There’s no shortage of colorful characters in the fashion business, but Andre Leon Talley stands head and shoulders (literally — he’s 6’7″) above the pack. Raised in Durham, North Carolina by his beloved grandmother who instilled in him a “love of luxury” (a relationship he lovingly detailed in his autobiography), Vogue‘s editor-at-large has led a fascinating life in fashion, mentored by two cultural icons: legendary style empress Diana Vreeland and Andy Warhol, who opened up the live action version of Interview to him and launched his extraordinary career.

Over the past 25 years, Talley has remained a consistent presence at Vogue. He survived the headline making-transition between former editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella and current editrix Anna Wintour, rising through the ranks to become one of the industry’s most recognizable figures — all without having ever appeared on a reality show. Talley prefers his slice of the pop culture pie served up with a soupcon more style. He’s been a commentator on the Oscars’ red carpet and shared the big screen with Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City: The Movie. But his influence is most strongly felt in the pages of Vogue. These days Talley writes its “Life with Andre” column, where his encyclopedic knowledge of the business is in full view. A true fashion historian, he’s never lost his enthusiasm for the glamour — or the grind — that goes into creating the magic that first lured him into its “escapist” world.

Rare is the front row where Talley, frequently sporting some outrageous couture coat or hat, is not seated beside his current boss and good friend. Of his decades-long tenure at Vogue, he says: “Listen, if Anna Wintour wasn’t there, I wouldn’t be there.”

The man that has Karl Lagerfeld on his speed dial and really knows what Anna Wintour thinks met with us recently at his favorite (and decidedly unfashionable) diner in White Plains, New York not far from his country home (“I don’t cook, so when I’m up here I have all my meals here”) to weigh in on New York Fashion Week, bemoan the lack of quality television (save his current obsession, Mad Men), and explain why any fledgling fashionista looking to follow in his Manolo Blahnik footsteps faces a tougher road than he did.

Name: Andre Leon Talley
Position: Editor-at-large, Vogue
Resume: Joined Vogue as fashion news director in 1983, creative director from 1988-1995. After living in Paris for several years, returned to Vogue in 1998 in his current position. Penned his autobiography, A.L.T: A Memoir (Villard) in 2003; author of A.L.T 365+ (Powerhouse, 2005), a photo book of images taken with hundreds of disposable cameras. Got his big break working with Andy Warhol at Interview.
Birthdate: October 16, 1948
Hometown: Durham, North Carolina
Education: Brown University, M.A. in French studies
First section of the Sunday Times: “The op-ed pages, because I really want to know what Maureen Dowd is saying. The two people I read the most are Maureen and Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. I think [theirs] are brilliant minds.”
Favorite television show: “The McLaughlin Group. That’s my favorite show on Sunday mornings. My second favorite show is Mad Men. I love Don Draper and Betty Draper. The costumes are fabulous. I love what [costume designer] Miss [Katherine Jane] Bryant has done — particularly how she has transformed Mrs. Draper from the first season into the second season, when we’ve seen her in the stable in the cashmere coats and her riding habit. The details are wonderful. I’m totally obsessed with that show. It’s great entertainment.”
Guilty pleasure: “Charvet. Wildly expensive but beautifully luxurious men’s ties, shirts, underwear. A Charvet handkerchief is 50 dollars at Bergdorf Goodman. You’ve got to really want to buy that handkerchief.”
Last book read: “I’ve just read two books that I couldn’t put down. Fascinating biographies. The last one was Snowden: The Biography by Anne De Couray that Karl Lagerfeld gave me in Paris. I was reading it during the couture collections in Rome and I simply could not put it down. I got off the plane, left it in the airport. Half way to Rome, I screeched to driver to go back — thinking no one would pick up a book in an airport today — and there was the book on the chair where I had left it! You learn so much about how Princess Margaret lived. This weekend I was reading Nureyev: The Life, Julie Cavanaugh’s book. You can’t put it down because it goes into fascinating detail on his life — how he became this famous star and how he died under miserable circumstances. I love to read biographies.”

What kind of closets do you have? They must be extraordinary.

I use extra bedrooms with no beds as closets. [Laughs] I have a closet for the linens and the household stuff. I have a closet for my clothes. I have a closet where I store things out of season. The closets are organized by season — suits and coats in one place, dressy clothes, black tie clothes — but not in a clinical sterile system.

Are you a collector? What’s your biggest collection?

Everything. Shoes — mostly Manolo Blahnik, Roger Vivier shoes; evening slippers, lots and lots of shirts; neckties, and coats. I love coats.

It seems as if you must have always known you wanted to be in fashion. When did you first realize it?

In my early teens. I was reading Vogue magazine in high school when it came out twice a month. I was so naive, I didn’t even think about a subscription. One of my joys was being able to go and buy it on the newsstand. It was something to look forward to. The visual escapism of Vogue always attracted me. The photographs were very important. I loved the idea that you could be in a world of beauty.

It’s amazing that you’ve been at Vogue as long as you have — quite an achievement given all that’s gone on there. What’s the secret to your longevity?

My secret is staying close to Anna Wintour, who is incredible as a boss as well as a friend. I wasn’t introduced to Vogue by Anna. The first day I went into the office to meet the former editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella, Anna sent me a note saying, ‘I’m so glad you’re on board.’ My relationship with Anna [Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief] is one where we understand each other. We can communicate silently.

Why do you think people are so fascinated by her?

Because she’s glamorous and people love glamour. And because she’s always done a brilliant job. Not only has she done a brilliant job at Vogue for 20 years, she raised so much money for the Metropolitan Museum and she does so much work that goes unsung — the work with CFDA initiatives. Seventh on Sale for AIDS. She spearheaded that whole thing when Princess Diana sold her gowns [at Christie’s]. Then, another time, she did that thing with Natasha Richardson when they got the gowns from the Oscars. She’s not only done a great job as the editor of Vogue, but she’s done a great job as a humanitarian. Anyone at that point where they become that famous and is not a Hollywood star, people are fascinated because she’s a woman who is obviously a great business woman. People are fascinated by how she continues to do it year after year and always on a high level. Somehow the British have a way of seeing the world of culture, art and society that just makes it so much more fascinating to the world.

When you first met Diana Vreeland did you have any sense that she would have such a tremendous impact on your life?

Yes, of course. I always wanted to meet her. When I was reading Vogue in high school in the ’60s when she was the editor, I knew who she was. One of my goals in life was to meet her, and I achieved that my early on. I was lucky and blessed to have had Andy Warhol to introduce me to her. We just clicked. [When] I went to volunteer [at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art], she saw something in me. I was thrilled to be in her presence.

You’ve worked with these strong personalities in fashion and there’s not too many people that can say they’ve done so as successfully as you have. You’ve built very strong bonds with people that are thought to be very intimidating. What is it about you that enables you to connect to these creative types and strike the right balance with them between colleague and friend?

I’m being me. I think I have an inner confidence about myself that allows me to who I am. I’m not pretentious — although some people think I am — I think people see me. Those two remarkable women and Andy Warhol — they sense the kind of talent that I maybe didn’t even know that was there. But I certainly was smart enough to put myself in their presence.

Have you heard about Showtime’s new show 54 based on the days and nights of Studio 54? You could do a cameo. That era was so interesting because the most famous people in the world were accessible in a way that they’re not today. Could someone do what you did back then now — come to New York and find their way into that world the same way you did?

No. The world has changed. People are more insulated now. They’re not into going out. The young generation today is into a different mindset. They’re on their computers. They’re blogging. People are more cocooned in their own environment. Our generation had Studio 54, and not many things since. I’m sure Bungalow 8 is great. I’ve never been inside and have no desire to go. The same for the Buddha Bar or any of those places. I don’t think going out is what it used to be at all. Each generation has its moment, and with this generation, I don’t know exactly what they do.

I recently interviewed Joe Zee and we talked about how there is such a different attitude among those just starting out in the business. We laughed about how when we were both starting out in fashion, we were just so excited to be asked to do anything. These days interns are putting requests in to go on shoots with Gwyneth. What do you think?

I think that comes with so much access to television and celebrity. All these young people today think, ‘It can happen to me overnight’ because there’s so much of that on television.

What do you think of the democratization of fashion as a result of so much exposure in the media especially with shows like Project Runway, Top Model and now Stylista?

Anything that promotes fashion is good, although I don’t watch any of these shows. None of them. I see them advertised constantly, but I never, never want to look at any of them. I think that fashion is one of the most exciting things in the world for people. I don’t think fashion on television has been covered properly, but I do think there has been great moments of TV fashion. I saw something on television late at night where they’re just going to bring someone to Europe to [air] runway shows and just run them from beginning to end. It’s not the opinion of the people talking about fashion — people can see fashion for themselves and are intelligent enough to pick what they want. I happen to think the democratization of fashion is great when you see a great Target ad. I saw one last night with two girls decorating their dormitory, and I loved it. I love Target because you can decorate a dorm room or you can find sheets. I love the size of the stores, the scale of them. You can go in there and get anything from a CD and DVD, buy Isaac Mizrahi sheets which I think are wonderful, or buy what you need. Fashion is a fabulous medium to enlighten people, to educate them about style in their lives.

You must have been approached at some point about doing a reality show at some point.

No.

Really?

I would never want to do one. Never. I don’t understand reality shows. I don’t understand. Pamela Anderson. George Foreman. There are all these famous people with these shows. And what’s her name… Spelling?

Tori Spelling.

Yes, and her husband. I don’t understand. I did look at one because it was a train wreck. God bless her, she’s deceased — Anna Nicole Smith. Her show on E! was just extraordinary because she was just this one big train wreck. But I don’t get it. I wish television would go back to a time when it was really something wonderful. That’s why Mad Men is so great. It goes back to different time. It’s not part of this era.

The depiction of fashion in movies has seemingly gotten better in the last few years. I have to ask you about what you thought of The Devil Wears Prada — and what do you think of the work-and-tell genre?

It took me forever to see The Devil Wears Prada. I waited until I could get it at Target at a discount for 10 dollars. It was highly entertaining, and I think Meryl Streep did a superb job. She’s a great actress and a brilliant woman. The tell-all book is something that our culture takes in. Is it a permanent thing? I don’t know. However, [the movie] Sex and the City was a great thing because it’s very positive — and not because I had a cameo. It was a great movie, a great movie for women, a great movie about New York coming out of Candace Bushnell, who worked at Vogue and didn’t write a tell-all book — she created something original. She took her own saga of being the girl in New York and created something which is far more creative than The Devil Wears Prada. I didn’t read the book. I did see the movie and it was not like Vogue. [Laughs] Not the Vogue I know.

Celebrities have long replaced models on the covers of fashion magazines. Do you see that continuing?

Yes, because everyone wants to have a red carpet experience. But back to television, the focus on celebrity in our culture can be detrimental. What’s that show? TMZ? They stand there and say, ‘I’ve got this on this person.’ The focus on celebrities can be detrimental because people could be thinking of other things, but it’s a part of the culture and it’s what sells. The bottom line is Hollywood sells. Gwyneth Paltrow sells. Kate Moss also sells.

Speaking of celebrities, were you surprised by all the flak Jennifer Hudson got over her Oscar outfit?

I was not surprised. I still stand by that choice, and she does, too. She’s one of my great friends, and I love her. It was a choice that she made and that I made, and she loved it. They had to pick on someone and they picked on Jennifer. I didn’t make any sense at all. She looked incredible. The color was chosen for her. It was her first time going to the Oscars, and she looked dignified and appropriate.

Let’s talk about Fashion Week. What the best part of it for you?

The beginning and the end. [Laughs]

And the worst part?

The lagging schedule. By Thursday you’re just exhausted. Fashion Week in New York maybe isn’t as exhausting as going to Milan or Paris, but there are so many shows — and you’re going uptown and downtown. It’s a little bit more organized than it used to be. Shows in the tents are preferred to shows off-site because it’s one place and you know it’s pretty much going to run on time. I always think Monday is fabulous, beginning with Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera. I look forward to going to Marc Jacobs’ show. It’s always exciting to get to the end of the week with Ralph [Lauren] and Donna [Karan]. Those are big shows. Fashion Week is exciting, and I look forward to it.

I’m always interested to know what someone like yourself who is there for the clothes thinks about all the people that are there just to be seen. What’s going through your mind when you watch the frenzy that surrounds B-listers looking for photo ops and the hordes of hangers-on who descend upon the tents every season?

I always think it’s fascinating to see these people who come in and are not working. In Paris, it’s great to watch celebrities come in because they’re treated like royalty. It might as well be Princess Diana because [the designers] have made those people feel so special. They have sent clothes to the hotels with assistants to get them dressed so they look fabulous in the front row. Liv Tyler looked incredible at Dior. Sometimes it can be chaotic because they’ve gotten body guards. In New York, you’re fascinated by these people — I don’t know where they’re from but people might have wanted to get an invitation to a show all their lives. Some dress up, some dress down. Some come over to you and say hello, and you’ve never seen them before in your life. But it doesn’t wear you down because it’s just part of the momentum. I do think that front row has gotten better than it was. About six or seven years ago, it was out of hand. You’d go into Michael Kors and those photographers were coming down the runway after the celebrities. That got to be a bit frustrating at times, especially if the show is being held up for a celebrity. The cardinal rule is: Don’t hold up your show for a celebrity because the editors are not going to be happy.

Does this ever get old? How do you keep it fresh?

No. There’s always going to be something in someone’s show you’re going to relate to and have an impact on you based on your own knowledge and career. If you have chosen to go to a show, you’re going to be able to spot something in that show that will have impact no matter whose show it is. Not the whole show, but it could be a shoe or a heel of a shoe, a bag, a belt, a hairdo. You’ll find something. You can find pockets of beauty. I’m never bored. I always pay attention, although I never take notes. If it’s meant to be remembered, I can remember it. If it’s bad, I just erase it from my mind right there. I don’t draw or sketch, but I can remember.

How do you get yourself in the right frame of mind of all that?

You just have to get there on time. I don’t lay out clothes for the week. I just make sure my office gives me the schedule so I can get to the ones I have to go to.

Any time you’ve ever left a show because you got a bad seat?

No. That wouldn’t be polite. I’ve sat down and waited for a show that was two hours late [Marc Jacobs]. I’d think if it was three hours late, I’d get up and walk out.

Do you think it’s harder to break into the business than it was 10 or 20 years ago?

Yes. It’s more competitive. There are more people, there’s more designers, more magazines, more stylists and more reality shows. It’s got to be tougher. It’s got to be tough to even get an interview at a fashion magazine. It must be very frustrating to have gone to a fashion school and want to get into a house, even for internships. Designers don’t have a lot of interns — some do and some don’t — so to even get on the list to be an intern has to be tough. It doesn’t mean you have to go to the Harvard of fashion — whatever that is — it means you have to have something that someone notices in you that is different from everyone else. And it’s hard to get in the door and do that. I was fortunate in my day that I was very articulate about what I wanted to do and people helped me — Mrs. Vreeland introduced me to Andy Warhol and that’s how it started.

What did you learn in the very early stages of your career that’s still relevant to what you do today?

Research is key. Have knowledge of what you’re talking about. Read and be curious. Always listen. Be prepared when you’re doing something. That’s especially true in the fashion world.

What has been your greatest contribution to Vogue?

I can’t say. I don’t think of my own contributions.

What would you say has been your greatest success to date?

My longevity at Vogue and giving a point of view that is informative, entertaining and knowledgeable whatever it’s about — clothes or people or style that represents the highest standards of Vogue. I haven’t done anything unique. Vogue has always stood for that. Mr. Conde Nast invented that, if you read about his world in the ’20s and ’30s. I think I embraced the standards that Vogue has always stood for. That’s been part of my longevity. I say that with great clarity — the standards of Vogue are very high. When I was in high school reading Vogue, I was obviously impressed by that. Vogue has always stood for the best.

I’ve done a lot of reading in life. The one thing when you get to be older is, you wonder about the futility of knowledge — when you die, the knowledge goes with you. There’s so much knowledge in the world and there’s a lot I don’t have, but I have a lot of knowledge about fashion and fashion people. I think that’s important to share when you’re talking about fashion, writing about fashion or looking at fashion.

What’s been your greatest disappointment?

Not to have traveled as much as I’d like to. I wish I’d been to Africa and Greece — Greece because of the Acropolis and Africa because of the culture. I’ve not been to India. I’ve not been to many places in South America. I’ve only been to San Paolo. I should have been to Rio.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

My faith in humankind. Getting up and appreciating every day as much as one can. You have to get up and soldier on. Some days are good, some days are not so good. Some days are really exciting. Some days are just tedious. You just have to get up out of bed. I had an uncle who was a barber, and he always used to say, ‘Just keep getting up every day.’ You just have to get up, get going, get cracking!

