MEN

OF THE
YEAR

FINALLY…
A 99%
XXI THE BEST,
THE BRIGHTEST,
TRUMP-FREE
ISSUE! THE FASTEST
& THE MOST
WARREN SWAGGERIFIC
BEATTY
STARRING
USAIN BOLT
TOM FORD
THE REAL RYAN
REYNOLDS
HERO OF THIS
ELECTION
THE REAL
HERO OF THE AMERICA’S
OLYMPICS SUPER-SUAVE
JOHN ELWAY SUPERHERO
THE KIDS OF
‘ STRANGER
THINGS’
FASHION’S
NEW GENIUS
TRAVOLTA &
THE ‘O.J.’ CAST

TRUE-LIFE
ENCOUNTERS
WITH THE ARTIST
FORMERLY
KNOWN AS
PRINCE
 STARRING

WARREN
BEATTY
THE
ORIGINAL
HOLLYWOOD
PLAYBOY
RETURNS
SEE PAGE 194
THE NEW QUARTERLY FASHION MAGAZINE

SUBSCRIBE! ON NEWSSTANDS NOW

GQ.COM/GQSTYLESUB
or via AMAZON.COM
M E N ’ S S H O E S , F R O M L E F T: C H R I S T I A N LO U B O U T I N , P R A DA , J O H N VA R VATO S , G U C C I , G I O R G I O A R M A N I ( LOA F E R S ) , F LO R S H E I M I M P E R I A L , A N D G O R D O N R U S H . T I E ( FA R L E F T ) : G I O R G I O A R M A N I . WATC H : B R E I T L I N G .
PAU L S O N ’ S B LO U S E : E Q U I P M E N T. S K I R T: A L E X A N D E R WA N G AT S A K S F I F T H AV E N U E . E A R R I N G S : E L I Z A B E T H S T R E E T AT R O S E A R K . H E R R I N G ( B OT TO M ) : T I F FA N Y & C O . H E E L S : C H R I S T I A N LO U B O U T I N .

PAGE 1 ⁄ 3

• GQ Intelligence

PAGE 1 ⁄ 3

• Departments • GQ Intelligence

40 131
Letter from The Punch List
the Editor This was the year pop culture
60 turned on the police. Plus: the
GQHQ unexpected book of the summer
63
Manual 147
234 Wait for the Drop
Backstory We asked VINCE STAPLES to
An Adult Coloring Experience explain the surprise-album
trend that’s taking over music

148
The Man Who
Fell to Earth
Luke Aikins jumped out of
a plane without a parachute
AS TOLD TO NATHANIEL PENN

152
Conquering the
Appalachian Trail
How? By eating junk food
AS TOLD TO BENJY HANSEN-BUNDY

158
The Year of
Magical Parenting
If the glove PATTON OSWALT grapples with
don’t fit, the raising his daughter after his
show’s a hit. wife’s death
Suits, from 160
left, by Dolce & The Femmepire
Gabbana, Calvin Strikes Back
Klein Collection, Here’s how women won 2016
Burberry, Louis
Vuitton, Matteo 164
Perin, Z Zegna, The Gawker Stalker
and Boss. One lawyer teaches the press
manners BY JASON ZENGERLE

PETER HAPAK 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 3 1
 • The Breakouts

Some of this year’s best

performances came from our
freshest talents—so young, a
few of them can’t drive

198 Riz Ahmed

199 Adriana Ugarte
PAGE 2 ⁄ 3 200 Ruth Negga
201 Trevante
Rhodes
• Men of the Year 202 The ‘Stranger
Things’ Kids
204 Lucas Hedges
172 205 The ‘Get Down’
COVER: Crew
Ryan Reynolds
The handsomest, charmingest,
Blake Lively–est actor alive
had a super-heroic 2016
BY ANNA PEELE

194
COVER:
Warren Beatty
Eighteen years after
Bulworth, he’s got an Oscar
contender BY AMY WALLACE

COVER:
Usain Bolt
The fastest man on earth,
for the longest amount of time
BY DEVIN FRIEDMAN

178
Tom Ford
BY TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER

180
Team O.J. and
John Travolta
BY CAITY WEAVER

184
Black Athletes
Matter
BY MARK ANTHONY GREEN

185
Carmelo Anthony
BY MARK ANTHONY GREEN

186
John Elway
BY ANDREW CORSELLO

188
Donald Glover
BY MARK ANTHONY GREEN

206
Bernie Sanders
BY JASON ZENGERLE

216
Gucci Designer
Alessandro Michele
BY ZACH BARON

218
Joel Edgerton
BY ZACH BARON Usain Bolt is a
self-proclaimed
“lazy person.”
Necklace by Renvi.
His own watch
by Hublot.
Ring, vintage.

3 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 ALASDAIR MCLELLAN
 PAGE 3 ⁄ 3

• Features

190
Orlando:
The Day After
How these survivors of the
Pulse nightclub shooting—the
worst mass shooting in
American history, and one of
the year’s deadliest days—
found a way to forge ahead
BY SEAN FLYNN

208
The Chef Loses It
Sean Brock, one of the
country’s leading chefs, battled
a mysterious disease—and
the result is one of 2016’s most
inventive new restaurants
BY BRETT MARTIN

220
The Extraordinary
Ordinary Life
of the Artist
Formerly Known
as Prince
An oral history BY CHRIS HEATH

THE COVERS

Alasdair McLellan

On Ryan Reynolds
Dinner jacket, $2,495, shirt,
$595, bow tie, $125, and pocket
square by Ralph Lauren. Hair
by Kristan Serafino using Dior
Homme. Grooming by Kumi Craig
using ReVive Skincare. Both
Reynolds and Bolt (below), set
design by Dorothee Baussan for
Mary Howard Studio; produced
by Dan Worthington at Rosco
Production.

On Warren Beatty
Sweater, $825, and shirt,
$495, by Giorgio Armani.
Contributing stylist: Kelly McCabe
at Art Department. Set design by
Colin Donahue for Owl and the
Elephant. Produced by Tallulah
Bernard at Rosco Production.
Location: Fox Studios.

On Usain Bolt
Warren Beatty Coat, $3,140, by Gucci.
is about to add Necklace by Renvi.
to his 14 Oscar Grooming by Barry White at
nominations. barrywhitemensgrooming.com.
Jacket, $5,488, Where to buy it
by Louis Vuitton. Where are the items from this
Sweater, $825, page to page 205 available?
and shirt, $425, Go to GQ.com/style/fashion
by Giorgio Armani. -directories to find out. All prices
Sunglasses, quoted are approximate and
his own. subject to change.

3 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 ALASDAIR MCLELLAN
 gentlemen’s quarterly

®
editor-in- chief publisher, chief revenue officer
Jim Nelson Howard S. Mittman
DESIGN DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Stefanie Rapp
Fred Woodward Jim Moore ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, MARKETING L. Paul Robertson
MANAGING EDITOR Catherine Gundersen EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, Rory Stanton
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE EDITORS FINANCE & BUSINESS OPERATIONS
Devin Friedman Christopher Cox, Devin Gordon
EXECUTIVE DIGITAL DIRECTOR Mike Hofman advertising sales
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RETAIL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL FASHION
ARTICLES EDITORS Geoffrey Gagnon, Ross McCammon
SENIOR EDITORS Nick Marino, Daniel Riley Meredith Homet Bobby Graham
SENIOR EDITOR, ENTERTAINMENT Dana Mathews ADVERTISING DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS LUXURY GOODS DIRECTOR

STAFF WRITER Zach Baron Meghan Finnell Tim Begley

CULTURE EDITOR Anna Peele EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LUXURY & VIDEO ACCOUNT DIRECTOR
SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR John Ortved Diane Mattioli Kimberly Buonassisi
ASSOCIATE EDITOR W R I T E R /E D I T O R
LOS ANGELES Jennifer Grace
Mark Anthony Green Caity Weaver
MIDWEST Terry Dwyer
ASSISTANT EDITOR Benjy Hansen-Bundy
NORTHWEST Greg Barnes
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Brennan Carley, Andrew Goble,
Lauren Larson, Clay Skipper DETROIT Stephanie Schultz
ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Mary Anderson SALES DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL MARKETS Rula Al Amad
SOUTHWEST REPRESENTATIVE August Media
fashion
FASHION DIRECTOR Madeline Weeks SOUTHEAST REPRESENTATIVE Peter Zuckerman, Z - M E D I A
EUROPEAN TECH/FINANCE/TRAVEL Simpson Media, David Simpson
FASHION MARKET DIRECTOR Ted Stafford
BOOKINGS DIRECTOR Victoria Graham MIDDLE EAST Integrated Advertising Sales FZ LLC, Mia Cachero
FASHION EDITORS Lucy Armstrong, Garrett Munce, Jon Tietz GENERAL MANAGER, ADVERTISING Susi Park
CREDIT & LOCATION COORDINATOR Nanette Bruhn ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL Haein Yu
ASSISTANT TO THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Alexander-Julian Gibbson INTEGRATED BUSINESS DIRECTOR Brita Bergh Dahlback
BOOKINGS ASSISTANT Kerrie Cline BUSINESS MANAGER Janelle Teng
art & production DIGITAL SALES PLANNER DIGITAL CAMPAIGN MANAGERS

ART DIRECTOR Andre Jointe Shauna Teevens Matthew Riccio, Caryn Wong
DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR John Muñoz EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER Taylor Gefen
DESIGNERS Kristie Bailey, Griffin Funk, Martin Salazar
SALES ASSISTANTS Debra Konstadt Abramson, Alessia Bani,
ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Chelsea Lee Casimir Black, Elyse Peterson,
DIGITAL DESIGNER Jeffrey Kurtz Jennifer Peterson, Mariam Rastegar,
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Jim Gomez Andrea Sternheim
PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE Timothy J. Meneely
DIGITAL PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE Casey Jabbour creative services & marketing
EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS, INTEGRATED MARKETING Pamela Kaupinen, Fuaud Yasin
photo EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Patrick Lavergne
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Krista Prestek
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Krista Boyd
SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Justin O’Neill
DESIGN DIRECTOR Gregory Hall
PHOTO EDITORS Jolanta Alberty, Michael Allin
INTEGRATED DIRECTOR Taylor Daly
ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR Monica Siwiec
DIRECTOR, DIGITAL PRODUCTION Nicole DeLaRosa
ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Jared Schwartz
ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS, INTEGRATED MARKETING Mike Assenza, Kristin Johnson, Tyler Stewart
d i g i ta l
ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Jamie Stuart
EDITOR, GQ.COM Jonathan Wilde
SENIOR MANAGERS, INTEGRATED MARKETING Elisabeth Bundschuh, Timothy O’Keefe
MANAGING EDITOR Louise Hart
SENIOR DESIGNER Efi da Silva
DEPUTY EDITOR Kevin Nguyen
STYLE DIRECTOR Matt Sebra EXECUTIVE STYLIST Brett Fahlgren
MANAGER, INTEGRATED MARKETING Jordan Guskind
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR NEWS EDITOR
Ashley Fetters Chris Gayomali INTEGRATED MARKETING COORDINATOR Shannon Gruda
SUPERVISING VIDEO PRODUCER Dorenna Newton MARKETING COORDINATOR Reilly O’Connor
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT EDITORS Freddie Campion, John Lockett
ASSOC. DIRECTOR, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Joel Pavelski published by condé nast
SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Alex Reside CHAIRMAN EMERITUS S.I. Newhouse, Jr.
STYLE EDITOR Max Berlinger CHAIRMAN Charles H. Townsend
STYLE STAFF WRITERS Liza Corsillo, Justin Fenner, Jake Woolf PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr.
CULTURE WRITER Maggie Lange CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER David E. Geithner
HEAD OF PRODUCT & DESIGN Doug Seidman CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER, James M. Norton
ART DIRECTOR Hugo Broche PRESIDENT OF REVENUE, CONDÉ NAST

