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Gala Christmas Issue: Quentin Tarantino Interview + Sex in Cinema + Holiday Gift Guide 
СААС | The Ravishing Padma Lakshmi + Ebert and Updike on Marilyn Monroe + College Hoops Preview 
E774 Jack Nicholson Talks Dirty + Fiction by Michael Connelly + Whitey Bulger's Final Days 
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TOP SHELF TAST 


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Mazda Makes History 
In Stunning Upset 


Becomes first Asian automaker to win 24 Hours of Le Mans 


LE MANS, FRANCE. June24 —After Gachot, the Mazda 787B averaged 
a record 362 laps covering more 127 mph during the race. Even 
than 3,000 miles, before taking 
Mazda's #55 car the lead the car 


screamed across ° Was impossible 
Rotary engine : 


the finish line of to ignore thanks 


the 24 Hours of Le lik ely t 0 b e to an outrageous 


Mans in first place orange-and-green 
yesterday, making b livery and an ear- 
the small carmaker anned from splitting ^ wail— 
from Hiroshima the L e M ans produced by a 
first ever Japanese 700-horsepower, 
manufacturer to seize four-rotor rotary 


the checkered flag engine. 
at thic nrectioions endurance Den 49 rah e cat tha 


HERE WE GO AGAIN. 


What choice did they have? In powering the 
Mazda 787B to its historic triumph in 1991, 
the rotary engine had proven itself such a 
threat to the racing establishment that 
it was banned from the 24 Hours 

of Le Mans shortly afterward. 
Steadfast, durable and capable 
of tremendous speed, 
the rotary was a literal 
game changer. 


For Mazda, the game az 
was about one thing: 
finishing. From the very 
start we set out to prove 
and improve the rotary engine's 
quality, durability and reliability 
by pushing it to its limits in the 
longest and most grueling endurance races 
throughout the world. 


Beginning with a major 84-hour endurance 
competition at the Nürburgring in 1968, the 
rotary would demonstrate its amazing stamina 
for more than four decades. The lessons 


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learned in countless races and victories, 
including 23 class wins at the 24 Hours of 
Daytona, have made their way into many of 
our street engines and back again into our 
race engines on the track today. 


Now we're changing the 
game yet again with the 
Mazda 2.2-liter SKYACTIV"-D 
clean diesel engine. This time 

we'll capitalize on the new 
; engine's fuel efficiency and 
4 @ asphalt-ripping torque. But 

our goal remains the same: to 
develop the SKYACTIV’-D into 
an undefeatable powerplant. 


SK YACTIV-D That's why we're debuting the 


SKYACTIV"-D in the 2013 Rolex 
24 Hours of Daytona. Just like with the rotary, 
we're looking forward to a long, exciting 
victory-filled journey as we make our diesel 
engine the next Mazda race winner. So put the 
rule-writers on speed dial-the playing field 
just became uneven again. 


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! he holidays are here again. Time to 
work less, imbibe more and take this 
EM issue of your favorite magazine under 
some mistletoe so you can smooch Miss 
December Amanda Streich (pronounced 
"streak"—we can't make this stuff up). We 
get the fun rolling with master crime scribe 
Michael Connelly. Blind Call—an excerpt 
from the author's new novel, The Black Box, 
published this month by Little, Brown—finds 
LAPD detective Hieronymus Bosch working 
on a murder from the Open-Unsolved Unit's 
file. Will Bosch bust the case wide open? 
Whether yes or no, in Connelly's seedy City 
of Angels, you know it won't be boring. In 
Elegantly Wasted we bring you wild winter 
stylings worn by even wilder rock-folk star 
„A мы celebration 
indeed. Fifty years after М ? Monroe's 
death, the world is still in awe € her. The 
Nude Marilyn presents a portfolio of pho- 
tographs snapped at both the beginning 
and end of her career. One common thread: 
nudity, of course. In Inside the Head of Foot- 
ball's Greatest Nerd, Karl Taro Greenfeld 
shows us why Super Bowl champion coach 
turned Monday Night Football 
announcer Jon Gruden is Amer- 
ica's coolest football geek. Where 1 
do pro coaches go for counsel- 
ing when the game (their Life's 
work) has passed them by? To 
Gruden's office, naturally. The 
holiday season is also a time to 
travel. In Adopting Africa, Amer- 
ica 5 preeminent travel writer, 
al a La i 20Q. The 
model, BSED author and 
Top Chef host is an enchant- 
ress of both the mind and the belly. Dig 
in on page 102. For the Playboy Inter- 
view, Quentin 1 tino mouths off in his 
usual spectacular fashion on the durability 
of his career and some surprising behind- 
the-scenes juice on his latest film, Django 
Unchained, set to hit theaters on Christmas 
Day. Adam Reposa of Austin, Texas is a true- 
life Tarantino character if there ever were 
that's saying something). You'll find him 
in his underwear beginning on page 126. 
Finally, this issue has a special holiday gift: 
a smoking (ен assay from former poet 
laureate I L. (Check out his latest 
tome, Christmas gi Eagle Pond.) At 84, Hall 
still has TNT in his inkwell. In Forum's “No 
Smoking," he explores his obsession with 
tobacco. So enjoy a dish of Padma, a smoke 
with Mr. Hall and a kiss with Miss Decem- 
ber Amanda Streich. As we said, we can't 
make this stuff up. 


Rufi iinwright 


aul Ther , revisits the con- 
tinent he captured so vividly in 
one. He's "a defense attorney in an already 


Dark Star Safari to see how the 
best of intentions have changed 
Africa. All this talk is making us 

hungry: On our menu u this month: 

Suc ud EU s atavistic underbelly,” reports 
Bob y in Law and Disorder. Reposa is 
a wilden -swilling legal mastermind, the 
Lone Star State's wildest attorney (and 


PLAYBILL 


Michael Connelly 


- TEN 
a PTT ч. 


: Marilyn Monroe 


Quentin Tarantino 


Bob Drury 


Donald Hall 


Oris Artix GT Chronograph 

Automatic mechanical chronograph 
Stainless steel case with turning top ring 
Special linear display for the small second 
Water resistant to 100 m 

See our story at www.oris.ch/journey-intime 


PLAYBOY 


FEATURES 


THE SECRET LIFE OF 
WHITEY BULGER 
The full story behind thes 
biggest law enforcement 
scandal of our time has 
never been told—unti 
By d 


INSIDE THE HEA 
OF FOOTBALL’S 
GREATEST NERD 


probes the beautiful mind 
of Jon Gruden, the most 
obsessed man in football. 


ARTIST LEROY 
NEIMAN 
A look back at the expres- 
sionist who sketched the 
world for PLAYBOY. 

м. 


REBEL NATION 

They beat the odds in one of 
the greatest championship 
runs in college basketball 
history: 

revisits the 1990 UNLV 
Rebels. Playboy's 
College Hoops Preview. 


ADOPTING AFRICA 

Does aid help Africa? 
explains what your 

goodwillis good for. 


HOW TO PARTY LIKE 
A GENTLEMAN 

From John Legend's playlist 
toapunch recipe from 

the world's best bar, the 
definitive guide to throwing 
a holiday shindig you'll talk 
about all year. 


LAW AND DISORDER 
Adam Reposa's sanity (and 
sobriety)? Questionable. His 
case record? Bulletproof. 
parties with the most 
outrageous lawyer in Texas. 


PLAYBOY CLASSIC: 
JACK NICHOLSON 
The actor's 1972 
conversation with 

reveals he 
was an iconoclast from the 
very beginning. 


ALL WRAPPED UP 
These timeless gifts will out- 
last any gadget or gizmo on 
your list. Check it twice. 


SUGAR ON TOP 
He's 56, his wife is 36, their gir 
friend is 20, and they pay her a 
tuition. IN, 
onthe sugar-baby revolution. » 


INTERVIEW 
QUENTIN TARANTINO 


sits 
down with the maverick 
director to talk about 
Django Unchained, turning 
50 and why he’s no longer a 
Hollywood outsider. 


20Q 


PADMA LAKSHMI 
The gorgeous Top Chef judge 
gets grilled by 

on her taste in 
men and how to win her heart 
(her tips on cooking the per- 
fect roast chicken help). 


FICTION 


BLIND CALL 

When his 20-year-old 
unsolved murder case is 
reopened, LAPD vet Harry 
Bosch begins to untangle 
strings that could prove he's 
still worth his badge. By 


MARILYN 
MONROE 


Who better to warm up a wint 
night than the fiery Marilyn 
Monroe? Our Rabbit, as usual, is 
two steps ahead of us. You'll find 
him cozied up by her fireplace, 
ready for wherever the night 
may take him. 


12 


PLAYMATE: Amanda Streich 


NO SMOKING 
A memoir from former 
poet laureate ООМА] 
Lon asmoker's life 
lived well, against the 
backdrop of our vilifica- 
tion ofthose who enjoy 
lighting up. 


TALKING WITH 
GUS VAN SANT 

F ponders 
mainstream success with 
the independent director. 


WHY WOMEN WATCH 
SUC H CRAP 

: IN comes to grips 
withthe evils of reality TV. 


CLOSING THE 
DEAL THE OLD- 
FASHIONED WAY 

Ps guide 
to Mine Eo a touchdown. 


j 


ELEGANTLY WASTED 
Rufus Wainwright shows 
off his cool, eclectic style. 
Fashion by JENNIFEI 


4 [ 


READER RESPONSE 
PLAYBOY banned from air- 
planes and prisons: an 
attack on our rights? The 
issues aren't as simple as 
you may think. 


CLASSIC 
CARTOONS OF 
CHRISTMAS PAST 
PLAYBOY's twisted take on 
holiday cheer. 


VOL. 59, NO. 10-DECEMBER 2012 


PLAYBOY 


CONTENTS 


2012 SEX IN CINEMA 

Who is pushing the 

boundaries on the silver 

screen? The women (and 

men) behind this year's 

raciest scenes. в 
RED HOT IN RIO f 
Feeling a winter chill? A 


Escape the cold with Brazil- 
ian bombshell Dany Giehl. 


PLAYMATE: 
AMANDA STREICH 
Enter the dressing room of 
Miss December, a Bolish 
temptation who is impos- 
sible to resist. 


THE NUDE MARILYN 
She was at once glamorous 
and melancholic, atragic 
beauty like no other. Is that 
why she still intrigues us? 


WORLD OF | 
PLAYBOY 

The cast of 90210 visits the 

Playboy Mansion 90024; 

the premiere of How 

Playboy Changed the World. y 


CELEBRATIONS AT 
THE MANSION 

Hef's brother, Keith, gets 
hitched; Cooper's star- 
studded birthday—with 
Jeff Ross, Pamela 
Anderson and more. 


20Q: Padma Lakshmi 


PLAYBILL 
DEAR PLAYBOY 


РЕАҮМАТЕ AFTER HOURS 
NEWS 

Shannon Tweed salutes REVIEWS 

our vets; Tiffany Fallon MANTRACK 
rocks with Rascal Flatts; PLAYBOY 
Kassie Lyn Logsdon sends ADVISOR 
usasexy mirror pic. PARTY JOKES 


PLAYBOY ON PLAYBOY ON 
FACEBOOK TWITTER 


IAL Keep up with all things Playboy at 
ein pra and twitter.com/playboy. 


GENERAL OFFICES: PLAYBOY, 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210. 
PLAYBOY ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY TO RETURN UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL OR GRAPHIC OR 
OTHER MATERIAL. ALL RIGHTS IN LETTERS AND UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL AND GRAPHIC MATERIAL 
WILL BE TREATED AS UNCONDITIONALLY ASSIGNED FOR PUBLICATION AND COPYRIGHT PURPOSES, 
AND MATERIAL WILL BE SUBJECT TO PLAYBOY'S UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO EDIT AND TO COMMENT 
EDITORIALLY. CONTENTS COPYRIGHT © 2012 BY PLAYBOY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLAYBOY, PLAY- 
MATE AND RABBIT HEAD SYMBOL ARE MARKS OF PLAYBOY, REGISTERED U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE. 
NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED 
IN ANY FORM BY ANY ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR RECORDING MEANS OR OTH- 
ERWISE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. ANY SIMILARITY BETWEEN 
THE PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE FICTION AND SEMI-FICTION IN THIS MAGAZINE AND ANY REAL 
PEOPLE AND PLACES IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FOR CREDITS SEE PAGE 170. DANBURY MINT, 
DIRECT WINES, DIRECTV AND REDSTAR WORLDWEAR ONSERTS IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION 
POLYWRAPPED COPIES. BPIJEAN PAUL GAULTIER INSERT BETWEEN PAGES 24/25 IN ALL COPIES. 
SANTA FE INSERT BETWEEN PAGES 32/33 IN DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTION AND DOMESTIC NEWS- 
STAND COPIES. CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE TÍTULO NO. 7570 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993, Y 
CERTIFICADO DE LICITUD DE CONTENIDO NO. 5108 DE FECHA 29 DE JULIO DE 1993 EXPEDIDOS 
POR LA COMISÍON CALIFICADORA DE PUBLICACIONES Y REVISTAS ILUSTRADAS DEPENDIENTE DE 
LA SECRETARÍA DE GOBERNACIÓN, MÉXICO. RESERVA DE DERECHOS 04-2000-07 17 10332800-102. 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 


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PLAYBOY 


HUGH M. HEFNER 
editor-in-chief 


JIMMY JELLINEK 
editorial director 
STEPHEN RANDALL deputy editor 
MAC LEWIS art director 
LEOPOLD FROEHLICH managing editor 


A.J. BAIME executive editor 
REBECCA H. BLACK photo editor 
PATTY BEAUDET-FRANCES deputy photography director 
HUGH GARVEY articles editor 


EDITORIAL 
FEATURES: JASON BUHRMESTER Senior editor FASHION: JENNIFER RYAN JONES editor 
STAFF: JARED EVANS assistant managing editor; 
CHERIE BRADLEY executive assistant; GILBERT MACIAS senior editorial assistant; TYLER TRYKOWSKI editorial assistant 
CARTOONS: AMANDA WARREN associate cartoon editor 
COPY: WINIFRED ORMOND copy chief; BRADLEY LINCOLN senior copy editor; CAT AUER copy editor 
RESEARCH: NORA O'DONNELL senior research editor; SHANE MICHAEL SINGH research editor 
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: BRANTLEY BARDIN, MARK BOAL, ROBERT B. DE SALVO, GRETCHEN EDGREN, JAMES FRANCO, PAULA FROELICH, J.C. GABEL, 
KEN GROSS, GEORGE GURLEY, DAVID HOCHMAN, ARTHUR KRETCHMER (automotive), LISA LAMPANELLI (special correspondent), 
CHRISTIAN PARENTI, JAMES R. PETERSEN, ROCKY RAKOVIC, STEPHEN REBELLO, DAVID RENSIN, CHIP ROWE, WILL SELF, DAVID SHEFF, JOEL STEIN, 


DAVID STEVENS, ROB TANNENBAUM, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT, ALICE K. TURNER 


ART 
JUSTIN PAGE senior art director; CRISTELA P. TSCHUMY associate art director; 
ROBERT HARKNESS assistant art director; MATT STEIGBIGEL photo researcher; 


AARON LUCAS art coordinator; LISA TCHAKMAKIAN Senior art administrator 


PHOTOGRAPHY 
STEPHANIE MORRIS west coast editor; KRYSTLE JOHNSON managing photo director; BARBARA LEIGH assistant editor; 
ARNY FREYTAG, STEPHEN WAYDA senior contributing photographers; SASHA EISENMAN, JAMES IMBROGNO, RICHARD IZUI, ZACHARY JAMES JOHNSTON, 
MIZUNO, BYRON NEWMAN, GEN NISHINO, JARMO POHJANIEMI, DAVID RAMS contributing photographers; 
KEVIN MURPHY manager, photo library; CHRISTIE HARTMANN archivist, photo library; KARLA GOTCHER, CARMEN ORDONEZ assistants, photo library; 


CRAIG SCHRIBER manager, prepress and imaging; AMY KASTNER-DROWN, LIANA RIOS digital imaging specialists; OSCAR RODRIGUEZ prepress operator 


PUBLIC RELATIONS 
THERESA M. HENNESSEY vice president; TERI THOMERSON director 


PRODUCTION 


LESLEY K. JOHNSON production director; HELEN YEOMAN production services manager 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING 
MARKUS GRINDEL managing director 


PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INTERNATIONAL, INC. 
SCOTT FLANDERS chief executive officer 


PLAYBOY INTEGRATED SALES 
JOHN LUMPKIN Senior vice president, publisher; MARIE FIRNENO vice president, advertising director; 


AMANDA CIVITELLO senior marketing director 


PLAYBOY PRINT OPERATIONS 
DAVID G. ISRAEL executive vice president, general manager of playboy media; 
TOM FLORES business manager 


ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: AMERICAN MEDIA INC. 
DAVID PECKER chairman and chief executive officer; KEVIN HYSON chief marketing officer; 
HELEN BIANCULLI executive director, direct-response advertising; BRIAN HOAR national spirits director 
NEW YORK: BRIAN VRABEL entertainment and gaming director; MIKE BOYKA automotive, consumer electronics and consumer products director; 
ANTHONY GIANNOCCORA fashion and grooming manager; KENJI TROYER digital sales planner; 
KEVIN FALATKO senior marketing manager; MATT CASEY marketing manager; JOHN KITSES art director 


14 LOS ANGELES: LORI KESSLER west coast director; VALERIE TOVAR digital sales planner 


TM 


PURVEYOR OF FINE MEN'S WARES & ACCESSORIES® 
] c www.gentsco.com 


THE WORLD 
OF PLAYBOY 


For its 100th episode, the CW drama 90210 
crossed over zip codes to neighboring Holmby Hills, 
where the cast and crew met three-time PLAYBOY 
cover girl Carmen Electra and a bunch of Bunnies. 


The Playboy 
international editors' 
meeting was held 

in our backyard, 
where we celebrated 
new editions from 
Austria, Portugal and 
Thailand. Our reach 
now covers more 
than 50 countries; 
between print and 
online, the gospel 

of PLAYBOY is read by 
more than 12 million 
people each month. 


Featuring interviews 
with Jesse Jackson, 
Donald Trump and Hef, 
of course, the History 
Channels How Playboy 
Changed the World 
shows how "PLAYBOY 
challenged social 
conventions about men, 
women, sex and nudity, 
and helped galvanize 
attitudes about civil 
liberties and civil rights.” 


CELEBRATIONS 
AT THE MANSION | 


Everyone knows the Grotto, 
but the wishing well is perhaps 
the most romantic place on 
Mansion grounds. It has seen 
Hef marry Kimberly Conrad, 
as well as Kendra Wilkinson 
wed Hank Baskett. This fall, 
Keith Hefner said "I do" to 
Caya Ukkas at the intimate 
spot. The couple tied the knot 
in a ceremony presided over 
by Chris Robinson. Witnesses 
included Ashley Matthau, 
Trisha Frick, Crystal Harris, 
Keith's son Morgan Farrington 
and Hef, who 


was deeply t 
moved by the 
expression of 
true love. = 
Ta 
— 
Remember your 21st birthday party? Cooper Hefner's was an all-day (and 


y " E n all-night) affair thrown at the Mansion that started with a waterslide and 
y A AS ended with a large late-night pizza order. Friends and family who came by 
) to toast Cooper at the pool bar included Playmates, Nick Simmons, Jeffrey 


ы Ross, Joel Berliner, Diablo Cody, Dan Maurio, Miss February 1990 
Pamela Anderson and Cooper's proud papa, Hef. 


TWO STEPS FORWARD 
This is a personal thank-you to Hugh 

Herr and to PLAYBOY for telling the 
world about biomechatronics (Bionic 
Man, June). Our son lost both legs 
below the knee while serving in Iraq as 
a Marine staff sergeant and tank com- 
mander. Thanks to Herr's work, Chad 
recently received prosthetics from the 
Veterans Administration that have made 
his life much more comfortable. He is 
able to walk and run on uneven ground, 
go up and down stairs and ride a motor- 
cycle and bicycle. When he wears pants 
you don't even notice his bionics. 

Bob and Ginny Brumpton 

Eagle, Idaho 


LASTING IMPRESSIONS 
In Girls of the Big Ten (October), it's 
hard to miss the tattoo of Cinderella on 
Marie Dawson of Northwestern Univer- 
sity. Was this approved by Walt Disney 
Studios? Does Disney ever authorize the 
use of its characters as tattoos? 
'Thomas Inge 
Richmond, Virginia 
No, it was not approved. But Marie already 
has Disney on her back. 


I have been reading PLAYBOY for almost 
40 years. Can you imagine all the beau- 
tiful women I have looked at in your 
magazine? Sasha Camille of Indiana 
University, one of the sexiest women I 
have ever seen, inspired me to finally 
put pen to paper. 

Deno Lorenzo 
Akron, Ohio 


CLASSIC INTERVIEWS 

I don't know if I'm unique among 
your subscribers, but I'm a 62-year- 
old college-educated African American 
woman who has been married for nearly 
40 years and has four grown children. 
Why do I read PLAYBOY? You have the best 
in-depth and candid interviews of any 
publication. There is no way to get to the 
heart and soul of an artist, politician or 
athlete without asking tons of questions, 
including unexpected ones, and your 
interviewers do that well. Over the years 
I have torn out my favorites and filed 
them away. Recently I reread the inter- 
views with Paul and Linda McCartney, 
Whoopi Goldberg, John Travolta, Joan 
Collins and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I 
had never heard of Lee Child (October) 
before seeing the ads for the film Jack 
Reacher based on his novel One Shot. Is 
there a book that contains all the inter- 
views, perhaps grouped by decade? 

Bellah James 
Los Angeles, California 

To mark the 50th anniversary of the 
Playboy Interview, we have begun to reissue 
classics with notables such as Miles Davis, 
Stanley Kubrick, Martin Luther King Jr., 
Bob Dylan, Matt Groening, Keith Richards 
and many others as Amazon Kindle e-books 
for 99 cents each. 


An Affair to Remember 

The September issue im- 
pressed me in a big way—Hugh 
Hefner's insightful editorial 
(Sexual Freedom) and the Playboy 
Interview with Richard Dawkins 


are notable, but top billing must 
go to Miss September Alana 
Campos (Thrill of Brazil), by 
far the most desirable Play- 
mate in the incredible run that 
began in 2004. Kudos on being 
the only men's magazine still 
worth reading. 

Michael Escritt 

Leeds, England 


POST-PRESEASON BLUES 

After lowly, Andrew Luck-less Stan- 
ford took advantage of a sleepwalking 
USC in the first week of the college 
football season, Playboy’s Pigskin Pre- 
view 2012 (September) immediately 
resembled fantasy more than proph- 
ecy. Hindsight may be 20-20 for Bruce 
Feldman, who ranks USC number one, 
but the story remains the same year 
after year. The PAC-12 apologists make 
excuses for a league full of gimmick 
offenses that inflate their stats against 
half-baked defenses; meanwhile, the 
SEC goes about the business of winning 


Damn it, Stanford, didn't you get our memo? 


yet another crystal football in January. 

Don't be shocked when Alabama and 

LSU meet again in the title game. 
Sean Rothrock 
Houston, Texas 


DEBATING DAWKINS 

All my issues of PLAYBOY are in pristine 
condition and neatly stacked in my home 
library on the top shelf—except Septem- 
ber's. The pages of the Playboy Interview 


with Richard Dawkins have been read 
several times over and are dotted with 
food stains and heavily underlined or 
highlighted. Chip Rowe does an excel- 
lent job giving readers insight into a 
brilliant mind. Dawkins has held my fas- 
cination and respect ever since I read 
The God Delusion. He has the soundest 
answers and beliefs regarding the lunacy 
and egotistical fanaticism that is religion. 
“God” bless him. 

Stephen Saunders 

Camillus, New York 


Dawkins claims that the evidence for 
the existence of Jesus is "surprisingly 
shaky" and that the authors of the earli- 
est New Testament writings, such as the 
Epistles of Paul, do not seem interested 
in whether Jesus was real. As an agnos- 
tic biblical scholar, I support Dawkins's 
message and mission. But he misses the 
boat here. Paul speaks of Jesus as a real 
person throughout his epistles, noting 
his birth, his disciples and ministry and 
the Last Supper. Paul personally knew 
Jesus’s brother, James, and closest dis- 
ciple, Peter. Jesus's existence is also 
documented in a large number of other 
first century sources. All told, for an 
ancient person, Jesus and his existence 
are unusually well attested to. He may 
not have been the miracle-working and 
resurrected son of God that Christians 
believe in, but he did exist. The bigger 
question is how he measures up to what 
people claim about him today. 

Bart Ehrman 
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 

Ehrman, a University of North Carolina 
professor, is author of Did Jesus Exist? The 
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. 


Your interview with our ubiquitous 
atheist had me holding my breath antici- 
pating questions that nobody else would 
ask. I exhaled in disappointment. Reading 


19 


PLAYBOY 


20 


SPOIL 
HER 


this Christmas! 


Choose from hundreds of great styles, 
each delivered in our exclusive gift packaging 
along with FREE extras she'll love. 


It’s a gift you'll both love! 
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The God Delusion had me thinking Dawkins 
doth protest too much. It is glaringly obvi- 
ous he could never have looked squarely 
into the eyes of Edgar Cayce, a psychic 
who attributed his 14,000-plus readings to 
Christ—events that even Cayce's staunch- 
est critics could not disprove. 

John Whitaker 

‘Tavares, Florida 

Cayce never provided anything close to 

scientific evidence of supernatural abili- 
ties. No one has. In fact, the James Randi 
Educational Foundation offers $1 million 
to anyone who can demonstrate such abili- 
ties under controlled circumstances. 


Despite his reservations, Dawkins should 
debate creationists. We ignore dogmatic, 
superstitious beliefs at our peril. 

John Barlow 
Norfolk, Virginia 


You pitched Dawkins softballs. Does he 
dismiss all evidence of a collective uncon- 
scious? How can Dawkins explain the 
countless people who tell of synchronis- 
tic experiences involving personal and 
startling presentations as anything but 
messages from the dead? God has an 
eternity—he doesn't need to zap things 
into existence. Could Dawkins support 
the notion that God “created” evolution? 
Deepak Chopra once noted that scientists 
exploring the brain have found everything 
that does everything except for the “cen- 
tral command," i.e., a higher power. Does 
Dawkins refute this? You did not ask any 
questions that invited him out of his box. 

Brad Keene 
Redondo Beach, California 

Your questions presume the existence of 
God; Dawkins is clearly not convinced of that. 
You also rely on a logical fallacy—just because 
a phenomenon can't be explained doesn't 
mean it must be attributed to a supreme being. 
That's like arguing any noise you hear in the 
night that you can't identify must be a ghost. 


INFOMERCIAL KING 
Don Lapre had a rare passion for 
motivating and inspiring others (Death 
of a Salesman, September). Hearing one 
of his pitches in the middle of the night 
always pushed me to close more business 
deals the next day. 
Tom Crabb 
Tallahassee, Florida 


STALLIONS OR GELDINGS? 

Joel Stein claims horse racing is eas- 
ier to understand than football (“I Hate 
Football,” Men, October). As a fan of both, 
I disagree. There are different classifica- 
tions of races, races for males and females, 
races restricted by age, as well as races 
with different distances and surfaces. This 
is without even getting into the nuances 
of wagering and the sport’s unique catch- 
phrases, such as maiden claimer, morning 
glory and bullets all over the tab. 

Stuart Ray 
Glendale, California 


During the many years that Asa Baber 
wrote the Men column, his message was 
“Be strong, my brothers, and fuck all 
these assholes who say otherwise.” It was 
beautiful and, for me, a much-needed 
positive voice at that time in my life. Now, 
instead of no apologies, we hear from the 
clearly emasculated Richard Lewis and 
Joel Stein. That James Franco kid does a 
fine job in his interviews (Francofile). Why 
not give him a shot? 

Todd Rayburn 
Phoenix, Arizona 


COVER ART 
Typically when a magazine puts a 
naked celebrity on its cover, that photo 
is the best you’re going to see. PLAYBOY is 
different. Case in point: I was overjoyed 
to see the terrific photo of Playmate 
Pamela Horton on the cover of the Octo- 
ber issue because I knew I would find 
more great shots inside. 
Michael Plourde 
Edmundston, New Brunswick 


к, 


at 


Reden; 


JU ket 


If you're lucky, Pamela will call your number. 


Thank you for the best cover photo in 
years. It is smart, sexy and simple. 
Matt Gunderson 
West Lafayette, Indiana 


BACK TO BASICS 
A dark and stormy should be made 

with Gosling's Black Seal rum, Barritts 
ginger beer and a slice of lime. Your 
addition of ginger liqueur (“The New 
Highball," After Hours, September) 
is a disservice to your readers and an 
insult to all the bartenders who have 
been working to reintroduce traditional 
cocktails. You want to make a dark and 
stormy better? Serve it to friends while 
you all listen to Harry Belafonte and 
Howard Livingston. 

Wayne Sickels 

Boise, Idaho 


E-mail LETTERS@PLAYBOY.COM or write 9346 CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA 90210 


THE NEW FILM BY 
QUENTIN TARANTINO 


CHRISTMAS DAY 


п й www.Facebook.com/UnchainedMovie www.UnchainedMovie.com 


A 
PICTURES ARTWORK © 2012 THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY ALL FIGHTS RESERVED 


LICIHUNLI 1 


iPLAYBOY Playmates, celebrities and articles 


EVERY PLAYBOY EVER 
FROM ISSUE #1 TO NOW 


ON YOUR IPAD, MAC OR WINDOWS PC. 


Uu 


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DECEMBER 


2012 


BECOMING 
ATTRACTION 


OUR ADRENALINE 
gets pumping from 
Beth Riesgraf's 
looks alone; as 
Parker on TNT's 
Leverage, this 
actress should 
come with a heart- 
attack warning. 
Playing a master 
thief and "sweet 
sociopath," Beth 
performs her 
own stunts, from 
dodging explosions 
to dangling off 
Skyscrapers. The 
“tomboy meets girl 
next door” grew up 
horseback riding in 
Minnesota and later 
found her place 
at punk shows in 
Las Vegas. “| was 
a bit of a rebel but 
the baby of the 
family,” she says. 
“I'm a good girl, but 
| love being wild." 
Consider our hearts 
her latest heist. 


aphy by CHRIS FORTUNA 


TALK | WHAT MATTERS NOW 


LABOR OF LUST 


* Joe Rubin knew the impor- 
tance of Black Love long before 
he saw it. The film—a rare dip 
into X-rated work by exploi- 
tation director Herschell 
Gordon Lewis—disappeared 
immediately after its brief 
1971 theatrical run. With high 
production values and a rare 
all-black cast, it's a significant 
document in smut history. As 
far as Rubin knew, no cop- 

ies remained; even Lewis 
didn't have one. Then Rubin 
uncovered a print of Black 
Love in the dusty basement of 
an old film lab and unlocked a 
piece of cinematic history he 
thought was lost forever. 

With the exception of 
blockbusters such as Deep 
Throat and Debbie Does Dallas, 
erotic film prints from the 
1960s, 1970s and 1980s were 
often thrown away or seized 
from fly-by-night studios 
by law enforcement agents. 
Those that survive in musty 
basements and storage units 
are degrading by the day. Nowa 
community of preservationists 
is fighting to save this record 
of the earliest days of modern 
pornography before it’s too late. 
Call them the Smut Crusaders: 
the last line standing between 
history and lost celluloid. 

“Next to silent movies, sex- 
ploitation and X-rated films 
are the biggest missing body of 
work in archives today,” says 
Rubin, an archivist special- 
izing in adult films for close to 
a decade. “Of the thousands 


THE GOOD 
REVEREND’S 
BEST BETS 


Rever 1С 


of sex films made between the 


late 1960s and early 1980s, only 


about half exist as complete 
prints. Most have degraded to 
the point where they're unus- 
able or lost entirely." 


The Reverend Ted Mcllvenna 


is another such pornography 
preservationist. A Methodist 
minister from San Francisco, 
he calls these films “the single 
most important item ofthe 
sexual revolution." His non- 
profit Exodus Trust holds more 
than 400,000 reels in some 25 
warehouses across the country, 
atacost of more than $100,000 
a year for storage alone. 

Archivists like Rubin and 
Mcllvenna track down erotic 
prints from wealthy collec- 
tors, defunct movie theaters 
and old film labs, and work to 
restore them to their full glory. 
Rubin is in the midst of prepar- 
ing Black Love for rerelease, a 
process that takes hundreds 
of hours and thousands of dol- 
lars. He hopes his restorations 
will ignite a renewed interest 
in erotic-film history and that 
both the free market and film- 
preservation institutes will 
come to see value in what has 
been, until now, a punch line in 
film history. 

“The reason people are so 
dismissive of these films is that 
the only option for viewing 
them is terribly edited junk,” 
Rubin says. “These films are 
our legacy, our artistic heritage. 
This is something we need to do 


to maintain it.”—Michael Stabile 


Marilyn 


Chambers 


RESURRECTION 

OF EVE 

(1973) 

— In this melodramatic 
tale, a woman (played 
by three different 
actresses) survives a 
mutilating car crash 
and finds herself—and 
sexual satisfaction— 
through swinger 
parties. "There's a 

lot of jealousy and 
disfigurement, and 

of course it's Marilyn 
Chambers"—a favorite 
of Mcllvenna's—"who 
gets resurrected." 


THE STORY OF 
JOANNA 

(1975) 

> Although Mcllvenna 
dislikes director Gerard 
Damiano, he calls The 
Story of Joanna "a 
fascinating piece of 
work.” Damiano had 
previously helmed the 
hard-core classics Deep 
Throat and The Devil in 
Miss Jones, but Joanna 
raised the bar for 
eroticism, production 
quality and Damiano's 
head-turning approach 
to filming S&M 


Illustration by 
DAVE NESTLER 


PRETTY 

PEACHES 

(1978) 

> "Alex deRenzy is 
the number one film- 
maker of the era," says 
Mcllvenna, and Pretty 
Peaches, about an am- 
nesiac girl who arrives 
in San Francisco, ranks 
among his best. The 
film even earned sex 
star Desiree Cousteau 
a "best actress" 
award. "DeRenzy's a 
great cameraman, a 
great shooter of film, 
and it shows." 


Lift here 
to experience 


SOLER 


| ү "LE MALE" 


Available at 


] 


TOO BIG 
TO FAILE 


AN OLD-SCHOOL STREET ART 
TEAM’S NEWFOUND FAME 


* Banksy, that shrewd British subversive 
extraordinaire, turned guerrilla street 
art into something extremely bankable. 
Now street art has moved far beyond 
spray paint on a city wall toward more 
complex articulations and more socially 
accepted venues, namely the museum 
and the gallery. But the art form still 
resides somewhere between legitimacy 
and lawlessness, and a select few grace- 
fully walk the line between gallery sales 
and streetwise actions. 

Enter Faile (pronounced “fail”), the 
Brooklyn duo of Patrick McNeil and 
Patrick Miller, who have been mak- 
ing their speculative and rakish work 
since 1999 and recently expanded 
their aesthetic internationally. Faile 
started as many street artists do, with 
a surplus of wheat paste and a burn- 
ing desire to present their patchwork 
iconography to the masses. They be- 
gan with a series of photographic 
halftone nudes, bringing a touch of 
feminine presence to the macho aes- 
thetic of the street. 

Since then Faile has mounted large- 
scale multimedia installations, includ- 
ing a 2010 collaboration with fellow 
artist Bast in which they fabricated a 
whacked-out but functional psyche- 
delic arcade in both London and New 
York City. The same year, they erected 


ome FA 


—-— с ro art n W 


a full-scale shrine in Lisbon that drew 
from Catholic, Native American and 
pop cultural iconographies (to name 
a few). "I think a huge thing we have 
always been drawn to is a boiling down 
of cultures," Miller reflects, "including 
all the things we have been fed over 
the years. We find meaning in this vast 
sea of ephemera." Their latest work 
includes a 16-foot sculpture titled Eat 
With the Wolf, erected this fall in Mon- 


golia, and a collaboration with the 
New York City Ballet in the form of a 
graphic installation at Lincoln Center. 

The work of Faile engages on the 
high and low levels of culture with 
dips into traditional beauty and manic 
bits of pop culture. While McNeil and 
Miller now reside within the interna- 
tional art world, if you keep a watchful 
eye, you can still find the work of Faile 
on the street level.—Eric Steinman 


DRONE 
NATION 


т FUTURE 


They're not just for 
spying anymore. 
Drones will soon be 
used for everything 
from TV news to NFL 
games. They'll track 
ivory poachers and 
scour the borders for 
incoming drugs. Uni- 
versity of Leeds re- 
searchers say drones 
will be well-suited for 
dispersing hurricanes 
and diminishing dan- 
gerous winds. Drones 


without bombs 

may soon become 
big with civilians. 
Schiebel's CamCop- 
ter S-100 will be used 
to gather news—an 
eye in the sky record- 
ing weather crises, 
hostage situations 
and more. When 
Boeing's hydrogen- 
powered Phantom 
Eye hits 65,000 feet, 
it can become an 
elite communica- 
tions satellite. The 
newest trend is the 
microdrone, which 
weighs less than two 
pounds, looks like 

a UFO and is con- 
trolled via a laptop. 
Want your own? 


At DIYDrones.com 
you can construct 
one yourself or 

pick up the web- 
community-created 
ArduCopter, which 
has four propellers 
and comes fully 
assembled for less 
than $900. (Check 
with the FAA first.) 
Over time drones will 
become even more 
affordable. Of course 
there's a seamy side 
to Drone Nation. 
Imagine drone- 
wielding paparazzi 
crashing Brangelina's 
honeymoon suite. 

Or your neighbor 
crashing yours. 
—Harold Goldberg 


25 


TRAVEL 


SS a 


MIDNIGHT 
IN PARIS 


Paris is at its most convivial on 
the last night of the year, when the 
famously prickly locals make merry 
on the chilly streets. Taxis will be 
impossible, and Métro trains, which 
run all night on December 31, will be 
packed after midnight strikes. The 
best recipe for an evening to enjoy: 
Dress warmly and stick to one eas- 
ily walkable neighborhood. Here are 
three ofthe best.—Alexandra Marshall 


—— MONTMARTRE = 
FORMERLY a unpretentious, 
self-contained inventive dishes 
village north made with the 


of the red-light 
district of Pigalle, 
Montmartre 

was home to a 
who's who of 
Postimpressionists. 
Now the artists are 
priced out, but the 
neighborhood's 
curving streets and 
steep hills remain 
among the city's 
most picturesque. 
EAT: Le Miroir. 
This bistro serves 


best seasonal 
ingredients. 
Standouts include 
half-cooked 

foie gras with 
spiced quince 
and quenelles 
au chocolat. 

DO: Bistro 82. 
The strength of 
this dive bar has 
always been the 


crowd- part boho, 


part expat, part 
freak. SLEEP: 


Hótel Amour. 
Thierry Costes and 
graffitist turned 
artist and nightlife 
impresario Mr. 
André have 
skimped on 
nonessentials (TVs, 
phones) to give 
you what you need 
without breaking 
the bank (beds 
from the supplier 
to the Ritz, 

Kiehl's products, 
attractive 
customers and 
staff). 


lare. "It’s S traditionally the 
Robuchon has 26 Micheli 
act OSS his аа bal empire 


rior mphe, with sushi-bar- 
aking friends and 


—— EIFFEL TOWER =—— 


REVELERS crowd 
the Champ de 
Mars, the park 
bordering the Eiffel 
Tower, for views 

of the light show. 
For fireworks, 
you'll have to wait 
till Bastille Day. 
Never mind—the 
symbolic center 

of town is still 
spectacular. EAT: 
Jean-Francois 
Piége at Hótel 
Thoumieux. Piege 
is happy to chat 
when he pops 

out of the kitchen 
(even after three 
seasons of running 
France's version of 
Top Chef). Dishes 
change according 
to season and 
whim but have 
included pan- 
seared langoustine 


lounge tables for keeping therr 
1 It's the chi 
€ ry burlesque venues, and i 
denm s (above) have been muses to 
David Lynch and Chri 


When Dita Von T: 


with black currant 
leaves. DO: 
Showcase. If it's 
booming bass 
you want, hit this 
multiroom dance 
club situated in an 
old stone warren 
underneath the 
Pont Alexandre Ill, 
between Les 
Invalides and the 
Champs-Elysées. 
SLEEP: Hötel 
Thoumieux. In 
Thoumieux's 15 
rooms, Farrow & 
Ball wallpaper 
clashes tastefully 
with graphic 
carpets and 
leopard-print 
throws. Aesop 
products, Samsung 
flat-screens and 
retro Illy espresso 
machines round 
out the amenities. 


st of P. 


tian Louboutin. 
nes to town 


re she perforn EP: 
The spacious 


Ph ilippe Starck | prop y are done up 


with pale colors and cushy furniture. 


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FOOD 


28 


RAW POWER 


SKIP THE SUSHI AND CEVICHE; IT'S TIME TO GET CRUDO 


his brother Tim of Bar Crudo in 
San Francisco. (Mike shared the 
easy recipe below.) With crudo the 
freshness ofthe fish is everything. 
Beyond that it's simply chopping 
and assembling, effectively making 
crudo a Top Chef-quality conve- 
nience food worthy of a holiday 
party.—Eric Steinman 


* With sushi a supermarket staple 
and South American ceviche mak- 
ing inroads on restaurant menus, 
things piscine and raw are all the 
rage. This winter we're celebrat- 

ing crudo, the Italian take on raw 
fish (it translates as “raw” in Ital- 
ian). Crudo offers a middle path 
between sushi and ceviche, neither 
doctored and vanquished by soy and 
wasabi nor overpowered and cooked 
by acidic citrus. “It is a whole dif- 
ferent ball game than sushi. For me 
it’s far more refreshing and light,” 
says Mike Selvera, co-owner with 


YELLOWTAIL 
WITH JALAPENO, 
GREEN APPLE 
AND LIME 


Makes 4 appetizer 
portions 


6 oz. sashimi-grade 
yellowtail (hamachi) or 
ahi tuna 


1 green apple, julienned 
1 large radish, julienned 
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced 
1 tbsp. micro arugula 
Juice of half a lime 
Extra virgin olive oil 
Coarse sea salt 


Slice the fish 
thinly and 
arrange on four 
plates. Sprinkle 
with apple, 
Jalapefio, rad- 

ish and arugula. 
Drizzle with lime 
juice and olive oil. 
Sprinkle with salt. 


CRUDO 
TO-DO 


IF YOU DON’T BUY 
THE RIGHT FISH AND EXQUISITE FISH THE SHARPEST KNIFE SMART SEASONING 
CUT IT CORRECTLY, Use only sushi- or sashimi- Use a knife at least eight Feel free to improvise: 
YOU MAY AS WELL grade fish, available at inches long and hone it Olive oil, lemon, sriracha 
PANFRY THAT THING. better supermarkets. Sushi just before using. Anything or a sprinkling of good sea 
HERE’S HOWTO TAKE grade means the fish has less than razor-sharp will salt is all you need to take 
been frozen to minus 31 mangle the flesh and make a piece of fish from simple 
FISH FROM FILLET degrees Fahrenheit, which for messy presentation. to sublime. 
TOFANTASTIC kills bacteria and parasites. 


Photography by ANNABELLE BREAKEY 


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DRINK 


FIZZ ED 


EXPAND YOUR BUBBLY VOCABULARY WITH 
SPARKLING WINES FROM AROUND THE WORLD 


' This holiday season, revelers from Australia to Spain will 
be popping a cork. Yes, there will be French champagne, 
but every other great winemaking country in the world 
has its own signature sparkling wine that's just as 
celebratory (and often more affordable). Here's a global 
tour of what to pour at your next party. 


A Oe 


SOMMELIER SECRET 


Adding water and copious salt to 
a champagne bucket full of ice 
can chill a bottle in 15 minutes 

flat. Here's how it works: Salt can 


lower the freezing point of water 
to 10 degrees, while ice cubes 
on their own are a comparatively 
balmy 32 degrees. So give that 
bottle a briny bath. 


- $c 


"i r "re 


|. Ps 


" 
.* 


"e, 


EN 
Dn 


Bo wp. 
"CC 


U^ É 
CAVA» SPARKLING SPARKLING 
Elyssia Gran ROSE» SHIRAZ> 
Cuvée Brut Domaine The Chook 
($18) Carneros Brut ($20) 
This refined Rosé ($36) Leave it to 
Spanish spar- Rich, with the Australians 


kler from the 
people behind 
Freixenet (the 
ubiquitous black 
bottle in liquor 
stores) is simul- 
taneously earthy 
and citrusy, 

with grapefruit 
flavors. 


floral and berry 
flavors, this ele- 
gant wine is 
made with a 
French tech- 
nique (by 
Taittinger, 

no less) in 
California. 


to inject their 
national grape 
with carbon- 
ation. Hearty 
and almost 
sweet, it's 

like grown-up 
Cherry Coke. 


4PROSECCO 
Ruggeri 

Gold Label 

($21) 


* In the 
crowded world 
of Italian pro- 
secco, this is a 
standout. It's 
rich and com- 
plex, with notes 
of white pepper, 
citrus and bub- 
ble gum. And we 
mean that in the 
best way. 


4 GROWER 
CHAMPAGNE 


Gimonnet- 
Gonet Brut 
Tradition 


($40) 


> Crisp, floral 
and fresh, this 
French “grower” 
champagne 
(made by the 
farmers who 
grow the grapes) 
is sourced from 
a mere 32 acres 
just up the road 
from Krug and 
sells for a third 
of the price. 


How to Outsmart er — 
a Millionaire 


Only the “Robin Hood of Watchmakers” can steal 
the spotlight from a luxury legend for under $200! 


wasnt looking for trouble. I sat in a café, sipping my espresso 
I enjoying the quiet. Then it got noisy. Mr. Bigshot 
rolled up in a roaring high-performance Italian sports car, 
dropping attitude like his $22,000 watch made it okay for 
him to be rude. That's when I decided to roll up my sleeves / 


and teach him a lesson. roe ayy 
f A! In 
J пп 


"Nice watch," I said, pointing to his and holding up mine. 
He nodded like we belonged to the same club. We did, but 
he literally paid 100 times more for his membership. 


— 
T7 
A 


MAN 


yi 1 
heavyweight from the titan of high-priced timepieces. 1 - 
I told him that mine was the Steuer Corso, a 27-jewel \ 
automatic classic now available for only $179. And just 


like that, the man was at a loss for words. 


Think of Stauer as the “Robin Hood of Watchmakers.” We 


believe everyone deserves a watch of uncompromising precision, 


Bigshot bragged about his five-figure purchase, a luxury 


impressive performance and the most elegant styling. You deserve 

a watch that can hold its own against the luxury classics for a frac- 
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grown the need to show off. They have nothing to prove; they already 
proved it. They want superb quality and astonishing value. And that's 
exactly what we deliver. 


The Stauer Corso is proof that the worth of a watch doesnt depend on the size 

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Y STYLE 


BROGUES 
BOOT UP 


LACE-UP WINGTIPS 
ARE THE STURDY AND 
STYLISH BOOTS TO 
BEAT THIS WINTER 


* Brogues (also known as wingtips) abound in 
every style, from Wall Street proper to dandified 
suede. Just because winter’s inclement 
challenges are in full effect doesn’t mean you 
have to shelve the style until spring thaw. 
Designers from John Varvatos to Grenson to 
Frye (the Frye James Lug wingtip, $248, is 
pictured above) are putting the bro in brogues, 


le ; í 
“| ' > saf tion: | 
| x | '— brogues actually serves a func 


Low = 
WHY WINGTIPS? 


The dotted wing-shape design on | 


. 4 it keeps water from pooling and 
soaking through the leather 


with rugged but stylish boot versions that can 
kick the slush out of winter. This is a return to 
the brogue's roots as the chosen footwear of 
hardy Scottish Highlanders, who depended on 
them for protection and comfort while hiking 
the blustery heath. We're going to pair ours with 
wool pants or denim this season, but you're free 
to wear them with a kilt. 


Photography by HACOB PHOTOGRAPHY INC. 


SAVE YOUR SKIN 


WINTERIS YOUR SKIN'S WORST 
ENEMY. HERE'S OUR THREE- 


STEP PLAN TO WIN THE BATTLE 
AGAINST FREEZING TEMPERA- 
TURES, SKI-SLOPE SUNBURN AND 
THE MORNING COMMUTE 


ШШЩ] 


———— 1 


* Lather up with Malin 
* Goetz vitamin E 
shaving cream ($22), 
which not only soft- 
ens stubble but also 
moisturizes. 


GET CLOSE 


* John Allan's Shorty 
razor (part ofa 
compact four-piece 
shaving set, $118) is 
tricked out with a five- 
blade cartridge, but its 
coolest feature is the 
easy-to-grip handle, 
formed from a solid 
aluminum blank. 


Illustrations by BRUCE HUTCHISON 


DON'T BE 
A FLAKE 


* Not all dandruff 
shampoos smell 
medicinal and dry 
out your hair. Clear 
Men Scalp Therapy 
($7) contains 
aromatic tea tree 
and almond oils. 


STEP 1.» 
SHOWER 


HYDRATE 


* Dove Men + Care 
soap ($3.79) is one 
quarter moisturizing 
cream. Yes, you'll need 
that much to fight 

the thermal whiplash 
of going from dry, 
freezing air to a well- 
heated office. 


GIVE 'EM LIP 


* Blistex Lip Medex 
($2.19) can both pre- 
vent and heal chapped 
lips. It's priced low 
enough that you can 
keep containers in 
your car, your desk and 
your jacket pocket. 


4 STEP 3. 
SURVIVE 


HYDRATE AGAIN 


* If you work outdoors, 
Aun : your hands can 
= KIEH Ls have it even tougher 
n dus cred 5бодаё SINGE 1851 than your face. Jack 
Han d H ealer رر‎ + йд, Black Industrial 
wf VIRÓMICA LE Р 8 Strength Hand 
FÄCIAILEDEL Healer ($45) isloaded 
(UV GUIARD) with moisturizing 
аазы Aen - macadamia nut oil. 


ЖАГУ РЧ LOL 


BLOCK PARTY 


* In the snow you'll 
be blasted with UV 
rays from both above 
and below. Cover up 
with Kiehl's SPF 50+ 
Facial Fuel ($36). 


VJA VERI rin 
UM Cavers UTI 


Iti VO EUH 
win ЫГЫСУЫ 


33 


س 


THAT CASUAL FRIDAYS MOCKED 


SNUG UP THE TIE, SHINE, SPRITZ, AND DIG THROUGH THE SOCK DRAWER 

FOR THOSE CUFF LINKS YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR BUT NOW WANT. | 
TONIGHT IT'S WITH TONIC. MAYBE IT'S A MARTINI. WHO К 
NOD IN THE MIRROR AND YOU'RE SHAKING HANDS 


— —a. 


TONIGHT WE 


£i х o E FACEBOOK.COM/ TANQUERAY 


PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. 
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TANQUERAY DRY MARTINI 


1. Splash 2-4 dashes vermouth on 
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4. Deck with olive 


Alcohol content: 0.6 fl oz 


TONIGHT WE 


TANQUERAY SNAPPER 


1. Shake 1.25 oz of Tanqueray* London 
Dry Gin, 2 large dashes of 
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A dot of tabasco spice 


2. Wreck a few lemons and splash 
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— ++ 
— 


MOVIE OF THE MONTH 


THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY 


By Stephen Rebello 


: A fire-breathing dragon, a scene-grabbing popping up his head to check the terrain,’ says 
Gollum and massive hype fuel director Peter Freeman. “He’s thrown into a world in which 
Jackson's new $250 million 3-D epic. The Lord he faces danger on a regular basis, and it was 

of the Rings maestro's latest film series based on my and Peter's job to see the audience is scared 
a J.R.R. Tolkien book features Rings returnees along with the character and proud of him when 
Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving he's brave." Is Freeman ready for international 


and others. Martin Freeman (above) stars as the fandom? “We'll see. You'd have to be a lunatic to 
young hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins. “Bilbo’s like a want your personal privacy compromised. But 
meerkat complacently foraging and occasionally е film and the character are bigger than me.” 


ALSO SHOWING IN THEATERS 


LINCOLN SILVER LININGS DJANGO UNCHAINED 
1 Da ewis did extensive PLAYBOOK n Quentin Tarantin« | dy 
earch, got extremely thin Director David O, Ru | finds weirdly funny pre-C 
nd remained in character tragicomedy in th juirky fan sp tti V rn, Chr | 
nd off the { } ile. Brad E per stars a tr 1ewly freed 
elf to star і | bij ar forme acher frest Y he 
n Spiell y \ r ut of ital institutior t r I beautiful wife 
o r jurin е 16t! thinks his life is a nade from ery ke de 
r 1 four mon by ( land that I d L 


36 earth. It sounds worth it estranged wife will reunite eonardo DiCap 


HOOKED 
ON 


HITCHCOCK 


By Robert B. DeSalvo 


PLAYBOY Contributing Editor 
and resident film expert 
Stephen Rebello wrote 

the book on the master of 
suspense, A/fred Hitchcock 
and the Making of Psycho, 
which was adapted for the 
upcoming film Hitchcock. 


Q: 


A: Seeing Psycho the first time 
knocked me for a loop. I realized 
only a great artist—let alone a 
great showman—could create 
something powerful out of what 
snobs originally dismissed as 


just a genre movie 


а: 


A: I'm honored to say I'm a part 
of it. It has become rare for 
Hollywood to turn a nonfiction 
book into a film. It's even more 
unusual for that book's writer 
to contribute to the film's early 
development process. Hundreds 
of gifted people poured so much 
love into Hitchcock, and seeing 
the movie was almost an out-of- 
body experience. 


а: 


A: І leave the last word to the 
master himself. When a man 
told Hitchcock how much the 
man's wife hated Psycho, Hitch 
asked him, “Have you considered 
having her exterminated?" 


By Greg Fagan 


BOND 50 
$299 


If you've been 
waiting to give 
your 007 shelf 

the royal Blu 
treatment, this is 
it—all 22 films, a 
new World of Bond 
documentary and 
an elegant box. 
Nine of the films, 


UNIVERSAL including A View 
CLASSIC MONSTERS to a Kill, make their 
$160 Blu-ray debuts here. 


Frank, Drac, the 
Mummy and more 
are together in HD 
in this eight-film set, 
plus Creature From 
the Black Lagoon in 
its original 3-D. 


FILM NOIR 
COLLECTION: 
VOLUME ONE 
$90 


High-def versions 
of early-1950s 

film noir thrillers 
Appointment With 
Danger, Dark City, 
Rope of Sand and 
Union Station— 
each worth 
discovering. 


TARANTINO XxX: 
EIGHT-FILM 
COLLECTION 
$120 


Along with Quentin 
Tarantino’s finest, 
this set includes two 
meaty retrospective 
documentaries on 
his 20-year career. 


12 MEDIA MUST-HAVES 


ENTOURAGE: THE 
COMPLETE SERIES 
$250 


ALFRED 


im 
MI uE 


LOUK 


ALFRED 
HITCHCOCK: 

THE MASTERPIECE 
COLLECTION 

$299 


Of the 15 films 
assembled here, 13 
premiere on Blu-ray 
and include new and 
vintage extras—most 
of which appeared 
in 2005, but they're 
still great. 


All eight seasons 
are included, as well 
as 22 commentar- 
ies, a mockumen- 
tary, "The Mark 
Wahlberg Sessions" 
and more. 


GAME OF 
THRONES: THE 
COMPLETE FIRST 
SEASON COLLEC- 
TOR'S EDITION 
$100 

This box contains 
Blu-ray and digital 
sets of the first 


WATCHMEN: season, plus sea- 
COLLECTOR’S son two’s premiere 
EDITION episode—and 


$75 a dragon-egg 
In addition to paperweight. 
all previous cuts 
of the film, the 
highlight here 

is the original 
DC Comics 
Watchmen series 
in hardcover for 
the first time. 


UNIVERSAL 100TH 
ANNIVERSARY 
COLLECTION 

$299 

From A// Quiet on 
the Western Front 
(1930) to Despi- 
cable Me (2010), it's 
25 films, a book and 
a soundtrack CD. 


FORBIDDEN 
HOLLYWOOD: 
VOLUME FOUR 
$49 


Kay Francis co- 
stars in three of 
these four pre-Code 
comedies, including 
Jewel Robbery with 
William Powell. 


THE AMAZING 
SPIDER-MAN 3-D 
$96 


This swag-tastic 
box celebrates the 
rebooted franchise 
starring Andrew 
Garfield with Blu- 
ray 3-D, Blu-ray, 
DVD and UltraViolet 
digital copies—plus 
Spider-Man and the 
Lizard figurines. 


