Joe Dolce: Asshat Takes the Cake
In yesterday's chapter of The Joe Dolce Story we wondered about the movie career Joe allegedly engaged in. Today brings further word of the project:
He attempted to produce a movie. I was at one of the readings of the script in the loft that he shares with his husband, the vastly less offensive Jonathan Burnham. Brian O'Byrne was the star! Awesome accent. Brian's, I mean. Joe's accent is New Jersey meets Madonna meets Helen Mirren. (Jonathan's is actually British.)
Anyway, the script wasn't bad, but it hit the same notes as Notting Hill. I doubt it ever had a chance. But Joe certainly made the rounds, sucking up to anyone with even the most remote Hollywood connections—like my boyfriend, who was way too in awe of Joe's grandeur (which I found deluded) to see the suck-uppery for what it was. This was in the lean times, between Details and his current position as overlord of the ethically challenged minons of AMI, when his big claim to fame was Fashion Wire Daily.
After the jump, Joe has a crisis of conscience and attempts to dedouche himself. But, as is often the case in life, you cannot change who you are: You can only embrace the douchebaggery.
Funny, I had Joe Dolce as an editor a few years back at a fashion news website and he seemed to be pretty good, as eds go. Then he went to India, ate some awful food there, came back sick, spent a couple of months recouping, announced upon his return that he had found the true meaning of life and it was not editing unimportant junk like what we were producing. No, he was going to do something more noble. Next I saw, he was EIC of the Star.
Which jibes with this, one of the many reminiscences to be sent under the heading "Joe Douche":
Joe Dolce was "acting" EIC at Star forever before he agreed to take the job. One time, when one of the assistants asked what he wanted to be titled for something/someone that was asking, he flew up from his desk and was like "Don't call me anything, I am not the editor in chief of Star, I'm just helping out," all embarrassed to be associated with that rag and shit.
But maybe he's more about getting the job done than worry about silly trifles like titles. As this heartwarming anecdote reveals, Joe spends a lot of time conferring with other staffers:
A few years ago, a high-level news editor at Star was pushed out because Bonnie Fuller and Joe Dolce simply couldn't handle the fact that said editor was smarter and more reasonable than them. (Seriously.) During this editor's goodbye party — which was arranged by adoring staffers and located in a public area just five feet from Dolce's office — Dolce sat in his office with Bonnie and refused to come out to give the editor a public sendoff, preferring to talk loudly with Bonnie so as to make sure everyone was acutely aware of his and Bonnie's presence/non-presence. But when someone fetched and began cutting an ice cream cake for the axed-editor/adoring colleagues to share, Dolce sent out one of his lackeys (the photo director) to FETCH HIM AND BONNIE A PIECE. It was one of the tackiest stunts I've ever seen two "grown" adults ever pull.