EVP–CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER Fred Santarpia

SENIOR DESIGNER Malcolm Dia
DEVELOPERS Fernando Alvarez, Isaac Torres CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER JoAnn Murray
CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER Cameron R. Blanchard
DATA ANALYST Daniel Perko
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER Edward Cudahy
copy & research EVP–CONSUMER MARKETING Monica Ray
ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR Laura L. Vitale SVP–BUSINESS OPERATIONS David Orlin
SENIOR COPY EDITOR Rebecca O’Connor S V P – M A N A G I N G D I R E C T O R – 23 S T O R I E S Josh Stinchcomb
RESEARCH DIRECTOR Lucas Zaleski SVP–NETWORK SALES & PARTNERSHIPS, CONDÉ NAST & Lisa Valentino
CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, CNÉ
RESEARCHER Riley Blanton
SVP–FINANCIAL PLANNING & ANALYSIS Suzanne Reinhardt
gq style S V P – S T R A T E G Y – 23 S T O R I E S Padraig Connolly
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Will Welch SVP–AD PRODUCTS & MONETIZATION David Adams
SENIOR EDITOR FASHION EDITOR SVP–LICENSING Cathy Hoffman Glosser
Noah Johnson Mobolaji Dawodu SVP–RESEARCH & ANALYTICS Stephanie Fried
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Samuel Hine SVP–DIGITAL OPERATIONS Larry Baach
SVP–HUMAN RESOURCES Nicole Zussman
contributors
GENERAL MANAGER–DIGITAL Matthew Starker
CORRESPONDENTS Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Robert Draper,
Sean Flynn, Chris Heath, c o n d é n a s t e n t e r ta i n m e n t
Jeanne Marie Laskas, Drew Magary, PRESIDENT Dawn Ostroff
Brett Martin, Michael Paterniti, EVP/GENERAL MANAGER–DIGITAL VIDEO Joy Marcus
Nathaniel Penn, Wells Tower, EVP–CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Sahar Elhabashi
Amy Wallace
EVP–MOTION PICTURES Jeremy Steckler
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT Jason Zengerle
EVP–ALTERNATIVE TV Joe LaBracio
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Sarah Ball, Jason Gay, EVP–CNÉ STUDIOS Al Edgington
Brendan Vaughan, Andy Ward
SVP–MARKETING & PARTNER MANAGEMENT Teal Newland
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Richard Burbridge, Pari Dukovic,
Nathaniel Goldberg, Inez & Vinoodh, condé nast international
Sebastian Kim, Paola Kudacki, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE Jonathan Newhouse
Martin Schoeller, Mark Seliger, PRESIDENT Nicholas Coleridge
Peggy Sirota, Michael Thompson,
Ben Watts Condé Nast is a global media company producing premium content
CONTRIBUTING STYLISTS Brian Coats, Kelly McCabe, Michael Nash for more than 263 million consumers in 30 markets.
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Carly Holden
www.condenast.com
S
E R E
C EDITORIAL BUSINESS ASSISTANT Jessie Mooney
A www.condenastinternational.com
Y
E

artistic director
P L

L E

Anna Wintour Those submitting manuscripts, photographs, artwork, or other materials to Gentlemen’s Quarterly for consideration
should not send originals unless specifically requested to do so by Gentlemen’s Quarterly in writing. Unsolicited
manuscripts, photographs, and other submitted materials must be accompanied by a self-addressed overnight-delivery
T

E
H

IS I return envelope, postage prepaid. However, Gentlemen’s Quarterly is not responsible for any unsolicited submissions.
M A G A Z
 LIKE WHAT
YOU SEE
Burberry
trench IN THE PAGES
coat
More OF GQ? NOW
on page YOU CAN
194
GET IT—AND

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P : A L A S D A I R M C L E L L A N ; S T E V E N PA N ; R O B E R T M A X W E L L ; T I M H O U T ; J A M E S R YA N G . T O P L E F T, T U R T L E N E C K : T O M A S M A I E R . L O C AT I O N : F O X S T U D I O S .
WEAR IT—
RIGHT AWAY

E A C H M O N T H ,
the editors of
GQ will select
a series of items from
our pages available
through our online
retail partner,
Mr Porter.com

T O L E A R N M O R E —
and see what we
have chosen for you
this month—go to
GQ.com/selects

Just a few of our picks from this issue...

Valentino scarf Vetements hoodie A.P.C. shirt Prada coat, shirt,

p. 88 p. 106 p. 219 and pants p. 204
 Readers’ Choice
Awards Edition

Every year we pour

ourselves some fine
bourbon, loosen our
smoking jackets, tally up
our page views, and
revel in the year’s most
popular mic drops.

Your Favorite…

…Photos Kim Kardashian

…Long-form
A Positive Life
Justin Heckert told the story
of Badger, a man who’d been
infected with HIV as a child—by
his father. Even the Internet’s
trolliest trolls were moved.
“Since I’ve forgiven him, that’s
all I can do. Just live my life and
show him what I’m made of.”
— BADGER , ON THE MAN
WHO INFECTED HIM WITH HIV
25 YEARS AGO
BEST of the BEST
e 2016 editions of
the “Best American” series
nodded to GQ stories
in several anthologies.
These days, Kim Kardashian “breaks the Internet” walking down
the street, but her photos in our July issue, by Mert Alas and
Marcus Piggott, obliterated the Internet. Smithereens of Internet are
still floating around in the atmosphere over Siberia, and a chorus
of dayummmmmm rose from land and sea. (Also: literally broke our
site.) Who knew Kim Kardashian nude in a meadow would be a hit?
…Contributor
Caity Weaver “She’s not a bimbo, but she’s not
especially clever.”
This was a busy year for — FRIEND OF MELANIA TRUMP ’ S
Caity Weaver. She caressed
Kim Kardashian’s breast, …Profile
she reveled in the yugeness of Melania Trump
Donald Trump’s palaces and
the goldness of his trash cans, Julia Ioffe traveled to Slovenia
she got to the bottom of the to unpack the myth of would-
Justin Bieber–monkey incident, be-First-Lady Melania Trump and
and Elon Musk briefly followed returned with a story that was
her on Twitter. When we as controversial and compelling
asked her to pick her favorite as a certain presidential
GQ stories of the year, she candidate she knows.
replied, “I nominate every Caity

FROM TOP: MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOTT (3); DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN/TRUNK ARCHIVE;
Weaver story.” After gentle
THE BEST AMERICAN
prodding, she picked these five …Instagram All Our Faves

TRAVEL WRITING
MITCH MOXLEY
“The Reddest Carpet,” March
THE BEST AMERICAN
SPORTS WRITING
DEVIN FRIEDMAN
“J. R. Smith Is Always Open,”
January
BUCKY M C MAHON
“Will These Robots Save
the World?,” November
DANIEL RILEY
“Jim Harbaugh Will Attack
This College Football
Season with ‘Enthusiasm
Unknown to Mankind,’ ”
September
THE BEST AMERICAN
ESSAYS
MICHAEL PATERNITI
“The Accident,” March
gq prefers that letters to the editor be sent to letters@gq.com.
letters may be edited.
[“lesser”—C.W.] masterpieces.
WET GRONK
AMERICAN SUMMER
“Like reading pure sunshine
(and vodka water).” (June)
THE FEDERAL BUREAU
OF WAY TOO MANY GUNS
“A rare (and astounding)
tale of stunning competence.”
(September)
REEFER MOMNESS
“Funniest opening sentence I’ve
ever read.” (June)
INSIDE THE CHURCH OF CHILI’S
“Crying, remembering the Chili’s
I never worked in.” (GQ.com)
THE CONFESSIONS OF R. KELLY
“ ‘Ignition’ is actually a remix
of ‘Ignition (Remix).’ WAAAAT!”
(February)
E R I C R AY D AV I D S O N ; V I C T O R D E M A R C H E L I E R . I L L U S T R AT I O N : M I C H A E L H O E W E L E R .
Gomez vs. Bieber continues as they face off as our most
popular Instagrams of 2016. Follow us at @GQ for more shots of
your style idols looking their best.
MOST COMMENTED ON
Even though Justin Bieber has since retired
from Instagram, the Beliebers were out in
full force in response to his cover shot. Many
comments featured all caps (“YAAASSS
BOO” @ellliethorpe) and a troubling number
of exclamation points (“That’s my husband
everyone!!!” @obey_a.monay).
MOST LIKED
This year, Selena Gomez made
Instahistory, reaching almost 6 million likes
on a picture of her drinking a Coke
through a patriotic straw. So we weren’t
all that surprised when she dominated
the @GQ account this year, likes-wise, with
this sexy shot from our May issue.

6 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
 Even after 13
years, there’s no
formal Best Stuff
process: Our
methodology isn’t
“academically
rigorous”; we
aren’t “entirely
responsible” with 2Ø16
the products; we
can’t claim not to
“keep the supercar
too long.” The
important part is:
We actually test
the s#!t out of
hundreds of
objects throughout
the year. And once
we’re done with
the testing, we ask
P R O P S T Y L I S T : R A C H E L S T I C K L E Y AT B E R N S T E I N & A N D R I U L L I

ourselves: Does
it work better than
anything like it?
Is it better-looking
than anything like
it? If the answer HONE
is “Hell yeah!” then TYPE 15
we have a winner. RAZOR 1 OF 8
There was a lot
of impressive
stuff this year, but
we can say, with
no hesitation and
only a little guilt,
this is the best.

TRAVIS
RATHBONE

DECEMBER 2016 GQ.COM 63

 SWITCH TO
A WHOLE NEW
FREQUENCY
•
Even high-end
headphones sound
low-end when you’re
plugging them directly
into a computer—or even
worse, a phone. JDS
Labs’ The Element
amp/digital-to-audio
converter enriches
your sound without
requiring audiophile
expertise: There’s only
THE SHARPEST one knob. Pair it with
WAY TO SHAVE the Focal ELEAR
• headphones, so clear
The weight and balance and comfortable you’ll
of Hone’s Type 15, re-listen to your favorite
a Dutch-born hunk of songs to hear all the
solid textured brass, sounds you’ve been
make the safety-razor cheated out of.
shave safer (and more +
stylish) than ever. The Element | $349
+ jdslabs.com | ELEAR
$140 | honeshaving.com $1,000 | focal.com

LOAD A LOWER-KEY PIPE

•
We don’t get why head shops are
still stocked with twisty, swirly
paraphernalia that seems inspired by
a trippy experience a glassblower had
in the ’80s. Meredith Arthur, the L.A.
craftswoman behind Haciendaware,
makes all her pipes from clay, then
airbrushes them for a look that finally
resembles your desired mind state.
2 OF 8 +
$70–$90 | haciendaware.bigcartel.com

2Ø16 SAFETY FIRST (BUT

STYLE A CLOSE SECOND)
•
An adult bicycle helmet usually looks
like something that comes with
matching kneepads and a free
subscription to SI Kids. But Hedon’s
Cortex helmet, with its simple
shape and calfskin trim, protects
your style as much as your noggin.
+
$250 | hedon.com

64 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

 2

3 OF 8

1 2Ø16

THE BOTTLES OF THE YEAR

3 4
(AND A BAR CART WORTHY OF THEM)
•
1 E S C U B AC L I Q U E U R
A cardamom-and-
caraway (at least, they’re
what hit us first) liqueur
created by London’s
innovative Sweetdram
distillery. $22
2 L A P H ROA I G LO R E
The same peat-bomb
Islay scotch your
father-in-law loves,
but dialed back to
more subtle levels of
earthy smoke. $125
5
3 ST. G E O RG E S P I R I T S
B RU T O A M E R I CA N O
The Bay Area craft
distiller’s citrus liqueur
makes for a slightly
sweeter Negroni. $30
4 J. R I E G E R & C O . G I N
A midwestern take
on classic London dry
gin, dreamed up by
Tanqueray’s longtime
master distiller and
made in Kansas City,
Missouri. $30
5 G I N L A N E B A R CA R T
Smoked brass plus
Carrara marble—as
minimal as a bar
cart gets. avenue-road
.com, $6,740

BLADES OF ENTERTAINING GLORY

•
The Azmaya cheese knife is a miniature cleaver, so
it can do what a set of cheese knives can (slice, scoop,
cube, and, uh, cleave) plus inspire conversation that’s
mercifully unrelated to cheese. The 5.5-inch Small Chef
knife from New Orleans’s Lockjaw Knives can handle
anything else you need to slice for a party—such as
the lemon twist for the Best Stuff martini you make using
five parts J. Rieger and one part Escubac (see above).
+
$75 | nalatanalata.com | $200 | lockjawknives.com

A COCKTAIL
TO GO
•
Rock and rye was
America’s O.G.
beverage combo—a
simple, reliable
19th-century saloon
treat that promised,
via a healthy helping
of rock candy, to
make any sub-par
whiskey palatable.
Hochstadter’s Slow
& Low Rock and Rye
helped bring it back
in 2014 by adding
raw honey, a dash
of bitters, and a hint
of orange. Now it’s
sippable straight
from a can that’ll fit in
your jacket pocket.
+
$3.99 | drinkslowand
low.com

70 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

 THE TANK
(WATCH) THAT
DOESN’T
COST AS MUCH
AS A TANK
(VEHICLE)
•
The Larsson & Jennings
Norse watch takes
on the legendary form
of Warhol’s Cartier
and JFK’s inauguration
Omega, but for
10 percent of the cost.
+
$315 | larssonand
jennings.com