INDIANA JONES: 
THE COMPLETE 
ADVENTURES 
$100 


Museum-quality 
restorations of the 
first three films— 
especially Raiders 
of the Lost Ark— 
make up for mostly 
recycled extras. 


SYSTEM UPGRADE 


NINTE 


muscle 


NDO ISN'T AFRAID to sacrifice grap! 


GAME OF THE MONTH 


FAR CRY 3 


By Jason Buhrmester 


To survive Far Cry 3 (360, PC, PS3) you'll 
crawl through dense jungle, fend off wild 
beasts and take out pirates with a recurve 
bow or a quick knife to the throat. Not 
your style? Go big and blow up their 
camp with a grenade launcher, or take 
them out with a sniper rifle. Then grab 

a getaway vehicle such as a hang glider 

or Jet Ski and disappear into the foliage 
until your next chance to strike. Y Y Y 


* Now this is Survivor: Wash ashore on 
atropical island and find yourself in the 
middle of an uprising by the indigenous 
population against the well-armed and 
drugged-up pirates who terrorize them. 


У ENTERTAINMENT 


GARY CLARK JR. 


By Rob Tannenbaum 


* Now and then a young 
singer-guitarist comes 
along who is declared 
to be “the future of the 
blues." In the 1970s it 
was Son Seals; in the 
1980s it was 
Robert Cray 
and Stevie Ray 


ла 
Vaughan. (Cray ye 
was better than g 


Vaughan.) But 
for nearly 30 


recording or touring. 
Gary Clark Jr., who 
is 28 years old, played 
Bonnaroo and Lolla- 
palooza this summer on 
the strength of only a 
few recorded 
songs. His full 
debut, Blak 
and Blu, earns 
the hype, with 
raucous songs 
about women, 


- 


yearstherehas BLAKANDBLU booze and 


been no one, Gary Clark Jr. 


unless you’ve been 
desperate enough to 
fall for Jonny Lang or 
Keb’ Mo’. The blues 
have been kept alive 
by old musicians, who 
have an unfortunate 
habit of dying and 
therefore no longer 


le J 


other kinds 
of danger, plus a Jimi 
Hendrix cover and lots 
of distorted, aggressive 
guitar. Careful: Clark's 
solo on the last three 
minutes of “When My 
Train Pulls In” could 
stab your eye out. 


YYYY 


38 


BOOK 


FLIGHT 
BEHAVIOR 


By Leopold Froehlich 


* With her 14th book, 
Barbara Kingsolver 
returns to the hills of 
Appalachia to tell the tale 
of Dellarobia Turnbow, a 
29-year-old mother of two 
who deserves a better life 
than the one she has been 
granted. Dellarobia is at 
the end of her tether when 
she one day discovers 
millions of monarch but- 
terflies wintering on her 
in-laws' property. The but- 
terflies, driven from their 
Mexican home by climate 
change, face extinction 
inthe Tennessee win- 

ter. Dellarobia rises to the 
challenge, and the ensuing 
drama is presented with 
all the élan we have come 
to expect from the author 
of The Poisonwood Bible. 
Kingsolver deserves credit 
for writing about how we 
are destroying our natu- 
ral world. She occasionally 
resorts to the soapbox, 

and her characters lose 


Barbara 


Kingsolver 
Ò 


Fli g ht 
Behavior 


credibility when they 
exhort the reader. Some 
ofthe didacticism is mis- 
directed, as Kingsolver is 
clearly preaching to the 
converted. One doubts the 
chairman of Consol Energy 
would be swayed by her 
characters' arguments. 
What's more effective is 
Kingsolver's sympathetic 
defense of Appalachians 
and their way of life. Like 
Richard Powers's National 
Book Award-winning The 
Echo Maker, this is a novel 
about the confusions of 
migration—both human 
and otherwise. It’s an 
important book and also a 
compelling one. Y Y Y 


Don't be fooled by the title: The TBS 
comedy Wedding Band shares pre- 
cious little DNA with the far superior 
nuptials-inspired likes of Wedding 
Crashers. The show chronicles the 
adventures of four 30-ish dudes (led 
by 90270 alum Brian Austin Green) 


WEDDING BAND 


who have day jobs but spend most of 
their time playing the Seattle events 
circuit as Mother of the Bride. Pro- 
ducers seem to think that by simply 
putting the guys into wacky situations, 
hilarity will ensue. It never does. The 
cover songs are pretty good, though. Y 


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Y RAW DATA 


# 
7 
Е 
, 
f 


2 


Number of golf balls 
Alan Shepard hit on 
the surface of the 
moon during the 1971 
Apollo 14 mission 


Club he used 
6-IRON 


Distance Shepard 
estimated the ball 
traveled 


400 


YARDS 


According 
to scientists, 
a recently 
announced 
62-mile-wide 
crater in 
Siberia holds 
enough 
diamonds 

to supply 
the world's 
needs for 


3.000 
YEARS 


SIGNIFICA, INSIGNIFICA, STATS AND FACTS 


The 17-minute battle sequence in Matrix Reloaded cost an estimated 


million to million 

produce, per 

or roughly Ф minute 
Worldwide, the film earned more than 


$740 MILLION 


There are a 

5 million 

miles of 

Street Ф megabytes 
View roads of imagery. 


available 


on Google 
Maps 

The data 
include 


SUGAR FIX 


More soda is con- 
sumed in the U.S. than 


n any other country, 


at a rate of 50 gallons 
per person annually. 
Second place: Ireland 
at 33 gallons 


TUNE UP @ 


Number of songs 
available on iTunes 


26 


EYES WIDE SHUT 


O 


We lose up to 6 seconds of 
visual information every minute 
from blinking 


During a 150-minute 


film, your eyes are 
shut for up to 


INFECTIOUS BEAUTY 


Chance of 
your computer 
being infected 
with malware 
after an online 
search for - 

Emma Watson, чац 
making her the 
most danger- 
ous celebrity 
search subject, 
according to 
McAfee 


12.6% 


ad 
(5 
> 


> 


Rank of 
Jimmy 
Kimmel, 
the only 
male to 
make the 
top 20. 


13 


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“MANTRACK 


THE BEST OF EVERYTHING 


ONE 
COOL CAT 


JAGUAR UNVEILS 
ITS FIRST NEW 
TWO-SEAT SPORTS 
CARIN 50 YEARS 


* This year’s Paris Motor 
Show felt like NFL draft 
day. Hugely hyped mechan- 
ical athletes were unveiled 
with fanfare, and an excit- 
ing new future of motoring 
came into focus. Rather 
than quarterbacks Andrew 
Luck and RG3, we saw a 


PS 


TOP MODEL: 


FIVE-LITER V8, 
495 HP, 
4.2-SECOND 
ZERO TO 60. 


SMALL WONDER 


TWO SEATS, 
LOW PRICE AND 
ENDLESS FUN 


Bentley racing car, a new 
Lamborghini and impres- 
sive new machinery from 
Porsche. But for us, one car 
stole the show: Jaguar's 
F-Type, the British firm's 
first all-new two-seat 
sports car in 50 years, 
going back to the E-Type 
ofthe 1960s. Jag held the 
global unveiling at the 
Musée Rodin, and we were 
there, as was the marque's 
now-legendary design 


chief Ian Callum, whom 
we can thank for this ride's 
shapely and aggressive fig- 
ure. “What is a sports car?" 
Jaguar globalbrand chief 
Adrian Hallmark asked. 
“It's arace car you can 
drive on the road. With the 
F-Type we tried to keep it 
pure." What you're buy- 
ing: an aluminum-bodied 
little rocket with a choice 
of three engines—a three- 
liter V6 (340 hp, 5.1-second 
zero to 60), a supercharged 
three-liter V6 version (380 
hp, 4.8-second zero to 60) 


THERE'S A 
reason Mazda's 
MX-5 Miata is the 
worldwide best- 
selling two-seat 
sports car of all 
time, with nearly 
a million cars 
produced since 
its 1989 debut. 
It's sleek and 
quick, and for 
the millions who 
desire a roadster 
but can't afford 
the new Jaguar 
above, the MX-5 
clocks in at a cool 
$24,000 base. 


and a fat five-liter V8 (495 
hp, 4.2-second zero to 60). 
Slip into the cockpit and 
you'll find old-school knobs 
on the instrument panel, 
sophisticated yet ana- 

log. The stitched leather 
smells like a cologne Jag 
should bottle. The tag will 
range from $69,000 to 
$92,000, a few bucks more 
than the Porsche Box- 

ster. Now owned by Indian 
auto behemoth Tata, Jag- 
uar is putting out the best 
machinery in its 77-year 
history. Expect to see the 
new all-star at your local 
dealership in early spring. 


Older models are 
remembered for 
their front end, 
which included a 
curved grille that 
appeared to be 
smiling, as if the 
car were fueled 
by Prozac. For 
2013, a freshly 
designed front 
fascia (its "chin") 
gives the MX-5 a 
bolder appear- 
ance, and Mazda 
added new color 
options such as 
liquid silver and 
crystal white 


pearl. Go for the 
Club version, 
which comes with 
cool gunmetal- 
alloy wheels and 
a front air dam. To 
see one go, tune 
in to the Playboy 
Mazda MX-5 Cup 
racing series 
(MX-5cup.com). 
Or better yet, 

get into a spec 
MX-5 and go 
racing. There's no 
cheaper or easier 
way to begin 
your competition 
career. 


RACE AROUND THE WORLD 


THE THREE BEST MOTORING ADVENTURES ON EARTH 


THE RIDE 

Competing in Mexico's Baja 
1000, one ofthe toughest off- 
road races around, isn't for 
everyone. But you can still 
enjoy a wild adventure on 
the course in the rough-and- 
rugged car pictured above. 


BUCKLE UP 

Wide Open Excursions 
(wideopenbaja.com) runs 
multiday trips along the 
Baja Peninsula. A four-day 
ride from Cabo to La Paz 
and back goes for $5,495. 
Burritos not included. 


THE COCKPIT 

A real Baja Challenge race 
car, with a Subaru four 
cylinder and GPS—capable 
of 90 mph in the dirt. 


+ ORIGINAL ж 


" 
— 


“MIDNIGHT | 


MOON 


MOONSHINI 


Ann Mn UL سے‎ en 


THE RIDE 

Germany's Nürburgring 
Nordschleife (also called 
“Green Hell") is the most 
dangerous racetrack in 

the world: 12.9 miles of 
madness curling through the 
mountains around the ancient 
castle of Nürburg—and 
around 73 tricky corners. 


BUCKLE UP 

Formula One races were held 
here until 1976, when the 
track was deemed too danger- 
ous. Don'tletthat stop you 
from driving it. Dig into the 
famous Caracciola-Karussell 
corner and Flugplatz bend, 
buttake it easy: Drivers die on 
the Ring every year. 


THE COCKPIT 

First, leta pro take you around 
thetrackinthe BMW Ring 
Taxi, an ass-kicking M5 ($279, 
bmw-motorsport.com). Then 
rent arace-prepared Suzuki 
Swift (about $390 a day, 
rent4ring.de). Trust us, it's all 
the power you'll need. 


HIGH- 
OCTANE 
FUEL 


more than 38,000 Midnight 
ROBERT GLEN miles and winning 50 Moon 
"Junior" Johnson races. In his old age came 


(pictured at right) 
learned how to go 
fast while running 
moonshine in rural 


North Carolina in the 
1940s. "You had to be 
a good driver and have 
a fast car to outrun 

the law,” the 81-year- 
old remembers. After 
a 1956 arrest, he quit 
moonshining and 
joined the fledgling 
NASCAR series, racing 


the speed legend has 
returned to his roots, 
partnering with a liquor 
company to produce 


THE RIDE 

Road-trip through Italy's 
Motor Valley (Bologna, 
Modena and the villages 
in between), home of the 
legends: Ferrari, Maserati, 
Lamborghini, Ducati et al. 


BUCKLE UP 

Don't miss the Ferruccio 
Lamborghini Museum, with 
its Lambo choppers and 
pope-mobiles (museo 
lamborghini.it); the Ducati 
Museum at the motorcycle 
maker's Bologna plant (ducati 
.com); the Panini Museum, 
home ofthe Maserati collec- 
tion that originally belonged 
tothe Maserati brothers 
(paninimotormuseum.it); 
and the Ferrari Museum, 
across from the auto factory 
(museo.ferrari.com). 


THE COCKPIT 

Book a tour guide and a 
vintage Fiat 500 (about 
$650 a day) ora new Ferrari 
(about $650 for one hour) 
through modenatur.it. 


his own moonshine. 
"We found a still close 
to where we live that 
a guy built in 1930," 
he says. "We cranked 
it up and started 


daddy’s recipe. 
That's where 


making whiskey 
according to my 5 


BANG FOR 
THE BUCK 


HOW TO BULLET- 
PROOF YOUR CAR 


THE ECONOMY is 
still low on gas, but 
one business that's 
booming is the 
armored-automobile 
industry. Credit the 
Mexican drug war for 
the uptick in demand. 
If you're in the market, 
or just want to see 
the product in action, 
visit Texas Armoring 
Corporation's website 
(texasarmoring.com). 
“Today | will redefine 
what it means to 
stand behind my 
product,” says CEO 
Trent Kimball ina 
video on the site’s 
home page. He 

then steps behind 

a windshield, and 

an employee fires 
three shots at his 
face with an AK-47. 
Get a quote on your 
ride, customize 

your own limo or 
shop for a ready- 
made vehicle—a 2011 
Cadillac Escalade 
($350,000) or a 2002 
VW Passat ($37,500). 
Then take a leisurely 
road trip into the 
heart of the Mexican 
war zone. 


from.” Try the 
triple-distilled corn 
moonshine—or any of 
the five fruit-flavored 
varieties—over ice 
with soda or tonic. 
Just not behind the 
wheel. ($20, juniors 
midnightmoon.com) 


2 MANTRACK 


THE BEST ОР EVERY THINS 


A WELL-CRAFTED 


MANHATTAN 
EXPERIENCE 


BEGINS WOLCT.H 


WOODFORD RESERVE? 


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= MANTRACK 


Hre BEST OF EVERYTHING 


LEVEL UP 


Headphones 
modeled after those 
worn by attack 
helicopter pilots 

can easily handle 
your virtual battles. 
Razer’s BlackShark 
stereo headset ($120, 
razerzone.com) 

uses deep ear cups, a 
detachable mike and 
booming bass to put 
you in the cockpit. 


(2) 
The Wikipad ($500, 
wikipad.com) packs 
a powerful Android 
tablet into a remov- 
able gaming rig, 
perfect for playing 
games downloaded 
from Google Play 
and PlayStation 
Mobile on a screen 
that rivals the iPad's. 
It's the best mix of 
work and play. 


3 


Smalllaptops can 
pack serious gam- 
ing muscle. Cram an 
Nvidia GeForce GT 
650M graphics card 
and an Intel Core i7 
processor into Ori- 
gin's customizable 
EON11-S ($1,272, 
originpc.com), then 
fire up Warcraft and 
forget about going 
outside for a while. 


SHATTERED WINDOWS 


EVERYTHING YOU KNEW ABOUT MICROSOFT IS DEAD 


* Someone killed the "Start" menu. 
Turn on a PC running the new 
Windows 8 operating system and 
the familiar menu in the bottom-left 
corner that has welcomed PC users 
since Windows 95 is gone. Based on 
user studies, engineers decided the 
button had outlived its usefulness 


and replaced the Windows you knew 
with a radical mosaic of colorful tiles 
that can be dragged, dropped and 
grouped together to your liking. 
Originally dubbed Metro (a name 
abandoned after worries over legal 
action from German company Metro 
AG), this new graphic approach has 


worked its way onto all Microsoft 
devices, including the Xbox 360 and 
the latest Windows Phones such as 
the Nokia Lumia 820 (pictured). It 
works best on the Microsoft Surface, 
a touchscreen tablet that lets you flick 
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by James Franco 


Gus Van Sant is the rare director who has 
found success both at the art house and 
at the multiplex. His works have screened 
at nearly every major film festival and 
taken top honors at Cannes, but he is also 
responsible for mainstream hits such as Good 
Will Hunting, Finding Forrester and. Milk, 
his biopic about gay trailblazer Harvey 
Milk, which earned Van Sant an Academy 
Award nomination for best director. One of 
the stars of Milk, PLAYBOY Contributing 
Editor James Franco, won an Independent 
Spirit Award for best supporting male actor 
in the film. The two friends sat down to 
discuss how Van Sant navigates the fuzzy 
line between independent and commercial 
filmmaking, his latest work and where his 
career is headed next. 


FRANCO: It seems your career has 
phases of commercial, studio-based 
films, and then you'll take a huge swing 
in the other direction, with smaller, 
independent films. Do you ever have a 
sense of what will be commercially suc- 
cessful and what won't? 

VAN SANT: Well, you just don’t know. 
You have ideas about it. You always 
figure it can break out, and sometimes 
it does. But how can you tell? I’m never 
able to think commercially. When I’m 
interested in a project, I always figure 
other people will be interested too; I 
just don’t know how many. The budget 
for Finding Forrester was the biggest 
I’ve ever worked with, but it was still 
a human story between a couple of 
characters. It wasn’t much different 
from, say, Good Will Hunting, and that 
was a smaller film that broke out and 
made a lot of money. I didn’t know 
whether that would happen or not; I 
just liked the story. I can never guess. 


ILLUSTRATION BY RAUL ALLEN 


FRANCO: Tell me about Promised Land, 
your new film. It’s about fracking, right? 
VAN SANT: That’s right. Matt Damon 
co-wrote it with John Krasinski, based 
on a story by Dave Eggers about frack- 
ing in Alaska. It then became a story 
set in the Northeast, about a natural 
gas salesman who leases land from 
farmers. He's from Iowa, working in 
New York City, and it’s about him em- 
bracing his own business practices and 
his New York business sensibility in the 
face of adverse conditions. 

FRANCO: Can you break down frack- 
ing for me? Why is it so bad? 

VAN SANT: It’s a way to get natural 
gas from shale below the earth’s sur- 
face, sometimes very far below. It’s not 
necessarily bad as a practice. What’s 
bad is the way the U.S. can make plans 
and rush in without adhering to clean- 
air codes. But our film isn’t really about 
that. It’s more about general business 
practices and the underhanded nature 
of these things than specifically about 
oil and gas companies. 

FRANCO: When we were working on 
Milk, we were shooting in San Francisco, 
in the actual locations and storefronts 
where Harvey Milk ran his campaign. 
Harvey was a hero in San Francisco, 
and I felt that city had a vested interest 
in what we were doing. Did you? 

VAN SANT: I guess there was a lot of 
pressure, but I was surprised the city 
was so open and happy to have us. 
They were proud of their history, they 
were proud of Harvey and they were 
proud of their politics. Even though 
it’s a political story, anyone who may 
have opposed Harvey seemed to uni- 
formly support what we were doing. 
From the extras to City Hall, every- 
body was really happy to be part of it. 
I think it was because we were mak- 
ing a story about their city, above all. 
Another thing about that particular 
story is that Harvey flies under the bio- 
graphical radar; it’s not a story about 
JFK or Lincoln. When people have a 
wide knowledge of the visuals and of 


the story, it makes doing a biography 
daunting, but Harvey’s story was less 
known, so it was going to be new. 
FRANCO: Besides directing, you also 
paint, you’re a photographer and you’ve 
written a book. You even have an album 
called 18 Songs About Golf, right? 

VAN SANT: Yeah. I was actually play- 
ing golf at the time. I was 29, working 
in New York, and my father would 
have me play on Saturday mornings 
in his foursome. It was three guys and 
myself, and we would go to the Darien, 
Connecticut country club and play 18 
holes of golf. Each Saturday afternoon 
I would write a song. And since I was 
playing golf, the song was about golf. I 
was just learning how to make a song, 
and after a couple of golf songs, I real- 
ized, Oh, there should be 18, because 
there are 18 holes. So I wrote 18 songs 
and made a little album that I gave to 
my friends. 

FRANCO: But now people can buy it. 
Do you think it’s weird? Directing is 
your livelihood, but now this humorous 
album you made is out there. 

VAN SANT: I don’t know if there’s a 
difference. It doesn’t seem as though 
there would be. You’re making a piece 
of work, of art or whatever it is, and 
then you’re evaluating it. Maybe you’re 
not marketing it, but you are playing it 
for people. 

FRANCO: Where do you think you'll 
go next? Is it harder now to make small 
independent films? 

VAN SANT: It's harder because the 
marketplace is getting cheaper and 
cheaper. With financing you can get 
only half the amount for a filn now 
that you could get before. Ten years 
ago it was easier. But I've always made 
them for so little that I have a long way 
to go before I start hurting. 

FRANCO: So you're returning to your 
indie roots? 

VAN SANT: Not necessarily. I've been 
trying to write an action film, one of 
those tent-pole movies. Why not? I've 
never done it before. ш 


49 


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By Joel Sein 


nybody who has spent any 
time around children knows 
they are incredibly stupid. 
Many cannot even read. 
So it’s not surprising that 
they watch TV shows made 
for stupid people: You say it’s a country with 
1.3 billion people who use chopsticks and speak 
Chinese? I don’t know this country of which 
you want to explore, Dora! But women, in 
the vast majority of my experiences, are 
not stupid. They say smart things, run 
smart companies, trick me into buying 
things I would never, ever want to buy. 
Yet women watch TV shows that are even 
dumber than the ones children like. The 
average Bravo viewer is college educated, 
wealthy, traveled and needs to know why 
Teresa Giudice called Danielle Staub a 
“prostitution whore.” Worse, women 
admit to watching horrifying shows as a 
pleasure they claim to feel guilty about 
but clearly do not feel nearly guilty 
enough about. When you actually feel 
guilty about a pleasure, you don’t talk 
about it all the time. Trust me. 

Smart women watching dumb shows 
makes no sense. The only explanation is 
that the TV sends out waves that travel 
to the vagina and up to the brain, where 
they temporarily reduce IQ. I suggest 
this rationale not because I believe it but 
to demonstrate the kind of idiotic things 
people say on TV shows women watch. 

And these aren’t accidental indulgences 
that happen when women are flipping 
channels. When you ask a woman why 


she’s keeping up with the Kardashians, 
she'll freely admit the show is fake and 
stupid, but she needs to know what hap- 
pens anyway. Which means women are 
having premeditated moronic experi- 
ences. When men do something stupid, 
we are tricked into it, usually late at night, 
usually when we’re drunk. We wouldn’t 
decide a week in advance to program a 
DVR to record “$1,000 withdrawal from 
the ATM at Spearmint Rhino.” 

I know guys aren’t watching astrophys- 
icist Brian Greene explain the origins of 
the universe on Nova. But actually they 
are. Sure, they’re also watching Monday 
Night Football and Ice Road Truckers, but 
that’s Masterpiece Theatre compared with 
Mob Wives and Bridalplasty. 

These shows aren’t just dumb, they’re 
sexist. Vapid, slutty women either com- 
pete for men’s affection or compete to see 
who can spend their husband’s money 
fastest. Porn actresses are better role mod- 
els. At least they don’t constantly com- 
plain about not getting what they want. 
And when they do, the men around them 
seem very, very happy to give it to them. 

I shouldn’t even know how bad these 
shows are, but like all men, I’ve been 
needled into watching The Bachelor, Gossip 
Girl, Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of 
Every City Bravo Could Find and America’s 
Next Top Model. Women who would never 
watch five minutes of Deadliest Catch have 
no problem insisting that men give Here 
Comes Honey Boo Boo a chance. And we do 
it. Because unlike with crustaceans, a pro- 
longed fight with women involves talking. 

That’s why, when my wife and I visited 
my mom this summer, I watched a show 
called Bachelor Pad. The game show took 
place in a house inhabited by a bunch of 
young white women I couldn’t tell apart 
and a bunch of young white guys who 
all seemed gay. They had contests and 
voted one another out and gave roses 


to people they wanted to keep around. 
Things that took 20 seconds in real time 
took six minutes in Bachelor Pad time. 
About halfway through I had a familiar 
annoyed, disgusted reaction to the enti- 
tled, narcissistic people on the show. For 
a day I couldn't figure out when I'd had 
that feeling before. Then I remembered: 
reading Jane Austen. 

But through years and years of remedi- 
al English literature majoring and master- 
ing, I was able to figure out that what an- 
noyed me about Pride and Prejudice is also 
what makes it great. There's a secret world 
of feminine semaphore that Austen—and 
these awful reality shows—amplifies and 
slows down in order to elucidate. That 
way you can see the unnecessary secrets to 
test alliances, the insults carefully designed 
to look like compliments to everyone ex- 
cept the person at whom they're directed, 
the lies to break up friendships. Machina- 
tions worthy of a medieval court are used 
by reality-show cast members to get a guy 
to kiss them a little longer than he kissed 
some other girl. The amount of strategy 
used by a coach to determine whether to 
go on fourth down is the same amount of 
strategy Brittnee uses to decide whether to 
tell Madison that Michael told her that he 
liked—I can't even stay interested enough 
to finish this hypothetical situation. 

But as ridiculous as all that is, it’s how 
women see everything—all the time. 
Which must be exhausting. You buy her 
flowers because they're on sale at Trader 
Joe's. Three hours after getting the ger- 
bera daisies, she's yelling at you about 
what you posted on your ex-girlfriend's 
Facebook page. To explain the psycho- 
logical jujitsu she did to get from the dai- 
sies to your assumed guilt about the Face- 
book posting would take about 44 min- 
utes of boring exposition spoken slowly 
into a camera. Which is why they have to 
make those reality stars so hot. ш 


ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE STREETER 


know that you, my loyal PLAYBOY 
readers, think of me as an old mar- 
ried beyotch, but that wasn't always 
my status. When I was a young single 
beyotch, my dating life was more 
active than Ann Coulter's thyroid. 
While I don't miss them in the 
least, I remember those times well. 
I especially enjoyed that point in a 
relationship when I was ready to go 
all the way, prepared to throw down 
the old dirty-dirty for the first time 
as a couple. For me, this was sometimes 
the third or fourth date in. Other times, 
it was the third or fourth drink in. And if 
the lucky guy supersized my meal, well, 
let's just say he could definitely count on 
boarding the train to Poontown by the 
time the check arrived. 

Guys, it's pretty simple. If she's into 
you, it's like you're the U.S. Olympic 
basketball team and she's the Nigerian 
team: It's not going to be hard to shoot 
and score. Even ifthe path to a woman's 
vagina is as confusing as her Facebook 
time line, when she's willing and able 
to do the deed, only you can cock-block 
yourself. So here are some helpful tips 
to guide you on your journey to the 
place between her thighs. 

Let's start with the basics. Preparation 
for a night of new nookie should be- 
gin with the big H, and by that I 
mean hygiene. Before going to 
meet up with your sweetie, take 
a nice hot shower, scrub, soak, 
floss, shave, pluck, exfoliate, 
sandblast—whatever you 
need to do. You don't have 
to be the best-looking guy or 
the smartest or the wealthi- 
est. But if you smell vaguely 
like an onion stuffed with 
Limburger cheese spritzed 
with Axe body spray, you'll 
be touching yourself more 
than a third-base coach with 
chicken pox. 

'They say clothes make the 
man. Clothes can also make 
that man make a woman. So if 
you're dating a normal girl, there 
are a few fashion choices to avoid. 
These include Crocs, dreadlocks, ascots, 
argyle socks, suspenders, jackets with epau- 
lets, capes, thongs, spats, knickers, Hello Kitty fanny 
packs, monocles, stovepipe hats and hand-knitted mit- 
tens. And while you're at it, leave your Darth Vader hel- 
met at home. 

So now you're ready to get your girl and begin your 
special night. To help you in your Indiana Jones-like 
trek to the ark of your lady friend's covenant, follow 
the three rules of real estate: location, location, loca- 
tion. A seven-course meal is going to stuff her (and not 
in the good way), an amusement park will exhaust her 
too much to take a ride on your Tilt-a-Whirl, and if the 
movie you watch together is sad, forget about it. Your cry- 


the 


ing at the end of The Notebook is not an 
aphrodisiac—that sappy ending will 
cost you a happy ending. 

Wherever you end up taking her, 
keep the boozing to a minimum. You 
need to avoid the most dreaded so- 
cial disease of all: whiskey dick. Noth- 
ing ruins a first time like your going 
from Peter North to Peter South in 30 
seconds flat. 

Okay, now you look good, you smell 

good, you’ve treated her to a magical 
night on the town. But wait! Where do 
you plan on bringing her to consum- 
mate this union? Your place? If the 
answer is yes, you’d better do some 
cleaning in that hellhole of yours— 
and by “cleaning” I don’t mean spray- 
ing Febreze and making sure the toi- 
let’s flushed. You’ve got to make that 
place look more like a scene from in- 
side The Bachelor’s house and less like 
a crime scene from Law & Order: SVU. 
I don’t care how cute and charming 
you are, she’s not going to stay in your 
bed if she feels a half-eaten pizza crust 
wedged between her butt cheeks. On 
the other hand, don’t clean up so 
much that it looks premeditated. 
If she walks into a dimly lit bed- 
room with mood music already 
playing and a bottle of cham- 
pagne chilling, she’s going to feel 
as if she walked onto the set of 
Extreme Makeover: Desperate-to- 
Get-Laid Edition. 

Once she’s in and she’s 
comfortable, the next step 
is to grab her and throw 
her onto the bed, right? 

Wrong. Slow down, Mike 
Tyson! Patience is a virtue. 

No woman, no matter how 
horny, wants a guy to at- 
tack her like Kobe Bryant 
in a Cialis factory. It’s your 
first time together. Make it 
last. Chances are you’re both 
nervous, and even the slightest 
bit of aggression could have her 

blowing her rape whistle like an 
over-bribed NBA referee. 

While you’re at it, keep the chatter, 
especially dirty talk, to a minimum. Even 

worse than saying something overly sexual is 
saying something downright stupid. Some women may 
actually forgive you for channeling your inner Ron Jeremy, 
but saying idiotic things like “Nice rack! Who’s your sur- 
geon?" or “What’s the matter, don’t you own a razor?" or 
“Hey, I'm a Republican" doesn’t work for anybody. 

As for me, when I was dating, it all came down to one 
word: romance. Candlelit dinners, flowers, soft music. Does 
that make me cheesy? Sure it does. Remember, guys: Women 
are like pizza—cheese works well on both of them. Make a 
woman feel that being alone with her is more important to 
you than beating your buddy in Call of Duty, and your call of 
duty will be to her bedroom—every night. W 53 


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Ате women more likely to be 
attracted to a man if his penis is 
tattooed and/or pierced? What 
about if it's circumcised? And 
does skin tone matter?—J.R., 
Seattle, Washington 

We assume that, in most cases, 
by the time a woman sees a man's 
genitals she has already decided she 
finds him attractive, regardless of 
his skin color or the status of his 
foreskin. It also stands to reason 
that a man who has tattooed or 
pierced his penis has ink and holes 
elsewhere; in fact, a woman may 
hesitate if a partner's penis is the 
only part he's modified. (Who starts 
there?) Can you make assumptions 
about the sexuality of a person who 
has tats or piercings? That's a con- 
tinuing debate. Numerous studies 
suggest that adults who get tattoos 
or piercings start having sex sooner 
and. are more sexually active than 
those who remain unadorned. The 
presumption is that modern primi- 
lives are sensualists and therefore 
more likely to engage in risky sexual 
behavior; however, a study released 
this year found no evidence for 
that. Another report from 2005 
concluded that among college stu- 
dents, 96 percent of men and 94 
percent of women with tattoos have 
had intercourse, compared with 72 
percent of men and 68 percent of 
women without. So if you’re in col- 
lege, look for ink. 


How do you get the ball rolling 
when you have an idea for a new 
product? Do you make a pro- 
totype? Do you need an attor- 
ney? I’ve seen the commercials 
and websites that claim to help 
inventors, but I have no confi- 
dence in them.—M.L., Grand 
Rapids, Michigan 

You're right to be skeptical. Before 
you devote any cash to your idea, find 
out if it’s original, patentable and 
marketable. Louis Foreman, creator 
of the PBS reality show Everyday 
Edisons, founder of EdisonNation 
.com and co-author of The Indepen- 
dent Inventor’s Handbook, points 
out that you can do much of the 
initial work on your own, includ- 
ing conducting free searches of the more than 
8 million patents on file at uspto.gov. Fore- 
man recommends you rely on fellow inven- 
tors, either online or through a local inventors’ 
club, for guidance on the process. Before you 
spend thousands of dollars to create a working 
model and hire an attorney or agent, identify 
your customer (‘Americans” or “men” doesn’t 
cut it), figure out if there’s demand (i.e., does 
it make life easier?) and make sure the cost 
of bringing the product to market isn’t more 
than you could charge for it. At that point, 
"if ws unique, feasible and will make money, 
you'll always find investors,” Foreman says. 


mua 


had an interior designer renovate my bachelor pad. 
He bought $10,000 worth of contemporary furni- 
ture and had it upholstered. The problem is, I don't 
like it. The pieces seem too expensive to resell on 
Craigslist. What's the best way to find a buyer?— 
D.C., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Your first call should. be to the designer. Mamy designers 
encounter buyer's remorse, and yours may have resources to 
help you change out the furniture. It sounds as though he 
pushed the pieces because he felt they looked good in the space, 
and they might, but his job is to help you realize your vision. 
That said, you have responsibilities too. If you don’t express 
reservations until after a purchase, how is he to know? If 
the designer isn't helpful, you may be able to recover some of 
the cost with a consignment shop—in Philly, try Phantastic 
Phinds—or by listing them on a site such as Lushpad.com, 
which specializes in modern furniture. 


Finally, don’t talk about the specifics of your 
idea with anyone until you have a patent in 
hand. We learned that the hard way with our 
juicer-vibrator-doorbell. 


[уе hit it off online with a 28-year-old 
woman who lives in Mexico. If we get seri- 
ous, would I have to marry her to bring 
her to the U.S., or could we live together 
first? —D.R., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
Slow down, hombre. It's far too early to 
arrange a threesome with the State Department. 
Besides, with some exceptions, the government 
requires that you meet your partner in person 


before it will recognize the marriage. 
So your new friend should visit you, 
or you her, as a tourist. Assuming 
the relationship progresses according 
to (your) plan, you could marry in 
Mexico and apply to bring her to the 
U.S. as a relative, or she could apply 
for a fiancée visa and you could 
marry within 90 days of her entry. 
Be wary if she asks you to send money 
for her travel expenses. We've heard 
that story too mamy times. In fact, be 
wary generally. Anything can hap- 
pen, but long-distance relationships 
usually start up close. 


| have a crush on one of my 
husband's friends. I wouldn't 
pursue this, but my marriage is 
essentially over. My husband's 
friend used to call or text me 
every day. But over the sum- 
mer, after I hadn't spoken to 
him for a while, I deleted him 
as a Facebook friend. A month 
later he e-mailed to ask why I 
had done that. We exchanged 
instant messages, and I friended 
him again. I happened to look 
at his page, and he had posted 
that he was “just not happy." For 
whatever reason, he doesn't talk 
or text unless I hit him up first. 
Should I delete him again?— 
T.W., New Castle, Delaware 
You're asking the wrong question. 
Do you want to delete the friend 
you're living with? Once you figure 
that out, the status of your virtual 
flirtations will become clearer. 


TOMER HANUKA 


М, first long road trip will 
take me from the Midwest to 
the Pacific Northwest. Besides 
checking the air pressure and 
wear on the tires and getting 
an oil change, what should I 
do to maximize fuel economy 
and ensure a safe trip?—R.E., 
Parkville, Missouri 

You're on the right track. It never 
hurts to have a trusted mechanic 
give the vehicle a once-over. Because 
you can't predict what you might 
encounter, have reliable roadside 
service in place with your auto 
insurer, AAA (aaa.com) or both. 
Since we tend not to venture more 
than 10 miles from the Mansion, we e-mailed 
road warrior Davy Rothbart, co-creator and 
editor of Found magazine. He's taken eight 
cross-country road trips in the past 10 years 
with his brother, Peter. They're in the midst of a 
75-city, 37-state tour to promote the magazine 
and Davy's new book, My Heart Is an Idiot. 
He offers this: “Remove unnecessary items 
to maximize fuel efficiency—a lot of people 
keep way too much stuff in their trunk. As for 
safety, we've learned not to play with fatigue. 
If you’re tired, pull off at the next exit for a 
nap. We plan night drives only in the flat- 
lands; mountain curves in the dark can be 


55 


PLAYBOY 


56 


tricky. Finally, be sure to stop in smaller, for- 
gotten towns along the way and have a beer 
at a local bar. That’s the best way to explore 


the country.” Happy driving, and stopping. 


Does a woman who has never had an 
orgasm during intercourse enjoy sex as 
much as one who does reach climax?— 
D.W., Lincoln, New Hampshire 

Of course she does—assuming her partner 
knows that many women don’t come consis- 
tently, if ever, during intercourse because a 
thrusting erection doesn’t provide direct stimu- 
lation of the clitoris. That’s why a conscien- 
tious lover makes sure his partner comes first, 
whether by tongue, vibrator or finger. If the 
stars align and she comes again during inter- 
course, that’s great. If you climax first, make 
sure she comes after you (see above). 


Which cigars are best for a novice?— 
S.L., Lafayette, Louisiana 

Tough question. We are limited in the same 
way we would be if you asked for the best 
wine or the best cut of steak. Aaron Sigmond, 
co-author of Playboy: The Book of Cigars, 
has always told us to instruct new cigar afi- 
cionados to try as many brands and blends as 
they can, "not to discover what they like but 
what they don't." Novices typically gravitate 
toward light-body and mild-blend tobacco. 
“With that in mind, the best ‘starters’ are 
usually those with a Connecticut shade USA, 
Ecuadorian Connecticut shade or Camer- 
oon wrapper leaf,” Sigmond says. "Those are 
among the lightest, and in the case of Camer- 
oon, slightly sweet, wrappers. For the binder 
and filler leaves look for either Dominican or 
Honduran tobacco." Those criteria provide 
for many opportunities, but a few good bets 
are Arturo Fuente (the classic line), Partagas 
1845, Alec Bradley Connecticut, Macanudo 
Vintage and, if you're feeling flush, Davidoff 
of Geneva classic white label. 


М, girlfriend, who is highly educated 
and into fitness, told me she had read an 
article that said swallowing while giving 
head can improve a woman's weight- 
loss efficiency by 37 percent. Apparently 
semen works like caffeine but is all natural 
and protein-rich. Have you heard of such 
a diet? By the way, she has lost six pounds 
in two weeks.—L.F., Atlanta, Georgia 
That's all the evidence we need. 


lamin college and for the past year have 
been dating a great girl. Things were 
fine until I discovered she was already 
in a relationship with another woman. 
At first it bothered me, but I felt better 
after we started having threesomes. The 
only problem is that whenever the three 
of us have sex, the two girls are usually 
so focused on each other, I feel left out. 
What can I do to get more attention?— 
T.G., San Francisco, California 

Even if you’re left sitting in a corner strok- 
ing yourself while two hot women pleasure each 
other, you won't get much sympathy around 
these parts. Any MFF threesome is orchestrated 
by the Fs, and if you have a testosterone tan- 


trum or pull out a stopwatch, it will become a 
twosome fast. When your girlfriend—or what- 
ever she is—stops having sex with you, you'll 
know the dream is over. 


1 met my husband when I was working as 
a stripper and he was a customer. Now I'm 
pregnant. How will I explain to my child 
how we met?—PR., Arlington, Virginia 

You have about 10 years to think about it, 
but when the time comes, say your husband 
spotted you in a crowded club and asked you to 
dance. That might work on the in-laws too. If 
and when your teenager wants more details, tell 
him or her the truth. It's nothing to be ashamed 
of, but at that point it can be part of a more 
substantial discussion. 


Last year I attended the Formula One 
race in Monaco, and now I’m hooked. 
However, I was disappointed to learn 
after the fact that I’d paid too much for 
my ticket. There were plenty available 
from the ticket office, but I bought mine 
from an online broker. I am planning 
to return in 2014 and am hoping to get 
tickets from the source. Is it possible to 
buy tickets two years in advance?—G.R., 
Atlanta, Georgia 

You can probably find a broker who will 
allow you to buy the promise of a ticket, but the 
official channels don’t open until about a year 
before each race. You can check Formulal.com 
or phone 888-205-3315, though you'll likely 
find tickets earlier if you visit the websites 
of local organizers. For instance, for Monte 
Carlo, order directly from the Automobile 
Club of Monaco (formulalmonaco.com) for 
the May 23-26, 2013 event. (The 2014 sea- 
son will be notable for two reasons: It will 
introduce the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, 
as well as turbocharged, 1.6-liter V6 engines 
with eight-speed gearboxes.) As you know, the 
most important accessory when attending a 
race is earplugs, especially for street circuits 
such as Monaco where the noise bounces off 
buildings. Ed Murdoch of the travel agency 
Fugarel.com, which specializes in Formula 
One, says the best place to watch the race in 
Monte Carlo is from a yacht—you’ll see a lim- 
ited amount of the track, but you'll be close. If 
you buy a spot on a balcony, go high enough 
to clear the trees. 


Do you know how to prevent ingrown 
hairs on the neck? I’ve tried tweezing, 
exfoliating with scrubs, shaving with 
hot and cold water and replacing my 
blade every two or three uses.—J.R., 
Manalapan, New Jersey 

You mean pseudofolliculitis barbae? We're 
good friends. Razor bumps are called that 
because they appear to be infections of the 
gland or follicle. What actually happens is 
the razor irritates the skin to the point that 
the hairs start to curl inward and pierce it. 
If you have a steady hand, carefully lift the 
hairs with a straight pin or tweezers. Or take 
a weekend off from shaving to give your skin 
a break. To prevent ingrown hairs, always 
shave in the direction of growth, which on the 
lower neck means upward. Make sure your 


beard is warm and wet. Try shaving twice a 
day, but use a lighter touch. And switch to a 
single-blade or safety razor. 


M y boyfriend likes me to talk dirty, but I 
always feel like such a nerd. I never know 
what to say. It’s almost as though I need 
a flowchart. I feel the same way when I 
sext or have phone sex. Could you give 
me any tips?—B.W., Omaha, Nebraska 

Your boyfriend isn’t looking for poetry—not 
much rhymes with “lick my pussy” anyway. Just 
describe what he's doing to you or what you're 
doing to him and how much you enjoy it. And 
use the slang everyone uses when they're so 
turned on their frontal lobes turn off —pussy, 
cock, fucking, licking, sucking. For most guys, 
simply hearing a woman say "I can't wait to 
suck your cock” or “That feels so fucking good” 
will make him 22.5 percent harder. 


| am not sure what to do in this situation 
so thought I would ask the Rabbit man. 
I am a guy who has a childhood friend 
who married another of our childhood 
friends. I do a lot with her (running, 
talking on the phone), as well as him. 
But I have developed a strong sexual 
desire for her and suspect she would not 
turn me away. How do I tell her about 
this without jeopardizing my lifelong 
relationships with both of them? I know 
she loves her husband, but she has made 
comments about his lack of size and qual- 
ity in the bedroom. What should I do?— 
D.B., Evansville, Indiana 

Masturbate. It will be less of a mess. Every 
fantasy need not become reality. 


M; brother is engaged, and our mother 
informs me he plans to ask me to be a 
groomsman. I am happy to attend the 
wedding, but I don't want to participate. 
My brother and I are not close, and I dis- 
like his fiancée. In fact, I doubt he wants 
me in the wedding party. Under what 
circumstances may I decline?—P.R., 
Summit, New Jersey 

It would be unseemly to decline. Accept gra- 
ciously, then be quiet. No one cares what you 
think of your brother or his fiancée; this isn't 
an episode of Dr. Phil. All you’re going to do 
is stand there, and though your brother may be 
indifferent to your presence, your mother will 
not be. She's being smart about this. The wed- 
ding isn't about you, but refusing to participate 
will put the focus there. 


All reasonable questions—from fashion, 
food and drink, stereos and sports cars to 
dating dilemmas, taste and. etiquette—will 
be personally answered if the writer in- 
cludes a self-addressed, stamped envelope. 
The most interesting, pertinent questions 
will be presented in these pages. Write the 
Playboy Advisor, 9346 Civic Center Drive, 
Beverly Hills, California 90210, or e-mail 
advisor@playboy.com. For updates, follow 
@playboyadvisor on Twitter. 


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SMOKING 


A poet laureate defends 
his nasty, filthy, thor- 
oughly enjoyable habit 


BY DONALD HALL 


s I look at the barn in my 
ninth decade, I see the No 
SMOKING sign, rusted and 
tilting on the unpainted 
gray clapboard. My grand- 
father, born in 1875, milked his cattle 
there a century ago. Neither of my grand- 
parents smoked. I don't know when my 
grandfather nailed up the sign, but I 


know why. Sometimes a tramp would 
dodge inside the barn after dark to sleep 
on a bed of hay, and once my grandfather 
found cigarette ash when he climbed to 
the tie-up in the morning. It doesn't take 
much to burn down a barn. Whenever 
I focus on the sign, white letters against 
red, I pull a cigarette from the pack 
beside me, flick my Bic and take a drag. 

When my parents and I visited the 
farm way back, my father was required 
to do his smoking outside. My mother, 
who learned to smoke at college, pre- 
tended to her parents that she never 
touched the stuff. (My grandmother 
lived to be 97, and her sense of smell 
diminished. My elderly mother sneaked 
upstairs and puffed on a cigarette.) My 
father was a gentle and supportive man, 
but he was tense, shaky—and could not 


ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN PAGE 


READER 
RESPONSE 


THE GOOD FIGHT 


In Sexual Freedom (September), 
Hugh Hefner writes, “The fight 
for gay marriage is, in reality, 

a fight for all of our rights." 

He is correct. For religious 
conservatives, gay marriage is 
the thin edge of the political 
wedge because they think it's 

the easiest one to get past the 
rest of America. If they succeed, 
they'll be emboldened to go after 
contraception, abortion, anything 
they can label as pornography 
and whatever else offends their 
personal sensibilities—probably 
including things you enjoy. 
Americans worry about sharia 
law but are ignorant about 

the religious radicals already 
operating here. Religion-based 
discrimination must not be 
allowed to become law. It is 
bigotry parading under the guise 
of religious freedom. 

Jim Morris 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 


Sexual | 
Freedom 


I grew up in the Bible Belt. It 
was oppressive, to say the least. 
Superficial religious fanatics 
such as Billy Graham and Pat 
Boone were held up as role 


61 


62 


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models. I remember reading 
about Charles Cotner in PLAYBOY 
and feeling outraged that a 
person could be imprisoned for 
a victimless crime. PLAYBOY was 
the first publication I was ex- 
posed to that argued homosex- 
uals deserve the same legal pro- 
tections as heterosexuals. Hef, 
the world is a better place for 
you and your creation. Thank 
you for your editorial and for 
more than half a century of 
fighting for sexual freedom. 


Jim Adams 
Columbus, Georgia 


PLAYBOY ON THE PLANE 


On a Southwest Airlines 

flight between Houston and 
Harlingen, Texas I decided to 
discreetly read the new issue 
of PLAYBOY. No one was sitting 
next to me. However, as I was 
reading, a flight attendant 
stopped in the aisle and said 
in a tense voice, “Please put 
that away, sir." I looked up, 
surprised. “Are you kidding 
me?" I asked. She replied, 
"Put it away. That isn't National 
Geographic." I sat in disbelief 


for the remainder of the flight. 
Do any airlines have a policy 
that forbids passengers from 
reading PLAYBOY? 


Richard Cardoza 
San Ramon, California 


According to the airlines, including 
Southwest, they do not. But it 

is wise to comply with flight 
attendants, as they have broad 
discretion and there is no reason to 
delay yourself and other passengers 
with this nonsense. 


do without his Chesterfields. He walked 
up and down the driveway, dodging 
horse manure, to work on his four-pack- 
a-day habit. He started smoking when 
he was 14 and wasn't diagnosed with 
lung cancer until 1955, when he was 51. 

Every time I write, say or think 
“lung cancer," I pick up a Pall Mall to 
calm myself. 


baby son about two hours away 
from my parents. In May I drove 
down for my father's exploratory 


f: 1955 I lived with my wife and 


ILLEGAL TENDER 


reenbacks, as we know, are legal 
tender for all debts, public and private. 
But that’s not the case with electronic 


currency. Earlier this year a federal lawsuit 
was filed in the Northern District of California 
against PayPal, the “faster, safer way to pay 
and get paid online.” The plaintiff is InfoStream 
Group, a company that runs various dating 
websites. The suit accuses the online payment 
service of breach of contract, bad faith and 
unfair business practices. PayPal is notoriously 
inconsistent when it comes to who and what 
can receive money over its wires. It seems to 
abide by its own ethical framework, leaving 
users clueless as to permissible uses. WikiLeaks 
is the most prominent example. At the height of 
its popularity, it received more than $800,000 in 
donations in one year via PayPal. In December 
2010, PayPal froze $80,000 in the WikiLeaks 
account, citing violations of the acceptable-use 
policy. That six-point policy prohibits transactions 
that “instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” 
The business of releasing government documents 
can be messy, of course, but WikiLeaks had been 
instructing others to engage in illegal activity 
for some time before PayPal froze its account— 
which happened during its high-profile releases 
of U.S. government documents. At the same 
time, PayPal allowed the English Defence 
League, an Islamophobic movement that Anders 
Breivik boasted of joining, to receive donations. 
(Breivik killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.) The 
federal court case may strip the website of the 
legal privileges it thinks handling your money 
bestows. As one disgruntled user puts it, "PayPal 
has all the power of a bank and yet none of the 
responsibility." Another reason to stick with the 
benjamins.— Tyler Trykowski 


operation and pushed his gurney into 
the elevator. My mother and I drove 
home to wait for the telephone call. If 
the phone did not ring for half a day, 
it could mean that the cancerous lung 
had been removed. The telephone 
rang too soon. When we arrived at 
the surgeon's office, Dr. Appel told us 
that he could not extract the tumor 
without killing my father. He said 
the short-term prospects were fine, 
but the long term.... (First my father 
would have radiation, which gave him 
two good months. He played golf and 
didn't die until December) As my 
mother realized what Dr. Appel was 
telling us, her fingers twitched at her 
purse. For her convenience, the tho- 
racic surgeon pushed his ashtray to 
the edge of the desk. 

Everyone smoked in 1955. When 
adults had a party, they set out ciga- 
rettes in leather boxes on every table, 
every mantelpiece, every flat sur- 
face, beside silver Ronson lighters 
among myriad ashtrays. There were 
round crystal ashtrays and square 
ones with deep receptacles over ce- 
ramic bottoms; there were ashtrays 
that sprouted from the floor on black 
steel stems; there were ashtrays with 
cork humps in the middle, for knock- 
ing cinders out of a pipe. In Durham, 
North Carolina there is the Duke 
Homestead and Tobacco Museum. I 
imagine multiple busy artifacts over- 
crowding its showcases. There are 
museums elsewhere, but it would be 
tedious to visit them all. In Shanghai 
there's the China Tobacco Museum 
with a cigarette exhibition, and there's 
another in Indonesia. 

In her attic, my friend Carole 
Colburn found a large volume. The 
American Tobacco Company pub- 
lished “Sold American!”—The First 50 
Years to celebrate its birthday, 1904 to 
1954. In 144 pages, nine by 12 inches 
and bound in bright red, the indus- 
try illustrates its development from 
the 16th century, when explorers and 
colonists first enjoyed the leaf prof- 
fered by generous Indians. Many com- 
panies were founded to cure tobacco, 
and there were three means of induc- 
tion. You could sniff it, chew it or burn 
it. It wasn’t until the Great War that 
cigarettes conquered both sides of the 
trenches. From the American Revolu- 
tion through World War II, tobacco 
enhanced and facilitated slaughter. 

Nowhere can I find the American 
Tobacco Company’s centennial sequel, 
“Harmful to Your Health!” —The First 100 
Years. I tried Amazon. 

For 50 years, all American living 
rooms turned dense with smoke, as 
did bars, restaurants, hardware stores, 
hotel lobbies, cabins, business offices, 


factory floors, sedans, hospital rooms, 
pizzerias, sweatshops, town meetings, 
laboratories, palaces, department 
stores, supermarkets, barbershops, 
McDonald's, beauty parlors, art gal- 
leries, bookstores, pharmacies, men's 
rooms, corner groceries women's 
rooms, barns except for my grandfa- 
ther's, movie houses, dairies, airports, 
offices of thoracic sur- 
geons, depots, tearooms, 
Automats, cafeterias, 
town halls, Macy's, gym- 
nasiums, igloos, waiting 
rooms, museums, news- 
rooms, classrooms, steel 
mills, libraries, lecture 
halls, emergency rooms, 
auditoriums, parks, 
Mongolian yurts and 
beaches—not to men- 
tion funeral parlors. 
Tidying up living 
rooms after parties, 
host and hostess filled 
garbage cans with 
a thousand cigarette 
butts. Ashes and ground-out ciga- 
rettes outweighed burned toast, 
eggshells, paper towels, tin cans, hy- 
podermic needles and kitty litter. In 
1954, 23 cents bought a pack of ciga- 
rettes, which has come to cost maybe 
$6 to $8, depending on state taxes. 
Hotels didn’t need to designate smok- 
ing rooms, because people smoked in 
all the rooms. The back page of every 
magazine—Time, The Atlantic Monthly, 
U.S. News, Life—carried a full-color 
ad for cigarettes. Even today, retir- 


Hotels 
didn’t need 
designated 


smoking 
rooms, 
because peo- 
ple smoked in 
all the rooms. 


ing boomers remember the Marlboro 
Man, who suggested that cigarettes 
enlarged one’s penis. Virginia Slims 
deepened one’s cleavage. A promi- 
nent advertising theme was medical. 
A solemn man looked us straight in 
the eye and pointed his finger at us, 
the way Uncle Sam recruited us dur- 
ing World War I. The man wore a 
white coat with a head 
mirror and a stetho- 
scope draped around 
his shoulders. “Old 
Gold," he told us firm- 
ly, “is good for you!” 
Then the surgeon 
general put terrify- 
ing labels on each pack, 
and by the millennium 
everyone decent knew 
that smoking was unfor- 
givable, like mass mur- 
der or Rush Limbaugh. 
My dear friend Alice 
Mattison twice bopped 
me on the face to dis- 
lodge a Kent. At first 
there were smoking areas in bars and 
restaurants and smoking rooms in ho- 
tels, but soon all smoking was forbid- 
den in all public places. Guilty, grubby 
men and women gathered on sidewalks 
in front of buildings. Despite blizzards 
and record heat, people in johnnies 
stood outside hospitals, a cigarette in 
one hand and an IV pole in the other. 
Everyone huddled in shame, bending 
heads to conceal identity, and took 
deep drags of emphysema, congestive 
heart, high blood pressure, heart dis- 


FORUM EJ 


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READER RESPONSE 


I was flying on Southwest from 
New Orleans to Houston and 
took along an issue of PLAYBOY. 
I was reading the article about 
Jean Harlow (The Original 
Blonde, December 2011) as we 
prepared for takeoff, and a 
flight attendant leaned over 
to say something to me. I lost 
my right ear and most of my 
hearing flying 200 bombing 
missions for the Air Force, so 


I had trouble understanding 
her. Finally she pointed to the 
magazine, and I got it—she was 
telling me I shouldn't be looking 
at Hollywood blondes. I was 
taken aback but said okay and 
turned to the college basketball 
preview. She shook her head no; 
I had to put the magazine away. 
After we deplaned in Houston, 

I informed the attendant that 

I was offended by her telling 

me what to read. A busybody 
behind me huffed in response, 
"PLAYBOY!" I told her she could 
get her own copy in the terminal. 


Don Phillips 
San Antonio, Texas 


PLAYBOY BEHIND BARS 


Like many prisoners, I sub- 
scribe to PLAYBOY. However, the 
Connecticut Department of 
Correction now bans inmates 
from receiving material depict- 
ing sexual activity or nudity 
unless it has “literary, artistic, 
educational or scientific” value. 
The commissioner claims 

this is necessary to aid in our 
“rehabilitation” and to prevent 
harassment of female guards. I 
do not believe the department 
has a legal right to ban PLAYBOY, 
but I don't have the resources 
to challenge it. 


Wayne Radney 
Newtown, Connecticut 


I am incarcerated at the Stateville 
Correctional Center. Last year 


64 


FORUM 


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READER RESPONSE 


the new head of the mail room 
deemed photos of actresses in 
lingerie too explicit to distribute. 
I fear PLAYBOY will be next. Can 
you stop this madwoman? 


Rolando Vargas 
Joliet, Illinois 


PLAYBOY has never been shy 
about speaking up for prisoners' 
rights, so I find it odd that you 
refuse to send special editions 
and calendars to inmates. Why 
the double standard? 


