How the Rise of Twitter, and the Death of Gossip Columns, Allows Celebrities to More Easily Deceive Their Fans
by Lynden Volpe
Three years ago, two of America’s most famous gossip columnists quit the biz because the truth was no longer being told. Twitter allowed celebs to spin their own versions of the truth directly to fans, and Facebook and TMZ made everyone a reporter (fact-checking, be damned). George Rush and Joanna Molloy had had their fill. But this fall the two are back with a book about their 15 years’ gossiping. Scandal: A Manual, details the encounters between the married Rush and Molloy, and the rich and famous they chronicled. There’s the story of Kirstie Alley trying to convince a publicist to breast-feed her baby possum, or that time Donald Trump called to dish about his experiences with Anna Nicole Smith. VF Daily asked Rush and Molloy about the highlights of their career, and whether anyone in Hollywood really is nice. (There’s at least one guy.) The pair has a reading tonight at the Barnes and Noble on 82nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan.
VF Daily: What has the response to the book been like? What you expected?
George Rush: The feedback has been gratifying. Most people seem to be surprised that we put this many words together. They apparently thought our maximum length was a paragraph. But we saw a lot at the fair. We were lucky enough to witness the twilight of the Front Page newsroom, the birth of hip-hop, the explosion of the blogosphere, some private moments with the Kennedys and the Clintons and assorted sex tapes.
What are readers the most curious about thus far?
Everybody wants us to spill the real names of the celebrities we didn’t name or gave pseudonyms. The coked-up Oscar nominee. The network anchor whose mistress was shaking him down. The record exec that offered me enough money “to buy a house.”
So what makes you two draw the line?
As they say in the TV commercial: “L-A-W-Y-E-R-S”! The stories are all true, but it’s just not worth a nuisance suit from someone who wants to defend his honor, or what’s left of his honor. It’s also fun to see how readers will make a mystery celeb into the person they want him to be. Those scamps at Gawker invited readers to guess the identity of a certain philandering producer. It’s amazing how many different producers could fit the description. But we ain’t telling!
Was there anything else you left out?
There were some insider media intrigues we could have gotten into, but we just didn’t think the average reader would give a fig.
As two of the most famous gossipers, why do you think gossip is so attractive to people? What made it so attractive to you?
George Rush: Primatologists know that if two high-ranking baboons get into a fight, a third one will spy on them and then spread the news. Gossip is deep in our DNA. It helps build intimacy between people.
Joanna Molloy: Thoreau said, “The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles; what distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same time.” Thoreau meant the constellations, of course, but celebrities are something we all know about and can collectively shake our heads at and share stories about at the office salt lick. I also think there’s a subconscious belief that these attractive people who work out for hours every day, when they’re not getting massaged, coiffed, or styled, have fuller sexual lives than the 99 percent. It gets very “meerkat” with celebrities.
Is there anything you ever dug up that you wished you hadn't?
George Rush: I am still trying to flush the image of that obese former child star getting pleasured at the tranny club.
What made you leave the world of gossip behind?
Joanna Molloy: I left gossip because I didn’t want to be a part of the growing celebrity-industrial complex. Actors used to try to hide the fact that they did commercials in Japan or Italy; now they’re global tweeters for hire. But they don’t share with their followers that they’re being paid to praise a certain brand of shoe or camera. It’s disingenuous, and it’s a bore. We even made a board game out of the obligatory path of those famous for being famous: the endorsement contracts, the clothing line, the sneaker line, the liquor line, the fragrance. If I wanted to go into marketing, I would have gone to business school.
George Rush: We decided to give the column a rest mostly because the game had changed. Keeping up with the Kardashians and other reality stars became nauseating. More and more, celebs were able to use social media to sidestep the columns, and most of the traditional media. They could spin their own version of the truth. Twitter, Facebook and the Web turned everybody into gossip columnists. Checking stories became a quaint, antique custom.
Have you kept in touch with any of your subjects now that you no longer write about them?
George Rush: I still help director James Toback procrastinate from time to time. His new film, Seduced and Abandoned, is genius.
Joanna Molloy: Gossip writers are like sportswriters—you really can’t be friends with the players. You have to reserve the right to run the story if you find out your subject filched a bracelet. But recently I was gratified to see Tom Hanks again and learn that, yes, he is still the nicest guy in Hollywood. Every crew member and limo driver tells me that; and I learned it myself at President Obama’s inauguration festivities, when he joined the folks stranded on Maureen Dowd’s sidewalk outside her overpacked party. He could have been carried in on a litter but he stayed with us in the cold and quipped with us for 20 minutes. “She’s stopped giving out free hot dogs, people! Go home!” No star stuff for Hanks. This year, he played the late, great columnist Mike McAlary on Broadway in Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy; and he would write notes in characterto some of us who were friends with Mac, which we treasure. He totally transformed himself and channeled Mac onstage; and I think he was robbed of the Tony. Some people just don’t want one person to have everything.