4 OF 8

2Ø16

72 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

 BELTS THAT
DON’T MATCH
ANYTHING—
WHICH IS
THE POINT
•
These Sid Mashburn
belts represent
a rare fashion genus:
luxury items that are—
and actually appear
to be—“artisanal.” 5 OF 8
Beaded in Ghana, they
provide all the color
any look needs.
+
$125 each 2Ø16
sidmashburn.com

SUPERCAR, SUPERPRICE
•
The first-generation Acura NSX (1991–2005) was revolutionary: aluminum
construction and 500,000-mile reliability from a supercar with Ferrari performance.
Now the NSX is back as a hybrid and even more impressive than the original. It’s
as complicated as the million-dollar hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder, but with more feel
and feedback. The feature we love the most: Electric motors on the front two wheels
provide instant (and we mean instant ) power to make up for the momentary lag
associated with any turbo engine. It’s 75 percent of the 918 at 20 percent of the price.
+
Starts at $156,000 ($207,700 as driven by GQ )

76 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

 A FOOTBALL
THAT’S ALSO
YOUR COACH
•
The Wilson X
Connected Football
has an accelerometer
inside that pairs
with an app to track
your yardage, the
tightness of your spiral,
and a bunch of other
stats that’ll prove to
6 OF 8 your cousin that, no,
he couldn’t be a third-
stringer on Sundays if
he had “stayed with it.”
+
2Ø16 $200 | wilson.com

MR. COFFEE’S
MORE STYLISH
COUSIN
•
SWITCH YOUR
ALLEGIANCE This ceramic
FROM NYLON TO Sucabaruca Coffee
CASHMERE Set from Mjölk finally
• made us switch from
These cashmere the patience-trying
sweaters, hats, and French-press method
scarves from The to the even slower
Elder Statesman pour-over method. It
will make you look makes a great cup of
like a winner even if coffee, sure, but just as
you’re a Lakers fan. important, it’s basically
+ a modular sculpture
$240 (hat) | $600 (scarf) when it’s not being used.
$1,620 (sweater) +
barneys.com $208 | mjolk.ca

CONTRIBUTORS:
MARK BYRNE, ANDREW GOBLE, BENJY HANSEN-BUNDY, JOHN ORTVED

78 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

7 OF 8

2Ø16

THE CONTAINER
YOUR WHISKEY
DESERVES
•
Decanters are usually
cut-crystal behemoths
that suggest to your
guests, “I’d rather
be wearing an opera
cape.” The copper-
and-glass Tank
Whiskey Decanter
from Tom Dixon says
you care as much about
modern design as you
do about aged whiskey.
+
$110 | tomdixon.net

82 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016


2Ø16
THE FIRST
READER TO GUESS
WHAT THIS THING
DOES RECEIVES
A FREE WHATEVER
THIS THING IS
• •
At first glance, the Ico,
designed by Fort Standard
for OTHR, is just a small
piece of art for your
shelf. At second glance,
it’s still a small piece of
art. At third glance—look,
we could be here all
day. The deal is: It’s a
bottle opener made of
3-D-printed bronze. And,
after using it on dozens
and dozens of beers, we
can tell you: It works.
+ $25 each
$70 | othr.com
AN INDESTRUCTIBLE LEICA
•
The Great Battle of Megapixels is over. Even a $500 camera—or hell,
an iPhone—is going to take shots that are pretty damn good, so
the best camera makers all have their eyes on specialized products.
This year Leica, the brand long known for its gloriously minimal and
straight-up beautiful cameras, introduced the waterproof, drop-proof
Leica X-U, a rugged camera that doesn’t say “rugged camera.”
+
$2,950 | us.leica-camera.com
86 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016
8 OF 8
A STAPLER
THAT WILL MAKE
YOU START
PRINTING OUT
DOCUMENTS
AGAIN
We haven’t had a
stapler on our desk
since the second Bush
administration. It’s not
because we don’t enjoy
stapling things—we don’t,
but still—it’s because
our old Swingline is an
emblem of drudgery. This
stapler from Romeo
Maestri is an emblem
of form, function, and
office cool.
+
sidmashburn.com
 Man on
the Street

Call It the
Neck Tie of Winter
A statement scarf is a warm burst of color in a cold,
dark time. And we hate to tell you, but: It’s getting cold
and dark out there. So we sent a cast of New Yorkers
into the elements to model our favorites—and to show
how to wear the scarf without the scarf wearing you

H A I R : B A R R Y W H I T E AT B A R R Y W H I T E M E N S G R O O M I N G . C O M . G R O O M I N G : K U M I C R A I G U S I N G C L A R I N S M E N . O N G U Y S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T, 1 . S U N G L A S S E S : T O M F O R D .
B R A C E L E T : G I L E S & B R O T H E R . 2 . D O G - T A G N E C K L A C E : D E G S & S A L . N AV Y B R A C E L E T : D E L T O R O . W A T C H : N I X O N . 3 . U M B R E L L A : B U R B E R R Y. W A T C H : S H I N O L A .
4 . B E LT : D S Q U A R E D 2 . 5 . B R I E F C A S E : L O U I S V U I T T O N . G L A S S E S : H I S O W N . 6 . B A C K PA C K : N E I L B A R R E T T. B E LT : T R A S H A N D VA U D E V I L L E .
S E T H M U LV E Y, 4 1 KURTIS HILLIARD, 27
Artist Poet ALFREDO L.
Nautica $55 | macys.com Valentino $495 | mrporter.com RABINES, 38
Doctor
Thom Browne
New York $190
mrporter.com

ALFRED LINDBERG, 24 ANTONIO MENDOZA, 25

Communications consultant Massage therapist
Gucci $410 | gucci.com H&M $50 | hm.com

ANTHONY Clockwise from top left: 1. Jacket Saint Laurent at matchesfashion.com. Jeans
H U M P H R E Y, 1 9 The Kooples. 2. Jacket Hilfiger Edition. T-shirt Levi’s Vintage Clothing. Sweatpants
Waiter John Elliott. 3. Coat J.Crew Ludlow. Turtleneck Michael Bastian. Pants Salvatore
Coach New York Ferragamo. 4. Denim jacket Gap. Jeans Earnest Sewn. 5. Coat Dior Homme. Suit John
$95 | coach.com Varvatos. 6. Jacket Neil Barrett. Sweatshirt Palm Angels. Jeans Gap x GQ John Elliott.
Where to buy it? Go to GQ.com/style/fashion-directories

88 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016 PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES RYANG

 A more-festive-than-usual
Mark Anthony Green on two
shoe-related challenges,
The Style Guy a classic book (gift idea!), and a
monogrammed wallet (gift idea!)

I need a book on and bigger. Check

style. Timeless
stuff. Rules, some
principles. A primer.
I swear on Fred
Astaire’s ghost
that I’ve done my
due diligence to
find a less obvious
answer. But right
is right. And perfect
is perfect. Alan
Flusser’s Style and
the Man, first
published in 1996,
is still the best book
for understanding
the foundation
of men’s dressing.
My husband has
huge feet, which
makes buying shoes
a huge problem.
Everything we find
in size 15 is really,
really ugly. Where
should he look
that’s not a big-and-
tall store?
Look to the feet
of basketball players.
Thanks to those
rakish giants, more
and more designers
are making the
good stu≠ in size 14
out Del Toro, a
favorite of Russell
Westbrook. Then
try Balenciaga
and Alden.
Lately I’ve seen
people with pins
and buttons on their
denim jackets—
sometimes even
their blazers. I can’t
decide if it’s cool
or childish. What’s
your say?
I’ve seen it done
in really cool ways
(cue LeBron James’s
small pin at last
year’s ESPYs), and
I’ve seen it look
like the uniform at
Chotchkie’s in O∞ce
Space (cue Jennifer
Aniston flipping
the bird). Moral of
the story: The look
is only as childish
as the buttons. No
puns. No memes.
Nothing that says,
“Keep Calm and
Carry On.” The more
vintage, the better.
And cap the flair at
two or three pieces.

I just bought my first pair of nice shoes. But now I’m afraid
to scuff them, so I mostly keep them in the closet. Is it silly to
save them for special occasions?
This speaks to a bigger issue: Do I wear my good shit, or do
I save it because it’s good? It’s the Sneakerhead’s Dilemma, and it’s
confounded philosophers for decades. There really isn’t a right
or wrong answer, just di≠erent outlooks. Here’s mine: Wear them
as much as possible. Nice shoes especially. They can take a beating
without falling apart and more often than not look better with a
few war wounds. And the more you wear something, the less the price
tag hurts. Those $800 boots seem a lot less expensive when you wear
them four times a week. Neither option is wrong. Just note, I’ll be
wearing my nice clothes while yours will be at home, collecting dust.
May the Style Guy Suggest…
A Holiday Gift for the Very Particular Man
There’s a Style Guy in every family. Ya know, the
one who wears suede slippers to Thanksgiving
dinner despite Uncle Thad roasting him every
year. He has very particular taste. And you’re not
sure if you speak his sartorial language. Here’s
a foolproof gift: a monogrammed wallet from
Parisian leather god Goyard. The magic comes
when you take him to one of the Goyard stores
ANDREW GOBLE

across the country: Each one is basically a Taj

Mahal of leather goods. Plus, he can have just
about anything he wants printed on it. It’s the
perfect gift for the particular guy.
The Style Guy is in! Send questions to styleguy@GQ.com or @GQStyleGuy.
Wallet $495 | card holder $720 | goyard.com/store

100 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY JANNE IIVONEN

 Me
Men
e whho know
know
th
the
h ru
he r les
es
s—an
—and
d exa
xac
actly
tlly
Re b e l ho to brreak
how k th
t em

Style

You ma
Yo
You mayy Lea
eaveve
v e a LotLot off Ro Room omm
rec
recogn
ec ogn
ognize ize
ze hih m at at in
n Youourr Suit uitcascase
cas e

G R O O M I N G : B A R R Y W H I T E AT B A R R Y W H I T E M E N S G R O O M I N G . C O M . D E N I M J A C K E T : S U P R E M E X L E V I ’ S . T- S H I R T : V I N TA G E . J E A N S : S A I N T L A U R E N T. S N E A K E R S : VA N S . B A N D A N N A A N D J E W E L R Y : H I S O W N .
th s p
thi poin
oi t—tthe
oin h jau au nty
aunty “Wh
W en I’m m on th thee
bandan
ban dan a na, a th
a, those
ose road,
roa d I love
d, l ove
o to sh hop. p.
Japani
Jap animat
ani m ion
ma
mat on ey eyes.
es At
es. To fin
To i d pla lac
ces, es
least
lea stt you
yo know kn ow
kn w hish m stly
mos
mo t I hea e r a bou
ear outt
music.
mus ic.
icc. Metro
M etro
Me t Bo oomi
omin
om n stuff
stu ff fro r m p eop o lee
(reeal namnamee Lela Lela land
n
nd wh
whoh lilive ve the here. re SiS ncee
Wayne)
Way ne)e haa s prod prod
roduceuce
ced d Jan
Jaa uar
uaryy we’vve bee een
en
bas
ass ica
ically lly
lyy al
alll o f hip-
h ip-
ip to Lon
London don n lilike
k fivve
ke
hop
hop’s
op ’s mosm t vita tall
ta tim
m es. I likke to to go
a ist
art s s:
sts: s: Nic ickikkii Min
Minaj, a
aj, t Sel
to e fri f dge ges;
ge s it’
s; it’ss like
like
Drake,
Dra ke,
ke ee, Ka
Kanyenyy , G ucc u i a supe
u per-B r-B
-Barn
arr eys
arn eys.
Mane.
Man e. H He’’s the t hee I chec
heckk Supr Suuprreme em ou o t, t
p mar
pri maryy coll o abo orat
rator o
or P lace
Pal ace.. I trrave
ace vell wwithith
th
w ith
wit h t he tw twi
win n p ole
oless a bunc
bunc
unch h o f c lotlothes
ot heses,,
o Atll ant
of an a eego, ggo,
o, Yo
Youngun
ung b ut I’I’llll go
but g outout an and d buy
b uyy
T hug and
Th
Thu a nd
n Fut Future u e.
ure stu
t ff
ff and d noot eveneven
ve
H did
He d “J “Jump
u man
ump man,” ,”” weaar what w hat at I bro ough
ught.”t.
t.”
“Where
“Wh ere Ya At At,” ,” and
an
tha
that
ha t song
s ong ab about o t
out H e a Si
Hav Signa gn tu
gna tur
ure
the clc ub goi goin’ n up on
n’ M e
Mov
a Tues
Tu
ues
essdayday.. Y
day Youo
ou “EvEven en bef e ore
efore re I mov
moved ed
could
cou ldd arg
ar ue u tha thatt t his t Atl
to A ant anta, a, I was wasas
wiryy 23-y
wir 23-y
3-year ear-ol
ear -ol
o d,
d heavy
hea vyy int
nto
nt o h ead eadweaweaar. r
whoho dr d ropp
op ed out
opp ouu of I h ad dam millilillllion
ll ion
o ha hats.
ts
ts.
Moreho
Mor eh use
eho u at 19 9 But wh w hen e I star
en s tar
tarted
ted
to
o mak
makee beat b eat
a s, s is thee thihiss h hair
airsty
air style,
sty t le, a
goo od-n
d-natu atured
atu reded lot
ot of ti t imes
m it
me
mes i wo o uld
embodi
emb
mb odiodimen
od me t of
men o f h ip-
p juss t l ook
just o ok du d mb
hop’s
hop ’ss new gee nerrati at on.
o w h a ha
wit hat. t I was
t. wass ini
One
ne th that’
at’ss noctt u
at’ urn
rn al,
a the st studi
ud o maki
udi m aki
akingng
traa nsnati
transn
nsn n ati
a ona
at onn a l,,
nal, ‘Sk
‘Skyfa
Sk yfa
yfall’ ll’l wiw th h Tra
Travis
vis
moneye
mo
mon eyed,
eye d , gen
d, en n der
der-- Scott,
Sco tt an
tt, n d h e was was
neu
n u tra
t l, and annd sh
n s hot
o
ot get e t ting
t n g his
tin h iss hai h r
ha
th ough
thr ougugg h w ith h paste
pa a ste
stels.ls.
s bra
b a ided.
ideed.d He He had h th hiss
Herre,
H e , Met
M ro
Me r tel tee lss uss cam a o b and d ann
a a, a
how
h oww hee me meldsld
lds
ds Ni
ds Nikek
ke And the hits just a I tie
an
and t d i t a rrou ro
o u nd d
w i h Sain
wit S ain
a i t Laur
ai u eent
ent th he keep on coming. my hea
my h ea d a s a joke
head jo
o kee
samee way he mix
sam mixes
mi es Metro’s first and nd to ookok an an Ins I tag agram
agram
Tok
o kyo
ok yo wit w t h the t hee tra
t p. p solo album will p tu
pi
pic tur
u e. The
ur heen I ssttarted
artrted
—DEVIN FRIEDMAN drop next year. doi
do o ng it it eveevvery rryy day
ay
aandnd itt be
n b cam ame a tth
am hing
ngg .
ng.
Iff I weareaar Ni N kee or Sai Saaintntt
Laurren
Lau
Lauren
La ent, t eve evven if I d
even drresss
u p a l itt
up ttle lee mormo o e with
w ith
th
th
a sswea
w ter
wea te orr a
turr tle
tu
tur tll nec ckk—s — til ti l witith
th
h
the banda
b anda
ba daan nn
nna
na.””
n

