When I was a student at the University of Florida, studying film during the day and writing freelance stories at night, I landed two choice assignments. Choice, that is, for a horny, unrequited, socially awkward twenty-year-old.
First, I got to spend an afternoon hanging out with Russ Myers, a notorious film director and king of loopy seventies porn, the man who gave movie critic Roger Ebert his notorious film credit on
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. That was a wild day.
The other unforgettable assignment was interviewing
Playboy magazine photographer David Chan, who came to Gainesville to uncover the most delectable Gator coeds for “Girls of the Southeastern Conference” pictorial. Chan was a delightful guy with an enviable job. Hundreds of beautiful women were lined up outside his headquarters at the University Holiday Inn to bare their, uh, natural assets.
But
Playboy and I go back about a decade or so earlier to the time when I discovered my dad’s prized stack of 1960s
Playboy s in a cardboard box in the attic on top of an old cedar wardrobe. And by the time I was thirteen, I ordered a subscription of my own. And once a month ever since, I’ve looked forward to the arrival of the next issue.
A female friend jokingly asked if I read
Playboy for the articles. Articles? I answered. Are there articles in
Playboy ?
Apparently, there are because my guest today is Chris Napolitano, the magazine’s editorial director. If you look at the masthead, the only name listed higher is the magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner.
Napolitano began his career with
Playboy in 1988 as an editorial assistant in the fiction department and now, in his 20th year with the magazine, is responsible for the day-to-day editorial policy and operations of
Playboy magazine. He reports to Hef and is based in the company’s New York publishing headquarters.
ANDELMAN: So, when did you guys start slipping articles in between the photos?
NAPOLITANO: When did that happen? Ever since the first issue in 1954. In fact, we started slipping more nude photographs in the book over the next ensuing years and decades. It was pretty article-heavy right from the very beginning.
ANDELMAN: That’s true. I do know that because I have read an awful lot of articles in there. I’m a huge fan of the
Playboy interviews in particular, which are a wonderful part of the magazine, and I think there’s probably a lot of women out there who only read the magazine for things like the interview.
NAPOLITANO: It’s the one that gets attention. We have a great tradition going back more than 40 years with the
Playboy interview.
ANDELMAN: How do you decide who’s appropriate for the interview?
NAPOLITANO: Well, the rule of thumb is household name. We usually don’t introduce personalities or thinkers no matter how interesting we might feel the things that they have to say are. They need to reach a certain point of critical mass where people are going to seek out the magazine based on who we’re talking to.
ANDELMAN: It seems like in recent years the folks interviewed in there, it’s broadened a bit, it’s gotten a bit younger at times. It seems like there’ve been some rap stars in there, maybe some film stars that maybe 20 years ago might not have quite qualified.
NAPOLITANO: That’s right. One of the things we used to talk about was that we don’t get Al Pacino and
Godfather I, we get Al Pacino and
Godfather II. In other words, somebody who’s clearly established themselves as having a strong track record. But in terms of actors, the movie industry has very much changed since then and with films being in theaters for about two weeks and then going to DVD, everything moves a little bit faster. The actors are a little younger and perhaps not quite as iconic. We had a great interview with Bruce Willis that we just ran in the July issue. And we all agree that Bruce Willis is somebody that was pretty high up on the list of guys that our readers liked. And then we scratched our heads a little bit and realized that this was the third interview with Bruce Willis, which was pretty extraordinary. It was quite an unusual thing to go back to him. And I think that’s because they don’t make stars like they used to. So we’ve adapted.
ANDELMAN: I read that that was the third time for Willis. Some people would probably scratch their heads and say, “You’ve interviewed Bruce Willis at length three times?” What’s interesting, it seems, about a guy like Willis is he’s always got something to say. This time I think the big takeaway was that he has changed political parties. And you got into that, and that was
quite shocking thinking about how adamantly Republican he had been in recent years.