What’s your motto?

Be kind. Smile. I read this somewhere — if you smile, it means you are in control of your destiny. I think smiling helps people break a kind of tension. I will sit in the car on the way to a meeting and just smile. I really mean that. It helps you get through life. If you have nothing to say, smile. Look up at the sky and smile. Just be grateful. It sounds simplistic, but it’s my mantra.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY. She writes the ‘Lunch‘ column.

Photo: Susan B. Landau

Charlie Collier wants you to know AMC is not your father’s cable movie network. These days the former all-movies, all-the-time network is riding high. With Mad Men‘s groundbreaking Emmy win for best drama and the top prize for a dramatic actor going to the star of its other critically acclaimed series (Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad), the network lead the way for last Sunday night’s cable coronation.

AMC’s wins in those categories are, in fact, quite significant. Gone are the days when the most buzzed-about projects were confined to premium cable — and the excuse echoed by most broadcast execs that without advertisers, cablers could push the envelope with more provocative offerings. AMC, with Collier as part of the brain trust, has quietly — and pointedly — proven the old axiom wrong. Both of their original scripted series — in their freshman year, no less — have managed to steal plenty of thunder from the networks and premium cablers. With cinematic production values and sharp writing, AMC has proven less is definitely more. “The overall mission is to make sure we do quality before [we] focus on quantity,” says Collier.

At a time when broadcast networks are still struggling to recover from the crippling writer’s strike and trying to stave off the continuing onslaught of reality television by employing the spaghetti-at-the-wall strategy to see what sticks, Collier explains how AMC’s vision for bringing quality television to the masses one show at time has helped make the once sleepy network a serious Hollywood player. This father of four (“my greatest success“) who spends his two-hour commute from Darien, Connecticut watching screeners every day, weighs in on the importance of on-screen cool and why, when he’s interviewing executives, only grown-ups need apply.

Name: Charlie Collier
Position: Executive vice president and general manager, AMC
Resume: Joined AMC in 2006 in his current position from Court TV, where he worked for four years and served as executive vice president and general manager of advertising sales. Did a two year stint (2000-2002) at Oxygen; at A&E/History Channel from 1994 until 1999.
Birthdate: August 23, 1969
Hometown: Millwood, New York
Education: Bucknell, BA; Columbia, MBA
Marital status: Married to Kristen; four children “A three-year-old, a five-year-old and two 10-year-olds.”
First section of the Sunday Times: “Week in Review. It’s a good place to ground yourself on a Sunday. Then I move to Business and Sports.”
Favorite television show not on AMC: SportsCenter
Guilty pleasure: Movies
Last book read: “Meditations in an Emergency. I understand how smart Matt Weiner is now.”

Congratulations on winning the Emmy for best drama. Besides earning AMC some pretty serious bragging rights, what else does it do?

I think it validates our strategy. It certainly is historic. No cable show has ever won best drama at the Emmys, so when they joke ‘It’s an honor to be nominated’ — it truly was for us, and it was historic to be there. I think it’s another supporting factor in the evolution of cable. We’re thrilled to lead the way.

There are so many sectors of our business — particularly the media and fashion crowds — that have embraced Mad Men. It’s really become something of an obsession among the Michael’s crowd. Jerry Della Femina told me a few weeks ago that it’s made advertising cool again. Michael Kors’ fall show was an homage to the show. How does it feel to be embraced by the cool crowd?

That’s what so amazing about this program. It’s struck a pop cultural chord in general, and then pockets like fashion have really taken to the show on a whole new level that I haven’t seen on other shows I’ve been a part of here or on other networks. It really has struck a chord that’s very personal depending on how you approach it.

Before we launched, Jerry Della Femina did a panel for us at Michael’s. When he was talking about the way it was then he said, “Whatever you think is untrue (as seen in the pilot), it was actually that and more.” He said when he used to work on a cigarette account, the chairman and CEO would get there early and comb through the ashtrays with their hands to make sure the butts were their brand. Then you look at the detail that Matt and the cast and crew has brought to this show, and they really have made it seem like time travel.”

What are you doing to capitalize on all this media attention? Was there some thought by the brain trust to leverage that by incorporating the show into the current ‘cool’ commercials for the network that are running now?

The ‘Long Live Cool’ campaign was part of something we’ve done for the last couple of years to reposition the network. We looked at what we had in the movie library, and we thought the one thing in the movies we focus on — and that promo spot is a perfect example — is that they have a quality of enduring cool. It can be defined in different ways. There are three or four spots with that line that ended with ‘Long Live Cool.’ The range goes from The Godfather to Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in Starsky & Hutch. What was amazing was that it was pointing out the enduring cool of a line or a specific scene. How that translates to something like Mad Men, in moving towards originals, was we looked at how we could take the best of what is the most widely distributed movie network in the country and build originals that could stand with them seamlessly. It’s funny that you would point out ‘Long Live Cool,’ because it was a promotion born out of the films but then transfers incredibly well to the originals.

How did Mad Men come to you?

Matt Weiner had written and used the pilot episode of Mad Men as his introduction to David Chase and The Sopranos. It was his writing sample. It was written eight years ago. Matt is a brilliant guy who has created this world that you can enter from so many different perspectives or just as someone looking for great entertainment. Here’s this script and our development folks saw it, fell in love with it, and felt that it would meet the mission of what I said before, which is to place enduring high-quality movies next to series that have the same hallmarks. We shoot on film — we want it to be like making a movie every week, and when you read something like Mad Men, it really is as well-written as any television any of us have ever seen. Our development group, my boss, Ed Carroll and his boss, Josh Sapan really bought in.

I spoke to January Jones (who plays Betty Draper on Mad Men) at the Peabody Awards and she joked that you all love the show so much that you’d go on making it even if no one was watching it. So far your ratings have been steadily climbing — and winning the Emmy has got to help. Is there an expectation that the show will cross a certain threshold and will be considered a success out of the niche it currently occupies?

The ratings have been superb. By any metric — versus last year’s average, versus our typical prime time average, the ratings are up double and triple digits depending on which demo you look at. Compared to ourselves or even compared to high-end scripted originals on other networks, this has been such a broad-based success. In June, on the Third Avenue side of Bloomingdale’s, every single window was an AMC-branded Mad Men window. It was spectacular. There was a pop cultural relevance and a way for us to leverage the AMC brand and the Mad Men brand and bring it to another level. The numerical success has been fantastic. One of the things that has been unsung about this show is how upscale it is.

The relationship with BMW seems perfect for the show and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got Target — an interesting mix of high-low marketing. Tell me how you went about selling the show. Is BMW still the lead sponsor?

There are multiple presenting sponsors of the show — Target, BMW, Heineken and others. The answer is, we sold the show like making a movie every week — high end, cinematic television. Obviously, having the first season under our belt and having the Golden Globe win and the Peabody and the Emmy nominations, it’s been a mixture of us talking about the show and at the same time and fielding calls about the show where people are looking for interesting ways to work with AMC.

With Heineken being a sponsor, that begs the question — was that product placement in episode eight (where Don Draper and his staff had to convince the suits at Heineken to go after the upscale housewife) a coincidence or a savvy cross-promotion?

We never dictate the storylines to Matt. Obviously, when you have a show about advertising, there are a lot of products in there. Heineken is a sponsor and we’re happy when they cross over, but Matt has such a vision for this world and who will participate that it starts with Matt and his cast and crew.

So it wasn’t a promotional thing like, ‘We can work Heineken into the script?’

Matt has got a picture of what happens for each of these characters and what they’ll consume and touch, so it all starts and finishes with Matt.

Maybe I’m used to watching it On Demand but last week it seemed like there were more commercials than before. True?

It’s exactly the same as it’s always been. We actually have one of the lowest levels of commercial clutter in commercial television.

Does the Mad Men demo differ from the overall demo of the network?

The reality is when you look at what we have as such a focused movie network, you really do have a unique situation. Unlike a network that runs strict programming Monday through Friday, we, by definition, have a different movie on every night of the week. We don’t tell our viewers, ‘Come back for the same thing at the same time all the time,’ — until scripted series Mad Men and Breaking Bad. That extends to our strategy. We actually ran with an ad sales strategy in the Upfronts to show people we can specifically target different audiences with the movies and as we know more and more about the film, we can speak to different demographics with the theory being that Clint Eastwood is going to treat you very differently than Angelina Jolie.

Look at what we used as a lead-in for the pilot episode of Mad Men — the lead in was Goodfellas. The thought was, here is this iconic Scorsese film — incredibly quotable about, loosely speaking, a group of men to whom the rules do not apply. Then, you take something like Mad Men, which again, loosely speaking, is about a group of men who think they’re above the rules. With something like Breaking Bad, with a very different feel, we support that with a month of anti-hero films. That brought in a very different demographic. We’re launching The Prisoner, a miniseries we’re doing in June. If you know the original series, you can only imagine the films we’re going to use to support that. It really does vary in terms of demographic what we’re trying to accomplish with each film and scripted series.

With shows like Shootout and Mad Men, AMC seems to be is going for the media insider niche which has been heretofore untapped. Yes?

Films are at our core, so for us to have Peter Bart and Peter Guber, who are iconic in the industry and have access to information and talent in a way that few others do, is great. In a lot of ways, Shootout brings a level of credibility and insight that we think Matt Weiner and Vince Gilligan bring to our scripted series. What we’re really trying to do is have movies at our core and support it with an unscripted series like Shootout and a special they might do for us that looks at the celebrity side of Toronto Film Festival to our scripted originals where people see it’s like making a movie every week — so they fit here under those auspices.

I read that your plan is to debut one new show and one miniseries a year. Are you on track for that?

In general. The overall mission is to make sure we do quality before focus on quantity. In January, we’ll come out with Breaking Bad season two and then our next move will be to do a mini, The Prisoner with Ian McClellan and Jim Caviezel. We’ll come back with Mad Men in third quarter.

When I spoke to Showtime’s Matt Blank for this series, we discussed the role controversial content plays in building a successful cable show in terms of generating buzz. What do you think about that?

I think controversial is not word I would use. For me, it’s about relevance and great storytelling. Our first foray into scripted originals was a Western, Broken Trail, in 2006. It was the highest rated movie of the year — it was the highest rated show on cable. For two nights in row, we had roughly 10 million viewers who came back for a Western. We were able to make it incredibly relevant for the largest audience in cable television that year.

How much television do you watch and what do you watch?

I watch TV in different ways. My family is always amazed that I know what’s on every channel. You mentioned Matt Blank — I’ve watched all of his series and admire them. I watch all of the competition as a sampling. As a viewer, I start with sports. Also, fortunately because we’re such an acquirer of content, we get a lot of screeners here. With a two-hour commute, I tend to watch something going in and coming out every day.

What qualities do you look for in an executive across the board when you’re hiring?

I like adults. I’ve got enough kids at home. Someone who can step away from the problem and look at it from multiple perspectives. There’s a great line in Mad Men when Duck Phillips says to Don, “There’s different ways to look at the world than the way you do.” I look for people who can see the world not just from the way they typically see it, but step back and look at it from different angles.
I’m so proud of the staff for creating an environment where the best in our business are bringing their passion projects. More and more, we’re seeing them first.

So with the street cred Mad Men has brought AMC, are you seeing an increase in pitches?

Absolutely. It’s not just Mad Men. When you do close to 10 million people a night for a Western, you see a lot of Western pitches. You do something as high end and a period piece like Mad Men and you see every period piece ever written. Then you do this modern day anti-hero in Breaking Bad and all of a sudden, it’s not just one thing you’re seeing. People see that we want to do quality and let the creators’ work show through.

What lessons did you learn early in your career that you still find relevant today?

Number one — begin as you intend to proceed. It’s something someone said to be when I was just starting out. She gave me my first management job at 24. She said, ‘So many people are trying to fit some mold instead of doing what they think is right from the start.’

What do you consider your greatest success?

Four children and [marrying] my college sweetheart.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

I’ve had the good fortune to have worked for people who let me run and let me make some mistakes and allow me to recover. Ed Carroll and Josh [Sapan] hired a guy — I had some success, but it was all on the business side — we talked for several months about the vision I would bring in for the creative side. I just passed my two year anniversary and had a nice conversation with Ed. I think we’ve both gotten out of the relationship what we hoped for and then some going in. Really more than anything, I think it’s been the support of some really good bosses along the way. I’ve benefited from people above me who’ve said, ‘His resume says ‘X,’ but we’ll give him a shot to do ‘Y.” I’ve been incredibly fortunate since my early 20s that that’s been the case.

Do you have a motto?

Do the right thing even when no one is looking.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

It’s been almost eight years since Kathie Lee Gifford said goodbye to ‘Reege’ and turned over her stool on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee to Kelly Ripa. Except for a few television appearances (including a gig as the first female guest host to fill in for David Letterman), the perennially perky Gifford says she was content to step out of the limelight of the small screen. After leaving Live, she says she found “true joy” in her second career as playwright in musical theatre, penning the critically acclaimed Under the Bridge, based on the children’s book, The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson, and Saving Aimee, about the life and times of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.

Then, seemingly out of the blue (Gifford would be the first one to agreement with that assessment), she was back on morning television last month as the co-host of Today‘s estrogen-infused fourth hour with Hoda Kotb. While she’s no longer sharing stories about mothering kids Cody and Cassidy (“It’s not the same kind of show Live was, it’s more like The View where we discuss events of the day”), Gifford is as unabashed as ever about offering her opinions about everything from Botox (she says she uses it) to Viagra (she’s speculated men are using it more these days). With new BFF Kotb — the twosome lunch regularly at Michael’s and even have a weekly Wednesday date to take in a matinee — Gifford is back with a vengeance, happily embracing the moniker of a menopausal fifty-something woman (both issues come up frequently in conversation) with the same zest that made her a fan favorite — and media target — during her days on Live.

From the back of a town car shuttling her from New York City to her home in Greenwich, Connecticut with daughter Cassidy (who was sound asleep) at her side having accompanied mom to Today to celebrate ‘Take Our Daughters to Work Day,’ the tireless Gifford called in to offer her thoughts on surprising second acts, why Silda Spitzer is (for now) standing by her man and the reason television critics’ are so tough on “strong women.”

Name: Kathie Lee Gifford
Position: Co-host of fourth hour, Today
Resume: Joined Today last month after a nearly eight year absence from morning television; her 15-year run on Live with Regis & Kathie Lee ended in 2000. Prior to Live was a correspondent for Good Morning America for three years. Landed her first television gig in 1974 as the singer on Name That Tune.
Birthdate: August 16, 1953
Hometown: Born in Paris, France and raised in Annapolis, Maryland. “My daddy was an attach� to General Eisenhower — that’s how far back I go. They were very happy years. We didn’t move to America until I was five years old.”
Education: Attended Oral Roberts University. “I left after two and half years because I already knew what I wanted to do. I was like a racehorse in the gate. I wanted to learn by doing. I wanted to work more than I wanted my degree. I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody, but it was the right thing for me.”
Marital status: Married to Frank Gifford; two children — Cody and Cassidy.
First section of the Sunday Times: “I don’t read it.”
Favorite TV show: “I am a news junkie. I really don’t watch the entertainment programs.”
Guilty pleasure: “It’s got to be theater. I don’t know that it’s so guilty but any time I get to go to a musical or a play� I love movies, too.”
Last book read: “It was a novel a friend sent to me who said, ‘This book will change your life.’ It’s called The Shack which is self-published and they’re in their tenth printing already. You will never think about God the same way again after reading that book. It’s so creative and out of the box.”

You came back to morning television after an almost eight-year absence. How did it happen?

It happened at Michael’s.

I knew there had to be a reason I was seeing you there more and more.

I was there on November last year. Hoda [Kotb], Natalie Morales and [ex-producer] Amy Rosenblum just sort of ambushed me. I was saying hello to Jonathan Tisch, who is an old friend, and they were sitting with him and just went, ‘We want you to come on the Today show.’ I said, ‘I don’t really have anything right now to promote. And they said, ‘No, we want you to cohost. Can you do it tomorrow?’ (Laughs) I said, ‘No.’ After I checked with my assistant Christine, she said I could do it the following Wednesday. So I ended up doing it that Wednesday and before a half an hour of it was through, several of the NBC executives were down on the floor with me asking, ‘Would you ever consider doing this again?’ It was just so not on my radar. I said, ‘Thank you, that is so nice but I don’t think so.’ So they said, ‘Can you come back tomorrow?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I was going out to Long Island because there was a production of my first musical, Under the Bridge, and I had promised to go out to work with the cast. They said, ‘Can you come back Friday?’ I said, ‘No. I’m getting both my feet operated on.’ I was out of commission for several months. It was winter, I think, when (vice president of NBC News) Elena Nachmanoff — called about having a meeting. She’s a very smart woman, a lovely woman. A really, really nice person and a straight shooter. I so appreciate that this point in my life. I can smell B.S. a mile away. I don’t want to be around it.

