Here are some ways to know you've arrived: Winning an award, having your own Wikipedia page and getting your photo taken by Annie Leibovitz. You remember Annie, the one who takes all those photos for Vanity Fair and HBO. But as beautiful as her staged photos look on the cover of a magazine or on the side of a bus, her second major gallery show has more or less proved that their appeal is just commercial.
The most famous celebrity photographer in America, Leibovitz shoots portraits of Hollywood stars for magazines like Vanity Fair and big companies like Disney and American Express.
A promo clip released yesterday of BBC documentary A Year with the Queen showed Annie Leibovitz requesting that Queen Elizabeth II remove her crown for a picture. The Queen's response was to incapacitate her with a royal shoe pressed against her neck, threatening, "Ask that of me again and I shall crush your trachea like a bug," before storming out of the session in a huff. Not all was what it seemed, however, and producers have issued apologies to both parties for having creatively rearranged their footage for maximum diva-rampage potential. From BBC News:
Maybe the Queen didn't storm off in a huff during that photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz after all. Or maybe the BBC is just worried about getting its charter renewed. Either way, the organization has apologized and "admitted the sequence of events in a BBC1 documentary about the Queen had been misrepresented and would not be shown that way in the final programme." Turns out the old lady was actually bitching and moaning as she arrived for the shoot. That's how we like our monarchs: surly from the get-go.
What happened when leading celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz—a bold artist known to throw fits when the prop baby DHL'd to her Vanity Fair cover shoot doesn't meet her exacting specifications—was assigned to shoot a legendarily frigid monarch? Things got tense, especially when the portraitist suggested to the Queen of England that she remove her crown, and BBC cameras were there to capture the entire exchange. From The Times Online:
The Queen of England goes off on Annie Leibovitz (on a photoshoot for Vanity Fair) much the way we've always wanted to ourselves. "TV cameras follow the Queen storming off with an official lifting the large train of her blue velvet cape off the floor as the Queen tells her lady-in-waiting: 'I'm not changing anything. I've had enough dressing like this thank you very much.'" Heh. [Daily Mail]
• Newsweek stands resolute against Gawker's jeers that "while [its recent Annie Leibovitz] story tells of Leibovitz's life and her long-term friendship with the late Susan Sontag, it skips around the question of Leibovitz's sexual orientation." As long as we're jeering, how come there was no mention of Annie running off with the nanny? [NYP]
• No uncomfortable questions were asked at the Bill Keller/Patricia Dunn dinner. Thank God, that would be so tactless. [NYO]
• For those of you who find Rachael Ray insufferably cloying, which should be all of you, maybe Gourmet's Ruth Reichl will be an improvement. RELATED: We get it, Bill Buford, you like cooking. [WWD]
This week's edition of Newsweek features a cover story on famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose new collection, A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005, features many of Leibovitz's personal photos, both of her extended family and "the person she was closest to for that decade and a half—the late writer and critic Susan Sontag." The article then goes on to devote a decent amount of inches to Leibovitz's relationship with Sontag, telling us how close they were, how much Sontag mattered to Leibovitz, how they never lived together but had apartments facing each other's, how they would make sweet, sweet love on the floor of West Village pleasure dome. Wait, no — not that last part. In fact, Newsweek so carefully avoids any such mention to the point of absurdity:
· Manhattan publicists Steven Hall and Sam Firer, owners of Thatbar, say their paperwork is in place to host five smoke-filled events this year as part of the city's exemption for promotional events. The first is May 11. [Page Six]
· Unik and Kiki, the Haitians who made Serafina so hot on Wednesdays, have taken over the former Chinghalle restaurant on Gansevoort Street and plan to reopen it as a nightclub. [Page Six]
· L.A. plastic surgeons say patients want Liv Tyler's lips, Halle Berry's eyes, Angelina Jolie's body, DiCaprio's cheeks, Russell Crowe's chin. [Cindy Adams]
· Blind item: "What visionary mother is interviewing potential new nannies because she left her partner for the last one?" ("That's too many mommies," one observer said wryly.) [NY Daily News]
· Flashback: Annie Leibovitz leaves Susan Sontag for the nanny. [Page Six]
· City Council candidate Vincent Gentile, who is opposing a gay-rights bill, has a constituency of drag queens threatening to campaign for him. [Page Six]
· Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag have broken up because Annie ran off with the nanny. [Page Six]
· Steven Greenberg's new club, Cobalt, features 1940s-era antiques collected by Karl Lagerfeld. [Page Six]
· Imitation of Christ designer Danny Seo created necklaces with the letters "FF", meaning "fur free." Some fashionistas thought it stood for "fur forever" and are wearing them proudly with their minks. [Page Six]
· Bill Clinton on Richard Gere's comments to Hillary at the AmFar dinner that her husband did nothing about AIDs: "I don't blame Richard Gere, because he is an actor. He doesn't know..." [NY Daily News]