Rememb
Rem e er:
em
emb e Cl
er C oth th
thes
he ess
Are Ge Gende nd de er-Free
rr-F Free ee
“Th
There
e wa wass a ti t mee
no onee wo would ull we
uld w ar a

Introducing femini
fem
em ini
bu
but
u t no
I d on’
ni ne
nine
n e clo
nott anym
on’tt know
clothe
a nym
k now
y ore
ow w
tthe
h s,
o .
wh
s

hy i t

the Man h ap pen

happen
hap
known
kno
fo
for
pened.
nown You
or a whiwhile,
wh
ed I’’ ve
ed.
Young
le,
e an
e,
ng Thu
ng
ve

and
T hugg
d

You’ve Been
h rea
he reallyllyy dodo eesn
does essn’t
sn’tt ccararee
about
abo u ‘femin
ut ‘fe
f minminine in ’ or
in
ine
‘mascu
‘ma
m sculin
sc
scu
cu linl in
ine.’
ee.’. ’ Pe
P opll e

Listening
t ked
ta
tal ke ab bo out
u Pr
ut Princ
inc
ince
nce
th
the
hee sa
s ame
mee wa way.. Who
way Who
eve
vee n s ays yss pip nk is i a
giirl colo
gir color?
oloor?? Li Lissten
Listen t , pink nkk

to All Year loo

ooks
oo
Whe
k coo
ks

people
peo
co l.l It
hen I w
ple we
wa
were
I pop
a s youn
eree lik
o ps.
o ngger
ike,
e,
err,

Atlant
Atl an
ant
nta über
ber-prprrod
p odu
ducer
cer Aww
ww,, man,
ww ann, yo ou got
g ot
Metro Boomin is s hi
h p-h
p op’
p- p’s
p P K?
PIN K? No Now w at
mostt iimpo
mos mporta
mp
mpo rtant
tant
nt bbeh
eh
e hind
n - S rem
Sup r e it’s t’ th he pink
p iink
nkk
the-sc
the -sc
s ene
enes figu
figure.
ig
igu
gure.e.. B
Buut he tha
hatt f lie
iess o ff the he
dresse
dre ss s like
sse
ss like
k a fro
ke roonntm
tm
manan
n she
h lvev s. E Eveve ryy tim i e.”e
e.

PHOTOGRAPH BY
104 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016 BJARNE JONASSON
 Drink
IMMERSIVE
EXPERIENCE
Bellocq, a Brooklyn
“tea atelier” equally

The fixated on loose-leaf

and design, crafted
this strainer from

Coffee- 3 silver-plated brass.

$29, bellocq.com

ization
of Tea
Now that cult coffee has
gone mass-market (cold
brew at Dunkin’?!), tea
is next in line to become
every caffeine fiend’s new
fix. As matcha replaces
the macchiato, a saggy old
bag just won’t do

P R O P S T Y L I S T : R A C H E L S T I C K L E Y AT B E R N S T E I N & A N D R I U L L I .

way, way better. Now, flavor that can hold kitchen Pinterest
we’re seeing the same its own in a latte. boards. The slickest
thing happen to tea, Oolong (3) is on the house is Samovar,
with an explosion rise thanks to its in San Francisco’s
of flavors and styles wine-like complexity Mission District,
About a decade ago, at a quality level that in a way that won’t and health halo. For paraphernalia—but which has futuristic
when cafés and coffee could give Sleepytime make you feel like some profound funk, you may find that, brewing stations and
roasters became night terrors. Sensing someone who brags there’s fermented like your cortado habit, too-pretty-to-open
obsessed with bean the sea change, about his PBS-tote- pu-erh (4), aged it’s worth leaving the $19 bags of green
origin, ideal milk new-school coffee bag collection. cakes of which can house for. Ryokucha. Still, it’s
temperature, and powerhouses like The tea that cost hundreds of Wherever you live, not above offering
mouthfeel, ordering La Colombe and won’t stop trending dollars. You can head to the gentrifying a seasonal pumpkin-
coffee began to Intelligentsia (1) is matcha (2), the make it all yourself, part of town (past spiced chai for those
seem like a lifestyle have rolled out their powdered favorite of course—with the coffee bar) to sip of us not totally sure
choice—a development own lines of tea. That with a heavy dose of handsome cups, Darjeeling surrounded how to pronounce
tolerable only because means it’s time to get antioxidants and a pots, bowls, whisks, by people updating Ryokucha.
the coffee itself got into the tea world—but concentrated grassy and strainers as your their Scandinavian- —CHRISTINE MUHLKE

108 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY TRAVIS RATHBONE

 3 Extreme Braking
You get it up to
Other
80 and then try to Fast-Track
stop the car inside Degrees
of a delineated
Drive “stop box” square
the size of a Jacuzzi.
Three even wilder
ways to get
behind the wheel
4 Drifting
Even if you never
get the hang of
drifting, spinning

Christmas at 120 MPH around about a

million times before
coming to a stop
The next time someone asks what you want for the holidays, tell on the grass right
them to sign you up for racing school. Then get ready to drift, drag, o≠ the track is
and obliterate the speed limit without rousing the po-po not entirely free
of delight.
NASCAR DRIVING
5 Drag Race Richard Petty
We all say we for speed so much a factor of 50 (“a W H AT YO U You’re like Vin Diesel Driving Experience
want “experience” as a hankering . I got road is a series of EXPERIENCE in The Fast and the Various tracks
gifts these days, behind the wheel at apexes”), making Furious, only you’re around the country
but too often that AMG Driving Academy overexcited small talk 1 Racing Line you and Michelle Take the driver’s seat
means “a hotel-room at Lime Rock Park with the other drivers Instruction Rodriguez is a cranky on iconic NASCAR-
experience” or a in Connecticut, but in your group, and You’re in a pack of 60-something track event tracks—or the
“fitness experience” there are tons of other buckling into your first five or six cars led o∞cial in a Lime passenger’s, if no
or an “immersive racing schools across car (you get to try as by an instructor (and Rock Park polo. amount of training
musical-theater the country. (AMG many as six different professional racer) makes you wanna
experience.” (Never also has academies high-performance who’s talking to you 6 The Hot Lap drive 165 mph.
again!) A real in Austin, Northern Mercedes-AMG through the radio Finally, you ride Packages vary by
experience allows California, and outside models over the in your car. (“Find shotgun around track, starting at
you to have a crazy Atlanta.) After listening course of the day), that apex!”) You the main track with $299, drivepetty.com.
amount of fun doing to a short presentation you motor through start out at relatively an instructor who
something you that improves your the infield over slow speeds (no cuts his turns at
don’t feel remotely concept of driving by to the main track. more than 90 mph), a speed that feels
qualified for. Like, focusing on vehicle totally unsafe (and
say, hammering a control, handling, that creates forces
souped-up Mercedes and turning with you’ve never felt in
around a racetrack. Lime Rock Park skill and e∞ciency. a car). It’s the most
At racing school, 2 3 Then you open terror you’ll feel all
you get to drive it up. My top day—and the most
someone else’s speed was 119 on fun.— R O S S M C C A M M O N
amazing cars, on the straightaway.
a professional track, 4
armed with only a 2 Agility Slalom The Price Tag ICE DRIVING
driver’s license and Essentially skiing Steep but worth Bridgestone Winter
a…well, not a need 1 with a car, you learn it. $1,895 for a full Driving School
the limits of your day. To see the Steamboat
vehicle’s handling author’s triumphant Springs, CO
Your experience by trying to avoid final-lap video, Go for a day to brush
may not include 5 hitting strategically go to amgacademy up on your safety
a pit crew, placed tiny orange .com/gallery/final handling, or spend
thousands of fans, cones. Turns out it -lap-videos and type a couple and skid
or the year 1955. can handle a lot. in “Ross.” like James Bond in
Die Another Day.
Classes start at $280

P H O T O G R A P H : G P L I B R A R Y L I M I T E D /A L A M Y. I L L U S T R A T I O N S : T A M E R K O S E L I ( 4 ) .
(Fifth Gear, the
two-day advanced
course, is $2,850),
winterdrive.com.

RALLY DRIVING
Team O’Neil
Rally School
Dalton, NH
After sliding around
the roads on the
school’s 585 acres,
navigating a highway
in a storm is
child’s play. One-Day
Rally Course
starts at $1,200,
teamoneil.com.

112 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016

 with vadouvan spice.) It’s the kind of
restaurant everyone wants to eat in now:
amazing food and flawless service, but
David Chang’s also a zero-pretense attitude—and a shock
to the palate every time you sit down.
Kitchen If Oxheart is a sniper rifle, then
Underbelly (in the artsy Montrose
neighborhood) is a shotgun—it takes the
same carefully sourced local ingredients
and blasts them into something Shepherd
defines as New American Creole. What
The Next Global Food that means is a fun and crazy (yet deadly
serious) menu representing every

Mecca Is in…Texas?! bit of diversity in Houston: Mexican

influences rub shoulders with Thai,
Cantonese, Sichuan, Korean, Punjabi—
When you think of “places I’m dying to eat,” Houston may not
be the first (or the 20th place) that comes to mind. It wasn’t for and, of course, Texas barbecue.
David Chang, either—until he went there to taste it for himself Yes, Houston has barbecue worthy of
its home state. (Order the gigantic beef ribs
at Killen’s.) Houston also has America’s
• A few years ago, when Linsanity ended that, but it’s true), and when you get best Vietnamese food. Pho Binh Bellaire
in N.Y.C. and Jeremy Lin signed with a collision of immigrants, the food scene is Justin Yu’s favorite spot, and now it’s
the Houston Rockets, I made a stupid is guaranteed to be bonkers. one of mine. Even great ramen can’t hang
comment on Twitter that I’d open a Houston also has cheap commercial with the soup they’re dishing up.
Momofuku in Houston just so I could and residential rents—oh, and no state All of this leads me to the one culinary
see Lin play. Houston food people did income tax—which means broke-ass cooks mash-up that best embodies what I love
not appreciate my dumb humor. and chefs can a≠ord to live and open here. about Houston, and that’s the evolution
After a handful of visits since then, Zoning laws are more permissive than of Vietnamese-Cajun food—think seafood,
I’ve realized the joke is on me: I wish an Amsterdam brothel. And customers rice, and herbs, French-tinged but also
I were opening in Houston, because it have cash to spend. very spicy. Crawfish & Noodles, the
just might be the next food capital Two chefs at the forefront of all things restaurant where I was indoctrinated
of America. I’ve always wondered where Houston are Justin Yu of Oxheart and into this fusion of cultures, makes me
the food in a Blade Runner–like future Chris Shepherd of Underbelly. These guys optimistic about gastronomy. It’s weird in
would appear first and what it would taste would be successful anywhere, and it’s the best possible ways. There’s nothing
like—and I genuinely believe it’s here. amazing what they’ve done in two very I enjoy more than the communal aspects
Partly that’s due to a demographic di≠erent parts of Houston. of sucking down a cauldron of crawfish
reality: By some measures, Houston Oxheart, in the Warehouse District, has heads with friends. This is the dish
is the U.S.A.’s most ethnically diverse one of the country’s most original tasting I think about all the time. It haunts me.
city (a bunch of New Yorkers just menus. (When I was there, I had the If I ever leave New York, I’m moving to
choked on their halal kebabs reading mung-bean crepe and the savory porridge Houston. This time I’m not joking. 

