Macaulay Culkin Is Not Like You
by Ryan D’Agostino
In 2020, Macaulay Culkin wasn’t not famous, but he had taken a huge step back from fame. Here he appears in his first photo shoot in fifteen years, for no reason at all, other than he felt like it. And maybe to get some photos to send to his girlfriend, fellow former child actor Brenda Song. He has a perspective on fame that can never be replicated. Mack comes across as content and secure as anyone whose face was seen around the world at 8 years old ever could be. Here he shares a few details of his sister’s death which still affects him 11 years later, tells a great story about shutting up James Franco, and talks about the tattoo he shares with Paris Jackson: “don’t forget to stick something up your sleeve.”
Original post, should be available for everyone to read
M.I.A.’s Agitprop Pop
by Lynn Hirschberg
This is a doozy. I’d heard about the viral bit from this 2010 article when M.I.A. says she wants to be an outsider while eating truffle fries at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, but truly that is the least self-eviscerating moment that Hirschberg lays out. M.I.A. asks for a calendar of photos she had taken by a photographer in his council flat while wearing thousands of dollars of Givenchy jewelry. She was labeled a terrorist sympathizer but apparently the terrorists don’t want her. She is called a genius by those who work with her despite her not having any actual musical training (shoutout to the iconic Quincy Jones Vulture profile). She states that she copied Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video and in the next line says that Gaga is not original. A stupendous documentation of obnoxious ignorance.
Original post, archived here
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold
by Gay Talese
From the introduction: In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra… The result, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” ran in April 1966 and became one of the most celebrated magazine stories ever published, a pioneering example of what came to be called New Journalism—a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.
Honestly I can’t sum this one up for you. It is long and reaches far into the depth of one of America’s greatest figures, the picture of masculinity for multiple generations. A time capsule that reaches far beyond the age in which it was written. It is a phenomenal piece of writing.
Original post here, archived here
Honorable mention to the ones in other tabs that I haven’t read yet:
What Ever Happened To Brendan Fraser? (2018)
Antonio Banderas Doesn’t Think You’ll Remember Him. Not Yet. (2018)
I was Russell Crowe’s stooge (2006).