I certainly didn’t want to come in under the wrong expectations. It was just really important to me that they understood where I was at in my life. [Executive producer] Jim Bell came to my house a couple of times. He asked, ‘What would it take if you ever did come back? What would the show look like?’ I told them I liked Hoda very much. I had never met her before that day at Michael’s. I hadn’t watched the ten o’clock hour of the Today show. By 10 o’clock every morning, I was well into writing or on a set or studio somewhere. [Hoda and I] had a lunch at The Rainbow Room and they had to kick us out. They were serving dinner by the time we left. We laughed, we cried, we went to the ladies room. She said, ‘Kathie, please think about it.’ I said to Hoda, ‘I just can’t imagine.’ Then people that I really respect like my husband and Christine said, ‘Kathie, it’s time. It’s the right vehicle at the right time.’ So I said yes and the next thing you know I was doing it.

How did you and Hoda prepare to work together?

Hoda came up to the house after the deal was done and the next time I saw her was the day we did the first show. We had never done a run through. We had no idea — we thought we were only going to be outside that week just to sort of get a little excitement going. The show is basically developing as we do.

I heard the two of you go to a Broadway show every Wednesday afternoon.

I look forward to our Wednesday matinee day. We have lunch and just bond as friends and then we go see something new. It gives us something to talk about on the show the next day. I’ve seen other versions of many of the shows but she has never even seen these before, so it’s so much fun to see them through her eyes. We saw Curtains — my friend Rupert Holmes wrote that. David Hyde Pierce is so brilliant in it. Yesterday we went to see Crybaby. Next week we’re going to see South Pacific. It’s fun introducing Hoda to a whole new medium. It comes out of my passion. When I met with the producers before I signed on I said, “Listen guys, if you want me to come back to television, you have to let me come back with my passions intact, or I’ll be miserable. It’s got to be about music and theater and all that kind of stuff.” They said, ‘We understand.’ They’ve been great that way. It’s been an absolute delight to work with [producer] Brian [Balthazar] and Jim Bell and everybody at the Today show. It doesn’t take any more than a ‘How about this?’ and the next thing you know, we’re doing it.

How do you think you’ve changed since you’ve left and come back to television?

I’m innately the same person — I’m too old to change at this point. The difference is, I do care less what other people think. You develop a very tough skin about the things that don’t matter. As long as you have a tender heart about the things that do, then you’re okay. I’m still candid about things but at the same time, there are places I will not go. But you know what? That was the same way before — maybe it didn’t seem that way. I always edited myself. I have secrets that will go to my grave. If someone tells me, ‘I don’t want this discussed,’ it’s not. The only way I’ve changed is that I’ve discovered at a late time in life something that fulfills me on a level that I didn’t dream existed and that’s writing. I hope that can be an encouragement to other people that thought that their life was always basically what they thought it was going to be and there are no more surprises left. That is not true. If you’re open to learning, you can get surprised by some lovely things in life. Nothing surprises me more than the joy I get from writing — whether it’s a screenplay, a song or stage show.

You took a lot of hits in the press during your days on Live. I’m curious to hear what you think about the media firestorm surrounding Katie Couric. Do you find it at all sexist?

I don’t know. I just ran into [CBS Evening News producer] Rick Kaplan today. He was my producer at Good Morning America. Frank once said, ‘We’re a very forgiving country. America will forgive anything except success.’ We do love to build people up to tear them down.’ Not a lovely quality, but it’s true. I think it’s just her turn to be in the barrel. We should not take these things so personally — sometimes people think you have too much, and they need to remind you that you have feet of clay. I think it’s unfair. Obviously, she was hired because she is a very fine broadcaster. Only she and the CBS executives can decide if it was the wrong decision for her. It’s not any of my business. I feel for her. It’s not fun to read those kinds of things about yourself. It’s easy to get a paranoid attitude like the whole world is against you when they truly aren’t. When you’re in the middle of a firestorm like that, you think that’s all people are talking about. It’s not. It may come up at a cocktail party, but none of us are so important that it’s all anybody is talking about.

When I interviewed Deborah Norville at the end of last year she discussed the difficult time the press gave her when she replaced Jane Pauley. Why are the critics seemingly so much harder on women in broadcasting — particularly morning television?

I think they are very threatened by strong women to this day. I don’t think the press is equally as tough on Obama as they have been on Hillary. Maybe they have had more to deal with on Hillary since she’s been around longer, but I think it’s hard to be a woman in the world. It’s still very much a man’s world. But we’re seeing great progress, and we should not lose sight of that.

There’s so much blather today about 40 being the new 20 and 50 being the new 30. How much pressure do you feel to look a certain way for your new job in a medium so obsessed with youth?

I’m over 50 so I’m just so grateful to still be here and feel as good as I do. Nothing is easy in life. It gets harder as you get older. Being healthy is a choice I make every day. I just came from Michael’s where I had my usual free-range chicken and spinach without the French fries. You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once. Even though I exercise, I had to lose a little weight before I started this show because I had gotten into the habit of putting on my sweat pants and scrunchie every day to go to work and sit there writing. I had put on 10 pounds since the last time I’d been on camera, so I had to get rid of it. Hoda is like 5′ 10,” so the better thing to do instead of dieting myself into a frenzy is to say, “Can you believe the legs on this woman? She’s an Egyptian goddess.” Just be honest about it. If anything is missing in our culture today — everybody is putting a spin on everything. I’ve just always tried to be as honest as I could with people and by being that way they see your humanity. You might live a life that, in some people’s eyes, is more thrilling or exciting, but you never want people to feel worse about themselves because they’re watching you — you want them to feel better. So by making fun of yourself, you put people at ease about their own problems. We’re all in this together. If you set yourself up on a pedestal, you’re asking for disaster. We do not live perfect lives, and we are not perfect people.

Speaking of setting yourself up for disaster, two days after you joined Today you were sitting there talking about Elliot Spitzer and how Silda Spitzer was handling the very public embarrassment she faced. You made the comment that she was doing what she needed to do to keep her family together as you did when you were faced with the public scandal involving Frank. Did that feel at all funny to you?

It was the truth, and it helps people who might be facing the same situation get through it. I’ve had thousands and thousands of letters and emails from people who have gone through that who have said it encouraged them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not that you stop loving. You don’t like them for a while. You get mad. You’re very mad and very hurt. The trouble with love in our society is that we only have one word for it. You look at the original Greek there’s all different kinds of [words for] love. Unfortunately, we live in an Eros-saturated society where we only think of that kind of love. Well, that’s too bad when you go through something in life that challenges that concept. We also live in an instant society. We want to take a pill for everything that ails us. Certain things in life cannot be hurried. With certain things, there is no magic pill — you are going to have to go through it.

You shared a great deal of yourself with viewers when you did Live, but these days there is a particular breed of celebrity that just lives to be in front of the camera 24/7 with reality shows that follow their every move. Where do you think we are culturally as it relates to that? Have too many ‘personalities’ given too much of themselves?

I think so. There is so little mystery. So little romance. That’s what missing in our sitcoms, our movies — there’s so little imagination left anymore. I think it’s a shame. I’m trying to raise my children to understand the difference. At the same time, I don’t want to raise my daughter on, ‘They lived happily ever after.’ That’s bunk, too.

Are you encouraging your kids to go into the business?

I’ve always encouraged them to be whatever they want to be and to do it the best they possibly can. Every child deserves their own dream. I never understood parents who say, ‘You’ve got to be a doctor because you’re father is a doctor.’ I’m surprised both our children have chosen to go into the entertainment field. I’m delighted, but I wouldn’t have cared if they wanted to do something else either as long as they’re wonderful human beings. That’s what we raised them to be. The choice of their vocation is up to them.

What happens to your musicals and writing now that you have this other day job?

I finish at 11 [a.m.] — I get there at 7:30 [a.m.] and I’m out of there at 11. I do my best writing in the middle of the night anyway. I’m menopausal. I never sleep. I can get by on four hours. I haven’t slept a night through since I was pregnant with Cody 19 years ago. What I would give for that, but I don’t want to do the drug route.

So how are you going to fit everything in?

[The producers] understand that there are going to be times when I can’t be there, and they’ve been great about it. That was the understanding going in. They knew this wasn’t something I was looking for. Probably, if I called my agent a year ago and I said, “I’m dying. I gotta get back on television. Get me on the Today show!’ It wouldn’t have worked out. The fact that I didn’t care, wasn’t looking for it, and it came to me was because I was already doing what I loved doing.

I know people get sick of me saying it, but my daddy used to say: ‘Find something you love to do, then figure out a way to get paid for it.’ That’s where you’re true success will be — it may not be success the way the world defines it, but it will be true. I want to be happy. I’ve had all the fame and fortune. It’s people that have never had fame or fortune that long for it. They don’t know the price that comes with it. I wasn’t looking to go down that road again. I was never seeking it at any time. It just happened. I left a national show — Good Morning America — to join a local show [Live with Regis and Kathie Lee]. I didn’t care, but because I was happy and doing what I loved, success followed.

Do you have new musicals in development?

I have two. I’ve got a preschoolers’ musical called Party Animal and I’ve got another one I’m very excited about called Key Pin It Real — It’s about a little surfer girl called “Key Pin” Mackenzie who is like a modern day Gidget. She lives in Malibu and is a surfer, and she’s trying to be a natural 13-year-old when all these kids are getting plastic surgery and all want to be Paris Hilton. It’s hard for a young girl like that who wants to keep it real. I wrote it two years ago for my daughter who is almost 15 now, and we’ve set it to music. I’m going down for the first read the minute the show ends tomorrow. That’s the only difference now — I can’t commit to everything. I use my weekends wisely.

What would you consider your greatest success?

Never presenting a false front. Just being who I am. “To thine own self be true” is a clich� because it’s true. It’s not that I take any great pride in anything — I’m very grateful that I was raised by two parents who told me how important that was, and I’ve tried to pass that on to my children. They ask, ‘Aren’t you so proud?’ And I say, ‘No. I’m never proud in that sense.’ I do believe pride comes before the fall. I’m extremely grateful. That’s the other thing that’s missing in our society besides common decency — it’s an attitude of gratitude.

What’s been your biggest disappointment?

I don’t think negatively, but I guess my greatest disappointment is that my daddy isn’t still alive. No one ever embraced life more heartily or joyfully than my daddy. He died five and a half years ago. My only disappointment is that he is not here to see his grandchildren growing up, see my new musicals or turn on the television every morning at 10 a.m. and see me. But I’m also grateful that he’s not suffering anymore. I don’t look at things negatively. I don’t think it benefits you in any way.

The first thing people should learn to say in life besides ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘forgive me.’ All of those things are lost in our culture. Learning how to forgive, learning how important it is to forgive on a daily basis — sometimes it’s forgiving yourself, sometimes it’s forgiving a partner, forgiving your parents for things left undone. Whatever it is, do yourself a favor and forgive. If you don’t, you will pay a huge consequence.

Do you have a motto?

My faith has been so important to me in my life ever since I was a child. There’s a wonderful scripture that says, ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ — meaning his justice. ‘And everything else will be added unto you.’ I think we’re messed up in the world. I’m not trying to tell people to believe the way I believe but in general, people who seek more of a heavenly consciousness have much more peace in their lives than people who seek treasure. I just have a peacefulness because I try to live my life vertically between me and my maker. When all is well between me and my maker, it’s quite interesting that everything is horizontally much better as well. It’s when I put the horizontal first in my life that’s when I get all screwed up. I’m not a religious person; I’m a deeply spiritual person. I want to live in the moment because all we have is right now.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor of FishbowlNY .

Over the past few years, it’s the rare news cycle that doesn’t include some story about The View. Between the show’s headline-making hirings and firings and the cohosts’ political smackdowns of the past election cycle, the 12-year-old daytime chatfest has become appointment television for ‘civilians’ and media-watchers alike. While Barbara Walters has always been the face and collective voice of the show when the on-air and behind-the-scenes fireworks go into overdrive — as they did most recently when former co-host Rosie O’Donnell dissed her former boss and the show while doing publicity for her new (now cancelled) NBC variety hour — executive producer Bill Geddie is the man that quietly and resolutely keeps all the moving parts in working order.

That’s not to say Geddie is anyone’s ‘yes-man.’ Whenever Walters asks him about anything, he says, “I tell her what I think — in the nicest possible way. And she tells me what she thinks. I never have to guess.”

It’s a winning formula that has been the basis for Geddie’s 20-year run as executive producer of The Barbara Walters Specials and The 10 Most Fascinating People (which he also co-writes and directs). He’s been with Walters from day one — Aug. 11, 1997 — on The View. But to hear Geddie tell it, the whole thing started as a lark. One day he received a call from Phyllis McGrady, who was then working as Walters’ producer but was departing for another position. Geddie, who was producing documentaries with former Good Morning America host David Hartman at the time, had worked with McGrady at GMA. Now she was offering him what was, at the time, one of the most sought-after jobs in television. Geddie recalls McGrady told him: “‘I want you to go in and say you’re every bit the producer I am and that you will take very good care of her. I’m going to hand you the reins of this thing if you want it.'” He didn’t hesitate. Says Geddie: “Who wouldn’t want The Barbara Walters Specials? I went in and said, ‘I’ll just do the one. No commitment to do anything beyond that.” So Geddie got to work on producing Walters’ 50th special, which wound up being a bit more than he bargained for. “What was great was that the special forced me to look at her entire career because [it] highlighted old specials,” he says. “We got very close over that time because I had to interview her.”

Still, Geddie had no sense the experience was going to amount to the game-changer it turned out to be. “Barbara knew that she could let me go at the end of the special, and I knew that I made [more] money from the special than I did in the entire year of working for David Hartman,” he says. “Somewhere in the middle of that special she said, ‘What are we doing next?’ and I said, ‘ Well…’ and she said, ‘You have to start booking now!’ So I just kept working on the specials and have ever since.”

Name: Bill Geddie
Position: Executive producer, The View and The Barbara Walters Specials
Resume: Has been with Barwall Productions for 20 years. Joined forces with Walters to launch The View in August 1997. Cohosts Barbara Live! (“Although it’s not live”) with Walters every Monday on Sirius and XM radio. Previously worked as a producer for Good Morning America. Got his start in television as a camera man at ABC affiliate KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City in 1977 and was also responsible for buffing the floors. “I can remember turning off my buffer one evening because I wanted to hear Barbara Walters interview Dolly Parton. She got her guitar out and I thought, I’ve got to turn the buffer off and hear this.”
Birthdate: July 17, 1955
Hometown: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Education: University of Texas (“I call myself a Tex-Okie. If Oklahoma is doing better in football than the University of Texas, I become a Sooner but for the most part, I’m a Longhorn.”)

Marital status: Married to Barbara Geddie; two daughters
First section of the Sunday Times: “I like the Book Review because I know I’m never going to read all those books, so it’s sort of like the crib notes. I really, really enjoy that. I don’t know if it’s always the first section I read, but it’s the section I savor the most.

Favorite TV show: “I like Mad Men. I’m a little depressed that I have to wait so long to see it again. I don’t know what it is — I think it’s because I was the age of [the Draper’s] kids. I can remember mixing a drink and bringing it to mommy and daddy and how that world worked. I find watching it almost a haunting experience. The actors are amazing and the scripts are amazing — it’s the best thing since The Sopranos to me.”
Guilty pleasure: Bombay Sapphire gin
Last book read: “I read April 1865 and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s about the last month of the Civil War. I always have a history book that I’m reading. It was phenomenal. I highly recommend it. I’m now reading the new Nelson DeMille book. I go back and forth.”

You’ve been working with Barbara Walters for 20 years. What’s the secret to your longevity?

The secret to our longevity is complete honesty. We have a mutual respect for each other. I think a very important part of this is that we’re completely different. She helps me see things that I would never have thought of and vice versa. That’s a big, big part of our success. I’m this redneck from Oklahoma and she’s a fancy uptown lady — although she wouldn’t see herself that way. She sees herself as a regular gal whose father was a [nightclub] impresario, and they had money, and then they didn’t have money. Whatever it is, her experiences and my experiences are completely different. It helps us sort out what people want — and don’t want — to see.