114 GQ.COM DECEMBER 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY GUY SHIELD


Want to Be a Genius?
Label Your Toiletries
Baz Luhrmann—the visionary behind The Great Gatsby,
Moulin Rouge!, and 2016’s Netflix breakout The Get Down—
likes to create lavish, messy worlds. To do that, he needs
order in everything else, from his mouthwash to his jeans
Creativity Starts with an Obsessively
Organized Closet
My office is in the dressing room. There are
always a lot of people with me when I’m
getting ready, and we’re having meetings
while I dress. That’s when I’m solving ideas
or having creative thoughts. The dressing
process has to allow for that, for the story
or whatever is happening, so that I can
be absorbed in it. So, jeans are in one
area, shirts are in another. It’s not like I have
a bunch of clothes higgledy-piggledy.
It’s the same in the bathroom. At the right
hand is the toothbrush, and then it goes
to the next thing, the mouthwash. The left
hand goes to the brush. And everything is
1 2 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
A Modest Proposal from… BAZ LUHRMANN
numbered, and there are lots of stickies.
I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but
if I go in and can’t find the clipper or razor
or whatever, I start to go, “Oh, we’re
doomed. Everything’s falling apart. There’s
no way anything can work. Let’s just stop
now.” Because you might have some
solution or some little imaginative risk in the
palm of your hand, and suddenly you’re
broken from your little dream or reverie.
The thing is that creativity—real
creativity—is by its very nature chaotic.
Think about how the universe is created: It’s a
whole lot of energy smashing against itself,
and stuff comes out. Now, managing all
that energy, or even creating a process to
have a creative-vision moment, that’s where
you have to be the opposite. You have to
employ process and method and systems.
Respect the Hair (and the Set)
The rules of my production company
are communication, transportation,
accommodation, and hair. People laugh
about the hair. But it can shut down sets in
ways you can’t imagine. And, really, “good
hair” is a symbol of spiritual well-being,
a reminder for people on both sides of the
camera to attend to their inner and outer
lives. Then, beyond hair, the creative space
has to inspire you to dream, to think, to play,
to create. And so my whole team puts
a lot of energy into creating environments
that are not just prosaic white spaces.
Then Completely Lose Your Mind
I am old enough to admit that I am addicted
to some kind of romance or romanticism,
even though I used to deny it vehemently.
But I understand the addiction to creating
worlds, or expressing oneself, in a way in
which things are better than they possibly
can be. Now, there’s a function in that,
but if you’re addicted to romance, you’re
also “wedded to calamity,” to quote
Shakespeare. Because, at some point, your
romantic environment and your romantic soul
are going to crash-land into the real world.
When I go to a restaurant to let loose,
the number one thing I say is “Don’t ask me
what I want to eat; don’t hand me a menu.”
I’m a director. My idea of a good time is
not making a decision. When I’m not doing
what I do, I’m a completely out-of-control
idiot. No one wants to see the person who’s
flying the airplane act like I do on his day
off. Usually, I go into a sort of fuzzy head
space and I let everything go. And then,
suddenly, I wake up in Cairo—which
actually happened once. I was in Paris, and
I might have had a couple of sherries at the
Ritz. And the next thing I know, I’m in Cairo.
That’s not the first time that’s happened. My
daughter, who is now 13, she’s rung me
MARCO GROB/TRUNK ARCHIVE
a couple of times and I’ve sort of sheepishly
answered, “Listen, I’m probably not in the
country right now.” She said, “Dad, this
is starting not to be funny. You have to let
us know when you’re going.” 
For more unexpected stories in gq, go to gq.com
/ unexpected. Brought to you by the 2017 Chevrolet
Malibu.
 Punch
A bombshell look
inside the slammer,
THE LIST
featuring America’s
EXPOSED! most hardened
fictional criminals
(PAGE 138).

SPECIAL
EDITION

Q IN A PERFECT WORLD, ALL COPS

would be like Lennie Briscoe,
the trench-coated ’90s folk hero
of the Law & Order mother ship.
He patrolled the 27th Precinct
with rumpled panache and per-
petually rolled eyes. His sterling
moral character was even nobler
contrasted with an appropriately
tortured backstory—divorce,
alcoholism, murdered daugh-
ter. Still, he always had enough
spunk to make a cringey dad
joke each time he visited a crime
scene. (“ree deaths and a kid-
napping; I’m only on my second
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF BYRON COHEN/FX; COURTESY OF M. OSTERREICHER AND ESPN FILMS; COURTESY OF BURGER KING.

O.J.:
cup of coffee!”) TV cops like
FRAMED Lennie Briscoe are pop-culture
BY THE comfort food—symbols of honor,
N E WS PA P E R B AC KG R O U N D : M I C H A E L B O D M A N N /G E T T Y I M AG E S . TO R N N E WS PA P E R T H R O U G H O U T: P E T E K A R I C I /G E T T Y I M AG E S .

L.A.P.D.? of masculini, of an Eastwoodian

America where justice prevails.
And this was the year pop cul-
ture turned against them.
We’ve occasionally seen
fictional rogue cops who've
diverged from the path of righ-
teousness—usually on premium
cable. But in 2016, as stories of
morally mur" law enforcement
pervaded the real-life news, that
kind of insurgency became the
norm. Much of the crime we saw
on-screen hinged on the change-
abili of truth, the hot potato of
guilt as our allegiances were
hurled between suspects and
law enforcement. It started at
the end of last year with Making
a Murderer, Netflix’s engross-
ing documentary about Steven
Avery, a destitute Wisconsin
man serving a life sentence
for murder. The series, which
became a phenomenon in 2016,
doesn’t come down either way on
Avery’s guilt, but it sure makes a
compelling case against the sher-
iff’s department—the camera
ORDER IN THE BASIC-CABLE MURDER watches officers patiently work
their prey, feeding them confes-
(GQ) COURT! BLOODBATH! NIGHTMARE! sions and conjuring damning
One magazine The women of evidence. On HBO’s The Night
brings monsters Lifetime movies Of, we rooted for everybody and
to justice. fight back.
nobody—specifically the lead
ÇÅ ÇÅ ÇÅ

E XC L U S I V E : T H E S H O C K I N G T R U T H A B O U T S H O N D A R H I M E S ! PG.136 12-2Ø16 131

 Steven Avery: maybe guilty,
surely railroaded.
detective, Dennis Box. Brilliant and
booze-pickled, he’s an idealistic comb-
over cop whose work turns lazy aer
decades in a morally skewed system.
He’s also maddeningly unknowable,
performing acts of calculated com-
passion that look like kindness in one
light and cruel in another.
Of course, 2016’s biest crime phe-
nomenon relied not on ambivalence
but something closer to certain: We
think O.J. did it, and we know the cops
bungled his case. Ryan Murphy’s The
People v. O.J. Simpson is a pastiche of
delicious ’90s porn and biting irony in
which Murphy neuters the dangerous
mass of charisma that was the Juice
into a pitiable man-child. Taking his
place as the Big Bad is Mark Fuhrman,
the bigoted cop who (maybe) tam-
pered with evidence and perjured
himself. Fuhrman is a villain out of
central casting, flaring his Voldemort
nostrils as he casually drops the
N-word. He literally has a collection of
Nazi medals. On a show about white
privilege, male privilege, and cop priv-
ilege, he embodies all three.
Whereas Murphy uses mustache-
twirling camp to stick it to the cops,
the exhaustive documentary O.J.:
Made in America tells the story of the
L.A.P.D. from 35,000 feet in the air,
chronicling a tortured history that
goes back 30 years. Like Making a
Murderer, the film reconstructs the
splintered relationship between a
communi and a police force. But
the L.A.P.D. aren’t the unscrupu-
lous schnooks we saw on Making a
Murderer—they operate on a much
larger scale, where generations of
corruption and violence foster such a
deep rot that even when the cops have
the right guy, they can’t get him con-
victed. Mark Fuhrman is there, too.
He’s still sure he did everything right.
So many of the cops we encoun-
tered on-screen this year wore these
moral horse blinders—they believed
that as officers appointed to uphold
the law, they had license to break
it to nail their guy. They had an
unshakable sense of their own moral
superiority. And that made them
scarier than any of the criminals they
chased.— E M I L Y L A N D A U
W
est Texas. A convoy 100 years ago. Then Foster just as fast, enforcing codes
of pickup trucks, shoots a machine gun at them. no one seems to really care
coming for blood. Our And they all meekly turn their about, trading the lightly racist
two protagonists, brothers trucks around, bowing to banter of their forefathers and
played by Chris Pine and Ben a future they can’t overcome. waiting for it all to end.
Foster, have robbed a Texas Hell or High Water is a classic It’s a movie about how late-
Midlands Bank, late in a crime Western, in the sense that it’s stage capitalism can sap life of
spree through the depressed about the growing obsolescence meaning; it also happens to be
vacancy of the contemporary of a way of life (that just an exhilarating advertisement
rural Southwest. Because it’s happens to be the way of life for the thrills of robbing banks
Texas, they’re not the only depicted in classic Westerns). with your brother. Pine, who
ones with guns. And so it comes Pine’s and Foster’s characters tends to float through big
to pass that as they flee their are robbing banks to get back studio films, is anchored three
latest job, they’re pursued by at a financial system that has feet in the earth. Bridges is a
a caravan of trucks, filled with robbed them of everything tornado moving at a leisurely
armed civilians, processing else. They’re being chased by three miles per hour. And
down the highway in the solemn, two lawmen, one of them a Texas, as the blood spills out
courtly tone of a posse setting transcendently laid-back Jeff on sand, remains Texas.
off into the same territory Bridges, who are fading away —ZACH BARON
(CR
HELL OR HIGH WATER SC IME)
OF ENE
The T-Bone Diner YEATHE
With Jeff Bridges (Marcus), Gil Birmingham R
(Alberto), and Margaret Bowman (Waitress)
MARCUS
Howdy, ma’am. How you doing
today?
WAITRESS
Hot. And I don’t mean the good
kind. So, what don’t you want?
ALBERTO
MARCUS FROM TOP: COURTESY OF NETFLIX; COURTESY OF CBS FILMS (2)
Pardon? I don’t want green beans, either.
WAITRESS WAITRESS
What don’t you want? Steaks cooked medium rare.
MARCUS ALBERTO
Oh well, I think I’ll just uh— Could I get my steak cooked
just a—
WAITRESS
You know I’ve been working here WAITRESS
for forty-four years. Ain’t That weren’t no question.
nobody ever ordered nothin’ but
T-Bone steak and a baked potato. ALBERTO
‘Cept this one asshole from New All right.
York, tried to order trout back
in 1987. We don’t sell no goddam WAITRESS
trout. T-Bone steaks. So, either Iced tea for you boys.
you don’t want the corn on the
cob, or you don’t want the green ALBERTO
beans, so what don’t you want? Iced tea’d be great.
MARCUS MARCUS
I don’t want green beans. Iced tea, yup. Thank you, ma’am.
 G AV E
L SO
UND

Every year, millions of crimes go unprosecuted.

ed. Fa
Fashio
i n
crimes. Perfect crimes. Some murders. And, of course,
urse, culture
cul
ultur
t e
tur
crimes. Well, no longer. Get ready for justice, GQ-style. — C . W .

