Exclusive: How GQ Made Glenn Beck Cry
Glenn Beck cries all the time because he's incapable of regulating his emotions. Also, it's a good image. Here's some deeply creepy and oddly transfixing behind-the-scenes video of Beck mugging and crying for the camera at his GQ photo shoot.
As we noted yesterday, Beck blasted photographer Jill Greenberg last year as a left-wing "nut job" who "terrorizes children" because she made fun of John McCain after shooting his portrait for the cover of Atlantic and once shot an infamous series of crying toddlers. When GQ assigned Greenberg to shoot a portrait of Beck to accompany a Q-and-A in its July issue, Beck naturally put aside his concerns and did whatever Greenberg asked him to do because he doesn't care about anything but getting people to look at pictures of him. Greenberg has no doubt that Beck knew exactly who he was crying for.
"He and his public relations people, at the shoot, said they love my work and had checked out my website," Greenberg told Gawker. "I believe they Googled me, like most of my subjects' PR people do. He was super nice on set."
And if Beck knew who Greenberg was, then he almost certainly would have known that the crying bit he was so eager to play along with was a sly reference to End Times, her 2006 series of photos of crying toddlers, which she shot by giving kids candy and then taking it away from them. Beck called that "terrorizing children" last year.
"The crying was my idea, and Glenn was cool with trying it," Greenberg says. "We used mentholated balm to make his eyes tear up naturally. From then on it was acting on his part. He had fun with it and was a great sport."