine, July/August 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
As the toughest, lustiest cop on TV, Holly Hunter loves to explode expectations—about women, morality, aging and the need to always be in control.
Holly Hunter is talking about sex, and who wouldn’t want to listen? During her nearly three-decade career, after all, the Academy [...]
June 2009
Farrah’s Brainy Side
Originally appeared in The Daily Beast
June 25, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie’s Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture—and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged.
Her golden hair prompted [...]
Edra Blixseth – The New York Times
Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club
Bankruptcies Jolt a Ski Haven for the Superrich
Jeff Minton
Originally appeared in the New York Times June 14, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nine days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests are coming, probably 125 in [...]
March 2009
Madoff’s Hollywood Connection – Condé Nast Portfolio
The roster of victims goes way beyond Spielberg and Katzenberg.
How did the scam of the century reach all the way across the country and into the pockets of the showbiz elite? It wasn’t hard at all.
Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio March, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
To hear him talk about the economic challenges facing the entertainment industry, you’d [...]
February 2009
The Unlikely Return of Mickey Rourke – Men’s Journal
Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was, but he is having more sex and attracting attention for his acting, not his antics. And if Rourke doesn’t nab an Oscar this time, so what? He’s going for one next year, too.
Originally appeared in Men’s Journal February, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Just a few months ago, Mickey Rourke [...]
Greed isn’t so good anymore – Rewriting Wall Street – Condé Nast Portfolio
Get Me Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite
Fox hits up Hollywood A-listers to make a sequel to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.
Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio February, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Gordon Gekko is an ex-con, fresh out of prison. The year is 2009. The place: New York. In Money Never Sleeps, a script floating around Hollywood, Gekko, the corporate [...]
January 2008
Rock Stars of Tech – Conde Nast Portfolio
Originally appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio January, 2008
BY: Amy Wallace
He’s Mark Zuckerberg’s coach, Bill Gates’ editor, Bono’s business partner, and an owner of Forbes. But Roger McNamee—the guitar-strumming soul of one of the quirkiest private equity shops in Silicon Valley—still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
Backstage at a cavernous Denver nightclub called the Cervantes Masterpiece [...]
October 2007
Nastier than a Speeding Bullet — Portfolio
A battle for control of the Superman franchise pits Time Warner against the original Lois Lane.
Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007
BY: Amy Wallace
In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.
“Dear Dick,” wrote Joanne [...]
March 2006
Viggo Mortensen – Esquire
Originally appeared in Esquire March, 2006
Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish.
The Appealingly Weird World of Viggo Mortensen
By Amy Wallace
Viggo Mortensen listens to a lot of AM radio. The forty-seven-year-old actor doesn’t enjoy this hobby, exactly. But if the vitriol spewed by conservative talk jocks is what tens of millions of Americans listen to, he figures he ought [...]
January 2006
Jerry Lewis – Esquire
What I’ve Learned
Originally published in Esquire, January 1, 2006
Jerry Lewis: Comedian, 79, Las Vegas
INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace
Hey, Penny! Forty-three years, Penny’s been in my office. She’s something else. She doesn’t let me get away with anything. Penny, bring me an orange soda, honey. You haven’t done a goddamn thing all day.
I will tell you [...]
February 2004
Larry Cohen – The Survivor – The New Yorker
Hollywood’s king of schlock
Originally appeared in The New Yorker February 2, 2004
BY: Amy Wallace
In 1998, a script entitled “Phone Booth” started making the rounds in Hollywood. It had a simple premise: a smarmy New York City publicist picks up a ringing pay phone and learns that a sniper will kill him if he hangs up. [...]
Patricia Clarkson and Benicio Del Toro – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
February 1, 2004
BY: Amy Wallace
Los Angeles is an actor’s town. Some 40,000 actors call L.A. home. But more than their numbers, it is their hunger, their flair, and most of all their ability to face rejection daily and yet still reinvent themselves that fuel this city and make it unlike any other. Whether [...]