People often talk about their “office husbands” and “work wives.” Do you ever feel like there’s a husband and wife vibe between you?

We have a mommy and daddy relationship with the staff — the only difference is I’m the mommy and she’s the daddy. I have to do it hands-on day in and day out much like, I think, traditionally women have to do with their children. She’s the dad that comes in now and then and says, ‘I don’t like this.’ I’ve always thought of it that way.

That’s fascinating. The View is currently in its 12th season. Ever feel like you’re going to overdose on estrogen?

I figured what happened for me in a previous life is that I abused women. I have these two Barbaras in my life, my two daughters and these five women. I think it’s some sort of penance… No, I don’t feel that way. Also, I don’t feel like I understand women any better [than] when we started 12 years ago. I am not some miracle worker or Alan Alda or Phil Donahue-type that just has a real sense of what women want. I’m still the same person I was when I started, but I do think I get along very well with women and they respond to that — but I don’t think I have any special insight.

Most executive producers on talk shows have one, maybe two, strong personalities to deal with — you’ve got a whole sorority. How do you keep things on an even keel?

Obviously, I’m not very good at that. (Laughs) When was that in the last 12 years?

One could argue that some of the women lasted a lot longer with you than they would have under somebody else.

I think it’s our job to go out there and mix things up. It’s supposed to be somewhat volatile. Sometimes in front of the camera bleeds into behind the camera, but for the most part not. I think when you’ve got the right group of people, it doesn’t. I think we have the right group of people right now. They totally get that they can disagree and we’re all good citizens at the end of the day. That’s a very important part of it. Also, there are a number of things that helped me — I have Barbara Walters and Barbara Walters has my back. At the end of day, one of the most respected women in television is behind me. That makes a huge difference in all of my dealings.

Secondly, I think the hiring of Whoopi Goldberg was extremely good for everyone. She is a lovely, reasonable person. She is a pleasure to see in the morning. If Whoopi isn’t going to be difficult, it’s hard for anybody else — including me — to be difficult.

So how do you approach working with so many different personalities?

I don’t think I have any special skills but I will say this: You treat women differently than men. It’s very old-fashioned, but it’s true. Not only that, you treat individuals differently. You figure out what it is that makes them tick and what it is they want to hear from you to reassure them. If you have to criticize them, you figure out the right way to do that. There are certain people you can be much more blunt with and there are people you have to take aside and coddle. There’s no magic to it. If you know people well enough and they believe that you have their best interest at heart and the show’s best interest at heart, then you’re fine. If they don’t, you’re screwed and it doesn’t make any difference what you say to them.

I’m sure you remember Dick Clark’s attempt to do an all-male version of The View for NBC with Mario Lopez.

That didn’t work.

Have you ever considered adding a man to the mix?

No.

Why not?

Because women talk a certain way with other women and they don’t talk that way with a man, and it just doesn’t work. We have occasionally put a man on just as a ‘stunt.’ But it never works. It always falls flat. Men don’t know how to talk like that, and women don’t talk like that with men there. For us it’s a no-brainer. It’s a women’s show, and it’s always going to be.

On a recent show Barbara, clearly referring to Rosie O’Donnell’s latest comments about being on the show, said, “There are some people who have done this show and then for years feel they have to dump on it.” She also said she was hurt by and resented her remarks. What’s your take on the whole thing?

I don’t want to get into it. I find the more I talk about the show we used to do, the less I focus on how great the show we are currently doing is. I understand in your situation I’d be totally into that, but I just want to focus on the show we’re doing.

The show has seemingly become more political over the years and the women have become more and more outspoken. I remember being on the set years ago when ABC standards and practices was calling during the break and told Meredith [Vieira, former co-host] she couldn’t say ‘vagina.’

That was a funny day. It’s interesting that even they have thrown up their hands and said, ‘Well, you know… We have to be able to talk about a female body part if we’re with a doctor.’ It’s very interesting how things have gotten both stricter and more laxed. Our show has always pushed the envelope. What’s funny is we have always talked politics and about things that people didn’t think belonged on a woman’s daytime show. One of the reasons we hired a conservative voice in Elizabeth is we felt we weren’t getting all the sides out. We’ve always talked about these things, but it may be that it’s more interesting now or maybe we’re better at it — I don’t know.

The show does devote a lot more time to the ‘Hot Topics’ segment now.

Considerably more. With this current group — for the first time — we found that we could do an entire show that would rank for us with just the women talking. We often [do] on a Monday — usually I’ll put somebody on at the end [of the show], someone that’s ‘Hot Topic’ worthy. We have discovered more and more that that’s what people want to see. We’re a little like the late night shows. You know how they keep the comedy going because they’re a little afraid the show is over once the guest walks out? We’re a little bit like that — we try to keep the ‘Hot Topics’ going as long as we possibly can.

You’ve been in this job for so long and the other job as producer of Barbara’s specials for so long — how do you keep it fresh?

I keep trying to come up with new ideas and things we should talk about and do, but the truth of the matter is you build the show around your talent. Anybody who tells you otherwise is making it up. That’s what we do. You try to build a show around them. The changing of people around that table has kept it fresh. Originally there was some concern that this was a freak of nature — which we just happened to find Meredith, Star and Joy and that was it and it was never going to work with anybody else. The truth of the matter is if you hire right, this will be a franchise. I think it already is a franchise. I think this last round of hiring proved that we’re a franchise show.

What would you say you learned early in your career that still holds true today?

(Laughs) They used to say when I was in my first job, ‘If you don’t like your job, there’s a 747 flying overhead full of people that would like it.’ That’s always stuck with me — that there’s always somebody out there that would drop everything, take less money and work harder to just be in television.

Is it harder to break into the business today on your side of it than it was 20 years ago?

When I started 30 years ago, you could start, like I did, in Oklahoma City and get a camera job in the newsroom, then get a job in Atlanta, then Cleveland and then San Francisco. You could work your way up. There was a time when people moved people in — they heard about a good person and brought them in. The business doesn’t work like that any more. It doesn’t pay well enough in many ways — that’s part of the problem. It used to be that those were big jobs that paid better — now they don’t pay as well. They want people to hit the ground running — they don’t want to have to explain where the Lower East Side is. It’s a different world. These days, if you want to work in New York or Los Angeles, you’ve got to pick yourself up and move there and find yourself a job.

When I speak to people about television, I always say there’s good news and bad news. The good news is there are more television jobs than ever. The bad news is none of them are worth anything — not none of them — but there are so many awful TV jobs because there’s so much awful TV, so when you get a good one you hang on to it tooth and nail.

I know you’ve written movie scripts. Are you keeping a journal so that you could turn your experience at The View into a chick flick one day?

I think that somebody should do that other than me. I’m too close to it. I wrote for a while. I thought I was going to be a screenwriter. The whole process of getting my movie Unforgettable made proved to me that I don’t have the patience for it. The problem is you spend years on it, then you go to the theater for a movie that you’re cut out of eventually because they don’t like writers. Then you sit down and watch this monstrosity and you go, ‘Look what they’ve done! How embarrassing.’ When I went to see Unforgettable, on the way out, there was this 18-year-old girl sucking on a cigarette and I walked by and heard her say, ‘Who writes shit like this?’ (Laughs) I was in a creative coma for two years after that. It proved to me I’m a TV person.

What do you consider your greatest success?

That I’ve been married 30 years.

And biggest disappointment?

That I thought I would be a famous screenwriter. I’m happy that I’m not now, but it was disappointing to go through it. That moment when I realized I wasn’t going to be a big time screenwriter was a big disappointment for me. Then The View came along a year later. When this opportunity came up, I pushed hard for it. It has made a huge difference.

Do you have a motto?

I really like what Reagan kept on his desk — I’m butchering it — but it’s something like, ‘There’s no limit what a man can accomplish if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.’ I really like that and I try to live by it. I don’t think it matters who gets the credit. I know this makes me sound more humble than I am — but I really, really believe that’s the truth. I also like ‘Tolerance is the suspicion that the other person might be right.’ I think about that all time when I’m listening to something that pisses me off.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

Last month, The L Word premiered its final season to its strongest numbers since season one. The irony isn’t lost on Ilene Chaiken, the creator of the groundbreaking Showtime series: Its exit comes at a time when issues like gay marriage have ratcheted up the rhetoric against the gay community and energized the extreme right. “The L Word is ending at the right time creatively for our show,” says Chaiken. “But I certainly am a little sad that it’s going off the air at a moment where our representation in popular culture just couldn’t be more important.”

As an open lesbian for 25 years, Chaiken never sought to politicize her writing but, she says, simply “wanted to tell compelling stories.” Still, since her finding her greatest professional success with The L Word, she has been recognized as one of Power Up’s “Top Ten Lesbians in Hollywood” and made Out magazine’s list of the “100 Most Powerful Gay People in Hollywood.” As a testament to her creative and cultural clout, last month at the Television Critic’s Association Press Tour, Showtime announced the network’s plans to shoot the pilot of a spinoff of The L Word, set in a women’s prison starring L Word‘s Leisha Hailey, Laurie Metcalf and Oscar nominee Melissa Leo. “It’s not a continuation of this world of lesbian relationships and commerce,” says Chaiken. “It’s a very different kind of show.”

The woman who broke into the business as part of the team that brought The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to television and learned about the importance of editing from Aaron Spelling talks about writing about what you know (and working with people who know about the same things) and why she finds pitching ideas to television executives the most “horrifying” part of her job.

Name: Ilene Chaiken
Position: Creator/executive producer of Showtime’s The L Word
Resume: Brought The L Word to Showtime, which premiered in January 2004 and is currently in its final season; is currently working on a spinoff of the show for the network. Before landing her own show, Chaiken worked as a writer for Showtime, with credits that include the Golden Globe-winning Dirty Pictures. Prior to her writing career, she worked as a television executive for Aaron Spelling and Quincy Jones.
Birthdate: June 30
Hometown: Elkins Park, Pa.
Education: Rhode Island School of Design
Marital status: “I never did get married, never was officially domestic partners, but [I] had a relationship of 20 years and during that time had two children in that relationship.”
Favorite television show: “I don’t watch that much television these days – not because I’m not interested — but because I don’t have time. When my mind jumps to the days when I did watch television, I’d have to say Bewitched.”
Guilty pleasure: “Who has time for guilty pleasures?”
Last book read: “I could tell you the last book I tried to read and was on my bedside all though production. I read about a page a night — the same page — and fell asleep. It was The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.”

How would you say being an openly gay woman in Hollywood impacted your career?

I would say it had relatively little impact up until the time I did The L Word. I’ve been out for most of my career. I’ve been out since it was not that comfortable to be out. I was never militant. I don’t think people assumed I was gay, but if it was appropriate to clarify, I never pretended that I wasn’t. I was in a relationship, and then we had children. Occasionally, I felt excluded — once or twice openly and offensively — I wouldn’t say discriminated against, but insulted in the way that people do in Hollywood. But it happened very, very rarely.

I never made career choices based on being gay. I didn’t particularly tell gay stories. It wasn’t a mission for me. I did often look to find gay characters in non-gay stories I was telling because I had a sense we should be included in the pantheon of human representation. But then I had the idea to do this television show. It wasn’t a mission — it was, ‘This is a good idea.’ That radically changed my relationship to my work.

This is the final season of The L Word. Why end it now? Did you feel like the story had come to an organic close?

This was serialized drama, and in serialized drama, life goes on. I wanted to end with a sense that life goes on. Of course, I also wanted to wrap up the stories in a satisfying way, but not in an artificial way.

You’ve had a long run. How much would you say has changed in terms of television’s receptivity towards gay characters and their representation since you started?

So much less than I would have liked. Receptivity, yes, there is tremendous receptivity in the culture. Audiences are interested in gay characters and welcome and embrace gay characters and gay stories if they’re good. But it’s no easier to get a gay character or a gay themed story on television now than it was when I first sold this idea to Showtime seven or eight years ago.

How long did you shop it around?

I never shopped the idea. I had written a movie for Showtime called Dirty Pictures, and I had a great experience working with them. They just seemed to me to be a really smart and receptive company to work with. I just had this idea, and I thought that Showtime was a place that might actually be ready to take on this subject. I knew that I would never sell it at a network, and I didn’t say to myself or my agents, ‘I’ve got to do this. Set up a bunch of meetings for me.’ I said, ‘I’m going to see if Showtime wants to do it.’ I pitched it to a couple of women at a VP level that I had worked with before. They smiled politely and said, ‘It’s just not going to happen.’ One of them actually said, ‘We could never sell it to that guy down in the corner office.’

It never went anywhere. They might have mentioned it at their weekly staff meeting because they’re obliged to. They probably said, “Ilene pitched us an idea to do a lesbian ensemble drama and of course we’re never going to do that.’ I just let it go. I was working on other things, writing other movies for Showtime, and I didn’t really think that I wanted to do it any place other than Showtime. A year later, Showtime had Queer as Folk on the air. They bought the English format and revamped it as an American show. It was quite successful for them. I thought, ‘Now, this is silly. There really is no good argument against it.’ I went back, and the movie I had written for them was nominated for a Golden Globe, so things had progressed.

I pitched to a more senior-level executive — Mark Zakarin — and he took the pitch, stood up at the end and said, ‘This is great. We’ve got to do this. A few days later Jerry [Offsay] walked up to me and said, ‘We’re going to do it.’

Cable has always been able to break new ground terms of character and plot. In your view, how has broadcast done in terms of representing gay characters? Are the characters primarily token characters or are they fully formed?

My impression is that they are largely token characters. There have been some exceptions, but for the most part, gay people are underrepresented on broadcast television or represented in a token way. Characters are still not sexualized — there are limits to how sexualized a character can be on broadcast television, but with gay characters in particular, the idea there might be a kiss or anything that suggests more sexual intimacy is still largely taboo and met with horror. One hears all kinds of stories about why this or that gay character goes away. We really don’t exist on broadcast television in any measurable way. In fact, across the board we’re less well-represented than we were five years ago.

Why do you think that is?

I don’t really know. It’s just a sad statistic.

With Prop 8 passing in California, do you feel you want to do something creatively to address it in some way?

I’ve never done anything creatively with a political agenda in mind. Certainly, in my personal life, I’m working hard to overturn Prop 8 with some great coalitions. I wouldn’t characterize the passage of that proposition in any positive way, but it has galvanized our community.

Why do you feel gay marriage is such a hot button issue, particularly in this climate of inclusiveness?

I don’t think that I have the best answer for this — there are probably scholars who have given it much more thought, but it just seems to be the issue that the biblical right is clinging to. There is a religious component to it, and for some reason it does push people’s buttons — ‘They can have this, this, and this, but they can’t be like us in this way.’ It’s not rational.

Let’s change channels — you said you don’t really spend time watching television, but do you keep up with what’s going on in the cable world?

I’m always planning to watch more television. I watch — not regularly — all of the Showtime and HBO shows, and the some of the shows on FX. There are shows I know I would enjoy that I haven’t really watched extensively. I’m interested in broadcast television, too. There’s been some great, great television.

Where do you get your best ideas?

I find that ideas come from all over. I keep a little catalog of ideas that I’ve always wanted to do, and in the rare moments when I have downtime, I go back to them and look them over. Every once in a while, I wind up pursuing one, but I usually find myself distracted by something that came out of nowhere.

What’s the secret of a good pitch?

I find pitching to be the most horrifying activity. The secret of a good pitch is to have a good story, to know your character, and to be very, very clear. Beyond that, it’s this really unfair exercise in which being a good performer is the secret to a good pitch — and writers aren’t traditionally good performers.

What’s your routine when you’re writing for a regular gig like the show?

With production there’s never any structure to the writing, because you’re working around everything else that comes at you. When I’m not in production, my writing day starts in the morning. I get up very, very early — usually by five a.m. I try to be writing by 5:30. This was seriously altered when I had children, but now that my children are getting older, I’m back to it again. I’m not somebody who’ll say, ‘I’m going to write for the first six hours of the day, and now I’m done.’
I write all day long. When I’m working on something and it’s really cooking, I can write anywhere from five to 15 hours in the course of the day. I get my work done when I’m sitting at the computer. I’m not one of those people who says, I’m going to go for a long walk and go shopping, and then I come back and it’s done. The work gets done when I’m sitting there, and I’m focused.

How did you break into television?