NAPOLITANO: We see a lot of the information that we publish in that long-form interview informs a lot of the coverage that Bruce Willis will get now for the next year or two. Any lengthy profile, everyone will use our interviews as a source and a sourcebook for various personalities. And that’s another thing that we are very proud of with the interview.
ANDELMAN: And I imagine that’s something that you look for, too, in terms of deciding who the interview will be. It’s someone who the public or the rest of the press will have to refer back to
Playboy .
NAPOLITANO: That’s right. They’re gonna be able to speak on a number of different subjects in depth, coherently and in an interesting way. These are all things that we think about when we assign the interview. A taciturn guy is not necessarily the best thing for us.
ANDELMAN: It’s got to be someone who has something to say and is willing to say it.
NAPOLITANO: Right. Exactly, exactly.
ANDELMAN: Who are the big guests out there right now that you haven’t been able to get or, for whatever reason, have not been able to bring into the
Playboy interview?
NAPOLITANO: Well, very often the hardest guests for us would be on the political side. I think that Hollywood responds very well to the kind of things that we do with the interviews. So, the guests usually come in Hollywood, it’s just a matter of time, when they feel that their project is right and that they’re willing to step out or that they want to finally let loose a little bit. So on the Hollywood side, I would love to hear from Angelina Jolie. On the political side, we’ve got a whole roster of political candidates for President out there. And I’m gonna cross my fingers and not really go into it too much, but we have had some good success with interesting some people in doing the interview for us, and as we roll out through the end of the year, you’ll see who they are.
ANDELMAN: I’m gonna take a guess, and I don’t expect you to confirm these, but I’m gonna guess that running for President, the three most interesting for your purposes would probably be Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and maybe Bloomberg if he runs. I’m guessing that Hillary Clinton just probably will not do it at all. Has she been asked and approached?
NAPOLITANO: We’ve been in conversation with Hillary and Bill, so we know where they stand with us.
ANDELMAN: That would be a no?
NAPOLITANO: Pretty much, yeah.
At this point. The idea is to kind of come around and make them have to say yes because everybody else is talking to us.
ANDELMAN: And what about in the literary area, the cultural area? One of the things that used to be fascinating to read is there were a lot of literary figures who would be interviewed in there, whether it be Norman Mailer, people like that. There doesn’t seem to be as many of those these days.
NAPOLITANO: I’ve kind of put on the slate that we should have our eye on John Updike for an interview. He’s a regular contributor to the magazine, but I think that he’s a shy guy and a shy public speaker. But he’s a very engaging guy, and I think that our readers would be interested, and it’s kind of funny that we haven’t quite covered him. Philip Roth is another guy that I want to bring in and land. Thomas Pynchon would be another person that I think would make headlines, perhaps a little bit off-beat for the bulk of our readers, but that would be another kind of literary find for us. But in general, the reason why you don’t see as many writers these days is when we look at the total package of the magazine, we’ve had extraordinarily good fortune in landing writers to write for us. So if we have them contributing pieces, we’re less inclined to try to find a way to get them in the magazine using the interview as a platform.
ANDELMAN: That makes sense. Of course, besides the interview, the other thing that
Playboy tends to be known for is getting celebrity women to pose for the magazine. I’m thinking that’s the other big part of the equation in terms of if
Playboy wants to make a big splash this month, it would love to have a big celebrity interview and a big celebrity photo spread.
NAPOLITANO: That’s right.
ANDELMAN: Is that a fair…?
NAPOLITANO: Uh huh, yep, yep, although we don’t tie the interview and photos together.
ANDELMAN: No, it’s just nice to have two big ones in the same issue.
NAPOLITANO: Absolutely, absolutely.
ANDELMAN: Two big
features, pardon me. I don’t want to suggest I meant anything other than that. Again, there was talk in the last couple years that celebrities, women, were not as inclined to pose for
Playboy as maybe they had been in the past, that they didn’t see it as the same path. Do you see that as true these days?