Matthew Harper 
Jarratt, Virginia 


We'd love to take your money, but 
when we send anything besides the 
magazine to prisons it is almost 
always refused. The U.S. Supreme 
Court has said wardens can ban 
certain magazines and books for a 
"legitimate penological interest, " 
which is vague enough to be hard 
to challenge unless the censorship 
is extreme, such as when the 
Berkeley County, South Carolina 
jail withheld all printed material 
except the Bible. Lawyers for the 
jail argued that staples and clips 


used to bind paper could be turned 
into weapons and that sexual 
content causes masturbation, 

which might prompt a sex-crazed 
inmate to rape a guard or be 
assaulted himself by grossed-out 
cell mates. The ACLU sued, calling 
the policy far too broad, and the 
jail rescinded the ban. 


E-mail letters@playboy.com. 
Or write 9346 Civic Center Drive, 
Beverly Hills, California 90210. 


ease, COPD (whatever that is) and can- 
cers of the mouth, esophagus and lung. 

For a moment I interrupt myself. 
Ah, that's better. 


y friend Carole smokes ciga- 

IM rettes, the only friend who 
does. When she visits we sit 
opposite each other smoking and talk- 
ing about death. We speak of how, 
when we’re driving or watching a 
game on TV or reading, we pick up a 
cigarette, light it and inhale—in order 
to have something to do. Is it a mastur- 
bation substitution? There’s one ad- 
vantage to smoking, about which we 
agree. When we turn blue, we will not 
need to ask, “Why me?” 
Sentient, sensible hu- 
man beings flee into the 
bushes when we exhale. 
When Linda Kunhardt 
stays with me, I step 
outside on the porch 
to smoke. (From cars 
passing at night I feel 
the horror and rage of 
motorists who witness 
the red tip of my cul- 
pability.) It puts off for 
a moment the agony 
of deprived addiction. 


Depraved. Something 
I havent mentioned 
about the benefit of ciga- 


rettes. When I am twisted by a hacking 
cough—which interrupts me as I read 
obituaries or Ira Byock on palliative 
care—guess what stops my coughing. 

Linda praises, with reluctance, an- 
other result of my smoking. She accom- 
panies me on poetry readings and says 
my ravaged throat keeps my voice low 
and resonant. At the end of a reading, 
people line up for signatures; some- 
times, interrupting the customers, I 
pretend to use the men's room. When 
I was offered the poet laureateship I 
decided I must turn it down because I 
couldn't smoke in the laureate's office; 
I changed my mind when I learned I 
could avoid the office. When I visited 
it once during my tenure, a librarian 
unscrewed a long window that opened 
onto a secure balcony At an AWP 
convention—a writers’ group—10,000 
people were registered at a Chicago 
hotel. When I walked through the lob- 
by to lumber outside and smoke, I was 
assailed by 400 emerging poets and 
fled as soon as I could. If you smoked 
in your hotel room, the fine was $700. 
I cracked the window and smoked in 
the hotel room. The chambermaid did 
not snitch. 

Kendel Currier is my assistant who 
types my drafts and my letters, who 
bookkeeps, who solves my techni- 
cal problems, who explains legal and 


There is one 
advantage 


to smohing. 


When we turn 
blue, we will 
not need to 
ask, “Why me?” 


financial documents and who drives 
me places. Once she found a ciga- 
rette butt in the leather case I'd left 
for her on my porch. A misplaced 
cigarette had torched my revisions. “I 
couldn't find it. I figured it went out." 
Once when the snow melted, she har- 
vested from the garden by the porch 
a bushel basket of soggy butts that I 
had hurled all winter into snowdrifts. 
Another time, she drove me in my car 
all the way to New York, and I cour- 
teously opened the window to smoke. 
Somewhere around Springfield, Mas- 
sachusetts she told me I could not 
smoke in my own car. She parked and 
I walked up and down a gutter, inhal- 
ing relief. Kendel is kind, but Kendel 
is a hard case. 

I came late to ciga- 
rettes. When I was 
young, I smoked cigars 
in Exeter's butt rooms. 
(Prep schools provided 
smoking  retreats in 
each dormitory.) Later 
I smoked cigars in lec- 
ture halls when I taught 
and on all social occa- 
sions. One friend told 
me that whenever I 
smoked Coronas at her 
cocktail parties she sent 
her drapes to the clean- 
ers. Of course I didn’t 
inhale—I didn’t know how—but when 
I blew out a lungful of cigar smoke, 
I choked on the murk around me. 
Everybody did. I even smoked cigars 
during psychotherapy. Dr. Frohlich 
was a psychoanalyst, the only one in 
Ann Arbor who did therapy. Therapy 
instead of analysis kept the two of us 
face-to-face—I didn't lie on a couch— 
and we met only three times a week, 
for only four years. While I sat with a 
smoldering Judges Cave, Dr. Frohlich 


smoked Camels, sometimes lighting a 
new one from the butt of the old. He 
had smoked from early adulthood 
through four years of medical school, 
an internship, two years of psychiat- 
ric residency, analytic training for five 
years at an institute and decades of 
practice. He was 70 and told me that 
he finished four cartons a week. Dur- 
ing a session late in our progress I no- 
ticed he was not smoking. I asked him 
why, and he told me that his elder son 
had asked him to stop. Dr. Frohlich 
answered that it would not help him, 
after all these years. When his son re- 
plied that he was thinking of himself 
and of secondary smoke, Dr. Frohlich 
stopped smoking. He told me it was 
easy. He lived to be 93. 

Like all smokers I quit from time 
to time. In New Hampshire once, I 
stopped for good, as it seemed. Some- 
one told me about a hypnotist in Con- 
cord who cured smokers. I've always 
been easy to hypnotize. (If you have an 
overdeveloped ego, you are not scared 
of surrender.) The moment I met the 
doctor, I knew he was a fraud. With a 
starched white coat, he was as hand- 
some and suave as the model who 
recommended Old Golds for your 
health. But what the hell? I decided 
to go ahead and try. In a small room 
he spoke to me soothingly, his tone im- 
personating a hypnotist's. When I felt 
sleepy he turned on a tape of his own 
voice and left the room. When the re- 
cording finished, I knew I would nev- 
er smoke again. I left his office feeling 
ecstatic. Illicitly, I threw a pack in the 
gutter. For seven weeks, I continued to 
feel blissful without nicotine. Then one 
night at suppertime, before I would fly 


to Arkansas in the morning, the phone 
rang. My dearest friend from school 
and college had dropped dead at the 
age of 50. Driving to Logan Airport 
on my way to the reading, I stopped 
at the first open shop and bought ciga- 
rettes. A week later I returned to the 
hypnotist and told him I had failed. 
He put me under again, but nothing 
happened. He told me, “If this doesn't 
work, we'll try psychoanalysis...." 


about the time the surgeon general 
issued his fuddy-duddy warning. I 
was a college teacher, separated from 
my wife, and had entered a fringe of 
the counterculture that took over the 
1960s. My students’ greatest sport 


E 40 before I smoked a cigarette, 


FORUM 


was to turn a professor on. Never did 
I need to buy a joint, and unlike Bill 
Clinton I accepted instruction in inhal- 
ing, learning to enjoy the pain, which 
moved from weed to cigarettes. Alas, I 
had another, deeper reason for seek- 
ing humiliation and harm. I endured 
a volcanic love affair with a beautiful 
young woman who was not psychotic 
but whose utterances sounded like 
surrealism. She had other attractions, 
of which she was aware, but she felt 
devastated by one unforgivable flaw: 
She could not stop smoking Kents. 
In our assignations the foggy air 
trembled with erotic joy. She adored 
the sex but abhorred the fog. Then, 
viciously, she dumped me. I went 
crazy; I daydreamed suicide; I took up 
Kents for revenge. I have not seen her 
for decades, and at 80-some I am still 
proclaiming, “Look what you did!” 

If my tender father had not smoked 
so much, by now he would have turned 
115. From the late 1960s into the mil- 
lennium, American living rooms have 
become smokeless, as well as bars, res- 
taurants, hardware stores, hotel lob- 
bies, cabins, business offices, factory 
floors, sedans, hospital rooms, pizzeri- 
as, sweatshops, town meetings, labora- 
tories, palaces, department stores, su- 
permarkets, barbershops, McDonald’s, 
beauty parlors, art galleries, book- 
stores, pharmacies, men’s rooms, cor- 
ner groceries, women’s rooms, barns 
except for mine, movie houses, dairies, 
airports, offices of thoracic surgeons, 
depots, tearooms, Automats, cafeterias, 
town halls, Macy’s, gymnasiums, igloos, 
waiting rooms, museums, newsrooms, 
classrooms, steel mills, libraries, lecture 
halls, emergency rooms, auditoriums, 
parks, Mongolian yurts, beaches and 
definitely funeral parlors. E 


WHO'S BUYING? 


nless you're a hedge-fund 
trader who takes compensa- 
tion in the form of capital gains, 


you pay a lot of payroll taxes. These taxes— 
which include Social Security, Medicare and 
unemployment insurance—are regressive, 
meaning if you're poor, you pay a higher per- 
centage of your income than if you're rich. As 
the chart at right shows, federal payroll taxes 
have contributed an increasing share of fed- 
eral revenue over the past 60 years—nearly 
four times as much in 2010 as in 1950. Mean- 
while, the share of revenue coming from 
corporate income tax has dropped from 
about one quarter in 1950 to less than one 
tenth today. Wonder why? [| 


Source: Office of Management and Budget. 


1980 


% corporate income tax 


26) 
| 


| e 


2010 
FEDERAL REVENUE H——————— 


65 


_ _ 


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MAPLE FINISHED. | 


thebor.com 


| CROWNROYAL.COM 

FINISHED 0 PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY. 
Р CROWN ROYAL Maple Flavored Whisky. 40% Alof Vol. 

/ ©2012 The Crown Royal Company, Norwalk, CT. 


o QUENTIN TARANTINO 


A candid conversation with the maverick director about why bloodier is 


better, the fun of reinventing history and how he 


wants his career to end 


When PLAYBOY interviewed Quentin Taran- 
tino in 2003, it had been six years since the re- 
lease of Jackie Brown, and as he prepared for 
the release of Kill Bill, the question loomed: 
Could Tarantino, who had broken all the 
rules, changed the crime genre with Reservoir 
Dogs and the Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction 
and spawned a legion of imitators, keep it up? 
By the time Uma Thurman sliced and 
diced her way to vengeance for the massa- 
cre at her wedding, the clear answer was 
yes. Nine years later, nobody questions 
Tarantino’s staying power anymore. His 
patented formula: reinventing established 
genres, mining his encyclopedic knowledge 
of film, writing dialogue that attracts big 
stars and injecting his unique sensibility 
and skewed worldview into otherwise pre- 
dictable events. The result is an original 
blend that, along with his outsize person- 
ality, has transformed him into one of the 
few directors whose name means something 
at the box office. With a deal that gives him 
final cut, a large percentage of gross and 
the kind of autonomy most directors can only 
dream of, Tarantino writes his own rules. 
With the exception of Grindhouse—the B- 
movie homage he made with his From Dusk 
Till Dawn collaborator Robert Rodriguez— 
Tarantino’s movies have all made money. 


A 


“To me, Django Unchained is a Western but set 
in the Deep South. What I was interested in as 
far as slavery was the business aspect. How much 
did they cost? How many slaves did an average 
person have? How did auction houses work?” 


After Kill Bill, Tarantino even rewrote 
history, killing Hitler and his Third Reich 
cronies in Inglourious Basterds, a violent 
wish-fulfillment fantasy. The film garnered 
eight Oscar nominations (and a best support- 
ing actor trophy for Christoph Waltz) and 
became Tarantino’s most financially success- 
ful film to date, with $321 million in world- 
wide ticket sales. 

Now Tarantino is back with Django 
Unchained. Just as Inglourious Basterds 
started out as a Dirty Dozen-style mission 
movie, Tarantino began with the goal of 
writing a spaghetti Western. Only he set it 
in the antebellum South, and its protagonist 
is a slave (Jamie Foxx) who is freed by a 
bounty hunter-dentist (Waltz) and taught 
the bounty-hunting trade. Django is on a 
collision course with a plantation owner 
(Leonardo DiCaprio) who has consigned 
Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Wash- 
ington), to sexual servitude. The depiction 
of female slaves forced to engage in sex with 
their masters and males pitted against one 
another in brutal to-the-death brawls is sure 
to raise controversy, but subtlety has never 
been Tarantino’s favorite technique. 

We sent writer Michael Fleming (who 
conducted our recent Tom Cruise interview 
as well as the interview with Tarantino in 


"I wouldn't do anything impaired while mak- 
ing a movie. I don't so much write high, but 
say you're thinking about a musical sequence. 
You smoke a joint, you put on some music and 
you come up with some good ideas." 


2003) to catch up with the writer-director. 
Fleming reports: "Quentin, now 49, has 
certainly matured from the filmmaker who 
told raucous tales of brawling with cabdriv- 
ers and taking ecstasy at the Great Wall of 
China while filming Kill Bill. We met at his 
house high in the hills of Los Angeles, a home 
that sports a great view of the Valley. The 
first thing I noticed when I drove up was the 
gaudily painted Pussy Wagon, the bright yel- 
low Chevy Silverado SS that Uma Thurman 
drives in Kill Bill. Above that is a drive-in 
movie theater sign, a prop from Grindhouse. 

“His house is filled with movie memora- 
bilia. Posters for unexpected films—Children 
Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, for 
example—hang on one wall, and I think I 
spotted oversize green Hulk hands. You can 
tell Tarantino is still single and able to in- 
dulge his voracious appetite for all things 
movies, because no wife would put up with it.” 


PLAYBOY: Is that the real Pussy Wagon 
in the driveway, the one the Bride 
drives in Kill Bill? 

TARANTINO: Oh, yeah. 

PLAYBOY: Do you actually drive it? 
TARANTINO: I haven't in a little bit. It 
was kind of fucked-up because it just 
sat there for a long time while I was off 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID ROSE 


“Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usu- 
ally the worst films in their filmography are those 
last four at the end. I’m all about my filmogra- 
phy, and one bad film fucks up three good ones. 
When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty.” 


67 


PLAYBOY 


68 


filming. We just got it looking nice again. 
PLAYBOY: It’s probably not the best car 
for Quentin Tarantino to be driving if 
discretion is the goal. 

TARANTINO: No, but it’s fun to do the 
opposite sometimes, to cruise with the 
windows down. You take the big, long 
Malibu drive and everybody is like, 
“Hey, it’s Quentin.” That’s fun. 
PLAYBOY: You killed Hitler in Inglouri- 
ous Basterds, with Jewish soldiers scalp- 
ing Nazis. In Django Unchained you 
have a liberated slave turned bounty 
hunter who takes on the slave masters 
who turned his wife into a prostitute. 
Hollywood is recycling fairy tales, from 
Alice in Wonderland to The Wizard of Oz. 
Are you doing a more creative version 
by crafting revisionist-history fables 
that allow victims of loathsome events 
to rise up and have their day? 
TARANTINO: It's in the eye of the be- 
holder to say if it’s more creative or 
not, but that is what I'm doing, partly 
because I would just like to see it. You 
turn on a movie and know how things 
are going to go in most films. Every 
once in a while films don't play by the 
rules. It's liberating when you don't 
know what's happening next. Most of 
the movies that have done that did it 
accidentally, like they punched into 
a contraband area they hadn't quite 
thought all the way through. But for 
that moment in the film, it is liberating. 
I thought, What about telling these 
kinds of stories my way—rough and 
tough but gratifying at the end? 
PLAYBOY: What movie sparked this idea? 
TARANTINO: When it came to Inglouri- 
ous Basterds, there was a movie done in 
1942, Hitler—Dead or Alive. It was just 
as America had entered the war. A rich 
guy offers a million-dollar bounty on 
Hitler's life. Three gangsters come up 
with a plan to kill Hitler. They para- 
chute into Berlin and work their way 
to where Hitler is. It's a wacky movie 
that goes from being serious to very 
funny. The gangsters get Hitler, and 
when they start beating the fuck out of 
him, it is just so enjoyable. They shave 
his mustache off, cut off that lock of 
hair and take his shit off so he looks 
like a regular guy. The Nazis show up, 
and Hitler, who doesn't look like Hitler 
anymore, is like, “Hey, it’s me!” And 
they beat the shit out of him. I thought, 
Wow, this is fucking hysterical. 
PLAYBOY: When viewers get to the end 
of Inglourious Basterds, the common re- 
action is, Wait, is Tarantino allowed to 
change history like this? 

TARANTINO: That wasn’t the jumping- 
off point for the film—it didn’t come to 
me till just a little bit before I wrote it. 
I'd written all day and was meditating 
about what the next day's work was go- 
ing to be. I was listening to music, pac- 
ing around, and finally I just grabbed a 
pen, went over to a piece of paper and 
wrote, "Just fucking kill him." I put it 


near my bedside table so I would see 
it when I woke up the next morning 
and could decide after a night's sleep if 
it was still a good idea. I saw it, paced 
around awhile and said, “Yeah, that's a 
good idea." I went out on the balcony 
and started writing. And I just fucking 
killed him. [laughs] 

PLAYBOY: You've also mixed history 
with fiction in Django Unchained. Did 
you study films or history to capture 
pre-Civil War life in the Deep South? 
TARANTINO: You could make a case for 
watching World War II movies, if only 
to learn the clichés that help storytell- 
ing by giving the audience what they're 
used to. There are only a handful of real 
slave movies. To me this is a Western but 
set in the Deep South. What I was inter- 
ested in as far as slavery was the busi- 
ness aspect: Humans as chattel—how 
did that work? How much did they cost? 
How many slaves did an average per- 
son in Mississippi have? How did auc- 
tion houses work? What were the social 
strata inside a plantation? 

PLAYBOY: What do you mean? 
TARANTINO: In the case of Django Un- 


I'm not trying to be inflam- 
matory. I'm just telling my 
story the way I'm telling tt. 
I'm doing it about a section 
of history that couldn't be 


more surreal or cruel. 


chained, Leonardo DiCaprio’s char- 
acter, Calvin Candie, is a plantation 
owner who has 65 square miles of land. 
He’s like Bonanza’s Ben Cartwright but 
in the South, one of a handful of cot- 
ton families in Mississippi. Anybody 
in that position is like a king in their 
own kingdom. All the poor whites who 
work for them and all the slaves are 
their subjects. They own everything 
as far as they can see, and the planta- 
tion is completely self-contained as a 
moneymaking entity. Candie is born 
into this, which means he doesn’t have 
to give a fuck about the business any- 
more; it takes care of itself. It’s a weird 
perversion of European aristocracy. 
That was a fascinating perspective to 
use with the whole story and with how 
Candie chooses to spend his time. 
PLAYBOY: In the movie, slaves are raped 
and men fight against each other like 
pit bulls. When you made Jackie Brown 
and Pulp Fiction, you were criticized 
for liberal use of the N word. There’s 
plenty of that here. Are you sitting on 
a powder keg? 

TARANTINO: Now I’m picturing myself 


sitting on a keg of TNT like a Looney 
Tunes cartoon. It remains to be seen, I 
guess. If we are, it’s not because I'm 
trying to be inflammatory. I'm just 
telling my story the way I'm telling it. 
I'm putting it in a spaghetti Western 
framework and highlighting the sur- 
real qualities inherent in the material. 
I'm highlighting them mythically and 
operatically, and in terms of violence 
and gruesomeness, with pitch-black 
humor. That's all part of the spaghetti 
Western genre, but I'm doing it about a 
section of history that couldn't be more 
surreal, bizarre, cruel or perversely co- 
medic when looked at from a certain 
view. They go hand in hand. 

PLAYBOY: But the idea of portraying 
these slave women as prostitutes 
TARANTINO: Well, they're not 100 per- 
cent prostitutes. The Cleopatra Club in 
the film is not a brothel. It's a gentle- 
men's club, a bring-your-own-bottle 
kind of place. There it's bring your own 
pony, and you can have dinner with her. 
PLAYBOY: Pony is the term for an attrac- 
tive slave woman? 

TARANTINO: Yeah. 

PLAYBOY: And that really existed? 
TARANTINO: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think 
it's the cornerstone of slavery, or one 
of the things that made it work. Aside 
from the labor force, it was the sex on 
demand. The minute people own oth- 
er people, we all know that's definitely 
part of it. Did they do that back then? 
Yes. They do that right now—go to 
Bangkok. The thing about the Cleopa- 
tra Club is, if you like your slave girl 
you can take her there. You can have 
dinner. You can socialize. If you are a 
guy who wants to take your pony and 
just fuck her for a night on the town, 
okay, you can do that. But maybe you 
actually love your girl and she's kind of 
your de facto wife. This is a way to take 
her out and show her a good time. 
PLAYBOY: You originally wanted Will 
Smith to play Django. How close did 
you come to getting him? 

TARANTINO: We spent quite a few hours 
together over a weekend when he was 
in New York doing Men in Black 3. We 
went over the script and talked it out. 
I had a good time—he's a smart, cool 
guy. I think half the process was an ex- 
cuse for us to hang out and spend time 
with one another. I had just finished 
the script. It was cool to talk to some- 
one who wasn't guarded about what he 
was saying. 

PLAYBOY: What did he have to say? 
TARANTINO: That's private stuff be- 
tween us, but nothing negative. 
PLAYBOY: He has to evaluate material 
partly based on his status as arguably 
the world's biggest star and certainly 
its biggest African American star. 
TARANTINO: Yeah, I know. But he didn't 
walk away from it because he was 
scared of the material. 

PLAYBOY: Why then? 


TARANTINO: It just wasn't 100 percent 
right, and we didn't have time to try to 
make it that way. We left with me say- 
ing, ^Look, I'm going to see other peo- 
ple." He said, "Let me just see how I 
feel, and if you don't find anybody, let's 
talk again." And then I found my guy. 
PLAYBOY: Why Jamie Foxx? 

TARANTINO: There are a lot of reasons 
I could say, but the gigantic one is that 
he was the cowboy. I met six different 
actors and had extensive meetings with 
all of them, and I went in-depth on all 
their work. 

PLAYBOY: Who? 

TARANTINO: Idris Elba. I got together 
with Chris Tucker, Terrence Howard, 
M.K. Williams. 

PLAYBOY: Williams, from The Wire and 
Boardwalk Empire? 

TARANTINO: Yes. I talked with Tyrese. 
They all appreciated the material, and 
I was going to put them through the 
paces, make them go off against one 
another and kind of put up an obsta- 
cle course. And then I met Jamie and 
realized I didn't need to do that. Jamie 
understood the material. But mostly he 
was the cowboy. Forget the fact that he 
has his own horse—and that is actually 
his horse in the movie. He's from Texas; 
he understands. We sat there talking, 
and I realized, Wow, if this were the 
1960s and I was casting a Django West- 
ern TV show and they had black guys as 
stars of those in the 1960s, I could see 
Jamie on one of those. And that's what I 
was looking for, a Clint Eastwood. 
PLAYBOY: When PLAYBOY interviewed 
Foxx several years ago, he talked about 
growing up in Texas. Even though 
he was the football team's star quar- 
terback, he was regularly called racist 
names and treated badly. How did that 
inform his performance? 

TARANTINO: He understood what it's 
like to be thought of as an "other." 
Even though he's on the football team, 
one of the stars, when he goes out with 
the pretty white girl in the school, ev- 
eryone loses their minds. He under- 
stood what it's like to be hired as a pi- 
ano player in a big white Texas home. 
When you're the black piano player at 
a cocktail party, you're furniture. You 
don't talk to nobody. No one talks to 
you. They're not supposed to even 
think about you. They should be able 
to say anything they want to say be- 
cause you are furniture. 

PLAYBOY: So they can say something 
racist if they want. 

TARANTINO: And they did. 

PLAYBOY: And you're invisible. 
TARANTINO: That's exactly it. He told 
me many stories like that, how the 
lady of the house is paying him, say- 
ing, “Look, I'm sorry about the things 
that some of the guests and my hus- 
band said. They didn't mean anything 
by it. Here's some cash." He told me 
that once he showed up and they 


said, "Whoa, whoa, you need a jacket 
to come in here." He said, “Oh, well, 
I would've brought one, but nobody 
told me." And they said, “That's okay. 
We got an extra jacket up there. I'll get 
it for you." They give him a jacket, he 
does his thing, and he's getting ready 
to leave. "Okay, here's your jacket." 
They’re like, “Whoa, hey, that's your 
jacket now, buddy. I don't want that 
jacket." They said that to his face. 
PLAYBOY: How are you when actors ask 
you to change material? 

TARANTINO: Well, somebody can actual- 
ly have a good idea and come up with a 
neat “Hey, well, what if this happens?" 
Sometimes it's "Oh, wow, that's a good 
idea. Let me think about it." People 
have given me good ideas. But it's not 
like I hand in a script and get notes 
back. ГЇЇ get notes back on the cut of 
the movie, but if people have a prob- 
lem with the script, we're probably not 
making the movie together. The stu- 
dios that made Django also did Inglouri- 
ous Basterds, and they were all happy. It 
was never an issue with all the subtitles 
in that film. Nobody said, “Can we try 


I make violent movies. I like 
violent movies. I never get 
into this argument because 

no one has this argument 
with me. They know where 
I'm coming from. 


it in English?" They just knew it wasn't 
the deal. The way it has worked with 
me since the beginning is, it's all in the 
script. I might change something, but 
if you read and liked the script, you'll 
probably like the movie. 

PLAYBOY: When you shoot a slave movie 
in the Deep South, how does the com- 
munity react? 

TARANTINO: Sociologically one of the 
most interesting things went down 
when we were on the Don Johnson 
character's plantation, Bennet Manor. 
He has cotton fields there, and he has 
cotton pickers—girls, men, children, 
old people. But he also has ponies, 
and he's the one who sells pretty girls. 
That’s his big stock: He is a plantation 
pimp, and people come from far and 
wide to his plantation to buy one of 
his pretty girls. We had a bunch of ex- 
tras from the community, St. John the 
Baptist Parish. It was cool, re-creating 
this history with black Southern extras 
whose families have lived there forev- 
er. They knew what went on back then. 
Then there was a social-dividing issue 
between the extras that mirrored the 


ones between their slave characters in 
the movie. The ponies were pretty, and 
they looked down on the extras play- 
ing cotton-picker slaves. They thought 
they were better than them. And the 
people playing the house servants 
looked down on the people playing the 
cotton pickers. And the cotton pickers 
thought the people playing the house 
servants and the ponies were stuck-up 
bitches. Then there was a fourth break- 
down, between the darker skinned and 
the lighter skinned. Obviously not for 
everybody, and it wasn't a gigantic 
problem, but it was something you no- 
ticed. They started mirroring the social 
situations of their characters, being on 
this plantation for a few weeks. 
PLAYBOY: What about the local whites? 
Were they resentful? 

TARANTINO: Well, frankly, there weren't 
that many whites in the area on our 
set. We had local crew for sure, but 
there was no reason for whites in the 
area to be hanging around. 

PLAYBOY: Leonardo DiCaprio was ini- 
tially mentioned for the Hans Landa 
role that won Christoph Waltz an 
Academy Award in Inglourious Basterds. 
DiCaprio's your new villain now. 
TARANTINO: Leo and I never actually 
got together and talked about /nglou- 
rious Basterds. He was curious about 
playing the role, but I knew I needed 
somebody with all those linguistic 
skills. Leo can actually speak good Ger- 
man, but Landa spoke French in the 
movie more than German. So it was 
never in the cards. But Leo and I have 
hung out over the course of 15 years, 
and he likes my writing and makes sure 
he gets a copy of scripts I finish to see 
if there’s anything that might float his 
boat. He got this one and really liked 
Calvin Candie. 

PLAYBOY: He called you? 

TARANTINO: Yeah. 

PLAYBOY: When you wrote Candie, did 
you have anyone in mind? 

TARANTINO: I did, but I don’t want to 
say who, simply because when I fin- 
ished the script I realized they were a 
little older than I wanted the character 
to be. That's a problem I have. I'll be 
thinking about somebody and not take 
into account that I'm thinking of them 
from 20 years ago. Leo was younger 
than I had initially written, but I read 
it again and could see no reason why 
the character couldn't be younger. And 
since I'm hitting hard this notion of the 
American South re-creating European 
aristocracy in this amateur make-it-up- 
as-you-go-along fashion, the notion of 
him as the boy emperor was cool. His 
daddy was a cotton man, his daddy's 
daddy was a cotton man and so was his 
father before him. So Candie doesn't 
have to do anything. It's all set up, and 
he can be the petulant ruler with other 
interests. His passion is not cotton. It's 
Mandingo fighting. 


69 


PLAYBOY 


70 


PLAYBOY: Is he a classic Tarantino villain? 
TARANTINO: He’s the first villain I’ve 
ever written that I didn’t like. I hated 
Candie, and I normally like my villains 
no matter how bad they are. I see their 
point of view. I could see his point of 
view, but I hated it so much. For the 
first time as a writer, I just fucking 
hated this guy. 

PLAYBOY: Why? 

TARANTINO: He is master of the institu- 
tion of slavery, and my despising that is 
why I wrote this whole thing. He’s the 
bedrock of it all. So I thought, Wow, I 
got Leo, and he doesn’t know that it’s 
a lot of smoke and mirrors and not as 
good as some of these other parts. But 
working with Leo, we ended up mak- 
ing it as good as all those other parts. 
The whole petulant boy emperor idea 
solidified as opposed to the older plan- 
tation big-daddy fellow. Leo formed a 
new character, and he was direct about 
what he wanted to do. Just as I have an 
agenda about history that I want to get 
across in this movie, so does he, and he 
brought all this research into his char- 
acter. Leo had a nice monologue, talk- 
ing about being a boy and his father do- 
ing this and being surrounded by black 
faces growing up. How could he ever be 
anything other than what he is? He was 
born into this. Is a prince going to deny 
the throne, his kingdom? I still blame 
him, but what chance did he have? 
PLAYBOY: You write terrific villains. 
Who set the bar highest for bad guys 
for you? 

TARANTINO: Lee Van Cleef is one of my 
favorite actors. I love him in The Good, 
the Bad and the Ugly. 

PLAYBOY: What makes a good bad guy? 
TARANTINO: You can point at a movie 
like Schindler’s List and there’s Ralph 
Fiennes. And there’s No Country for Old 
Men and Javier Bardem, and Inglouri- 
ous Basterds and Christoph Waltz. The 
last time I watched a regular genre 
movie and the bad guy showed up and 
blew me away was Alan Rickman in Die 
Hard. It was the way he took over the 
film. It’s definitely fun to write char- 
acters like that. But what I’m always 
trying to do, even in the case of Res- 
ervoir Dogs, is get you to kind of like 
these guys, despite on-screen evidence 
that you shouldn't. Despite the things 
they do and say and despite their agen- 
da. I also like making people laugh at 
fucked-up shit. 

PLAYBOY: The last time you did a Playboy 
Interview you described being proposi- 
tioned by women mailing you photos 
and things. What does the mail look 
like now? 

TARANTINO: If I'm at a film festival, out 
and about in town or in a bar, I can chat 
a gal up and it's still all good. I don't 
keep up with mail anymore. When I 
went to the Venice Film Festival and 
was the head of the jury, I couldn't do 
anything because everyone knew I was 


there. You go down to the bar, where 
it was always cool to drink with some 
of the other jury members, but it was a 
constant bum's rush. 

PLAYBOY: You took ecstasy at the Great 
Wall to let off steam while you were 
making Kill Bill. When you shoot a 
tense slave drama in the Deep South, 
how do you let loose? 

TARANTINO: This movie was so hard. I 
thought about it in terms of Kill Bill, 
and I was like, Okay, I am not partying 
like I did on that one. We had the week- 
ends off, and sometimes I found myself 
sleeping all Saturday and maybe every 
once in a while going out to dinner. 
PLAYBOY: You told Howard Stern that 
Brad Pitt cut you a hunk from a hash 
brick while you were talking about 
Inglourious Basterds. What kind of trou- 
ble did you get in from Brad, or from 
Angelina Jolie? 

TARANTINO: Oh no, that time I was 
okay. Brad fucking started it. He men- 
tioned it at a fucking press conference. 
I'd mentioned it earlier, but he made it 
official. Maybe he doesn't realize he's 
the one who officially started it, but he 


If I had a wife, I would 
probably be more polite. She 
would make me write thank- 
you notes, which I won't do 

on my own. I wouldn't be 
such a caveman. 


did. But it was all good. It got picked 
up on a zillion sites: “Quentin gets 
Brad high to say yes to Basterds." And 
then 996 related articles. [laughs] 
PLAYBOY: Do drugs have a positive im- 
pact on your creative process while 
you're writing or directing? 
TARANTINO: Well, no. I wouldn't do any- 
thing impaired while making a movie. I 
don't so much write high, but say you're 
thinking about a musical sequence. You 
smoke a joint, you put on some music, 
you listen to it and you come up with 
some good ideas. Or maybe you're 
chilling out at the end of the day and 
you smoke some pot, and all of a sud- 
den you're spinning a web about what 
you've just done. Maybe you come up 
with a good idea. Maybe it just seems 
like a good idea because you're stoned, 
but you write it down and look at it the 
next day. Sometimes it's fucking awe- 
some. I don't need pot to write, but it's 
kind of cool. Making this movie was 
really hard. The weekend comes and 
all I want to do is smoke out to veg. 
It's just shutting down. My blowout on 
Django was always Friday night. In New 


Orleans, me and the crew would go out 
to some bar. There were tons of bars, 
and some of them were pretty wild. 
We would be out till six or seven in the 
morning and then just sleep all day, re- 
cuperate Sunday, maybe show a movie 
and be back at it Monday. 

PLAYBOY: Do you have a medicinal mari- 
juana prescription, which allows every- 
body in Hollywood to get pot legally? 
TARANTINO: I might be the only guy 
here who doesn't have that. 

PLAYBOY: You turn 50 next year. Do you 
think about getting married and hav- 
ing kids? 

TARANTINO: We'll see. I've had things 
that have almost worked out but 
haven't, where I thought I'd get mar- 
ried and have kids. I'm not necessarily 
against it anymore. I was into it, but 
then I got over it. I had a little baby 
fever for a while but got over it. 
PLAYBOY: Did you spend quality time 
around a little kid? 

TARANTINO: No, no, no. The movie I'm 
working on is my baby. But I'm in an 
open time in my life right now, and I'm 
kind of interested to see what's going 
to happen next. 

PLAYBOY: Is any of that because you're 
about to turn 50? 

TARANTINO: I don't think so, because I 
don't think about it like that. I think 
you're the first person to keep refer- 
ring to my turning 50. [laughs] Yeah, 
I'm still hanging on to my 49. I have 
a little while yet. All this 50 talk? It's 
just mean. 

PLAYBOY: It's pissing you off? 
TARANTINO: Yeah. [/aughs] I could be 
open right now to meeting a cool girl, 
getting along with her, taking it to the 
next step and, if that's good, taking it 
to the next step. And let's just see what 
the deal is. 

PLAYBOY: You're going to be one of 
those 65-year-old guys chasing kids 
around the house, aren't you? 
TARANTINO: Frankly, I wouldn't have 
a problem with that at all. I mean, a 
little ego in me would like to be young- 
er when I have kids, but fucking kids 
don't give a shit. And there is that as- 
pect of being older now and having 
time with them. You don't have better 
shit to do. The kid doesn't care. 
PLAYBOY: What's the most appealing 
thing about living a single man's life? 
TARANTINO: I have the freedom to do 
what I want. I can make the day what- 
ever I want to make it. People with fam- 
ilies have responsibilities to their team. 
I'm sure there are negative aspects to 
my bohemian lifestyle, to be sure. 
PLAYBOY: Like what? 

TARANTINO: I don't know. I’m just talk- 
ing the most mundane stuff. 

PLAYBOY: You can't think of a single 
thing, can you? 

TARANTINO: Yeah. If I had a wife, I would 
probably be more polite. She would 
make me write (continued on page 178) 


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THE 


Et 


> Until the feds busted him in 
2011, Boston gangster Whitey 
Bulger was the FBI's most 
wanted man, the greatest crimi- 
nal mastermind of our time. On 
the eve of his trial, all his shock- 
ing secrets will soon come to 
light—even the one our justice 
system is desperate to conceal 


BY RICHARD STRATTON 


y 


, n a cool Wednesday eve- 
ning, June 22, 2011, FBI 
agénts with the Violent 
Crimes Task Force gathered 
at the Bureau's Los Angeles 
headquarters on Wilshire 
‘Boulevard. They were joined 
by deputy U.S. marshals and heavily 
armed members of the LAPD SWAT 
team. The agents and cops were wired, 
ténse with anticipation, for they were 
hoping to take down the FBI's most 
wanted man, a criminal who had 
evaded capture for more than 16 years 
despite one of the largest worldwide 
manhunts in history. 

That man, these agents believed, 
was living with his mistress in an 
apartment complex in Santa Monica 
just five miles from where the task 
force had assembled. James “Whitey” 
Bulger, criminal mastermind and Top 
Echelon FBI informant, was wanted 
for racketeering, extortion and drug 
dealing, as well as for his alleged par- 
ticipation in at least 19 murders. The 
agents believed Bulger, now 83 years 
old, was living under the alias Charles 


74 


Gasko at 1012 Third Street, two 
blocks from the beach in Santa Mon- 
ica, always paying his $1,145 rent on 
time, always in cash. The painstaking 
planning centered on how to capture 
Bulger now that the FBI was con- 
vinced it finally had him in its sights. 
Bulger was considered to be armed 
and extremely dangerous. An ex-con 
who had served time in California’s 
infamous Alcatraz penitentiary, he 
had sworn he would never go back 
to prison. 

The Bureau did not want to screw 
it up this time. For years the agency 
had been humiliated time after time 
in locations around the world— 
from England to Australia, Italy to 
Ireland—as tips and reported sight- 
ings had failed to produce an arrest. 
Bulger was a phantom. There was 
rampant speculation that he was in 
fact the FBI's least wanted fugitive, 
that the Bureau was merely making 


He emerged from 


prison a master 


criminal on acid. 


a show of trying to find him for fear 
of the consequences of his arrest—of 
what his secrets would reveal not just 
about the underworld but about the 
U.S. justice system itself. 

At last the bust was about to go 
down. Sharpshooters had the tree- 
shaded building surrounded. Fearing 
a shootout, they decided not to break 
down the door and go in with guns 
blazing. Instead they concocted a 
ruse to lure the gangster from his 
lair. Agents contacted the building 
manager and instructed him to call 
the apartment. When the man they 
believed was Bulger answered, iden- 
tifying himself as Mr. Gasko, the 


building manager told 
him a storage locker he 
was using in the base- 
ment of the building had 
been broken into and 
asked him to come down 
to make a claim. 

The balding, white- 
haired man shuffled 
from the apartment and 
took the elevator to the 
basement. He wasn’t noticeably sur- 
prised or even upset when he walked 
into the trap and found a small army 
of federal agents with guns pointed 
at his head. 

“James Bulger!” an agent yelled. 
“You’re under arrest! Put your 
hands on your head. Drop to your 
knees. Lie facedown. Hands behind 
your back.” 

Agents swarmed around him like 
paparazzi on Brad Pitt. There was 
that familiar click and grip of the 
cuffs around his wrists. 

“Yes,” he admitted, “I am James 
Bulger. You got me.” 

Whitey Bulger smiled. At last he 
could stop running. 

The agents took him back upstairs 


> 1960: While Whitey : 


1. After a 16-year manhunt that spanned the globe, the FBI's most wanted man—Irish American 
gangster James “Whitey” Bulger—was captured hiding in plain sight in Santa Monica; he had 
been using the alias Charles Gasko. &. The FBI found nearly a million in cash and an arsenal of 
weapons in Bulger’s hideout. 3. Guns found in Bulger's possession. He is a suspect in 19 killings. 
4. The apartment complex at 1012 Third Street, two blocks from the beach, where FBI agents 
and U.S. marshals made the arrest. B. Bulger, left, with a Winter Hill gang associate in an FBI 
surveillance photo taken before the gangster’s 1995 disappearance. 6. FBI Special Agent John 
Connolly recruited Whitey into the Bureau's secret Top Echelon informant program. Ӯ. Connolly 
huddles with a lawyer in federal court in 2002. 8. Mafia hit man Francis “Cadillac Frank" Salemme. 


to the apartment, where his 60-year- 
old companion, Catherine Greig, 
awaited. There the investigators 
uncovered almost a million dollars in 
cash and a huge arsenal of weapons. 

Bulger looked at his longtime live- 
in girlfriend, on the run with him for 
all these years. “Honey,” he said, “it’s 
time to go home.” 


hones rang in the offices of 
cops, agents, politicians, lawyers 


and prosecutors and in the 
homes and hideouts of crooks big 
and small all over the globe. Bulger’s 
flight had ended. 
For Whitey Bulger was not just 
some run-of-the-mill bad guy. He 
was a mythic figure, a folk hero 


> 1975: Now an FBI agent, 


The Great { y » ‚== : is at Alcatraz, his Connolly convinces his old 
White Wh ale Ae ХЭ, : Younger brother friend Bulger to become 
CO ms : Billy is elected to the a TE—a Top Echelon FBI 
: y E : Massachusetts House informant. Connolly asks Bulger 
ER A i o E DAP IS CIN EM EN 
i youth of orime wenn > 1968: Bulger gets out of : England faction of the Italian 
to the FBI's most wanted list get , Connolly works on the mob-Whitey's main rival. 
: Bulger is sentenced campaign. prison and becomes a top Bulger agrees, allegedly saying 
> September 3, 1989: James Bulger : to federal prison for lieutenant in South Boston's : j - i 
is born to Irish immigrant parents in the : bank robbery. He Irish Winter Hill posse. : “All right, if they 
Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His : participates in the During the city’s 1960s : want to play 
platinum hair earns him the nickname : CIA's notorious LSD gang wars, Bulger partners : i 
Whitey. He grows up in a housing project’ : experiments. with Stephen “the Rifleman" : checkers, We 11 play 
in South Boston, where future FBI star : Flemmi. Their criminal : , S 
agent John Connolly also comes of age. : chess. Fuck, em : 


ascendancy begins. 


ae _- > de 


and ruthless murderer, the great 
criminal mastermind of our time. 
Loosely portrayed on the silver 
screen by Jack Nicholson in the 
Martin Scorsese film The Departed, 
Bulger ranks on a level with Gotti, 
Capone and Escobar, and even 
higher in his hometown of Boston. 


While executing his alleged 19 hits— 


strangling and stabbing his victims, 
dismembering their bodies and 
yanking out their teeth with pliers 
to thwart identification—Bulger and 
his partner, Stephen “the Rifleman” 
Flemmi, ruled the New England 


> Late 1970s: Bulger 
goes on a murderous 
rampage. Insiders later 


testify that his henchmen : 


disposed of bodies after 


pulling the teeth out with : 


pliers so they could not 
be identified. 


> 1978: Whitey's 
brother Billy becomes 
president of the 
Massachusetts State 
Senate. All the while, 
Billy claims his older 
brother Whitey is the 
smarter sibling. 


rackets for decades. 
All the while, it had 
long since been 
revealed, they were 
what is known as 
Top Echelon FBI 
criminal informants, 
or TEs. They 

were FBI assets. While Bulger 

and Flemmi ran New England's 
underworld, they were protected 
and allowed to remain active by 
high-ranking officials within the 
Department of Justice. 

'The FBI claims that after a 16-year 
manhunt it finally got wind of 
Bulger's whereabouts after dissemi- 
nating a 30-second public-service ad 
focused on his female companion, 
the elegant Greig, a former dental 
hygienist who was known to frequent 
beauty and nail salons. Aired primar- 
ily during women's TV shows such 


as Ellen, The View and Dr. Oz, the 

ad produced more than 200 calls. 
According to inside sources, a young 
deputy U.S. marshal zeroed in on 
the lead that ultimately led agents to 
Bulger—a mere two days after the 
ads started to air. 

'The tip supposedly came from Miss 
Iceland 1974, Anna Bjórnsdóttir, still 
stunning at 58, a former B-movie 
star living in southern California. 
Bjórnsdóttir recognized Greig, whom 
she had befriended over a stray 
cat the ladies encountered in the 
streets of Santa Monica. That pussy 
cost Bulger his freedom and earned 
Bjórnsdóttir a $2 million reward. 

But in the highest realms of the 
Department of Justice, and for 
students of the Bulger saga every- 
where, the capture is not the end of 
the story but a new beginning. The 
gangster is a man of many secrets. 
He holds information that if exposed 
would send shock waves through the 
hallowed halls of the Department of 
Justice. Here is Bulger's opportunity 
to end all the lies and tell the world 
what he knows. 

'There is one man who stands to 
gain the most by having the truth 
emerge. That man is former special 
agent John Connolly, Bulger's FBI 
handler. A long time ago Connolly 
was a highly decorated agent. Now 
he has been in prison almost as long 
as Bulger was on the run. Connolly 
was headed to the yard for a workout 
at a federal prison in North Caro- 
lina when he heard about Bulger's 
takedown. All through his workout, 
the news of the arrest played in Con- 
nolly's mind. When he finished his 
exercises and returned to the housing 
unit for the evening count, Bulger's 
capture was all over the airwaves. 

Connolly's side of perhaps the big- 
gest law enforcement scandal of our 
time has never been fully told. Until 
now. In a series of telephone inter- 
views from prison, Connolly spoke 
about the potentially game-changing 


> Early 1980s: Bulger and 
Flemmi become involved in a World 
dai Alai fixing scheme. When 
things get out of control, they 
engineer the killing of numerous 
people connected to the fix. The 
former president of World Jai Alai 


Р 
> 1998: Even though their 


> 1980: Now the top тап іп : ¡9 killed and dumped in the trunk of : — TE status is supposed to 
the Winter Hill gang, Bulger his Cadillac. : protect Bulger and Flemmi 
helps Connolly and the FBI from prosecution, the 
bring down the New England feds decide to bust them. 


faction of La Cosa Nostra. As 
a result, Connolly becomes 
highly decorated. 


Flemmi is arrested. Bulger 
disappears. Did Connolly 
tip him off to the coming 


ө 


indictments? >>> 


arrest of Jim Bulger, his longtime 
Top Echelon criminal informant. 
“Was I surprised to hear they 


caught Jim?” Connolly says. “Yes... 
but then again no. Yes because Jim 
had been a fugitive for so long, and 
as an FBI agent I realized the trail 
of someone that bright and that dis- 
ciplined is usually ice-cold after 16 


years. I knew Jim Bulger wasn’t 


going to be making the usual mis- 


takes that result in fugitives being 
apprehended. 


“Later,” Connolly remembered, 


“when I caught up with the news on 
TY, it hit me. This thing is going to 


get blown wide open. The poten- 


1. A surveillance photo shows Whitey 
with Catherine Greig before they dis- 
appeared together. 8. The FBI used 
a variety of strategies to bring the 
fugitives to justice. 8. Stephen “the Rifle- 
man” Flemmi, Whitey’s partner, testifies 
in 2008, An admitted killer, he is now 
serving a life sentence. 


Bulger finally expos- 
ing the truth of his 
relationship with 

the Department of 
Justice—and what was 
done to me to cover 
that up—cannot be 
overestimated. That 
could finally set me free.” 


in the true sense of the word—an 

Irish American enclave physi- 
cally and psychologically separate 
from the rest of the city. It even has 
its own song: “Southie Is My Home- 
town.” In the Old Harbor housing 
project, three Irish American youths 
were born before World War II to a 
shared destiny: One would reach the 
lofty heights of the famously clan- 
nish Massachusetts political machine, 
one would rise to the highest ranks of 
national law enforcement, while the 
third would seize the bloody crown 


© outh Boston is a neighborhood 


three would end up embroiled in a 
scandal that reached the highest levels 
of the American justice system. 

Whitey Bulger got his elementary 
education in crime as a teenager run- 
ning with a Southie street gang known 
as the Shamrocks. He became a jour- 
neyman criminal in league with a 
crew of bank robbers while still in his 
20s and was named to the FBI's most 
wanted list. Bulger did his first major 
prison stretch at the federal peni- 
tentiary in Atlanta. While there, in 
the 1950s, he volunteered to ingest 
massive doses of LSD as part of the 
CIA's MK-Ultra program. Becom- 
ing a human guinea pig earned him 
a reduction in his sentence. He was 
transferred to Alcatraz, the Harvard of 
penitentiaries, where he received the 
equivalent of a doctorate in criminal- 
ity. An avid reader and a long-range 
thinker, Bulger studied military his- 
tory and warfare tactics while locked 
up, absorbing such classics as Sun 
Tzu’s The Art of War and Machiavelli's 
The Prince. He emerged from the peni- 
tentiary a master criminal on acid and 
was soon in the thick of the mob wars 
raging in Boston in the 1960s and 
1970s, working his way up until he 
was running the notorious Winter Hill 
gang out of Southie. 

Whitey's younger brother Billy 
took the opposite road. He became 
a "triple eagle" graduate of Boston 
College High School, Boston Col- 
lege and Boston College Law School 
before entering local politics. After 
17 years in the state senate, Billy 
was named president of the Univer- 
sity of Massachusetts. Later, after his 
gangster brother absconded from the 
law in 1995, Billy was hounded out 
of public life by then Massachusetts 
governor Mitt Romney for refusing 
to testify before a grand jury investi- 
gating Whitey. 

Like most of the kids in the neigh- 
borhood, young Johnny Connolly was 
in awe of Whitey. He heard the sto- 
ries of Whitey having an affair with a 


tial evidentiary value of Whitey of the New England underworld. All stripper from (continued on page 180) 
s > 8006: Martin > dune 22, 2011: After 16 years > Early 2013: 
Scorsese’s The Departed on the lam, the FBI's most wanted Bulger is 
hits theaters. Jack man, James “Whitey” Bulger, is busted expected to 
Nicholson plays a crime living in Santa Monica under the name testify in 
boss inspired by Bulger. Charles Gasko. An arsenal of weapons court. All his 
FA and hundreds of thousands in cash are secrets could 
A found on the premises. be revealed— 
> 2002: Bulger is still guum Y whether the feds 
on the lam. The feds try likeitornot M 
Connolly for racketeering, 
claiming he tipped Bulger : 
off so he could flee. The : > 2008: Connolly is convicted of 
disgraced FBI man is ; second-degree murder. The feds 


; claim he provided information 
: that Bulger’s henchman used to 
: make a hit. 


convicted and sentenced 
to 10 years in a federal 
76 penitentiary. 


GEH I CINEMA 


BY STEPHEN REBELLO 


HOLLYWOOD FINALLY DISCOVERS EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. THIS YEAR MEN GIVE WOMEN SOME 
COMPETITION IN PUSHING THE SENSUALITY ENVELOPE—AND EVERYONE IS HAVING FUN 


n 2012, on the big and small screens, 
sex and sexuality finally began to look 
like all-access sports. Cable boundary 
pushers such as True Blood and Game of 
Thrones continued to celebrate female 
nudity. Michelle Williams and Sarah Silver- 
man go blissfully full frontal in Take This 
Waltz without a whiff of sensationalism. But 
something else quietly revolutionary began 
to happen with increasing frequency: male 
nudity. For example, in Shame, a powerful 


tale of sexual addiction, co-stars Carey Mulligan and 
Michael Fassbender both appear at length and up close 


exactly as nature intended. 


Above: Bow before 
the majesty of 
Jessica Clark making 


her sexy debut as 
a vampire goddess 
who rises in naked 
splendor from a pool 
of blood. 


This year, for every rags-to-riches show 
business saga like Sparkle, in which Carmen 
Ejogo sizzles, along came another rags-to- 
riches show business saga like Magic Mike, with 
its own beefcake brigade including Channing 
"Tatum and Alex Pettyfer. Former kid star Shia 
LaBeoufnot only goes the full monty in a Sigur 
Rós music video, but he also plans to do real 
sex scenes for director Lars von Trier's Nym- 
phomaniac. Even sexy Mila Kunis plays second 
fiddle to a prostitute-loving stuffed toy in Ted. 


So here for your enjoyment, fun and pleasure is a wrap- 
up ofthe year in cinema, with equal time for good-looking 


private parts female and male. 


SHAME 


“You could play golf with your hands 
tied behind your back,” joked George 
Clooney to Michael Fassbender (above). 


MY WEE WITH MARILYN THE VICTIM 


Michelle Williams conjures some of Actress Jennifer Blanc does down-and-dirty cabin-in-the-woods lovemaking 
eternal screen siren Marilyn Monroe’s with this grindhouse-style thriller’s star-writer-director, Michael Biehn. Of 
sweet, fragile sensuality. course they did research in real life as Mr. and Mrs. Biehn. 


CAME OF THRONES CALIFORNICATION 


The producers have figured out how to keep us from drifting off whenever the Camilla Luddington had Showtime 
medieval skulduggery gets too thick on HBO’s hit fantasy: They throw in hefty viewers standing at attention during 
doses of blouse ripping, wenching and shagging to make sure we don’t get bored. each of her eight episodes. 


HELD THE LIGHTS ON 


Things get steamy in this portrait of a 
tortured relationship between a gay 
filmmaker and a closeted lawyer. 


(AFL DE FLORE ROCH OF AGES 


Canadian pop singer-songwriter Kevin Parent plays a rock star DJ who hopes the Tom Cruise’s pelvic thrusts and Axl 
enticing actress-singer Evelyne Brochu will help wash away the pain of his devas- Rose-style writhing inject some 
tating divorce. If she can't do the job, this poor guy may be beyond hope. needed energy into a lame movie. 


HOMELAND THE DICTATOR 


After years of captivity in Irag, Damian The fictional despot played by Sacha Baron Cohen is so filthy rich he keeps a 
Lewis learns his sexy wife, Morena Bac- phalanx of sexy Virgin Guards including Dominique DiCaprio not only to protect 
carin, is sleeping with his best friend. him from his enemies but also to serve as his personal milkmaids. 


BOARDWALK EMPIRE 


Mobsters, vice, bootleg booze and singing-and-dancing floozies such as Meg 
Chambers Steedle? No wonder corrupt Atlantic City power broker and crime 
boss Steve Buscemi keeps stopping by. But why is he always depressed? 


DABA SHADOWS PIRANHA 20D 


Eva Green’s sorcery can’t help but We're not sure what Seth MacFarlane’s Irina Voronina, PLAvBov's Miss January 
awaken the devil in her centuries-old rude plush movie hero does with this 2001, emerges from the deep uneaten— 
flame, courtly vampire Johnny Depp. group of escorts. We fear the worst. by flesh-gobbling fish, anyway. 


PARADL'S END FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS 


The hero of this World War | BBC No sexy back for sultry Mila Kunis, who insisted on a butt double in this no- 
series resists the allure of the wealthy strings-sex comedy. Justin Timberlake, however, showed no such modesty. 
man-eater played by Rebecca Hall. Another reason friends with benefits seldom remain friends. 


THE SHIN I LIVE IN STRIKE BACH 


In Pedro Almodóvar's twisted com- On Cinemax's British import about international spies running around the globe 
edy, Antonio Banderas plays doctor blowing stuff up, the secret agents always take time out from going deep under- 
with his captive, Elena Anaya. cover to go deep diving. It's just like Downton Abbey, only different. 


A DANGEROUS METHOD 


Keira Knightley responds ecstatically 
to the “medical” spanking doled out 
by Michael Fassbender, her shrink. 


SMU FALL LIZ & DICH 


Only a starchy prude like M could disapprove when Daniel Craig steams up the Lindsay Lohan is all cleavage, smol- 
shower with stunning French import Bérénice Marlohe in James Bond's 23rd spy der and jewels while posing as Eliza- 
thriller. No wonder the franchise is celebrating its 50th anniversary. beth Taylor in a Lifetime TV movie. 


aa > 


CONAN THE BARBARIAN 


Alina Puscau sexes up the remake 
of the old Arnold Schwarzenegger 
sword-and-sorcery epic. 


E 4 : ; t‏ ا 
d .‏ 


MAGIC MBE SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE 


In the year’s most brazen display of beefcake, the bumping and grinding of strip- Playing a scheming, newly freed body 
pers Channing Tatum, Adam Rodriguez and Matt Bomer had women standing in slave, Bonnie Sveen uses her beauty 
line at the box office and the rest of us rushing to the gym. to sleep her way up the ladder. 


THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 


Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield’s On Starz’s political drama starring Kelsey Grammer, the tendency of mayoral 
chemistry spins a web of young love aide Kathleen Robertson to sleep with the wrong guys results in a pregnancy by 
both on- and, as it turns out, offscreen. one of her boss’s fiercest enemies. Time for a session with Dr. Frasier Crane? 