I was an executive before I started to make my living as a writer. First I was a movie executive. I started as a trainee at CAA. I then got a development job working for two producers with an overall deal at Warner Brothers. I went with one of them, Alan Greisman, when he went to make movies for Aaron Spelling. I was his director of development. I met Aaron Spelling in a couple of meetings talking about the movie business, and he asked, ‘Are you interested in television?’ I wound up working for him running his television department.

That must have been a trip.

It was fascinating. (Laughs) I’ll leave it at that.

And you worked for Quincy Jones.

Yes, I left Aaron and went to work for one of the ‘young Turks’ who started the Fox Network. He hired me to start a company for Quincy Jones — he had a joint venture with Warner Brothers and we were doing films and television. We put together The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was during that executive job that I crashed and burned as an executive and said, ‘If I don’t do this, I’m never going to do it.’ And I started writing. For about three or four years, I made my living writing movies. I was constantly employed, but over the course of that time only had one movie actually produced — Barb Wire. I wound up getting a job writing a movie for Showtime, Dirty Pictures, which was sort of a crossover into television. I still thought of myself as a movie writer. I never thought about getting into television.

How do your personal interests shape what you do?

As a writer, before I did The L Word, my answer would have been: I like learning about a new world and one of my favorite things was — and still is – a project that’s really research-intensive that compels me to delve into the sociology of another world. Doing The L Word brought me much closer to my own experience, and I enjoyed that. For me, it’s whatever is compelling in the moment.

Having done both, how do you feel about the old adage ‘Write what you know?’

It can be good. There are some projects like a television show where people who know the world are, for the most part, the ones who are qualified to write about it. I found that with The L Word. I started out a little idealistic thinking we should have very mixed set of writers — straight men, gay men, and straight women. I found that I would never exclude people for one thing or another, but I found the people that were able to really help me craft these stories were mostly lesbians.

What did you learn in your first job in television that still holds true today?

I certainly learned the television business working for Aaron Spelling. Here’s the specific thing I learned: how important the editing room is. I never knew before the extent to which a story gets made in the editing room, and that so many things can be compensated for. It really is a storytelling venue, and it’s very like writing for me. I was sometimes baffled by how it all came together back then, and I watched Aaron and saw that he always was in the editing room and made it happen in there.

What would you consider your greatest accomplishment?
The L Word

Biggest disappointment?

That I didn’t write it better — not necessarily The L Word, but anything that I could have spent more time on and rewritten.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

Mostly by steadiness and dogged determination. Not a pit bull-like determination, but a quiet, focused unwillingness to not ever back down.

Do you have a motto?

I don’t have a motto. One of the reasons I don’t is because at my job at CAA, I was the assistant to the head of a department, and he had a motto taped above my desk. He said, ‘This is your motto. Live by it.’ It was, ‘When I assume, it makes an ass of you and me.’ (Laughs) I was so horrified by that I promised myself I’d never have a motto.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

More often than not, those who rise to the top in fashion began plotting their careers around the time they first learned to dress themselves. Sally Singer is an exception to that rule: While her consuming passion for fashion fueled a lifelong love of sewing, along with her voracious consumption of magazines since childhood, her path to the rarified environs of Vogue was anything but premeditated. “I didn’t think of it as a professional choice, in part because I didn’t know anyone who worked in fashion; I didn’t know how people got their jobs in magazines,” says the editor, who is a regular front-row fixture at fashion shows in New York and Paris.

Somehow, Singer’s stints editing books in London and waxing lips at a San Francisco beauty school all led her to landing one of the most coveted jobs in fashion: working for Anna Wintour. (“A great boss.”) As a result, her expansive and intellectual view of the world extends well beyond an interest in fashion’s next big thing and the celebrity du jour — and that, she says, is precisely the point. Her advice to fledgling fashionistas is astonishingly practical: “Know something else and bring that with your interest in fashion to a magazine. It’s not enough to just love fashion,” she counsels. “You have to have a much broader interest in culture, even if all you’ll be doing is pinning clothes on a model.”

Name: Sally Singer
Position: Vogue fashion news/features director
Resume: Joined Vogue in 1999 from New York, where she served as fashion director. Prior to that, worked at Elle, British Vogue and the London Review of Books, respectively.
Birthdate: March 21, 1965
Hometown: “My family moved a bit, but I basically grew up in Oakland, California.”
Education: UC Berkeley (undergrad); Yale University, American Studies
Marital status: Married to novelist Joseph O’Neill; three children
First section of the Sunday Times: “Of the stuff you get on Saturday, the book review. For five years, I worked at Farrar Straus & Giroux as a book editor, and so I always go to the book review first. I read it the way people who work with books do. I look at which companies have gotten reviews — not just what has been reviewed. On Sunday, I read the news section first.”
Favorite TV show: “Charlie Rose. It’s probably the only one I watch. It’s the only thing that I actually know when it’s on. I don’t have TIVO or OnDemand. I don’t even have cable. The thing I love about Charlie Rose is that it’s one of the few places where there’s an extended discussion about something, and I like that.”
Guilty pleasure: Movie theater popcorn
Last book read: “I just read Antonya Nelson’s new collection of stories. I think she’s very, very good. She’s kind of a new spin on Ann Beattie. That’s my equivalent of television — some people watch Brothers & Sisters, and I read Antonia Nelson. I read a lot of fiction. I probably read two to three novels a week.”

Did you always want to work in fashion?

I always loved clothes and making clothes. I sewed all of my clothes with thrift store things mixed in throughout high school and even college. I was fanatical about home sewing. I didn’t come from a family with the means to actually purchase anything that would constitute fashion, nor do I come from a family where anyone was involved in the culture of designer ready-to-wear.

Because I made my own clothes, I always cared about fashion and always knew what every designer had done, as reported in the pages of Vogue, Interview and Paper. I always followed what was happening and did my interpretation of where I thought things were going. I didn’t think of it as a professional choice, in part because I didn’t know anyone who worked in fashion; I didn’t know how people got their jobs in magazines. But I knew the masthead of every fashion magazine. By the time I was 11, I could tell you who the bookings editors were. I did send a handwritten letter to Andy Warhol when I was 12 because I wanted to work at Interview.

[Fashion] was a way of making myself interesting in the world. It wasn’t something one would do professionally. I come from a family — my father is a mathematician, my mother is a psychologist, my brother and sister are doctors — which one doesn’t do commercial things. So the idea of being a historian specializing in reconstruction to civil rights and black history was what I was raised to do. My idea was [that] I would work at a research institution, teach a small class load, and get a chair some day.

What happened?

I was in graduate school when I realized I was too much of a dilettante. I was into New York too much — I was at Yale, but I was always in New York. I just needed a break. I needed to figure out who I was, so I went into book publishing. It was fantastic. It allowed me to think quickly and instrumentally about text, but to have a kind of long relationship with writers; to have a complex relationship with subject matter — particularly with nonfiction. From there, I went into book reviewing and editing — I was at the London Review of Books. It was only when Alexandra Shulman asked me if I would go to British Vogue that I thought, “Wow, I could go to a Vogue.” It was a fluke. She saw in me things I hadn’t seen in myself but were there. I left Berkeley at one point to take a semester off, because I started very young and skipped a lot of grades. I went to beauty school. I did the California curl, the Marcel wave and learned to wax ladies’ lips. I didn’t finish. I realized that I wasn’t great at haircutting. It allowed me to have a lot of practical knowledge of beauty culture. It’s been this extraordinarily useful thing.

So this amalgam of experience has been helpful.

Definitely. Knowing how to sew has helped me enormously in understanding clothes when they come down the runway — how they work, why they work and when they don’t work. If you know how to sew, you know about fabrics and textiles and how they should be cut. I’ve known how things should be properly made since I was a junior high school student. Having gone to beauty school, I actually do have a basic knowledge of what people do… if they’ve really got it or they don’t — because some people have it, and I don’t. I should never wax a person’s lip or eyebrow again. I was terrible, and it’s a terrible thing to be terrible at.

It’s an interesting detour given all that came before and after.

I think everything you do in your life can come together. I was at London Review of Books, and I had done a piece for British Vogue about Jay McInerney because I was an American living in England. They offered me a job as a culture editor when Eve McSweeney (who I now work with at American Vogue) came to New York to work at Harper’s Bazaar with Liz Tilberis [in the early ’90s]. I followed her to British Vogue. I loved it [at British Vogue]. Suddenly, the disk drive of information in my head about clothes, style and photographers — and every credit I ever read and remembered from every fashion magazine from the time I was 10 — was all useful. I was getting paid to go into the recesses of my imagination. British Vogue was a fantastic experience.

What’s the difference between the culture at British Vogue versus American Vogue?

It’s more similar than I would have imagined it to be. When I worked at British Vogue, it was at a time in which British fashion was having a very big moment. John Galliano was going to Paris. [Alexander] McQueen was starting at Givenchy. There was a lot of excitement. A lot of the fashion at the time that was successful commercially was very lifestyle-driven (which is what the English can often do well) — clothes that don’t come from the street, they come from the garden and how people live. It was all about wearing your pajamas or a slip dress with combat boots to work. It was very feminine, girlie and fun. There was a lot of interaction between the features and fashion staffs to put forward that vision. That was the birth of [designer label] Marni. We were wearing the rose prints with the striped T-shirts. Meanwhile, you had Oasis and Blur hitting it big, and the Brit pop thing. It was just a good moment to be there. It was a small staff and small budgets to do things — bigger budgets than anyone else in England, but small budgets in comparison to what America does.

When I came to American Vogue, I had this perception that it had far more staff, far more resources, and far more divisions between the different parts of the magazine. Since I’ve been here, we’ve sort of merged features with fashion features because it used to be two people, and now it’s me. Through issues like ‘Power,’ ‘Shape’ and ‘Age,’ we’ve done more stories in which the fashion side of the magazine and the feature side of the magazine have to work together to produce features that are relevant for both. We do have more staff, and it’s a bigger magazine read by far more people. [American Vogue] has a far broader vision because it has to. The pleasures of working here are quite similar. [British Vogue editor-in-chief] Alex Shulman and Anna Wintour are not alike in any way, in that Alex comes completely from features and Anna comes first from fashion. Alex is a writer; Anna is a visual genius. But the pleasure is the same. It’s really fun. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.

There’s been some criticism of the magazine. Cathy Horyn wrote in The New York Times that Vogue isn’t as relevant as it once was. What’s your response to that?

I was in India when Cathy’s piece came out, so I didn’t read it at the time; I can’t comment directly on what she said, but I obviously disagree wholly with that. When I started at American Vogue, Style.com hadn’t even started. There’s now far more information in the world about fashion. You couldn’t know the name of the 14-year-old Eastern bloc model the day after she appeared in the Prada show, unless you were at the show. When I was at New York and you had to shoot a look from Ann Demeulemeester, you had to go to the showroom, put the pieces together, and Polaroid them. There wasn’t even a look book, let alone a Web site to show you how it was worn. It’s changed completely. Anyone who is interested in clothes right now knows the clothes almost as soon as I do. That changes the way you report on clothes and changes the way you show clothes. It makes what we do more relevant than ever, because you actually need someone to edit it down for you. You need people now not to tell you what was at Prada, but to tell you why it was at Prada and how you’re going to wear it. American Vogue is very good at explaining to American women — and by extension, women around the world who want to dress like American women — why they should wear what they wear, and how they should wear it.

For the last two years, in [American Vogue‘s] “View” section in and echoed in the fashion features, we have said: Buy less, buy better, and don’t think fast fashion is the fix for your life. We’ve done stories on women who only have an edited wardrobe, because they don’t want to have more than they need, but what they have is good. So I have to say we’ve been putting it out there — issues of sustainability, issues of value, issues of thoughtful shopping — for about two years now. It might not be something that people are ready to listen to, but it’s been there. There’s so much relevant information that keeps you caught up in the drama of the season and the fun of fashion and the beauty and the romance of it. Grace Coddington’s shoots are always about that, but also push you to think harder about why you’re buying what you’re buying, and who to invest in now. We put it out there every month with features on people that I certainly think are relevant.

Like your March cover subject Michelle Obama?

We had Michelle Obama in over a year ago. We had Valerie Jarrett. We had the McCains and we had Sarah Palin first. When that story broke, we had done her. The conservative news networks were trying to get our picture of her because they didn’t have any other pictures of her. No one else had bothered with this woman.

I do think we’re out there first — not just for the sake of being first. I won’t put a collection in just because I have to have an exclusive first when some young person is having a collection, and there’s some hype around it. I won’t do those in “View.” I’ll maybe wait until it’s the season when the person has done their best work. It might be their first season; it might be their third. I think the same with the features coverage — we don’t have to do every hot young actress and every new person who makes it on to the national stage. We do the ones [who have] a story behind them that might push them forward, for better or worse. In the case of Sarah Palin, there was enough out there [to] be part of culture conversation that’s happening at dinner tables around the country, if not around the world.

We did Alice Waters for “The Edible Schoolyard,” not because she’s a celebrity chef, but because she did something else with it. We worked very hard with Alice to bring “Edible Schoolyard” to people’s attention five or six years ago.

It’s our mission to be as relevant as possible, and yet to keep up the dream of Vogue. For some, Vogue can only be relevant as a dream. They want to get their news somewhere else. They want to see the couture in Vogue. People come to us with all different expectations. Overall and every month, we try to match all of them in some way. I’m always thinking about it, because my mother and sister do not read Vogue for the fashion — they could not care less. They wear what they wear, and they look perfectly nice. My mother makes her clothes. They’re thrilled that we had Nancy Pelosi first. They’re thrilled when we do a medical piece that has real information.

For some people, and I imagine Cathy [Horyn] might be one of those people, it’s a Steven Klein picture. It’s the picture that pushes it out — shabby fur on a cliff. The pictures that push the aesthetic issue of Vogue, taking it to some place that’s maybe darker or sexier than the more wearable fashion stories. It just depends where you get your kicks.

There’s this sense that the line between fashion and news is often blurred in pop culture. I’m fascinated by how this is happening in the way Michelle Obama is already anointed a fashion icon. How do you see that evolving?

The thing about Michelle Obama is she’s an unwitting fashion icon. She has to be one because she’s beautiful, she’s tall, and she dresses well. She’s young and she’s the First Lady, so whatever she wears is interesting. The fact that she’s chosen to pick such independent, interesting, and — in many cases– emerging designers as the people from whom she buys clothes is exciting. It’s going to be watched and commented on by people the world over, regardless of whether she invites it or not. Ditto her husband. Anything [Barack Obama] does is interesting because he’s just gorgeous and young. It wouldn’t have been the same with John McCain because he’s old. [The Obamas] accept their iconicity and obviously enjoy it to a certain extent, and they know how to use it well.

Do you think they’re going to leverage that even more?

I think he has a lot of work to do. She also has a lot of work to do. There’s nothing silly about this couple. They do not seek celebrity for celebrity’s sake. They are celebrities by virtue of how amazing they are. That is a new paradigm for America. We have had so many people who want to be celebrities, and have come out of this era of reality television in which being famous for fame’s sake matters. Finally, we have people who are famous because they are really interesting, smart, and attractive on their own terms. [Michelle Obama]’s not a size zero. It’s genius. When I saw her in that Jason Wu dress, I thought, “I hope all those Hollywood actresses realize they don’t need a giant necklace and cantilevered cleavage to go to an awards show.” That night I thought, “Thank God someone understands — just wear something you look pretty in and get through it.” I think it’s only good that she’s made the business of American fashion look so interesting, so diverse and so exciting right now because fashion needs all the help it can get.

With fashion being fodder for so much of TV and movies these days, what’s your take on fictional representations of the fashion industry?

I don’t watch any of the shows about fashion. I’ve never seen Ugly Betty. I’m the person who didn’t read or watch The Devil Wears Prada. It’s for no other reason than: For me, it would be like going to work. I have the good fortune to work in this industry, so I want to see Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon or watch Charlie Rose. I get my fashion at the office. I don’t need to see it anywhere else.

I wanted to get your take on some of the same things I asked Andre Leon Talley when we interviewed him: Anna Wintour is the subject of so much coverage. Why do you think people are so fascinated by her?

