HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE: In the reality TV era, the only remaining taboo is acting boring. The E network proved that truism this week by hiring Isaac Mizrahi to conduct red-carpet interviews on its Academy Awards pre-show on March 5. Mizrahi’s recent outrageous behavior at the Golden Globes — where he felt Scarlett Johansson‘s breasts, peeked down Teri Hatcher‘s cleavage and interrogated Eva Longoria on her bikini-area grooming — generated a wave of critical articles, but also helped the network reach an average of 1.6 million viewers during the two-hour broadcast — far more than rival TV Guide Network.
Columnist Liz Smith, who claimed in The New York Post this past Monday that Johansson was “beyond furious” at being groped by the designer, said she was not surprised at E’s reaction. “Nothing succeeds like excess,” she said on Thursday. “It’s just another example of culture sort of running riot.” Smith noted she is a fan of Mizrahi’s, but didn’t think his being gay was an excuse for actions that made his interview subjects uncomfortable: “Just because he’s not sexually interested in these women doesn’t mean they should be manhandled.”
A spokesman for “Isaac,” Mizrahi’s talk show on the Style Network (a sister channel to E), said Mizrahi did not plan to comment on the flap. “He doesn’t want to do an interview defending himself,” he said. As for whether Mizrahi will exercise more impulse control at the Oscars, the spokesman said, “The answer is: watch and see.”
But don’t be surprised if, this time around, Mizrahi walks up to the line without crossing it. A representative of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told Newsday the institution would be “extraordinarily angry” were Mizrahi to reprise his touchy-feely shtick.
— Jeff Bercovici
TOO SEXY FOR TV: To achieve its distribution of 12 million copies in 87 different newspapers, Life magazine prints issues two weeks ahead of time. The drawback of this approach is evident from next week’s cover, featuring Heather Graham, who is proclaimed by Life to be “TV’s new darling” for her role on ABC’s “Emily’s Reasons Why Not.” ABC canceled the sitcom on Jan. 17, after only six episodes.
Related Galleries
Fortunately, Life is faring somewhat better, according to publisher Peter Bauer. The weekly has been noticeably light on advertising since its reincarnation as a supplement in September 2004, but Bauer said that began changing around six months ago. Ad revenue in the fourth quarter of 2005 was up 25 percent from the same period in 2004, and the title has already received business from 10 new advertisers this year. “There’s momentum from that perspective,” said Bauer. “We made our numbers last year. The investment that the company made in Life was slightly below what was projected.”
The magazine is still thin, averaging about 20 pages total per issue, but not as far from its targets as it might appear, said Bauer. “We’re never going to be a 100-page magazine, and that was never part of the plan,” he said. “We will be hugely profitable to Time Inc. if we can consistently produce a magazine that’s 30 pages long, 15 of which are ads.”
As for that Heather Graham cover story, the show may be canceled, but the article remains relevant in another sense: It’s all about how the actress spends her days off.
— J.B.
LATEST ON LEROY: James Frey fessed up on “Oprah” Thursday about the liberties he took with his memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” but the perpetrator(s) behind that other recent literary hoax, JT LeRoy, have yet to emerge to give his/her/their explanation. On the fauxthor’s Web site this week, a photo of sweatshop typists bears this caption: “The JT LeRoys hard at work on the next novel.” However, at least one or two of those typists must have been working on a TV script. LeRoy was hired by HBO last year to write an episode for the next season of “Deadwood,” and it appears as if that project could still have a future, no matter who pens it. On Thursday, an HBO spokeswoman said, “HBO has given JT LeRoy a freelance, episodic script assignment on ‘Deadwood.’ The show is currently in production and there has been no decision as to when the script will be delivered or produced.” The spokeswoman did not say which name or names would be listed in the credits, if and when the script materializes and is shot.
— Sara James
NIGHT OF A LIFETIME: In a business that more often celebrates youth, the older generation got its turn in the spotlight at the Magazine Publishers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Awards on Wednesday night at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.
Hearst president Cathleen Black, on stage to receive the Henry Johnson Fisher award, was kvelling after being introduced by a video clip celebrating her accomplishments. “Can we, like, run that again, please?” she asked.
Later, author Tom Wolfe took to the podium to introduce William F. Buckley Jr., who was being inducted into the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. Wolfe compared the National Review founder to Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Charles Darwin, the last of whom merited a lengthy digression. “They gave me three minutes and forty-five seconds, but my aside on Darwin doesn’t count,” said Wolfe. By way of praise, he said, “It is not too much to say there would have been no Reagan revolution without Bill Buckley.”
Reading his speech from paper notes rather than the TelePrompTer, Buckley said he had felt some ambivalence at hearing he was to receive a lifetime achievement award. “It might be telling me I am old enough to have used up a lifetime. That’s entirely plausible.” In his trademark elevated diction, he also recounted the early days of the National Review. “It was a very indigent operation,” he said. “My salary as editor in chief was one dollar a year. In 10 years, I put in for my salary only every other year.”
— J.B.