INSIDE- FOOTBALL 


CRENTEST-— 


At any 


given 


KARL TARO 
GREENFELD 


momen ГА 
theres 
only one 
thing on 
Jon 


ла шз 
rr” 
"== 
E) 


Gruden’s 
mind. 
It’s the 
sport that’s 
become his 
magnificent 
obsession 


E. 


indy Gruden is a patient woman. The petite blonde, 
a former University of Tennessee cheerleader—"I 
was the girl at the top of the pyramid!"—has wed one 
Gruden man and raised three Gruden boys. She can 
get kids to school before the bell and to practice on time 
and can get dogs walked and cats fed, but the one thing 
she finally said enough is enough to was fired football coaches 
showing up at her house at four A.M., ringing the doorbell and then 
shuffling in and heading to the office of her husband, Jon Gruden, to 
watch videotape with the Super Bowl-winning ex-Tampa Bay Bucca- 
neers head coach and Monday Night Football announcer. They just kept 
coming, hangdog expressions and collared short-sleeve O- ----.. 


85 


86 


shirts, still smelling of a hundred 
miles of car air-conditioning, and 
Cindy Gruden is a kind woman. She 
wasn't going to turn away these tired 
and broken men who sought out her 
husband for fellowship and 
companionship in their time 
of need. 

“I love coaches,” says Cindy. 
"These are good guys, smart 
guys, intense guys. But come 
on, I've got a family to run." 

And so Cindy told Jon to 
find an office outside their 
home in the gated Avila 
community. He set off down 
Tampa's North Florida 
Avenue until he came to 
a forlorn little strip mall 
grandly named the Florida 
Professional Group, be- 


tween Rheem Team AC & 
Cooling and Austin Septic 
Systems, where the landlord 
talked him into paying $900 
a month for a one-room 
office facing a swamp. The 


Ў 0л Monday Night Football Jon Gruden gives voice to all his fellow football fanatics across America. Their 
obsession is his obsession,'and critics say he out-John Maddens John Madden in terms of over-the-top 
passion. ©) Gruden was even more intense as a coach, and in 2003 it paid off when his Tampa Bay Buccaneers 
beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bow! XXXVII. I Line judge Ron Baynes got a sense of just how intense 
Gruden is when, as head coach of the Raiders, he challenged one of Baynes's calls during a game against 


the Kansas City Chiefs in 2001 


carpet is gray, the walls are brown 
tongue-in-groove and the windows 
are filthy—not that you'd notice, be- 
cause the light is awful, and not that 
Jon cares, because he keeps it dark in 
there all day anyway to watch game 
films. He emptied his garage of his 
videotapes and monitors, set it all up 
here and started operating what he 
half jokingly calls the FFCA, the Fired 
Football Coaches Association. 

So Cindy sleeps better. And Jon, well, 
Jon barely ever sleeps at all. 

He's tried everything: sleeping pills, 
hypnotism, even drinking himself into a 
stupor, and none of it worked. He can't 


stay down for more than three or four 
hours a night. A doctor he saw in his 20s 
examined him and told him there was 
nothing wrong physically and to view 
his sleeplessness as "a gift. You just need 


to find something 
to do with your 
free time." 

It turns out 
being a football 
coach is a good 
profession for an 
insomniac. There's 
always more prep- 
aration a coach can do, always another 
play to diagram, always another forma- 
tion to study. 

So this fired Tampa Bay Buccaneers 
head coach is joined, many days, by fel- 
low fired football coaches: Rick Venturi, 
fired Northwestern head coach; Ron 


Zook, fired University of Florida and 
University of Illinois head coach; Jim 
Leavitt, fired University of South Flor- 
ida head coach; Doug Williams, fired 
Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant; plus 
other college and high school 
coaches too numerous to 
mention. They turn up at all 
hours, tired men, fired men. 
Every coach gets fired, Jon 
Gruden's dad, Jim Gruden— 
himself a former assistant 
coach fired from Notre 
Dame—has told Jon. So there 
are plenty of prospective 
FFCA members. And Jon tells 
them to get coffee from the 
gas station down the street 
because his coffeemaker is 
broken and to pull out a fold- 
ing chair from the stack in 
the corner and sit down and 
watch some tape with him. 
Men helping other men by 
watching football together. 


Ins hrvolas cloone 
JON OAVCLY SLCEPS 
(Pd Ll 


"DN 7 | 
att. 116 


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112 tas ley 
есеҥйуй гази, 

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S leez PNL Pults. 
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your ROUTS. 


“Its kind of a 
support group,” 
says Leavitt, who 
has since become 
the San Francisco 
49ers' linebackers 
coach. “It keeps 
you in touch with 
football after you're 
fired, and it's im- 
portant emotion- 
ally to be around 
guys who are go- 
ing through what I 
went through." 


Gruden would be here anyway, every 
morning. He'll watch film with noth- 
ing but the palmetto bugs for com- 
pany. And somehow, the few times a 
year he comes out of that dark room— 
to commentate on the NFL draft, 
to film the (continued on page 190) 


"Every year I leave Cookie out for Santa." 


87 


ARTIST 
LEROY 
NEIMAN 


88 


rom 1958, when he visited Chicago's fabled Pump 
Room, to 1972, when he attended Super Bowl VI, 
artist LeRoy Neiman traveled the world to sketch and 
paint the good life for pLavsoy. Man at His Leisure, as 
his series was known, appeared 42 times in these 
pages. Neiman died this past June at the age of 91. 
Here, we pay homage to a man who embodied the 
elegance and sophistication of the Playboy lifestyle. 


.London, 1972 

eiman visited the headquarters of 
Sotheby's and offered his unique take on 
he lively auction room. "It's as solemn as 
high mass at St. Peter's," said the artist. 


2. Cannes, 1962 

eiman's skills as a draftsman are 
apparent in his sketch of a beauty 
contest on the French Riviera. "Those 
women really had strong back porches,” 
he later observed. 


3. New York, 1965 

While visiting the Playboy Club on East 
59th Street, the artist found himself more 
impressed with the esprit of the Bunnies 
at work than with the fantastic facilities. 


4. Malibu, 1967 

In a Man at His Leisure installment that 
appeared in the July 1967 issue, Neiman 
portrayed daredevil California surfers 
who were "shooting the pier." 


5. Paris, 1964 

Neiman spent a gratifying week on 

the Champs-Élysées, sketching the 
marvelous dancers of the Lido. "For 
the artist," he noted, "backstage is even 
more interesting than out front." 


89 


t's winter in North America. 

You step out your door on a 

blustery morning and your 
foot sinks into the snow. The wind 
grabs your ears until it feels as 
though they're going to shatter. 
But you're not concerned. Not at 
all. In your driveway a cab idles, 
ready to whisk you to the airport. 
You're headed to the southern 
hemisphere, where the summer 
sun is baking the hot sands of 
Rio de Janeiro. There, Brazilian 
bombshell Dany Giehl waits in a 
hotel room, ready to party. 


Raised in Dois Irmáos in southern 
Brazil, Dany has emerald eyes that 
sparkle like shots of Chartreuse. 
She is the winner of PLAYBOY Brazil's 
first Playboy National Preference 
Contest. At 23 years old, she is in 
her prime. And like the beaches of 
Ipanema, Dany is all natural. 


he Runnin’ Rebels’ Stacey Augmon flashes downcourt 
with one long, elastic Mr. Fantastic arm outstretched— 
calling for the ball. Teammate Larry Johnson is on the 
other wing, muscles rippling, ready to take flight. Guard 
Greg Anthony pushes the ball up the middle. Which way will 
he dish? Duke guard Bobby Hurley sure doesn’t know, but either way 
the next sound you hear will be the kwanng of a rim-rocking dunk and 
the deafening roar of a frenzied mob. 

It’s April 2, 1990, the 52nd NCAA championship basketball game, 

a battle of polar opposites. Duke, college basketball’s “good guys,” 
against UNLV’s “outlaw program.” Academic exemplar vs. a commuter 
school known as Tumbleweed Tech. Jackets and ties vs. thug hoodies. 
Coach K.’s Xs and Os vs. Tark the Shark’s running gunners. 

Vegas oddsmakers say the game is likely to be close. UNLV fans 
have a two-word answer to that: “Duck, Duke!” 

Jammed to capacity, Denver’s McNichols Sports Arena can’t con- 
tain the decibels. Millions at home crowd their TVs to see if college 
basketball’s outlaws—the Rebels of the University of Nevada—Las 
Vegas—can crown their season with a first national championship. In 


98 


pgromutfaiene, 


Vegas, gamblers, showgirls, politi- 
cians, high-level mobsters—all are 
tuned in to the action. And on the side- 
line, the ultimate outlaw—UNLV's 
coach, Jerry Tarkanian—marches 
back and forth with all the intensity 
of a pugilist charging into the ring, 
except he's stuffing a towel into his 
mouth and chewing it. 

This is the story of Tarkanian's 
UNLV Runnin' Rebels, a band 
of gifted misfits who lit up score- 
boards, ruled Las Vegas and 
showed the world what a blast 
college hoops could be. All the 
while, they broke every rule in 
the book. Or did they? As the 
Rebels filled highlight reels with 
speed and acrobatics, they inces- 
santly dodged the iron 
fist of NCAA officials 
and, at times, the law 
itself. Never had the 
NCAA seen anything 
like them. 

They made a run at 
history that night in Den- 
ver, a run that had be- 
gun many years earlier, 
the day Jerry Tarkanian 
first appeared in Las 
Vegas. The Strip would 
never be the same. 


"People forget how small Vegas was 
when Tark came to town," says docu- 
mentary filmmaker Stan Armstrong. 
With a population of 125,000 in 1970, 
Las Vegas was smaller than Jackson, Mis- 


Sinatra 


called alter 


svins: “Con- 


Donch. 
sahin’ you го 


dinner!” 


sissippi and Evansville, Indiana. The lo- 
cal commuter college was called Nevada 
Southern until 1969, and even after be- 
coming the University of Nevada-Las 
Vegas it kept its Old South mascot, a 
rootin’, tootin Confederate cartoon wolf 
named Beauregard—not the best sym- 
bol if you're recruiting in the city’s fast- 
growing black neighborhood. "Vegas 
was totally different in those days," Tark 
recalls, looking back on his arrival al- 


most 40 years ago. "Still a small city. You 
could get a nice hotel room for $19. Peo- 
ple didn't think of Vegas as a basketball 
town, but I thought it could be." 

Sin City's racial history wasn't pretty. 
In the 1940s and 1950s, black stars 
such as Sammy Davis Jr. headlined at 
El Rancho, the Sands and other whites- 
only resorts but weren't allowed to 
rent rooms there or show their faces 
in the casinos. The lone exception was 


t DUKE. 


light-skinned chanteuse Lena Horne, 
a favorite of Flamingo owner Bugsy 
Siegel. Horne was allowed to stay in a 
Flamingo bungalow as long as she didn't 
eat or gamble in the hotel, and after she 
checked out, her towels and bedsheets 
were burned. Even after the hotel-casinos 
were integrated in the 1960s, local blacks 
were confined almost exclusively to a 
downtrodden neighborhood called the 
Westside, uncelebrated, mostly unseen. 
Then came Tark the Shark, a bas- 
ketball coach (continued on page 164) 


BY JOHN GASAWAY 


>THE 
FOOTBALL- 
DRIVEN 
CONFERENCE 


realignment you’ve been 
hearing about for a while will 
finally show up on your flat- 
screen this college basketball 
season, and its effects will be 
felt at the top of the hoops 
food chain. Missouri will push 
Kentucky and Florida for 
supremacy in the SEC, while 
West Virginia and Texas 
Christian should populate the 
Big 12’s midsection and cellar, 
respectively. Those lovable 
overachievers from Butler and 
Virginia Commonwealth will 
give perennial contender Xavier 
some competition in the Atlantic 
10. Not counting TCU, all these 
new arrivals have made it at 
least as far as the Elite Eight in 
the past four seasons. 

And that’s just speaking in 
the present tense. Next season 
Syracuse and Pittsburgh will join 
the Atlantic Coast Conference, 
with Notre Dame scheduled to 
bring its game to the ACC as 
soon as the Irish negotiate their 
exit from the Big East. 

Still, don’t write that Big 


OLLEGE 


HOOPS 
12-413 


> THE NCAA GETS A FRONT-END REALIGNMEN 


T 


East obituary yet. Legendary 
Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun 
announced his retirement in 
September, but as long as the 
Huskies, Louisville, Georgetown, 
Villanova and Marquette stay, 
the Big East will be a player. 

Depending on your viewing 
habits, the last time you saw 
Mike Krzyzewski he was either 
watching his Duke team lose to 
Lehigh in the round of 64 or 
coaching the United States to a 
gold medal at the Olympics. He 
doesn’t have LeBron and Kobe 
anymore, but Coach K.’s Blue 
Devils will be much improved 
this year, especially on defense. 

Far from Tobacco Road, the 
prognosis for West Coast hoops 
is finally looking up, with Ben 
Howland and Sean Miller landing 
stellar recruiting classes for UCLA 
and Arizona, respectively. But 
if you’re looking for elite hoops 
after the East Coast goes to bed, 
don’t look past Gonzaga and its 
four returning starters. 

The teams at the top of the 
polls for most of the year will 
be Indiana, Louisville and 
Kentucky, but we expect a 
surging Michigan State to ride 
a dominant defense and just 
enough offense all the way to a 
national title. 


~ 


OUR 
PRESEASON 
SWEET 


-- 


Indiana (Їй 4 Marquette 
Kansas (| = Butler 


Kentucky (1 4 Arizona 
Duke (їй > Pittsburgh 


Florida (ii ^ UCLA 


Gonzaga lll — Louisville 
Michigan State 0 ^ Syracuse 
NC State (1:1 = Ohio State 


ELITE EIGHT 


Indiana lll 2 Kansas 
Kentucky Nf = Duke 
Florida (JE 


Gonzaga 


Michigan State (1:1 > NC State 


i 


FINAL FOUR 


Kentucky Їй 1 Indiana 
Michigan State (ЇН ^ Florida 


{ 


NATIONAL 


CHAMPIONSHIP 


| MICHIGAN STATE (Vii * Kentucky 


Tee CARTOONS OF 
/ ING 


“We can’t go on like this, Mr. Mathers—seeing each other only 
at Christmas office parties!” 


100 “Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la—la-la-la-la....” "What do you mean, where's your present? 
You're unwrapping it now.” 


Ҹу 


lle RRS, | 
АМАМ LALA ANN \ 


W ^ PA 
1.666 Y 
|| Жш 


“You're darn right I was good all year. Pm good anytime." “Pm sorry, Mrs. Claus, but nobody here 101 
its that description..." 


2Q 


BY DAVID HOCHMAN «tp» PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAVIN BOND 


DORA ) 


жор журер жр реу ку) 


TITTLE. 


А 
(] 
Del: 
D 
D 


фоосоооооооо о 


(ж 


u-— | AKSAM| FP] 


THE SEXIEST JUDGE IN COOKING-SHOW HISTORY TALKS 
ABOUT MODELING, EATING AND HOW SHE'S A TRUCK 
DRIVER CAUGHT IN A WOMAN'S BODY 


each season. Then I spend 12 weeks working іс. 
off. But it's worth it. When the timer goes off and 
the food is ready, I'm really excited to eat. 


- 


PLAYBOY: How is the show different this season? 
LAKSHMI: Of all the seasons, this one was the 
easiest and most relaxed for me. The people of 
the Pacific Northwest were very welcoming. The 
terrain around us was lush, and the seafood was 
amazing. Seattle has some talented young chefs. 
Top Chef continues to surprise me as far as being 
a phenomenon. I lucked out. 


-. 


=; 


PLAYBOY: Has the show made you a better cook? 
LAKSHMI: Absolutely not. I can cook, but I'm not 
a chef and I don't want to be. I never aspired to 


“а 


г e «e 


u.s 
en 


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ы У 
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4 


run a restaurant. What I am is an excel- 
lent taster. I have an incredibly sensitive 
palate, which is why I can do what I 

do. If you saw me chop an onion, you 
would be highly unimpressed. But if I 
taste a dish, I can usually replicate the 

ingredients. And if I kissed you, I could 
probably tell what you had for lunch. 


9 


PLAYBOY: You temptress! Your 
contestants must fall in love with you 
constantly. 

LAKSHMI: Well, you know, everyone 
has a little crush on their fourth-grade 
teacher. It fades. But because this is a 
game show, the chefs are not allowed 
to talk to me unless it's on camera. 
It's an FCC thing. Honestly, I don't 
know a thing about these chefs while 
we're shooting. I don't know their last 
names. I don't know if they're married 
or gay. I don't care. But if an innocent 
chef tries to chat me up, a producer 
will walk up and say, "Please step away 
from the judge." Where's that guy in 
my daily life? 


9 


PLAYBOY: Do you get hit on a lot? 
LAKSHMI: I guess so. I don't even real- 
ize it most of the time. A lot of men get 
frustrated with me, actually, because I 
am like a guy. Honestly, I'm like a truck 
driver trapped in this body. I don't want 
to be your best friend. I don't expect 

you to give me a birthday card or send а 
me flowers. I don't need fancy trips. You 
could take me across the street. Don't 3 


get me wrong. That stuff's nice, but I am 
a physical and sensual person. I love to 
be held. I love massages. I'm just not a 


Hallmark kind of gal. 
PLAYBOY: You do realize that makes you 


even more attractive, 1 ight ? 
LAKSHMI: We always read in self-help 
books that men should listen to women 
and talk about their feelings. I sus- 
pect there's some truth to that or they 
wouldn't keep publishing these books. 
Psychologists (continued on page 196) 


104 


"I wish you'd sculpt something from your imagination once in a while!" 


105 


106 


ADOPTING 
AFRIC 


By Paul Theroux 


v 


Most people come to Africa to see 
animals in the wild, while others 
make the visit to tell Africans how 
to improve their lives. And many 
people do both—animal watching 
in the early morning, busybodying 
in the afternoon. Lots of African 
countries offer this opportunity: 
Kenya (game parks and 
slums), Uganda (gorillas 

and tyrants), Tanzania 
(colorful Maasai herd- 

ers and urban shanty- 

towns), Malawi (lakeshore 

luxury and half a million AIDS 
orphans). There are other 
tourism-and-busybody oppor- 
tunities, notably in South Africa, 
where it is possible to travel with- 
out much trouble from wilderness 
safari to township tour and see— 
by the way—that both experiences 
(game viewing and slum visiting) 
have in common a certain pathos, 
even an aesthetic. 


One feature of tourism from the 
grand tour onward is that, not far 
from the five-star hotels, there is 
starvation and squalor. In most 
destinations you can't be a tour- 
ist without turning your back on 
human desperation or else hold- 
ing your nose. India is the en- 
during example—glory in the 
background, misery in the fore- 

ground, no vision of gold with- 

out a whiff of excrement. But 

we are in Africa now, a conti- 
nent plagued with foreign ad- 
visors. I have stayed in African 
hotels, usually the more expen- 
sive ones, where virtually every 
other guest was a highly paid ad- 
vice giver. Itis important to keep in 
mind that charity, and foreign aid, 
is a business, that the people who 
run charities are well-paid and 
that a great deal of what the aver- 
age person contributes—80 cents 
of every ` (continued on page 174) 


astern Europe is a hotbed of model- magazine. Manhattan has become her geo- 


ing talent. From the land ofblade-sharp graphic G-spot. Whether working a photo 
cheekbones, gorgeous gray eyes and, shoot, applauding a Broadway show or 
yes, the pierogi, comes Miss December shooting pool with the boys in SoHo, she 


Amanda Streich. “Just a little over two is savoring the Big Apple. “New York is 
years ago,” says the 19-year-old Polish mod- ту dream-come-true town because it has 
elka with a velvet accent, “I was a champion such energy and magic. I don't like leav- 
swimmer who entered a beauty contest ing it for even one night,” she declares. 
and, before I knew what was happening, s 
I was scouted by a manager and moved 


s perfection with the Christmas 


to New York City to model." It proved tree at Rockefeller Center and the Empire 
a perfect move for Amanda. Her ever- State building all lit up in red and green," 
expanding résumé now includes gigs with she says. “So beautiful!” Ravishing too is 


Victoria's Secret, Calvin Klein and Shape our Centerfold herself. Her humble expla- 
nation? "When I moved here I was really 
skinny and young," says Amanda. "But 
after two years my body has changed and 
I've become, I don't know, a little sexier or 
something?" Maybe just a little... 


Photography by 


в ARNY FREYTAG 


кес ” | 


FROM POLAND TO PLAYBOY COMES MODEL AMANDA STREICH, MISS DECEMBER 


в ARNY FREYTAG 


ues 


3930 SSIW 


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PLAYMATE DATA SHEET 


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HEIGHT: g __ WEIGHT: . tdclos — 

BIRTH um W/OD. sreruptace:__PVOCY | Po Proc Poland 

AMBITIONS: lo oU. CC S6, £ LY óchool ano толеш 

_Ond о emoy Ше with mo абз 0— 

mmo. d VÉ a man who LS ое ent, ole, 

ond ambitious, and he must make me laugh. 

rurnorrs: UCR, Shoes, being boas or borimg-and 

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WHY I DON'T COOK: t n A Yet do E APs | 
HAPPY PLACE: Central Losk e 
WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS: По wot my jawly m Plond— 


Pla -d.a- bikini. Teenager with Kochomt aka: 


See more of Miss December at 
playboy.com. 


PLAYBOY’S PARTY JOKES 


What do you do if you come across Santa on 
Christmas Eve? 
Apologize and wipe it off. 


What’s the difference between Santa Claus 
and a bartender? 
Santa has to look at only eight assholes. 


Can I have a dog for Christmas?” a boy asked 
his mother. 

"Absolutely not!” she answered. "You'll have 
turkey like everyone else.” 


Why doesn’t Santa Claus have any children? 
Because he comes only once a year, and 
when he does, it’s down a chimney. 


I feel bad for you guys,” a wife told her 
husband while watching television. “Between 
Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day every com- 
mercial is about gifts for women and there’s 
nothing about the perfect gift for you.” 

“Well,” he replied, “I think it might be illegal 
to air a commercial showing a threesome with 
you and your best friend.” 


Dia you hear about the Larry David dolls that 
are coming to stores this holiday season? 
They’re already wound up. 


A couple had been waiting to buy presents 
until the wife received her Christmas bonus, 
but it never came. On Christmas Eve she said, 
“Darling, funds are low this year. I suggest that 
instead of buying gifts for each other you just 
go out and buy something for the house.” 

Later in the evening the husband stum- 
bled home drunk and empty-handed. “What 
the hell did you buy for the house?” his wife 
screamed at him. 

He responded, “A round of drinks.” 


One day a little boy wrote to Santa Claus, 
“Please send me a sister.” 

“Surely,” Santa Claus wrote him back. “Send 
me your mother.” 


On Christmas Eve a woman was anxiously 
picking through the Cornish game hens in the 
supermarket in hopes of finding larger ones. 
In desperation she called over a shop assistant 
and asked, “Excuse me, do these game hens 
get any bigger?” 

“No, ma'am,” he replied. "They're all dead.” 


What's the most popular Christmas wine? 
“I didn't get the present I wanted.” 


The Four Stages of Life. 
Stage one: You believe in Santa. 
Stage two: You don't believe in Santa. 
Stage three: You are Santa. 
Stage four: You look like Santa. 


For Christmas I want something that can go 
from zero to 220 in four seconds," a man told 
his wife. 

So she gave him a scale. 


A man was shopping in a toy store when a sexy 
blonde smiled and waved at him. Taken aback 
and unable to place her, he asked, "Sorry, do 
I know you?” 

“I think you might be the father of one of my 
children," she answered. 

His mind shot back to the one and only time 
he'd been unfaithful. ^Holy shit," he said. "Are 
you that stripper I screwed on the pool table 
in front of all my friends while your girlfriend 
whipped me with her belt?" 


“No,” she replied, “I’m your son's teacher." 


Who said that just because I tried to kiss you 
at the Christmas party you could neglect all 
of your work here at the office?" a boss asked 
his secretary. 

'The secretary replied, ^My lawyer." 


Two men in a bar were drinking beer and 
talking about what they had gotten their wives 
for Christmas. The first man said, “I asked 
her what she wanted, and she just said, 'Sur- 
prise me.' So I went out and bought her a new 
iPhone and a dildo." 

“Why the dildo?" the other man asked. 

The first replied, “If she doesn't like the 
iPhone she can go fuck herself." 


Send your jokes to Playboy Party Jokes, 9346 
Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 
90210, or by e-mail to jokes@playboy.com. 
PLAYBOY will pay $100 to the contributors whose 
submissions are selected. 


M IC 
| \ DAYA سے‎ Oe AA ee Ore ee 


4 

M 

M 
t 
t 


“Pm new here, Mr. Fitzroy, but isn't it usual for all the employees 


to be invited to the office Christmas party?" 


119 


PARTY LIKE A 
GENTLEMAN 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY F. SCOTT SCHAFER 


STEVE AOKI, w 
ist JIM MEEHAN, ic 
MARK HUNTER, 
r JOHN LEGEND 
CHRIS COSENTINO. 


SET THE MOOD 


BRIGHT LIGHTS ARE A BUZZKILL. FOR 
GOD’S SAKE, TURN THEM DOWN 


1. DIM THE LIGHTS 


Take a cue 
from every 
romantic res- 
taurant you've 
visited and turn 
down the lights. 
Especially in 
the kitchen (it’s 
where everyone 
ends up anyway). 


2. STRAND AND 
DELIVER 


' Twinkle lights 
aren't just for the 
tree. Hang them 
in every room. 
Buy white ones: 
You can deploy 
them at other 
parties through- 
out the year. 


3. VOTIVE EARLY, 
VOTIVE OFTEN 
Grab a pack of 
tea lights at Ikea 
(they're scent- 
free and only 
four bucks for 
100) and place 
them throughout 
the house for 
dramatic effect. 


GET THE INVITE RIGHT 


— With in-boxes jammed with unanswered holiday e-mail invita- 
tions, sending out letterpress invites printed on heavy card stock 
will greatly improve your RSVP ratio. The handsome invitation 
above was designed and printed by Dauphine Press, which can 
work with you to create your own custom design. 


LISTEN TO 
LEGEND 


PUT THE SINGER’S 
FAVORITE HOLIDAY 
SONGS ON YOUR 
PLAYLIST 


MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY 

by Elvis Presley 

THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY 
by Stevie Wonder 

BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE 

by Betty Carter and Ray Charles 
LET IT SNOW! 

by Frank Sinatra 

CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN HARLEM 
by Louis Armstrong 
CHRISTMAS IN HARLEM 

by Kanye West, CyHi da Prynce 
and Teyana Taylor 


JOHN LEGEND 
The nine-time Grammy 
Award winner is putting the 
finishing touches on his next 
album, Love in the Future. 


Portrait illustrations by ALEXANDRA COMPAIN-TISSIER 


GET PUNCHY 


T 


Meehan is owner 
of PDT, New 
Jork^s preemi- 
nent speakeasy 
and winner of the 
2011 Best Bar in 
the World award, 
and author of 
The PDT 
Cocktail Book. 


Created specially for PLAYBOY, this punch is prepared with a number of 
ingredients worth talking about. Redbreast (comment away) is one of the finest 
Irish whiskeys. Plymouth sloe gin was traditionally sipped from flasks by English 
fox hunters. And the new Tempus Fugit créme de cacao is absolutely amazing. 
Everyone loves champagne, or should, and it can be served on its own for those 
who prefer a glass of wine: Be sure to stock extra bottles. The drink’s name refers 
to the glow one attains after sipping a few of these, as well as to the flush that 
follows an arduous trck to a holiday party. 


' 9 oz. Redbreast 12-year-old Irish Combine first four ingre- 
whiskey dients and refrigerate. 
* 6 oz. Plymouth sloe gin Right before the party, 
* 6 oz. Tempus Fugit creme de pour into a chilled punch 
cacao bowl containing cubed 


* 6 oz. fresh lemon juice ice or a large block of ice 
" . and top with champagne. 

* 1 bottle Moét Imperial Serve in five-ounce 

champagne punch cups garnished 

* 12 lemon slices, for garnish with lemon slices. 


BB 
H LET YOUR 
GUESTS MIX IT UP 


THE ULTIMATE SELF-SERVE BAR 


For the less adventurous—which occasion- 
ally includes VIP attendees such as your 
boss or in-laws—a well-chosen highball 

bar is the low-maintenance way to please 
all tastes. It gives your guests the oppor- 
tunity to show their true colors when they 

mix their own drinks and compliment you 

on your choice of spirits. Set up a combina- 

tion of the categories below, with a bowl of 
lemon and lime wedges. 


= The оја > 


WHISKEY VODKA GIN TEQUILA 
Johnnie Absolut Tanqueray Siete Leguas 
— € Belvedere Plymouth El Tesoro 
Ketel One Hendrick's Jose Cuervo 
The Famous Tradicional 
Grouse 
Compass Box 
= Plica With = 
GINGER MINERAL TONIC GRAPE- 
ALE WATER WATER FRUIT 
Q Ginger Perrier Q Tonic SODA 
Fever-Tree Lurisia Fever-Tree ate 
i 
Blenheim San Schweppes i 
Pellegrino Ting 
Izze 


ALL HAIL 
HOLIDAY ALE 


UNCORK A LIMITED 
EDITION SEASONAL BEER 


> Every year, San Francisco's 
Anchor Brewing creates a top- 
secret custom-blended Christmas 
ale with intense, spicy flavors 
and a higher alcohol content 
than standard ales. Track down 
a magnum for an impressive and 
celebratory presentation. 


DRESS THE PART 


> You've gone to the trouble of dialing in all the details, so 
keep up the high standards on the sartorial front. A simple dark 
suit and tie, or a natty blazer and a crisp shirt, will show your 
best side—and show your guests the respect they deserve. 


SHOOT 
LIKE THE 
COBRASNAKE 


MARK HUNTERS 

TIPS FOR TAKING 
UNFORGETTABLE 
PARTY PHOTOS 


“Your pictures will only 
be as good as what you’re 
taking a picture of. 

Parties are not the time to get 
ambitious with composition to 
show everyone you're a fancy- 
pants artist. Nobody cares about 
your composition. Just find the 
coolest-, hottest-, weirdest- 
looking people you can, stand a 
couple of feet in front of them, 
and take a picture." 


“The key word in ‘party 
photographer’ is ‘party.’ 
You'll never get good photos if 
you look boring and ugly. If you 
dress wild enough, you will cre- 
ate a party just by walking into 
the room, and you can then 
take pictures of that party.” 


“Get a real camera. 

At good parties, 

things happen fast. 
Your camera phone may be 
able to take pretty good 
pictures, but it won’t be 
fast enough to capture the 
really hot action while it’s 


MARK HUNTER 
Hunter, a.k.a. the Cobrasnake, 
shoots the hottest parties in the 
country. Gheck out his pics at 

thecobrasnake.com. 


happening. If you want a 
picture of the big fat drunk 
guy jiggling through the air 
before he lands in the pool, 
you’re going to need a big 
camera with a real lens.” 


“Nothing is worse 

than a picture of a 

really pretty girl with 

a really fake smile. 

| always try to sneak up on 
girls so they don't have time 
to decide what kind of face to 
make, or | try to make them 
laugh so they’re really smil- 
ing. There are other reasons 
to make pretty girls laugh at 
parties, but if you don’t know 
about that, you’re reading the 
wrong magazine.” 


Of all possible holiday hams, none can top the arti- 


Ss. sanal, exactingly smoked Southern country-style hams that 


have become beloved by American chefs. If you've never 
had a country ham from the Deep South before, think of 
it as America’s bold, smoky answer to prosciutto. Chris 
Cosentino, winner of Top Chef Masters and the chef behind 
Incanto in San Francisco and Pigg in Los Angeles, says, 
“Country ham sliced and served like a classic prosciutto is 
the way to go. I like to serve it with ripe pears and toasted 


hazelnuts. Or a simple citrus marmalade and a great 


biscuit would be perfect.” Benton’s, Broadbent’s, Colonel 


OL ‚ С Bill Newsom's, Father's and S. Wallace Edwards and Sons 
[ | are among the best producers. 


KILL YOUR HANGOVER 


BETTER RECOVERY 
THROUGH CHEMISTRY 


Of course, moderation is the 
best medicine. If you over- 
imbibe, the hair of the dog 
will only put off inevitable 
pain and suffering. Blowfish 
is a megadose of caffeine and 
aspirin (which usually works 
for us) in a convenient form. 


age y 
am 
eost i 


SPIN LIKE AOKI 


DAFT PUNK, ALIVE 2007 


QUEEN, GREATEST HITS 
— “They have many hits 


JUSTICE, CROSS 


ә "This album ‹ 


THE BLOODY BEETROOTS, 
ROMBORAMA 
=> «Ti 


STEVE AOKI, WONDERLAND 


"| worked d in ї 


Watson!" 


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127 


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128 


what Reposa rowed “the diviest dive bar in Austin.” 
Saying something. 

“There’s a fucking horse in the bar.” 

Reposa’s thick dark brown beard and hair, billowing over 
his shoulders, drip with grill sweat and grease. It is over 100 
degrees, a hot wind blowing up from old Mexico. It is his 
birthday. Thirty-eight. Taken over the entire saloon, inside 
and out, for the party. His wife and two-year-old son are 
not present. Many former and cur- 
rent clients are. As Reposa is a defense 
attorney in an already peculiar city’s 
atavistic underbelly, this may bode ill. 

To me, “Check it out.” 

I thread my way through a group 
passing a purple hash pipe. Sun still 
high, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s empty 
on the picnic table. Bourbon whiskey 
jug, Evan Williams brand, half full. 

Up a short flight of metal stairs, 
there is indeed a horse in the bar. 
Brown and sleek, shod, saddled and 
reined to the rail. 

A voice in the dark. “Idiot, that ain’t 
a horse. It's a mule.” Well... 

Back outside, someone hands me 
a longneck Lone Star. Chippy, one 
of Reposa’s oldest friends. Tall, thin, 
grew up on the south Texas side of the 
Sabine. Accounts for the clipped bayou 
accent. Did a seven-year federal bit for 
smuggling major-weight weed, back 
when Reposa was still in law school, or 
else he would have defended him. Prob- 
ably would have walked him. Chippy’s 
straight now, owns a pizza joint. 

I nod toward a corner. Two zaftig 
Hispanic women—Rubens would paint 
them, Tracy Jordan would bed them— 
chatting at an outdoor garden table. 
Smoking grass and sipping vodka. 

“Those, um, the strippers?” 

Chippy, laconic, pulls on his own 
longneck. “Well, you know, everything’s bigger in Texas.” 

Getting ahead of myself. 


THREE DAYS EARLIER 


The door flies open from the outside, releasing the faint 
aroma of wood varnish and Jim Beam. Adam Reposa doffs 
his white straw fedora, loosens his Carnaby Street neon-blue 
tie and carefully folds his cranberry-striped seersucker suit 
jacket over a chair back in 
his new office suite. 

He slumps into a larger 


“I've done the best ecstasy. | fucked the greatest virgins. And there's nothing 
like walking a guilty person smooth out of court 


chair, snaps his suspenders like an old-timey banker and plops 
his alligator boots onto a desk. Lowers them. Stands. Sits. 
Plops. Stands again. Paces. All kinetic energy. If I am a per- 
sonal pronoun, Adam Reposa is a verb. 

"I'm pretty constrained in what I can do with this space.” 
He waves his arm about the cramped, three-room attic. "Some 
Bondo and paint on that wall. Put in that little window. Those 
bricks, they were the chimney. Covered 'em with cement and 
painted 'em. The look I'm going for? 
Better than an attic." 

An attic in a run-down clapboard 
house steps from the Heman Marion 
Sweatt Travis County Courthouse 
in downtown Austin, Reposa's stage 
and laboratory. Have to climb the fire 
escape to enter. Convenient, at least, 
if maybe not what you'd expect from 
a man some view as the best crimi- 
nal defense attorney in the Texas Hill 
Country, perhaps the entire state... 
and others view as the legal profes- 
sion's version of a monstrous hybrid 
of Charlie Sheen and Russell Brand. 

Saw it up close. Within an hour 
of my landing last night he plied 
me with oysters, local-brewed IPAs, 
many (many) shots of Kentucky bour- 
bon. Bartender refused to let us pay. 
Reposa once skated him on a DWI. I 
tipped appropriately. 

So I dragged this morning when 
we hit the courthouse. Scut-work day 
in a holiday week: filings, resched- 
uled hearings, no trials. Reposa, 
by contrast, was...chipper. Every- 
one admired his rainbow getup in a 
world of gray flannel and repp ties. 
Almost everyone. Five courtrooms, 
five judges. I counted three amused 
smiles, one raised eyebrow, one mean 
stare and glare. "Me and him got into 
it one time," Reposa explained. 

Just one time? From the lawyer who advertises himself as 
"Bulletproof" and owns the website DWIBadass.com? From 
the lawyer whose photoshopped mug leers from the back page 
of every issue of Austin's most popular underground newspa- 
per in poses ranging from French-kissing a pit bull to banging 
a policewoman doggy style? From the lawyer who gleefully 
performed a cameo in Total Badass, a notorious documentary 
that tracked one of Austin's biggest marijuana dealers—who 
now happens to be Reposa's legal assistant? From the law- 

yer whose most famous 
You' Tube video shows him 
(continued on page 158) 


In a recent promotional video, Reposa rams a truck into a car 
before kicking in the window, screaming, “| am a lawyer!" 


A ranting Reposa appears as a "celebrity spokesman" in this 
psychedelic public service announcement for Drunk Drivers of Texas. 


Footage from 2008 shows a younger, short-haired Reposa 
reporting to serve his sentence for contempt of court. 


“I decided to wear my stockings rather than hang them over the fireplace.” 


129 


ILLUSTRATION BY JON KRAUSE 


osch got to the cubicle early Wednesday 
4 morning and before anyone in the squad 

had arrived. He poured coffee out of the 
take-out cup he’d brought with him into the mug he 
kept in his desk drawer. He put on his readers and 
checked for messages, hoping he had gotten lucky 
and would find that Charles Washburn had been 
picked up overnight and was waiting for himina 
holding cell at 77th Street Division. But there was 
nothing on the phone or in e-mail about 2 Small. 
He was still in the wind. There was, however, a 
return e-mail from Anneke Jespersen’s brother. 
Bosch felt a trill of excitement when he recognized 
the words in the subject line: The investigation of 
your sister’s murder. 

A week earlier, when Bosch was notified by the 
ATF that the bullet casing from the Jespersen 
murder had been matched to ballistics from 
two other murders, the case jumped from the 
submission phase to an active investigation. Part 
of the Open-Unsolved Unit’s case protocol was to 
alert the victim’s family whenever a case went to 
active status. This was (continued on page 183) 


Vintage suit, $724, by 
MOSCHINO, at Albright 
Downstairs. Printed 
shirt, $140, by TOPMAN. 
Conch-shell lapel pin, 
$295, by LARRY VRBA, 
се аге, $29, Бу 
J. PRESS. Shoes, $980, by 
BOTTEGA VENETA. 


Styled by Michael Fisher for Starworks Artists 


ufus Wainwright is the sort of 
man who cares nearly as much 
about the material of his sports 
coat as the material in his songbook. 
The singer-songwriter, who released the 
brightly colored Out of the Game earlier 
this year, is a brilliant cunesmith with an 
eclectic eye for apparel. When we meet 

him, he is wearing an artfully dis- 


7n tressed leather jack- 


et and a scarf long 
enough to get tangled 

in the back wheel of an Amilcar. He has some 

truly offbeat ideas when it comes to dress-up. 

“Т always wanted to be Anouk Aimée in the 
movie La Dolce Vita," he says. "You know, the 
bored, sexually hungry rich woman. She also 
wore the best sunglasses in the world." 

Born the child of two accomplished singer- 
songwriters—Kate McGarrigle and Loudon 
Wainwright III—Rufus was ushered into cre- 
ative circles before he could focus his eyes. He was 
playing piano at the age of six and touring with 
his mother’s group by 13. When he released his 
first studio album (Rufus Wainwright), in 1998, 
critics fell over themselves with praise. Rolling 
Stone named him best new artist of the year. 

Wainwright has since worked in theater and 


Pre. P 


FASHION бу 
Jennifer R pan Jones 


E um r by 


Sony N elly 


untl: 


Q 


THE ETERNAL COOL OF 


Rufus Pl atravetylt 


opera, with Shakespearean sonnets and even 
on the soundtrack for Shrek. His music amal- 
gamates genres from rock to folk and beyond. 
Its precise and enigmatic, yet at the same 
time free-flowing and loose, as if sprung from 
the mind of a man perpetually plastered— 
elegantly wasted, as they say. 

All the while he has gained a reputation for 
surprising sartorial choices—three-piece suits 
that effectively clash patterns and colors, brightly 
colored pocket squares that seem to drool from 
the breast, even experiments with lederhosen. 

"I get a lot of stuff for free, which is great,” 
he says. "I need a barn to store them in. I guess 
I'm a clotheshorse." 

Unless you've been living in Pago Pago, you 
know that Wainwright is out and proud, a fact 
that brings up his recent nuptials (to German 
Jórn Weisbrodt) and his favorite designers 
(Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, who cre- 
ated the wedding wear). 

"Viktor and Rolf are able to simultaneously 
stretch the boundaries of artistic expression," 
Wainwright says, "while retaining total crafts- 
manship and quality. Timeless! I adore chem." 

How extraordinary. We were looking for a 
way to sum up Wainwright's oeuvre. He ended 
up doing it himself. 


سے 
غو И‏ 


BY PETER GERSTENZANG 


| Upe 
7 . 
Cunning 


Clash 


Vintage jacket, $639, 
by MOSCHINO, at 
Albright Downstairs. 
Vintage shirt, $349, by 
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER, 
at Albright Down- 
stairs. Pants, $375, by 
SURFACE TO AIR. Scarf, 
$615, by YVES SAINT 
LAURENT. 


and) 


\ Show- 
tinte ~ 
C 


Silk dinner jacket, $7,000, 
by BRIONI. Printed shirt, 
$250, by TOPMAN. Tux- 
edo trousers, $1,250, 
by BRIONI. Silk pocket 
square, $250, by BROOKE 
DAVID. Bow tie, $135, by 
BRIONI. Shoes, $450, 

|. STUBBS & WOOTTON. 


NS 
Е ا‎ 


N, acd. and | 


eu pete 


Vintage suit, $869, by MOSCHINO, at Albright 
Downstairs. Cheetah-print shirt, $188, by BY 


ROBERT JAMES. Vintage flower lapel pin, $170, 
by STAR STRUCK. Pocket square, $29, by J. PRESS. 
|! Loafers, $795, cA JEAN-MICHEL CAZABAT. 

ا 


JACK NICHOLSON 


RS 
Do 
x 


He's known as 
both a rebellious 
free spirit and one 
of the greatest 
American actors 
ever. Here, at 

the age of 34, he 
shows why he 
was destined to fill 
both roles 


Jack 
Nicholson 


ack Nicholson is on every credible reviewer's 
short list of the greatest actors of all time. Over 
the past half century he has played some of 
the most memorable characters ever seen on 
screen— characters that “stand for freedom, anar- 
chy, self-gratification and bucking the system, 
and often they also stand for generous friendship 
and a kind of careworn nobility,” as film critic 
Roger Ebert has written. Many of the 75 films he 
has appeared in are among the best ever made, 
an astonishing list that includes Chinatown, The 
Last Detail, Carnal Knowledge, One Flew Over the 
Cuckoo’s Nest, The Passenger, Hoffa, The Shining, 
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Prizzi’s Honor, 
Batman, A Few Good Men and About Schmidt. He 
has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards (he’s 
won three) and is a recipient of a lifetime achieve- 
ment award from the American Film Institute. 
Nicholson’s personal life has also been 


celebrated—including his off-screen relation- 
ships with actresses Anjelica Huston and Michelle 
Phillips, among others, his unapologetic drug use 
and his sexual escapades. A noted sports fan, he is 
often seen ringside at boxing matches and courtside 
at Los Angeles Lakers basketball games. It was at 
a Lakers game that he celebrated his 75th birthday 
this year. The crowd gave him a standing ovation. 

Nicholson’s big break came in 1969 when he 
starred with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 
the now-classic Easy Rider. Three years later he 
gave the first of two remarkably candid Playboy 
Interviews, in the April 1972 and January 2004 
issues. It was 40 years ago, just before Nicholson 
turned 35, that Contributing Editor Richard 
Warren Lewis sat down with the actor for a con- 
versation that covered everything from censorship 
(how in Hollywood “if you suck a tit, you're an X, 
but if you cut it off with a sword, you're a PG") to 
his experimentation with LSD, while he smoked 
Montecristo cigars and petted his cat. In the in- 
troduction Lewis noted that Nicholson's eyes were 
somehow “as inscrutable as the cat’s.” It was an 
interview worthy of the actor known to be similar 
to a character he played who says of himself, “I’m 
just your average horny little devil." 


PLAYBOY: Have there been any significant changes 
in your lifestyle in the three years since you hit it 
big with Easy Rider? 

NICHOLSON: I’m not looking for work anymore. 
Work is looking for me. Since my overnight star- 
dom, if you can call it that, I can't go around pick- 
ing up stray pussy anymore. 

PLAYBOY: Is it true, as one interviewer reported, 
that you smoked 155 joints during Easy Rider's 
campfire sequence? 

NICHOLSON: That's a little exaggerated. But 
each time I did a take or an angle, it involved 
smoking almost an entire joint. We were smok- 
ing regular dope, pretty good Mexican grass from 
the state of Michoacán. Now, the main portion 
of this sequence is the transition from not being 
stoned to being stoned. So that after the first take 
or two, the acting job becomes reversed. Instead 
of being straight and having to act stoned at the 
end, I’m now stoned at the beginning and have 
to act straight and then gradually let myself re- 
turn to where I was—which was very stoned. And 
Dennis [Hopper] (continued on page 168) 


139 


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et's start with the sex. That's what they've been talking 
about all night, first in the restaurant and then in the condo 
perched high over the glittering lights of Atlanta. Jodie 
gets things started. "What time is it, guys?" 
Eleven р.м. 
“It is so late!" 
She has a philosophy final 
tomorrow on Meditations 
of René Descartes, which she 
pronounces Dez-car-tez. 

Jodie is 20, or maybe she's 
18, depending on which ver- 
sion of the story you get. 
She has a supertight athlete's 
body and a striking face with 
tiny blue eyes. She's study- 
ing premed at a nearby col- 
lege, hoping for a career in 
sports medicine. Kelly admits 
to 36 or 38, and like Jodie she is 
blonde but with the coarser beauty 
of Ellen Barkin. She's a former computer 
executive turned real estate mini-mogul. Then 
there's Jim, a retired banker who is 56 and amiable look- 
ing, still in possession of all his hair and not exactly svelte. 
Fat, in fact. "Jodie," he asks, "what's your schedule tonight? 
Do you need to—" 


JODIE HAD A MILLION 


OUE/TION/. 


WHAT DO YOU DO IN BED? 


HOW MANY - 


2 єў SUGAR BABIES DO YOU HAVE 


` AT ONCE? 


She does have a philosophy final tomorrow. He doesn't 
want her feeling any pressure. 
"No, no, no, no,” she says. She wants to stay. "But | have to 
get up early." 
So Jim pours more wine and says, "Enough 
small talk. Let's go to bed." But Kelly says 
she feels sweaty, so she and Jodie are 
going to take a shower together. 
"Why don't you put on some 
porn," Kelly says. 

Porn. This is the fate of a man 
with two hot blondes who are 
definitely going to fuck him. So 
he puts on a video and strips 
off his clothes, and eventu- 
ally Jodie and Kelly come back 

and start kissing and messing 

around, and finally Jim gets him- 

self in there, playing with both of 

them a little and kissing Kelly, and 
then Jodie starts kissing Jim and the 
girls go down on each other and get the 

toys out, the vibrators. Jim puts on a condom be- 

cause he always uses a condom with Jodie, then fucks her 
doggy style because that's how she prefers him to do her. 
And when the right moment arrives, he takes the condom off 
and finishes inside Kelly, because (continued on page 186) 


"The best Christmases are the ones when you have what you want the most." 


147 


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“I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One 
of them was Norma Jeane from the orphanage who belonged to 
nobody; the other was someone whose name I didn’t know. But 
I knew where she belonged. She belonged to the ocean and the 
sky and the whole world.” —Marilyn Monroe 


“Daughter of God, weaver of wiles,” Marilyn Monroe, 
like Sappho’s Aphrodite, will never die. It has been 50 
years since she gasped her final breath on that lonely 
mattress with no bed frame—her beautiful nude body 
just there, collapsed and unrestricted, that body all men 
(and women) yearned to cradle, ravage or revere. There 
she was, Marilyn: her hand clutching the telephone 
that kept her company when she holed up in her 
hacienda on Helena Drive; her pill bottles visible; her 


last phone call with friend Peter Lawford; her odd little 
housekeeper Eunice seeing lights still on under her 
door; her devoted though strange Dr. Greenson first on 
the scene, breaking windows; Marilyn’s agent rushing 
out of the Hollywood Bowl; the cops; the changed 
stories; the Kennedys; the mob; the FBI files—what 
on earth was going on? A death scene so like Marilyn, 
that creature of contradictions: bizarrely glamorous and 
completely degrading, blatantly obvious and unendingly 
mysterious. Suicide. Accident. Murder. Myth. 
Monumental M.M. myths don’t die. When Marilyn’s 
inner light—that luminosity she could turn on with 
one brilliant pout of her lips, with one glance of moist, 
widened eyes, with one flash of that glimmering, 
sometimes puckish smile—departed her body, she 


| 
| 
| 
И 
ү 
: 
H 
i 


didn't lose her power. She lost her life, 
and that was tragic and indeed too soon. 
But that vulnerable woman, that strong 
woman—a woman both in charge of her 
life and deeply unsure of herself, full of 
hope and dope and dreams and fear of the 
future—that woman maintained her power. 
Marilyn wasn't a candle in the wind. 
The well-meaning Sir Elton didn't write 
her swan song. Her poetic soulmate, that 
troubadour of Americana Bob Dylan, 
granted her that honor. As Marilyn said 
herself, ^I knew where she belonged," and 
so did Dylan, the other famous Bobby one 
wishes she had made love to or had lived 
long enough to meet. (Oh, what a couple 
Bobby Zimmerman and Norma Jeane 


would have made!) Without intending 
for М.М. Dylan placed her in the “oc 


it 
ed her ат 


Am T PL 


the moment she stepp 


camera, was an artist and she didn't look 
back. "She can take the dark out of the 
nighttime and paint the daytime black." 


Yes. The complexity o 


lyrical duality of a poet. And she, deep 
down, must have known this, even if she 


didn't believe she had 


needed. And she remains ever present, 
ever modern, ever the hypnotist collector. 
“You are a walking antique." 

Much has been written about Marilyn's 
vulnerability, much of it irritating. There's 
the sad-eyed pat on the head, the poor- 
little-girl-lost atti 


Ge 00 weinen, gue 
I QUIE UE 


and the sky and the whole world," making 
"She Belongs to Me" belong to Bobby 
and herself and to all of us. Marilyn, from 


ed in front of a 


f a woman. The 


everything she 


it reduces her to - 
156) 


arilynmonroe, we called her. 
One word. Like Johnwayne. Or 
Presidenteisenhower. Standing 
astraddle our bikes in a circle on some- 

| one’s front lawn. What did we mean by 
| Marilynmonroe? This would have been 

| 

| 


before most of us had a clear understand- 


ing of the facts of life. I wonder how 


| 

| тату of us had even seen а Marilyn- 

| monroe movie. On a might when we were 
tj on our own, my dad took me to the Rialto 
| to see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This 
| 
| 
| 


filled me with some uneasiness. The movie 
was not precisely “Condemned” by the 
Legion of Decency in Our Sunday Visitor, 
the newspaper handed out in church, but 
|! it was “Morally Objectionable in Parts.” 

| I sal ready to clap a hand over my eyes to 
| block a potential mortal sin. 

Those neighborhood conversations 


D 


M 


A ense - Control. 


took place in hot summer twilighis. Il was 
informally understood that the nightly 
topic would in some way involve sex and 
that we would recycle what little informa- 
tion we had. 1 clearly recall one of my pals 
observing that Marilynmonroe had “great 
tits,” and in a flush of sudden insight it 
all fell together for me: Tits were what they 
were called. Tits were what she had. Tits 
were an admirable thing. I liked tits. 

Do you believe me when I say that up 
until that moment I had never parti 
noticed breasts? Girls and women had them, 
but 1 don't believe I particularly took an 
interest. Monroe embodied for us a shad- 
we were eniering, a world in which girls 
possessed a mysterious 1 over us 
through the ineffable power of their bodies. 

We were innocent. It seems impossible 


in these latier days when the internet 
and cable TV have made sex and nudity 
commonplace. In the first days of my ado- 
lescence there were other “pinup girls” or 
“cheesecake models,” but Marilyn Mon- 
roe was different from them in the very 
essence of her being. Her smile was not 
seductive but friendly. She seemed warm. 
Even naked, she seemed to want to be a 
friend, not a seductress. 

How clearly 1 recall the first time I saw 
her naked. Of course it was in the pages 
of the first issue of PLAYBOY, a turning 
point in American cultural history. 

“You're not going to believe what I 
found in our basement,” Hal Holmes told 
me. He was my best friend. His father 
was the editor of one of the local newspa- 
pers. By virtue of this job he accumulated 
countless (text concluded on page 173) 


arilyn Monroe was not 
nudity-averse. Natasha Lytess, 
who lived with the star in 
the late 1940s, recalled how she would 
come naked from her bedroom arownd 
noon, bathe for an hour and, “stall 
without a stitch on...drifl in a sort of 
sleepwalking daze into the kitchen and 


fix her own breakfast.” So 3t was at the 


studio, where she “ambled unconcerned, 
completely naked, around her bungalow, 
among wardrobe women, make-wp girls, 
hairdressers. Being naked seems to soothe 
her.” Men undressed are stripped of the 
power that uniforms and armor confer; 
women put on power of a primal sort. 
Fatherless and with a mentally unstable 
mother, she marned young and worked 
in a war plant; when a photographer 


Qu^» 
od 


3H  BYJOHN UPDIKE 


chose her for a publicity shot, her make- 
believe life began. Gamely, she led her 
photographers on, challenging the lens. 
In 1949 Tom Kelley offered her $50 to 
pose nude for a calendar. "He stretched 
me out on this red velvet and й was sort 
of drafty,” she recalled. “When I was a 
kid, I used to dream of red velvet.” She 
became a swimmer through the dreams 
of unknown men. In Something’s Gol 
lo Give—aptly titled, a doomed movie 
she was fired from for tardiness and 


fuzziness—she did shuck her flesh-colored 


bathing suit and left on film a haunting 
record of what the world would soon lose. 
Bert Stern told how, six weeks before her 
suicide, he turned a shoot for Vogue into 
a striptease. The climactic shots came 

after midnight, when the model had been 


loosened with Dom Pérignon. Who can 
doubt that such tmmortalizing exposure 
was what she desired? She studied the 
transparencies, mutilating with a hainpin 
the ones she didn't want used. Stern's 
assistant, Leif-Eric Nygárds, snapped 
the star when everyone else had left the 
room. Her pubic hair is unbleached; 

her hand rests like a child’s beneath 

her mouth. The semblance of intimacy 
and the sensation of isolation are twin 
conditions of those who live by what the 
public sees of them. Her awkwardness, 
her pathetic death consecrate her to a 
lonely monumentality. Had she lived, she 
would be one more discomfiting reminder 
of how we all age. As ü is, like a broken 
marble Venus, she defies time. 
(Excerpted from the January 1997 issue.) 


(continued from page 150) so many 
feminists bristle over, to which I 

ask, what is wrong with the child- 
woman? What is wrong with holding 
on to that lost kid, waiting for your 
daddy to come home? Then there 
are those who are quite sincere 
though simpleminded—Marilyn just 
needed a hug. She needed love and 
understanding. Of course she did. And 
of course it's never that easy—not 
with a contradictory creature like 
Marilyn. And then there's the more 
honest, robust look at "vulnerability," 
chiefly seen in Norman Mailer's take 
on Marilyn. Mailer was a man who 
understood the mystery of women, 

a man who both made love to many 
women and fucked many women, 


many beautiful women, a man who 
admitted he wanted to steal Marilyn 
from Arthur Miller (“I wanted to meet 
her so I could steal her. And you know, 
a criminal will never forgive you for 
preventing them from committing 

the crime that is really in their 
heart.") and a man who understood 
that vulnerability can sometimes be 
complicit and manipulative, thereby 
making Marilyn neither total innocent 
nor doe-eyed dummy. 