Because she is the most powerful person in fashion, because she’s so good at what she does, and [because] she’s been so good at what she does so for long. When she was at New York, she was amazing. When she was at HG [the former House & Garden], all of her ideas about lifestyle and the relationship between home and closet are so relevant now. She understood the celebrity thing before anyone in high fashion really did. She just has it — and she has it without talking a lot about it. I think that’s what people are fascinated by. She’s not someone who is writing books, giving lots of interviews, or putting herself out there, and people are racing to catch up. That’s what sustained [the interest] over the years — the sheer ‘How does she do it?’ Like the Met Ball [which Wintour chairs annually]: It’s just an act of precision and care and work. She just is on every detail. She has a vision, and it’s going to be realized. She knows what it is. She can delegate people to help her realize it, but at the end of the day, she’s going to make it happen. I think that’s fascinating. The cracks usually show for people, and they don’t show for her. It’s the same with her look. She always looks perfect and always looks appropriate.

How is she as a boss?

She’s fantastic because she’s clear. The thing about Anna that’s so good to work for is she knows what she wants. She doesn’t need to be shown five things to get the one she wants. She’s clear from the start. It’s your job to listen, and if you have objections to the final vision — if you’re someone who can think through to the end of a project at the start — it behooves you to voice them. She listens, and you have that discussion then. What I love is that it’s always been completely clear. There’s no tricks, deceptions or emotions. It’s just work. It’s rigorous and interesting and forward-thinking.

It’s New York Fashion Week: How do you think the economic climate is going to affect covering the shows?

It behooves none of us to be doom-and-gloom about this. The business of fashion goes on. To simply worry about how we got into this slump and how bad it’s going to be doesn’t help the designers to have confidence to design wonderful things. It doesn’t help the retailers come and buy things for their stores, and it doesn’t help the editors get inspired to do the pictures with whatever their budgets are now. We need to keep the industry going because it’s huge in [New York] and in the world, and because fashion is one of the great elixirs — a great, fun thing people can do to pick themselves up at whatever level they choose to engage in it. I would hope that the backbiting between industry professionals on who got it wrong begins to subside, and that people who do wonderful work get recognized. That doesn’t mean everyone has to be recognized. I don’t think there should be some critical washout giving fabulous reviews to collections that are half-thought-out. It’s time to celebrate clothes with value– everything has been done with care, regardless of the price point. That can be an Italian yarn sweater that’s been really well-cut now favored by Mrs. Obama from J.Crew, or it can be a crazy loose-gauge mohair extravaganza from Rodarte. What we will see and should see is a movement away from cynical gestures in the name of luxury, and a kind of bland acceptance that that’s kind of great stuff, too.

Covering Fashion Week is a physical marathon for someone in your job: How do you get through it? What do you carry around with you?

I’ve never been good with carrying stuff around because whenever I try to do that, the PowerBars are gone by 11 in the morning. There’s a Korean nail bar/hair place called Hair Party on 28th and Madison, and it’s open 24/7. You can have a pedicure at two in the morning. During Fashion Week, that’s the ultimate thing — that you can clean yourself and get going again at five in the morning. That’s key for me.

How do you keep track of it all and take in all the information and imagery? Andre [Leon Talley] told me he doesn’t take notes. If it’s great, he’ll remember it; if it isn’t, he doesn’t.

That’s absolutely true, but I do take notes. I always have a notebook. When you start in New York and a month later you’re in Paris, it’s nice to go back and remember the line of a dress you particularly liked. I take fewer notes now, because I don’t feel I have to take every look down. The [notes] I take are the ones I know I’m going to need a month later.

The other half of your job in features involves the celebrities you choose for your covers. How does that play out?

There’s a group of celebrities who have a relationship with the magazine and appear frequently, so we always know the release dates of their projects, and we see [their films] early if we can.

I thought the images from the story on Reese Witherspoon [in the November 2008 issue] were beautiful.

Reese is a great actress for us to do because she’s game to do interesting things, and she tends to be in really good movies. I just did Anne Hathaway for January because I loved Rachel Getting Married, and it seemed like the right time to do her. Blake Lively from Gossip Girl — we did her in the center of the magazine when the show launched, but it seemed like the right time for her. In February, we often do a young, New York person. I think we did the first Sarah Jessica Parker cover in February. I did a Kate Bosworth cover in February. That’s the month where we often take a risk on a new person. Then there are certain actresses that people are fascinated with, like Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. The public just loves them. I understand why people love celebrities and clothes — they can bring all these narratives to it. It’s often the imperfect celebrities who get the biggest responses.

What piece of advice would you offer someone just starting out who’s looking to work at a fashion magazine?

It’s not a great time to go into magazines. People who often want to be in fashion magazines love magazines, but they love them to the exclusion of the rest of the culture in the world. They do media programs or communication courses [in college]. I always say, get a real education in a discipline with some history and weight behind it. Be an art history major. Whatever you’re doing, do it to the utmost. People waste a lot of time thinking about the social operations of things and waste a lot of time growing up and half-paying attention to what they’re reading in college or high school. I would say: Whatever you’re doing, pay attention when you’re doing it. Magazines reward wide-ranging curiosity and intelligence. People that want to consume information at a fast and ferocious level do well at magazines. To be really good at fashion, it’s not about what you wear. Looking good in clothes is fairly interesting, but that doesn’t help you.

I think most people would be shocked to know that.

If I only took an interest in what worked for me, everyone would be in an A-line skirt and a cardigan. [Laughs] I always think people need to have a vision of fashion outside of themselves, and that should include a couple of other things, too. It could be music culture. It could be anything, but it’s good to bring a few things to the table before you get into the narrow world of fashion, because you will be found out at some level.

How you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
I have no idea. It makes no sense. There’s nothing in my biography that led to this. I really should have been a civil rights activist or I should be working for Amnesty International. It probably reflects the deeply shallow nature of my inner life. I still pinch myself. I don’t know how I got to American Vogue. I couldn’t even begin to trace the steps that landed me here, but I did.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

When Manhattan’s movers and shakers reach for their morning papers, chances are one of the first things they read is ‘Page Six’ in the New York Post. The notorious, irreverent and always-entertaining gossip column, which chronicles the lives, loves and foibles of celebrities of every stripe, got its start in 1977 and counts its fair share of illustrious alumni — Anna Quindlen and Claudia Cohen among them. But it’s Richard Johnson who has survived — and thrived — the longest at the helm.

Under the native New Yorker’s stewardship, ‘Page Six’ has become an international phenomenon that has spawned countless imitators in print and online. It helped launch careers like that of Paris Hilton, whom Johnson gleefully christened a ‘celebutante.’ “We’ve been criticized for writing too much about her, which is maybe fair,” he says dryly. “She’s a lot less interesting than she used to be, so we stopped writing about her so much. She’s getting old.”

No matter: There’s no end to the number of A-listers whose publicists work overtime to avoid confirming those pesky stories about break-ups and breakdowns (only to find themselves chastised when they’ve been busted by Johnson and his staff) and C-listers who will do anything to see their name in boldface type in the column (and do if their antics warrant it). Johnson takes them all on with a seemingly unflappable temperament and a healthy sense of humor.

But there’s little doubt Johnson takes his job seriously: His fearless reporting of failed box office performances, ill-fated hookups, love children and nasty behavior has earned him more than a few enemies. He went a few rounds with Alec Baldwin after he ran an item the actor didn’t like about his mother’s breast cancer charity (they’ve since made up), had a drink thrown in his face by an ex-girlfriend of Al Pacino’s and another hurled at him by Mel Gibson’s agent Ed Limato (when Johnson speculated in the column that Limato’s Oscar night fete would be less than star-studded because of the perception that his client’s film that year, The Passion of the Christ, was considered anti-Semitic by some). Thanks to his “unexcitable nature” and a seemingly Teflon-like ability to shrug off everything from threats of bodily harm to multi-million dollar lawsuits, Johnson shows no signs of giving up the gossip game. He might not understand Twitter, but he knows how to serve up great dish.

Name: Richard Johnson
Position: ‘Page Six’ editor, New York Post
Resume: Got his start in journalism as an unpaid intern for a New York City neighborhood weekly, The Chelsea Clinton News; Joined the New York Post in 1978 as a general assignment reporter; became editor of ‘Page Six’ in 1985. Left briefly in 1989 to try his hand at television. In the early ’90s, had a short stint at The New York Observer and a two-year gig as a gossip columnist for the New York Daily News before returning to the Post in 1993, where he’s been ever since.
Birthdate: January 16, 1954
Hometown: New York City
Education: Empire State College, BA in communications
Marital status: Married (“for the third time”) to Sessa von Richthofen. Three children: Damon, 30, Jack, 17, and Alessandra Renee, 2.
Favorite TV show: “Right now, it’s 24.”
First section of the Sunday Times: “I go for the news. I feel like I should keep up-to-date on current events, given what my job is.”
Guilty pleasure: “The sports pages.”
Last book read: “I just read a Carl Hiaasen book called Skinny Dip. It’s a crime caper. I liked it.”

You’ve been editing ‘Page Six’ for more than 20 years. What’s the secret to your longevity?

I’m not sure. (Laughs). I don’t suffer from stress and burn out. I never thought I’d be here this long, that’s for sure.

It’s quite an achievement since quite a few people in the business — former Post freelancer Jared Paul Stern comes to mind — go off the rails after working in gossip for an extended period of time. How do you keep everything on an even keel?

I think I’m blessed with a sort of unexcitable nature. I had been doing rewrite for the Post before I got into the gossip thing — those were the days when we had eight editions. I’d show up and work on stories the whole day, where you had deadlines in 20 minutes and you’d have to bang out a front-page story. Nobody before me lasted more than two or three years.

Have you ever come close to leaving?

Actually, I did leave at one time. After [Rupert] Murdoch was forced to sell the paper and Peter Kalikow was the owner, there was a period where I wasn’t allowed to rehire people to replace people who left. It was down to me and one other guy. And I couldn’t get a raise for three years in a row. Things were very grim. It was about 1989, and I was offered a job in television working with Robin Leach. It was a show called Preview — The Best of the New. But we quickly started calling it Preview — The Worst of the Old (Laughs). It got cancelled about three weeks after the launch. Then I started doing a column for The New York Observer and they were calling it Page Five or something. (Laughs). The Post sent a cease-and-desist. Then about six weeks into that, I was hired by the Daily News to replace Liz Smith when she left and went to Newsday. I worked for two years at the Daily News and actually had my picture in the paper every day.

So what brought you back into the fold?

To tell you the absolute truth, Mort Zuckerman didn’t like me, or didn’t like my work, and he let my contract expire. Luckily enough, Rupert Murdoch was able to re-buy the Post, and they rehired me. Of course the first thing I said to Ken Chandler when we met over lunch was, “I’d be happy to come back and work for the New York Post, but the one thing I don’t want to do is edit ‘Page Six’ because I’ve already done that.” He gave me this whole song and dance about how it was the most important part of the paper and that I did such a great job when I was the editor. It took about two minutes and I said, ‘Okay, okay.’ (Laughs)

Growing up, were you an avid consumer of media? Did you want to be a newspaper man?

I remember in third grade, the teacher asked everybody to write a little thing about what you wanted to be when you grew up. I said I wanted to be the editor-in-chief of Life magazine. My father worked for McGraw-Hill; he was the editor-in-chief of Chemical Week.

What did your dad think of your career?

To tell you the truth, he was more of a Herald Tribune guy. He always said the Daily News was the best-edited newspaper. This is historically. (Laughs) I think Mort Zuckerman’s attitude towards gossip is very short-sighted. I think that’s the one area where newspapers can still do something.

It seems as if a major newspaper folds every day. What do you say to people who say newspapers are on the way out?

Sadly, I think it’s true. The younger people just never developed the habit. They have other habits: using computers and using cell phones. A lot of people grow up now never touching a newspaper. They’re read the content, but they’re getting it from these parasitical news aggregation sites. A lot of times, they don’t even know where it’s coming from. They’re just getting it, and they’re not even sure what the original source is.

How has the Internet changed the way you do your job?

It’s made it more competitive because in the old days, I just had a couple of other gossip columns I had to compete against. Now there’s countless bloggers and Web sites. The question is, how well-read are they? How many of my readers are aware of this story if it’s been on the Internet? You have to make the calculation with every story if it’s worth it now that somebody else has already done it, or if we can push it forward. I don’t want to fill my column with stuff that’s already on the Internet.

What sites do you check out regularly?

I don’t spend a lot of time on them because I’m too busy with my own work, but I do look at Drudge, Gawker and sometimes Jossip [now on hiatus].

Gossip went mainstream several years ago. What do you think the tipping point was?

I’m not sure. The general idea is that it has gotten bigger. There’s a whole genre of magazine[s] which is basically celebrity reporting. Actually, People magazine really isn’t that gossipy. I always say it’s amazing how little gossip gets into a gossip column because by its nature, once you’ve done all your reporting it’s not really gossip anymore. (Laughs) Our lawyers won’t let us put gossip in.

What is off-limits for you?

When children are involved, it’s a problem. You don’t want to necessarily reveal where they go to school and stuff like that. Also health issues — when somebody gets cancer. I broke the story when Steve Ross was running Warner Communications [and got cancer]. I was tipped off he’d been at Sloan-Kettering [cancer center]. I justified it on the grounds that he was chairman of a huge publicly-held corporation and that shareholders deserved to know.

Trying to figure out who’s who in your blind items is a popular guessing game among certain circles. What’s the criteria with those?

It’s a story we believe to be true, but we can’t prove it. It’s a way to get it into the paper — otherwise you’d have to drop it completely. It’s stories that if you used the names, you’d probably be sued.

You can claim credit for popularizing some interesting phrases like ‘canoodling.’ The names you’ve given to people over the years are great. My all-time favorite is Monica Lewinsky’s moniker, The Portly Pepperpot.

With ‘canoodling,’ it was an old term that we revived like ‘bloviate.’ Actually, it was a sports columnist here, Hondo, who came up with ‘The Portly Pepperpot and her crusty love dress.’ (Laughs) I never got ‘crusty love dress’ in the paper.

What do you think the biggest contributions of ‘Page Six’ have been to gossip to date?

We sort of invented ‘Sightings,’ which I see a lot of other people copying. It was basically a way to get more information into the column. A lot of times there was no reason to do a whole item on it — it was just a sighting. I think the mix that we do is a little different than most columns. In the old days, New York magazine had a column, Intelligencer, which sort of had the same idea to write about movers and shakers, politicians and sports stars — not just solely focusing on showbiz. I think it’s lazy if you are just going to settle for writing about Britney Spears.

What kind of influence does [Post editor-in-chief] Col Allan have on ‘Page Six’? Do you talk to him a lot?

Oh sure, I go into an editorial meeting in the morning and then in the afternoon. If there’s a story on the list that he thinks isn’t a good idea, he’ll let me know, and sometimes there are stories on the news list that he thinks would be a better ‘Page Six’ story. He referees sometimes if two different editors have the same story on the list — he decides where it will go.

I would think your universe doesn’t intersect too much with Cindy Adams.

No, but I intersect quite a bit with the TV section and with the business section, and sometimes with the news section.

What about Murdoch? Do you talk to him? Does he ever say, ‘Write about that guy…?’

He drops by once in a while. It startles me. (Laughs) He comes by and asks, ‘What’s new?’ and of course, my mind goes blank. I can never think of anything clever to report.

The last democratic White House gave you plenty of fodder for the column. What are your expectations this time around? Michelle Obama’s wardrobe isn’t exactly ‘Page Six’ material.

I just wrote about [Washington Post fashion editor] Robin Givhan, who writes about her clothes. I think it will be hard for Obama to be more fun than Bill Clinton was.

Are the [Obama] daughters off-limits?

I think they’re too young to be of much interest. I thought when Al Gore was vice president that we were going to have a field day with his daughters — they were all fairly attractive and entering that age where they could misbehave, but they were disappointingly well-behaved. (Laughs)

I seem to recall the Post being approached about a reality show some time ago. Would you do one?

I think there was some talk some time ago. There was a show the Daily News did. They had come to the Post first, and Col Allan had decided there was very little to gain and a lot to lose. Having watched the show, the Daily News didn’t come off too well on-air.

It’s amazing how that genre seems to do so much for so many people, especially in New York City, like Project Runway.

I was actually in an episode in the first season of Project Runway. I don’t know why they didn’t invite me back. (Laughs) I thought it was a lot of fun.

So you’ve got no interest in doing a reality show?

It’s one of those things where I don’t think there would be enough time for me to do it. People have talked about doing a reality show on ‘Page Six.’ Do you have any idea how boring it is to film somebody sitting in front of a computer screen typing? You don’t want people to hear our phone calls or see our emails because we’d lose all of our sources. I guess the only thing they could do is follow us around at night, but they can do that with the Real Housewives — they don’t need us to get into parties.

Tell me about what are average day is like for you.

I get in about 10 [a.m.], 10:15 and get everything filed by 6 [p.m.]. I’m generally out of here by 7.

