50 years after directing the Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola is still chasing one last long-held dream: a movie no one else wants to make; a movie that he plans to spend $120 million of his own money on to make anyway. This was a very fun profile to write
Jason Sudeikis had the same pandemic year we all had, and in the middle of that, he had TED LASSO turn into a massive, unexpected hit, and in the middle of that — well, let him explain that part. My profile for the August cover of
@GQMagazine
, out now:
I’ve been reading Robert Jordan’s epic WHEEL OF TIME series over and over again since I was a kid. Wrote about Amazon’s very ambitious, and very expensive, attempt to finally make it into a TV show
Tom Holland is 23 and already one of the highest grossing actors in Hollywood. He’s also currently in the middle of a wild corporate dispute, has like 17 movies coming out next year, and drives the ball 300 on a golf course, a fact I learned the hard way:
This summer, as I got sicker and sicker of staring at this same computer screen, I went to Berkeley to ask Jaron Lanier for help. He got me to quit this bad place, for a while. I met his cats. And then he showed me the future in all its terrifying glory:
Proud to introduce the first-ever GQ Video Cover Story, starring André 3000 and featuring another guy who is not André 3000. Two days at a laundromat in LA washing clothes, playing flutes, talking about life. Watch it/read it here:
Reunited! Four years ago I met Brendan Fraser at a strange and uncomfortable moment in his life. Pleased to say the story was a happier — though still complicated! -- one this time around
First Justin Bieber started talking, and then he kept talking, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever been so surprised or upended by a profile subject. Cover of the mag this month. Photos by Ryan McGinley.
Joshua Williams was 18 when he was arrested during the protests in Ferguson and sentenced to 8 years in prison for lighting a trashcan on fire. Five years later, he is still incarcerated. Spoke to him this week about protesting and its costs:
“I had to break down the barriers and be by myself, cry, and realize, ‘I got to fucking help myself,’ ” Giannis Antetokounmpo told me, not long after we started talking. Then he asked if I was gonna put the curse words in. Story on GQ’s Dec cover now:
Before Tom Holland was exiled (?) from the Marvel Universe he destroyed me in a round of golf, among other things. When Tom Holland destroys you on a golf course he says, very kindly: “Unlucky!”
How do you survive a violent motorcycle crash, then convince your mind that pain isn’t real?
How do you pack a million dollars cash into a modest piece of Tumi luggage?
To these and other questions, George Clooney still has the answers. My profile:
What do you think the young Ryan Gosling would make of where you’ve ended up?
“First of all, I’d be like, ‘Hey, young Ryan, calm down. This dude, Zach, asked me to come back and talk to you.’ ”
This and other dubious interview strategies, right here:
An action-packed episode of
@TheBigPic
, headlined by the debut appearance by the show's First Husband,
@zachbaron
. We hit:
🔹 The Golden Globes (remember them?) nominations
🔹 EMANCIPATION
🔹 THE WHALE
🔹The Brendan Fraser Hall of Fame
Rest easy, Virgil Abloh. Always an amazing person to be around — crazy to think of all that energy and all those ideas coming to an end. Way too soon. Grateful to have been able to see him do his thing up close a few times
For this month’s
@GQMagazine
, had a series of conversations with Marcus Mumford about addiction, shame, hope, banjos, Oscar tattoos, and what you do when you realize that the story of your life is a little different than what you thought it was:
Sharing this guy again — Robert Pattinson, king of quarantine. Thanks to
@geoffgagnon
and the rest of my GQ brethren for doing wild stuff with me in wild times.
Spent a week in New Zealand with James Cameron while he was finishing AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. All the stories about this man are true. Even the ones that aren’t.
“I had a bunch of tools and nothing to build. I'm really glad I have something to build now.”
Profiled Jason Isbell, who is just a really good human being:
Wrote about the grand and enviable creative partnership between Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — soundtracking movies, surviving the '90s, coming to work every day in search of the thing that makes you feel a little less bad
Wrote about All Time, my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, and what comes after the pandemic for places that are built on coziness and intimacy and all the things I love about restaurants in the first place
Got invited onto Jam Session after three and half long years in the cold. Thanks to
@akdobbins
and
@julietlitman
and Brad Pitt for finally making it happen:
At the end of this conversation, Pacino and De Niro stood up and hugged one another and Pacino told De Niro that he loved him. That is a thing that happened!
"The fact that I’m even here is a miracle. It’s like shooting a bullet with another bullet."
Chris Evans on black holes and other things, now on the October cover of
@GQMagazine
:
Three years ago, Brad Pitt’s life blew up. Shortly afterwards, he made Ad Astra, a complicated movie about loneliness, space, and the fleeting possibility of human connection. We talked about it in somebody’s pool house:
When I arrived at his office, Martin Lawrence had set up two chairs on a basketball court in the back, right at the foul line, and we sat outside facing one another for the duration of this conversation. Martin! A legend:
In Miami and Palm Beach, just down the sand from Mar-a-Lago, Harmony Korine has built a collective called EDGLRD to try to figure out what comes after movies as we know them now: “That really became the obsession. I was like, What comes after all this?”
Wrote about the golf swing — What is it? What is its purpose? Why do we do this thing that is so dumb? — and the man who has all the answers, George Gankas
One year ago, a man named Tristan Beaudette was killed while camping in Malibu Creek State Park with his two young daughters. For residents, it became a true crime sensation. But for his family, it was something very different. This is their story:
Stabbing and sex sounds coming from the other room for like a whole week now. Now I know what it was like for my parents when I got into Brian De Palma films for the first time.
Anyway there is no one better than Jaron Lanier at simultaneously making you feel like you will die from looking at social media but also that tech might just save us all. I don’t know!
Legit great Post Malone story by Kelefa Sanneh: “You always see this super fuckin' hackneyed shit in the movies where the guy gets all this money and at the end of the day he's in the house all alone.”
Today is the one year anniversary of Tristan Beaudette’s death. This story captivated a lot of people in Los Angeles when it first happened, myself included. But the truth turned out to be even stranger. Grateful to everyone here for telling their stories:
1. Once Upon a Time
2. Parasite
2. Uncut Gems
4. Irishman
5. Marriage Story
6. The Souvenir
7. Honey Boy
8. Ad Astra
9. Little Women
10. Pain and Glory
2019 was an incredible year for movies and my taste is apparently quite boring!
Last of 2022 -- been talking to the director James Gray since February about fatherhood and art and ARMAGEDDON TIME and what it's like to finish and then release a non-franchise film into the weird howling winds of America's deserted movie theaters
Striking to think back to 2014, pre-Trump, when all these same guys were in Nevada with Cliven Bundy, pointing guns at federal rangers (without consequence) and talking to me about their desire to die. People have been wanting to do this for a long time!
Really been enjoying this brilliant, ongoing series from
@theprophetpizza
about the demented aesthetics cops () and clueless politicans () have been been bringing to the present moment.
Still remember the thrill of encountering for the first time the strange magic way David Berman put together sentences. There was and is no other writer like him.
Tremendously grateful to these guys, who spent years working incredibly hard to put the spotlight on other people besides themselves. Thank you
@maxlinsky
and
@aaronlammer
, and congrats on never having to read another magazine piece again.
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