As he wrote, so beautifully, she was 
"a female spurt of wit and sensitive 
energy who could hang like a sloth 
for days in a muddy-mooded coma; a 
child-girl, yet an actress to loose a riot 
by dropping her glove at a premiere; a 
fountain of charm and a dreary bore. 


She was certainly more than the silver 
witch of us all." 

Mailer understood her as both 
a human and celestial being—the 
"very Stradivarius of sex." That may 
sound like horny hyperbole to some, 
but to me it places her on the level 
she deserves—a woman as a poet, an 
artist in her own being, her own sex, 
her own talent. And no one has ever 
captured that specific magic that is 
Marilyn. No one. Mailer's words are 
a gorgeous counterpoint to what that 
other famous Marilyn biographer, 
Gloria Steinem, said of Marilyn on the 
American Masters special "Still Life" a 
few years back: "She was a joke. She 
was vulnerable. She was so eager for 
approval. (continued on page 171) 


PLAYBOY 


158 


DISORDER 


(continued from page 128) 


ramming an old Chrysler with a massive 
truck while screaming like a pirate, “J am 
a lawyer—don't get in my way!”? 

Naturally there are reality-show 
producers sniffing. 

But oh my, lots of people don’t get, and 
don't like, Adam Reposa. Predominantly 
prosecutors and judges. His trademark: 
despises the plea bargain. DWI, assault, 
drugs—the charge does not matter. Always 
a trial. Usually wins, then brags on it just 
to piss people off. 

Riffing on the attic again. “They come 
in, I got this shitty fuckin' space. So I have 
to do something with it. I'm sort of like the 
architect. It's the same thing with a crimi- 
nal case. Somebody brings you a shitty set 
of facts. ‘Okay, dude, let me think how I 
can creatively litigate this case.’ 

“Most defense lawyers, it’s like being a 
real estate agent. “Let me see if I can get a 
price the seller's gonna be good with and 
the buyer's gonna be good with. I get my 
money and we're outta there.' Fuckin' plea 
bargains. People are gonna get half-assed 
representation, and they're not gonna 
fuckin' know any better, not gonna know 
they're getting fucked. Happens every day. 

“That's the mind-set. Sit there and tell 
the client, “You better be scared. It could 
go badly. Oh, this is a good deal.' If you're 
the government, would you rather have 
that or not? Of course you would. I'm 
always the opposite. If I can justify going 
to court, then let's have a fucking trial." 

It seems to work. By Reposa's own 
count—it is hard to believe that no offi- 
cial body keeps track of wins, losses and 
pleas, but apparently none does—last year 
he nailed 10 not-guilties out of “proba- 
bly, like, 17 or 18 trials," with another half 
dozen walks or time-serveds through the 
first half of this year. 

Reposa is pacing faster now, the words 
jumbled in his throat, racing to get out. 
Can't come quick enough when he is riled. 
Gets him in trouble in court. Grievances 
with the state bar. Contempt citations. Pro- 
bation. Even jail time. 

"Really, what is it that these prosecutors 
want? They want a big trophy, a big jail- 
bird they can hang on their wall and make 
themselves feel better, like they've gone out 
and killed it. You come to me, you know 
what I'm gonna say? “Trial, have a jury 
trial. Do not plead guilty.' 

“Tell the jury, ‘If y'all feel like what you 
need to do is make this guy lose his job 
and lose his lease and literally just hurt 
him because of the fact that he went out 
and drank and drove and he could have 
killed somebody—if that's what you think 
justice is, then y'all should do that.’ But 
the reality is, he's either gonna get the 
message or he won't. Plenty of people go 
to prison for DWI and get out and do it 
again. Just getting locked up doesn't pre- 
dict how someone's gonna act." 

And this works? In Texas? 

"Like fuckin’ gangbusters here in Travis 


County. Mothers Against Drunk Driving 
hate me. The jurors get it. You're just 
gonna have one more broke dick down 
on their luck looking for a place to live, try- 
ing to get back on their feet. And if that's 
what you think justice is, making it so peo- 
ple have to struggle to get back on their 
feet because they could have gotten in a 
wreck and hurt somebody, give 'em a big 
jail sentence. 

"Jesus, that's what pisses me off. I went 
after these defense lawyers here, talking 
shit about how they're shitty lawyers, and 
the state bar sanctioned me. I'm like...." 

He makes the waggle-fist jerk-off sign, 
the same motion that got him suspended 
and thrown in jail when he directed it at a 
prosecutor in open court. "Picked up four 
clients while I was inside," he says. 

Reposa eyes a bottle of Cuervo standing 
on an end table, pushes his hair behind his 
ears, scratches the thick beard. 

"People believe in the magic lawyer, 
the connected lawyer, the lawyer who can 
make things go away. And everybody sort 
of plays into that at every level. It's fuck- 
ing ridiculous. Put it this way: Before me 
they didn't used to offer time served on 
DWIs. Now they all do. 

"Everyone here goes to the judge on 
punishments. I go to the jury. You have a 
choice in Texas. When I started doing that, 
everyone was like, ‘Man, the jury's gonna 
put Reposa's guy in jail forever.’ 

“The first time I did it, DWI, jury came 
in. Lost. Went back to them for sentencing. 
Gave the dude four days in jail, time served." 

Pause. Big breath. 

"Get a margarita?" 


ENTR'ACTE ONE 


Austin is a state of mind. The top-selling 
Tshirt slogan says it: KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD. 
South by Southwest. The University of 
Texas. The gin mills of Sixth Street hard 
by the governor's mansion. Hipster Port- 
land meets drink-and-puke Beale Street. 
A town made for Adam Reposa. 

He grew up middle-class in San 
Antonio, 70 miles southwest. Dad a fam- 
ily psychologist—sick now, early-onset 
Alzheimer's—and Mom a community- 
college teacher. Right-thinking people, 
he says. “Liberals, sort of. For San Anto- 
nio.” Wanted something better for Reposa 
and his sister. Put them both through col- 
lege and postgrad. She's now an ob-gyn 
up in Fort Worth. He graduated from the 
University of Texas law school and stayed 
in town. “Pd say they're proud,” he says 
with some warmth. 

He hung his shingle out 10 years ago, 
and even his detractors, legion as they are, 
admit he is a brilliant attorney. “Dresses 
and acts like a clown show," a local pros- 
ecutor tells me one morning at the Travis 
County Courthouse. “But yeah, he gets 'er 
done. Until they disbar him." 

“That's a little harsh,” says an Austin 
defense attorney. ^Most people think trials 
are like you see on TV. They aren't at all, 
of course, except for Reposa’s.” 


Another defense attorney, a petite, 
pretty blonde named Stefanie Collins, who 
once worked as Reposa's assistant, tells me 
that since the birth of his son, Cash, two 
years ago, she's found his “madness” has 
ratcheted down considerably. “Of course,” 
she adds, “Adam’s ratcheted down is most 
other people’s fourth gear.” 

Judge Carlos H. Barrera, before whom 
Reposa has argued several cases, is more 
circumspect. “I don’t think the show hurts 
him a lot except with his reputation among 
traditional lawyers and judges.” 

The soft-spoken judge and I are chat- 
ting in his chambers, and this last remark 
pulls me up short. Isn't Texas chockablock 
with traditional lawyers and judges? 

Barrera allows a chuckle. “You probably 
have a greater number of defense attor- 
neys who think he’s okay than do judges 
and prosecutors. I say probably, overall, 
two thirds of all people who work in the 
courthouse think he goes too far.” 

And this is in Travis County, a known 
island of liberal thinking—and liberal 
juries—in a sea of dead-red Baptists. 

As we converse I get the impression that 
Barrera likes Reposa, even if he finds his 
act obnoxious. Thinks he is smart. Just too 
much of a wiseass—particularly when he 
knows he’s right. 

"He'll make comments that are unneces- 
sary," Barrera says, "although they might 
be true. He can't refrain. They make him 
look bad." 

Like badgering the state's expert witness 
about the level of pain a blood-engorged 
penis jammed up her butt would cause. 


TWO DAYS EARLIER 


“Oh, man, I was so fuckin’ right about that 
penis thing. The jerk-off sign? Same trial. 
Okay, wrong on that. Not wrong-wrong, 
you know, but wrong to, like, do it. I apolo- 
gized. Took my jail time. Told you I came 
out with four clients? Took the home con- 
finement with the ankle monitor, paid the 
$3,000 fine. Took the work release pick- 
ing up trash on the side of the road. The 
three-year probation, up next March.” 

Reposa spoons the last of the sludgy 
frozen margarita into my glass, orders 
chicken burritos, a side of red beans and 
rice, another pitcher. In perfect Spanish. 
South side of town, across the Colorado. 
Gen-u-ine Mex restaurant. 

Certain he is always “so fuckin’ right” and 
then being so smart about it has been a hall- 
mark since he first began practicing. One of 
his first trials, defending “a buddy" charged 
with second-degree DWI, was up in Denton 
County, north of Dallas. “Bunch of Bap- 
tists," he remembers. "Super Bible Belt." 

Cut his hair, wore a conservative suit, 
ended his summation "just throwing out 
random shit." Mimics the twang he used, 
as slurry as any jim-cracker. 

"As ah stand heeyuh I am jus' afraid 
that I didn't do a good ’nough job for 
mah client. I am jus' afraid that I failed 
him buh-cause I know he is not guilty. I 
can look at this videotape and tell that he 


"I understand we have some very special guests with us tonight!" 


159 


PLAYBOY 


160 


is not guilty. And I pray to Gawd that ahm 
not alone....” 

Ace in the hole? The clock. It was 4:40, 
and court was closing at five. Only Reposa 
noticed. The judge moved to send the jury 
home and come back the next morning to 
deliberate. “I hopped out of my chair. Judge, 
we don’t mind. Let ’em start deliberating.’ 
Looks at me with these fucking killer eyes. 

“Then he turns to the jury and says, ‘Do 
y all want to try and deliberate for 15 min- 
utes?’ Jury says yes. At 4:59 they come in. 
Out 16 minutes. Not guilty. Like they were 
really gonna come back tomorrow. Judge is 
fuckin’ pissed. Kinda growls, “You got lucky, 
Mr. Reposa.’” 

Luck is good. Until it goes bad. Like in 
the penis case. “Pure bullshit” Reposa calls 
the state bar’s grievance against him. “And it 
wasn't even the witness who complained; it 
was the prosecutor. And the state bar fuckin’ 
grieved me!” 

Long story short: defending an alleged 
homosexual rapist. Says he felt “terrible 
and horrible” for the alleged victim, “if it 
happened.” 

Still, everyone deserves their day in court. 
Reposa smelled a rat. All came down to the 
opinion of the state’s expert as to what con- 
stitutes pain. 

“So they got a case they can’t prove. They 
offered my guy two years deferred. He could 
have been looking at life, and they reduce 
it to the lowest grade of felony—two years 
deferred probation. Wouldn’t even go on his 
record if he completed the probation. I told 
my client, “Turn that down.’ 

“That's a very hard thing to do, tell your 
client not to take that. Put your whole life on 
the line, and you might go to prison forever." 

The case hinged, as per the Austin defense 
attorney I spoke to earlier, on the Adam 
Reposa show. Back-and-forth with the state's 
expert medical witness about the level of pain 
caused by anal penetration. 

*She's like, ‘Well, I don't know how to 
answer that question.’ 

"So I said, “Well, let me ask, if you get 
smacked in the head full-swing with a golf 
club, is that gonna hurt?’ 

“Yes. 

““Well, if you get hit in the asshole with a 
fucking dick, is that gonna hurt?” 


HEY, MA'AM! WHAT 
ARE YOU DOING? 
IM GONNA HAVE 
TO CITE YOU 
OR INDECENT 
$ EXPOSURE! 


Well, I sure don't believe that. You said 
“asshole” and “fucking dick” in court? 

Sheepish pause. More margaritas. “No, 
I did not. I said something like “So you 
would also agree then, the first time you 
get anally penetrated by a penis it is going 
to cause pain?’” 

The expert witness waffled, he says. “So 1 
respond, “Well, are you personally familiar 
with the phenomenon?’ 

“The state objected. The judge sustained 
it. All hell breaks loose. I’m like, ‘Is anal sex 
embarrassing? You’re a doctor. Does the sub- 
ject of anal sex embarrass you, Doctor?’ Jesus. 

“That’s what I got nailed on. The pros- 
ecutor filed a grievance with the state bar. 
The law says that if you ask a question that’s 
just intended to embarrass a witness and not 
have any substantial purpose, that’s griev- 
able. My purpose was obviously to find out, 
What’s the basis of your opinion? Have you 
ever been penetrated? If her answer is yes, 
then my next question is, ‘Did it hurt?’ 

“And how’s she gonna answer? ‘Yes, ladies 
and gentlemen, the first time it happened to 
me it didn’t hurt.’ She loses all her credibil- 
ity. Or she says, ‘No, I have no idea.’ Well, 
everybody on this jury knows that you know 
it hurts. I’ve got them, and I’m never gonna 
lose them. 

“Criminal case? I won. Not guilty on every 
count. And then after I got the contempt I 
did go kind of postal, because that’s when 
I really wanted to show the world how ter- 
rible the lawyers are in Austin.” 

It does strike me that taunting rival attor- 
neys in the newspaper with foul plays on 
their names—“Betty Butthole,” “Prick 
McGuire”—qualifies as going postal. 


ENTR'ACTE TWO 


One night we bounce, hit six, eight joints. 
Start on the quieter south side of the river 
before making our way north to down- 
town. Reposa’s friend defense attorney Ben 
Blackburn drives. Big Ben’s ride is a yellow 
Caddy decked out with a supersonic boom 
box that he parks outside of saloons with the 
trunk open to display a neon sign that reads 
478-JAIL—GET OUT. Keeping Austin weird. 
It is, as I said, a holiday week, and the city 
is jacked. Lines to get in to all the live-music 


joints, though Reposa and Blackburn jump 
every one. They’ve represented so many of 
the bouncers and bartenders. 

As part of the state bar findings against 
him, Reposa still owes the state community 
service. At one of the quieter gin mills he 
tells me his idea. “Drunk Drivers of Texas.” 
No shit. Drunk Drivers of Texas. 

He hatched it with his old friend Chad 
Holt, a reefer-dealing legal assistant he hired 
after walking him from a hashish arrest. The 
filmmaker Bob Ray is in on it too. Ray, a for- 
mer punk rocker, directed the YouTube video 
of Reposa in a monster truck and a well- 
received documentary about Holt called Total 
Badass. My favorite line from the film, which 
Holt repeats to me one day when we talk in 
Reposa’s office: “I took a year off from work 
to raise guinea pigs with my girlfriend and 
do cocaine.” Show-quality guinea pigs, mind 
you. Who knew? He only started the blow, 
he says, because he was on probation and 
they were testing him weekly for marijuana. 

Reposa, Holt and Ray figure the city 
needs a nonprofit program that attracts 
attention. Drunk Drivers of Texas sure fills 
that bill. They will recruit people recently 
arrested for DWIs and send them into bars 
and saloons as living, breathing warnings. 
Have them sit there “like in an airport infor- 
mation booth, educating people.” Reposa’s 
eyes light up, either at the thought of 
his pending Samaritan-ness or from the 
reddish-colored double shots containing 
God knows what that we have just downed. 

“Have them saying, ‘Look, man, they'll 
arrest you for goddamn nothing. Then 
you're gonna be spending all this money 
going to court. It's just not worth it. Here 
are the bus routes. Here's the number for 
a free cab ride.’” 

He plans to outfit these volunteers in 
safety orange or neon green to make them 
easy to spot and fund the entire enterprise— 
the clothing, the gratis car services—with 
donations from bar owners, who will then 
get publicity as sponsors of Drunk Drivers 
of Texas. 

Meanwhile Reposa will be able to walk 
the busted offenders into their court hear- 
ings and explain to the judge that they have 
already learned their lesson, Your Honor, and 
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service. He is pleased with himself. Orders us 
another double shot of red goop. 

I express my reservations that bar owners 
will line up to get involved with this scheme. 
Reposa takes umbrage. “I seriously doubt 
that. I think a lot of bars would want to be 
Drunk Drivers of Texas sponsors. That's 
good PR. ‘Yeah, we sell a bunch of drinks, 
but we also give some of that money to this 
nonprofit to try to facilitate keeping people 
from getting behind the wheel after they've 
been drinking.’ 

“You'll see. We're going to shoot the first 
PSA at my birthday party.” 


ONE DAY EARLIER 


Breakfast. Huevos rancheros. 

One of Reposa’s more interesting cru- 
sades is his ongoing harassment of a state 
district judge named Ken Anderson from 
neighboring Williamson County. Twenty-five 
years ago Anderson, then a district attorney, 
put an alleged wife killer named Michael 
Morton away for life. Morton was released 
only last October when he was exonerated 
by DNA evidence. Morton’s lawyers claim in 
court papers that Anderson withheld crucial 
evidence that allowed the real murderer to 
remain free and kill again. 

A formal court of inquiry into Anderson’s 
alleged misconduct will begin in December, 
and Reposa burns white-hot over the fact 
that Anderson still presides while he’s being 
investigated. He has cases before this judge. 
Still, not long ago he drove up to William- 
son County with 100 yard signs adorned 
with Anderson’s creepy-leery Satan-smile 
face juxtaposed with the words 1 COST AN 
INNOCENT MAN 25 YEARS OF HIS LIFE, AND I FEEL 
TERRIBLE. THAT IS WHY J REFUSE TO RESIGN. 

“Offends my sensibilities.” Reposa mops up 
the last of his huevos with a slice of sourdough 
toast. To the waitress, “Más café, por favor. 

“Cops use their county up there like a 
hunting preserve. They brag, “We are the 
most pro-law-enforcement county in the 
area.’ And people move there for that. So 
you get simpler-minded people. There are 
counties like this in and around Dallas, 
around Houston. Everyone knows that the 
cops up there are much more likely to pull 
people over, profile, do illegal searches. So 
when you do catch them at it"—he bangs so 
hard on the table other customers flinch— 
“you don't let 'em off the hook." 

But why single out Anderson? 

“Jesus, because he's still on the bench. It 
is utterly repugnant that he is still making 
rulings after there's been a probable-cause 
determination that he failed to turn over 
what he was ordered to turn over, and an 
innocent guy did 25 years. 

"Look, y'all need to wake up and see that 
there are real consequences when people put 
themselves in the position of basically saying 
they believe whatever government tells them 
to believe. When people give government 
that much power, they're gonna exploit it. 
That’s the nature of government. And people 
can't wrap their minds around it. It's cogni- 
tive dissonance. They're just unable to believe 
something like that—that Williamson County 
and a crooked, rogue district attorney con- 
vinced a jury to throw away an innocent 


man's life—because government says so." 

I delicately mention that a cynic might 
associate Reposa's offended sensibilities 
toward the miscarriage of justice in Wil- 
liamson County with the attendant free 
media coverage. 

*Fine, but that would sound a lot better if 
there were 20 other people doing the same 
thing. I mean, fuck it, where are the goddamn 
lawyers who were on the case? Morton's law- 
yers, their offices are right here. I mean, fuck 
it, if they don't, ГЇЇ do it for them." 

When it comes to criminal baggage, 
Reposa has a carry permit. His public record 
is a symphony of discordant notes. By his 
own account he has seen the inside of a jail 
cell probably 15 times. 

"Public intoxication, assault, drunk driv- 
ing, possession of marijuana. I like to fight, 
but I don't have any family violence. All my 
assaults have been guy on guy. But it was 
all before I became a lawyer. I was a stupid 
kid. Since I got my degree, jail time just the 
once. The state bar sanction. At least it was 
winter. You do not want to do time during 
the Texas summer. 

“Then again, I look at my life, dude: Glass 
half empty or half full? My glass is about 89 
percent full. It would be stupid for me to act 
like I don't have a very, very, very good life." 


ENTR'ACTE THREE 


Methinks Reposa's glass may not be as full 
as he projects. There are rumblings among 
his circle that his mates Chad Holt, 18 years 
a friend, and the filmmaker Bob Ray are 
unhappy about being eased out of any pend- 
ing reality-show deal. It was after all their 
Total Badass documentary that put Reposa 
on Hollywood's radar. And during my stay 
in Austin it is hinted to me on several occa- 
sions that his bug-eyed performance in the 
jumbo-truck "I am a lawyer!" YouTube video 
has again attracted the attention of the state 
bar's sanctioning committee. 

Closer to home, by the time you read this, 
Reposa's common-law wife, Susan, will have 
moved to Scotland for 14 months with their 
two-year-old son and his 10-year-old stepson 
in order to pursue her master's degree in 
environmentally sustainable development at 
the University of Edinburgh. Reposa crypti- 
cally informs me that there is no guarantee 
she will be returning to Texas. When I run 
into the blonde, doe-eyed Susan one morn- 
ing at Reposa's office we share a pleasant 
conversation about many things—Scottish 
trains, the current heat wave, her older boy's 
budding athletic prowess—many things 
except, pointedly, her husband. 

Susan, a seemingly lovely, grounded 
woman—not quite the “Catwoman meets 
Lady Gaga" Mrs. Reposa I had imagined— 
has arrived to deliver child-custody papers 
the two have been haggling over. When her 
meeting with Reposa in the next room grows 
perfervid enough to be heard through the 
attic walls, I take a gentlemanly leave. 

That same morning I sit with Susan's step- 
sister Jana Ortega for coffee at a Starbucks 
close to the Travis County Courthouse. 
Ortega, a stunning brunette, is yet another 
local defense attorney—1 am beginning to 
wonder if being a knockout is a requirement 


for the job around here. It is a measure of 
the charm Reposa oozes that his sister-in- 
law wonders aloud why she is even meeting 
with me, “much less saying such nice things 
about him. I mean, my sister's leaving him." 

Ortega prefers to avoid discussion about 
her stepsister's marital situation—"I was 
definitely worried for Susan, but Susan's a 
big girl." Yet like many others she admits to 
personally liking Reposa. "It's a love-hate 
relationship." 

When she opened her own practice, 
Ortega says, “he was just beginning to build 
his reputation. There were a lot of people 
who had respect for his legal mind. He was 
the talk of the town. Everyone was sort of 
fascinated with him. We've all come to the 
consensus that we are dealing with a bril- 
liant lawyer. We just wish he would rein it 
in a little bit." 

Here our conversation turns more sad 
than sanguine. "It bothers a lot of people 
around the courthouse. They feel he doesn't 
have respect for the profession in general. I 
worry about where he's going." 

The flamboyance, the “antics,” she says, 
"is a line he’s crossed. I understand he wants 
to express himself that way, but I don’t think 
that should be at the cost of a law degree.” 

As we depart I ask Ortega if she will be 
attending Reposa’s birthday party the next 
day. She looks at me as if I am the biggest 
idiot in Texas. 


WEDNESDAY 


Full circle. The saddled mule is still in the 
bar. I am not. Chad Holt hands me a joint. 
When he walks off I donate it, unlit, to a big- 
breasted blonde in a halter top. She fires it 
up and sidles across the cracked dirt and 
brown grass toward Holt. 

Now, a relatively quiet corner of the back- 
yard. Someone hands Reposa a big plastic 
cup of red wine. I mention his rap sheet, the 
DWIs in particular. 

“Oh, man, you have to?” The weed posses- 
sion, the assaults, the public intoxication—he 
fesses right up. But the two DWIs? 

“Whoa! What do you mean dee-wees?” 

Public record says two. 

“Nuh-hunh.” Indignant. “Just one. I 
should know how many fucking dee-wees 
I got. Fucking one. I was a kid. Jesus, you 
put that in your story?” 

Yes. Listen, wife going to Scotland, Holt 
and Ray not happy, state bar may be looking 
at your YouTube video. Things going south? 

Reposa’s face scrunches up tight. He swigs 
the wine. “I’m fighting with my old lady. 
Leave it at that. Other’n that, I don’t think 
anything’s going south. 

“Chad’s been a longtime friend of mine. 
Definitely gets a lot of people in the door. 
Routinely brings in $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 
cases. So it’s like, well, fuck it, Pm gonna give 
this dude a job. Now, is he the most organized 
person? Is he the most efficient? Fuck no.” 

And the video? Trouble with the state bar? 

“They would have already sent me some 
shit. Fact is, it’s not a commercial. You have 
to have your phone number, and you have 
to say, ‘I provide a service.’ I never said I 
provide any goddamn service. I said, “Don't 
get in my way.’ You can stand in the middle 


of the road and juggle puppies and say, Tm 
a lawyer.’ That’s not a commercial. 

"I think the majority of people would 
be like, “Yeah, I wouldn't mind having that 
guy's problems.' People know my reputation 
and they hire me. And then when I show up, 
the prosecutor and the judge are like, ‘Okay, 
here's Reposa. Let's see what he's got.’ 

"A few years ago I think maybe that repu- 
tation was as a fucking joke. But now I think 
most people know, don't let the song and 
dance and the bow tie and the long hair fool 
you. The guy'll then get up and make some 
moves real quick, and before you know it the 
state's all, ‘Fuck, we're really gonna lose this.’ 

“T might not get the big-money cases. The 
lawyer with the right office and the right 
look? You have to go to the right country 
clubs, go to the right churches, be in the 
right networks. Most people who are gonna 
spend $50,000 have been treated right by 
the system. They believe in the legitimacy of 
it. So somebody who says, "The system's ille- 
gitimate. Don't trust the system,' they look 
at like, "This guy's on the fringe. This guy 
kind of scares me.' 

“My personal theory of arguing a case— 
the system usually gets it right. Look, 
the reality is, most of the people who get 
accused of something are guilty. Sometimes 
your client's fucked, and if you can get him 
17 instead of 40, fuck it, gotta plea. But if 
you're a trial lawyer, it's all-in poker. I've 
done the best ecstasy. I fucked the greatest 
virgins. And there's nothing like walking a 
guilty person smooth out of court. 

"But plenty of them are not. And I can say, 
“This time they got it wrong’ and make that 
argument as good and hard as I can. Tell you 
what, I get a reality show, people will watch 
the way I practice and the way I do things 
and then see the results I get. They'll be like, 
“Well, fuck, I want to use this guy.’ 

"Shee-it. Turn that tape recorder off. It's 
a party." 

Late now. Inside. The Star Wars bar-scene 
trope is beaten to death, but I can conjure no 
other. There was no mule in that joint, though. 

On a small stage an Adele look-alike 
stomps the pedal of a bass drum with a 
cowboy boot and angrily strums an acoustic 
guitar. She shouts a song about fucking and 
fighting, fighting and fucking. Fireworks 
begin to fly. Literally. Roman candles. Bright 
red sparks and deafening blasts inside the 
bar. The mule rears in terror and depos- 
its a steaming dump on the floor. More 
sparks, more blasts, a smoky haze. Bob Ray 
is filming the Drunk Drivers of Texas pub- 
lic service announcement. 

Two party guests, a couple, slide toward 
the door. One is the defense attorney 
Stefanie Collins with her boyfriend, a Travis 
County peace officer. They seem to sense it 
is time. I hitch a ride. 

As I slip away from the saloon, people are 
drinking and dancing and screaming and 
laughing, and the best damn defense lawyer 
in the Texas Hill Country and maybe in the 
state is rolling across the floor in a wheel- 
chair, ducking and firing Roman candles for 
a PSA against driving drunk. I assume all his 
guests are taking taxis home. 


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Rebel Nation 


(continued from page 98) 


who trolled Westside streets where white 
men weren’t welcome. A balding, slump- 
shouldered Armenian American with the 
sunken eyes of a sleep-deprived raccoon, 
Tarkanian appeared in Vegas in 1973, fresh 
off a 26-3 season at Long Beach State. He'd 
won four straight Pacific Coast Athletic Asso- 
ciation titles at Long Beach, challenging the 
west-of-the-Mississippi dominance of mighty 
UCLA. “In those days nobody knew there 
was college basketball west of Bloomington 
and Lexington except for John Wooden and 
UCLA,” says Las Vegas Review-Journal hoops 
writer Steve Carp. “Hell, from 1964 to 1973 
UCLA won every NCAA championship but 
one. Tark was the upstart.” 

While UCLA coach Wooden was seen as 
a saintly figure, his program was less than 
pristine. NCAA players were forbidden to 
accept cash, gifts, even a free newspaper. 
According to Bill Walton, who starred 
for Wooden before going on to a Hall of 
Fame pro career, “UCLA players were so 
well taken care of—far beyond the ground 
rules of the NCAA—that even players from 
poor backgrounds never left prematurely.” 
In Walton’s view, if the NCAA had investi- 
gated the Bruins, “UCLA would probably 
have to forfeit about eight national champi- 
onships and be on probation for 100 years.” 
And yet it was UCLA that dropped a dime 
on Tarkanian. The year after Tark’s Long 
Beach State team gave the top-ranked 
Bruins a hellacious scare in the tourna- 
ment’s west regional, UCLA athletic direc- 
tor J.D. Morgan suggested—confidentially, 
of course—that the NCAA look into pos- 
sible recruiting violations by Tarkanian. 

Tark’s career-long war with the powers 
that be was under way. 

In 1973, the year the MGM Grand 
opened and vice cops arrested 52 hookers 
at Howard Hughes’s Frontier Hotel—after 
rumors of an orgy featuring “six girls and a 
German shepherd"— Tarkanian took over 
UNLV’s basketball program. Elvis Presley 
was selling out the International Hotel and 
Frank Sinatra was about to make his trium- 
phant return to Caesars Palace. Sinatra had 
vowed never to play there after a spat dur- 
ing which a Caesars manager pulled a gun 
on him, but Sinatra relented after the man- 
ager was sacked. His prospects looked bet- 
ter than those of the local basketball coach. 

Tarkanian inherited a 14-14 Rebels unit 
that played home games in the crumbling, 
half-empty Convention Center downtown, 
where fans waved giant Confederate flags. 
With no size and less talent, his team played 
a 1-2-2 zone. On offense they walked the 
ball up and worked it into the low post. It 
was boring but effective enough for UNLV 
to go 20-6 in Tark's first season, the best re- 
cord in the school's Division I history. Then, 
that winter, the NCAA put Long Beach 
State on probation for infractions such as 
letting players watch a $7 movie in their ho- 
tel, which Tark defended as perfectly legal 
entertainment. There was talk that the as- 
sociation's chiefs were out to get Tarkanian. 
He was unsavory. He seemed to have a 
fondness for poor, academically challenged 


kids who were desperate for a shot at college 
hoops, the kind of kids college-basketball 
boosters were always wooing with cash, cars, 
girls. Urban black kids who seemed like 
gangbangers to lily-white crowds in Provo, 
Utah and Pocatello, Idaho. 

Tark’s rising stature didn’t help his pop- 
ularity with enemy recruiters, who scared 
recruits' parents with tales of how their sons 
would rub elbows and more with hookers, 
gamblers and Mafia dons if they went to 
UNLV. Tarkanian hated his enemies’ back- 
door tactics. He understood their drive to 
beat him—nobody burned to win more 
than he did—but not the way they stooped 
to sneak and snoop on him and send secret 
reports to the NCAA. He never talked down 
other programs to recruits or their parents; 
he talked up UNLV. He knew he was los- 
ing players to rule-breaking schools. Recall- 
ing the booty UCLA players glommed from 
a booster named Sam Gilbert, the Bruins’ 
notorious "sugar daddy," Tark joked that 
coach Wooden's team was "way over the 
salary cap." But he never dreamed of turn- 
ing them in. 

“T would never be a rat," Tark said. 

It wasn't as though Tark was drawing 
aces in the recruiting wars. He lost all the 
blue-chippers to bigger, more respectable 
schools. (By the time his UNLV career 
crashed and burned, he had signed a to- 
tal of only four McDonald's All American 
prospects in 19 years.) But in 1974, his sec- 
ond season as the Rebels' coach, he real- 
ized he couldn't compete with the national 
powers unless he outsmarted them. So he 
threw out his playbook. 

^We had no size. We had no stars. But 
we had a couple of things going for us," 
Tark recalls. *Good athletes. Good speed." 
So he reinvented UNLV basketball. From 
that moment on his team would be more 
than the UNLV Rebels. They'd be the fast- 
breaking, record-breaking Runnin' Rebels, 
the highest-scoring team in college hoops. 
But at what cost? 


“We started running and never stopped,” 
Tarkanian says. “People loved our style of 
play, but that's not why we played it. We 
played it because it worked." 

With holdover Ricky Sobers, a cat- 
quick point guard, and the new wave of 
Tarkanian's Rebel recruits—“a bunch of 
six-foot-six guys who were good athletes"— 
Tark installed a pressure defense and a fast- 
break attack designed to get shots off before 
opponents had time to set up on D. The 
team's scoring average jumped from 78 
points per game in his first season to 91 in 
his second. To coaching legend Pete Newell, 
the move was a stroke of genius. “For years 
Tark was the best zone coach in the country. 
He had a very controlled offense," Newell 
told sportswriter Terry Pluto. “In one year, 
he ripped up his whole book of coaching 
and tried something entirely new. There 
aren't many coaches who would have the 
courage to try that, because if you flop, it 
looks like you lost your mind." 

Tark shrugged off talk of how ballsy he 
was. “We had no choice. Our kids weren't 
going to get any taller." 


His 1974-1975 team lost two of its first 
three games. Then UNLV won 24 of 29 to 
claim the West Coast Athletic Conference 
title. The Rebels were off to the races. 

The following season, Tarkanian's third 
in Vegas, saw the team average 111 points 
per game. Tark's gunners whacked South 
Alabama 122-82 and Northern Arizona 
139-101. At Hawaii-Hilo they had 85 points 
at halftime and won 164-111. Hoops fans 
all over the country took notice, and the 
school derided as Tumbleweed Tech was 
just getting warmed up. That year's roster 
featured a freshman who would help lift 
the fastest-improving team to heights that 
would dizzy even Tark. 

Reggie Theus came from Inglewood, 
California, where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 
and the Lakers played home games at 
the Fabulous Forum. The rest of Ingle- 
wood was bullet-pocked and poor. One 
day 'Theus came home to find his father, a 
janitor, lying dead from a heart attack ap- 
parently brought on by exhaustion. A tire- 
less six-foot-seven guard with movie-star 
looks under a mountainous Afro, Theus 
made it his mission to lead the Rebs to the 
Final Four. 

As a sophomore he came off the 
bench most nights, a crucial cog in the 
hard-nosed eight-man rotation report- 
ers dubbed the Hardway Eight. Before 
home games UNLV fazed opponents 
with a light show worthy of Cirque du 
Soleil, each Rebel taking the floor in his 
own spotlight as the jammed Convention 
Center shook with cheers for the most 
crowd-pleasing college team ever. Home 
or away, the Runnin’ Rebels came out fir- 
ing, with shooter “Sudden” Sam Smith 
launching long-range bombs years before 
the college game had a three-pointer. “He 
threw in 25-footers as if they were layups,” 
Tarkanian said of Smith, who hit 52 per- 
cent of his shots that year, some from zip 
codes in other states. 

On defense, UNLV employed a man- 
to-man full-court press from the opening 
buzzer until the game was won. The sea- 
son’s most telling stat wasn’t Smith’s shoot- 
ing percentage, Theus’s 14.5 points off the 
bench, a 29-3 record or 107-point average. 
It was 28: UNLV’s pressure defense forced 
an average of 28 turnovers per game. “We 
just swallowed teams up,” said Tark. 

After finishing the year ranked in the 
top five, UNLV faced San Francisco in 
the opening round of the 1977 NCAA 
Tournament. The Dons were ranked 
number two. Tarkanian saw the draw as 
proof the NCAA was biased against him. 
“How could two top-five teams meet in 
the first round?” 

The University of San Francisco featured 
seven-foot-one superstar Bill Cartwright, 
who would go on to score 12,713 NBA 
points and a trio of NBA championships as 
third wheel for the Michael Jordan-Scottie 
Pippen Chicago Bulls. If the NCAA was out 
to put Tark in his place, it couldn’t have 
chosen better: UNLV’s quick, vertically 
challenged sprinters had nobody to match 
Cartwright’s size and skills. Nobody—not 
the NCAA, the hoops writers or the mil- 
lions of TV viewers getting their first look 


at the so-called streetball team from Sin 
City—expected the Rebels to run USF out 
of the gym. Except maybe the coach who 
knew how hungry his players were. 

Flying over and around Cartwright, 
UNLV forced 32 turnovers and shocked 
USF 121-95, with Theus scoring 27 points 
in 23 minutes. "The team was really catch- 
ing fire. The basketball players were 
heroes," says a former UNLV football 
player. “Nobody more than Reggie Theus. 
He came across as a real cocksman, and 
every girl was after him. If you hit on some 
beauty and she left with Reggie, you'd just 
think, Well, the best man won." 

After their conquest of USF and the re- 
gional finals, it was on to the Final Four 
in Atlanta. Upon their arrival, Tarkanian 
heard from another coach that the Reb- 
els might as well run back to the desert: 
“There's no way the NCAA will let you win. 
'The refs will make sure of it." 

Final Four, 1977: Nevada-Las Vegas 
against North Carolina. Jerry Tarkanian 
vs. Dean Smith. Renegade program vs. 
traditional powerhouse. The Rebels had 
the edge, 49-43, at halftime, but the Tar 
Heels pulled out a win that went down to 
the final seconds, 84-83. 

Tark wept after that loss. "That hurt 
so bad, but it put us on the map nation- 


ally," he remembered. “It hurt, but we 
wouldn't let it kill us." 


Five months later, the NCAA put the Run- 
nin' Rebels on probation, banned them 
from the tournament for two years and or- 
dered UNLV to suspend coach Tarkanian. 
'The charges included putting one player 
up in a motel that turned out not to exist 
and flying another player on a flight that 
never happened. 

The NCAA's David Berst, who led the 
investigation, crudely ripped Tark as an 
Armenian “rug merchant." His upstart pro- 
gram threatened more-respectable powers 
with friends at NCAA headquarters and fed 
racial biases about black athletes. Sports Illus- 
trated described Tarkanian as the "Pied Piper 
of Negro youngsters," while opposition 
fans called his players niggers and ghetto 
blasters. Theus, for one, detected racism 
and envy behind charges of cheating in Ve- 
gas. "I never took a dime at UNLV. Neither 
did the other players when I was there," he 
said. ^I had a car, and people kept insisting 
that the school got it for me. The truth was 
that I made the payments from the Social 
Security checks that came to me because my 
father died. So if you want to know who paid 
for my car, it was my father's death." 


Tark was hardly alone in his loath- 
ing of college sports' rulers. Jim Murray, 
Pulitzer-winning columnist for the Los An- 
geles Times, once compared the NCAA to the 
Gestapo. Hall of Fame coach Al McGuire 
said, “The NCAA does it like Pontius Pilate. 
It pretends to be washing its hands when 
what it’s really saying is ‘Crucify that guy.” 

Vegas was changing. In February 1979, 
the FBI raided the mobbed-up Tropicana. 
The “Valentine’s Day Raid” helped break 
gangsters’ control of Strip casinos, lead- 
ing to an era in which city leaders sought 
a clean, corporate image for the fast- 
growing city. Tarkanian, with his up-all- 
night eyes and old-Vegas cronies, looked 
like a throwback. His team went 20-8 in 
the first year of its tournament exile, 21-8 
in the second. The NCAA kept him under 
surveillance, while he kept his eye on the 
ultimate prize, an NCAA title. 

Soon his Rebels had a new home, a palace 
at the southwest corner of the campus, fast- 
break distance from the Strip. The Thomas 
& Mack Center, a scarlet and gray colossus 
that seats 19,000, was nicknamed the Shark 
Tank in honor of the coach who prowled 
the sidelines, often grinding a folded towel 
between his teeth. Tark’s basketball pro- 
gram, which generated $6 million a year, 
and boosters covered the lion’s share of the 


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166 


arena’s construction costs. The week the 
place opened in 1983, the Runnin’ Rebels 
took over the top spot in the NCAA polls. 

“You've got to remember, Vegas never 
had a big-league sports team,” says the 
Review-Journal’s Carp. “UNLV basketball 
became the prime focus of everyone’s at- 
tention and affection. And now they’re 
not just number one in town, they’re 
number one in the country.” 

With guard Danny Tarkanian, the 
coach’s son, dishing to six-foot-six shoot- 
ing guard Larry Anderson and six-foot- 
nine forward Sidney Green, UNLV won 
24 in a row before losing to Cal State- 
Fullerton. After that game, Tarkanian 
roared at his 24-1 Rebels: "You guys, I'm 
getting tired of losing!" Then he laughed. 

'The greatest show in Vegas sold out ev- 
ery home game, with celebs packing court- 
side seats. Those seats became known as 
Gucci Row. Bill Cosby, Sammy Davis Jr., 
Don Rickles, Diana Ross and casino mogul 
Steve Wynn cheered the home team to 
another conference title. ^In the town 
of Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton and 
Siegfried and Roy, Tark was the most be- 
loved of them all," says Jimmy Kimmel, 
who grew up in Vegas. "The others were 
here for the tourists. Tark belonged to 
us." One night Kimmel and four drunk- 
en buddies spotted the coach outside an 
arena in Los Angeles. They were singing 
his praises when Tarkanian asked them 
to give his wife, Lois, a lift home. "Jerry 
turned his bride over to a van-load of in- 
toxicated teenagers. He knew he could 
trust us because the bond between the city 
and the coach was so strong. Lois, on the 
other hand, was a little freaked out." 

'The biggest star of all, Sinatra, phoned 
Tark after big wins: "Congratulations, 
Coach. I'm takin' you to dinner!" Tark 
held court with his pals at Piero's Italian 
Cuisine, where the bar was a shrine to 
Runnin' Rebels hoops and where Mar- 
tin Scorsese shot scenes for Casino, with 
Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe 
Pesci playing slightly fictionalized Vegas 
mobsters. Other, shadier figures—the kind 
Sinatra was said to be connected with— 
watched from less conspicuous seats. The 
Tarkanian story featured enough guy- 
who-knew-a-guy connections to make 
NCAA investigators drool. In 1979 Vic 
Weiss, a reputed bagman for the Mafia, 
was working on a deal for Tark that could 
have made him the Lakers coach. On the 
night he drew up the contract, Weiss dis- 
appeared. He was found a few days later 
in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, his hands 
bound behind his neck, shot twice through 
the head. A newspaper reporter wrote that 
Weiss got whacked because he was helping 
Tarkanian leave UNLV. Tark didn’t want 
to believe it. The case is still unsolved. 

“The mob guys kept a low profile,” 
says a UNLV athlete who worked at the 
arena. “Tark didn't court them, but in 
Vegas they're part of the picture. You'd 
see Anthony ‘the Ant’ Spilotro and Frank 
‘Lefty’ Rosenthal—the guys Pesci and De 
Niro play in Casino—rooting for UNLV." 


"I can confirm that," says Oscar 
Goodman, the criminal lawyer who went 
on to be mayor of Las Vegas. “They were 
clients of mine, and like everybody else 
in town, they were Runnin' Rebels fans. 
'The team galvanized the city, and then 
it went beyond the city. I started seeing 
UNLV caps on kids in New York and 
Philadelphia. Before the Tarkanian era 
I'd go into a courtroom and they'd say, 
“Here comes that shyster lawyer from Las 
Vegas.' In the 1980s, lawyers and judges 
started saying, ‘How are the Rebels do- 
ing? Are they going to win it all?” 


In 1983, coach Jim Valvano's North Car- 
olina State Wolfpack slipped past UNLV 
in the tournament thanks to a miracle 
tip-in at the last second. 

"We were close," Tarkanian recalls. 
“We kept getting close, but we couldn't 
clear that last hurdle." 

His mid-1980s records alone might 
have brought another coach some love 
from the hoops Hall of Fame. Tark, who 
hasn't made the Hall despite one of the 
best winning percentages in NCAA histo- 


"In the town of Frank 
Sinatra, Wayne Newton 
and. Siegfried and. Roy, 
Tarkanian was the most 
beloved of them all,” says 

Jimmy Kimmel. 


ry, put up records of 28-3, 29-6 and 33-5. 
In 1987 the top-ranked Rebels were 37-1 
going into a Final Four to face yet another 
old-school power, Bob Knight’s Indiana 
Hoosiers. Indiana won by four on its way 
to the crown, but by all accounts the Reb- 
els were on the verge. 

By 1989 Tarkanian had the team he 
wanted. His unit starred a guard tan- 
dem, six-foot-one Greg Anthony and 
long-armed six-foot-eight Stacey "Plastic 
Man" Augmon, along with six-foot-seven 
forward Larry Johnson, a junior-college 
transfer who became the college game's 
most complete player. All three would go 
on to be NBA stars. At Thomas & Mack 
they led a Rebels attack that outran high- 
scoring Loyola Marymount in the season's 
lid-lifter, 102-91. After splitting the next 
four games, UNLV won 11 of 12 before 
losing a 107-105 thriller to an LSU team 
led by Shaquille O'Neal. From there the 
Rebels ran off 21 victories in 22 games. 

Along the way they heard the usual 
catcalls. Venomous crowds, reporters and 
opponents called them thugs and worse. 
Against Utah State, an Aggies player 
dared UNLV’s Chris Jeter to “Hit me, 
motherfucker." Jeter complied, touching 


off a brawl in which the Rebels’ Moses 
Scurry decked Utah State's coach. After 
the game, UNLV president Robert Max- 
son blamed the Rebels. “I am ashamed 
and embarrassed," Maxson announced. 

By now the nation's top basketball 
team was at odds with former supporters 
including Wynn. The casino king was 
riding high after opening the Mirage in 
1989. He donated millions to UNLV and 
agonized over the program's reputation. 
Tarkanian’s players swore they got a bad 
rap. Who else would get blamed when 
several surfboards went missing during a 
trip to Hawaii? As Tark recalls, “The hotel 
just said some black guys stole them, and 
the NCAA decided to suspend a couple 
of my players.” One protested, “Coach, 
we don’t even swim!” Yet Tark had in- 
vited scrutiny. In addition to numerous 
minor infractions, he had recruited New 
York playground legend Lloyd “Swee’ 
Pea” Daniels, a rangy guard with Magic 
Johnson talent and a crack habit. A 
UNIV assistant coach became Daniels's 
legal guardian, which was one of the 
kindest or most cynical recruiting moves 
ever, depending on your point of view. 
University officials’ view of Tark’s tactics 
darkened after Daniels was busted trying 
to buy a $20 rock at a Vegas crack house. 
It turned out his friend and mentor Sam 
Perry, a team booster, was actually Rich- 
ard “Richie the Fixer” Perry, convicted 
of fixing horse races and Boston College 
basketball games. Perry was connected to 
the Lucchese family and Henry Hill, the 
wiseguy Ray Liotta played in Goodfellas. 

“That embarrassed the team and the 
town,” says a UNLV insider. “Things were 
going downhill for Tark. One night they’re 
losing to an inferior team, and Jerry’s cuss- 
ing them out at halftime. Steve Wynn was 
in the locker room. He said, “Tark, take it 
easy.’ Jerry told Wynn to go fuck himself. 
He was making too many enemies.” 

One was Maxson, the headline-hungry 
president who saw the basketball team as 
a threat to his school’s reputation. Along 
with NCAA investigators who harassed 
the Rebels by suspending them just before 
game time—pulling players off team buses 
for such violations as taking a bag of pea- 
nuts from a hotel room—Maxson chipped 
away at Tarkanian's credibility. 

“There’s only one thing we can do,” 
Tark told his team. “Kick everyone’s ass.” 


In the 1989-1990 season, all but three 
Runnin’ Rebels would be suspended for 
at least one game. Larry Johnson, a good 
citizen who led by dint of supreme talent 
but never said much, was among the saintly 
three. Greg Anthony wasn’t. Anthony 
wasn’t well respected by his teammates 
either. Point guards are supposed to be 
leaders, but the cocky Anthony came off as 
self-centered if not soft. Until the Fresno 
State game. That was the day Anthony 
went down so hard his face bounced off 
the hardwood. “We thought he broke his 
nose or his neck,” Tark recalls, “but it was 


just his jaw." Doctors wired Anthony's jaw 
shut. He wouldn't eat solid food for weeks. 
“We thought he might be out for the year. 
'Then he shows up at our next practice with 
a hockey helmet on." A hockey helmet with a 
football face mask. 

Anthony mumbled through his mask, 
"Hi, Coach." He grabbed a ball and 
launched a shot. Swish. 

Three days later he led UNLV to a win 
over New Mexico State. Anthony struggled 
to get enough air with his mouth wired 
shut, so a doctor cut the wire during time- 
outs to let him breathe, then rewired him 
and sent him back in. Says Tark, "Oh, the 
guys loved Greg after that. That's when we 
really came together as a team." 

UNLV averaged 93 points per game and 
led the nation in victory margin and shoot- 
ing percentage. Tark rolled to his first- 
ever title game, a run-in with yet another 
old-school power, Mike Krzyzewski's 29-8 
Duke Blue Devils. 

While the Rebels sported sweats and 
backward baseball caps to the game, Duke's 
players— Christian Laettner, Phil Henderson, 
freshman Bobby Hurley—wore suits and ties. 
It was thugs vs. Boy Scouts, a theme one re- 
porter sounded in a pregame press confer- 
ence. “Coach,” he asked Tarkanian, “is this a 
game of the good versus the bad?" 

“That really upsets me," Tark said. He 
paused like a Vegas comedian. “Because 
I've met some of these Duke kids, and they 
are good kids once you get to know them." 

Before the game, Duke's mascot waved 
a sign that mocked the Runnin' Rebels: 
WELCOME FELLOW SCHOLARS. Ten minutes 
later Larry Johnson’s behind-the-back save 
of a loose ball triggered the Rebels’ fast 
break. Augmon took Johnson’s pass to the 
hole—bang! UNLV took a 12-point lead to 
the locker room at halftime. 

“Tighten the vise," Tarkanian told his 
squad of outcasts. 

Early in the second half, leading 57-47, 
UNLV scored 18 straight in three minutes. 
Guard Anderson Hunt knocked down 
five shots. “The level we were playing at,” 
said Augmon, "that's just plain desire." 
Johnson, who would finish with 22 points, 
11 rebounds and four steals, took a seat as 
the Rebels put the game away. 

“We could have beaten them by 50," 
Tark said, “but I didn't want to run it up.” 

UNLV 103, Duke 73. That final score 
was (and still is) the biggest blowout in 
title-game history. “This wasn’t a game of 
Xs and Os,” Duke’s coach Krzyzewski said. 
“It was one of complete domination.” Jerry 
Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels were (and still 
are) the only team ever to score 100 points 
in the championship game. While fans 
poured onto the court, UNLV players un- 
veiled the souvenir T-shirts they'd commis- 
sioned with the words SHARK TAKES HIS BITE. 

Twenty-two years later Tark remembers 
cutting down the net. "That's the best, the 
best," he says. “That's happiness." 


Eight months after the championship game 
the NCAA announced new sanctions against 
Tarkanian. By then, president Maxson had 
named a new interim athletic director, a 


former wrestling coach named Dennis Fin- 
frock, who has been described as Maxson's 
hatchet man. Finfrock—who would later say 
he regretted working with Maxson against 
Tark— ran the Thomas & Mack Center. 

Tarkanian's 1990-1991 unit is some- 
times called the best college team ever. 
The top-ranked Rebels went 34-0, capping 
a 45-game winning streak. 'Their average 
victory margin was 28. The NCAA kept 
sniffing at him. “We got shadowed non- 
stop," he said. "The NCAA did not want us 
to win the national championship." After 
Nevada-Reno players popped off in the lo- 
cal newspaper that they could beat UNLV, 
Tark bought a bunch of papers and passed 
them out in the locker room. “They think 
they're as good as we are!" he said. The 
pissed-off Rebels went out and thrashed 
Nevada-Reno by 50, but they couldn't cel- 
ebrate for long. Tarkanian got word that 
he had broken NCAA rules by giving play- 
ers free newspapers. 

Meanwhile Maxson and Finfrock dis- 
patched undergrads to spy on Tarkanian, 
his players and assistants. ‘They planted sto- 
ries in local newspapers. (One Vegas news- 
man called the school's tactics "public rela- 
tions in reverse.") And in what may be the 
most extreme instance of a college turning 
against its own team, UNLV officials secretly 
videotaped practices, placing a camera in an 
air-conditioning duct above the gym floor. 

Maxson led the NCAA champs onto the 
floor at their homecoming rally, waving his 
hands as if he'd scored 30. But by 1991, the 
reputation ofthe college game's winningest 
coach was in tatters. Moses Scurry and two 
other Rebels were photographed enjoying 
beers with "Richie the Fixer" Perry in the 
Fixer's hot tub, and the Review-Journal ran 
the picture on its front page. The hot-tub 
photos sealed Tark's doom. 

He sent Maxson a letter. "Allow this to 
serve as notice of my resignation...." 

Later, Tarkanian attended a rally at a 
Methodist church on the Westside. “What 
a night that was," says Carp of the Review- 


Journal. "He gets up to talk, and the people 
start chanting, ‘Keep Tark! Keep Tark! 
And Tark’s choking up. He says, “Thank 
you, but I gave my word to the president. 
I've gotta keep my word.’ But they won't 
stop. ‘Keep Tark! Keep Tark!’ And then 
he blurts, ‘I am rescinding my resignation!’ 
A bizarro moment. They cheered and just 
about carried him out of there.” 

The crowd loved him, but it wasn’t to be. 
"I called the president that night," Carp 
recalls. ^*What's your reaction?' The presi- 
dent said, ‘We have an agreement. I have 
his resignation.” 

In his last Rebels game—a 12-point vic- 
tory over Utah State—Tarkanian capped 
a 23-game winning streak, finishing the 
1991-1992 season 26-2. 

'Today, 20 years after leaving Nevada- 
Las Vegas, Tarkanian wouldn't mind 
chewing a few more towels. Now 82, he has 
had six heart stents put in place before his 
latest heart attack last spring. He struggles 
to speak but still loves talking about the 
old days. “You know that towel thing, 
that started in high school ball," he says. 
He was 30, coaching at Redlands High in 
California. Nervous under pressure. “We 
were playing Ramona High School for the 
Citrus Belt League championship. It was a 
hot afternoon. I kept running to the drink- 
ing fountain. Finally I wet the towel and 
chewed it on the bench. We won in over- 
time, my first championship. So I kept 
doin' it. You keep doin' what wins." 

At his retirement Tarkanian held the 
fourth-highest winning percentage of all 
college basketball coaches in history. Asked 
if he belongs in the Naismith Memorial 
Basketball Hall of Fame—his exclusion is 
an ongoing scandal— Tark shrugs. “I think 
about our team, not me. We had a hell of a 
team. The best ever? That's not for me to 
say, but you know something? If you put 
our 1990 and 1991 teams against anybody, 
we might run 'em out of the gym." 


“T hate to interrupt you, Louise, but you're sitting on the remote.” 


167 


PLAYBOY 


NICHOLSON 


(continued from page 139) 


was hysterical off-camera most of the time 
this was happening. In fact, some of the 
things you see in the film—like my looking 
away and trying to keep myself from break- 
ing up—were caused by my looking at Den- 
nis off-camera over in the bushes, totally 
freaked out of his bird, laughing his head 
off while I’m in there trying to do my Lyn- 
don Johnson and keep everything together. 
PLAYBOY: You once told a reporter you had 
smoked grass every day for 15 years. Do 
you still? 

NICHOLSON: To a certain degree. I'm a so- 
cial smoker. But I can go for months at a 
time without even thinking about it. 
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the anti- 
marijuana laws? 

NICHOLSON: It’s insane to have laws that are 
making criminals out of a huge percentage 
of our population, particularly when it’s 
something that involves morality. I’m old- 
fashioned in that I don’t want to see the 
entire world addicted to drugs—like the 
synthetic existence described in Brave New 
World—but I think it’s an enormous leap 
from a little grass to that grim picture. I 
don’t think there’s anything to prove that 
marijuana leads to the use of harder drugs. 
It hasn’t been true in my case, although 
probably I never would have encoun- 
tered any other drug if I hadn’t gotten in- 
volved in smoking marijuana. But I’m not 
addicted to any of it. I know when to say, 
“No more of this.” 

PLAYBOY: Isn’t cocaine the currently fash- 
ionable drug in Hollywood? 

NICHOLSON: I see it around. 

PLAYBOY: Have you tried it? 

NICHOLSON: Yeah, it’s basically an upper, but 
it doesn’t do too much to me. I don’t think 
it'll be fashionable for long, because it’s ex- 
pensive and we’re in a depression; whether 
the world chooses to call it a depression 
or not, there’s no money around. Cocaine 
is “in” now because chicks dig it sexually. 
The property of the drug is that, while it 
numbs some areas, it inflames the mucous 
membranes such as those in a lady’s genital 
region. That’s the real attraction of it. In his 
book, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Errol Flynn 
talks about putting a little cocaine on the 
tip of your dick as an aphrodisiac. But his 
conclusion is that there really isn’t any such 
thing as an aphrodisiac. I sort of agree with 
him, though if you do put a numbing tip 
of cocaine on the end of your cock because 
you're quick on the trigger and need to cut 
down on the sensation, I guess it could be 
considered a sexual aid. And it's an upper, 
so you've got added energy. 

