Glenn O'Brien —
Gabriel Snyder · 12/23/09 02:11PM
GQ's The Style Guy on his nine-year-old son, in an interview with A Continuous Lean.
GQ's The Style Guy on his nine-year-old son, in an interview with A Continuous Lean.
It's been a very rough month for Glenn O'Brien, the former editorial director of Interview who was ousted from the mag in early June and slapped with a lawsuit shortly thereafter. He is, however, still alive. You're excused, though, if you may have thought otherwise given it's O'Brien's photo that accompanies an obituary of former Beatles manager Allen Klein on the Hollywood news site, The Wrap. (It looks like a Google image search led the site to this story, although neither of the two men in the photo happens to be the deceased.) Oh, new media! [The Wrap]
Like every other print magazine in the world, Interview continues to have problems.
• It's an ugly day at MySpace. The News Corp.-owned social network is slashing nearly 30 percent of its staff, or 400 people, due to a decline in sales. [BN, PC]
• Protesters in Iran have been using Twitter to keep up with developments on the ground. Now the State Department is stepping in and asking the company to put off a planned upgrade so service isn't disrupted. [Reuters]
• MTV entertainment president Brian Graden is departing the network. [NYP]
• It's official: NBC is dumping Live at Five and replacing it with an hour-long "daily information, lifestyle and entertainment show." [NYO]
• Interview dropped editorial director Glenn O'Brien last week. Now the magazine's parent company, Brant Publications, is suing him for allegedly breaking the terms of his confidentiality agreement. [WWD]
Brant Publications is, predictably, suing former editorial director Glenn O'Brien for trashing the company's reputation.
Earlier this week, Glenn O'Brien, the editorial director in charge of Brant Publications' magazines—Interview, Art in America, and others—left the company. Now O'Brien says the entire company is "going insane."
Polo-playing paper tycoon Peter Brant has had plenty of drama on his plate in recent weeks. His divorce from Stephanie Seymour has only been getting messier by the day. (Last week, the ex-supermodel got into a shoving match with one of Brant's bodyguards at the couple's Greenwich estate; over the weekend, she was issued a summons after another run-in with Brant's staff.) But that isn't the only crisis unfolding in the house of Brant. The convicted felon—Brant served 84 days in prison in 1990 after pleading guilty to tax fraud—is now watching Interview, the art/fashion mag founded by Andy Warhol and which Brant has controlled since the late 1980s, crumble to pieces. And it's all happened under the not-very-watchful eye of the man that Brant appointed to oversee his collection of magazines—his equally scandal-plagued son, Ryan Brant.
• The Boston Newspaper Guild, the Boston Globe's largest union, narrowly rejected a package of pay concessions and benefit cuts last night. [NYT]
• David Letterman is close to signing a new, 3-year contract with CBS. [THR]
• Conan O'Brien has beat Letterman in the ratings every night since his show debuted last week. But that may very well change pretty soon. [Vulture]
• Rachael Ray's talk show has been renewed for two more seasons. Alas. [THR]
• Glenn O'Brien is out as Interview's editorial director. [Daily Intel, FWD]
Karole Armitage's Armitage Gone! dance company held its annual benefit last night at Capitale. The honorees at the Think Punk! event, Jeff Koons and Earle Mack, celebrated with their wives, Justine and Carole, as well as with attendees like Rufus Wainwright (left), Andre Balazs, Calvin Klein, Fabiola Beracasa, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, Nicole Miller, Lauren duPont, Allison Sarofim, Peter Marino, Mary Boone, David Salle, Michael Musto, Dominique Levy, Sandy Brant, Tom Sachs, Todd Eberle, Francesco Clemente, Michele Zalopany, and Jamie Niven. [PMc, VF, WWD]
♦ The opening of Elizabeth Peyton's New Museum exhibition on Tuesday was full of her friends and fans like Marc Jacobs (with boyfriend Lorenzo Martone, left), Glenn O'Brien, Amy Astley, Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour, Hope Atherton, Cecily Brown, Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, Gavin Brown, Barbara Gladstone, Debbie Harry, and Thelma Golden. [The Daily, PMc]
A very tanned and very inarticulate Marc Jacobs talks about Interview and Andy Warhol with the magazine's owner Peter Brant, Brant's wife Stephanie Seymour, and co-editorial director Glenn O'Brien, on the Charlie Rose Show. A botoxy-looking Seymour, who sounds like she's taken a handful of benzos, opines that Warhol was "biblical."
Glenn O'Brien is so sick of celebrities! Glenn O'Brien is co-editorial director for Brant Publications, overseeing magazines including Interview, the historic celebrity... interview magazine, founded by celebrity aficionado Andy Warhol. Glenn O'Brien says he "he avoids new movies and TV, shuns reading living authors, has no interest in commercial music," and only listens to really old comedians. Glenn O'Brien is conflicted. [WWD]