Do you go out every night?

I go out twice a week.

Take me through the process of reporting and vetting an item.

Every story is different: If it’s a sighting from someone I know and trust, I don’t need to make any calls on it. If it’s a story that’s going to say something somebody might not like, you certainly have to do the reporting, call people and give them a chance to comment. Sometimes that can be tough. When you call somebody’s office and you get, ‘They’re not in the office today, and they’re not going to be back until Tuesday,’ I always say, ‘Everybody has got a cell phone now.’ They say, ‘They’re out of town,’ and I say, ‘I’m sure there’s a phone wherever they are.’

I love ‘Liar’s Corner,’ when you take publicists to task when you catch them in a lie.

It’s so annoying because if you do a story and you hadn’t called them, they’d complain like crazy — ‘How dare you run that without calling!’ Then we called and you lied to us, so they can’t have it both ways.

What do you think of all these celebrities on Twitter?

I’m so behind the times, I’m not really sure I understand the concept.

Ashton Kutcher is the self-proclaimed king of Twitter — he even posted a photo of Demi Moore bending down ironing his pants at Bruce Willis’ wedding.

Oh, I saw that.

He — and a lot of other celebrities — are ‘tweeting’ about the minutiae of their lives. Although Demi allegedly helped talked some woman out of killing herself on Twitter.

I think it’s sort of dangerous because it’s going to do away with the middle man — me. (Laughs)

And then there’s the whole idea of celebrity Web sites.

I didn’t know that Jane Fonda blogs. I called up her publicist about Ted Turner when he went to see her [Broadway] show and he went backstage. The publicist said, ‘Just go to her Web site and read about it.’ Still, I think they need us [to] interpret the blogs and edit them and take out the best parts. (Laughs)

Who are the boldfaced names that you never tire of reporting on?

There are a couple: Jerry Della Femina is someone who has something intelligent to say on almost any subject. He’s like a go-to guy if you ever need any comment. Vincent Gallo is a guy who has appeared on ‘Page Six’ many times because he’s crazy and fun.

Who needs to go away?

We used to write about her a lot — I can’t remember her name now — the girl that had bad plastic surgery and was in American Pie.

Tara Reid?

Yeah. But she went away already. And I think the backlash has begun on Rachel Maddow. And Keith Olbermann is so over the top. He’s paranoid. He’s only named me the worst person in the world three or four times. He thought he was being very clever by calling me ‘Dick Johnson.’ Everybody on the staff has been named on that segment.

You’ve had some famous feuds with guys like Alec Baldwin, Ed Limato and Mickey Rourke. Anything ever really worry you, or is it your nature to just blow it off?

I think it’s in my nature not to realize the danger that I’m in. (Laughs) A.J. Benza opened his book with a scene where he’s out with Mickey Rourke and Mickey is very upset about something in ‘Page Six’, and he’s trying to find out my home address.

Did you see him during this past Oscar season?

We made up a few years ago and actually sat together at a Vanity Fair party for the Tribeca Film Festival. I made up with Mickey, and I made up with Alec Baldwin.

How about Ed Limato?

I’m looking forward to dancing on his grave. (Laughs)

What’s still relevant now that you learned back in your earliest days as a print journalist?

I don’t think things have changed that much. A good story is a good story. The elements are largely the same as they’ve always been, which are sex, money and violence.

What do you do to detox from all this?

I have a sailboat, a 19-foot Flying Scot; I play basketball on Thursday nights, and I mow my lawn out in Hampton Bays which is the un-Hamptons.

Have you ever considered writing a book? Everyone that has ever worked for you has or is.

Yes. I’ve often thought the only way I could find the time to do it was if [I was] on a desert island or arrested in jail, but I’m thinking I’m going to have to figure out a way to do it on weekends.

What do you consider your greatest success to date?

I guess the fact that I’m still here.

What about your biggest disappointment?

I can’t really think of any. There are stories that get away and you’re very disappointed at the time, but in retrospect it’s like when people say, ‘What’s the best story you ever did?’ and it’s the one I did today. By nature, this stuff doesn’t have a long shelf life.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

Ruthless ambition (Laughs). I think I’ve always tried to get the best people to work with, and I think we’ve had an incredible cast of characters on staff here — some of whom were a lot better than others.

Are there plans to expand ‘Page Six’?

Not that I’m aware of, but you never know.

I liked the Page Six Magazine. The stories were good and dishy.

That was a real shame because it was getting better and better. I think everybody agreed that the editorial content was great. The sad part was they just couldn’t sell advertising. It was partly the timing. The economy was just going under as they were trying to sell all the Christmas ads.

Do you think there are more huge changes coming in media, or are we near the bottom of the shakeout?

I think they’re going to find a way to charge people for content. The Associated Press made an announcement that they’re moving in that direction. The music industry was able to do it with downloads and people pay 99 cents. Maybe we’ll have to charge them 39 cents. (Laughs)

Do you have a motto?

‘Why not?’

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

Unlike many of his peers who always knew they were destined for a career in front of the camera, Harry Smith took a little longer to figure things out. “I was in radio for a while and was in my mid-20s when I realized what I really wanted to do was pursue news.” Smith was working at a Denver radio station when “somebody asked me to be on the public television station’s pledge drive.” That changed the course of his broadcasting career: “Someone said, ‘He’s pretty good on TV.’ Several years later, I wound up with a job at the public television station.”

While Smith has maintained a presence on radio, it’s his decades-long tenure at CBS in varied roles as reporter and anchor that have defined his career. Having filed stories from coast to coast for the network, Smith’s also anchored from Baghdad where he did a series of reports on the war in Iraq, was the first network morning anchor on the ground after Hurricane Katrina, and anchored from Sri Lanka following the aftermath of the tsunami in January 2005.

These days, both heads of state and A-list actresses have sat across from Smith for his day job and that suits the early riser (who gets up at 3:45 every morning) just fine — just don’t ask him to interview the reality show star du jour.

Name: Harry Smith
Position: Co-anchor, The Early Show
Resume: Assumed his current position in October 2002; also hosts a daily radio news spot on CBS News Radio Network. Joined CBS News in 1986 as a Dallas-based reporter and became a correspondent for the CBS Evening News the following year. Co-anchored CBS This Morning from 1987-1996. Before coming to CBS, had reporting stints in at Denver’s public television station and in radio at KHOW in Denver and WLW Cincinnati in the early ’80s.
Birthdate: August 21, 1951
Hometown: Lansing, Illinois
Education: Central College, BA in communications and theater
Marital status: Married to sportscaster Andrea Joyce
First section of the Sunday Times: Op-Ed
Favorite TV show: “I don’t have one right now.”
Guilty pleasure: “Watching romantic comedies with my wife on Pay-Per-View on Saturday night.”
Last book read: “I’m reading the Ted Kennedy book — Last Lion [The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy]. It is fantastic — it’s all these reporters from the Boston Globe edited by one guy. It’s decades and decades of reporting, and because it’s a Kennedy, it reads like a novel. It reminds me a little bit of The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin — it just has that kind of page-turning quality. It’s really good.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

It’s a combination of talent, determination and luck. I think almost everybody says the same thing.

Did you always know you wanted to be in news?

No. I messed around at the college radio station, [and] then I got a job after I got out of school as an all-night disc jockey. The general manager of the radio station used to go out and party almost every night, and he would come knocking at the door at two in the morning and want to hang out. One night he came in and said, ‘You know, you’re never going to make it in this business on the air. You should become a salesman.’ I said, ‘No, I think I want to stick with this.’ (Laughs) I started to do all of the stuff at the radio station nobody else wanted to do — interview the dog catcher and the zoning board director — and just kept pushing my career in that direction.

When I was watching the feed from Walter Cronkite’s funeral on The Huffington Post, I saw you talking to your colleagues at CBS and the anchors from the other networks, and I was struck by the idea that there seemed to be a line in the sand drawn on that day — a true end of an era. At a time when newsgathering organizations are imperiled by finances, where do you think we are?

(Sighs) I have kind of a long view. People talk about CBS and the days of ‘The Tiffany Network.’ There were days when none of the news divisions had to financially justify their existence. They were an act of largesse on the part of these big corporations. But even in the days of the ‘Tiffany Network,’ all of that was fueled by I Love Lucy episodes and Jackie Gleason. There’s always been a fight. Go back to Ed Murrow, who did phony shows with Liberace talking about who he wants to marry. There wasn’t anybody who didn’t know he was gay. That paid the bills, and they could still out McCarthy. These things have always lived in an uneasy balance. As we got into the late ’80s, it got to be: ‘You’ve got to financially justify your existence.’ A lot of things changed in what we paid attention to and how much we paid attention to it — especially in morning television. There were things that we never would do when I started in 1987 that we lead the broadcast with now. It’s all about the pressure to make the needle move.

This citizen journalist [movement] online and the growing concern that content is no longer king — what does that do to the television news business?

My contention is that reporting will always pay. Presence at a story will always pay dividends. I’ve been at two seminars in the last six months with people talking about the future of news: ‘How is the news going to get paid for? Who is going to report the news? Will newspapers exist?’ What’s interesting is the stuff that’s making money on cable right now is opinion. Fox and MSNBC make money. Those guys are making money. I don’t think that [is] the future of news per se. I think, at least for the time being, there’s got to be room for people who report. I don’t know if at some point there’s some sort of consolidation where there’s a consortium of people, say The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and somebody else got together, and say, ‘We’re going to have a Web site and we’re going to have proprietary [content] and if you want it, you’re going to have to pay for it.’ Maybe that’s the way we can still know that we can still have people on the ground in places where they need to be, like Afghanistan.

Back when Bryant Gumbel and Jane Clayson were hosting The Early Show, there was so much heat on them to gain ground in the ratings, and was much made of their perennially third place finish behind Today and Good Morning America. You don’t hear much about that anymore in relation to the show. How would you describe the vibe at the show regarding that now?

I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve stopped paying attention. I use this as an opportunity to report as much as I can. We had a great run through the election with a basket full of exclusives with [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain. We were out there in Iowa. We were at campaign events with Mike Huckabee when there were eight people there. This is still a really great job in that regard.

The past few years in television news has been this extraordinary period for hard news, and the coverage has reflected that, but on the flip side exists its polar opposite, where the fluff is more superfluous than ever. Do you agree? How did the yin-yang get so extreme?

We’re in one of those cycles right now. We actually had a day last week when we didn’t have a Michael Jackson story. I made note of it in the editorial meeting. But that whole thing has been part and parcel of this for a good 10 years.

And of course there’s the whole genre of reality show Z-listers that have become a staple of the guest roster. Do you ever find yourself thinking, ‘Why the hell am I talking to this person?’

(Laughs) Sometimes I recuse myself. I’ll just gently suggest that maybe somebody else should do that segment. I will not give you names.

You have done your fair share of celebrity interviews and you seem like a movie buff. Who would you say are the most interesting celebrities out there at the moment?

Meryl Streep is going to be on this week, and I love the fact that Meryl Streep is still such a terrific interview. It’s all about her talent. Here she is now with this string of summertime movies that have made a lot of money — The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia and this new one, Julie & Julia. It wasn’t that many years ago when we would sit and have conversations about the fact that there weren’t many good roles [for women]. It’s interesting how these cycles change and demographics shift. Here she is doing great work, and people are more than happy to pay good money to go see it.

You got some grief for giving Jennifer Aniston a bow tie when she came on the show after that infamous GQ cover.

The thing that’s interesting about her is that she’s this mega star because of Friends. That was a giant show and a big part of the culture for a long time. She’s part of the fabric of American life, and she shows up in GQ with a just a tie on, and just because I’m superficial and like cheap, physical humor, I thought it would be funny to offer her a bow tie. It was just a cheap joke — what can I say? (Laughs)

It wasn’t too long ago when the unwritten rule was when promoting a film, an actor appeared exclusively on one morning show. Now they seem to make the rounds talking about the same thing in every interview. How do you keep it fresh?

The producer who produces a lot of the movie stuff is a guy who has worked for us for a long time named Scott Stern. The conversation we have about once a year is, ‘You’ve got to commit.’ They may be doing their 14th or 47th interview about a given thing, but it’s still our first, and maybe it’s the first for our audience. You still read through all the magazine stuff and look through all of the movies that they made and look for those little pieces of things to connect to. I’ve got a funny one: I did this interview with Amanda Peet. Somewhere, some time ago, she said she fell in love with the movie Tootsie and had memorized every line. So we’re in the middle of this interview and I ask her about Toostie and I said, “The best scene was…” and we started to do the lines back and forth. She was just ecstatic. By the end of the interview she said, ‘No one has understood me like you.’ I think the thing is, as long as you do it, make your commitment and do your due diligence, and [you] find the thing that makes it fresh.

You have been the constant amid quite a few staffing configurations and permutations at The Early Show. What’s the secret to your longevity?

(Laughs) I’m not sure I know the answer to that.

What do you consider your greatest success?

I’m pretty sure I’ve reported from every single state in the country. It’s interesting: the stories you actually write and file — I can remember almost every single one of them. You can ask me what was on television this morning, and [I] might not know.

What are you most proud of?

I so love reporting and I love being in the field, so I’d say I’m most proud of my reporting. I treat this job as a reporter’s job. This morning I was up at 3:45, and I was in here by 4:15. I’ve read all the Web sites and all the papers.

What sites do you look at?

I go to Google News because there’s a wide variety of stuff. I look at the Reuters and BBC Web sites. I’ll look at newspaper Web sites from around the country: the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times. I want to get a feel for more than just what’s happening here. Sometimes as you’re going through those things, it will trigger you off to someplace else and the next thing you know, you’re reading The Guardian. That’s one of the great things about this time: You can reach a long way at any time of the day and get a feel for a lot of things. The Daily Beast is great. I like The Beast a lot.

And what would be your biggest disappointment?

(Long pause, then laughs) Hmm. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that one.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

Robbie Myers easily laughs off the moniker of fashionista, but there’s no denying she’s become emblematic of the glitz and glamour of the couture-clad clique that populates the front rows of the shows in New York, Paris, and Milan. Last year, Forbes named Myers the second most powerful fashion editor in the U.S. (She tied with Vogue‘s Anna Wintour; Glamour‘s Cindi Leive earned the top spot). Unlike her headline-grabbing counterparts, Myers is content to let the spotlight shine on the magazine and its bumper crop of reality stars, a cagey strategy that has paid huge dividends.

Elle was the first magazine partner on Bravo’s Project Runway with then-fashion-director Nina Garcia as one of the show’s judges. While the rest of the fashion crowd turned up their noses at the prospect of mixing with wannabes on television, Myers says she and her bosses took a “calculated risk” that helped make the renowned publication a household name. “‘Runway‘ was a great showcase for the magazine and the brand,” she says. Emboldened by their success, Elle moved on to more television projects. Creative director Joe Zee and fashion news director Anne Slowey presided over the aspiring editors vying for a job at the magazine on The CW’s Stylista in 2008. (“I wouldn’t let them script me. I told them I was going to be myself,” says Myers of her cameo.) Next up, Elle has a starring role in the second season of MTV’s The City, which will follow a group of young women alongside the magazine’s public relations director Erin Kaplan through her professional and personal paces. Zee also makes several appearances.

Besides using television to bolster the Elle brand, Myers has put plenty of substance behind the magazine’s style. Under her stewardship, Elle earned a top spot on Advertising Age‘s A-List for three successive years (2005-2008) and last year tallied up 2,573 Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) ad pages — the highest in the magazine’s history. “It’s all about the brand. The magazine is the star,” she says.

Ahead of New York Fashion Week, the editrix spoke with mediabistro.com about her lifelong love of magazines, the power of reality television, and building a brand for the Internet age.

Name: Robbie Myers
Position: Editor-in-chief and vice president of brand content, Elle
Birthdate: November 10
Hometown: “St. Louis, Philadelphia, Colorado, Fort Lauderdale. I grew up all over the United States.”
Education: Colorado State University, political science
Resume: Assumed current position in May 2000 after serving as editor-in-chief of Mirabella since 1998. Prior to that, held senior editor positions at Elle and InStyle. Toiled at Seventeen for six years, rising to managing editor from articles editor. Worked at Interview from 1985-1987. Got her big break fresh out of college in 1983 when she landed a job at Rolling Stone.
Martial status: Married with two children
First section of the Sunday New York Times: “The front page.”
Favorite TV show: “Since The Sopranos went off the air, I’ve been casting around for one.”
Guilty pleasure: “Really late night television.”
Last book read: “I’m reading Philistines at the Hedgerow. We have a little house in the Hamptons, and I’m at the part where they’re talking about ‘north of the highway’ versus ‘south of the highway,’ and we’re so north of the highway. My family has been out there since the ’50s, but they haven’t been out there since the 1450s.”