PLAYBOY: Five or six years ago, the popular 
sexual upper was amyl nitrite. Have you 
had any experiences with that drug? 
NICHOLSON: I've never taken any poppers; 
I'm afraid of them. Whenever I say that to 
friends of mine, they look at me like I must 
be insane, so I guess it's big in the sexual 
area. It ups the respiratory system to a tre- 
mendous degree, from what I understand, 
and makes the heart pound. I just don't 
like fast rushes. I really know very little 


168 about drugs except how they individually 


affect me. I'm attuned to that because of 
my training as an actor, to know how I feel 
and why I feel and where the feelings are 
emanating from. In that regard, I've had a 
lot of experiences with acid. 

PLAYBOY: When did you first try it? 
NICHOLSON: I was one of the first people in 
the country to take acid. It was in labora- 
tory experiments on the West Coast about 
nine or 10 years ago. At that time, I was a 
totally adventurous actor looking for expe- 
rience to put in his mental filing cabinet for 
later contributions to art. I was very curi- 
ous about LSD. Some of the people I knew 
were in therapy with it. I went to downtown 
L.A. and took it one afternoon. I spent five 
hours with a therapist and about five more 
at home in the later stages of it. I hallucinat- 
ed a lot, primarily because of the way the 
therapist structured it. He put a blindfold 
on me, which makes you much more in- 
trospective, gives you more dreamlike im- 
agery. Imagine what acid is like when you 
know nothing about it. You think it's going 
to be like getting stoned on grass, which I 
had done. But all of your conceptual reality 
gets jerked away and there are things in 
your mind that have in no way been sug- 
gested to you: such as you're going to see 
God; or watch sap streaming through the 
leaves of trees; or you're going to feel the 
dissolving of certain bodily parts; you're go- 
ing to re-experience your own birth, which 
I did on my first acid trip; you're going to 
be frightened that your prick might be cut 
off, because you have castration fears. 
PLAYBOY: Can you describe what the castra- 
tion fears felt like? 

NICHOLSON: At first, I just didn't feel too 
hot. I said to the therapist, ^I feel a kind of 
fluttering in my genital area." It was sort 
of like a queasy stomach. At that level, it's 
alarming, but it's not terrorizing. Then I 
began to get more uncomfortable and cold 
in that area. At one point, I came back to 
consciousness screaming at the top of my 
lungs till I had no more breath to exhale. I 
thought I'd have to try to remedy this geni- 
tal discomfort myself by cutting my cock off. 
I got into interpreting that psychologically 
with the therapist, what it meant, and he 
said it related to homosexual fears. It was 
really a kind of paranoia. The drug just ag- 
gravated it. Taught me a lot about myself. 
PLAYBOY: Have you dropped much acid 
since then? 

NICHOLSON: Some, but not as much as 
most of the people I know. I still take it 
occasionally, but I have a certain awe of it. 
PLAYBOY: What makes you persist? 
NICHOLSON: Once you've related to acid, 
there are certain things you perceive that 
would be impossible otherwise—things 
that help you understand yourself. Also, 
maybe there's the element of challenge. 
You get into it because you don't want 
to feel something is too frightening to 
deal with. If properly used, acid can also 
mean a lot of kicks. During the shooting 
of Easy Rider in Taos, New Mexico, for ex- 
ample, Hopper and I dropped a little of 
the drug and a couple of guys drove us 
up to D.H. Lawrence's tomb. It's on the 
side of a mountain and there's this great 
huge granite tomb where his wife is buried. 


Lawrence is indoors in a kind of crypt. 
When we got up there, we were just start- 
ing to come on. The sun was going down. 
Dennis and I get very sentimental about 
each other at these moments; we love to 
cry about old times and talk about how it's 
gonna be. So we were up there rapping 
about D.H. Lawrence and how beautiful it 
was. We decided we were going to sit on 
the tomb with D.H. From then on, this was 
where we were going to make our stand in 
life, and if they wanted to go on with the 
movie, they'd have to come here and get 
us, 'cause this was where we were and this 
was where we'd be. We looked at trees and 
talked about art and the nature of genius 
and asked ourselves why people couldn't 
be more open. After a while, the guys in 
the van came back to get us. 

PLAYBOY: We heard you were equally into the 
part for the scene in Five Easy Pieces in which 
you're confronted with a sullen waitress. 
NICHOLSON: Yeah, the one where the wait- 
ress says, “No substitutions," and I end up 
having to ask for a chicken-salad sandwich 
on wheat toast—hold the butter, lettuce, 
mayonnaise and chicken salad—just to get 
an order of wheat toast. Finally, boom, I 
sweep the table clear of glasses, silverware 
and dishes. Actually, something like that 
scene had occurred in my own life. Years 
ago, when I was maybe 20, I cleared a table 
that way at Pupi's, a coffee shop on the 
Sunset Strip. Carole Eastman, the screen- 
writer of Five Easy Pieces and an old friend 
of mine, knew about that incident. And 
Bob Rafelson, the director, and I had gone 
through something like the bit with a “no 
substitutions" waitress, although that time 
I hadn't dumped the dishes. So, knowing 
me, Bob and Carole just put the two inci- 
dents together and into the script. 

Bob and Carole are among a number 
of actors, writers and directors I've hung 
around with for years whom I consider my 
surrogate family. I have very familial feel- 
ings about them and Charles Eastman, the 
writer; Robert Towne, the actor [turned 
writer-director]; Monte Hellman, who 
most recently directed Tivo-Lane Blacktop; 
and Roger Corman, who produced most 
of my previous films. People in that group 
were writing plays and reading them in 
coffeehouses. A bunch of us literally built 
a small theater. 

PLAYBOY: Was the theater and coffeehouse 
scene pretty much your whole life then? 

NICHOLSON: No. I was also part of a gener- 
ation that was raised on cool jazz and Jack 
Kerouac, and we walked around in cordu- 
roys and turtlenecks talking about Camus 
and Sartre and existentialism and what go- 
ing on the road would be like. We stayed 
up all night and slept till like three in the 
afternoon. We were among the few people 
around seeing European pictures. We went 
to Dylan's and Ravi Shankar's early con- 
certs. We smoked a lot of dope, usually in 
the toilet or out in the backyard or driveway, 
'cause it wasn't cool to do it in public. There 
were a lot of parties. Many more parties 
than I go to now. We'd get 19 half gallons 
of Gallo Red Mountain and get everybody 
drunk. I guess you could call them orgies 
by the strictest definition. I gave parties 


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that hundreds of people attended; there 
were a lot of rooms in my house and people 
would take their own little private trips. I 
don’t know what they were doing. I know 
what I was doing, though, and I guess that 
could be called an orgy. But it wasn’t some- 
thing where everybody’s there and naked 
and fucking one another all over the place. 
I've never been in that scene. I’ve tried 
intellectually to promote it a time or two, 
because of thrill-seeking impulses, but they 
never really came together. I’ve never been 
in an orgy of more than three people. 
PLAYBOY: How were you supporting your- 
self during this period? 

NICHOLSON: Unemployment checks helped. 
And I was doing pretty well betting the 
horses. I guess I earned most of my living 
from TV. There was lots of television work 
around in those days. I used to do court 
shows and improvised stuff like that. I was 
a great correspondent in Divorce Court. I got 
my first film, The Cry Baby Killer—with Roger 
Corman as executive producer—right after I 
started acting. I played a high school boy who 
kidnaps a woman and a child—sort of a Des- 
perate Hours situation. I got killed at the end. 
PLAYBOY: How do you feel now about your 
work in your early low-budget films? 
NICHOLSON: I’m probably more pleased 
about it than I should be. The beauty about 
most of those early films is that I was—for 
the most part—working with the same 
group of actors and writers who hung 
around the parties and coffee shops. In 
fact, in the first and only film I directed— 
Drive, He Said—I used a number of my old 
cronies. And I was more than pleased that 
I was in a position to do so. 

PLAYBOY: Drive, He Said was originally rated 
X by the Motion Picture Association of 
America. Why? 

NICHOLSON: Because it had frontal nudity 
and it had someone who was fucking have 
an orgasm. The orgasm is audible, not vis- 
ible. The person says, “I’m coming." I'm 
convinced the rating system is 100 percent 
corrupt. The censors say they’re protecting 
the family unit in America when, in fact, 
the reality of the censorship is if you suck a 
tit, you’re an X, but if you cut it off with a 
sword, you're a PG. 

PLAYBOY: Was any footage eliminated in 
order to qualify for the R rating? 
NICHOLSON: There have never been any 
cuts. So far, I haven't allowed any censor- 
ship. The authorities in Canada wanted 45 
cuts, so it's not being distributed there. As 
of this moment, it's not being distributed in 
England either, because I refused to censor 
the fucking sequence in the car. They don't 
mind the fucking, they mind the coming. 
That’s what's fascinating to me. In other 
words, you can have the sequence, you can 
have everybody moaning and saying, "It 
feels good," and "Screw me," but you can't 
have someone saying, “I’m coming." 
PLAYBOY: A few critics suggest that this 
scene brands you as one of the last of the 
old school raised on the idea that sex is 
dirty—something to be done in the back- 
seat of a car in a drive-in. Are they right? 
NICHOLSON: No, I don't think there's any- 
thing dirty about sex. I don't dislike sex in 
the backseat of an automobile and I don't 


know why anyone would think it's dirty. 
It's certainly not dirty to me. 

PLAYBOY: But the way you've shot the 
scene—with the girl bent over the front 
seat, the guy behind her, grinding away— 
has been called rather unattractive. Some 
of those same critics said it might be fun to 
do it that way, but it wasn’t fun to look at. 
NICHOLSON: That was the most forthright, 
frank way of presenting it. I’ve fucked in 
the front seat of a two-seater sports car, and 
that’s how I happen to know it’s practically 
the only place in the car, the only position 
in which it can be accomplished. Many peo- 
ple, in fact, have gone out of their way to 
tell me that the scene totally turned them 
on. I think it's the most erotic scene that’s 
been shown in a legitimate film to date, and 
yet all that's visible is the two people's faces. 
The whole point of the film is that this is a 
young man involved in an erotic relation- 
ship with an older woman from whom he is 
emotionally unable to detach himself, even 
after she's tired of him. So that when I did 
the scene, I wanted it, in the clearest, most 
succinct way, to show that these people 
were involved in a sexual relationship. 
PLAYBOY: One of your lines in Carnal Knowl- 
edge goes: "Love is so elusive that it may not 
exist at all." Do you think that's true? 
NICHOLSON: No. I don't know if I could 
give a succinct definition of love, but I feel 
that it's there in my own life and in my re- 
lationships with people. Even if they out- 
lawed love tomorrow and found some way 
of eliminating it from everything but the 
mind, it would have existed in my life. 
PLAYBOY: Presumably you were in love 
during some portion of your six-year mar- 
riage. What prompted the divorce? 
NICHOLSON: My marriage broke up dur- 
ing the period when I was acting in a film 
during the day and writing a film at night. 
I simply didn't have time to ask for peace 
and quiet or to say, "Well, now, wait a sec- 
ond, maybe you're being unreasonable." I 
didn't have the 30 minutes I felt the con- 
versation needed. If the other person can't 
see that I haven't got the time right now, 
I can't explain it to her. I've blown a lot 
of significant relationships in my life be- 
cause I was working and didn't have time 
to deal with a major crisis. Another source 
of trouble is that your increasing celebrity 
becomes a threat to your partner, and you 
can't turn the celebrity off to save the re- 
lationship. Nor should you. I'm not terri- 
bly thirsty for the limelight, but obviously 
you don't get into the movie business if you 
want to be a recluse. 

PLAYBOY: Having had one failed marriage, 
would you be wary of getting married again? 
NICHOLSON: I'm currently involved with 
somebody—Michelle Phillips—who has 
the same feeling about marriage as I do. I 
don’t think either of us particularly wants 
to get married. As my feeling for Michelle 
deepened, I told her up front, “Look, I 
don’t want to constantly define the prog- 
ress of this relationship. Let’s keep it in- 
stantaneous.” And it’s working beautifully. 
PLAYBOY: What would your reaction be 
if Michelle—or a future spouse, for that 
matter—made it with someone else? 
NICHOLSON: I'm not all that willing to 


share, but my suspicion is that I wouldn't let 
something that incidental—if that's what it 
was—destroy something that's much more 
substantial to me. I don't know if I can live 
up to it. As I say, I'm not after all the women 
anymore. I've had days in my life, or three 
or four days at a time, or weeks, when I've 
been with more than four women. Every- 
one knows that's a pure ego trip. A couple 
of years ago I told a reporter that for years 
I'd balled all the girls I wanted to. Well, 
man, every chick I related to really resented 
that statement. I mean, no chick wants to 
be a part of some band of cunts. And I cer- 
tainly don't blame 'em for that. 

PLAYBOY: Does that make you feel some kind 
of need to explain what you're really like? 
NICHOLSON: Not really. Гуе done enough 
of that. 

PLAYBOY: Then why are you spilling your 
guts in this interview? 

NICHOLSON: At this moment, I'm wishing 
I wasn't. Maybe because I know when the 
interview is read, it will add as much confu- 
sion as to who I am as it will reveal truth. 
PLAYBOY: Don't you reveal as much of your- 
self in your performances as you do in an 
interview such as this one? Friends have 
suggested that in the scene in Five Easy 
Pieces where you break down and cry in 
front of your father, with whom you have 
not communicated for years, you were 
summoning up memories of your own 
father. Were you? 

NICHOLSON: Of course; who wouldn't in a 
scene like that? I had never really had a re- 
lationship of any significant longevity with 
my father. He was very rarely around. He 
was involved in a personal tragedy of alco- 
holism, which no one hid from me. I just 
sort of accepted it as what he was like. He 
was an incredible drinker. I used to go to 
bars with him as a child and I would drink 
18 sarsaparillas while he'd have 35 shots of 
Three Star Hennessy. 

PLAYBOY: Did the absence of a father in 
the household leave any traumatic im- 
print on you? 

NICHOLSON: I don't think so, no. If it did 
at all, it would be that I didn't have any- 
body to model myself on after my own 
child was born. 

PLAYBOY: Why didn't you attend your 
father's funeral? 

NICHOLSON: I was living in Los Angeles at 
the time and the financial aspects of the 
trip made it prohibitive—or at least gave 
me a reason for it to be prohibitive—and I 
didn't particularly want to fly east just to go 
to the funeral. I never attended any funeral 
until a couple of years ago, when my moth- 
er died and I went back to New Jersey. 
PLAYBOY: Have you deliberately avoided 
funerals? 

NICHOLSON: Yes. Well, none had ever come 
along that I felt I needed to attend out of 
respect for the deceased, and I certainly 
was never attracted to funerals as occasions. 
When my mother died, the funeral was a 
good experience for me. I was fully in touch 
with what was happening. I felt the grief, the 
loss. After I asked at a certain point for ev- 
eryone to leave, when she was in the funeral 
home for what they call the viewing, I stayed 
for an hour or so sitting next to the casket. I 


really tried to let it all come through me and 
see what my feelings were, and I was very 
enlightened by the experience. I felt that 
during her lifetime, I had communicated 
my love very directly to my mother. We had 
many arguments, like everyone does with 
any parent, but I felt definitely that I had 
been understood. There were no hidden 
grievances between us. I had always fulfilled 
whatever her expectations of me were, as 
she had mine of her. I didn't feel any sense 
of, "Oh, I wish I had done this or that," at 
the moment of bereavement. I felt as good 
as you could feel about the death of anyone. 
PLAYBOY: Are you able to think ahead to 
your own death? 

NICHOLSON: My mind has difficulty sinking 
into that. I always imagine myself locked 
in a casket underground, scraping at the 
inside of it, or I sense an incredible feel- 
ing of searing agony from being burned. 
I've never liked the idea of being dead, of 
short-circuiting out. 

PLAYBOY: Then you have no particular 
regrets? 

NICHOLSON: It's funny you should ask that, 
because with my 35th birthday coming 
up I've been thinking a great deal about 
what I've done with my life—the various 
successes and failures I've had in everyday 
living as well as in my career. One of my 
biggest regrets is that I'm not academically 
trained: It's hard for me to talk in intellec- 
tual terms because I'm not a high-powered 
intellectual. I also regret that I don't have 
more contact with my daughter. She's eight 
now. I hope to be having more success in 
that area. Turning 35 is a major milestone. 
Its probably the last time you can con- 
sider abandoning what you've started and 
getting into something totally new. I’ve 
thought recently about getting out of films 
and going into some other business, like 
maybe ranching—an alternative I've con- 
sidered in the past. One of my problems is 
that I'm a romantic. I constantly allow my- 
self to believe that things could be better. 
But one has to examine what one does with 
that romanticism. Do you try to enhance 
it? Or do you drop it and become more 
pragmatic? It's not that I feel I've done less 
than I’m capable of. I don't want to brand 
myself a failure. But in the future, I hope I 
have a little more peace of mind than I've 
had during my first 35 years. 

PLAYBOY: Since you've given the prospect 
of your 35th birthday so much thought, 
how would you like to spend it? 
NICHOLSON: If I'm in my regular groove, 
I'll be with a bunch of my friends uncork- 
ing a bottle of champagne and smoking a 
terrific joint. That would help a lot. And, 
of course, Michelle will be there. No music. 
Just nice and quiet. Very clean air. But I 
really don't want to project my 35th birth- 
day, man. Better it should be a surprise— 
just like whatever I've accomplished in my 
first 35 years has been a surprise. That'll 
take the sting out of it and set things up 
nicely for the next 35. Come to think of it, 
maybe 35 isn't so old after all. 


Excerpted from the April 1972 issue. 


MARILYN 


(continued from page 156) 
She was all the things that I feared most 
being as a teenage girl." 

I don't believe you, Gloria Steinem. 

Further, in the same special, Steinem 
(who I do believe admired Marilyn) com- 
ments on Marilyn's final shoot with pho- 
tographer George Barris—those gorgeous, 
timeless, casual shots on the beach, where 
she's wrapped in a green towel and smil- 
ing or walking along the water in a sweater, 
staring at the camera with such soulful 
ambiguity that we can only stare back and 
wonder what she's thinking; where she 
looks so modern, so ready for the 1960s 
in all her classic Pucci and slimmed-down 
frame and progressive ideas about sexual- 
ity. She's clearly enjoying the beach, enjoy- 
ing life. But she's contemplative too. And 
this makes these photos poignant, not 
tragic. She looks so happy and womanly 
and alive: Who could believe she would die 
three weeks later? But Steinem, who sees 
Barris as a "kind man," felt Marilyn was 
not her true self in those pictures. “The 
photographs are rather mannered and fe- 
male impersonating and pathetic and sad." 

Pathetic? If there's one thing Marilyn 
Monroe was never pathetic in front of, no 
matter the quality of the shot or the quality 
of the movie, it was a camera. She was a 
master. She had the God-given talent and 
charisma to turn on that inner light, and 
she had the intelligence to dim that light 
as well, to create darker erotic images (like 
Milton Greene's Black Sitting), sad images, 
vulnerable images. And that is not pathet- 
ic. That's strong. That's brave. That's art. 
Marilyn's art. 

And this instinct of her artistry came 
to her early. As chronicled by photogra- 
pher André de Dienes, who shot some of 
her better-known youthful images, Mari- 
lyn yearned to express herself. She sug- 
gested ideas (as that other great M.M. 
photographer, Eve Arnold, could attest). 
In 1958 the rising star called De Dienes 
at two in the morning, sleepless, sad and 
distressed. And in this state, she wanted to 
take pictures. When he arrived she wore 
no makeup, her eyes tired, her hair dishev- 
eled, and she was on the verge of despair. 
He was hesitant to shoot, but she insisted 
he snap her just as she was, in the dark 
streets of Beverly Hills (all her idea). In 
one of the most compelling images, Mari- 
lyn is leaning against a tree near a garbage 
can, eyes closed, in a black coat, lit only by 
De Dienes's car headlights. If you didn't 
know it was Marilyn, you could mistake it 
for a Cindy Sherman film still (and Mari- 
lyn set it up just as Sherman would). But 
since she was in real pain, it’s much more 
raw than Sherman's work and in line with 
the dark beauty of a Francesca Woodman. 
She said to De Dienes, "You usually write 
captions for your photos. You can put "The 
end of everything’ under these." The im- 
ages are heartbreaking—depleted and 
scary and fascinating and, yet, beautiful. 
Not only for M.M.’s pain, but also for her 
modern approach to exposing it. 

“T can’t figure you out. You’re silk on one 


171 


PLAYBOY 


172 


side and sandpaper on the other,” Richard 
Widmark says to her mentally ill babysitter 
in Don’t Bother to Knock, released a year be- 
fore the “end of everything” photos and 
a movie that feels lost among her Tech- 
nicolor dreamscapes. How many times had 
Marilyn heard similar versions of that male 
confusion? “What are you?” Her movie an- 
swer? A breathy "I'll be any way you want 
me to be." Does she mean it? I hope not. 
Marilyn is brilliant here: so young and 
sexually damaged and complex, simmer- 
ing with erotic heat that flows naturally 
out of her. There's a prophetic sadness 
permeating her performance as this delu- 
sional young woman freshly released from 
an insane asylum. Knowing what we know 
about Marilyn's childhood—the mentally 
ill mother, foster homes, sexual assaults, 
the longing for a father—she certainly un- 
derstood the pathology and despondency 
of her character. She was a woman who 
wanted to be normal. Normal and special. 
But mental illness—in real life Marilyn's 
greatest fear, that demon—just wouldn't 
allow it. The breach between reality and 
fiction bedeviled her as a walking work of 
art—no matter how effortlessly sensual she 
looked in a negligee. 

Silk and sandpaper. Love and sex. And 
again sex. As women, may we just have sex 
without judgment? Marilyn may have been 
used early in her career (and all through 
it), and she certainly harbored anger and 
sickness over some of those rougher mo- 
ments, but women like that survive it. And 
she did. It didn't destroy her creativity and 
it didn't destroy her sex. She may have dis- 
cussed her background and heartache as a 
little girl, but she didn't let go of her carnal- 
ity, healthy or unhealthy or a mixture ofthe 
two. I love what she said in her last inter- 
view, before the feminist movement, which 
often viewed her as a movie star trapped by 
the male gaze (a tired criticism that forgets 
how much women revere Marilyn): “We 
are all born sexual creatures, thank God,” 


she said, “but it’s a pity so many people de- 
spise and crush this natural gift. Art, real 
art, comes from it, everything.” 

Real art. Marilyn’s innate acting ability 
and sexuality radiated in early pictures, 
like her unaffected, jeans-wearing charm in 
Clash By Night—a movie in which she utters 
Clifford Odets’s dialogue with such natural- 
ism you wish the movie were about the girl 
in those jeans. She held her own with the 
inimitable George Sanders in All About Eve 
and gave us more than a mere plum honey 
in The Asphalt Jungle. In front of the movie 
camera she was pure talent, pure instinct, 
pure sex and sympathy and strength, from 
her fantastically overripe voluptuousness 
in Niagara to her sweet playfulness in The 
Seven Year Itch to her impeccable comic tim- 
ing in Some Like It Hot—transforming what 
could have been dumb blonde Sugar Cane 
into a soulful chanteuse who breaks our 
hearts and turns us on (that translucent 
dress!) with “I’m Through With Love.” She 
is not only dreamlike but bursting through 
the celluloid with such humanity and tem- 
perature that you feel as if you could al- 
most touch her. 

In The Misfits, her bravura performance, 
the faded cowboys circle around a near- 
faded woman but one still so lovely that 
classic movie star Clark Gable, sitting on 
Marilyn’s bed, just next to her exquisite 
bare back, is humbled by the sight of her. 
Yes, even Rhett Butler is honored to be 
touching that skin. 

The Misfits was a notoriously tough shoot, 
but I don’t care how many accounts I’ve 
read about her lousing up lines, showing 
up late or not showing up at all. She was 
worth it. Even Billy Wilder, who was deeply 
frustrated while working with her, cited her 
“elegant vulgarity” and her understanding 
of the camera: “She had a feeling for and a 
fear of the camera. She also loved the cam- 
era. Whatever she did, wherever she stood, 
there was always that thing that comes 
through. She was not even aware of it.” 


“My New Year's resolution is to have twice as much sex as last year! 
Or do you think two times is an unrealistic goal?” 


She must have been aware of it, at least 
sometimes. Watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. 
Once you get to “Diamonds Are a Girl's 
Best Friend," with that famous pink dress 
and those black-clad sadomasochistic ladies 
hanging from chandeliers (what a fantasti- 
cally kinky touch!) and Marilyn's “No, no, 
no, no, no," she is such a movie star and 
yet has such a sense of humor about her- 
self and is just so damn glamorous that she 
brings you to your knees. And she had to 
have known that. She wasn't stupid. 

And most self-respecting Marilyn biog- 
raphers know she wasn't the dumb blonde. 
But as much as Marilyn has been written 
about, with all the usual facts emerging— 
her pain and her undeniable magic, her 
epic rise and fall—she still seems, through 
all these years, misunderstood. Good. For 
as ubiquitous as she is, she's still mysteri- 
ous. She's still beguiling. 

Her films are more layered, enchanting 
and intricate now. I recently took in Mari- 
lyn’s powerful performance in Bus Stop and 
Lars von Trier’s genius Melancholia back- 
to-back and thought to myself, My God, 
would Mr. Von Trier have gotten Mari- 
lyn! In Bus Stop she's the ultimate hillbilly 
beauty—broken down and abused and 
filled with all that excitable “Hollywood 
and Vine” hope that will never pan out. 
But she’s an angel. Like one of Von Trier’s 
tortured martyrs, she’s a unique woman 
because she’s so confused and frustrated, 
because she’s willing to demean herself. 
Painted up in that gorgeous chalky white 
makeup that only M.M. could pull off so 
naturally, gyrating in that dive, donning 
costumes probably unwashed for weeks, 
standing onstage in sexily torn fishnets and 
bruised legs and sweetly warbling through 
“That Old Black Magic” (even though 
M.M. was a talented singer and dancer), 
she is a deity—a vision that man-child Don 
Murray sees right away. And he’s right. 

Yes, she’s an earthly woman, a woman 
who sleeps in all day and probably bleeds 
on the sheets and spills liquor on her 
clothes and continually embarrasses her- 
self, and a woman so lost or sacrificial that 
she just gives up her dreams and leaves 
with that insane cowboy. But that makes 
her even more interesting and almost guilt- 
ily desirable. As I’ve written about Von 
Trier’s women, they live in hard, oppres- 
sive worlds filled with people who harbor 
little concern for their goodness or who at 
least attempt to understand their ugliness. 
I can imagine Marilyn, like Kirsten Dunst’s 
Justine, basking under that doomsday 
planet, naked and pale and accepting— 
absorbing and eroticizing that pain—and, 
as Marilyn did in film, giving us the plea- 
sure of looking at her beautiful body. 

Because through it all, no matter what 
was happening in her life, Marilyn gave us 
that gift: pleasure. Pleasure in happiness 
and pleasure in pain and the pleasure of 
looking at her. And great artist that she 
was, looking at her provoked whatever you 
desired to interpret from her. Her beauty 
was transcendent. For that, we should do as 
Dylan instructs: “Bow down to her on Sun- 
day, salute her when her birthday comes.” 


EBERT 


(continued from page 152) 


newspapers, which he tied up with string 
and kept in bundles in the basement for the 
annual paper drive. 

Hal and I descended into the damp- 
smelling basement with its overhead 
lightbulbs, and his fingers walked with 
familiarity down the side of a bundle until 
he found what he knew was hidden there. 
It was the Marilyn Monroe cover issue. 
I had heard PLAYBOY mentioned but had 
never seen an issue. The cover sent elec- 
tricity tingling through all my nerves, like 
when the marching band played “Illinois 
Loyalty" at halftime. 

My mind struggled to comprehend what 
I was seeing. Marilyn Monroe, stark naked, 
smiling. Smiling! I knew it was her because 
of articles in Life, Look and The Saturday 
Evening Post. I must have seen her on TV, 
probably on The Ed Sullivan Show or a Bob 
Hope Christmas special. But here...in my 
hands...oh my God! 

"She has great tits," I mumbled to cover 
my embarrassment and naivete. They 
were the first tits I had ever seen. Even at 
that moment, I sensed from her no leer 
or wink, no come-hither expression. She 
seemed utterly comfortable within her 
skin, happy to be herself, stretching lux- 
uriously to share her magnificence so we 
could all enjoy it. 

'That famous photograph by Tom Kel- 
ley, with Monroe on the red velvet cloth, 
was purchased by Hugh Hefner, and it 
would not be going too far to say it was 
the making of his new magazine. It legiti- 
mized nudity by embodying it in arguably 
the most famous woman in America. With 
a crash of prudish sanctions and a hail of 
joyous trumpets, the beauty of the female 
form came into popular view. 

She exuded a sense of perfect calm. "She 
was most in control when she was nude,” 
Hef recalls on this anniversary. "What would 
be a position of vulnerability for others was 
a position of power for her." 

By embodying that sense of control, she 
gave us permission to be invulnerable too. 
We could admire her and not be made to 
feel complicit in something shameful or 
sinful. Nudity was natural and beautiful. 
That was true from the red velvet shot to 
the swimming pool photos near the end of 
her life from Something's Got to Give, when 
she told photographer Lawrence Schiller 
to send the nude photos to PLAvBov. Unlike 
some models who became great stars, she 
had no "image" to protect in retrospect. 
It was always the same image, as she was 
always the same Marilyn. 

How did that work? "It was a combina- 
tion of circumstances," Hef remembers. 
“Her initial appeal came from her beauty, 
of course, but also from the sexual yet vul- 
nerable roles she played. But it extended 
beyond the movie roles to her life as well. 
We lived her real life with her. 

"She topped it off by dying young. 
'The sad reality is that dying young can 


be a good career move for both female 
and male actors. Think of Jean Harlow 
or Rudolph Valentino. If Marilyn were 
still alive today, I don't think she would 
be such a big deal." 

I'm not sure I agree. I believe her mys- 
tery and legend would have outlived her 
physical beauty, though it would have 
involved a prudent cultivation of her 
behavior and her visibility. Consider the 
lifelong fascination Greta Garbo inspired. 

Brigitte Bardot was in no sense Monroe's 
equal, but she was a big deal in the 1950s, 
the real thing. Then she alienated her pub- 
lic by supporting the French fascist leader 
Le Pen and being photographed in disarray 
at various animal rights demonstrations. 
"Stardom destroyed me," she now says. 

Marlene Dietrich continued to per- 
form well into middle age, but at a 
certain point she simply drew a curtain 


and disappeared behind it. For Marlene, 
Maximilian Schell's 1984 documentary, 
she “cooperated” with Schell but refused 
to allow either herself or her apartment to 
be filmed; he had to make do with build- 
ing a set to resemble her apartment. “I’ve 
been photographed enough, thank you,” 
she told Schell, who was an old friend. 

If Marilyn had lived into old age, 
what might she have become? An elderly 
parody of herself? I believe she was 
too intelligent. I believe—or hope— 
she would have quietly disappeared, as 
another great star, Doris Day, has chosen 
to do. Her legacy would never die. From 
everything I sensed when I saw that first 
photo and all of her movies, I believe she 
would have become a sweet little old lady, 
and a good friend. 


"I got a Christmas surprise from my new girlfriend—we’re actually 
in a same-sex relationship.” 


173 


PLAYBOY 


174 


AFRICA 


(continued from page 106) 
dollar, in some cases—goes to run the 
bureaucratic organization. 


And then there are the celebrities. Four 
examples, wearing theatrical makeup, 
come to mind. 

The modestly gifted, semi-educated but 
hugely popular movie star whose provable 
skills are purely thespian decides to become 
an ambassadorial presence in the Sudanese 
territorial struggle. 

The aging dissolute singer visits Malawi, 
adopts both a posture of piety and a child 
or two and leaves with the promise of a 
new school. 

The TV talk-show billionaire hobnobs 
with a head of state and founds a luxurious 
academy for girls in Johannesburg. 

The scandal-plagued pair of superstars 
find seclusion from their fans in Namibia, 
the woman giving birth in a private hospital 
and thereafter providing two local hospitals 
with large endowments. 

In each case the donors—professional 
performers, novices in Africa—are from 
faraway America. They seem weirdly 
euphoric—wild-eyed and deafened by the 
power their money has given them—for 
money can't buy belief or obedience in Hol- 
lywood the way it can in Africa. These stars 
act out their concern in public, their patron- 
age rising to the level of performance, like 
giant infants fluttering money into a beg- 
gar's outstretched hands and pretend- 
ing to ignore the applause. It is as though 
they have set out to prove that a person in 
such a shallow and puppetlike profession is 
capable of a conscience. 

Does this improvisational charity do any 
good? History suggests not—that the coun- 
tries are worse off for it. Zambian econo- 
mist Dambisa Moyo says aid to Africa has 
discouraged investment, instilled a culture 
of dependency, created corruption and, 
taken together, impeded growth and re- 
tarded economies. A great deal of aid is 
plainly political, and much is pure theater, 
something that comes naturally to the per- 
formers and public figures who involve 
themselves in these efforts at improve- 
ment, which (when you look closely) are 
often efforts at improving irregularities in 
their own public images. 

Still, a lack of human charity is an appall- 
ing defect, and so I am not condemning the 
efforts of these people, only questioning 
them and finding them misguided. The 
thought occurs that the ambiguous, self- 
indulgent or egomaniacal fame-hogger, 
speaking with the tongues of men and of 
angels, is never more a clanging cymbal, 
obviously acting, than when playing a star- 
ring role as philanthropist. And no one is a 
bossier moralizer than a dissolute celebrity. 

“We live in a culture of aid,” Moyo writes 
at the beginning of her book Dead Aid: Why 
Aid Is Not Working and Why There Is a Better 
Way for Africa. She says that the more than 
$1 trillion in development assistance since 
1959 has left Africa worse off. "Aid has 
helped make the poor poorer and growth 


slower." One of the main reasons she gives is 
that much ofthe money has gone to corrupt 
regimes and kept dictators in power. 

This is also the view of Sudanese telecom 
billionaire Muhammad Ibrahim, who in 
a Wall Street Journal interview was quoted 
as saying, "It's my conviction that Africa 
doesn't need aid." Corrupt African gov- 
ernments are the problem. *Without good 
governance there's no way forward." He is 
a philanthropist in Africa but refuses to give 
money to any badly governed country. 

"Such intentions have been damaging 
our continent for the past 40 years," said 
Kenyan economist James Shikwati, speak- 
ing about donor countries in an interview 
in Der Spiegel. “If industrial nations really 
want to help Africans, they should termi- 
nate this awful aid. The countries that have 
collected the most development aid are 
also the ones in the worst shape. Despite 
the billions that have poured into Africa, 
the continent remains poor." 

Nigerian American novelist Teju Cole 
writes in The Atlantic that what is driving 
American aid in Africa is "the white savior 
industrial complex" and adds, "If we are go- 
ing to interfere in the lives of others, a little 
due diligence is a minimum requirement." 

Given this dismissal of aid, I was struck 
by a bright, full-page (and expensive) ad in 
an April issue of The New York Times Maga- 
zine. It showed smiling African children— 
the humanized Africa of happiness and 
gratitude—under the headline NYIT 
STUDENTS HELPED BRING LIFESAVING MEDICAL 
CARE TO THE PEOPLE OF OWOROBONG. WE'RE OUT 
THERE. JOIN US. At the bottom of the page 
were listed the achievements of the New 
York Institute of Technology in Oworo- 
bong: "established the village's first health 
clinic," “trained health care workers," “de- 
veloped an essential clean water system." 
And "Now, babies are delivered safely." 

'The reason I noticed this ad was that I 
had recently been in Africa, speaking to a 
director of the United States’ Millennium 
Challenge Corporation. He mentioned 
MCC’s successes in Ghana. He also said 
funding to Ghana, which amounted to 
$547 million over five years, ended in Feb- 
ruary 2012. 

'The NYIT ad is of course selling virtue, 
a big "We Do Good" pitch for attracting 
students to this private institute and giv- 
ing it the perverse glamour that celebrities 
have brought to their appearances in Af- 
rica's life. NYIT is relatively small (14,000 
students), with campuses in Manhattan 
and Long Island, as well as Abu Dhabi, Jor- 
dan, Bahrain and China. But the ad made 
me curious to know less about NYIT and 
more about Oworobong, the object of this 
adopt-a-village philanthropy. 

Oworobong does not exist on any but 
large-scale political maps of Ghana, which 
isn't surprising since it is obviously tiny. 
Typically a Ghanaian village numbers in 
the hundreds of people. This village is in 
Kwahu East in eastern Ghana. The provin- 
cial capital of Kwahu East, Abetifi, is about 
70 miles from Ghana's second-largest city, 
Kumasi. Kumasi is a prosperous city of 
2 million and the birthplace of Kofi Annan. 
In addition to a soccer stadium that seats 


40,000 people, Kumasi boasts its own 
medical school and teaching hospital. If 
Kwahu Fast's capital is so near, it is easy to 
conclude that Oworobong cannot be much 
farther. But it is depicted in the NYIT ad 
as existing at the ends of the earth, its fate 
hanging in the balance and its only hope 
the efforts of sympathetic Americans and 
their medicine and money. 

It so happens that the small village of 
Oworobong also figures heavily in the ad- 
vertising of the Rohde Foundation, whose 
founder, Jesse Rohde, is described on its 
website as a "social entrepreneur, health 
advocate for the global poor and physi- 
cian." Dr. Jesse Rohde, the site continues, 
“has dedicated his life to providing health 
care services to the world's poor." Perhaps 
daunted by "the world's poor" (estimated at 
almost a billion hungry people, according to 
WorldHunger.org), the site indicates, “Cur- 
rently our focus is in Ghana, where there 
is an urgent need for basic infrastructure." 

'The foundation solicits money online in 
the "Make Cents" program and seems to be 
a slick fund-raising organization with a scat- 
tering of volunteers. But the testimonials 
posted on the internet have the tone of self- 
satisfied hype. "Through the NYIT Center 
for Global Health, several students went on 
a three-week Global Health fieldwork trip 
to Oworobong, Ghana," an NYIT student 
writes. ^Our primary affiliate for this trip 
was the Jesse M. Rohde Foundation at the 
Oworobong Clinic. At this point, it is a child 
and maternal care clinic, which has been in 
development for the past four years." 

'The medical students who spent a mere 
three weeks in this village “realized that 
building a health care system goes beyond 
just practicing medicine. There are so 
many other factors involved. We all gained 
an appreciation for this after we came back 
from the trip." 

An intern for a California newspaper 
also went to Oworobong. She wrote of her 
trip in The Santa Ynez Valley Journal: “Each 
participant in Rohde’s two-week-long and 
work-oriented visit to the Ghanaian villages 
of Nteso and Oworobong—where Rohde’s 
fledgling clinic is finally beginning to 
stretch its caregiving wings—was required 
to raise $1,000 to contribute to Rohde’s 
herculean effort to save Ghanaian lives.” 

Like celebrities—the role models for such 
efforts—none of these students stays very 
long in Africa. Nor is there any mention by 
the NYIT or the Rohde Foundation of the 
more than half a billion dollars from U.S. 
taxpayers that America has contributed 
in the past five years through Millennium 
Challenge Corporation to Ghana’s welfare. 

The Rohde Foundation and NYIT ad- 
opted Oworobong in the same spirit that 
Mrs. Jellyby adopts Borrioboola-Gha “on 
the left bank of the River Niger” in Charles 
Dickens’s novel Bleak House. So much of 
aid is a system of adoptions—literally, in 
the case of celebrities (and the people they 
influence) who see aid in terms of rescuing 
children, and figuratively, in adopting vil- 
lages like Oworobong. There is no shortage 
of potential adoptees among the world’s 
poor. The United States is full of them; in 
Mexico there are even more. But Africa, the 


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176 


world’s greenest continent, holds a special 
allure for the adopter and the aid giver. 


Namibia is a wonderful place to observe 
both sides of the aid process. Namibia— 
a vast, mostly desert country with a small 
population—receives the attentions of 
many charity-minded Americans, most 
notably Angelina Jolie, who has donated 
money to hospitals and to a nature conser- 
vancy. But, as I will describe, the American 
taxpayer, through Millennium Challenge 
Corporation, has committed more than 
$300 million to Namibia’s welfare. 

There are only a few cities in Namibia, 
and the largest is hardly a city: Windhoek, 
the capital, has a quarter of a million 
people, roughly the same size as Newark, 
New Jersey. I can well believe that there 
are many visitors from Newark to Wind- 
hoek who make the journey with the idea 
of telling the locals how to live their lives. 

But Newark and Windhoek face the 
same problems. Both of them struggle 
to alleviate illiteracy, poverty and unem- 
ployment. The main difference is that in 
Windhoek the high school graduation 
rate is higher than in Newark, where— 
as Governor Chris Christie attests—it 
is 29 percent. The Windhoekians are 
demonstrably more polite. Windhoek has 
a balmier climate than Newark and has 
access to diamond mines. It is not far from 
an unspoiled coast and near to prides of 
lions and herds of elephants. Windhoek’s 
streets are cleaner than Newark’s, which is 
perhaps why you don’t find celebrity do- 
gooders on the streets of Newark. 

But I have had firsthand experience of 
the positive side of aid in Africa. While in 
Namibia I was invited to a high-minded, 
well-funded, foreign-sponsored event—the 
sort I had always either avoided or mocked. 
It was being held in Tsumkwe, a small town 
in the remote northeast of the country—an 
unpromising area, it seemed, for such an 
expensive and scholarly effort. Yet I knew 
such places to be the beating heart of Africa. 

The event would be a full day’s program 
of talks and films, billed as “Celebrating 
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage in 
Namibia,” organized by UNESCO. I was 
asked if I would be willing to speak at this 
Tsumkwe event, on “Preserving a Cultural 
Heritage.” The subject, however vague, 
interested me. I said yes, fighting my skep- 
ticism, and was glad afterward, because I 
learned how quiet, humble, noncelebrity 
aid was working. 

Tsumkwe’s community center was offi- 
cially designated the Captain Kxao Kxami 
Community Learning and Development 
Centre. Far from being a Namibian gov- 
ernment effort, the center had been built 
in 2005 with funds from the Namibian As- 
sociation of Norway. This group of Norwe- 
gian well-wishers was also deeply involved 
in local village education projects. The 
Redbush Tea Company chipped in with 
money, a charity in South Africa donated 
books and the center was supplied with 
computers and an internet connection. In 


2009 the Texas chapter of the Explorers 
Club collected money to construct the 
seminar room where I would give my talk. 

On the face of it, Tsumkwe—solitary, 
remote, poor—was the classic example of 
a hard-up outpost in Africa, adopted by 
noncelebrity foreigners as a recipient of 
funds and the idealistic efforts of outsiders 
to improve education and health. Unlike 
in Oworobong this was all done quietly. No 
hype about “saving lives.” The Norwegians 
had been at it for 30 years, funneling mon- 
ey to the place and producing extensive 
and scholarly self-financed surveys of the 
hardships and goals of the local people. 

In my talk I advocated that local people 
take down the oral histories of the elders 
in the region, making a database of folk- 
tales and proverbs, customs and tradi- 
tions. The students and elders listened 
politely, but soon afterward I learned that 
such an effort was already in the works, 
thanks to a foreign-funded transcription 
project in Tsumkwe. Who knew? 

The Ju’hoan Transcription Group had 
been active in Tsumkwe since 2002, but 
the tales had been collected since 1971. 
Much of this work was due to the Kalahari 


Fame ttself is also a kind 
of currency, spendable 
all over the world. And 
in Africa the contrast 
is stark, literally in black 
and white. 


Peoples Fund (based in Austin, Texas), 
which dated from the 1970s and operated 
through the apartheid era to create home- 
grown reading materials for local schools, 
among other projects. 

Over the years the project became more 
ambitious. From afar came webmasters, 
tech assistants, linguists from Germany, 
donations of laptops and solar panels by 
foreign companies. Soon the Norwegian- 
funded Captain Kxao Kxami Community 
Centre became available with electricity 
and an internet connection. 

In the foreign-funded center, with 
foreign-funded equipment—computers, 
digital recorders, video cams—the goal 
was “technological empowerment” to 
protect the culture, produce educational 
material for schools and build an archive. 
The mission was for the Ju'hoan people to 
tell their own stories. If these foreigners 
hadn't done it, no one would have. And 
if this history had not been preserved, it 
would have been lost forever, not just to 
the people in Namibia but to the world. 


Most of the high-profile projects and ef- 
forts, such as those of the Rohde Foun- 


dation, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, 
Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and the 
evangelical churches, represent a pittance 
of the total foreign aid to Africa. The real 
money, in the hundreds of millions, is the 
quiet annual funding from governments 
in the First World, and they are giving it 
with greater scrutiny. When in 2002 Den- 
mark got wind of corruption and misuse of 
aid money in the Malawian government, it 
suspended its program. This is happening 
more and more, because the great prob- 
lem is oversight and monitoring. It was to 
counter corruption that Millennium Chal- 
lenge Corporation was begun. 

Millennium Challenge Corporation was 
started in 2004 by the Bush administra- 
tion, a consequence of the frustration of 
people who saw the United States Agency 
for International Development and other 
agencies pouring money into countries 
with few tangible results. MCC keeps a 
close eye on how American taxpayer mon- 
ey is dispensed in efforts to improve other 
people's lives. The projects are spread all 
over Africa—indeed, all over the globe. 

Oliver Pierson is resident country direc- 
tor in Namibia for MCC. Pierson is young, 
in his 30s, and quietly hearty. I liked his en- 
ergy and admired his disposition. He biked 
and ran, even on the hottest Namibian 
days. He was married and lived in Wind- 
hoek when he was not traveling. He had 
been associated with MCC for four years. 

In 2008 Pierson, with Peace Corps zeal, 
had started working for MCC in "project 
appraisal." He became Namibia's resident 
country director in 2011. It was Pierson 
who told me that Namibia was getting 
more than $300 million, and Tanzania got 
more than twice that, $698 million. 

"But let me explain," Pierson said, be- 
cause hearing the large numbers, I had 
started to snort. The grant is administered 
in stages over five years in what is called 
a compact. And before a country qualifies 
for a compact it has to pass the eligibility 
requirements. 

Pierson said, "And we do audits. There's 
no evidence that contractors are misap- 
propriating the funds. You wouldn't be- 
lieve how much time we spend monitor- 
ing these grants and double-checking." 

For a country to get U.S. money from 
MCC it must go through an intensive pro- 
cess of measurement in three categories: 
just rule, economic freedom and invest- 
ment in people. If these conditions don't 
exist, no money is given. Each category is 
further broken down into 22 indicators, 
such as land rights, civil liberties, control 
of corruption, freedom of information 
and so forth. And they have to be low- or 
middle-income countries. Botswana doesn't 
qualify because it has a brisk economy. 

And, Pierson said, sometimes a compact 
is in place and something changes that 
queers a development deal. After the 2009 
coup in Madagascar, its multimillion-dollar 
compact was terminated. The Malawian 
government had signed on to a $350 mil- 
lion compact for investment in the energy 
sector, but not long after the signing there 


were demonstrations in three cities, includ- 
ing the capital, against the government's 
human rights abuses. Nineteen demonstra- 
tors were shot dead by the army. 

"So we put an operational hold on the 
compact," Pierson said. "And then the 
Malawians were going to host Sudan's Omar 
al-Bashir"—who is wanted by the Interna- 
tional Criminal Court for crimes against 
humanity. And that was the end of Malawi's 
deal. No more money. (The compact was 
reinstated after President Joyce Banda's in- 
auguration in April.) 


Why do celebrities engage in high-profile 
philanthropy, especially in Africa? Obviously 
it is an expression of good-heartedness. It 
sometimes seems to me an act of atonement 
for all the bad karma and compromise ac- 
cumulated in clawing to the top of celebrity- 
hood. And for actors, musicians, perform- 
ers, TV people—always at the mercy of 
directors, agents or bosses—it must be re- 
freshing when they promote themselves to 
the role of world-traveling philanthropist, 
meeting a head of state on their own terms 
because they are holding a chunk of money. 
Fame itself is also a kind of currency, spend- 
able all over the world. And in Africa the 
contrast is stark, literally in black and white. 

But none of these donations begins to 
compare with the $67 million in MCC mon- 
ey Namibia was getting to promote tourism. 
When I remarked on the size of the grant, 
Pierson elaborated by saying it was for the 
improvement and management of Etosha 
National Park and for the marketing of 
Namibian tourism. Tourism? Many tourist 
destinations in the United States, which get 
nothing from the U.S. government, would 
have been glad to get the millions Namibia 
had been awarded. Places I knew well got 
no money from the government to prop 
up their tourism industries—Hawaii got 
nothing, Cape Cod got nothing—but they 
struggled along. I thought particularly of 
the Maine tourist industry, which has been 
in serious trouble because of the economic 
slump, high unemployment, high gas prices 
and the lack of awareness outside of Maine 
of the delights of the Maine coast, one of the 
noblest and best preserved on earth. 

And the hard-pressed and severely taxed 
residents of Maine, many of whom work in 
the Maine tourism industry at motels and 
restaurants, were contributing to the im- 
provement of the Namibian tourism indus- 
try, to lure herds of (mainly) German safari- 
goers to Etosha National Park? 

"Let's say I happened to be a Maine lob- 
sterman,” I said to Pierson. “I get up at 4:30 
every morning and set off in my boat to haul 
hundreds of traps. Some days fuel is so ex- 
pensive and there are so few lobsters that I 
lose money. But I keep hauling. I pay my 
taxes. I'm wet and cold most of the time." 
Pierson was smiling; he knew what was com- 
ing. "What would you have said to my late 
friend Alvin Rackliff of Wheeler Bay, Spruce 
Head, Maine about the use of his tax money 
to get tourists to Namibia?" 


“Га say we're trying to help create coun- 
tries that are stable," Pierson said. "And it's less 
than one percent of the total U.S. budget." 

“It’s still a ton of money. Alvin was heav- 
ily taxed and worked very hard." 

"Tt builds good relationships," Pierson said. 

"Alvin would have wanted to know what 
Namibia is doing for itself." 

"Each country contributes—up to half of 
the total,” Pierson said. “Ghana is a good 
example of how loans and investment help. 
We had a successful compact there. Namibia 
has had regular elections since 1989. As well 
as tourist-based development, we're doing 
education and agriculture. Hey, it's five years, 
and we keep checking that no one steals." 

What does all this mean to the average 
U.S. taxpayer? Not much, I felt. What would 
it have meant to sorely taxed and hardwork- 
ing Alvin Rackliff in Maine? Up until he 
died, at 91, he was still fishing, still hauling 
traps. I can imagine him in his yellow slicker, 
wet gloves and rubber boots in the wheel- 
house of his lobster boat, Morning Mist, as I 
told him what I'd heard, his mocking laugh- 
ter ringing in my ears: "If you believe that, 
Paul, you're crazy as a shit-house rat!" 

But of the foreign aid schemes I'd come 
across, Millennium Challenge Corporation 
seemed to be doing its work honestly and 
well. I liked the idea that it cut off funds to 


countries that did not live up to their word 
and that tyrannies did not qualify. Still, the 
economists who denounce aid as harmful 
have a point. 

For any organization to raise money, it 
needs to present a life-or-death struggle, 
which is why charities love crises. And cri- 
ses perfectly suit celebrities, who are larger 
than life and for whom this drama of “sav- 
ing lives" is a real-life reflection of the mov- 
les or songs they promote. 

Still, the big-money aid in Africa seems 
bland compared with the vivid small-scale 
efforts of the celebrities and the highly pub- 
licized push to help villages like Oworobong. 
Anyone reading this in the United States can 
easily think of a needy or depressed neigh- 
borhood, slum area or dog town that would 
serve just as well for such an initiative. Brad 
Pitt is to be applauded for his work in post- 
Katrina New Orleans, but there are at least 
a hundred small towns in the United States 
where the annual per capita income is $5,300 
or less. New schools and hospitals could have 
been built in Allen, South Dakota or Luka- 
chukai, Arizona, where the residents live way 
below the poverty line. You don't find celeb- 
rities in those places. You find them on TV, 
claiming, “I’ve just saved some lives in Africa." 


“It’s good to work with somebody who really gets into 
the Christmas spirit." 


177 


PLA Y B O Y 


178 


TARANTINO 


(continued from page 70) 


thank-you notes. When people do some- 
thing nice for me, she would make me 
do something back—a note or a phone 
call—which I won’t do on my own. 
[laughs] That would be a nice part of the 
bargain. I wouldn’t be such a caveman. I 
might be a little less remote. Having said 
that, though, with the artistic, almost 
academic way I like to live my life when 
it comes to the movies I make and the 
research I do on them, I’ve got it pretty 
great. If I wanted to live in Paris for a 
year, what the fuck? I can. I don’t have 
to arrange anything; I can just do it. If 
there is an actor or a director I want to 


get obsessed with and study their films 
for the next 12 days, I can do that. The 
perfect person would be a Playmate who 
would enjoy that. 

PLAYBOY: Well, they’re out here. 
TARANTINO: I know, and that’s why I say 
it’s not impossible. 

PLAYBOY: We could probably throw a 
rock from your house here and hit one. 
TARANTINO: Well, they have to be legiti- 
mately Playmate on that. They have to 
dig it. They have to be down with a J. 
Lee Thompson film festival. 

PLAYBOY: How do you know if women you 
meet are into Quentin the guy and not 
Quentin the filmmaker? Does it matter? 
TARANTINO: Well, I’m not Quentin the 
average guy. Expecting her to like me 


‘And now if you're satisfied, my dear, we can focus on 
what I'd like for Christmas.” 


the way she would like me if I were a 
plumber or if I worked at Why Not a 
Burger is not realistic. And why would 
you want that? Part of me is me and my 
life, and part of me is me and my artistic 
journey. That’s all part of it. 

PLAYBOY: Does that mean the woman 
should be a fan? 

TARANTINO: No, it just means that if you 
like my work or respect what I do, it’s 
conceivable that could be an attractive 
element if you meet me. And if you like 
me and I’m charming and sexy or what- 
ever things you could be attracted to, 
that could be a plus. You can date this 
girl and that girl, but if you’re going 
to get together and try to be girlfriend 
and boyfriend, me and my life and my 
artistic journey are part of the deal. And 
part of my life is my artistic journey. At 
a certain point it becomes overwhelming 
when you’re doing a film. A girl needs 
her own life too. 

PLAYBOY: But she has to understand your 
artistic journey comes first. 

TARANTINO: Yeah. 

PLAYBOY: You’ve threatened to retire at 
60. Why put a timetable on it? 
TARANTINO: Who knows what I'll do? I 
just don't want to be an old-man film- 
maker. I want to stop at a certain point. 
PLAYBOY: Why? 

TARANTINO: Directors don't get better as 
they get older. Usually the worst films in 
their filmography are those last four at 
the end. I am all about my filmography, 
and one bad film fucks up three good 
ones. I don't want that bad out-of-touch 
comedy in my filmography, the movie 
that makes people think, Oh man, he still 
thinks it's 20 years ago. When directors 
get out-of-date, it's not pretty. 

PLAYBOY: Stanley Kubrick was viable in 
his later years. Scorsese and Spielberg 
have made good movies in their 60s, and 
Woody Allen made Midnight in Paris in 
his 70s. Won't fans want to see what's on 
your mind as you continue to develop 
as a man? 

TARANTINO: Maybe. If I have something 
to say, ГЇЇ do it. I haven't made any gi- 
gantic declarative statements. I just don't 
want to be an old filmmaker. I'm on a 
journey that needs to have an end and 
not be about me trying to get another 
job. Even if it's old and I'm washed up, 
I'd still want to do it. I want this artistic 
journey to have a climax. I want to work 
toward something. 

PLAYBOY: When a director jumps the 
shark, doesn't it have more to do with 
him getting fat and happy and losing his 
edge or not listening? 

TARANTINO: Could be, but it's also age. 
[laughs] The directorial histories don't 
lie for the most part, but I'll concentrate 
on a unique example: I hadn't thought 
about how old Tony Scott was until he 
checked out. And I knew him. I thought, 
Wow, Tony was close to 70? 

PLAYBOY: As a director, how will you know 
when you're not capable of that anymore? 


TARANTINO: Well, I guess that's what I'm 
trying to figure out. 

