Have any of you seen The September Issue – that so-called “reality” movie about life on the floor of Vogue magazine when they worked on their biggest issue ever?
I couldn’t wait to get a peep into the life of another magazine, how they work, inhouse bitchiness, nasty editors – yay! All the stuff I would love to see.
So am I the only one who thought it was a bit of a yawn? Yes, they work hard, but that’s because they’re reshooting a reshoot of a reshoot of a yellow jersey! And the editor? The portrayal of her was far better – and probably more real – in The Devil Wears Prada. Why would we think any editor would show their true colours on the big screen?
Where is the angst? Where are the deadline dramas? No magazine goes off to press without some mayhem or last-minute crisis.
I imagine if we were filmed on this floor the tempers, swearing and performance would make for far better viewing!
Conferences are a great start – we aren’t always polite, we often sigh, roll our eyes and relegate bad ideas to what we now refer to as the “special issue” for story suggestions we’ve heard over and over which that us cry with boredom. And we laugh often – and loudly. I’m sure it would make for far more interesting viewing – but then again if cameras were on us (at our suggestion) we’d probably control ourselves and what would appear would be a whitewash.
Although I’ve always loved the idea of monthly fashion magazine if The September issue is anything to go by I’d be asleep at my desk four out of five days a week! I’ve canvassed far and wide and have a couple of colleagues who are in my corner on this. Esmare loved it, as did a few others – so what did you think? Real or fake?
From the 7th floor: When one of our staffers suggested Charlize Theron for a cover for this week’s issue I literally groaned out loud in conference.
What do you say about such a boring person – honestly is there anything new other than that she has left her boyfriend (which everyone will already know by the time we’re on sale!)
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn. But it seemed I was alone in this. Esmare waltzed into my office after a day away and slapped down the newspaper story on Charlize saying: “I assume we are doing this story and running her on the cover!”. Lord, here we go again – although I tempered my yawn,groan, booooooored response and said I would canvas the staff.
So after much “research” – asking dozens of people, checking the circulation of our previous covers etc - we went with our original cover choice. Beautiful Diaan Lawrenson of 7de Laan and her fiancé Jody Abrahams announcing their baby news! 7de Laan is hugely popular with YOU readers and they’ve done so well for us before. What do you think? Who would you rather have seen on the cover? Let us know!
Linda Pietersen is senior deputy editor of YOU. She’s been many places, seen many things – and has enough fabulous stories to keep this blog going into eternity.