What do you miss the most about your column?
George Rush: The priest-like feeling of strangers calling to confess, as Wilhelm Busch put it, “other people’s sins.” Also, the variety of truly fascinating people you could chat with, however briefly. Everybody from a promising 19-year-old actor named Heath Ledger to crusty 80-year-old Norman Mailer, plus a few Nobel laureates in between.
VF Daily: What has the response to the book been like? What you expected?
George Rush: The feedback has been gratifying. Most people seem to be surprised that we put this many words together. They apparently thought our maximum length was a paragraph. But we saw a lot at the fair. We were lucky enough to witness the twilight of the Front Page newsroom, the birth of hip-hop, the explosion of the blogosphere, some private moments with the Kennedys and the Clintons and assorted sex tapes.
What are readers the most curious about thus far?
Everybody wants us to spill the real names of the celebrities we didn’t name or gave pseudonyms. The coked-up Oscar nominee. The network anchor whose mistress was shaking him down. The record exec that offered me enough money “to buy a house.”
So what makes you two draw the line?
As they say in the TV commercial: “L-A-W-Y-E-R-S”! The stories are all true, but it’s just not worth a nuisance suit from someone who wants to defend his honor, or what’s left of his honor. It’s also fun to see how readers will make a mystery celeb into the person they want him to be. Those scamps at Gawker invited readers to guess the identity of a certain philandering producer. It’s amazing how many different producers could fit the description. But we ain’t telling!
Was there anything else you left out?
There were some insider media intrigues we could have gotten into, but we just didn’t think the average reader would give a fig.
As two of the most famous gossipers, why do you think gossip is so attractive to people? What made it so attractive to you?
George Rush: Primatologists know that if two high-ranking baboons get into a fight, a third one will spy on them and then spread the news. Gossip is deep in our DNA. It helps build intimacy between people.
Joanna Molloy: Thoreau said, “The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles; what distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same time.” Thoreau meant the constellations, of course, but celebrities are something we all know about and can collectively shake our heads at and share stories about at the office salt lick. I also think there’s a subconscious belief that these attractive people who work out for hours every day, when they’re not getting massaged, coiffed, or styled, have fuller sexual lives than the 99 percent. It gets very “meerkat” with celebrities.
Is there anything you ever dug up that you wished you hadn't?
George Rush: I am still trying to flush the image of that obese former child star getting pleasured at the tranny club.
What made you leave the world of gossip behind?
Joanna Molloy: I left gossip because I didn’t want to be a part of the growing celebrity-industrial complex. Actors used to try to hide the fact that they did commercials in Japan or Italy; now they’re global tweeters for hire. But they don’t share with their followers that they’re being paid to praise a certain brand of shoe or camera. It’s disingenuous, and it’s a bore. We even made a board game out of the obligatory path of those famous for being famous: the endorsement contracts, the clothing line, the sneaker line, the liquor line, the fragrance. If I wanted to go into marketing, I would have gone to business school.
George Rush: We decided to give the column a rest mostly because the game had changed. Keeping up with the Kardashians and other reality stars became nauseating. More and more, celebs were able to use social media to sidestep the columns, and most of the traditional media. They could spin their own version of the truth. Twitter, Facebook and the Web turned everybody into gossip columnists. Checking stories became a quaint, antique custom.
Have you kept in touch with any of your subjects now that you no longer write about them?
George Rush: I still help director James Toback procrastinate from time to time. His new film, Seduced and Abandoned, is genius.
Joanna Molloy: Gossip writers are like sportswriters—you really can’t be friends with the players. You have to reserve the right to run the story if you find out your subject filched a bracelet. But recently I was gratified to see Tom Hanks again and learn that, yes, he is still the nicest guy in Hollywood. Every crew member and limo driver tells me that; and I learned it myself at President Obama’s inauguration festivities, when he joined the folks stranded on Maureen Dowd’s sidewalk outside her overpacked party. He could have been carried in on a litter but he stayed with us in the cold and quipped with us for 20 minutes. “She’s stopped giving out free hot dogs, people! Go home!” No star stuff for Hanks. This year, he played the late, great columnist Mike McAlary on Broadway in Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy; and he would write notes in characterto some of us who were friends with Mac, which we treasure. He totally transformed himself and channeled Mac onstage; and I think he was robbed of the Tony. Some people just don’t want one person to have everything.
What do you miss the most about your column?
George Rush: The priest-like feeling of strangers calling to confess, as Wilhelm Busch put it, “other people’s sins.” Also, the variety of truly fascinating people you could chat with, however briefly. Everybody from a promising 19-year-old actor named Heath Ledger to crusty 80-year-old Norman Mailer, plus a few Nobel laureates in between.
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