December 2003
Rabbi Finds Anti-materialism A Tough Pitch in Hollywood – New York Times
Originally appeared in the New York Times December 21, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was dinnertime when the 80 or so invited guests began arriving. Handing off their Benzes and Boxsters to uniformed valets, many of Hollywood’s most important agents, producers and studio and network executives followed a brick path to Sandy Grushow’s [...]
March 2003
Kathy Bates – Los Angeles Magazine
March 1, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
THE OTHER DAY, KATHY BATES WAS STANDING with a friend on a street corner in Beverly Hills when a stranger offered an appraisal of her hot body.
“This guy said, ‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you have really great nipples!’” Bates says, delighted. “I’m over 50. I’m [...]
Robert Newman – LA Magazine
The Un-agent Agent: He represents top directors. He drives a hard bargain. Mostly, though, Robert Newman just loves to sit in the dark
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how many trailers [...]
April 2002
Hollywood Dish – Vanity Fair
The Greasy Spoons that Made L.A. Great
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002
BY: Amy Wallace
There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in peace: the Apple [...]
March 2002
Jodie Foster – Los Angeles Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2002
INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace
Jodie Foster sums it up: she’s focused, she’s critical, she’s downright mathematical. After so many movies, she knows how things work and why they don’t.
THERE’S A MOMENT IN DIRECTOR David Fincher’s upcoming thriller, Panic Room, that shows why Jodie Foster got the lead role. Playing a [...]
January 2002
Stacked Like Me – Los Angeles Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
January 1, 2002
By: Amy Wallace
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The lid on my cup wasn’t tight, so when I went to take a sip, milk foam poured and then puddled on my sweater. [...]
December 2001
Owen and Luke Wilson and Wes Anderson – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
December 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
Bitter sweet dreamers: in their comedies Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and now The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson and his friends Owen and Luke Wilson skirt irony in favor of sincerity. They are the perfect funnymen for an unfunny world.
YOU HAVE TO SEEK OUT VAHRAM. IF you need to know about [...]
September 2001
Hollywood’s Information Man – LA Magazine
He knows the movie business as well as anyone, and when he talks, studio chiefs listen. He’s Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, and he lives in curious coexistence with the industry he covers
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine September 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
Peter Bart is on the phone, and he’s threatening to sue.
“I really take [...]
March 2001
THE ACTOR’S LIFE: Joan Allen and Ed Harris – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
ALEC GUINNESS USED to say that he built his characters from the shoes up. Laurence Olivier began with the nose often reshaping it with putty. Al Pacino insisted on the elegant camel-hair coat he wore in The Godfather, Part II. Externals matter, he explained.
BUT WHAT OF THE [...]
Ben Affleck – Los Angeles Times
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED AT EVERY TURN; BEN AFFLECK MAY SEEM TO HAVE A SCATTERSHOT CAREER, ACTING IN BOTH INDIE AND BLOCKBUSTER FILMS. BUT IN HIS AFFABLE WAY, HE CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS.
March 7th, 1999
BY: Amy Wallace
Ben Affleck likes money as much as the next guy, but for a friend, he’ll still work cheap.
Consider the small [...]
May 1997
The Sushi Nazi – Vanity Fair
Uni Bomber
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997
BY: Amy Wallace
TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around.
To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, is to relinquish control. [...]
April 1995
School for Sandals – Vanity Fair
Karma and culture draw Hollywood to the free-spirited Crossroads School
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995
BY: Amy Wallace
Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a nightclub, but [...]
October 1994
Social Climbers – Vanity Fair
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair October, 1994
BY: Amy Wallace
Nestled into a steep Santa Monica hillside, 189 concrete steps are giving new meaning to the term ‘social climbing.’ At dawn, at dusk, even in the middle of the night, the fit and would-be fit battle for parking spots near the top of the well-worn stairs, which [...]
By Category:
Blog Posts
Welcome to My New Site
Three years ago, I asked my friend Kelly to build me a website — an online archive of my work that would make it easy for people to find stories they were curious about. She designed an elegant portal that divided my stories into categories that seemed to correspond to what people might be interested in: Hollywood Players, [...]
Happy Oscars weekend, y’all!
Click on photo below to read about what I saw at the top of Runyon Canyon this morning….
$1 million Lawsuit Dismissed!
Last December, two days before Christmas, I was served with a $1 million lawsuit that alleged I had libeled a woman who was mentioned in my November 2009 cover story for Wired magazine: “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement”.
Today, the lawsuit was dismissed. Read the attached ruling here: Memorandum Opinion
Feedback from a reader in Australia
I just got this from a Wired reader in Australia who read my November cover story and was following the legal action that followed. She gave me permission to reprint it here:
My name is Toni McCaffery. I live in Australia and one year ago my beautiful
baby daughter Dana died from Pertussis on 9 March 2009
(www.danamccaffery.com). [...]
Best Science Writing 2010
Just got word that “An Epidemic of Fear,” my Wired story on vaccines, will be in “Best American Science Writing 2010,” to be published soon… Very exciting.
International Herald Tribune runs Prototype
My sartorial NYT column is in the International Herald Tribune today.
Please look out for the August issue of GQ
I have a lengthy profile of Garry Shandling, the actor and comedian, in GQ this month. It’s not online yet, and won’t be for a while. But please go take a look. He’s a fascinating guy. Oh, and as well as being hilarious, he’s wise. I’m not kidding. If the challenges of work-a-day existence haven’t [...]
Details
Pee-wee Herman Rides Again – Details
After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls?
Originally appeared in Details November, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m still relevant at [...]
Elle
Heel, Cesar! – Elle
What most people don’t know is that long ago, before Cesar Millan became TV’s beloved canine savant, the Dog Whisperer, his wife had to teach him how to love women.
Originally appeared in Elle February, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
What, you were expecting peace and quiet,muchachas? Cesar Millan may be known as the Dog Whisperer, but in his [...]
Esquire
Jerry Lewis – Esquire
What I’ve Learned
Originally published in Esquire, January 1, 2006
Jerry Lewis: Comedian, 79, Las Vegas
INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace
Hey, Penny! Forty-three years, Penny’s been in my office. She’s something else. She doesn’t let me get away with anything. Penny, bring me an orange soda, honey. You haven’t done a goddamn thing all day.
I will tell you [...]
Viggo Mortensen – Esquire
Originally appeared in Esquire March, 2006
Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish.
The Appealingly Weird World of Viggo Mortensen
By Amy Wallace
Viggo Mortensen listens to a lot of AM radio. The forty-seven-year-old actor doesn’t enjoy this hobby, exactly. But if the vitriol spewed by conservative talk jocks is what tens of millions of Americans listen to, he figures he ought [...]
The Other Baron Cohen: A Narrated Biography – Esquire
Meet Ash, cousin of Sacha, who has quietly been directing not-remotely-funny movies in Hollywood for years – and who told the man behind Brüno to stay away from comedy
Originally appeared in Esquire Magazine July, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Ash Baron Cohen’s father and his uncle — who is Sacha Baron Cohen’s father — were in the shmatte [...]
GQ
The Rise and Fall of the Cincinnati Boner King – GQ
Steve Warshak made millions on “natural male enhancement.” Now he’s doing hard time.
Originally appeared in GQ October, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
The ads just ooze intentional cheesiness, none more so than “Enzyte Christmas.”
In the (unlikely) event you’ve never seen it, picture an office holiday party: reindeer sweaters, cubicles festooned with garlands, and antler-headed colleagues engaged in photocopier [...]
Los Angeles Magazine
THE ACTOR’S LIFE: Joan Allen and Ed Harris – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
ALEC GUINNESS USED to say that he built his characters from the shoes up. Laurence Olivier began with the nose often reshaping it with putty. Al Pacino insisted on the elegant camel-hair coat he wore in The Godfather, Part II. Externals matter, he explained.
BUT WHAT OF THE [...]
Hollywood’s Information Man – LA Magazine
He knows the movie business as well as anyone, and when he talks, studio chiefs listen. He’s Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, and he lives in curious coexistence with the industry he covers
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine September 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
Peter Bart is on the phone, and he’s threatening to sue.
