Friday, January 24, 2002
Talk’s talking no more - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- When I think of the auspicious days when I started this column in late spring 1999, I really can’t believe it’s been that long. Two and a half years later, I’m still doing it and, at times, am enjoying the chance to vent and bellyache publicly. Two and a half years isn’t a long time, really, and when it’s the lifetime of a magazine, then it’s sad.
In August of 1999, Talk magazine made a much ballyhooed entry into the magazine business with Tina Brown at the helm and Miramax’s bucks behind it. Brown, late of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, was brought in by Harvey Weinstein, the noteworthy movie producer, to create an upscale magazine that would rival Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire and even the New Yorker. It was glossy and advertisement driven like your Vanity Fair’s and Esquire’s, yet it would have the substance that the New Yorker embodied. In her “Notebook” column in the first edition of Talk (September 1999), Brown wrote that Talk was inspired by the “not-so-long-ago era of Big American Magazines, when the edge of news coexisted comfortably with the pleasures of phenomenal writing, photography, and illustrations.”
And in a way it was. The first edition of Talk hit the news stands with much press attention as it featured a scantily clad Gwyneth Paltrow lying breast down, a grinning George W. Bush (then governor of Texas) and Hillary Clinton, three times donning sun glasses and smiling. The Bush profile caught much attention, I recall, because its author Tucker Carlson was criticised for writing up Bush’s constant reliance on four-letter words and the like. The Clinton piece was most noteworthy because Lucinda Franks was able to get the-then first lady to open up about Bill Clinton’s infidelities. And of course there was the gratuitous spread of Gwyneth, ahem, spreading them.
I liked Talk. It was a good magazine that you could get monthly and get to know what the WASP set in the Eastern seaboard were talking about. It was pretentious, yet it claimed not to be. It had it all. You could get a Tom Stoppard piece about finding his Jewish roots, or an up close and personal with Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe. And you could get Richard Butler on Iraq’s nuclear arsenal or Steve Martin writing something funny.
Talk collapsed under its own weight last week, as Miramax and Hearst pulled their stakes out of the fold. Tina Brown reportedly wept as she told staff that the mag was to cease publication forthwith, even though the March issue was nearly ready for printing. I guess we’ll never see that issue, and the February 2002 issue is the last we’ll come to know. With Sean Penn on the cover, it’s an interesting issue showing off that eclectic style that Talk was. Inside you could find a piece on Benazir Bhutto and a piece on Dan Rather, and how he was somehow, now, hip? Yup. You could get interesting pieces like the one on Bobby Durst or on Oscar security.
Talk was eclectic and stylish. It was full of substance and it’s too damned bad it won’t be around anymore. When it first came out I was most complimentary saying that for a non-WASP, non-New Yorker, non-American for that matter, Talk was a conversation piece for all. Though it changed from being a large, lighter stock feel of paper to using ‘perfect’ binding for its spine and glossier paper stock, it remained an interesting read month in and month out. Tina Brown is being beckoned by the masses to write a book of her own, as an unflattering account of her rise to the pinnacle of the magazine business was published this past summer. Her own high-class travels would make an interesting read, seeing that she revamped the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, making lots of heads turn in the process.
She will most probably resurface in the media business in the near future. Perhaps in publishing or another magazine. Maybe she could lend her talents to Hollinger and the upcoming “New York Sun” paper Conrad, Lord Black of Crossharbour is starting up in the Big Apple?
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On this theme of ‘talking’, it’s appropriate to note the passing of Peter Gzowski. The former CBC radio personality died Thursday afternoon at the age of 67. He will be remembered for the number of years he spent on the CBC, hosting This Country in the Morning in the ‘70s and from 1982 to 1997, hosting Morningside. He started his career as a newspaper journalist, propelling to Maclean’s, where in 1962 at the age of 28, he became the magazine’s youngest managing editor.
For many he was Canada. He embodied the land he loved, speaking with a gravely voice that was inviting and endearing. Unlike other talkers like Jack Webster, Gzowski was the gentle giant at the Mother Corp. We read about Gzowski being “seriously ill” in a Toronto hospital Thursday morning, and that afternoon across the country tributes and remembrances were being sent across the country with his death. (I actually found out when I saw the statement from the Governor General, in the form of an e-mail, which expressed the nation’s sadness.)
Peter Gzowski wasn’t like the brutish Rafe Mair whose radio mandate is to hold the politician’s feet to the fire. He was not loud and brash like Pat Burns, Peter Warren, Gordon Sinclair or Jack Webster. Peter Gzowski was a gentle soul who shone light on the entire country, trying to keep it somehow together. Many have said he tried to keep this country together and many loved him for that. I never listened to him, so I can’t say I agreed with his politics, the CBC’s mandate or that his gravely voice was so neat. I read his recent columns in the Toronto Globe and Mail and whilst not largely moved by them, I knew he was a true Canadian who loved this country and who gave it such unique service and so much love. Even Rafe Mair was complimentary, and I think that spells a lot.
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It’s been a month of great losses in Canada’s cultural life. We lost Frank Shuster last week and with Peter Gzowski yesterday, Canada is a little less for it. Let me note the passing too, of Peggy Lee. Although I don’t own any CDs of hers or a fan for that matter, Lee was a legend and a real jazz star. Is that all there is?
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .