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OUR WAR AND PAT DOLLARD’S
How did I miss this article that came out in 2007? Conor Friedersdorf, filling in for Andrew Sullivan at his blog, linked to an old Vanity Fair article today as an example of “Slow” (i.e. long) journalism he especially likes.
I read the piece over dinner. Normally when I read an article that I think will be of interest to Filmmaker readers, I’ll offer a quick summary and then excerpt a couple of particularly interesting paragraphs that capture the flavor of the piece. When it comes to “Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood,” by Evan Wright in the March, 2007 Vanity Fair, such an approach is impossible. I would have to quote every paragraph, so compelling and impossibly sprawling is this tale of Hollywood agent Pat Dollard’s journey from William Morris to the depths of cocaine addiction to the battlegrounds of Iraq to the studios of Fox News. Along the way there is a bizarre interlude in which art imitates life (when Dollard’s personal life echoes a film he produced, Paul Schrader’s Auto-Focus), several near-death experiences, a hilariously canny portrait of Steven Soderbergh, a lot of sex, and the smarmiest neo-con pick-up line you’ll ever read. Guest stars: agent Mike Simpson, Ann Coulter, Sheila Nevins, Billy Bob Thornton, and more.
For context, before you begin this very long but worthy article, you can view the trailer for Young Americans, the doc that Dollard has been working on for years, below.