“I really take [...]
Owen and Luke Wilson and Wes Anderson – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
December 1, 2001
BY: Amy Wallace
Bitter sweet dreamers: in their comedies Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and now The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson and his friends Owen and Luke Wilson skirt irony in favor of sincerity. They are the perfect funnymen for an unfunny world.
YOU HAVE TO SEEK OUT VAHRAM. IF you need to know about [...]
Stacked Like Me – Los Angeles Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
January 1, 2002
By: Amy Wallace
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The lid on my cup wasn’t tight, so when I went to take a sip, milk foam poured and then puddled on my sweater. [...]
Jodie Foster – Los Angeles Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2002
INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace
Jodie Foster sums it up: she’s focused, she’s critical, she’s downright mathematical. After so many movies, she knows how things work and why they don’t.
THERE’S A MOMENT IN DIRECTOR David Fincher’s upcoming thriller, Panic Room, that shows why Jodie Foster got the lead role. Playing a [...]
Robert Newman – LA Magazine
The Un-agent Agent: He represents top directors. He drives a hard bargain. Mostly, though, Robert Newman just loves to sit in the dark
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how many trailers [...]
Kathy Bates – Los Angeles Magazine
March 1, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
THE OTHER DAY, KATHY BATES WAS STANDING with a friend on a street corner in Beverly Hills when a stranger offered an appraisal of her hot body.
“This guy said, ‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you have really great nipples!’” Bates says, delighted. “I’m over 50. I’m [...]
Patricia Clarkson and Benicio Del Toro – LA Magazine
Los Angeles Magazine
February 1, 2004
BY: Amy Wallace
Los Angeles is an actor’s town. Some 40,000 actors call L.A. home. But more than their numbers, it is their hunger, their flair, and most of all their ability to face rejection daily and yet still reinvent themselves that fuel this city and make it unlike any other. Whether [...]
One Angry Betty – LA Magazine
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine November, 2009
After she confessed to a young reporter about the murder of her ex-husband and his new wife, Betty Broderick became an icon for women scorned. Twenty years later, that reporter reconnects with the killer who launched her career.
BY: Amy Wallace
She took her gun, entered her ex-husband’s house, tiptoed [...]
Viggo Mortensen: Actor, Poet, Publisher, Man – LA Magazine
An email exchange with Viggo Mortensen on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature.
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama A History of [...]
Los Angeles, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down
Noah Baumbach, the writer-director most associated with Brooklyn, explains how he made an (almost) cliché-free movie about L.A.
Los Angeles magazine, March 2010
» The Filmmaker’s Back Story
Noah Baumbach’s first movie was shot in Los Angeles, and you weren’t supposed to know it. The writer-director had wanted to set Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 film about a [...]
“I Said Dressing on the Side!” – Confessions of a Hollywood Grunt
Lunch is anything but a break for Hollywood’s production assistants. A former PA tells what it’s like to battle traffic, tickets, and spills
As told to Amy Wallace
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine June 2010
When you move to L.A. to work in Hollywood, there’s no clear path. But if you don’t get broken down and [...]
The Ice King: Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Special Frozen Needs
A former Hollywood production assistant dishes on how the DreamWorks executive takes his meetings on the rocks
Originally appeared in Los Angeles June 2010
As told to Amy Wallace
At DreamWorks Animation, they have free lunch. So as a PA there, you don’t have to pick up food. But you do have to get Jeffrey Katzenberg’s ice. At [...]
Los Angeles magazine answers the burning question: ‘What is Burn Notice?’
While shopping at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan, the star of USA Network’s hit Burn Notice, opens up about his early struggles as an actor, doing his own stunts, and the right way to make vegetable soup
By Amy Wallace
Los Angeles magazine, July 2010
On this sunny morning at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan isn’t booby-trapping a doorway or [...]