PLAYBOY: You don't turn these things 
out once a year. How many films do you 
have left in you? 

TARANTINO: You stop when you stop, but 
in a fanciful world, 10 movies in my film- 
ography would be nice. I've made seven. 
If I have a change of heart, if I come up 
with a new story, I could come back. But 
if I stop at 10, that would be okay as an 
artistic statement. 

PLAYBOY: When we did the interview last 
time—— 

TARANTINO: I reread that interview not 
long ago. Literally the next day I was 
asked, “Do you want to do another one?" 
The thing that was 
cool about that 
first interview was 
that you made a 
big deal about me 
doing Pulp Fiction 
and then coming 
back with Kill Bill. 
So is he the real 
deal or not the 
real deal? And I 
thought, Well, if 
PLAYBOY'S coming 
back, then I guess 
I passed the real- 
deal test. 

PLAYBOY: You cer- 
tainly have passed 
that test. Last time, 
you said you felt 
you could become 
a fine actor if that 
were your prior- 
ity. Why did it stop 
being important 
to you? 
TARANTINO: I just 
lost the bug. I think 
I got the bug from 
a combination of 
two things. I'd had 
a good experience 
doing From Dusk 
Till Dawn, and I 
started going out 
with Mira Sorvino. 
She’s an actor and 
so is her father, 
Paul, and they talk 
about acting a lot. I got all into that. And 
there were old dreams and desires from 
when I was a little boy. Now it’s the op- 
posite. If I write a part for myself, I cut 
it down to nothing. Actors have said 
that now that I’m over myself, I can get 
down to doing good work. But it’s more 
about the fact that when I did Kill Bill, 
I was going to play Pai Mei, and it was 
so hard 
PLAYBOY: Pai Mei is the teacher Daryl 
Hannah poisons. 

TARANTINO: Yes. I was going to play him. 
I'd trained to do the fights and every- 
thing, but it was such a big-deal movie 
that it needed all my attention directing. 


Evan Williams 


CINNAMON 


When I was done with it, I decided that 
if I'm going to be on a set, I want it to be 
my set, with me directing. I don't want 
to be an actor in somebody else's movie. 
I don't want people faxing call sheets to 
my house, and I don't want to get up in 
the morning for somebody else's movie. 
PLAYBOY: The tragedy in Aurora, Colo- 
rado, where a gunman massacred mov- 
iegoers at a Dark Knight Rises midnight 
screening, led some filmmakers to do 
some soul-searching about how they de- 
pict on-screen violence. Did you? 
TARANTINO: No, because I think that 
guy was a nut. He went in there to kill a 
bunch of people because he knew there 
would be a lot of people there and he'd 


intensely Cinnamon. 
NCREDIBLY SMOOTH 


The Smoothness of 
Evan Williams with 
a Hot Cinnamon Taste. 


make a tremendous amount of news do- 
ing it. That’s no different from a guy go- 
ing into a McDonald’s and shooting up 
people at lunchtime because he knows a 
lot of people will be there. 

PLAYBOY: When people point to movies 
for glorifying violence, what do you say? 
TARANTINO: Well, I never get into this 
argument because no one has this argu- 
ment with me. [laughs] They know where 
I’m coming from. I make violent mov- 
ies. I like violent movies. I’m on record 
about how I feel there is no correlation 
between art and life in that way. 
PLAYBOY: After Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fic- 
tion, you were this raging, rule-breaking 


outsider who redefined the gangster- 
movie genre and spawned imitators. How 
do you see yourself now? 

TARANTINO: Bob Dylan going into the 
1970s; De Palma, Scorsese, Kubrick and 
Spielberg going into the 1980s. I would 
like to be thought of as one of the pre- 
mier directors of his time, at the height of 
his powers, with his talents at his finger- 
tips, with something to say, something to 
prove, just trying to be the best he can be. 
PLAYBOY: No longer an outsider? 
TARANTINO: Yeah. That’s one thing that’s 
actually kind of nice. I’m not a Hollywood 
outsider anymore. I know a lot of people. 
I like them. They like me. I think Pm a 
pretty good member of this community, 
both as a person 
and as far as my 
job and contri- 
butions are con- 
cerned. Back in 
1994 I think they 
were all pretty 
impressed with 
me, and that was 
cool, but I felt 
like an outsider, 
a maverick punk, 
and I was hoping 
I wouldn't fuck 
it up. I still do 
things my own 
way, but I didn't 
go away either. I 
still kind of feel 
like I'm always 
trying to prove I 
belong here. 
PLAYBOY: When 
J.D. Salinger 
died, it was clear 
what a burden 
his early success 
had been. Af- 
ter Pulp Fiction, 
do you give a 
big sigh of relief 
when you make 
a movie and feel 
you have risen to 
the level of your 
earlier work? 
TARANTINO: No. 
I like people to 
be excited and 
think my best work's in front of me. 
That means you're trying to top your- 
self to one degree or another. I take that 
seriously. It's a subjective thing, but you 
are trying to make a big, bold, vital work 
that moves your artistic journey forward. 
I wouldn't have it any other way. I want 
there to be anticipation. I was actually 
quite proud when I read that Django is 
one of the most anticipated movies com- 
ing out this year. It's a black Western. 
Where's the anticipation coming from? I 
guess a lot of it is me. That's pretty fuck- 


ing awesome. 


179 


PLAYBOY 


WHITEY BULGER 


(continued from page 76) 
the Old Howard burlesque hall and run- 
ning off with a traveling circus while most 
kids were still in school. But Connolly 
was closer in age to Billy Bulger, and they 
became friends. Connolly chose to follow 
Billy’s lead. He got a good education before 
embarking on a career in law enforcement 
with the FBI. 

As a young street agent in Manhattan, 
Connolly was walking along Third Avenue 
on a cold December day in 1972 when he 
recognized fugitive Boston mafioso Francis 
“Cadillac Frank” Salemme walking toward 
him. Salemme was a suspect in numer- 
ous gangland hits and had been indicted 
for planting a car bomb that blew one of 
the legs off a Boston attorney. After a foot 
chase that ended when Connolly tackled 
Salemme at the corner of 81st Street, Con- 
nolly took the fugitive into custody virtually 
single-handedly. With the Salemme arrest, 
Connolly got his wish: He was transferred 
back to his hometown to work the under- 
belly of Boston, where both the Irish and 
Italian mobs were thriving even as they 
warred for dominance. 

By the time he retired, in 1990, John 
Connolly had received a distinguished 
service award, presented to him by then 
FBI director William Sessions. During his 
tenure with the Bureau, Connolly proved 
particularly adept at “flipping” ranking 
mobsters, getting them to roll over and 
snitch by providing vital secret informa- 
tion on organized crime. His FBI superiors 
ordered Connolly to cultivate top Irish 
gangsters as potential secret informers on 
the Italian Mafia. He was from the neigh- 
borhood and knew these guys from when 
they were kids, he was told, so why not 
give it a try? Through his old friend Billy 
Bulger, Connolly approached Whitey. As 
Connolly tells it, they arranged for a late- 
night meeting in a parked car overlooking 
Boston Harbor in September 1975. 

In the car Connolly played Bulger a tape 
of a wiretapped phone conversation between 
Jerry Angiulo, head of Boston’s arm of La 
Cosa Nostra, and a Mafia hit man. Angiulo 
had put out a contract to have Bulger killed. 
Bulger thanked Connolly for the tip, but 
he declined to help the FBI. He went back 
and talked to his partner Stephen Flemmi, 
a killer in the Winter Hill gang, and learned 
that the Rifleman had already signed on 
to the FBI’s top-secret program. Bulger 
changed his mind and entered the rarefied, 
treacherous terrain of the Top Echelon 
criminal informant program. 

The Italians had a contract on his head, 
and Bulger allegedly said to Connolly of his 
rival mobsters, “If they want to play check- 
ers, we'll play chess. Fuck 'em." According 
to Connolly, the deal he was instructed to 
make with the rising crime boss was simple 
and clear-cut: Give us the guineas and you 
and your Winter Hill mick gang get a pass. 

From that day forward, Connolly and 
Bulger were bound together in a secret 
covenant. They were shadowed by a neigh- 
borhood code of honor that holds informers, 


180 rats, snitches as the lowest form of life. The 


secret interplay in that relationship is vital— 
if it becomes known, people die. 


of Special Agent John Connolly for the 

rating period of November 15, 1981 to 
November 12, 1982 states, "[Special Agent] 
Connolly's performance in this area [the 
Top Echelon informant program]...is truly 
exceptional. He independently has devel- 
oped, maintained and operated a corps of 
extremely high-level and productive infor- 
mants. His direction and their resultant 
information has [sic] brought about results 
exceeded by none in the Boston Division’s 
Organized Crime Program. Most signifi- 
cantly, he skillfully developed a high-ranking 
LCN [La Cosa Nostra] figure who is presently 
the only member source in New England and 
one of very few developed since enactment 
of legislation dealing with organized crime 
nearly two decades ago. His performance has 
been at the level to which all should aspire to 
attain but few will realistically reach.” 

As FBI assets, Whitey Bulger and Stevie 
Flemmi were Connolly’s top performers. 
They supplied invaluable inside mob intel- 
ligence to the FBI for more than 15 years. 
That information often constituted the prob- 
able cause the feds needed to get warrants, 
plant bugs and mount wiretaps, which pro- 
vided Department of Justice prosecutors 
evidence to indict and convict the entire 
hierarchy of the New England branch of La 
Cosa Nostra, the long indomitable Patriarca 
crime family, ruled by Mafia commission 
member Raymond L.S. Patriarca and later 
by his inept son Ray Junior. 

As Connolly explains the Bureau’s ratio- 
nale in using TEs, it was only through the 
use of highly placed criminal informers that 
the FBI was able to penetrate the executive 
level of the Mafia. “The FBI, unlike state or 
local police departments, is responsible by 
statutory authority for protecting the internal 
security of the United States,” Connolly says. 
“State and local law enforcement have no 
such statutory obligation from Congress. The 
FBI’s domestic investigative responsibilities 
include addressing the threat posed by the 
international criminal conspiracy known as 
La Cosa Nostra—the Mafia—which is another 
investigative responsibility state and local law 
enforcement do not have. The Bureau’s oper- 
ational strategy of maintaining TEs to address 
the investigative mandate to bring down the 
Mafia was necessitated by statutory obliga- 
tions the FBI was saddled with by Congress. 

“The proof is in the pudding. The fact is, 
it was due in large measure to the probable 
cause furnished by my long-term TEs that 
allowed the Boston FBI office to degrade, 
destabilize and dismantle the New England 
Mafia in a series of highly publicized court- 
authorized wiretaps.” 

Conceived by FBI honcho J. Edgar 
Hoover and first known as the Top Hood- 
lum program, the Top Echelon informant 
initiative is still in wide use today. In essence, 
the TE program gives informers protection 
from prosecution for whatever crimes they 
may commit as long as they continue to 
provide valuable information to their FBI 
handlers—and as long as they do not com- 
mit murder or extreme violence. However, 


A November 1982 performance appraisal 


the kind of informers these agents look to 
recruit—made members of organized crime, 
high-level dope dealers, members of violent 
terrorist cells—reach those lofty levels in 
their chosen field only by killing people. So 
the idea of the TE program is paradoxical, 
as perverse as the cross-dressing paranoid 
lawman who conceived it. Yet the program 
worked. It worked very well indeed. 

In the winter of 1981, guided by Special 
Agent John Connolly and with information 
provided by Bulger and Flemmi, the FBI 
placed bugs in the Boston headquarters of 
Patriarca underboss Jerry Angiulo. Record- 
ings of the foulmouthed Angiulo ordering 
hits and berating underlings in his far- 
flung criminal organization resulted in the 
indictment and conviction of dozens of high- 
ranking Italian gangsters—/talian being the 
operative word. 

Fight years later, in October 1989, Bulger 
and Flemmi gave the FBI the tip that led 
agents to place the wiretap that recorded 
for the first time a traditional Mafia induc- 
tion ceremony, presided over by Raymond 
Patriarca Jr. The gangsters met in the base- 
ment of a home in suburban Medford, 
Massachusetts. Four new members took the 
blood oath to kill anyone who violated the 
organization's rules. The tape and the tran- 
script made from it were an unparalleled 
evidentiary bonanza for the feds. Prosecu- 
tors used the tape in a number of Mafia trials 
around the country to prove the existence of 
the secret criminal organization. 

As the FBI shattered the Mafia's criminal 
organization in New England, the path was 
clear for Bulger and his Winter Hill gang 
to seize total control. Working out of their 
headquarters— Triple O's bar in South Bos- 
ton and later a Lancaster Street garage in 
the shadow of tony Beacon Hill—Bulger 
now ran his criminal empire. 

Although the deal the Department of Jus- 
tice made with Bulger and Flemmi paid off, it 
had serious unintended consequences. Peo- 
ple were murdered, and not only criminals. 
Girlfriends of criminals. Innocent people 
who got caught up in the cabal. Legitimate 
businessmen who unknowingly became 
involved with organized-crime figures. 

'TE informers are valuable only as long as 
their identity remains a highly classified secret. 
They are never required to testify at trial or 
wear a wire. The informers and their agent 
handlers walk a fine line between crime con- 
trol and government-sanctioned criminal 
activity. The agent handlers need the intelli- 
gence provided by the informers in order to 
do their job and stay alive. In one case, dubbed 
Operation Lobster, an undercover FBI agent's 
life was saved thanks to information provided 
by Bulger. All too often, however, the question 
becomes, Who is handling whom? 


hen he retired, Connolly took a posi- 
М: as head of security at Boston 
Edison. He resumed a normal family 

life with his wife and sons—hockey games in 
winter, summer vacations on Cape Cod. He 
didn't miss the stress of handling a stable of vio- 
lent, cagey criminal informants. Life was good. 
Bulger, meanwhile, was planning his 
retirement—stashing money in safe-deposit 
boxes across the country and even in a 


London bank, acquiring false identification, 
driver's licenses in dead people's names, 
Social Security cards. And he was managing 
long-term relationships with three differ- 
ent women. Always with his finger on the 
quickening pulse of the heat, Bulger knew 
that with the changing of the guard in New 
England's federal law-enforcement chain of 
command it was time to get out of town. He 
scooped up his main squeeze, a single mother 
named Teresa Stanley, and together they set 
off on a leisurely cross-country motor trip. 

New assistant U.S. attorney Fred Wyshak 
had arrived in Boston with an agenda: Take 
down Bulger and Flemmi, even if it meant 
exposing the FBI's secret TE program in 
the process. Wyshak teamed with prosecu- 
tor Brian Kelly, and soon they were making 
cases against low-level bookmakers and loan 
sharks, with their sights set on the Winter 
Hill gang's bosses. 'The prosecutors called 
on Bulger and Flemmi's former handler, 
who by then had already retired from the 
Bureau. When Connolly was told the pros- 
ecutors were investigating his TE informers 
for crimes including bookmaking and loan 
sharking, Connolly maintained that the FBI 
and higher-ups in the Department of Jus- 
tice had given the informers immunity for 
"anything but murder." Wyshak informed 
Connolly that that deal was now off the table. 
They were going to take down Whitey and 
his partner, the Rifleman. 

'The new regime in the Boston federal pros- 
ecutor's office urged Connolly to go along with 
the program and deny there had ever been an 
arrangement with Bulger and Flemmi. Con- 
nolly was adamant: no deal. He refused to 
lie about the arrangement, which had been 
underwritten and ratified by his superiors, 
including the former U.S. attorney in Bos- 
ton, Jeremiah T. O'Sullivan. If Connolly lied 
and Bulger went down, the former FBI man 
(not to mention his family) could find himself 
in Bulger's crosshairs. Besides, Connolly says, 
both his direct FBI supervisor in the 1980s, 
John Morris, and O'Sullivan asked Connolly 
to arrange meetings for them with the crime 
boss. O'Sullivan and Bulger met in a Bos- 
ton hotel room. Bulger and Flemmi went to 
dinner at FBI supervisor Morris's suburban 
home, where they enjoyed a lavish wine- 
soaked meal together. Morris later admitted 
to taking cash and gifts from the gangsters. 
'The fine line between cops and criminals 
became obscured. 'Their mandate: Do what- 
ever it takes to bring down the Italian Mafia. 

When the indictments against Bulger and 
Flemmi were unsealed in 1995, Flemmi was 
arrested in a restaurant he was renovating 
near Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston. But 
where was Bulger? He had vanished. 

'The FBI was forced to admit Bulger and 
Flemmi had been informants. But the pros- 
ecutors and Department of Justice higher-ups 
were loath to acknowledge that as TEs they 
had been given immunity from prosecution 
in exchange for their intelligence. Connolly 
refused to play along, and as a result he 
became the DOJ's whipping boy, its scapegoat. 

By October 2000 Connolly had been 
charged with nine counts of criminal action, 
including racketeering, obstruction of justice 
and making false statements to law enforce- 
ment officials. Essentially the government 


prosecutors attempted to prove that instead 
of merely handling his Winter Hill infor- 
mants, Connolly had joined Bulger as an 
active member of his gang. The trial had 
the city of Boston riveted. Connolly was 
found guilty of racketeering, obstruction of 
justice and making false statements. Bulger 
was gone, and the feds needed to save face. 
Using testimony from a Winter Hill gang 
insider (testimony that was later discounted 
by another witness), a jury found Connolly 
guilty of tipping off Bulger to the impending 
indictments so he could flee before the law 
came for him. The judge sentenced Connolly 
to 10 years in federal prison. 

Seven years later, Connolly was wrapping 
up his federal bid when he was charged in 
Miami with conspiring with Bulger and 
others to murder a shady Boston business- 
man named John Callahan. The former 
president of World Jai Alai, Callahan was 
involved in a scam with Bulger—until he was 
found riddled with bullet holes at the Miami 
airport in the trunk of his Cadillac. The 
charge claimed that Connolly had tipped 
Bulger off that Callahan was going to drop 
a dime on him for the murder of World Jai 
Alai owner Roger Wheeler. Callahan's body 
had been found with one dime facing up 
on his chest. Connolly was transferred from 
the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina 
to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional 
Center in Dade County, Florida. He was held 
in the hole on 24-hour-a-day lockdown. 

At the Miami trial, prosecutors trotted out 
a rogues' gallery of hit men and snitches to 
testify; it was in all of their best interest to take 
Connolly down. Connolly's former supervisor 


John Morris again took the stand and wept 
through his testimony. Although he admit- 
ted to accepting thousands in cash and a case 
of fine wine from Bulger (Bulger called him 
Vino for his fancy palate), Morris testified 
against his underling Connolly and walked 
without ever spending a minute behind bars. 
Hit man turned government witness John 
Martorano—who admitted to committing the 
murder and placing the dime on the victim's 
chest after shoving the body into the trunk 
of the Cadillac—testified against Connolly. 
Today Martorano, known as the Basin Street 
Butcher and with more than 20 confirmed 
notches in his belt, is a free man often seen 
dining in fine Boston restaurants. Another 
admitted murderer who testified against Con- 
nolly in exchange for a lesser prison sentence 
is Bulger's partner Flemmi. 

Connolly was convicted of second-degree 
homicide with a firearm and sentenced to 40 
years in prison—a virtual life sentence. His 
Miami lawyers belatedly pointed out that in 
cases involving the crime for which he was 
convicted—second-degree murder with a 
firearm— Florida statute requires that it be 
proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the 
firearm used in the murder was in the per- 
sonal possession ofthe defendant during the 
commission of the felony. That element of 
the crime was never proven; in fact it was 
never even alluded to in the state's case. The 
only firearm in Connolly's possession would 
have been his FBI-issued weapon, which was 
with him in Massachusetts, hundreds of miles 
from the scene of the crime. 

'The trial judge agreed with Connolly's 
attorneys that the jury's verdict, and therefore 


"Mr. Claus, you're named in a class-action lawsuit for 


discriminating against the ‘naughty. 


ووو 


181 


PLAYBOY 


182 


Connolly’s conviction, was flawed. But, he 
pointed out, the lawyers had filed their 
motion for arrest of judgment several days 
beyond the 10-day period allowed by law. 
Because the motion had not been filed in a 
timely manner, the judge ruled that the con- 
viction and 40-year sentence would stand. 
And the appellate court in Miami denied 
the appeal without issuing an opinion. 

As Connolly watched his life slip away in 
a Florida prison, FBI agents maintained 
their command center in Boston and 
spent millions on one of the most elabo- 
rate and expensive criminal manhunts ever 
mounted. All the while, Whitey Bulger and 
his lady, Catherine Greig, were living qui- 
etly in Santa Monica, hiding in plain sight. 


a worthy endeavor to travel to Bos- 
ton to interview some of the people 
who had been closest to him back in the 
day when he was assuming control of the 
underworld and conniving with FBI agents. 
Theresa Stanley was in a relationship 
with Bulger for 30 years. She was on a road 
trip around the country with Bulger in Jan- 
uary 1995 when they heard the news on the 
car radio that Flemmi had been arrested. In 
her early 70s, Stanley sat for an interview 
over lunch at Legal Sea Foods. A delicate 
woman still mourning the drug-overdose 
death of her son—a son Bulger had helped 
raise (“Jim was very strict,” she remembered 
of Bulger’s parenting skills)—Stanley was 
also still suffering from Bulger’s betrayal: 
All the while he was with her, he had two 
other mistresses, Catherine Greig and long- 
time girlfriend Lindsey Cyr, with whom he 
had a child, a boy named Douglas. 

“Tt’s hard to understand,” she said over 
a bowl of lobster bisque. “I don’t know how 
a man can live so many different lives and 
keep up so many lies. It must not be easy." 

Reminded that Bulger, given his dual 
role as informer and mobster, was adept 
at living multiple realities, Stanley gained 
little solace. She had resisted telling her 
story because the whole thing brought up 
too many unhappy memories. She agreed 
to meet only after her son-in-law Chris 
“Knuckles” Nilan, a former enforcer for 
the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and 
a Bulger confidant, had put in a good word. 

Stanley confirmed that Bulger had 
planned for his flight long before he 
learned of the indictments and Flemmi's 
arrest. “He was traveling under his own 
name while we were together,” she recalled. 
“But he was aware something was going on 
back in Boston.” 

Once they heard about Flemmi and the 
warrant for Bulger’s arrest, Stanley said, 
Bulger immediately stopped using his real 
name and assumed the identity of Thomas 
F. Baxter, who had died in January 1979. 
In 1990 Bulger had obtained a driver’s 
license in Baxter’s name and had renewed 
the license again in 1994, a year before he 
went on the lam. 

“Connolly never tipped Jim,” Stanley 
said. “We weren't even in Boston at the 
time. Jim heard the news on the car radio. 


i n the eve of the Bulger trial, it seemed 


It’s not right what was done to Connolly. 
Jim should clear Connolly. He should do 
that. He should do one good thing before 
he dies.” Stanley succumbed to lung cancer 
and died just months after our interview. 

It is well established that Bulger had 
already planned his flight and left town 
by the time the Boston indictments were 
unsealed. He had phony IDs and cash at the 
ready. Connolly had retired from the FBI 
four years before the indictments. As another 
Connolly supporter, former FBI agent Joe 
Pistone, known as Donnie Brasco while 
working undercover for the FBI, explains, 
“No one is calling a retired agent to tell him 
they have an indictment against one of his 
former informants. It ain’t happening. They 
keep that information close to the vest.” 

Pistone knew Connolly when they were 
both on the job. “All John Connolly did was 
his job, what he was hired and sworn to do,” 
Pistone says. 

Hockey player Nilan believes that in 
addition to clearing Connolly, Bulger wants 
to set the record straight on several of the 
killings attributed to him. “Jimmy said to 
me, “The last guy to come in always gets 
blamed for everything,’” Nilan says. In par- 
ticular, Nilan and others close to Bulger 


“There’s trouble,” Whitey 
Bulger said. "I'm going 
away for a while. But 
everything’s under control. 
I've got insurance, and it’s 


gold-plated.” 


believe that Flemmi's testimony against 
Connolly was self-serving in the extreme, 
that he lied about several murders Bulger 
supposedly committed, that he heaped 
the blame for killing two of Flemmi's ex- 
girlfriends on Bulger and that government 
prosecutors knew Flemmi lied and there- 
fore committed perjury. 

“Jimmy’s very smart," Nilan says. “I’m 
sure he's still got a few cards he can play. 
Believe me, they don't want to hear what 
he has to say." 

Lindsey Cyr—mother of Bulger's only 
child, Douglas, who died of complications 
from Reye's syndrome when he was six years 
old—has stories of Bulger few except those 
closest to him ever knew. Cyr met Bulger 
when she was 19 and had a second job as a 
waitress in a restaurant Bulger frequented 
while he was working for a construction 
company soon after his release from prison. 

"Jimmy was very quiet and well-behaved," 
Cyr told me in a television interview, "a gen- 
tleman, at least with me. He had beautiful 
manners and was so handsome—the blond 
hair and those blue eyes. You couldn't help 
but notice him." 

Cyr's boyfriend got rough with her one 


day in the restaurant while Bulger was 
there having breakfast. "Jimmy took him 
outside, talked to him for a second and 
then folded him up with four straight 
shots," said Cyr, remembering how Bulger 
became more than just another customer. 
Bulger returned to his seat and told her, 
“That won't happen again. If it does, I will 
be forced to become unpleasant." 

She started dating the older man. He 
took her to a cookout at Billy Bulger's 
South Boston home, where she met Billy's 
wife and their many kids, as well as the 
brothers' mother, Jean Bulger, to whom 
Whitey was devoted. 

"He was still living at home, taking care 
of his mother," Cyr said. "I guess that's 
something Irish men do." 

Other dates were not so relaxed. Twice 
while out with Bulger, Cyr said, they were 
caught in gun battles with shooters try- 
ing to take him out. “He explained he was 
reorganizing Southie,” she recalled. There 
was a mob war raging in Boston at the 
time, and Bulger had landed himself in 
the middle of it. 

Cyr remembers him as an “incredible,” 
well-endowed lover. “First time I saw him 
naked, I was shocked,” she said. “I told him, 
“No way you're going to put that in me!’ But 
he was very gentle. Sex was a major item 
for Jimmy. I mean, it was like breathing. 
And he had to have it when he wanted, and 
that meant any time I was in the vicinity.” 

Inevitably she became pregnant and 
gave birth to a baby boy. Cyr remembers 
Bulger as a doting father who was crazy 
about Douglas, his look-alike towheaded 
little boy. But Bulger was concerned about 
the exposure having a wife and child could 
mean to his enemies during his “reorga- 
nizing” of the underworld. He chose not 
to give the child or Cyr his name and kept 
them as much as he could out of harm’s 
way. She says Bulger changed after the 
boy’s death. “Jimmy became very cold. He 
said to me, ‘I can’t hurt like this. I don’t 
think I can go through life just as we always 
have with the exception of no Douglas.’ 
That was the one time he mentioned his 
name after Douglas died.” 

Eventually they drifted apart. Cyr 
remembers the last time she heard from 
Whitey was in January 1995. He called at 
three in the morning and told her, “There’s 
trouble. I’m going away for a while. But 
everything’s under control. I’ve got insur- 
ance, and it’s gold-plated.” 

“T don’t know what kind of insurance 
he’s got,” Cyr said, “but I honestly believe 
that several of the people who are walking 
around should be in jail, and certainly not 
the FBI agent. John Connolly, they threw 
him to the wolves.” 


E ulger is now being held in solitary con- 


finement in the maximum-security unit 

of a prison in Plymouth, Massachusetts. 
He's made more than a dozen appearances 
in federal court in Boston, shuttled in and 
out by helicopter or in a caravan of armored 
black Suburbans. He smiles and nods to the 
media entourage that flocks to his every 


appearance. He waves and greets his loyal 
family members, in particular his brother 
Billy, who shows up at every hearing. His 
companion, Catherine Greig, was sentenced 
to eight years in prison after pleading guilty 
to harboring Bulger. She is serving her sen- 
tence in a low-security women's penitentiary. 

Bulger's upcoming trial is the most 
anticipated public airing of the biggest law 
enforcement scandal of our time. Through his 
court-appointed attorney, J.W. Carney, Bulger 
declared that he intends to take the stand and 
name names, to tell of the higher-ups within 
the Department of Justice who authorized 
him as an informant and granted him immu- 
nity. He has insisted on only person-to-person 
communications with his lawyers, claiming 
that all his calls are monitored, even the pro- 
tected attorney-client calls, and asserting his 
belief that all law enforcement is corrupt. 

But the trial may never happen. Bulger 
turned 83 in September. He has a heart ail- 
ment. People held in custody with medical 
conditions tend to die. And already the feds 
are making moves to ensure that the full 
dimension of Bulger’s complex relationship 
with Connolly and his superiors in the Depart- 
ment of Justice is never brought to light. 

Upon Bulger’s return to Boston to face 
the charges, prosecutors handling the case 
announced he would not be tried for any 
of the offenses in the original racketeering 
indictment that covered the period when he 
was a TE informant. A superseding indict- 
ment charges him only with the 19 murders 
he and Flemmi allegedly committed. 

The judge imposed a tight gag order on 
Bulger’s attorney Carney, who has com- 
plained to the court that the order prevents 
him from talking to potential witnesses and 
is hampering his ability to prepare a defense. 
Given the machinations on both sides, it’s fair 
to assume that whatever comes out during 
the trial —if it takes place—will be a highly 
attenuated version of what really happened. 
The judge can simply rule that areas of 
Bulger's evidence the government does not 
want made public are irrelevant, outside the 
purview of the current indictment or a threat 
to national security. End of story. 

As Connolly says from prison, "It is my 
understanding that the many FBI agents 
who have been fighting to prove my inno- 
cence have been alerted by FBI officials in 
Washington, D.C. to evidence indicating 
Whitey Bulger has exonerated me and con- 
firmed I was framed. I was also told he has 
implicated my admittedly corrupt former 
FBI supervisor, John Morris, in additional 
criminal wrongdoing, which proves Morris 
perjured himself both in his plea agreement 
and at both my trials. It is my further under- 
standing these statements by Bulger have 
been documented in official FBI reports, 
but the reports are placed under seal by the 
Department of Justice and have not been 
provided to my attorneys. 'This comes as no 
surprise in light ofall the other exculpatory 
evidence they concealed. Bulger has always 
kept his own counsel, for only he knows what 
he intends to do. Obviously it is my fervent 
hope that he will be allowed to take the stand 
and tell the truth and exonerate me." 


Blind Coll 


(continued from page 130) 


a tricky thing, however. The last thing the 
investigator wanted to do was give fam- 
ily members false hope or needlessly have 
them revisit the trauma of losing a loved 
one. The initial notification was always han- 
dled with finesse, and that meant approach- 
ing a selected family member with carefully 
chosen and vetted information. 

In the Jespersen case, Bosch had only one 
family connection, back in Copenhagen. 
The victim’s brother, Henrik Jespersen, was 
listed in the original reports as the family 
contact, and a 1999 entry in the chronologi- 
cal report noted an e-mail address for him. 
Bosch sent off an e-mail to that address, 
having no idea if it would still be good after 
13 years. The message was not kicked back, 
but it also wasn’t answered. Two days after 
sending it he re-sent it, but again it was not 
replied to. Bosch had then put the contact 
issue aside as he investigated and prepared 
to meet Rufus Coleman at San Quentin. 

Coincidentally, one of Bosch’s reasons for 
his early arrival at the office was to attempt 
to get a phone number for Henrik Jesper- 
sen and place a call to him in Copenhagen, 
which was nine hours ahead of Los Angeles. 

Henrik had beaten Bosch to the punch 
and answered his e-mail, the reply landing in 
Harry’s e-mail basket at two A.M. L.A. time. 


Dear Mr. Bosch, I thank you for your e-mail 
which mistakenly diverted to my junk file. I have 
retrieved now and wish to answer promtly. Many 
thanks to you and LAPD for seeking the killer of 
my sister. Anneke is still very missed in our lifes 
here in Copenhagen. The BT newspaper where she 
work has brass plaque in place to commemorate this 
brave journolist who is a hero. I hope you can catch 
this bad people who kill. If we can talk to one an- 
other my job phone is best to call at the hotel where 
I work every day as direktor. 00-800-11-20-11-40 
is the number you will call. 

I hope you can find killer. It means very much to 
me. My sister was a twin of mine. I miss very much. 


Henrik 


PS: Anneke Jespersen was not on vaction. She 
was on th story. 


Bosch stared at the last line for a good long 
while. He assumed that Henrik had meant 
“vacation” instead of “vaction.” His postscript 
seemed to be a direct response to something 
in Bosch’s original e-mail, which was copied 
at the bottom of the message. 


Dear Mr. Jespersen, I am a homicide detective 
with the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been 
assigned to continue the investigation of your sister 
Anneke's murder on May 1, 1992. I do not wish 
to disturb you or cause you any further grief, but 
it is part of my duty as investigator to inform you 
that I am actively pursuing new leads in the case. I 
apologize for not knowing your language. If you are 
able to communicate in English, please respond to 
this message or call me at any of the numbers below. 

It has been 20 years since your sister came 
to this country for a vacation and lost her life 
when she diverted to Los Angeles to cover a city 
in flames for her newspaper in Copenhagen. It is 


my hope and obligation to finally put this case to 
rest. I will do my best and look forward to com- 
municating with you as I go. 


It seemed to Bosch that Henrik’s reference 
to vacation and “th story” was not a reference 
to the riots but to something else. Bosch 
took it to mean that his sister had come to 
the United States to pursue a story and had 
diverted from that to the riots in Los Angeles. 

It was all semantics and conjecture until 
Bosch actually talked to Henrik directly. He 
looked up at the wall clock and did some 
calculating. It was shortly after four P.M. 
in Copenhagen. He had a good chance of 
catching Henrik at the hotel. 

His call was answered right away by a 
front-desk clerk who told him that he had 
missed Henrik, who had just gone home 
for the day. Bosch left his name and num- 
ber but no message. After hanging up he 
sent an e-mail to Henrik asking him to call 
as soon as possible, day or night. 

Bosch pulled the case records out of his 
battered briefcase and started a fresh read- 
through, this time with everything filtered 
through a new hypothesis—that Anneke 
Jespersen was already working a story 
when she came to the United States. 

Soon things started to fall into place. Jes- 
persen had packed light because she wasn’t 
on vacation. She was working and she 
brought work clothes. One backpack and 
that was it. So she could travel quickly and 
easily. So she could keep moving, chasing 
the story—whatever the story was. 

Tilting the angle brought to light other 
things he had missed. Jespersen was a pho- 
tographer and journalist. She shot stories. 
She wrote stories. But no notebook was 
found with the body or among the belong- 
ings from her hotel room. If she was on a 
story, shouldn’t there be notes? Shouldn’t 
there be a notebook in one of the pockets 
of her vest or in her backpack? 

“What else?” Bosch said out loud, then 
looked around the squad room to make 
sure he was still alone. 

What else was missing? What should she 
have been carrying? Bosch carried out a 
mental exercise. He envisioned himself in 
a hotel room. He was leaving, pulling the 
door locked behind him. What would he 
have in his pockets? 

He thought about this for a while and then 
something came to him. He quickly turned 
pages in the file until he found the coroner’s 
property list. It was a handwritten list of all 
items found on the body or in the victim’s 
clothing. It listed the clothing items as well as 
a wallet, loose money and jewelry consisting 
of a watch and a modest silver neck chain. 

“No room key,” he said aloud. 

This meant one of two things to Bosch. 
One was that she had left her room key in 
her rental car and it had been taken when 
the car was broken into. The other, more 
likely conclusion was that someone had 
murdered Jespersen and taken her hotel 
room key from her pocket. 

He double-checked the list and then went 
to the plastic sleeves containing the Polaroid 
photos he had taken himself 20 years before. 
The faded photos showed various angles 


of the crime scene, the body as it had been 183 


PLAYBOY 


184 


found. Two of the shots were close-ups of the 
torso and clearly showed the victim’s pants. 
The top of the left pocket showed the white 
lining. Bosch had no doubt that the pocket 
had been pulled out when someone had rifled 
the victim’s pockets and taken her hotel room 
key while leaving behind jewelry and cash. 

The hotel room had then most likely been 
searched. For what was not clear. But not a 
single notebook or even a piece of paper had 
been found among the belongings turned 
over by the motel staff to the police. 

Bosch stood up because he was too tense 
to keep sitting. He felt he was onto some- 
thing but he had no idea what and whether 
it ultimately had anything to do with 
Anneke Jespersen's murder. 

“Hey, Harry." 

Bosch turned from his desk and saw his 
partner arriving at the cubicle. 

"Morning." 

"You're in early." 

“No, the usual time. You're in late." 

"Hey, did I miss your birthday or 
something?" 

Bosch looked at Chu for a moment be- 
fore answering. 

"Yeah, yesterday. How'd you know that?" 

Chu shrugged. 

"Your tie. Looks brand new and I know 
you'd never have gone for bright colors 
like that." 

Bosch looked down at his tie and 
smoothed it on his chest. 

"My daughter," he said. 

"She's got good taste then. Too bad 
you don't." 

Chu laughed and said he was going to 
the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. It was 
his routine to report to the squad room 
each morning and then immediately take 
a coffee break. 

"You want anything, Harry?" 

"Yeah, I need you to run a name for me 
on the box." 

“I mean do you want a coffee or 
something?" 

"No, I'm good." 


“ГЇЇ run the name when I get back." 

Bosch waved him off and sat back down 
at his desk. He decided not to wait. He 
went on the computer and started with the 
DMV database. Using two fingers to type, 
he plugged in the name Alex White and 
learned there were nearly 400 licensed 
drivers with the name Alex, Alexander or 
Alexandra White in California. Only three 
of them were in Modesto, and they were all 
men ranging in age from 28 to 54. He cop- 
ied down the information and ran those 
three through the NCIC data bank, but 
none of them carried criminal records. 

Bosch checked the clock on the wall of the 
squad room and saw it was only 8:30. The 
John Deere franchise where the Alex White 
call had originated from 10 years earlier didn't 
open for a half hour. He called directory assis- 
tance for the 209 area code, but there were no 
listed numbers for an Alex White. 

Chu came back, entering the cubicle and 
placing his coffee cup on the same spot where 
Lieutenant O"Toole had sat the day before. 

"Okay, Harry, what's the name?" he asked. 

"I already ran it," Bosch said. "But you 
could run it through TLO and maybe get 
me phone numbers." 

“No problem. Give it to me.” 

Bosch rolled his chair over to Chu's side 
and gave him the page where he had writ- 
ten down the info on the three Alex Whites. 
TLO was a database the department sub- 
scribed to that collated information from 
numerous public and private sources. It was 
a useful tool and often provided unlisted 
phone numbers, even cell numbers, that 
had been provided on loan and employ- 
ment applications. There was an expertise 
involved in using the database, knowing 
just how to frame the request, and that was 
where Chu's skills far exceeded Bosch's. 

"Okay, give me a few minutes here," 
Chu said. 

Bosch moved back to his desk. He noticed 
the pile of photos stacked on the right side. 
They were three-inch-by-five-inch shots of 
Anneke Jespersen's press-pass photo that he 


"I thought we didn't celebrate the holidays?!" 


had ordered from the photo unit so he could 
distribute them where needed. He held one 
up now and studied her face again, his eyes 
drawn to hers and their distant stare. 

He then slid the photo under the sheet 
of glass that topped his desk. It joined the 
others. All women. All victims. Cases and 
faces he wanted always to be reminded of. 

"Bosch, what are you doing here?" 

Bosch looked up and saw it was Lieu- 
tenant O’Toole. 

“T work here, Lieutenant,” he said. 

"You have qualifying today and you can't 
delay it again." 

“Not till 10 and they'll be backed up any- 
way. Don't worry, I'll get it done." 

“No more excuses." 

O"Toole walked off in the direction of 
his office. Bosch watched him go, shaking 
his head. 

Chu turned from his desk, holding out 
the page Bosch had given him. 

“That was easy," he said. 

Bosch took the paper and checked it. 
Chu had written phone numbers under 
all three names. Bosch immediately forgot 
about O"Toole. 

“Thanks, partner." 

"So who's the guy?" 

"Not sure, but 10 years ago somebody 
named Alex White called from Modesto to 
ask about the Jespersen case. I want to find 
out why." 

“There's no summary in the book?" 

^No, just an entry in the chrono. Prob- 
ably lucky somebody even took the time to 
put that in there." 

Bosch went to work on the phone, call- 
ing the three Alex Whites. He got both lucky 
and unlucky. He was able to connect with 
all three of the men, but none of them ac- 
knowledged being the Alex White who had 
called about the Jespersen case. All of them 
seemed thoroughly confused by the call 
from Los Angeles. The closest Bosch got to a 
connection was with the last call, which was 
to the oldest Alex White. With each call he 
had not only asked about Jespersen but also 
about what the men did for a living as well 
as whether they knew the John Deere deal- 
ership where the call supposedly originated. 

The eldest Alex White, an accountant 
who owned several plots of undeveloped 
land, said he had purchased a tractor- 
mower from the Modesto dealership about 
10 years earlier but could not provide the 
exact date without searching through his 
records at home. He happened to be golf- 
ing when Bosch called him but promised to 
get back to Harry with a date of purchase 
later in the day. Being an accountant, he 
was sure he still had the records. 

Bosch hung up. He had no idea whether 
he was just spinning his wheels, but the 
Alex White call was a detail that bothered 
him. It was now after nine and he called 
the dealership from where the 2002 call 
had come. 

Blind calling was always a delicate skill. 
Bosch wanted to proceed cautiously here 
and not blunder into something or give a 
potential suspect a heads-up that he was on 
the case. He decided to run a play instead 
of being up-front about who he was and 
where he was calling from. 


The call was answered by a receptionist 
and Bosch simply asked for Alex White. 
There was a pause at first. 

“Do you know which department he’s in?” 

"I'm sorry, I don't." 

“Well, I don’t seem to have an Alex 
White on the employee list. Are you sure 
you want Cosgrove Tractor?” 

“Well, this is the number he gave me. 
How long have you been in business?” 

“Twenty-two years. Please hold.” 

She didn’t wait for his reply. Bosch was 
placed on hold while she presumably han- 
dled another call. Soon she was back. 

“We don’t have an Alex White. Can any- 
one else help you?” 

“Can I speak to the manager?” 

“Yes. Who should I say is calling?” 

“John Bagnall.” 

“Hold please.” 

John Bagnall was 
the phony name 
used by all mem- 
bers of the Open- 
Unsolved Unit when 
they were working 
phone plays 


The call trans- | 329.95 


fer went through Sampler includes: 
1 i: 1» CAO Black 
quickly — | -1- Hoyo de Monterrey . Only 
This is Jerry | -1- 5 Vegas Cask-Strength Il 
Jimenez. How can I Lut Montecristo Classic 
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P ee "n -1- CAO Gold Maduro 
Yes, sir, this is | -1- Macanudo Cru Royale 
| -1- Cohiba “Red Dot" 
John Bagnall and -1- La Gloria Cubana { 
I am just checking | -1- Joya de Nicaragua Antaño ` 
an employment ap- i Plus: i 


plication that says 
Alex White was an 
employee of Cos- 
grove Tractor from 
2000 to 2004. Is 
that something I 
can get confirmed?” 

“Not through me. 
I was here then, but I 
don’t remember any 
Alex White. Where 
did he work?” 

“That’s just the 
thing. It doesn’t say 
specifically where 
he worked.” 

“Well, I don’t see 
how I can help you. 
Back then I was sales 
manager. I knew ev- 
erybody who worked here—just like now— 
and there was no Alex White. This isn’t that 
big an operation, you know. We've got sales, 
service, parts and management. It only adds 
up to 24 people including myself." 

Bosch repeated the phone number Alex 
White had called from and asked how long 
the dealership had had it. 

"Since forever. Since we opened in 1990. 
I was here." 

“I appreciate your time, sir. Have a 
good day." 

Bosch hung up, more curious than ever 
about the Alex White call of 2002. 


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Bosch lost the rest of the morning to 
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cent police shootings with discussion of 
what went wrong or right in each inci- 
dent. He then made his way to the range 
where he had to shoot in order to keep 
his weapon qualification. The range ser- 
geant was an old friend who asked about 
Harry's daughter. It gave Bosch an idea 
for something to do with Maddie over 
the weekend. 

Bosch was crossing back through the 
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when Alex White called him back from 
Modesto with information on his tractor 
purchase. He told Bosch that he had be- 
come so intrigued by the out-of-the-blue 
call that morning that he quit his golf 
game after just nine holes. He also noted 
that his score of 59 was another deciding 
factor in the decision. 

According to the accountant's records, 
he had purchased the tractor-mower at 
Cosgrove Tractor on April 27, 2002 and 
picked it up May 1, the 10th anniversary of 
Anneke Jespersen’s murder and the same 
day someone claiming to be Alex White 
had called the LAPD from the dealership 
number to inquire about the case. 

“Mr. White, I need to ask you again, on 
the day you picked up your tractor, did you 


RETAIL VALUE 5113 


call down here from the dealership to ask 
about a murder case?" 

White laughed uneasily before answering. 

“This is the craziest thing,” he said. “No, 
I did not call the LAPD. I have never called 
the LAPD in my life. Someone must have 
used my name and I can't explain why, 
Detective. I'm at a loss." 

Bosch asked if there were any names on 
the paperwork he had checked for the date 
of purchase. White gave Bosch two names. 
'The salesman was listed as Reggie Banks 
and the sales manager who signed off on 
the deal was Jerry Jimenez. 

"Okay, Mr. White," Bosch said. “You 
have been very helpful. Thank you very 
much and I'm sorry if I messed up your 
golf game today." 

"No problem, 
Detective. My tempo 
was way off anyway. 
But IIl tell you what, 
if you ever solve 
this mystery of who 
called down there 
using my name, let 
me know, okay?" 

"Will do, sir. 
Have a nice day." 

Bosch thought 
about things as he 
unlocked his car. 
The Alex White 
mystery had now 
gone from a detail 
that needed clarifi- 
cation to something 
more. It was appar- 
ent someone had 
called from the John 
Deere dealership to 
inquire about the 
Jespersen case but 
had given a false 
identity, borrowing 
the name of a cus- 
tomer who had been 
in the dealership 
that very day. For 
Bosch that changed 
things about the 
call in a big way. It 
was no longer an 
unexplained blip 
on his radar. There 
was now something 
solid there and it 
needed to be explained and understood. 

He could not put his finger on what was 
happening with the case, but things had 
shifted. Little more than a day earlier he 
believed the investigation was going no- 
where and that he would soon be repack- 
ing the archive boxes and sending Anneke 
Jespersen back to the depths of the ware- 
house of unsolved cases and forgotten vic- 
tims. But now there was a spark. There 
were mysteries and irons in the fire. There 
were questions to be answered and Bosch 
was still in the game. 


329.95' 


From the book The Black Box, to be published this 
month by Little, Brown and Company. 


185 


PLAYBOY 


SUGAR 


(continued from page 146) 
she happens to be his wife. Then Jodie puts 
on her plaid flannel jammies and buckles 
down to do her homework. 

Everyone’s happy: a man, his wife and 
their college-age girlfriend, who is defi- 
nitely being compensated in a manner 
commensurate with her abilities. Or in SD/ 
SB lingo, a sugar daddy, a sugar mama and 
their beautiful sugar baby. No jealousy, no 
lingering questions—except those pertain- 
ing to Meditations of Dez-car-tez. 


Fortunately for Jim, Kelly and Jodie, we 
live in a revolutionary time when the in- 
ternet has turbocharged the ancient con- 
cept of concubines and courtesans. There 
exists today a subculture of sugar daddies 
and sugar babies, complete with their own 
web-based meeting grounds and notions 
of morality. The basic tenet of sugar cul- 
ture: There are wealthy men (and some- 
times women) who love beauty and sex, 
and there are beautiful young women with 
a special feeling for older men willing to 
pay their college tuition or mortgage. It’s 
as simple as supply and demand as defined 
by economist Adam Smith. 

The visionary entrepreneur who got this 
rolling was a guy named Brandon Wade, 
an extremely nerdy MIT software engi- 
neer who found himself in deep romantic 
pain as the 21st century began. Remem- 
bering the advice of his mother, who al- 
ways told him he’d have more success with 
women if he worked hard and could afford 
to be “generous,” he noticed some sugar- 
daddy groups cropping up on Yahoo and 
decided to start a site of his own. His tim- 
ing was brilliant. Two years after launch- 
ing SeekingArrangement.com in 2006—in 
the midst of TV shows such as Millionaire 
Matchmaker and The Bachelor introducing 
mainstream America to the idea of attrac- 
tive women competing for wealthy geeks— 
the financial crisis drove tens of thousands 
of young women to the website, looking for 
“arrangements” with wealthy men. 

Today scores of other websites have 
jumped into the game, but Wade’s remains 
on top, with more than 250,000 active 
monthly members—30,000 sugar daddies 
and about 220,000 sugar babies. Sugar cul- 
ture has caught mainstream attention; it has 
been covered by CNN, The Wall Street Jour- 
nal, Dr. Phil, New York magazine, The New York 
Times and the Huffington Post. The headline 
in U.S. News & World Report even found a mi- 
croeconomic angle—sUGAR DADDY DATING: A 
VERY PERSONAL STIMULUS. As Wade expands 
his multimillion-dollar empire, he is hosting 
sugar parties in posh hotels and launching 
new websites, including SeekingMillionaire 
.com and Miss Travel.com. 

“In the past, you had to be quite 
wealthy,” he says. “Now you just have to 
make six figures and have enough left over 
for a lavish dinner and a weekend trip.” 

All of this beams an X-ray through the 
vexing question of money and its relation- 
ship to sex. As Jim puts it, when you grow 


186 up rich, you learn there's a financial aspect 


to every relationship. “The only difference 
is that in sugar relationships," he explains, 
"the negotiation occurs up front." 

Jim is a pillar of his community; only 
his closest confidants know of his taste for 
sugar, which is fine by him. 

“Гуе got it pretty good," Jim says. “I 
can't complain." 

"Yeah, you got a pretty good lifestyle," 
his sugar baby, Jodie, says. 

"It's not bad,” his wife, Kelly, says. 

“It's not bad,” Jodie says. 

"It's not bad,” Jim agrees. 

Fun is the operative word. Jodie loves it 
when they pull up to a restaurant in the 
Rolls. The door pops open, she says, and out 
comes sugar mama Hot Kelly with her long 
legs. Then the seat flips down and out comes 
sugar baby Jodie. And the valets go nuts. 

Kelly laughs. "See, I like her because she 
always refers to me as Hot Kelly. This girl is 
better than a Brazilian butt lift. She makes 
me feel like a million bucks." 

“I love it,” Jodie says. 

“T love it," Kelly says. 

"I get off on it," Jodie says. 

“T get off on it,” Kelly says. 

Jim sits there like a pasha on his throne. 
Yes, he gets off on it too. He explains: "If 
I walk into a popular bar in Atlanta as a 
normal person, there are going to be 10 or 
20 gorgeous women there. What chance 
do I stand to attract them? None. In the 
normal world, they're in short supply. 
But in the sugar-daddy world, how many 
multimillionaires are there who are look- 
ing for those girls? One or two. So for one 
multimillionaire there are 10 or 20 beauti- 
ful girls." He smiles. “I’m in short supply." 


How did Jodie, a college student who had 
a "strict, strict, strict" upbringing, arrive at 
this place? 

Jodie grew up in the suburbs of Boston, 
the daughter of a computer programmer 
who stayed on Jodie's back all the time 
about making good grades. Her dating 
life was limited to a single boy who had to 
submit to an old-fashioned paternal inter- 
rogation. “My family's like, “You need to 
find one and just stick with him and that's 
it, ” Jodie says. When her parents told her 
they couldn't afford another year of col- 
lege, she knew she'd have to get a job to 
help pay for tuition. Jodie takes her pre- 
med studies seriously. 

Shortly afterward, she met a girl who 
had a sugar daddy. The girl said all she 
did was walk around in her underwear 
and read books to a rich guy, and Jodie 
couldn't help thinking, God, that sounds 
so nice; maybe ГЇЇ find some really old 
guy and read him books in my underwear. 
When she got home, she went straight to 
Google and typed, “Where can I find a 
sugar daddy?" 

She found the Seeking Arrangement 
website. It can't hurt to sign up, Jodie told 
herself. It would be her secret, a dirty little 
secret nobody would guess in a million 
years, so glamorous and...bad. 

She says her friends joke, “ʻI wish I had 
a sugar daddy,’” and she thinks to herself, 
Ha-ha, I do have one. 


"And a sugar mommy too," Kelly adds. 

Jim and Kelly pay her tuition, from 
$3,000 to $5,000 a month. 

Jodie says she loves the secret life. “Ev- 
erybody wants to know what I do. Like, 
‘Where does Jodie go? Where is she sneak- 
ing off to? Why is Jodie talking about the 
Opus One she drank last night? Where did 
Jodie get that Lilly Pulitzer dress?' 

"And they'll never know," Jodie says. 
"It's my little secret." 

'The secrecy is especially delicious be- 
cause Jodie belongs to a sorority where 
Lilly Pulitzer dresses are the thing, and 
she could never afford one on her own. 
So Kelly took her shopping and bought 
her a Lilly dress, and when she got back, 
her sisters just died. How did Jodie get a 
Lilly dress? She was so thrilled she sent 
Kelly a text message: "You turned me 
into a Lilly whore!" 

Kelly smiles, almost like a proud mother. 
“Her first Lilly dress." 


Their initial meeting was on Skype. Jodie 
had sent Jim and Kelly a note through 
SeekingArrangement.com because their 
profile seemed normal and safe and espe- 
cially because Kelly had once been a sugar 
baby on Seeking Arrangement herself. She 
wasn’t some wife who was pissed off be- 
cause she had to do this to save her mar- 
riage. And Jodie liked how honest Jim was. 
From the beginning he said, “Here’s my 
name; google me. You know I come from 
a semifamous family, and you'll see my pic- 
tures and all the committees and boards 
I've served on." 

Kelly teases Jodie for showing up for 
that first Skype call directly after a work- 
out, hair still sweaty. "It's all slicked back 
and greasy and she has this sports-bra 
uniboob going on,” Kelly says. “She's like, 
“Yeah, I just got back from the gym. Do you 
think I'm hot?’ Jim's like, ‘Oh my God, I 
don't know. She looks a little too——' " 

“Sporty,” Jodie supplies with a giggle. 

Flat-chested would be another word. Jim 
likes curvy, but Kelly liked her. 

"I'm not attracted to somebody my age," 
Kelly says. “It’s a fantasy for me—I don't 
want to fuck myself. I wanna be with some 
hot young thing. That's my fantasy." 

After the Skype meeting, they met at a 
hotel near Jodie's college. Jim and Kelly 
seemed so normal. They were a family, 
raising a child together. Other than that, 
it was just like any other blind date. They 
ordered wine. They ordered dinner. Kelly 
gave Jodie advice on how to avoid creeps 
and how to cut her meat. 

Jodie had a million questions. What do 
you guys do in bed? How many sugar ba- 
bies do you have at once? How many have 
you had? Am I going to be hanging out 
with other girls? 

Kelly laughs, remembering the evening. 
"Oh, if only Jim was 18 again." She turns to 
Jim. *I don't think you can handle yourself 
in a large group." 

He laughs. “In my dreams." 

She also teases him about wearing plaid. 
"All you need is the pocket protector and 
you'd be all set, babe." 


Jodie joins in. “It’s best when he pairs it 
with the short shorts and the high socks." 

Jim takes the abuse as gracefully as he car- 
ries his big gut, confident in his manliness. 

The arrangement is especially nice, 
Jodie says, because Jim and Kelly don't 
care if she dates other people. Instead they 
say, "Tell us about it." Like this guy Jodie 
dated who was 36. Kelly said he was too old 
but not old enough. 

"Young and hot or old and wealthy," 
Kelly explains. ^I mean, really, there's no 
in-between." 


Jim's pied-à-terre is on a high floor of a 
building right in the heart of Atlanta's 
Buckhead district. As Jim finds a suitable 
wine, the conversation steers to Kelly. How 
did she end up a sugar mama? 

Kelly grew up a math nerd in Connecti- 
cut with strict Catholic parents who had sex 
only three times to produce each of their 
three children. Or at least that's Kelly's 
theory. Her dad was an engineer, her mom 
a school administrator. Both were very fru- 
gal. College was paid for, but she never had 
a designer dress. That was wasteful. What's 
wrong with JCPenney? 

Sex was Kelly's rebellion. She had three- 
ways in college. She went to sex clubs. Most 
of all, she fantasized about being a geisha. 
One night a rich boyfriend gave her a roll 
of bills and told her to buy a new bed for 
them to fuck in. “Like, that was just hot for 
me." Next time, he gave her $500 to buy 
a bottle of wine. “Think of me when you 
drink it," he said. 

