Top 5 Magazine World Films

As the magazine world suffers through one of its deepest crises in memory, this may be a good time to recall an age when the world celebrated print as empires of glamour and arbiters of taste. A handful of films over the decades put magazine publishing in the center of their stories. The offices were lavish and pristine, the editors haughty and imperious. Writers and photographers traveled around the globe—apparently with little regard for expense accounts—to spend months ferreting out new trends. Ah, when margins were high. Here are out five faves.

1. Funny Face (1957): Fred Astaire turns bohemian bookstore clerk Audrey Hepburn into the "Quality Magazine" Girl. From the cool New York office to the Parisian photo-shoots, director Stanley Donen imagines every scene as a two-page spread. Not surprisingly, photography great Richard Avedon advised on design, and no other film actually embodies the look and feel of a ’50s glossy. Audrey never looked better. Astaire’s lousy acting was never more endearing. And Kay Thompson’s turn as the autocratic EIC will chill the blood of every assistant editor who watches.

2. Sex and the Single Girl (1964): A weird rethinking of Helen Gurley Brown’s bestseller. Tabloid magazine ("Dirt") writer Tony Curtis is researching a story on a fictionalized research psychologist named “Helen Gurley Brown,” played here by Natalie Wood. The hijinks ensue, and the movie actually makes a vague stab at exposing middle-class prurience and the disconnectedness of the publishing world from everyday folk. Hot off his success with landmark novel Catch-22, Joseph Heller was a co-author of this curio.

3. The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996): The perennially irritating Woody Harrelson and equally obnoxious Courtney Love finally locate appropriate channels for their personalities. The tale of Flynt and Hustler’s battle with Jerry Falwell captures that age when the doors of propriety blew off the publishing industry and flesh ruled the newsstands. According to this film, it actually doesn’t take much time out of a person’s personal hedonism to run a magazine.

4. Almost Famous (2000): Adolescent fantasy meets Rolling Stone fantasy meets rock groupie fantasy. The improbably tale of high schooler Cameron Crowe writing for the legendary magazine is true enough, since that is precisely how Crowe got his start. The shock of the RS staff discovering the real age of its new reporter is good enough but Philip Seymour Hoffman’s manic rendition of rock critic Lester Bangs is incredible. For a brief moment he convinces us there was a time when writing really did matter because it is manicured thinking.

5. The Love God? (1969): One of the last of the Don Knotts (yes, we’re talking Don Knotts) cycle of ’60s B-flicks is a send-up of Playboy culture. Knotts plays Abner Audubon Peacock, the publisher of a generations-old bird watching book. When a scheming pornographer buys the book, he turns “Peacock Magazine” and its small-town hapless editor into the next girlie mag empire. The Kermit-like Knotts dressed in late-60s mod style is the chief attraction. You can turn the sound off.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com

http://www.minonline.com/news/9963.html