Los Angeles Times
Ben Affleck – Los Angeles Times
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED AT EVERY TURN; BEN AFFLECK MAY SEEM TO HAVE A SCATTERSHOT CAREER, ACTING IN BOTH INDIE AND BLOCKBUSTER FILMS. BUT IN HIS AFFABLE WAY, HE CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS.
March 7th, 1999
BY: Amy Wallace
Ben Affleck likes money as much as the next guy, but for a friend, he’ll still work cheap.
Consider the small [...]
Men's Journal
The Unlikely Return of Mickey Rourke – Men’s Journal
Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was, but he is having more sex and attracting attention for his acting, not his antics. And if Rourke doesn’t nab an Oscar this time, so what? He’s going for one next year, too.
Originally appeared in Men’s Journal February, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Just a few months ago, Mickey Rourke [...]
More Magazine
Holly Hunter – More Magazine
Saving Grace’s Wild Woman
Originally appeared in More Magazine, July/August 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
As the toughest, lustiest cop on TV, Holly Hunter loves to explode expectations—about women, morality, aging and the need to always be in control.
Holly Hunter is talking about sex, and who wouldn’t want to listen? During her nearly three-decade career, after all, the Academy [...]
Harold and Me – More Magazine
A chaotic childhood left the author believing she had only herself to rely on. But a painful divorce — and an insight from her young son — led her to a new conclusion.
Originally appeared in More Magazine December/January 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Standing behind her in the supermarket line, I could see the girl was pretty. Slightly [...]
Meg Whitman’s Political Reinvention – More
She has a billion dollars and she wants to be Governor of California. Her critics say she’ll try to buy the election. Her supporters say that as the former CEO of eBay, she has the business chops to salvage a near-bankrupt state.
Originally appeared in More Magazine February, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Ground zero for Meg Whitman’s campaign for governor [...]
Check out this HOT cover photo from MORE magazine
Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so.
Peggy Sirota took it.
I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…
Dana Delany: Sex & Sensibility – More magazine
She’s neither desperate nor a housewife, and that’s just the way she likes it. Dana Delany sounds off about her single status, why lovemaking gets livelier after 50 and the male star who’s her surprising role model.
Originally appeared in April 2010 More
By Amy Wallace
Photographs spill out of big manila envelopes, making a mess of Dana [...]
Sharon Stone is Shameless
A friend just told me she just received her June More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe):
Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She thinks [...]
Stone gets heat
The Huffington Post sums up my Sharon Stone story:
Sharon Stone is on the cover of the June MORE magazine and in the interview the actress, 52, talks about her dating life and the plastic surgery disaster that happened six years ago after her divorce from newspaper editor Phil Bronstein.
On why she got lip injections:
“Nobody loved me. [...]
New York Times
Rabbi Finds Anti-materialism A Tough Pitch in Hollywood – New York Times
Originally appeared in the New York Times December 21, 2003
BY: Amy Wallace
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was dinnertime when the 80 or so invited guests began arriving. Handing off their Benzes and Boxsters to uniformed valets, many of Hollywood’s most important agents, producers and studio and network executives followed a brick path to Sandy Grushow’s [...]
Edra Blixseth – The New York Times
Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club
Bankruptcies Jolt a Ski Haven for the Superrich
Jeff Minton
Originally appeared in the New York Times June 14, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nine days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests are coming, probably 125 in [...]
Whispering to Rottweilers, and to C.E.O.’s – New York Times
Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” built a multimillion-dollar company on his skill with pets and their owners. “God was my lawyer,” he says.
Originally appeared in the New York Times on 10/11/2009
BY: Amy Wallace
IT’S a miracle. That’s what the humans believe, more often than not, after watching this compact, 40-year-old C.E.O. do his work. He enters [...]
Prototype: Building a Better Mailbox
Originally published in the New York Times, 2/21/10
By AMY WALLACE
WHEN Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually.
“It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Mr. Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk.
His wife agrees. [...]
Prototype: The Wit that Breeds Wisdom
Originally published in the New York Times 3/21/10
By AMY WALLACE
JEN BILIK sells wit for a living.
Since 2002, when she founded her gift and stationery products company, Knock Knock, with a $750,000 windfall from a Manhattan apartment sale, Ms. Bilik, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, has been churning out cleverness in abundance. There are the sticky notes saying [...]
Prototype: Crème De la Cell: Six-Figure Phones
Originally appeared in the New York Times
April 18, 2010
By AMY WALLACE
IN 2006, Frank Nuovo was 45 — “boom!” he says, “five more years to 50!” — and at the top of his game. Except for one thing: “I’d kind of lost my soul.”
As chief of design at Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone supplier, Mr. [...]
Prototype: Putting Customers in Charge of Design
Originally appeared in the New York Times
By AMY WALLACE
THE idea was never to try to supplant retail, says Fan Bi, the 22-year-old chief executive of Blank Label. Sometimes you need a dress shirt right now, and at those times, Mr. Bi says approvingly, “you can get it right now at Nordstrom.”
But what about those times [...]
Prototype: Take Them to the Cleaners, Again and Again
Originally appeared in the New York Times 6/13/10
By Amy Wallace
MAN or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor. He would be in his clothes closet, running late, wrestling with the plastic bags that encased — and the twist ties that entangled — his dry cleaning. [...]
Prototype column: Whose Idea Was It, Anyway?
Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 9, 2010
Whose Idea Was the Dry-Cleaning Bag Anyway?
By AMY WALLACE
LAST month’s Prototype column — about a company that makes reusable dry-cleaning bags — began: “Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor.”
The day it appeared, [...]
Portfolio
Nastier than a Speeding Bullet — Portfolio
A battle for control of the Superman franchise pits Time Warner against the original Lois Lane.
Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007
BY: Amy Wallace
In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.
“Dear Dick,” wrote Joanne [...]
Rock Stars of Tech – Conde Nast Portfolio
Originally appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio January, 2008
BY: Amy Wallace
He’s Mark Zuckerberg’s coach, Bill Gates’ editor, Bono’s business partner, and an owner of Forbes. But Roger McNamee—the guitar-strumming soul of one of the quirkiest private equity shops in Silicon Valley—still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
Backstage at a cavernous Denver nightclub called the Cervantes Masterpiece [...]
Greed isn’t so good anymore – Rewriting Wall Street – Condé Nast Portfolio
Get Me Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite
Fox hits up Hollywood A-listers to make a sequel to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.
Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio February, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Gordon Gekko is an ex-con, fresh out of prison. The year is 2009. The place: New York. In Money Never Sleeps, a script floating around Hollywood, Gekko, the corporate [...]
Madoff’s Hollywood Connection – Condé Nast Portfolio
The roster of victims goes way beyond Spielberg and Katzenberg.
How did the scam of the century reach all the way across the country and into the pockets of the showbiz elite? It wasn’t hard at all.
Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio March, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
To hear him talk about the economic challenges facing the entertainment industry, you’d [...]
Kenneth Starr = Mini-Madoff?
Today’s criminal complaint against Kenneth Starr, the financial adviser to many a Hollywood A-lister, made me dig out a story I wrote last year about business managers who serve the entertainment industry. It ran in the March 2009 issue of Portfolio (the now-defunct business magazine where I was a senior writer). The complaint, as outlined [...]
The Daily Beast
Farrah’s Brainy Side
Originally appeared in The Daily Beast
June 25, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie’s Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture—and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged.
Her golden hair prompted [...]
The New Yorker
Larry Cohen – The Survivor – The New Yorker
Hollywood’s king of schlock
Originally appeared in The New Yorker February 2, 2004
BY: Amy Wallace
In 1998, a script entitled “Phone Booth” started making the rounds in Hollywood. It had a simple premise: a smarmy New York City publicist picks up a ringing pay phone and learns that a sniper will kill him if he hangs up. [...]
Uncategorized
Keep an eye out…
In this Sunday’s New York Times, I begin writing a monthly column called Prototype about innovation and creativity. If you want to hear about the thinking behind the first one, about a Compton couple who invented a better mailbox, Sunday Business Editor Tim O’Brien interviewed me for the Weekend Business podcast that just went online.