Offense Offense Offense

MTV scheduling Burger King Everybody riding
Britney Spears to CHEETOS® Chicken 18-year-old
perform after Fries First Daughter
Beyoncé at the Malia Obama’s jock
2016 VMAs Complaint for having fun
Wanton and willful (dancing, wearing
Complaint criminal negligence, shorts, stimulating
Real Housewife Intentional infliction for selling consumers the Chicago
of New Jersey (and of emotional distress a product its own economy, etc.) at
recent minimum- on Britney Spears research indicates is Lollapalooza in July
security prisoner) “dangerously” cheesy
Teresa Giudice Relief Ordered Complaint
explains what it’s The defendant Relief Ordered Criminal trespassing
like to watch TV in must air two hours Every Burger on Malia’s jock
federal detention. of Britney music King must close

M A R C O P I R A C C I N I /A R C H I V I O M A R C O P I R A C C I N I / M O N D A D O R I P O R T F O L I O / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; C O U R T E S Y O F B U R G E R K I N G ; M A N D E L N G A N /A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S
—CAITY WEAVER videos recorded permanently; Relief Ordered
in her prime (1999 every CHEETOS® Everybody must
What shows are to 2003) from Chicken Fry must remain at least 100
popular in prison? 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. be tossed onto yards from Malia’s
Of course, my show, one Sunday night. a pile of flaming tires. jock at all times.
’cau I was there.
Empire. Love &
Hip Hop. Dancing
with the Stars. And
on the weeken :
Lifetime. They had a
sports room, where

A
lmost every (above, 1996), only sports were
offering from which I swear on, and a Spanish
the Lifetime is a real title I did room, with Spanish-
Movie Network not make up.

F R O M L E F T : C O L U M B I A -T R I S TA R T E L E V I S I O N / C O U R T E S Y O F E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N ; C I N DY O R D / G E T T Y I M A G E S ;
language television.
could have the Look, if you
same synopsis in want dazzling
TV Guide: Strong cinematography, Who’s in charge
of the remote?

THE BIGGEST CRIME

woman defeats go spend $17.50 MR. GAME OF
awful male for IMAX tickets. There was ROBOT THRONES
19 110
antagonist who (Or watch Enough somebody whose (VERIFIABLE)
work assignment

SHOWS OF THE YEAR

absolutely deserves again—very
his comeuppance. underrated!) was holding on to it.
Each one is But Lifetime
basically a low- movies are ready If you didn’t feel
budget version to deliver all like watching
(BY BODY COUNT)
of J.Lo’s Victimized you really want television, what AMERICAN THE THE
Woman canon out of a crime was the next best CRIME NIGHT OF AMERICANS
(Enough, The flick: a somewhat- thing to look at? 1 3 7
Boy Next Door) flawed-yet- I was there for four
that gives away always-relatable seasons—spring,
the entire plot heroine, a truly summer, fall,
in the title. Strong evil antagonist winter—and I have
woman finds whose downfall to say, the view was
out her neighbor you can gleefully breathtaking. I’ve
has a dark, sinister, and unreservedly never seen more
super-murder-y root for (and beautiful sunsets. HOW TO GET AWAY
past? My Neighbor’s count on), and just Purples and oranges
Secret, 2009. the right amount and pinks. I’m WITH THIS MANY SHOWS
Strong woman of glorious camp. tellin’ you, it was
defends adorable They know incredible!
ABOUT MURDER
adopted daughter perfectly well that Which of the following are real 2016
against psychotic you don’t always series about homicide, and which are just
Better than TV?
biological father want your movies random phrases with “murder” in them?
Definitely. I felt like
hell-bent on to ponder moral
I was gonna get
getting her back? ambiguity and 1 HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
asbestos in there
Adopting Terror, explore the flaws
or somethin’, ’cause 2 MURDER IN THE FIRST
2012. Strong inherent in our
there was mold. 3 MIDSOMER MURDERS
woman cracks a nation’s criminal-
Fresh air is great. THE
rowboat paddle justice system. 4 MURDER AMONG FRIENDS QUIZ
over the head of Sometimes, you 5 SIX DEGREES OF MURDER
her bad boyfriend just want a little
6 PASSPORT TO MURDER
turned killer? paddle-assisted
Mother, May I Sleep vengeance. 7 MURDER U
with Danger? —JAY WILLIS 8 MAKING A MURDERER
ANSWER

Making a Murderer, which premiered on Netflix in 2015.

1 3 6 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 All of the above were 2016 murder-based series except
WELL-INTENTIONED
TREASON

PHILIP & ELIZABETH JENNINGS ELLIOT ALDERSON (MR. ROBOT): EDWARD SNOWDEN (SNOWDEN):
(THE AMERICANS): Russian spies Global-financial-system hacker Whistle-blower
CRIMES COMMITTED BY
IMPOTENT WHITE MEN

TOBY HOWARD (HELL OR HIGH WATER): JOHN RAYBURN (BLOODLINE): BAZ BROWN (ANIMAL KINGDOM):
Bank robber (rural Texas) Brother killer Bank robber (Oceanside, CA)
DISORDERLY
CONDUCT

RACHEL WATSON ANNALISE KEATING RYAN LOCHTE

(THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN): Lush (HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER): Lush (TEAM USA): Lush

What crime
THE GQ SURVEY story scared
you most

THE AMERICANS’ as a child?

What was
COLD WAR CRIMINAL the most
horrific crime

MATTHEW
of the year?

What would

RHYS
your serial-
killer name be?
COURTESY OF CRAIG BLANKENHORN/FX

Who is more
nefarious: the
Hamburglar
or Trix Rabbit?

What’s the worst

crime you’ve
ever committed?

What social
behavior should
be illegal?

WARD SUTTON

NOAH HAWLEY, THE TV GENIUS BEHIND FX’S
‘FARGO’ AND THE FORTHCOMING UN-SUPERHERO
SUPERHERO SERIES ‘LEGION,’ ALSO WROTE
2016’S BOOK OF THE SUMMER, ‘BEFORE
THE FALL,’ ABOUT THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING
A PRIVATE-PLANE CRASH OFF MARTHA’S
VINEYARD. SO, HOW EXACTLY DOES HAWLEY
KEEP HIS STORIES STRAIGHT? BY DANIEL RILEY
THE ALBERTAN OIL PRAIRIES east of Calgary are speckled
with the sorts of towns that crop up during energy booms—towns that
thrive when gas is expensive and suffer when gas is cheap, but no
maer the price of gas always look perfectly suitable as the seing for
a season of Fargo. In its two seasons, the FX show’s been shot all over
these parts, and on a Tuesday in late September, creator and showrunner
Noah Hawley is checking out potential locations for a library-slash-
police-station (a highly Fargo-ian conceit in itself) for the season-to-be.
e first town he and his crew roll into is called Beiseker.
1 4 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
J A C K E T, S H I R T, A N D J E A N S : L E V I ’ S . T I E A N D B E LT : B R O O K S B R O T H E R S . C A R : C O O L C A R C A S T I N G .
Say it like they’d say it on the show—it’ll
serve as a pitch pipe for the voice in your
S T Y L I S T : A S H L E Y W E S T O N A T T H E W A L L G R O U P. G R O O M I N G : A LY S S A G A R C I A F O R O R I B E .
head, to make sure you read the accents
right throughout. Bi-succor. With its 800
residents and its gas wells and its smiling,
gleaming-eyed mascot, Squirt. “e Friendly
Skunk,” Hawley adds as we pass Squirt on
the edge of town, where he serves much the
same welcome as Babe the Blue Ox does
in Fargo (O.G., 1996) and Fargo (season one,
2014). e main drag of Beiseker is plagued
by deserted businesses, junking up the street
like roen teeth. It’s quiet as a set. is could
be the place they’re looking for.
Hawley is in Alberta for just three days
and there is much to accomplish and his time
is tight. Since Fargo won the Emmy for best
limited series in 2014, the many lines that
Hawley had thrown in the water during his
decades as a TV-, movie-, and book-writing
hustler have resulted in a haul of projects.
Films and shows and books; films and shows
based on those books. is year, he devel-
oped several features, created and wrote and
directed most of the first season of Legion
(a new un-superhero superhero show for
FX, due out in February), published a best-
selling novel (Before the Fall, a big-brained
JEFF RIEDEL
 “The reality is, every year is an entirely new show,” Hawley says of his anthology series Fargo. From left, Billy
Bob Thornton and Colin Hanks (season one); Ted Danson and Patrick Wilson (season two); Hawley on the season-two set.
why-, how-, and whodunit about a private-
plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard), knocked
out Before the Fall’s adapted screenplay,
and worked his way through a blueprint for
the third season of Fargo.
By late September, he’s finished writing
three of the ten episodes, and the plan is to
start shooting in eight weeks. Now is about
the time to get extremely serious about
some major decisions. “Since, don’t forget,
we’re starting from scratch,” he says in the
location-scouting van. “e reali is, every
year is an entirely new show.” New actors,
new stories, new seings. A unique creative
demand that exploits Hawley’s capaci to
whip up rich and unpredictable narratives
seemingly at will. In Fargo-land, the seasons
aren’t adaptations in any sense we’re familiar
with—not spin-offs of the movie characters
or repurposing of plot. Rather a transfer-
ence of tone, a certain you-know-it-when-
you-see-it-ness. And not just as it relates
to Fargo (film), but to any of the Coen broth-
ers’ stuff, Hawley says.
“ ’Cause Fargo is a state of mind, right?”
John Cameron, one of the show’s executive
producers, adds in the van. He’s the bridge to
the Coen brothers; he worked on the original
Fargo (and a half-dozen other Coen brothers
films) and was asked by Joel and Ethan to
consider taking on the TV project. “I called
them and I was like, ‘What is going on? You
guys don’t even own televisions, what are
you doing?’ And all they said was: ‘Read the
script.’ And like them, I was blown away.”
At 49, Hawley and his hot hand belie the
years-long slog that predated his sudden tri-
umphs. It’s an ascendance he jokingly refers
to as “a 20-year overnight success story.” He
wrote three novels before one was published
and published four before any really sold. He
pitched and worked on movies and shows for
14 years before a show he created made it past
a single season. But with Fargo, Legion, and
Before the Fall, he says, “I’ve suddenly reached
a point where the perception is that I have
e Secret to making something successl.”
Which is why he now has the opportuni to
take on most every project he pitches—which
is how you get a plate loaded like this one.
“It’s the same way your brain doesn’t
know when you’re ll—you’re still eating,
it takes a while,” he says. He hasn’t lost “the
freelancer’s muscle, the failure muscle,” and
so hasn’t yet trained himself to pump the
brakes. ere’s a calendar on his office wall
in Austin with events and cities, as well as
film and television and book projects, with
blocks of color showing him exactly how
much time he has to get each hunk of writ-
ing—each script revision, each manuscript
dra—out the door. (Hawley pro tip: “Be a
good first-dra writer.”)
Consider the process by which he cob-
bled together Before the Fall. e week aer
the 2014 Emmys, in a stretch of peak Fargo
fever, Hawley’s agent dusted off 150 pages of a
manuscript Hawley had set aside
when season one got picked up.
She sold the book and film rights
at auction that fall, which was
great, except Hawley had to
somehow pump out the rest of
the novel in little gaps before, level. It’s a compulsion.”
during, and aer the production
of Fargo’s second season. His edi-
tor gave him a publication date before they’d
even read a ll dra—“It was a huge leap of
faith on their part that I was going to stick the think we have to suffer personally to make
landing,” Hawley says—but the gamble was
exactly the right one. Before the Fall spent 14
weeks on the New York Times best-seller list
and was a runaway book of this summer.
Back in Beiseker, there are a few options
for a suitable library-slash-police-station for
the town of Eden Prairie, but none are quite
right: the communi school (too big); an
abandoned hardware store (no parking lot,
and Hawley’d wrien it with a parking lot in
mind). “We drive a lot of long distances out
here to go: ‘Nooo, this isn’t it.’ ”
e Beiseker Village Office, a municipal
museum that used to serve as the local rail
station, is a charmingly hokey red structure at
the edge of town (everything is at the edge, it’s these stories for the rewards that come back
a town of edges), and inside, a few volunteers,
all women, snap to action when Hawley and
his crew walk through the doors. While the
crew chat the women up, Hawley wanders
through the building on his own, mapping
the visual possibilities of the interiors against Horror Story: Hotel. And I said, ‘I dunno: Fargo:
what he’d spent months whipping up in his
head. Fargo’s third installment, you should
know, features Ewan McGregor playing
rival brothers, and is catalyzed by a feud over
a bequeathed stamp collection—which: Okay,
we’re in a season of Fargo now. Coen brothers
state of mind. Hawleywood.
On the location scout and off, Hawley
appears at all times meditative and mea-
sured, an efficient machine that reveals none
of its labor—quiet and cool exterior while the
engine’s humming ceaselessly: how to keep
organized the discrete universes, the over-
lapping story lines, the blizzard of decisions.
Working at creative high points in several
different worlds makes him a lot of things: a
story autocrat, an on-set CEO, but more than
anything, he’s a decider-in-chief. ough
not ever the dictatorial auteur that certain
praised TV-makers seem to fancy them-
selves. “In that, I truly believe that there’s a
version of this where everybody does their
“I write stories because
I have to write them.
It’s a sickness on some
best work in the time alloed, and then we
go home to our families,” he says. “I don’t
great art. If you’re prepared and organized
and you know what you’re looking for, you
can make great art and then go home.”
Hawley is busy these days, but he’s busy in
a manner that makes you not worry for him
if things dry up a lile, if there’s a correction
toward the norm. Because he’s been there
before; that’s where he lived for decades.
FROM LEFT: FX NETWORKS/EVERETT COLLECTION (2); COURTESY OF CHRIS LARGE/FX
When he published his fourth book, in 2012,
a book with real support behind it, it was
barely reviewed. “And it was this thing where
you begin to feel like, ‘Should I give this up?’
And having felt that feeling only contrib-
utes to the buoyancy of what happened with
Before the Fall. No, we don’t give up. I don’t write
to me. I write them because I have to write
them. It’s a sickness on some level. It’s a com-
pulsion.” It’s armor. It’s artillery. Stories at the
ready like bullets. “Aer the first season, they
asked if there was a subtitle, like American
Backlash?’ ” ere was no way it could live up
to the first season. And then it was even more
warmly received. “But the specter of that is
hanging over my head with everything I do,
that at some point somebody’s gonna say,
‘Who does this guy think he is?’ And I will
have to treat that the way I’ve treated every-
thing all along: What am I writing today?
What am I making today?” 
DANIEL RILEY is a GQ senior editor.
142 12-2Ø16
 G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
T H E Y E A R I N M U S I C

