Trash

HOW COULD a Berkowitz kill a Moskowitz?" the interviewer asks Shelley Duvall as they find their table in a New York restaurant. The latest issue of Andy Warhol's Interview continues in this tasteless vein for 48 pages of newsprint that would like to be glossy, and contains gossip that would like to be sophisticated. It ends up sounding like People magazine, except that artsy condescension replaces human interest.

The cover this month should warn you what to expect. It is pink and hand-tinted, a rather bizarre close-up of that very bizarre film star, Shelley Duvall. Duvall wears her exquisitely vacant stare--deep eyes beneath wispy bangs looking vaguely pre-Raphaelite. This is a fan magazine for people whose sensibilities are affronted by the lack of subtlety in run-of-the-mill collections of chit-chat with the stars.

The ads in the magazine, like those in the New Yorker, are aimed at "the seeker after excellence," and appeal to the reader's worst instincts--snobbery, exclusivity, and delight in sheer expense. It is doubtful that any but the pretentious rich would jump for joy the way a male model does in one ad--over nine pairs of new shoes in a full page spread. And there are the ubiquitous pictures of a Calvin Klein damsel in satiny "at-home" clothes or a Matisse-like line drawing publicizing Yves St. Laurent's stylish scraps.

The magazine would be harmless, indeed dull, if its collection of photo-journalistic essays did not purport to be art. First of all, as in every issue, there are full-page photographs of children of the famous. This month Elizabeth Taylor's 16-year-old daughter Maria Burton and 22-year-old son Christopher Wilding grace pages six and seven. They were photographed by Firooz Zahedi, with whom young Christopher plans to open a photography studio soon in New York. Both of Taylor's children are good-looking, both seem deliberately posed to provoke comparison with Beautiful Mama, yet neither has much sparkle. While this may be simply the fault of the portraits, it also seems to reflect an editorial theme of the magazine; a theme very evident as a succession of movie stars and bright men-and women-about-town are drawn into long and intimate discussions. The interviews are usually reprinted verbatim from tape transcripts, with even the point where side A ended and side B began noted.

And yet, even though the famous names are as familiar to the reader as grocery lists, the pieces fail to capture the spark that brought fame to the subject. They are meandering and not especially compelling.

One feature article consists of an interview with "the next 'Duke'." This turns out to be Patrick Wayne--son of the old man of the cinematic West. Catherine Guinness simpers her way through their conversation with unoriginal remarks like "Maybe stardom isn't all it's cracked up to be?" Then she gushes unabashedly "You're better looking than the new Superman." He swallows her flattery greedily and easily.

ANDY WARHOL, the publisher, conducts two interviews and interjects his wit and wisdom into a third. His questions give the same kind of impression as Guiness's--that the interviewer is thinking "Isn't it exciting talking to these Frightfully Important People!" And Warhol is even more irritating. In the Duvall interview, the reader hears from Warhol that he "was supposed to go to the pimple doctor this morning" but "never went."

Daniela Morera has a "chat" with Calvin Klein, during which this gentleman whose "elegant sportswear" company makes $25 million a year declares, "I have no pity for people who screw up their lives, no patience. There are so many people lost and it's their fault..." Nice guy, that Mr. K. Nice to hear how he and his partner used to sell water for five cents a glass in the Bronx as kids. Horatio Alger's heroes had nothing on him.

If you can endure the endless fawning upon the monarchs of the cafe kingdom, there is some superlative photography. Candice Bergen, for example, has produced a haunting study of Joel Schumacher, who wrote the screenplays for Car Wash and is currently working on a film version of The Wiz. The accompanying interview, with Liz Smith, is in a seemingly unedited question-and-answer format that often rambles, full of generalities. In this case, however, writer and subject are friends of long standing so they have a rapport lacking in some of the other pieces. You may not agree with Schumacher's most profoundly-held life truth, "that the world is divided between people who have had analysis and people who haven't," but at least you are presented with a real character instead of a mere pin-up.

Bob Colacello's "Out" column makes the reader froth at the mouth at its name-dropping and wolverine voraciousness for The Stories about The Only People Worth Writing About. Even if one had been raised to venerate age and all that jazz it would be hard to feel any rush of attraction to this man who eyes the camera with all the vivacity of a flounder. This issue he describes "How I spent my Summer Vacation." In Harvard Expository Writing classes even freshmen flee from this uninspiring topic, but Colacello is raring to go.

He seems to have enjoyed himself. There was a lunch in New York with the Empress of Iran where he was somewhat disturbed by a University of Wisconsin school newspaper reporter screaming "Liar!" when the woman spoke, but he was reassured by her screne highness's "sincerity and grace under pressure" as the unfortunate heckler was dragged away by Iranian security guards.

During the New York blackout his comment on the morning after was:

The park looked like Madison Ave. instead of 125th St. for a change, probably because the 125th St. crowd was still at the all-night free-shopping party going on up in Harlem.

WHEN YOU CLOSE this magazine and line your wastebasket with it, or pin the cover on your memo board--each to his own--you may wonder why such mediocre personalities as those the magazine describes are the heroes and heroines of our society. In this sense the editors of Interview should not be blamed for the dreariness of the scenes they record. Form tends to follow content, and it would take genius to paint most ofInterview's subjects in other than flat planes.