MEETING YOUR HEROES

The first in a series about the images I’ve played a part in making, and the magic people I met making them. First, the great Mike Nichols.

Marc Jacobs and Winona Ryder as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’s George and Martha. Photograph by Mark Seliger.

What’s that saying, “Never meet your heroes”? The idea that if you encounter those you revere, they will inevitably disappoint you? Well, I think that’s bullshit. The real problem is the uber-elevation of people in the first place, no? The forgetting of their very humanness. And that’s not really their fault, is it?

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with celebrity, with heroes. There is a long list of people that I admire hugely, but I’ve never seen them as “other” than me, and, fortunately for my mental health, as those to be envied. If they’re a duck gliding along the pond, I’ve always been, thankfully, able to see the legs. To quote When Harry Met Sally, directed by ever-hero Nora Ephron, I’ve never truly “wanted what she’s having.”

I’m the first to recognize, though, that what gives you perspective on heroes is when you meet a helluva lot of them. And I’ve met a whole shiny bunch, thanks to my years at Harper’s BAZAAR and InStyle. Over the 16 years I spent at both magazines, I must have produced 200+ covers. (I think I just sprouted 10 grey hairs just typing that).

Anyway, when you shoot that many covers – and on top of that, inside stories – well, you learn a lot about people. When you’re at a celebrity photo shoot, you get it all: insecurities, quirks, the flexing of hangers on – but at best, surprising bits of personal candor and wonder (and in some cases following, years of friendship). But each shoot set you arrive on, with all its distinct ingredients, is like a soufflé – it can either rise to perfection or be an unholy flop.

At BAZAAR, alongside booking and conceptualizing cover shoots, I hatched a series of director collaborations where we recast classic films with actors or designers. Sometimes it was corny, other times sublime. The first portfolio I did was with the cast of Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers (Tilda Swinton, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone) in 2005. Knowing Tilda was fearless, and loving a grand environmental photograph myself, we photographed her in the middle of London’s Leicester Square wearing Viktor and Rolf’s “bed dress.” It was pretty epic, tbh. If you don’t remember it from then (youth?), it’s been memed to death.

Tilda’s commute. Photographed by Jason Schmidt.

After that came out, I was hooked. What I loved more than anything was taking something iconic and subverting it. I started to approach other directors for their blessing to mess around in their worlds (and I’ll write about more of them later). But none of them came close to Mike Nichols.

When I first saw The Graduate, I didn’t get it. It was so dry, so knowing, and I was too young to understand that an “old” movie (1967!) was not just relevant to today’s “society” but was capable of deftly satirizing it too. (I tried to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a couple of times, but there was just so much yelling). Then, as a teenager I watched Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge and in my early 20s, The Birdcage. I couldn’t believe it: how could one director be that good, that sophisticated, that distinct?

And Nichols had an earlier life in fashion that I knew nothing about: It wasn’t until I started at BAZAAR that I learned about his great history with Richard Avedon (a 50-year friendship, from when Nichols and his then girlfriend Suzy Parker modeled for Avedon in Paris in 1962). Jesus, man, it was too much! How could he be so brilliant at everything? Nichols wasn’t merely a hero of mine, he inhabited some other level of iconography. And I’m pretty sure he would have also thought “Never meet your heroes” was bullshit.

Nichols and Suzy Parker by Avedon in 1962. The nun really makes it.

Cut to 2011, and I wanted to work with Nichols desperately. I wrote an overture to whatever contact was given for “Director Mike Nichols” on Celebrity Service. I got back some interest, a few questions and soon after, an invitation to have breakfast with him at his home in New York. Ooh, that was a day. Right after that I had to jump on a train to DC to interview Hillary Clinton at the State Department, so it’s fair to say I hyperventilated for 24-36 hours.

I arrived at Nichols and his other half Diane Sawyer’s apartment, overlooking the Met on 5^th Ave, and all my nerves vanished. I think maybe we ate some pancakes and fruit, but the conversation didn’t just flow, it flew. Mike was everything I’d hoped for: funny and racy and in the world. He was almost 80 then, had a hearing aid or two, but he had the most extraordinary generosity of time – the languor of age and success, perhaps. Anyway, I guess he liked my moxie because he gave me his blessing to do the shoot. I was hopping.

We stayed in radio on email for a bit before the shoot day. I started calling him, “Mr Nichs,” and he didn’t seem to mind. He couldn’t make it to the set, where we’d cast Diane von Furstenberg and Prabal Gurung as The Graduate’s Mrs Robinson and Benjamin (corny in retrospect); and Marc Jacobs and Winona Ryder as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’s George and Martha (sublime). I can’t remember exactly how this magic happened, but Rita Wilson (who wrote for BAZAAR at the time) and Tom Hanks (who’d starred in Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War) were in town and came by the set to play around as George and Martha themselves.

I sent Mike the pictures of Marc and Winona, followed by Tom and Rita. He replied, “U kidding me? It’s great. Izzat TOM? They’re wonderful. That Rita. She’s the real thing. Both amazing. You too.” Imploding, I wrote back: “These pictures complete me.”
“You don’t need no completing,” he replied. “Already are.”

“Izzat Tom? They’re wonderful. That Rita. She’s the real thing.”

Not long afterward, Mike invited me to dinner back at that beautiful apartment. The guests were Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner and Mark Harris (who subsequently wrote Mike’s biography, Mike Nichols: A Life), Martha Plimpton. And…me?! The conversation was about real things, often literally life and death. It was funny and intimate, and so unlike all the prattle you’d normally hear in fashion or entertainment. I remember perfectly lit art and leopard poufs and Diane taking off her shoes after dinner. I left first, for some dumb reason, like I didn’t want to curse it. I still can’t believe I was there.

Nora died the next year, and Mike passed in 2014. I ran into Diane at an event a year or so after Mike’s death at a MoMA benefit. We were both walking out of the revolving doors when she turned to me and said, “Wasn’t that dinner wonderful?”

It was. I met all my heroes, and it was sublime.