If an album didn’t shock

the hell out of us and dominate
Twitter, it probably didn’t
matter. We got Vince Staples
to appraise the surprise
factor—or lack thereof—for
each of this year’s drops

Beyoncé James Blake

Lemonade The Colour in
When & Where: Anything
April 23 on HBO When & Where:
and TIDAL May 6, everywhere
What: Sweet revenge What: Spirit guide
in album form for millennials
C N TO W E R : R I C K M A D O N I K / G E T T Y I M A G E S . S TA P L E S H E A D : J O H N N Y N U N E Z / G E T T Y I M A G E S . P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N F O R E D I TO R I A L P U R P O S E S .

Vince’s Verdict: Surprise:

“ ‘Oh, I didn’t know
Beyoncé came out’— Solange
no one says that. A Seat at the Table
That’s not a thing.” When & Where:
Surprise: September 30,
everywhere
Frank Ocean What: Prompted a
Endless and Blonde national discussion
When & Where: around feminine
August 19 and 20 blackness in America.
on Apple Music Surprise:
and iTunes
What: Everything Kendrick Lamar
we ever wanted untitled unmastered.
Vince’s Verdict: When & Where:
“We were waiting for March 3, everywhere
the album for a long What: A mixtape of
time. There’s no reason unfinished songs—still
to make posters.” better than pretty
Surprise: much every other rap
album this year
Kanye West Vince’s Verdict:
The Life of Pablo “I don’t think he was
When & Where: thinking, ‘I hope this
February 14 on TIDAL goes double platinum.’
What: The MSG That’s more of a
live-stream-slash- gift to his listener
fashion-show was a than anything else.”
defining moment of Surprise:
2016. The aftermath
was very Kanye:
He was tweaking Rihanna
the album even ANTI
after releasing it. When & Where:
Surprise: January 27 on TIDAL
What: TIDAL
Chance the accidentally leaked
Rapper the album early, took
Coloring Book it back after about
When & Where: 25 minutes, and then
May 12 on Apple Music released it again.
What: Chance’s gift Vince’s Verdict:
to humanity “There’s no such thing
Vince’s Verdict: as a surprise album if
“Chance doesn’t you follow the artist on
believe in selling music Instagram. You knew
because Chance has what was happening
a lot of morals and a the entire time because
lot of values behind you saw the pictures
the thing that he does.” in the studio.”
Surprise: Surprise:

EDDIE GUY 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 4 7

After a 130-second free fall, Aikins landed safe and sound.
me how much the wind was moving me
and what I would need to do to counter
it. If you jump out at 25,000 feet, you’re
probably gonna have seven or eight
different wind directions. I could think
I was going straight down but I might
really be moving at 17, 18 miles an hour
across the ground. At 17 miles an hour,
you’re gonna be across the net really fast.
It takes about 30 minutes to reach
altitude, and on the way up, I had about a
minute of thinking to myself: What
the hell am I doing? This is stupid! I have a
son! I have a wife! e sports psychiatrist
I worked with had told me that I was
gonna experience a moment like that.
I had structured my payments into thirds—
the first for agreeing to do the jump, the
second for training, and the last for doing
it. If I didn’t jump, I just wouldn’t have
goen that last third. I didn’t want money
weighing on my decision in that moment.
One minute before the jump, the plane’s
going about 90 miles an hour. e pilot
turns on the green light—then we open the
door. I look at all three of the guys who
were jumping with me. I wanted to have
the comfort of being with my friends,
my teammates, my trusted buddies. But
once I jumped out, there’s nothing that they
could do to help me. I look down. I see
the target. We’re exactly where I want to be.
I say, “Ready, set, go,” and we jump out.
1 5 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
e airplane’s actually going forward
much faster than you’re going down, so in
the first second, you drop 16 feet down,
but you’re probably going 300 feet forward.
I start moving toward the center a lile
bit. To do that, we have to angle our bodies,
our heads down a lile bit so that we
have surface area behind our center of
gravi rather than in front of it. To go
backward, you do the exact opposite. And
the same thing right and le. I'm in
the right area, within 1,000, 2,000 feet
horizontally of where I want to be.
At 3,000 feet, all my lights are white. I’m
in a perfect spot. I’m like, I got it! But then
I moved a lile too far forward. So I started
backing up. en I felt like I wasn’t backing
up fast enough, so I gave it the ll speed
backward for just a second—and I shot too
far. So now I’m back behind the center of
the net. I’m maybe at 2,000 feet, and I’m like,
Oh shit. I put my hands back and moved
forward a tiny bit. Okay. Now I stop moving.
I’m a lile bit le of center from where
I wanted to be. But I’m still over the net.
At 350 feet, I need to roll over to land
on my back. I’m not exactly in the center,
but we’ve tested all the way to the edge,
and I’m well within the safe parameters.
I heard my ground speed in my helmet
speakers: ree miles an hour. Two. And
then I heard nothing. at means you’re
not moving at all. You’re coming perfectly
G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
E X T R E M E B E H A V I O R
straight down, countering the wind
perfectly. I roll over to my side, to my back.
I look up at the s , I tuck my chin to
my chest, make sure my mouth is closed,
and I start geing tighter and tighter
and tighter, because I know I’m about to
hit, I know I’m about to hit.…
About one second aer I roll to my
back, I hit the net. I almost can’t describe it.
It was firm, but not hard. ere was no
jarring, never a smack of an impact. It was
just a fwhoooahh! It grabs you and slows
you down real quick. As it captured me,
I said a couple of curse words: “Fuck yeah,
buddy! Fuck yeah!” e net rolled me—doot-
doot-doot—three rolls to the middle. I lay
there on my back, and I was like, Whew! e
adrenaline rush was more overwhelming
than anything I’ve ever experienced.
M A R K D AV I S / G E T T Y I M A G E S F O R S T R I D E G U M ( 4 )
All of a sudden, my back touches the
ground. I didn’t realize it, but the whole
time they were lowering the net. And that
was the moment that I was like, It’s over.
We did it. I get up, and the medic’s coming
toward me. We had a deal that I didn’t
need this crazy checkout. Either I was
gonna be okay or I wasn’t. ere’s not a lot
of gray area on this. I’m like, I’m good! I have
life-insurance coverage that includes
s diving, but I didn’t specifically ask if they
covered jumping without a parachute. 
NATHANIEL PENN is a GQ correspondent.
 G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
E X T R E M E B E H A V I O R

Meltzer claims he can eat a bucket of
chicken without even blinking.
mushrooms growing on the trees, not
the overlooks. You know, I live out west.
I get plen of overlooks.
WE KEPT THE BREAKFAST prey light.
I’d usually have two yogurts and then walk
out with a blueberry muffin or a banana.
I’d go for eight or ten miles to the next stop,
and my dad, who was part of my support
crew, would display a bunch of food on the
table. Anything from a PB&J to a cinnamon
bun to maybe a candy bar to some bacon
or some es or French toast, stuff like that.
We made probably five stops per day over
the course of 48 miles. I was drinking four
or five Red Bulls per day. A lot of times,
I’d take a piece of pizza to go. But I’ve never my hands, so I don’t come up with a flapper
had a problem with my belly.
I've always had an iron stomach.
Coming into camp at the end
of the day, my dad would have
a lile bin of water with some
soap in it. First thing he’d do
is clean my feet from my knees
down. Look for blisters, make
sure everything was okay.
en I would put my feet up on
a crate, and I would eat while
icing my shins. My crew chief,
Eric [Belz], would have made me
a killer meal. Could be a big, fat
rib-eye steak with broccoli or asparagus, and
a potato or French fries. With all that food,
I could still throw down a small blueberry pie
for dessert. Ice cream is an amazing thing.
I would eat like a pint in three minutes.
at all would take about 10, 15 minutes, and
then I would go to bed. Like super fast.
AT ONE POINT my wife was running
behind me, and we weren’t talking for a
while. When she said something, I turned
around and—bam!—slammed down on
my hip, right on the hip bone. at hurt for
a week. I probably crashed about a hundred
times. You don’t always go down super
hard. I wear bike gloves when I run to save
every time. How many times did I stub my
toe? I’d say a thousand. At least.
One night I pulled in and thought, “God,
my foot is killing me.” Every time I sat
down, I had to raise my leg above the ground
so it wouldn’t throb. It was horrible. I was
diagnosing it as a symptom of my neuroma,
which is inflammation of the nerve. A good
friend of mine saw it and said, “No, that’s
a really deep blister. Do you have anything
to lance it?” We tried a safe pin and got
a lile bit of fluid out, but we had to use a
surgical needle to get the rest.
I did the poking. He just pointed where to
do it. We pulled all the fluid out, and it wasn’t
that much. It was just really, really deep.
I cleaned it off and threw some moleskin
underneath it to protect it. I put my shoe
on and took off. e pain was gone. I’ve never
experienced such incredible gnarly pain
reduced to nothing in a maer of ten minutes.
It takes about three and a half months to
really recover from a run like this. Right now
my body is very fragile. My legs are super
heavy. I’m not going to go for a run anytime
soon. I still feel like eating everything in sight.
I’m hungry all the time. I’m so hungry, I could
eat everything in my house right now. 
BENJY HANSEN-BUNDY is a GQ
assistant editor.

TOP: COURTESY OF INTERPRET STUDIOS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL. OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS: SEE ADDITIONAL CREDITS.
• Every Last Thing Karl Meltzer Ate Along the Way
Filling up on an average of 7,500 calories per day isn't as easy—or fun—as you might think

30 2 lbs.

45
86 2 lbs. dinner 20
24 portions
80
6
6 1,200
1 lb.