What’s the best part of Fashion Week?
I love what Andre [Leon Talley] said: ‘When it starts and when it’s over.’ I guess it’s when I see something that’s truly new and also beautiful. You don’t always get that every season.

Designers must be feeling an incredible amount of pressure these days. What are you expecting to see this season?

It’s going one of two ways with the financial crisis: The designers either become very safe and commercial or very innovative and creative.

Where does the celebrity designer fit into the scheme of things right now?

It’s interesting; I just read the story in the Times on the Olsens’ line. It’s very easy to sneer at celebrity lines, but I have found that a lot of creative people can be creative in more than one medium. I’ve heard the Tom Ford movie is really good.

What about the whole idea of packing the front row of the shows with celebrities? Do you think there will be less of that this go-round?

Fashion has been fairly democratized. I don’t think we’re going back to when it was just a handful of people sitting in ateliers. The celebrity-fashion connection in the way that we consume culture is undeniable and here to stay. I do think that often these designers are genuine friends of their guests.

But there have been plenty of “checkbook” relationships in the past.
Speaking of that, I think there are elements of it that will go the other way and become more publicized and celebrity-driven. There was conversation that at one point [Fashion Week] would be a revenue stream, and people would charge the public [to attend] because there’s such great interest.

Did you always know you wanted to be in fashion?

I didn’t. I took the LSAT and was going to go to law school. I was one of those people who wanted to be a First Amendment lawyer and fight the good fight. Then I fell in love with magazines, particularly Rolling Stone, because it was what I read in college, and I worked there in my first job out of college.

What else did you read when you were younger? Did you read Seventeen before you worked there?

I spent six years of my life at Seventeen. I didn’t read it when I was a teenager. My stepmother had the big fashion magazines, so I read those. I never, ever really read teen magazines, and I didn’t know what they were about until I went to work for one. But I loved working for that reader because I identified with them.

What was it like working for Andy Warhol at Interview?
I was admittedly not in Andy’s inner circle — but I was in the second ring of hell. [Laughs]

What did you learn working at the magazine?

It was amazing. Here’s what happened at Interview: You worked until 10 o’clock every night. Everybody did. Then you would go out because that was part of the culture of the magazine. I was at Rolling Stone first, and I learned a lot about reporting, journalism and celebrity culture there. Then, I went to Interview where it was all about the image. I remember the art director taking fake copy. He would do the layout with the art the way he wanted it to be, and then he would cut off whatever was hanging over the bottom of the layout. He’d throw it at me and say, ‘Cut that much.’ [Laughs] I learned very early on about the importance of image and the importance of journalism and reporting.

What do you read now and how much of it do you read online?

I read a lot of magazines. I read the competition — it would be irresponsible not to — and I read The New York Times, New York Post, Women’s Wear Daily. Sometimes I read them in both mediums.

What sites do you regularly check out?
Perez Hilton, The Cut, Politico, Mediabistro, The Daily Beast.

What’s the primary function of Elle‘s Web site? Is it a brand builder or a traffic generator?

It’s both. The one thing that’s gotten a lot of buzz is Elle Video Star, which is edit, but we have an advertising partner. It’s a great example of the edit coming to life in a three-dimensional way. It’s what the Web can do that a print magazine can’t. It’s user-generated, which means the enthusiasm for the content is built-in — [readers] provide it. I think the Web is a powerful and amazing thing, especially for a brand like Elle.

I remember you once mentioned to me that you had a brief foray into acting, and last season you played yourself on Ugly Betty. What’s tougher: being a fashionista or playing one on television?

[Laughs] That’s your title, not mine. I was in Caddyshack, but I wasn’t an actress.

Were you an extra?

No, I had a role. I took my little sisters to the casting call and [the director] Harold Ramis said, ‘You look kind of Irish. Do you want to be in the Noonan family?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ [Laughs]

Okay, so how was it playing a fashionista on television?

[Laughs] I will say I admire the amount of time and effort it takes to shoot 40 seconds of television. I really appreciate what they do.

For another interview last year, when we discussed Elle‘s involvement in the past seasons of Project Runway, you told me that TV has played an integral part in building the Elle brand. What role does the medium play in your current and future strategy?

Next up, we’re doing The City on MTV. Our head of public relations [Erin Kaplan] is the central character from Elle. When we did Project Runway, some people were like, ‘Oh no, it’s reality TV.’ My feeling at the time was it’s a different medium. If a person turns it on in their home, they’re complicit and they want to be there. There was a lot of debate about this. It doesn’t hurt the integrity of the magazine — meaning the fashion stories are still going to be great and cutting edge, the writing is still going to be top notch, and the reporting is going to be strong. Project Runway was quite a phenomenon — not just for us, but for the business.

Stylista wasn’t the hit Project Runway was.

My attitude is, it’s done. I looked at it and thought, ‘What did we learn from it?’ What do we now know that we didn’t know?’ It’s a different medium for us.

Is Johanna Cox, [the Stylista competitor] who won the one-year gig as a junior editor with the magazine, still there?
Yes. She’s been a great addition. Now, I have to figure out if I can keep her.

When I did my interview with [Elle creative director] Joe Zee for this column, he talked about how so many interns and young staffers come in with more of a sense of entitlement than an enthusiasm for the work. Do you see that a lot?

Yes and it’s maddening. When I interview somebody I always ask, ‘Do you have any questions for me?’ That’s always the moment where people show themselves. Invariably, about 85 percent of the time it’s, ‘When can I get promoted? When can I write?’

The person that I hired as my assistant jumped on a plane from Colorado. I said, “I’m sorry I can’t pay you back for your trip,” and he said, ‘I’m coming anyway’ and showed up on Monday morning. I went through a stack of people who had mint educations, and they were all lovely and all very polished, and completely disinterested in what we did. They were only interested in their own thing. I get that it’s your first job, but where’s the passion for what we’re doing?

When I got to the point in the interview where I asked [my future assistant], ‘Do you have any questions for me?,’ he was the only one who asked me a question about what had recently happened at the magazine and what our editorial plans were about something specific. He was the only one that read the magazine.

And he’s your current assistant?
Yes, he is.

What advice would you give to candidates coming to Elle?
Know something about what we do and have a point of view on it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people, ‘What magazines do you read?’ and they say, ‘Umm, let me think…’ Enthusiasm counts for a lot. Motivation counts for a lot. You can tell the ones that have the attitude, ‘I will do anything to work here,’ versus the ones who say, ‘I really need to get to work because my dad is going to cut me off any minute.’ The lesson that I’ve learned from this is that my kids are going to have boring, tedious jobs when they’re teenagers.

Do you think it’s harder or easier to break into magazines than it was five years ago?
There are fewer magazines, but perhaps there were too many. Print is still robust.

So would you say the death knell for print is greatly premature at this juncture?
Radio is a really old medium, but I still use it, and I also use the Internet. The novel is supposed to be dead, but there are more books being published now more than ever. Print is a medium that is still useful and pleasurable to a lot of people. For a long time, magazines were the primary source of news and opinion for many people, so perhaps there won’t be as many of those magazines. With fashion magazines, a fashion photograph is its own thing in the fashion world, meaning people inside that world and the reader are excited to see those images and how we put things together. The visual experience of it is a great pleasure that’s hard to replicate on the Web. I also believe that people are still going to read the words in magazines, too. The one thing magazines know how to do is make money: We’re making less of it, but we’re actually operating at a profit.

What do you consider your greatest success?
The staff that I’ve been able to assemble around me, for sure.

And biggest disappointment?
I was heartbroken when Mirabella folded. It was a small, energetic staff, and we were all very attached to it.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
There were many serendipitous moments, but I hope that I’ve worked hard in between them.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.

During her 12 years at Today, Ann Curry has been game for anything the producers could dream up, from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro (she made it within striking distance of the top but had to turn back when her team began suffering the effects of altitude sickness) to bungee jumping off the landmark Transporter Bridge in England to raise money for charity. At the time, she said, “I was really thinking, ‘I hope this does some good.’ If you’re going to do something as crazy as that, you want some good to come out of it.”

While Curry has always good naturedly participated in Today show stunts like dressing up for Halloween and hot air ballooning into a viewer’s backyard, it is her deep desire to do “meaningful work” that has sustained her throughout her broadcast career. Earlier this year, she traveled to Iran when she landed the first interview with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the June elections on the eve of his visit to the United Nations. She was the first network news anchor to report from war-torn Kosovo, the first on the ground from the Southeast Asia tsunami zone and the first to document the genocide in Darfur. While hard news is Curry’s “first love,” she’s also managed to land the big celebrity gets, too. When Brangelina was sequestered in Africa preparing for the birth of their twins, Angelina Jolie spoke only to Curry.

The self-described “army brat” and eldest of five children born to a Japanese mother and Caucasian father was the first in her family to graduate from college and still marvels that she landed on Today. “I never imagined that anyone who looked like me would have a place here.” But she makes no bones about what it takes to stay there. “I’ve come to a point where I’ve gained a terrific opportunity to do the work that means the most to me and the work, in the end, I’ll always be grateful I did. I work really, really hard,” says Curry.

Name: Ann Curry
Position: News anchor, Today; anchor, Dateline NBC
Resume: Began her television career as an intern in 1978 at KTVL in Medford, Ore., where she later became the station’s first female news reporter. Went on to report and anchor for KCBS in Los Angeles and KGW in Portland. Joined NBC News in 1990 as Chicago-based correspondent; named anchor of NBC News at Sunrise in 1992. Helped launch MSNBC and joined Today in March 1997. Named co-anchor of Dateline NBC in May 2005. Substitute anchor on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
Birthdate: November 19
Hometown: Ashland, Ore.
Education: University of Oregon, B.A. in journalism
Marital status: Married to software entrepreneur Brian Ross, with two children, daughter MacKenzie and son Walker.
First section of the Sunday Times: “The front page.”
Favorite TV show: “The Office. I love Steve Carell. I like House, as well.”
Guilty pleasure: “Sometimes I feel guilty about going to yoga. To take time out to exercise, breathe and think about your own health makes you feel guilty. But it’s what you should be doing all the time.”

You’ve been at NBC for 19 years — coming up on 13 with Today. What is the secret to your longevity?

There are two things. I aspire to be valuable. I try not to lean on too many other people. I try not to have other people do my work. The other thing is trying to keep a sense of humility and trying to always remember to be grateful for this opportunity and proceed in that way. The loss of humility is a disease of this profession for a lot of reasons. I don’t want to catch that disease.

You’ve been part of the mix of so many different personalities on Today. How has that affected the way you do your job?

I’ve been grateful to have the ear of the managers of this network who have trusted me to do the stories that I am most proud of. That’s not the work that involves sitting on any couch or being in front of a camera on a live broadcast. It’s about being in the field. That’s really something I intend to continue to pursue. This was not something I ever figured out how to do when I first began at NBC and the Today show. But I’ve figured it out, and it’s working so far.

I can work on the nightly news broadcast, the Today show, MSNBC and MSNBC.com, and I’m still exploring ways of getting information out. I’m a serious photographer now, and it’s another way of getting the story out. That’s my motivation: to get these voices heard and get these stories out because I know they’re important to do.

Did you want Katie Couric’s job when she left? If you had gotten it, it’s unlikely you would have been able to do the type of work you just described.

I did think about that job. The one great thing about that job is you have the opportunity to interview newsmakers and have access to major stories. I would have been a fool to not want that job, but the thing about life is that sometimes not getting what you think you want has a silver lining. Had I gotten that job, I might never have been able to go to Darfur four times. I might never have gotten to do what some have said was a transformation hour on Iran and the interview with Ahmadinejad or gone to Congo and brought attention to the crimes against women there. That’s just the short list.

I think people are often disappointed by not getting exactly what they want. I think the secret is [to] keep your eyes open and not to blink, because you need to see that what is possible is something you may not be paying attention to. It’s interesting that you sometimes get a chance to do exactly what you should be doing because you didn’t get what you wanted. I would have loved that job and I would have relished it, but you’re right, I wouldn’t have been able to do this other work.

You have personally witnessed so much of the world’s devastation. Is there one event that you could say has affected you the deepest?

It’s difficult for me to compare them. Kosovo was the first one where I recognized there was nothing I could do to stop what I was witnessing. I will say I’m proud to say that our reporting in Kosovo was an early part of the wave that did bring change. It was transformative to see these people stuck in these camps crying without food or milk for their babies. In Darfur, I was face to face with an elderly woman who tried to save her husband from the burning house where a thatched roof fell on top of him. He was an invalid and she was in her 80s. I found her in a hospital a few days later with her whole body covered in third-degree burns, and her husband was dead. How do you compare that to anything? When I went to Congo, I met a girl who saw her parents killed right in front of her, and she ran away. She was caught by the same men who killed her parents and then chained up and raped for months. She became pregnant and when she delivered her baby, everything inside her was broken. I found her on an operating table having surgery so she could go to the bathroom normally. When I asked her if she wanted revenge, she said to me, ‘All I want is to rise from this bed and thank the people who helped me and work for God.’

I see all of these events as one. That’s the one thing I’ve come away with — I recognize that every one of those lives matter. There is no life that is less precious than another. There is no culture that is less important than another, and when we allow these kinds of crimes against humanity to continue, we are hurting our human family.

You’ve also managed to get unprecedented access to the tabloid couple of the decade, having scored a number of exclusives with both Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. How did you establish such a good rapport with the both of them?

I think it’s based on mutual respect. I first interviewed Angelina a long, long time ago when she was first emerging as an actress. Even then, I could see the depth of her wish to be useful. A lot people didn’t see her for who she was, but because I had this opportunity to sit and talk to her, I could see she was far more than people realized. I really don’t know why we were able to hit it off except that I have a lot of respect for her work and I think she might have some respect for mine.

Did you find that she knew a lot about you when you met?

Not the first time I interviewed her, but certainly in subsequent interviews it was clear that she knew about my efforts. As she became a force for humanitarian work, I understood her efforts and motivation, and my respect grew for her. Brad is very much like that, as well. He has got a sense of altruism and a sense of justice. He’s really old-fashioned and delightful. Maybe it’s a surprise to some people, but he’s serious about the injustice that has lingered for so many people in New Orleans. He’s not only talked about it, but he’s done something about it. Some people actually want to elect him mayor, although he’s not planning to run. I respect that. I respect people who stand up for what they believe in and do something. I think they are people who get it.

Today has always mined the lives of the show’s key players in order to connect to the audience on a personal level. Have you grown more comfortable with that over the years?

I’m a little more comfortable, but I still am pretty largely uncomfortable with stories about us because I think the story should be on everybody else but us. I recognize that there is an interest. The first time we did it, the response was so enormous. It was surprising because people responded not just to us, but about how they felt about their own experience through us. That’s made me feel a little more comfortable. If someone can feel something about his or her parents because you’ve been honest about your own experience about losing a parent — if you can help them in their grief — then that has value. I think that the broadcast is a soup-to-dessert broadcast. It’s going to have all that stuff, but balance is the key.

I just did an interview with a woman who is dying of breast cancer and for the first few moments she said, ‘I just can’t believe I’m actually sitting with you.’ It didn’t take me that long, but it did take me a minute to have her stop thinking about that and start thinking about what I really wanted to talk to her about. That’s not good. It was an interesting kind of situation, but I don’t want it to bleed over into the work, and I struggle against that.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you about working in television news?

I’m not sure it’s advice, but early on, I realized I don’t work for my bosses; I work for the people who watch, and that has been my best guide. If I do the best job for the people who watch and they’re happy, my bosses are happy, but making my bosses happy without taking care of the viewer is not the life I want. There is one bit of advice someone gave me: ‘A lot of people give advice. Only listen to the advice that rings true in your gut and even then, make sure you double-check before you make changes. If you watch yourself on television and something doesn’t feel right or look right, it’s not right. Listen to your own instincts.’ I would say that’s the best advice I ever got.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

I don’t know. I’m as surprised as anyone. If I can get to where I am, anyone can. I’m the girl who wasn’t even supposed to go to college, raised by a woman with a thick immigrant’s accent, and grew up mispronouncing words as a result. How the hell did I get on national television? I want so much to be a journalist that meets the needs of this time. I keep trying to be good enough, and I think it’s the effort. I’m never satisfied.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY. She writes the ‘Lunch’ column.