Moguls, Monsters and Madmen by Barry Avrich

Author:Barry Avrich
Format: epub
Published: 2016-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

After I finished filming Guilty Pleasure, Dominick received a cut of the film, against my wishes, before it was ready. Should I have been surprised? Wasn’t he the man who had access to everything? The result was a sudden voicemail from Dominick on my answering machine, “I’ve got to talk to you!”

When I called back, he told me, “Look, I loved the film except for two things: First, I don’t like the title, I don’t understand it.”

After I explained that “guilty pleasure” was what readers felt when reading his Vanity Fair columns, he said, “Okay. You’re the marketing guy. I’ll leave that with you.”

His second complaint: “I don’t know who Eddie fucking Greenspan is, but I want him out of the film. Cut him. I want him out.”

I replied, “Look, Dominick, this is not a bar mitzvah film. Eddie is a well-respected lawyer.”

“To whom? I don’t know who he is.”

The film—with Eddie Greenspan still in it—was given a private screening in a New York screening room, attended by all of Dominick’s friends. It was a glittery event, definitely A-list. Afterwards, Dominick wrote in his Vanity Fair column, “I just attended the screening of a film about my life, and it was thrilling, except for the presence of a Canadian lawyer, to whom I will not give any publicity by mentioning his name.”

Three years later, when I did a documentary on Eddie for CBC-TV’s Life and Times, I made sure to tell Dominick when he would be able to watch my film about “the lawyer you love to hate which was sold to Court TV in the U.S.” Dominick replied, “Thanks for giving me advance notice to throw my television out the window.”

Eddie loved that email, which he framed and hung on his wall. He said it was almost as good as being in Vanity Fair.

After Guilty Pleasure was released, Larry King invited Dominick and me to appear on Larry King Live, which would have been terrific publicity. Dominick agreed. Unfortunately, around this same time, the Gary Condit/Chandra Ann Levy scandal went into high gear. Levy, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, disappeared in May 2001. Investigators later discovered she was having an affair with a married congressman, Gary Condit. Dominick, with his usual self-assurance, was convinced of Condit’s guilt. Why? Because he had heard it from a horse whisperer in Dubai. As it turned out, the horse whisperer was wrong. When Condit was cleared, he sued Dominick and Vanity Fair. Dominick, caught in mid-scandal, was mortified, because he’d always had the best information. When he told me he wasn’t going to appear on Larry King Live, I tried to persuade him, “We’ll insist that the Gary Condit case is off-topic.”

Dominick was adamant. “Larry would not be doing his job if he didn’t ask about the Condit case.”

He was right of course, proving that even if you are at the centre of the media, you can’t control it. I lost my chance for Larry King Live just as Eddie Greenspan lost his for Vanity Fair.

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