Prototype: Building a Better Mailbox
Originally published in the New York Times, 2/21/10
By AMY WALLACE
WHEN Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually.
“It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Mr. Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk.
His wife agrees. [...]
$1 million Lawsuit Dismissed!
Last December, two days before Christmas, I was served with a $1 million lawsuit that alleged I had libeled a woman who was mentioned in my November 2009 cover story for Wired magazine: “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement”.
Today, the lawsuit was dismissed. Read the attached ruling here: Memorandum Opinion
Feedback from a reader in Australia
I just got this from a Wired reader in Australia who read my November cover story and was following the legal action that followed. She gave me permission to reprint it here:
My name is Toni McCaffery. I live in Australia and one year ago my beautiful
baby daughter Dana died from Pertussis on 9 March 2009
(www.danamccaffery.com). [...]
Check out this HOT cover photo from MORE magazine
Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so.
Peggy Sirota took it.
I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…
Conspicuous, Consuming: A few images
In his 1899 book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen (who I quote in tomorrow’s New York Times) coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe how people, rich or poor, acquire cool stuff to impress and to establish a pecking order.
Here are a few pictures of the cool stuff (specifically high-end cell phones) [...]
Blank-Label no more
Here are a few images of the shirt I designed via www.blank-label.com — complete with my own made-up label, “Live Free or Die.”
The handsome model is related to me. And he likes the shirt, even though his mom made it.
International Herald Tribune runs Prototype
My sartorial NYT column is in the International Herald Tribune today.
Musings on a purple crayon
This morning I received a wonderful note from a woman who’d just read my More magazine piece about Harold, his purple crayon and me. She said she’d never written to a journalist before, but that the piece, which appeared in December, “struck me deeply… I feel exuberant!”
Harold always makes me feel exuberant. So glad to [...]
Sharon Stone is Shameless
A friend just told me she just received her June More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe):
Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She thinks [...]
Los Angeles magazine answers the burning question: ‘What is Burn Notice?’
While shopping at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan, the star of USA Network’s hit Burn Notice, opens up about his early struggles as an actor, doing his own stunts, and the right way to make vegetable soup
By Amy Wallace
Los Angeles magazine, July 2010
On this sunny morning at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan isn’t booby-trapping a doorway or [...]
This may be the best feedback I’ve ever received
“The maximum intrigue to be found on the August newstand is in GQ’s x-ray of Garry Shandling. Reads like Philip Roth directed by David Chase.” — from @shinangovani
When I looked him up on Twitter, this is what it told me:
Shinan is the social columnist for Canada’s National Post, and author of the novel Boldface [...]
Vanity Fair
Social Climbers – Vanity Fair
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair October, 1994
BY: Amy Wallace
Nestled into a steep Santa Monica hillside, 189 concrete steps are giving new meaning to the term ‘social climbing.’ At dawn, at dusk, even in the middle of the night, the fit and would-be fit battle for parking spots near the top of the well-worn stairs, which [...]
School for Sandals – Vanity Fair
Karma and culture draw Hollywood to the free-spirited Crossroads School
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995
BY: Amy Wallace
Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a nightclub, but [...]
The Sushi Nazi – Vanity Fair
Uni Bomber
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997
BY: Amy Wallace
TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around.
To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, is to relinquish control. [...]
Hollywood Dish – Vanity Fair
The Greasy Spoons that Made L.A. Great
Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002
BY: Amy Wallace
There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in peace: the Apple [...]
Wired
An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All – Wired Magazine
Originally appeared in Wired Magazine November, 2009
By Amy Wallace
To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams [...]
Physicist Taps Pop Culture to Explain New Theory of Time – Wired
Originally appeared in Wired Magazine January, 2010
BY: Amy Wallace
Sean Carroll’s office at Caltech is a jumble of brainy flotsam. There are books with titles like Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology; five empty champagne bottles, one for each of his students who’s earned a PhD; and a NASA-approved blow-up beach ball of the universe. And on the [...]