But the pull of convention was too 
strong. Kelly graduated from a respected 
college and went to work for a legendary 
computer company. She married an age- 
and income-appropriate guy and paid her 
mortgage six months in advance—until 
the day when she became fed up with 
her husband's drinking problem. After 
the divorce, she went looking for a man 
who would treat her the way her rich boy- 
friend had. 

"Even though I was making a lot of 
money, I was banking it," she explains. 
And if a rich boyfriend offered her money? 
"I'm still making Mom and Dad happy," 
she says, "because I can use his money to 
get that designer dress. I can use his money 
to get Jimmy Choo shoes." 

Now Kelly is like a missionary for the 
sugar lifestyle. She sees the college boy 
with his shirt open showing off his abs and 
thinks nothing at all. But an older guy with 
a briefcase and a hint of gray? Hot. With 
summer break coming, she's even plan- 
ning to fly Jodie to the coast to introduce 
her to a distinguished older gentleman 
(we'll call him the Executive). This is be- 
cause sugar relationships have a shelf life 
of about six months, says Kelly. Then it's 
often on to the next thing for all involved. 

After all, Jodie's used to the lifestyle now. 
“It’s like a special thing,” Jodie says. “Pretty 
much helping me out." Jodie is very happy 
to get Kelly's advice. "Kelly knows every- 
thing in this industry," she says. 

Kelly's eyebrows go up. "Industry?" 

"I mean lifestyle," Jodie says. “I don't 


even know what to call it. She knows what 
she's talking about. I mean, they even go so 
far as to tell me, ‘Do not cut up all your meat 
before you eat it. Cut it one slice at a time.” 

"Yeah, I'm teaching her: Put your nap- 
kin in your lap; don't suck down your wine 
in one gulp.... I'm teaching her, like, 10 
years' worth of knowledge in one month," 
Kelly says. 

'This is fundamental to the sugar expe- 
rience, Jim says. "When you read some 
of the traditional literature about sugar 
daddy-sugar baby relationships, one of 
the big attractions for young women is the 
mentoring aspect. That sounds trite until 
you experience it. It is actually one of the 
more valuable parts of the relationship to 
the young lady. And it's fun for us too." 

Of course, the lessons extend to sex. 
'They don't go into detail about this, but 
Jim gives a hint in a smile that speaks of sat- 
isfaction with a solemn responsibility prop- 
erly discharged. “I can tell you, the next 
guy she meets is going to be much happier 
than the last guy she dated," he says. 

"] tell her things that maybe her mother 
should but would never," Kelly says. 

“We just don't have, like, boundaries," 
Jodie says. "I mean, in the eyes of society 
we're all sinners; we've all just thrown our 
morals out the window. So everything's just 
out on the table." 

Back in Boston, Jodie has a serious boy- 
friend who wants to marry her. She doesn't 
feel she's cheating, because they have a 
no-tell rule while she's at school. But it 
would be the end if he ever found out. At 
the same time, she feels really close to Kelly 
and Jim. ^Hopefully when I'm married 
and I'm older,” she says, “ГЇЇ still keep in 
touch with you guys." 


At lunch the next day Jim finally gets a 
chance to tell his own story. He grew up 
relatively middle-class, he says. 

“Jim’s version of middle-class is my ver- 
sion of upper-class,” Kelly says. 

“We lived in a very middle-class house.” 

“You lived in the nicest neighborhood 
in town.” 

“No, no, no, we didn’t, actually.” 

“He’s lying.” 

Jim rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I was middle- 
class my whole life, but I was very happy.” 

He ended up making millions in bank- 
ing and marrying a beautiful woman 
who didn’t much care for sex. They had 
kids. She got depressed. Life turned gray. 
Counseling failed. Finally Jim felt he had 
two choices. “I could stay in the marriage 
and be miserable, or get a divorce, which 
I didn’t want to do for the kids,” he says. 

A third choice occurred to him, but 
his wife caught him and initiated divorce 
proceedings. 

Free at last, he was ready to fulfill his 
fantasies. A friend advised him to play the 
field, but Jim quickly found that a 50-year- 
old man with a taste for plaid was some- 
thing less than a sex magnet. He went back 
to his helpful friend. 

“Well, the first thing is you’re driving a 
Ford Taurus,” his friend said. “Go buy a 
nice car.” 


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PLAYBOY 


188 


Ridiculous, Jim insisted. Women aren't that 
shallow. They'll see through that right away. 

But he tried it. "What I found is if I 
picked a woman up in a Rolls and was 
wearing a nice suit, I was going to get laid." 
Fancy cars and expensive clothes were the 
male version of big boobs. 

Then he discovered Sugar Daddy 101, a 
guidebook that turned his insight into an 
entire philosophy of modern, eyes-open 
intimate relationships. There was a price 
on everything, it argued, and wise women 
learned what it was. From the book he 
found his way to the Seeking Arrangement 
website, which certifies the assets of its sugar 
daddies and sugar couples so potential sug- 
ar babies know what they’re getting into. 

Jim got certified to $10 million and be- 
gan to experiment. He became obsessed 
with beauty, and, man, was it a rush. But 
like all rushes it faded, and he found him- 
self stuck with too many vacuous beauties. 
So he started focusing on personality. 

This led to an unexpected pleasure when 
one young woman he dated, someone he 
genuinely liked, admitted that she’d got- 
ten deep into money problems that even 
Jim’s monthly sweetener couldn’t resolve. 
He got out his calculator and spreadsheets 
and helped her restructure her finances. 


After that, mentoring became a large part 
of his pleasure in the sugar lifestyle. “I 
really do feel like I'm making a positive 
contribution to society and to these girls in 
particular,” he says. 

Jim and Kelly insist there's a differ- 
ence between a college girl paying her 
tuition and a full-time sex worker pay- 
ing her rent. “Because then it becomes 
prostitution,” Jim says. (Alas, the cop who 
answered the phone at the Atlanta Police 
Department snorted in derision at this no- 
tion. “You can’t pay for sex for any mon- 
etary gain,” he said.) 

“The idea that someone I’m going to be 
with has been with five guys already, that’s 
just gross to me,” Kelly says. 

"We're in a difficult position to be judg- 
ing anyone," Jim says, "but that's not at- 
tractive. It's just not attractive." 

"I'm very much a feminist," Kelly says. 
“I think women should support them- 
selves, not rely on a guy." 

And what about the idea that for some- 
one as young as Jodie, being a sugar baby 
might be a formative experience that will 
warp her life? 

"She was on the website already," Kelly 
says. "We didn't go drag her on the website." 

In Jim's mind, that's one more reason 


“Honey, where should I hang this mistletoooooh?!?!” 


to like college girls. They’re smart enough 
to make thoughtful decisions. Jodie knows 
what she wants from life and is taking prag- 
matic steps to achieve it. Jim admires that. 
“If she thought we were taking advantage of 
her,” he says, “she wouldn't be doing this.” 


Let’s get a little more comfortable, shall 
we? Into the Rolls! Oh, how beautifully 
money expresses itself in stitched-leather 
seats and a hammered-aluminum dash- 
board. “Nothing bad ever happens in a 
Rolls-Royce,” says Jodie. 

An hour’s drive brings us to Jim and 
Kelly’s gorgeous home in an Atlanta sub- 
urb. There’s a sitting room with a family 
portrait, a dining room centered around 
an antique mahogany table, four large bed- 
rooms and a magnificent kitchen: elegant 
yet homey. 

Kelly’s daughter’s room is an explosion 
of pink with castles and butterflies but no 
TV. Except for prescreened Disney mov- 
ies, Jennifer has never watched TV. “I don't 
want her to watch commercials and say com- 
mercial things and want things," Kelly says. 

Soon Jennifer comes home from school, 
a Hummel figurine in a white shirt and 
black skirt, her straight hair pulled back 
with a black headband. Kelly asks what she 
learned in school. 

"Nothing." 

"Nothing? I want to talk to your teacher!" 

At dinner, Vivaldi plays as Jim talks 
about his kids from his first marriage, 
how they're sending out résumés, looking 
for jobs, how tough things are now. The 
housekeeper sits with them. Then Kelly 
takes Jennifer off to bed and Jim sits down 
to explore the latest offerings from Seek- 
ing Arrangement. Since these relationships 
tend to fade out and Kelly wants a date 
night once a week, Jim does a little bit of 
this every day. Right now he's looking for 
Jodie’s summer replacement. His in-box 
has 182 messages. 

"Oh, it's just never-ending," he says. 
“We get four or five e-mails a day, on the 
weekends 20 or 30 a day. There's no way 
you could meet all these girls." 

Here's a 20-year-old hardbody from 
Turks and Caicos. “Hi, I am a young pretty 
sweetheart and would love to meet some- 
one older, confident and kind." 

Jim likes her body, but she's not educated. 

Here's Nikki, a 21-year-old from New 
Jersey who specifically requests a sugar 
couple. That's unusual, though less un- 
usual than it used to be. And she's a col- 
lege student who says she's been through 
tough times, which is good because she's 
being honest. Jim cuts and pastes one of 
his prewritten responses: "Hi, I'm Jim, an 
old-school Southern gentleman..." 

Here's a prospect from San Francisco 
with an amazing body. "I'm a lusty, petite 
and curvy woman of passion and plea- 
sure," she begins. 

She's overselling. Jim deletes her. 

When Kelly comes in, the delete rate 
soars. First to go is a 28-year-old who says 
she wants no less than $20,000 a month. 
“This is crazy talk," Kelly says. ^I wouldn't 
even give this girl the time of day." 


Here's Taylor, a beauty from a small 
town in Alabama who “has some stresses a 
pretty girl shouldn't have to fret over." 

"She's a little chunky," Kelly says. She 
stops at a young blonde. "She looks hot. I 
go for blondes. How old is she?" 

Twenty-six. Which means she's probably 
32, Kelly says. 

Delete. 

A professional musician strikes Jim as 
the perfect girl next door. Kelly disagrees. 
“T think this girl is a man.” 

The next one’s willing to relocate. “This 
girl needs a place to live,” Kelly says. 

Should Kelly be a little more sensitive? 
Is it weird for a woman who calls herself 
a feminist to judge her sisters so harshly? 

“We just have our pick,” says Kelly. “It 
sounds wrong and it’s not very feminist, 
but it’s a fact of life. And as the recession 
gets worse, it gets better.” 

Finally they find a prospect who looks 
as though she walked out of a Victoria’s 
Secret catalog. “If that’s really her,” Kelly 
says, “she’s hot.” 

Jim scans the profile. “Look, there’s a 
comma after ‘whoever.’ And there’s an 
ellipsis, and it’s actually in the correct 
place. She can punctuate!” 

“This one will never go for us,” Kelly 
says. "She's gorgeous, she’s smart, she 
writes coherent sentences. She'll be going 
for a billionaire." 

This is where Jim takes over. "We'll 
find out," he says, executing a quick 
cut-and-paste, sending a blast of desire 
along with the hydraulic whoosh of out- 
going e-mail: ^Hi, I'm Jim, an old-school 
Southern gentleman...." 


In the morning Kelly comes down to the 
kitchen in a pair of pink Hello Kitty pa- 
jamas. Slicing strawberries for Jennifer's 
cereal, she announces her plans. "Mama's 
going to be gone tonight." 

“That's twice this week,” Jennifer says. 

“TIl be back.” 

"I don't know if you will," Jennifer says. 

"When do I not deliver on what I say? 
Your mom’s a rock. If I say something, it 
happens. You don't have one of those flaky 
moms. The only thing that could keep me 
from making your soccer game is if there's 
a delay in flights, which I can't control." 

After good-bye kisses, Kelly heads out 
in the Navigator to pick up Jodie; today 
they're flying to the coast so Kelly can in- 
troduce Jodie to the Executive. This will 
probably lead to a three-way, which would 
be Kelly's first three-way without Jim since 
they got engaged. 

On the way, she tells her version of their 
story. She met Jim on Seeking Arrange- 
ment five years ago. At first she dated other 
sugar daddies, and Jim had other sugar ba- 
bies. It was just fun, and Jim's secret kink 
tickled her fantasy. “The idea that my dorky 
boyfriend was banging these hot girls with 
huge tits," she says, "that turned me on." 

Gradually it became clear there was se- 
rious potential in the relationship. They 
clicked. Kelly is fire and Jim is earth, Kelly 
the hard-charger and Jim the quiet force 
who keeps everything in balance. Even 


their relatives thought so. Her mother told 
Jim, “Usually Kelly runs right over men, 
but you know when to shut her down." 

So Jim got serious about Kelly. How 
serious? As serious as the $150,000 Tiffany 
diamond that now glitters on her left hand. 
Serious enough to give up sugar and com- 
mit to a normal life as a normal couple. 

But when Kelly finally felt secure, finally 
felt sure she could trust Jim, she said, “I 
kind of miss the lifestyle, don't you?" 

Enter sugar babies and, eventually, Jodie. 

As Kelly gets closer to the college to pick 
up Jodie, she begins to get nervous. "Isn't 
it weird?" she says. "I'm picking up my 
girlfriend at her dorm." 

Jodie comes out with her bag and some 
homework. “I’m going to be really lame on 
this plane and work on a paper," she says. 

She's wearing a perfume called Victo- 
ria's Secret Bombshell. She also has a bottle 
of Chanel Mademoiselle. “One is my sexy 
scent, and one is my fun, flirty scent." 

That’s good, Kelly says, because “happy 
and fun" is the theme of the weekend. The 
Executive doesn't like drama. 

At the airport Kelly gets disoriented in 
the parking lot and can't figure out where 
the terminal is. The momentary lack of 
control visibly upsets her. “Where the freak 
is the terminal?" 

"It says Delta right there," Jodie says 
patiently. 

'The truth is, Kelly is nervous. A three- 
some? Without Jim? She and Jim came up 
with the idea over a bottle of wine and it 
sounded fun, but now it seems wrong. The 
Executive is richer than Jim and fitter too. 
Jim doesn't say anything, but she knows 
it bothers him. I'm not a sugar baby any- 
more, she thinks. 

Maybe she'll just do stuff with Jodie. 

In the meantime, a sugar mama has 
her responsibilities. Where was she? "The 
Executive is not married, he has two grown 
children...." 

Jodie thinks he's handsome, but clearly 
he has had work done. Kelly laughs. Jodie 
says, “You think I don't know what plastic 
surgery looks like?" 

"And that's the reason the Executive is a 
perfect choice for Jodie," Kelly says, “be- 
cause Jodie wants to get her boobs done." 

Really? A beautiful girl like her? 

“I stunted my growth in gymnastics," 
Jodie says. “Four hours a day, including 
Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t hit puberty 
until I was, like, 16.” 

Kelly’s eyes narrow. She turns her focus 
on Jodie. “Can you, like, do the splits?” 

“Yeah. Maybe. I haven't tried in a while.” 

Perhaps it’s the slight flaring of her 
nostrils or a sudden flush to her skin, but 
somehow Kelly gives off a flash of sexual 
heat that could light up an airport termi- 
nal. “Га like to see that,” she says. 

“TI try,” Jodie says. 

And off they go, bad and beautiful in 
their Lilly Pulitzers and Jimmy Choos, 
chasing glamour and moonlight and 
money while Jim surfs the web at home, 
waiting patiently for another chance to 
raid the sugar bowl. 


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189 


190 


JON GRUDEN 


(continued from page 86) 
show Gruden's QB Camp for ESPN, to be the 
lead analyst for Monday Night Football —he 
brings insight and knowledge that can be 
gleaned only from spending those long 
nights by himself in that hot little office, ob- 
sessively studying football. 

He is our national football nerd, our big- 
gest football geek in a nation gone hyper- 
geeky for pro football. And he does it with 
what his MNF producer Jay Rothman calls 
"the Chucky factor," after the nickname 
Gruden picked up while coaching the Oak- 
land Raiders. (Chucky is the name of the 
murderous doll in the Child's Play slasher 
films. In 1998, after Gruden chewed out 
Raiders running back Harvey Williams for 
blowing a play against Seattle, Williams 
told reporters that when Gruden yelled he 
looked like Chucky. The nickname stuck 
because he does look a little like Chucky— 
People magazine once naming him among 
the 50 most beautiful people notwithstand- 
ing.) Rothman says that when Gruden gets 
in the Chucky zone—when all that intense 
football study combines with his playful, 
ballbuster persona and he becomes more 
than just another football broadcaster—he 
becomes a character, the larger-than-life 
Chucky who adds excitement and edge 
to a football broadcast without distract- 
ing or alienating fans. (Yes, we’re talking 
about you, Dennis Miller and Tony Korn- 
heiser.) “He has the qualities of a preacher, 
coach, motivational speaker and guy sit- 
ting at the bar next to you all rolled into 
one, and he plays those characters while 
dispensing deep football knowledge. It’s 
unique packaging,” says his broadcasting 
partner Mike Tirico. Gruden may already 
be the most recognizable football broad- 
caster, and though he is quick to downplay 
any comparisons to fellow former Raiders 
head coach and color commentator John 
Madden, his ESPN bosses are not shy 
about declaring him “Madden Y2K.” 

In recognition of Gruden’s huge 
potential—“Q-rating off the charts,” says 
Rothman—the Monday Night Football tele- 
cast has been reconfigured this season. 
Gone is Ron Jaworski, Gruden’s foil and 
fellow color analyst for the past three sea- 
sons. The decision was made, in part, to 
unleash the Chucky. “You have 25 seconds 
between plays, and you don’t want guys 
talking over plays. This gives Jon room 
to grow,” says Rothman. Jaworski, for his 
part, says he was disappointed with the 
decision but understands it. “I think that’s 
the rationale, that Jon can become a bigger 
and bigger personality.” 

It’s been three years since John Madden 
retired from Sunday Night Football, leaving a 
void in the national psyche for everyone’s 
big, cool, zany football pal. Madden, with 
his smashing through walls on beer com- 
mercials, best-selling books and humorous 
doodlings on the telestrator, filled that role 
perfectly and lucratively, earning hun- 
dreds of millions from endorsements and 
his eponymous computer game. Gruden is 
the only broadcaster with the personality, 
swagger and natural sense of humor—and 


Super Bowl-winning credibility—who can 
fill that gap. “I don't know about any of that 
stuff," Gruden says when asked about it. 
"I'm trying to get better at this right here, 
at watching Andy Dalton and the Bengals' 
red-zone offense. I'm just a guy in a dark 
room studying tape, a fired football coach 
trying to keep up with the game." 


It's a curious sight, this stocky man with 
freckled legs, tan shorts, tennis socks 
and black New Balance sneakers, a video 
clicker in hand and three Dell notebook 
computers spread on a glass table before 
him and a Samsung 42-inch monitor set 
up next to him. At this hour, four A.M., he 
is the only person awake within a square 
mile, the only soul within a half-mile, the 
only tenant of this strip mall who turns 
up before dawn, parks his white Mercedes 
next to the swamp, tears open a pack of 
spearmint Dentyne and begins grinding 
through eight straight hours of parsing 
football plays with Talmudic intensity. 

A strange thing happens when you 
spend time with Gruden. You start to talk 
like him, even to think like him. He wears 
you down with his steady football banter, 
and after a few hours he has you memo- 
rizing formations and plays. What are the 
strong-side flanker formations? (East, west, 
far west, trips and far trips.) What are the 
weak-side formations? (South, north, wing, 
far double-wing and lurk. I actually re- 
member the answers from my hours in his 
office.) And you start trying to memorize 
these terms and to recognize formations in 
part to try to please him, because he takes 
such evident pleasure in explaining the 
technical aspects of football—he feels he is 
sharing with you some profound wisdom 
that he does not understand how you got 
this far in life without possessing. 

When you're on the receiving end of 
his football lectures, when he gets into the 
Chucky zone, it's almost hard to keep a 
straight face as he leans toward you while 
he talks, an evil grin on his face, waving 
his hands around, taking off his reading 
glasses and pointing them at you; he's 
mugging and pulling a rat face and his jaw 
is clenching and he is squinting and crin- 
kling his eyebrows and then scrunching his 
nose and then smirking and widening his 
eyes and—I swear—wiggling his ears. His 
straw-colored hair is flapping up and down 
on his pink forehead and he is frowning, 
angry, frustrated, depressed, defeated, 
deflated, pissed off and then, suddenly, 
delighted because you have finally memo- 
rized the correct flanker formations. 

Gruden prepares for his Monday Night 
Football telecasts with the same intensity. 
“Pll wake up and look at my phone, and 
there will be texts from him time-stamped 
4:13 A.M. telling me to go back and watch 
the New Orleans tape for something he's 
found,” says Tirico. “On game day, in pro- 
duction meetings it's like he's getting ready 
to coach the Super Bowl." 

MNF producer Rothman adds, “He's 
wound so tight, he's a difficult dude to talk to 
before we go on the air. He gets in the Chucky 
zone—he's pacing around; he doesn't want 


anyone near him. He's as intense and fired 
up as if he were on the sideline again." 


Jim Gruden, 75, recalls the five-year-old 
Jon waking up at 3:30 A.M., coming down 
and standing by his and his wife Kathy's 
bed and staring at his sleeping parents. "It 
was strange,” says Jim Gruden. “Pd open 
my eyes and he'd be right there, sort of 
watching us. I'd grab him and bring him 
back up to his room." 

The middle of three brothers, Jon wasn't 
as smart as his older brother, Jim, or as ath- 
letic as his younger brother, Jay. Jim was 
a straight-A student at Clay High School 
in South Bend, Indiana who would go on 
to become a radiologist. Jay, a few inches 
taller and a few steps faster, would be a 
Division I record-setting quarterback at the 
University of Louisville. ^It got under my 
skin a little bit," Jon says of competing with 
his younger brother. "One time, after I lost 
a mile race to him, he said to me, “You're 
nothing but a Division III backup scrub.' 
That’s what he said! Oh, he was always a 
better athlete than I was. That burned me 
a little. Still burns me up." 

Jay Gruden, who is the offensive coor- 
dinator for the Cincinnati Bengals, laughs 
when he hears Jon's confession. “I think 
what bothers him the most was that as 
hard as he worked—and nobody worked 
out harder or threw more footballs—I was 
the better athlete and didn't work nearly as 
hard as Jon." 

Jon recalls being a distracted student. “I 
was always thinking about football. And I 
didn't see how history or algebra was going 
to further my understanding of football." 
Yet when he took the SAT, he surprised 
his classmates by outscoring his A-student 
peers. ^He's always had this photographic 
memory," his father says. 

Combine all those attributes and en- 
vironmental factors—good but not great 
athlete, son of a coach, fantastic memory, 
insomnia—and you just may have created 
the single human being most perfectly 
suited to becoming a football coach. So 
when Gruden was a senior in high school 
and told his father that's what he wanted to 
do, his dad was not in any way surprised. 
He gave him the best advice a coaching 
father could give a coaching son: Don't be 
a running-backs coach; be a quarterbacks 
coach. 'Those are the guys who develop an 
understanding of the whole offense and 
can become offensive coordinators—the 
usual path to a head-coaching position. 

When Jon was wrapping up his career 
as a "Division III backup scrub" quarter- 
back at the University of Dayton, his father 
called Walt Harris, offensive coordinator 
at the University of Tennessee, and urged 
him to interview his son for a graduate as- 
sistant position. Jon was hired. He asked 
his professors in Dayton to accelerate his 
courses so he could graduate early, and 
he moved to Tennessee for the first of 
nine coaching positions as he commenced 
the migratory life of an American foot- 
ball coach. After two seasons in Knoxville 
he moved on to Southeast Missouri State 
and then to the University of the Pacific in 


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PLAYBOY 


192 


Stockton, California. He had met Cindy in 
Tennessee while she was on the cheerlead- 
ing squad, and they managed to keep their 
long-distance relationship going through 
each of Jon’s far-flung coaching jobs, with 
Jon driving back to Knoxville from Cape 
Girardeau, Missouri or Cindy flying out to 
see him in Stockton, California. 

In 1990 Mike Holmgren, who at the 
time was offensive coordinator for the San 
Francisco 49ers and would go on to coach 
a Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers 
team, was looking for a quality-control as- 
sistant just a couple of hours away from 
Stockton. Gruden’s father, Jim, was then 
a scout for the 49ers and asked Holmgren 
to meet with his son. “You could say I’m 
trying to give nepotism a good name,” Jon 
Gruden jokes about his career. 

Holmgren met with the 26-year-old as- 
sistant and hired him for $800 a month. “I 
asked him if he knew how to use comput- 
ers,” says Holmgren. “It was 1990 and we 
were going to start drawing plays on the 
computer, but nobody knew how to do that. 
I told Jon he had to learn. I was going on 
vacation and told him he had one month.” 

By the time Holmgren came back, 
Gruden was, Holmgren says, “a whiz kid.” 

But Gruden was sleeping in his car out 
in the parking lot. Or on a sofa outside 
owner Eddie DeBartolo’s office. Holmgren 
was worried about his young charge. “I 
didn’t think any human being could sur- 
vive that long like that, without sleeping.” 

Gruden was too excited to sleep. These 
were the 49ers built by Bill Walsh and 
quarterbacked by Joe Montana and Steve 
Young. Gruden spent every waking hour, 
and there were a lot of them, soaking up 
the West Coast offense pioneered by Walsh. 
He was the young, eager apprentice in the 
engine room of the greatest offensive jug- 
gernaut ever. And his job, inputting the 
plays Holmgren devised after meetings 
with Joe Montana, put him in a unique 
position to understand the most sophisti- 
cated passing offense ever. “For a kid who 
wanted to be a football coach, it was like 
going to Harvard,” says Gruden. 

Gruden left the 49ers to become an 
assistant coach at the University of Pitts- 
burgh, heeding his father’s advice to work 
with quarterbacks. After a year in Pitts- 
burgh, Gruden joined Holmgren as he took 
on his first head-coaching job in Green Bay, 
where as a wide-receivers coach Gruden 
worked with Sterling Sharpe and a young 
quarterback named Brett Favre. It was a 
star-studded coaching staff, including future 
head coaches Ray Rhodes, Andy Reid and 
Steve Mariucci. When Rhodes was hired to 
take over the Philadelphia Eagles, he tapped 
Gruden to become his offensive coordinator. 

After a few years in Philadelphia, Gruden 
got a call from the legendary Al Davis to 
meet with him about a head-coaching job 
with the Oakland Raiders. Gruden, who 
does very good impersonations, can do a 
pitch-perfect Al Davis Brooklyn accent. Da- 
vis nicknamed Gruden “Butch.” 

“Butch,” Gruden says, doing his Davis 
impression, “who is the third cornah-back 
fuh the San Diego Chahge-ahs?" 

And Gruden, who had memorized 


every player in the league, could answer, 
“Terrence Jones.” 

“Where’s he frum?” 

“Tulane.” 

In Davis, Gruden had met someone as 
obsessive about football as he was. The 
two spent entire days—and nights—at the 
whiteboard, diagramming plays. Gruden 
had the habit of using a blue marker for 
the offense, red for the defense and green 
for the blocking schemes. (Gruden also 
prides himself on being able to draw per- 
fect circles, these being the basic symbol 
used when drawing up plays on the board.) 
At one point Davis stopped Gruden while 
he was explaining how his offense would 
pick up a corner blitz. 

“Lemme ask you somethin’, Butch. Why 
are you changin’ crayons? Is there some- 
thin’ wrong with them?” 

Gruden explained he was using differ- 
ent colors for different sides of the ball. 

“Doncha know I'm color-blind, Butch?" 

Davis eventually gave Gruden his first 
head-coaching job. The two men were 
a perfect match of like-minded football 
freaks. In fact, Davis was the only person 
who seemed to sleep less than Gruden, 
calling up the coach at nine P.M. or later to 


"If you want to be 
dominant, you have to go 
into an enemy city and take 
what you want. If you want 
to be the man, you don’t ask, 
you just do.” 


talk about what he had seen in practice that 
day. “I finally had to tell him enough, okay, 
enough,” says Gruden. “I’m in my under- 
wear, my wife is pregnant, we’ve got kids 
in the bed with us, and he wants me to go 
downstairs and turn on the practice film.” 
By then Jon and Cindy had had the first 
two of their three sons—Jon the second, or 
Deuce, as he’s nicknamed, and Michael. 

In Oakland Gruden really entered the 
Chucky zone, casting his famous sour-faced 
looks when a player blew an assignment 
or a referee blew a call, and mouthing a 
stream of steady, salty banter. CBS analyst 
Rich Gannon, then a Raiders quarterback, 
recalls a film session with Gruden and back- 
up quarterbacks Bobby Hoying and Rod- 
ney Peete. The three of them were watch- 
ing tape of Seahawks running back Ricky 
Watters shredding a defense with a series of 
cutbacks. Gruden started praising Watters, 
saying how the Raiders could use a runner 
like him. “How do you like that Watters? 
What do you think, Bobby? Would you like 
to see Watters in a Raiders uniform?” 

“Sure would, Coach,” said Hoying. 

Gruden continued, “What would you do 
to get Ricky Watters to come to the Raid- 
ers? How bad do you want him, Bobby?” 


“What do you mean?” 

“Would you suck Ricky Watters’s dick to 
get him in a Raiders uniform?” 

“What?” 

“Would you suck his dick to get him in a 
Raiders uniform? I would. That’s how bad 
I want Ricky Watters on my team. That’s 
your problem, Bobby. You don’t want it bad 
enough to suck his dick.” By then, the three 
quarterbacks were hunched over laughing. 

“He sort of used humor to loosen us up,” 
says Gannon. 

It worked. Gruden thrived in Oakland, 
taking the Raiders to back-to-back AFC 
West titles, losing to Tom Brady and the 
Patriots on the famous tuck-rule call in the 
Snow Bowl of 2002. 

Gruden’s departure from Oakland, 
however, was controversial, and he became 
the last coach in NFL history to be traded. 
After Oakland’s loss to New England, Davis 
and Gruden’s agent, Bob LaMonte, had 
agreed to a contract extension, but when 
LaMonte received the faxed copy of the 
contract to look over, he had to tell Gruden 
it wasn’t what they had agreed to. The 
Raiders had changed the terms, giving 
Gruden less money and less job security. 
“My agent recommended I didn’t sign it,” 
Gruden says. “I figured I would coach my 
option year and then see what happens.” 

At midnight Davis called Gruden and 
said he had traded him to Tampa Bay for 
two first-round picks, two second-round 
picks and $8 million. 

Gruden, who remained fond of Davis 
(who passed away last year), believes he 
angered Davis by talking to Notre Dame 
about the possibility of becoming head 
coach of the Fighting Irish. For Gruden, 
whose parents were living in Tampa Bay, 
the disappointment of leaving the Raiders, 
a team he helped build into a contender, 
was offset by taking over a winning Tampa 
Bay Buccaneers team that already had per- 
haps the best defense in the NFL—loaded 
with veterans Warren Sapp, John Lynch, 
Derrick Brooks and Simeon Rice—but had 
not yet made it to the Super Bowl. 

“He won our respect pretty damn quickly,” 
says Brooks, a captain on the 2003 Super 
Bowl-winning squad. “He came in and said, 
“You guys are good, you guys are dominant, 
but you know what? You haven’t won squat.’ 
And he said from now on it was going to be a 
war between his offense and the defense. He 
just attacked us. We loved that.” 

He also brought a much-needed dose of 
humor to Tampa Bay. At one point, before 
a flight to Charlotte to play the Carolina 
Panthers during that Super Bowl campaign 
in 2002, he told his players, “If you want to 
be dominant, you have to go into an enemy 
city, into their backyard, and take what you 
want. If you want to be the man, you don’t 
ask, you just do. We're going to eat in their 
restaurants and leave without paying the 
check. We're going to take their best-looking 
women and load ’em onto our plane and 
take 'em back to Tampa. We're...we're go- 
ing to park in their best parking spaces!" 

"Coach was always cracking us up like 
that," says Brooks. 

Gruden is a not a vindictive man, but 
Chucky is certainly competitive, and he 


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gained some satisfaction from demolishing 
Al Davis’s Raiders in the 2003 Super Bowl. 


Gruden steers his five-year-old Mercedes 
out of the parking lot and heads down 
North Florida Avenue, pulling into a gas 
station and noting the police car idling in 
the lot. The police stopped by his office 
once, suspecting a drug deal when they 
saw his car there in the middle of the night. 

He parks and walks into the minimart, 
and the guy behind the counter shoots him 
a way-too-cheery-for-five л.м. “Hey, Coach!” 

Gruden, who was fired as coach of the 
Tampa Bay Buccaneers nearly four years 
ago, smiles back. The firing came as a 
shock to him. He had won the Super Bowl 
in 2008, was coming off a winning season 
in 2008, had a career coaching record of 
95 wins and 81 losses and had just signed 
a three-year extension. Nonetheless, the 
Buccaneers let him go. 

He describes that period of being fired 
as "going into the ditch. I got a little bit 
lost there. I sulked. I felt a little bit worth- 
less. Here was this thing that I was more 
passionate about than anything else in the 
world, and it was taken away from me. I 
was sort of embarrassed, ashamed." 

He did what he always does when he 
gets down on himself: He called his dad. 
“I told him two things," says Jim Gruden. 
"Save your money, and you're not a real 
coach until you've been fired." 

"My mental toughness was tested," says 
Jon Gruden. ^I loved football, and it was 
taken away from me. You turn in your 
dealer car, your office keys. And you can't 
watch your tapes anymore." 

Gruden came home and became a reg- 
ular presence at his kids' Little League 
games and peewee football practices. But 
how does a man who doesn't need much 
sleep fill 20 or so hours a day? “It was 
strange to finally get to know my husband," 
jokes Cindy Gruden. 


CO CHRD 


There was no football-related issue too 
small for Gruden's consideration. When his 
friend and former Buccaneer quarterback 
Brad Johnson found himself coaching fifth- 
grade football, he began sending Gruden 
his game plans. “He would send back plays 
we should run. *Weak left west U shift F 
short 2 U banana Z over, and then audible 
358 slow or H 2 Miami, and if you don't like 
what you see, you got a time-out in your 
pocket.' That's what he's telling me to run," 
says Johnson. "And these are fifth-graders." 

When the NFL Network called Gruden 
in 2009 and asked him to cover the scout- 
ing combine, he initially refused, still too 
embarrassed to be around fellow coaches 
who would all know he had been fired. 
But he went, and his honest evaluations of 
talent were immediately noticed—by NFL 
Network’s competitors over at ESPN. “Oh, 
I wanted him badly,” says Jay Rothman. 
Over several hours of drinks at Gramercy 
Tavern in New York, Rothman wooed 
Gruden, telling him he believed Gruden 
could be the next superstar in the booth. 
For a trial run, they put Gruden in a booth 
alongside Mike Tirico and Ron Jaworski 
for mock telecasts of taped games. Roth- 
man reviewed the tapes and sent Gruden 
his critique. 

“He was honest with me,” Gruden says. 
“He told me, ‘Look, you called plays for 15 
years in this league. Don’t hold back. Don’t 
talk when the quarterback is over the ball. 
Lay off after a scoring play. Don’t be over- 
the-top technical.’ But the main thing was 
they told me I would get to study film, all 
the film I wanted. I can study the Bengals 
and the Ravens all day if I want. I can look 
at tapes all day.” 

He signed the contract. 


The only requirement for membership in 
the FFCA is to be an active or fired foot- 
ball coach—because active coaches will 
eventually be fired coaches. Gruden jok- 


“In the book she just gave him a hand job.” 


ingly plays up the support-group aspect 
of the FFCA, but what is remarkable is 
how grateful the various members are for 
Gruden’s tutelage. His remarkable success 
as a coach gives him credibility as a men- 
tor to fired coaches, but his post-coaching 
success makes him a hero to fired sideline 
generals. “The fact that Jon is succeeding 
at broadcasting, at being a former coach, 
is interesting to a former coach,” says Ron 
Zook, fired coach from Illinois and Florida. 

It was Gruden’s way of dealing with a 
genuine emotional and intellectual need 
for fired coaches to stay in touch with foot- 
ball, to have a place to watch film and talk 
about the game, that inspired him to set up 
the FFCA. It has become an essential tool 
for some coaches to deal with the career 
mortality that is a part of the game. 

“It gave me this opportunity to stay 
busy,” says Zook. “You’re getting up early 
in the morning, you’re watching film, 
you're doing the things you're familiar 
with—but you are also learning a ton. He's 
like a philosopher, and that place is like a 
black hole. You are having this constant, 
very high-level dialogue about football and 
offensive systems that keeps you totally up 
on the game." 

Plenty of coaches have emerged from 
their time in the FFCA to regain employ- 
ment as coaches, including Leavitt, who 
is now a linebackers coach with the 49ers, 
and former Buccaneers assistant (and 
Super Bowl MVP) Doug Williams, who is 
now head coach at Grambling State Uni- 
versity. Gruden, who keeps a stack of boxes 
of FFCA hats and visors next to the toilet, 
explains, ^Hey, when I was fired, I wanted 
to disappear for a while. I needed a place 
like this, so I had to make it up." 

"It's a place to come to refresh, to re- 
lease all the things that have happened 
to you," says Rick Venturi, former North- 
western head coach and interim head 
coach for the New Orleans Saints and 
Indianapolis Colts. ^He created this safe 
place for fired coaches." 

But after spending a few days at the 
FFCA it becomes clear that Jon Gruden has 
also devised a perfect system for keeping 
up-to-date on the game. He has a parade 
of college and professional coaches—and 
college quarterbacks—passing through, 
talking about how their offenses work, dis- 
cussing the nuances of their play calling. 
'The list of active coaches who have come 
through is staggering: Chip Kelly of the 
University of Oregon, Urban Meyer when 
he was at the University of Florida, Derek 
Dooley of the University of Tennessee, Jim 
Haslett of the Washington Redskins. The 
FFCA has become, in the words of Venturi, 
"the best think tank in football." Gruden 
now knows more about college football, af- 
ter nearly four years of working with fired 
and active college coaches, than he ever 
has, and he keeps a close watch on the NFL 
draft for ESPN's coverage every year. In 
other words, as a noncoach, he knows more 
about football than most active coaches— 
and he doesn't have to travel the country to 
stay informed, because the greatest football 
minds come to him. “If Gruden gets a job 
in the NFL tomorrow, he is prepared right 


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196 


now,” says Doug Williams. “He is there 
every day at four A.M. Ready? How сап you 
be more ready?” 


Jon and Cindy are sitting at a square table 
on the clubhouse patio of the golf course 
behind their home. They live on the 11th 
hole, and Jon usually drives a golf cart 
from the house up to the first tee. “After 
I play nine, I like to have a few beers, take 
the cart out for a spin.” 

Their youngest son, Jayson, has made 
his way over to the driving range for a 
lesson. The two older boys, Deuce and 
Michael, have just finished a workout in 
the weight room. Deuce is built like his 
father, short and stocky, and he can bench- 
press double his own weight. A powerful 
athlete, he’s attending Lafayette College, 
where he plays football. 

“Hey, you guys want to go to the Poison 
concert tonight?” Gruden asks his sons. 

They return blank expressions. “Um....” 

“Come on! Poison!” Gruden likes his hair 
metal, and tonight Def Leppard, Poison 
and Lita Ford have brought their Rock of 
Ages tour to Tampa. “And Lita Ford! Oh 
man, we gotta get there early. I don’t want 
to miss Lita Ford.” 

Deuce nods. He’s mastered letting his 
father’s rare enthusiasms for anything 
besides football bounce off him. He 
mumbles something about being invited to 
Adventure Island, a local water park. 

The boys retreat, and Jon and Cindy order 
lunch. Cindy runs the Gruden household; 
Jon, according to Cindy, can’t even change a 
water filter. She likes to joke that her husband 
does football, “and I do everything else.” 

That’s why she had to banish him to his 
strip-mall office, which she admits is not 
the most luxurious environment. “But at 
least there’s toilet paper over there now,” 
she says, smiling. Then she looks at Jon. 
“Right? There is, right?” 

Gruden nods in a manner evocative of 
his sons’ response to the Poison invitation. 

Almost every head-coaching vacancy in the 
NFL or with a major college football team 
is accompanied by speculation that Gruden 
is under consideration for the job. He is 
coy when asked about a return to coaching, 
predictably saying he wants to become as 
good at broadcasting as he can so that’s what 
he’s focusing on. Gruden seems aware there 
may be more of an upside, and a far more 
comfortable lifestyle, to reaching the top of 
the broadcasting profession, at least while his 
boys are still around. Still, if the right team 
with the right quarterback came calling at the 
right time, America might lose Chucky as an 
announcer for a few seasons. 

When asked if her husband is happier 
broadcasting than he was coaching, 
Cindy pauses and then says, "Sometimes 
I think Jon has two monsters on his 
shoulder. One is go back to coaching, 
and the other is stay with this, have a 
nice life with his family. He'll always have 
those two monsters." 

Gruden nods, seems to think it over and 
shrugs. “At least, no matter what happens, ГЇЇ 
have tape to watch—and a seat at the FFCA." 


PADMA 


(continued from page 104) 
make a killing training men how to be more 
understanding. It's just not what I need to 
be attracted to someone. I want someone 
who's a challenging adversary, who can tease 
me and get away with it, who can flirt and 
make me think and laugh and blush. But 
there's an art to that. You either have it or 


you don't. 


PLAYBOY: And the sex must be good. 

LAKSHMI: Yes. But sex is good when the 
attraction is good. It's not a technical 
skill. If my mind is engaged, the body 


will follow. 


PLAYBOY: You were married to Salman 
Rushdie for three years. Did it bother 
you when people said, "I don't get this 
relationship"? 

LAKSHMI: It didn't, because comments like 
that came out of ignorance. If you saw us 
together you would know exactly why we 
were together. Now there is somebody who 
has great wit and is a great flirt. I don't 
regret a day I spent with Salman, but it 
was tiring. He has a big life, and it only 
got bigger when we were together. I'm 
happy to have stood next to him holding 
his hand, but we were in very different 
parts of our lives. 


Ay 


PLAYBOY: At the time, he was winning liter- 
ary awards and you were known for your 
modeling career. 

LAKSHMI: I was doing other things too, 
but yes, from modeling bikinis in Sey- 
chelles to skiwear at Timberline, I did 
it all. Fortunately I avoided the fast life 
that's often associated with models. Hav- 
ing grown up in an Indian home, I'm 
quite conservative and risk-averse in 
many ways. I would have been too em- 
barrassed for my mom and my grand- 
parents in India to read some salacious 
thing about me. But having said that, I 
was also lucky because my mother in- 
stilled a really healthy attitude about 
my body. She taught me that the female 
form is one of the most beautiful, natu- 
ral shapes on earth. 


E 


PLAYBOY: Was it hard posing nude for the 
first time? 

LAKSHMI: Yes, it was. In fact, I canceled on 
Helmut Newton at first. And no one ever 
canceled on Helmut. I got cold feet. He 
called to book me again six or seven weeks 
later. This time he said it wasn't going to 
be nude—just topless. He said I could put 
my hair in front, which I did. What he was 
most interested in was my scar. 


E 


PLAYBOY: That scar on your upper right 
arm is a result of a car accident when you 
were 14. How do you feel about your scar 
now that you're an adult? 

LAKSHMI: It's a mark of survival, and I 
definitely think it made me who I am. 
Beautiful girls are a dime a dozen, and 
everybody wants to work with a photog- 
rapher like Helmut. It was the scar that 
made him notice me. He loved my scar, 
and by extension he made me think dif- 
ferently about myself. All of a sudden it 
was something to celebrate or at least 
not to be ashamed of. Everything in life 


shapes you. 


PLAYBOY: Why did you decide to move on 
from modeling? 

LAKSHMI: The thing is, beauty is no ac- 
complishment on its own. It's what you 
do with it. Have you ever met a girl and 
she's really pretty, but then you talk to 
her for 15 minutes and she's not that 
pretty anymore? She's kind of boring. 
Or else you'll meet a girl who's okay- 
looking but makes you laugh and says 
something saucy. Suddenly her beauty 
shines through. A lot of people I see in 
magazines or on TV bore me. I don't 
ever want to be boring. I want to do 
something. I want to be someone who 
stimulates people in their thinking or 
viewpoint. If you watch Top Chef on a 
very surface level, it's just a reality show. 
It’s a competition about food. But if 
you actually watch the show, it's really 
serious—about the food, about mastery, 
about people vying to be the captains of 
their industry. Being passionate about 
what you do is never boring. 

PLAYBOY: And yet you co-starred oppo- 
site Mariah Carey in Glitter, one of the 
greatest "worst movies" of all time. What 
made you do that? 

LAKSHMI: Oh, the money. Had Steven 
Spielberg called me with the script to a 
modern Citizen Kane, Га have done that, 
but as an actress starting out, you don't get 
to choose. The thing is, it was fun. What's 
important to know about Mariah Carey 
is that nobody can sing the way she does. 
Watching her close up is like swimming 
alongside Michael Phelps at the Olympics. 
Girl's got some lungs. 


E 


PLAYBOY: Speaking of lungs, we read 
somewhere that you require three sports 
bras while jumping rope. Urban myth? 

LAKSHMI: Oh, that. I think sports bras 
have improved a bit since I said that in 
Vogue or somewhere. But its an odd 
thing. A regular bra doesn't work alone, 


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PLAYBOY 


198 


and sometimes I need more support, so 
I'll put a sports bra over it. And I like to 
have a runner's tank top over that. It's my 
cross to bear, I guess. Sometimes I think 
I'm one of the last women with real boobs. 


E 


PLAYBOY: Quick-fire challenge: What's a 
dish every man should know how to cook? 
LAKSHMI: A beautiful roast chicken. The key 
is to leave it on a dinner plate in the fridge 
for 24 hours uncovered. Really wash it and 
dry it inside and out first, and then let it sit 
so the skin dries out—just like in China- 
town. Then I put it on my counter to tem- 
per it. You don't want to put a cold chicken 
in a hot oven. Inside the cavity I put a quar- 
tered orange, garlic cloves, rosemary and 
bay leaves, and some black peppercorns and 
sea salt rubbed inside. Then I tie it tight. On 
the outside I just rub on some pink Hima- 
layan salt. Put the whole thing in an oven at 


4 


450 degrees for about 45 minutes, turning it 
down to 400 as it browns. The last 15 min- 
utes I do a spread in a bowl: a stick of butter, 
two tablespoons of honey and a teaspoon of 
cayenne whisked together at room temp. I 
just slather that all over and let it cook for 
the last 15 minutes like that. It's heaven. 


E 


PLAYBOY: Is it true you once ate a testicle 
in Spain? 

LAKSHMI: I did try a bull’s testicle, yes. 
It wasn't terrible. I'm an omnivore. Part 
of being good at my job is trying every- 
thing at least once. So in that sense I am 
adventurous. I'll eat anything. I have no 
food snobbery. 


E 


PLAYBOY: Who's your favorite chef? 
LAKSHMI: Eric Ripert never gets it wrong. 


аллее npn 


“Га like something that says Christmas, that says love and affection, 
but doesn’t say commitment.” 


Of all the chefs I’ve met, his palate is the 
most incredible. It’s sophisticated and 
highly manipulated, yet it still feels light, 
almost feminine in how delicate it is. 


E 


PLAYBOY: How are men different from 
women in the kitchen? 

LAKSHMI: Of course I'm generalizing, but 
I think when men cook it tends to be an 
event. I don't mean professional chefs, 
but I think men can sometimes cook as 
a statement. It's like, “I’m making this 
food for you. It's an accomplishment." 
Whereas when women cook, they do it 
as a service: "I've produced something 
that I hope you'll love and I hope is 
comforting, nourishing, yummy, sensual 
and decadent." 


ee 


PLAYBOY: Have you ever run into Rachael 
Ray in a dark alley? 

LAKSHMI: No. I think she's really nice, 
and we don't have a beef. With all these 
channels, there's room for all of us. If 
you like catfish noodling, there's a chan- 
nel for you. But TV food personalities 
aren't interesting to me. Bobby Flay, I'm 
sure, is a great guy, but I don't watch 
him. I don't watch Iron Chef. I don't even 
watch Top Chef, to be honest. It freaks 
me out sometimes how obsessed people 
are with the show. I appreciate the au- 
dience, certainly, but there seems to be 
no middle ground. Either they've never 
heard of the show or they're obsessed. 
I'm somewhere in between. What I love 
about Top Chef is it doesn't define me. 


e 


PLAYBOY: How do you want to be defined? 
LAKSHMI: I don't want to be beholden to 
anyone or anything. I have my daughter 
and the people I love in my family. But 
what I value most is freedom. This may 
sound lame, but when I first came to 
this country I was four years old. I flew 
alone as an unaccompanied minor on 
Air India. In those days, you made a mil- 
lion stops—Cairo, Rome, London and 
then New York. Pm sure my mom got 
me a cheap ticket since we were broke. 
But I remember wanting to be like those 
airline hostesses. They were so glamor- 
ous. They wore these beautiful saris. They 
had these big bouffant hairdos and little 
Samsonite beauty cases. They got to trav- 
el the world and were independent and 
did whatever the fuck they wanted. They 
didn't answer to anybody. They knew what 
was important in their lives, and they had 
the opportunity to see the world and do 
what they wanted. That's what I wanted, 
and now that I say it, I guess that's what 
my life is. I can't really complain. 


* йй. 


ATE NEWS 


ашттхшз 
SHANNON TWEED IN A 


PINUP 
CALENDAR 


for 
VETERANS 


In the spirit of the holidays, we highlight PMOY 
1982 Shannon Tweed. She gave her all when she 
posed for the 2013 Pin-Ups for Vets calendar. For 
each calendar sold, money is donated to improve 
patriots’ health care. Gina Elise, founder of Pin- 
Ups for Vets, enlisted Shannon, her sister Tracy 
Tweed and daughter Sophie Tweed-Simmons for 
the shoot, which was shown on an episode of Gene 
Simmons Family Jewels. “I don't know how I feel 
about your mom doing pinups," Gene told his son, 
Nick. “You met her at the Playboy Mansion,” Nick 
responded. The girls modeled for photographer 
Austin Young. As Shannon says, "It was like play- 
ing dress-up in your mom's stuff.” She and Tracy 
even re-created their May 1991 PLAYBOY cover. 

In the end Gene was thrilled with the result. “I 
could pin it up by your toilet if you 
like," Shannon told him. *Very 
romantic,” he said. “Well, that’s 
where you spend all your time,” 
she answered. Buy one to put 
where you spend all your time, or 
donate it to a vet. You could even 
buy one for the Mayans—we hear 
they’re out of calendars. 


PIN-UPS FOR vers PRESENTS 


y 


This is not an 
exact photo of 
Miss May 2010 
Kassie Lyn 
Logsdon—it's a 
mirror image. 


у”. 
Л Б ANDERSON 


As the Baywatch 
theme song has 
y) it, "Forever and 
j always, I’m always 
4 here." Miss Feb- 


, ruary 1990 first ' IOVEM e 

_ rocked her leg- = eene 22^ 4 
ans endary bathing 

= KA suit 20 years ago, 

and while filming 
a commercial in 
Rio de Janeiro 
she demonstrated 
that red is still 
her best color. 


Miss February 2009 


hosted a Mexican 
Independence Day soiree 
at Crazy Horse III (a 
piñata was harmed dur- 


i he photo shoot). 
looks rocker) „7 


[ Miss August 2001 


Chic IN d and her e cl 
football player Ada 
crystal (OK AMA wc ЖО 


second child in September. 


Y . sec > > 
à > \ Bunny outfit Hawk Adam Archuleta 


was born at home. 


iN MISS OCTOBER 2003 


¿ESA AUDRA LYNN... 


y / breeder of Chinese cresteds, 
y) having won at the Westminster 


Some | ] Kennel Club dog show. 
of the 
smartest 

rove Women | 
know are 
raLLow blondes. 


stars in the 


Fifteen years ago this 
month Miss December 
1997 [ 
warmed up our pages. She 
became PMOY 1998, and 
our readers later voted her 
the second-most-popular 
Centerfold of the 1990s. 
Karen, who also appeared 
in Italian Vogue and was 
the first Men’s Fitness 
cover model, still makes 
dogs bay at the moon. 


video for 
“Come Wake | missnovemser 
2002 
Me Up.” 


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Every Playboy ever on your 

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Р iPad, Мас or Windows PC 


PLAYBOY PL 3 E! PLAYBOY PLAYBOY PLAY SO" 


PLAYBOY riaroos татат 
у= М 


202 


A PAZ THAT REFRESHES. 


PAZ DE LA HUERTA—BEST KNOWN AS THE SEX-CRAZED LUCY 
DANZIGER ON BOARDWALK EMPIRE, THE WILD-CHILD ACTOR 
POSES FOR A SPECTACULAR PICTORIAL. 


MATT DAMON-THE LOW-KEY, VERSATILE STAR OF PROMISED 
LAND AND THE SCI-FI THRILLER ELYS/UM GETS UNCHAR- 
ACTERISTICALLY PERSONAL IN A REVEALING PLAYBOY 
INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN REBELLO. 


PLAYMATE REVIEW—WE HATE HAVING TO MAKE TOUGH 
DECISIONS AS MUCH AS ANYONE, BUT IT’S TIME TO SELECT 
ONE—JUST ONE—PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR. WE’LL SHARE A 
DOZEN PHOTOS TO JOG YOUR MEMORY. 


SALE OF THE CENTURY—THROUGH A SERIES OF COMPLI- 
CATED REAL ESTATE SCAMS, MATTHEW COX POCKETED A 
COOL $25 MILLION. HE REVEALS TO DAVID KUSHNER THE 
INNER WORKINGS OF A CRIME THAT HOLDS UP A CRACKED 
MIRROR TO THE HOUSING CRASH. 


CARS OF THE YEAR—KEN GROSS AND A.J. BAIME REVEAL THE 
BEST WHEELS FOR THE YEAR TO COME. AND NEAL GABLER 
REPORTS ON JAY ROGERS, WHO HOPES TO SHAKE UP THE 
AUTO INDUSTRY; THE FIRST VEHICLE RELEASED BY HIS COM- 
PANY WAS DESIGNED BY VISITORS TO HIS WEBSITE. 


THE CENTERFOLD AS MUSEUM MATERIAL. 


NEXT MONTH 


= => E 4 u 
MISS OCTOBER PAMELA HORTON: WILL SHE BE OUR PMOY? 


ZOMBIE KILLER—AFTER A STRANGE ATTACK IN MIAMI THAT 
INVOLVED ONE MAN EATING ANOTHER MAN’S FACE, POLICE 
WARNED OF A DRUG THAT COULD TURN HUMANS INTO 
FLESH-EATING ZOMBIES. FRANK OWEN INVESTIGATES, IN 
PART BY PARTAKING HIMSELF. 


BEFORE THE ROAD—WITH ON THE ROAD SOON TO BE SHOW- 
ING IN YOUR LOCAL CINEPLEX, WE TAKE A TRIP BACK DOWN 
THE ROAD TO GET THE LINE ON DEAN MORIARTY. FICTION 
BY JACK KEROUAC. 


SMUGGLING HUEY NEWTON—DISGUISED IN DRAG TO ESCAPE 
THE FBI, THE BLACK PANTHERS LEADER TURNED TO AN OLD 


FRIEND, PRODUCER BERT SCHNEIDER, TO SPIRIT HIM TO 
CUBA. JOSHUAH BEARMAN RECOUNTS THE UNUSUAL TALE. 


PLAYMATE FOR THE AGES—EIGHT OF THE WORLD’S BEST- 
KNOWN ARTISTS—FROM TRACEY EMIN TO RICHARD PRINCE 
TO CINDY SHERMAN—REINTERPRET THE CENTERFOLD. 


PLUS—HAIL TO THE CHEF, 20Q WITH SCOTT SPEEDMAN OF 
LAST RESORT, LAWRENCE BLOCK’S HIT MAN COMES OUT 
OF RETIREMENT, THE HILARIOUS YEAR IN SEX, MISS JANU- 
ARY KARINA MARIE, MISS FEBRUARY SHAWN DILLON AND 
MUCH, MUCH MORE IN A SPECIAL HOLIDAY DOUBLE ISSUE. 


Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), December 2012, volume 59, number 10. Published monthly except combined January/February and July/August issues, each of which counts as two of 12 in an annual subscription, by 
Playboy in national and regional editions, Playboy, 9346 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Periodical postage paid at Beverly Hills, California and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Canadian 
Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40035534. Subscriptions: in the U.S., $32.97 for a year. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS (see DMM 707.4.12.5); nonpostal and military facilities, send address change to 
Playboy, PO. Box 37489, Boone, IA, 50037-0489. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather 
not receive such mailings, please send your current mailing label to: Playboy, PO. Box 37489, Boone, IA, 50037-0489. For subscription-related questions, call 800-999-4438, or e-mail plycustserv@cdsfulfillment.com. 


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