NAPOLITANO: Yes. I mean, I think that it’s a more complicated environment than it has been in the past. I think that, personally, a lot of celebrities would be more than happy to pose for us, but there are a number of people who have a lot at stake in their individual decisions. It’s not the same as when Sharon Stone and Philip Dixon decided to take some photographs. There’s a whole bunch of ramifications. They have endorsements, commercial endorsements, they have appearances at stake, and a bunch of advisors, and so it’s a really complicated process these days. And what we try to do is just reduce it to the idea that never mind the money, naturally the PR and establishing yourself and showing another side of yourself to the public is a major factor, and they should definitely consider that as a plus. But, also, it’s about taking a great photograph, a kind of photograph that will be seared in the memory of the national consciousness, and I think that’s something that doesn’t come up as often as it should in our conversations with them.
ANDELMAN: If the phone rings when we’re done, and it’s Angelina Jolie’s people and they’re calling to say, “Listen, Angelina would love to do the magazine, your choice, she’ll either do the interview, or she’ll do the photo spread,” which do you choose?
NAPOLITANO: Well, I certainly would choose the photo spread first. Absolutely.
ANDELMAN: Okay. So this is good. This is consistent with what I expected. I’m afraid I’d be disappointed if you said anything else, Chris. Who else would you like to have do a photo spread in the coming months to year?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, well, there are plenty of people. Anybody that is attractive and willing to embrace the sort of
Playboy spirit and the
Playboy lifestyle is on that list. It’s a great platform for reinvention and rejuvenation, so there’s a handful of young celebrities out there right now who are struggling a little bit or having personal struggles, and I’d see us as a great venue for them to kind of break out of that.
ANDELMAN: Let me guess. Lindsay Lohan?
NAPOLITANO: That would be one name.
ANDELMAN: Alright. Were you surprised at how upset Jessica Alba was when you ran a photo of her clothed on the cover of the magazine?
NAPOLITANO: Well, that’s a tricky area. That’s a tricky subject for us. Again, I think that it’s a group decision for when people embrace us or decide to cooperate with us. And it’s probably a group decision when there are upset feelings, maybe because other arrangements have been made for exposure for the personality or the celebrity that’s disruptive, or maybe it’s seen as a loss of control by the people who would like to be making these decisions for her. So, that’s about as far as I’ll go with that. I think this was more of a reaction by….This was not the way that people in Hollywood like to see things get done, and I think that the ultimate reaction to that was Jessica stepping out and saying that she did not want to be on the cover at the time that we put her on there.
ANDELMAN: Was that a political lesson for the editors of
Playboy for going forward?
NAPOLITANO: I don’t think it’s anything that we didn’t necessarily anticipate. You’ve got the celebrity tabloids that are gonna run any pictures and any stories about the stars that they think will drive newsstand sales and entice their readers. Then you’ve got the glossies with
Vanity Fair and others who have full cooperation from celebrities undoing things that are photo-driven essays with kind of bland stories attached to them.
Playboy is somewhere in the middle between those two things. The interview is something where the only negotiation is, “Are you gonna do it or not?” And we’re gonna ask the questions and you can trust us to publish what you say and nothing but. That course has been really helpful to us because they are never surprised by what the story is about because they know what came out of their mouth. So the flip side of that is that when they choose
Vanity Fair’s venue they know what they’re getting. They have no control over or some of the time when
Us or
In Style or
In Touch or any of those books go forward with or let alone
Star or any of those kind of things do it. And we see ourselves kind of in the middle. We’ll do what we want because, as mainstream as we are and as widely sold as we are, we have a little bit of an edge. There’s a little renegade quality to what we do.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Angelina Jolie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Willis, Chris Napolitano, David Chan, Hugh Hefner, John Updike, naked, Norman Mailer, nudity, Playboy, Russ Meyers, sex
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