25 45 dinner 190
12 45 dinner 6 portions
20 48
portions
45 dinner
portions

½ lb. 18
18 8 45 dinner 120 4 gal. 45 dinner 45 dinner
portions portions portions
AND
12 lbs. bacon, 20 sausage links, 20 patties, 8 eggs scrambled, 8 fried, 4 omelets, 18 hash browns, 16 crepes,
4 mini breakfast burritos, 3 breakfast sandwiches, 12 pastries, 2 plates of steak and eggs, 2 biscuits
with gravy, 8 bananas, 40 strawberries, 6 fig bars, 16 honey buns, 30 glazed doughnuts, 4 bologna sandwiches,
6 large boxes of Nerds, 80 oatmeal cookies, 1 lb. beef jerky, 10 (3 oz.) portions of steak or chicken,
15 brownies, 30 oatmeal pies, 6 whoopie pies, 45 butterscotch Tastykakes, 12 chicken or steak quesadillas,
12 grilled cheeses with meat, 6 Sugar Daddys, 30 Tootsie Rolls, 20 Starbursts, 195 cans of mandarin oranges
or peaches, 2 chicken-noodle soups, 4 steak-and-cheese sandwiches, 6 calzones, 4 pulled-pork sandwiches,
30 100 Grand bars, 40 Milky Ways, 4 portions of lasagna, 12 chicken enchiladas, 1 lb. salmon, 4 lbs. steak,
1 lb. pork loin, 1 lb. rotisserie chicken, 1 lb. mac and cheese, 12 cheeseburgers, 12 pizza pockets, 6 fish
tacos, 12 wings, 46 beers, average dinner portions of rice, pasta, squash, bok choy, peppers, and green beans

1 5 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6

IVE MONTHS and ten days ago, as
I write this, I became a single father.
I was half of an amazing parenting
team, except we weren’t equals.
Michelle was the point person,
researcher, planner, and expediter.
I was the grunt, office assistant,
instruction follower, and urban Sherpa.
I did idiot sweeps before we le hotel rooms
and ran checklists before we aended
school nctions and boarded planes. But
Michelle put those lists together. She knew
how to use my OCD to our lile family’s
advantage. And her super-mom skills were
one brilliant facet of the dark jewel she
was—true-crime journalist, online sleuth,
tireless finder of half-remembered facts, and
craer of devastating murder prose. I was
looking forward to spending my life with
the single most original mind I’d ever
encountered. And now? Gone. All gone.
It feels like a walk-on character is being
asked to carry an epic film aer the star
has been wiped from the screen. Imagine
Frances McDormand dying in the first act of
Fargo and her dim-bulb patrol partner—the
one who can’t recognize dealer plates—has
to bring William H. Macy to justice.
I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I want
to tune out the world and hide under the
covers and never leave my house again and
send our daughter, Alice, off to live with
her cousins in Chicago, because they won’t
screw her up the way I know I will.
Somebody help me! I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
But then I think back to when I became
a father—to when Michelle and I became
parents together. I felt the same terror.
I longed for the same retreat. And somehow
I sort of half breathed in and clumsily
took steps forward and I screwed up a lot
of stuff—we screwed up a lot of stuff,
Michelle and I—but eventually we got the
hang of it. We had it. Or our version of “it.”
And I think back even rther. Back to
when Michelle and I first married. I’d
somehow landed a woman far above my
pay grade, in looks and intelligence and
personali. And yet I felt the same terror
and pull of retreat and safe to the old,
no-strings life of a single comedian/actor in
1 5 8 1 2 - 2 Ø
0 1 6
his 20s and 30s in Los Angeles. Beholden to
no one. e days stretching out in a fluffy
road of marshmallow leisure leading all the
way up to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
But…I got the hang of it.
You will never be prepared for anything
you do, ever. Not the first time. Training and
practice are out the window the second they
meet experience. But you’ll get beer. I have
subjective yet ironclad knowledge of this.
is is my first time being a single father.
I’ve missed forms for school. I’ve forgoen
to stock the fridge with food she likes. I’ve
run out of socks for her. I’ve run out of
socks for me. It sucked and it was a hassle
every time, but the world kept turning. I said,
“Whoops, my bad,” and fixed it and kept
stumbling forward. Now I know where to buy
the socks she likes. I asked two parents at her
school to help me with forms and scheduling.
I’m geing good at sniffing out weekend
activities and scheduling playdates and
navigating time and the ci to get her and
myself where we need to go every day. I work
a creative job, but I live a practical life. If I can
persuade a comedy club ll of indifferent
drunks to like me, I can have my daughter
ready for soccer on a Saturday morning.
I’m going to keep going forward, looking
stupid and clumsy and inexperienced at first,
then eventually geing it, until the next
jolt comes, and the next floor drops out from
under me, until there are no more floors.
G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
F A T H E R H O O D
In April, the author’s
wife, crime writer Michelle
McNamara, died suddenly
in her sleep at age 46. In
an instant, he became a
widower—and single parent to
their 7-year-old daughter.
Here, the actor and comedian
writes about the only job
he’s got that really matters
right now: being a dad
B Y PATTON OSWALT
I don’t know what kind of single father
you are, if you are one or ever will be
one. If you’re widowed or divorced, adopter
or elder sibling. If you’re feeling any fear
or self-doubt, reassure yourself with the
fact that I’m doing this. Me. Spend an
hour with me sometime. I can’t drive stick.
I can’t scramble an e. I can’t ice-skate.
But I’m doing this. Being a father. I’m
in charge of another human being. So you
can do this. I promise.
And to show you I’m on the up-and-up?
I’ve also been lying to you. Because none
of this is for you.
It is for Alice.
I’m moving forward—clumsily, stupidly,
blindly—because of the kind of person
Alice is. She’s got so much of Michelle in
her. And Michelle was living her life
moving forward. And she took me forward
with her. Just like I know Alice will. So
I’m going to keep moving forward. So I can
be there with you if you need me, Alice.
Because I’ll need you.
I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Because
of you, Alice. 
C O U R T E S Y O F PAT T O N O S WA LT
 G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
W O T Y 2 0 1 6

#STILLWHITE
HOW TO BE The Inevitable
i Oscar Ladies
i of the Year
FAMOUS-ER
IN 2016 NATALIE PORTMAN in JACKIE EMMA STONE in LA LA LAND
The fame
landscape is La-la-la
increasingly ...
open to scrappy
social-media
savants—some
with talent, some
with talented
friends

C O L L E E N H AY E S / F X / E V E R E T T C O L L E C T I O N ; E Z R A S H AW/ G E T T Y I M A G E S ; C O U R T E S Y O F J E N N A M A R B L E S / Y O U T U B E ; C O U R T E S Y O F J U L Z G O D D A R D ; C O U R T E S Y O F I N S TA G R A M / S O F I A R I C H I E
FRIENDS
WITH CELEBS

NOMINATED FOR: Taking on an iconic role and NOMINATED FOR: Making a musical this enjoyable. It’s a
swinging the emotional wrecking ball. challenging task, but she did it with charm to spare.

OSCAR CLIP: Incensed lash-out at Bobby OSCAR CLIP: The bravura finale

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T : C O U R T E S Y O F F O X S E A R C H L I G H T ; C O U R T E S Y O F D A L E R O B I N E T T E / L I O N S G AT E ; K E V I N M A Z U R /A N H E U S E R - B U S C H / G E T T Y I M A G E S ;
MAY WIN B/C: The academy loves a good period piece. MAY WIN B/C: It’s a musical.

MAY LOSE B/C: JFK wasn’t actually a great president. MAY LOSE B/C: It’s a musical.
Sofia Richie
Claim to Fame: INADVERTENT SEXINESS: Draining her wine at dinner INADVERTENT SEXINESS: It’s not very inadvertent.
Dated Justin
Bieber; Lionel
Richie’s daughter
Social Clout:
1.7M on Instagram are
Moms to
gross, o.
MALIA OBAMA
WOMEN WIN ALL THE THE MILLENNIALS’
MEDALS IN RIO (AND REDEEMER
STAY CLASSY DOING IT) The generation that
includes the teens making
From the green-tinted pools to Snapchat worth $2.5B,
the aggressively pink floor mats, as well as the 26-year-old
the American women went big in CEO of that same company,
Rio Janeiro and carri the has been taking a lot of flak
YesJulz men on their shoulders with 61 total for the selfie-ization of our
Claim to Fame: medals, including 27 golds. Lilly society. Malia Obama is proof
Snapchat model King wagged her finger at Russian that millennials are not a lost
Social Clout: doping and then out-swam her cause—she’s managed to
300K on Snapchat opponents. Katie Ledecky pulled Moms Now Funnier break out of the most secure
five more medals out of the pool. household in the country
Allyson Felix sprinted for three. The
Than Dads and do her thing.
basketball team took home gold. The archetypal trope Kevin James). There’s Gap yea
And so did team gymnastics—not to of American-family a very pregnant Ali bitches r,
.
mention Simone Biles, who snagged comedy—you know, Wong’s special, Baby
four more medals on her own. We’d the well-intentioned Cobra —basically a
call that a banner year for Title IX! but dopey dad and TED talk on bodily
his exasperated wife fluids. It all adds up
I want careening through to a golden age of
the gold. ddomestic scenarios— mom jokes. Don’t
Jenna hhas finally been get us wrong, we love
Marbles ssubverted. There’s Mila Louie. But Pamela
Claim to Fam
me: Kunis in Bad Moms
K Adlon’s Better
Internet ttaking the low road of Things —a saga of
comedian public nudity and
p single motherhood
Social Clout:: d
drunken rampages à la in Hollywood—is
16.5M on YouT
Tube Will Ferrell. There’s
W not only applicable to
Allison Janney’s well-
A a larger audience,
llit, Emmy-nominated it’s darker, more
prime-time role on
p realistic, and, dare
CBS’s Mom (move over,
C we say it, funnier.
ACTUAL TALENT

Anthony’s WikiLeaks “Grab them

YIK ES.

weiner pic Julian Assange’s by the pussy”

Sending dick pics is one personal grudge Trump hits the lowest
thing. Tweeting one is far against the Clintons point for a nominee since
worse. Having your kid is not a reason to Strom Thurmond and
in the photo? Unforgivable. abet the Russian “Segregation forever.”

1 6 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6

Harder won Hogan a $140 million judgment.
Melania Trump against the Daily Mail and
a Maryland bloer for reporting a rumor
that she’d once worked as an escort.
Deposed Fox News head Roger Ailes has
reportedly retained Harder to represent
him in a potential libel suit against New York a leer to Univision threatening to sue
magazine and the writer Gabriel Sherman.
(Full disclosure: I write for New York.)
He’s currently suing two financial bloers
on behalf of the investor Barry Honig.
Certainly, Harder’s most headline-
grabbing role could come in what would
be the libel suit of the century: Donald
Trump v. The New York Times. Trump has
hinted that he’ll sue the Gray Lady for
“irresponsible intent” (which is not actually him—and the perils that
a legal term) in response to the paper’s
reporting on his taxes and a spate of alleged something that’s factually
sexual assaults. While Harder re ses to
talk specifics about Trump, he doesn’t
exactly dampen speculation. “It would be
interesting if he’s a siing president, as
opposed to just a businessman,” he told
me in September, “but either way I would
probably bring that case if I felt it had
merit.” Indeed, Harder was dragooned
into offering what amounted to the
Trump campaign’s weak response to
allegations in People that Trump assaulted
one of its reporters years ago: He sent
a leer on Melania Trump’s behalf to the
magazine, denying that she was ever
friendly with the reporter (as the story
had claimed), which seemed to allow
Trump’s campaign to say it had threatened
legal action against the magazine.
Of course, with the year Harder has had,
those stern leers can be downright
terri*ing. Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder,
1 6 6 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
says of the lawyer who put
him out of business: “He
certainly seems intent on
instilling fear in other
publications by threatening
them with Gawker’s fate.”
And we’re not talking
merely of sex-tape purveyors
and Fleet Street tabloids,
either. Aer the Hogan
case, it would seem even our
most venerable media
institutions are at risk. All
it takes is a lawsuit, financed
by a billionaire, that seeks
to bankrupt them through
ruinous jury verdicts that,
even if they’re eventually
overturned on appeal, would
have already done their damage.
As for the man who devised
this legal strategy, he’s got
his own reputation to protect.
With so many lawsuits
against so many media outlets,
Harder recognizes that he’s in
some, as he would say, reporters’ puing them online. “I watched probably
“crosshairs.” And he’s puing them on
notice. Aer former Gawker editor-in-chief
John Cook was quoted in Forbes as saying
that “the end goal for Charles Harder
is to harm people,” Harder’s law firm sent
Cook for defamation and the company
for “negligent hiring practices.”
Long accustomed to the behind-the-
scenes role pical of lawyers to the
stars, Harder has become a surprisingly
public, if still somewhat mysterious, figure.
As we talk, Harder reflects on what it’s like
to now have reporters writing
not about his clients but about
represents. “If they were to say
to be a chilling effect
false and hurts my business,
they’re gone. ey’re toast,”
Harder says. “And I’ve got a law
writers,”
firm. And what are my costs?
A $400 filing fee? Okay. You
know, I could put $10 million
of value into a case, no problem.” Harder,
ever the gracious host, smiles his non-
bleached smile as he says this in a perfectly
pleasant tone. My stomach drops as
I realize “they” includes me.
HARDER’S EMERGENCE as America’s
pre-eminent media menace appears
to be as unlikely as it is sudden. Until the
Hulk Hogan case, he was a respected
but low-profile entertainment lawyer—
just another cog in the Hollywood
machine. When Reese Witherspoon wanted
to stop Sears from selling ugly baubles it
dubbed “Reese rings,” she turned to Harder;
G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
M E D I A
Clint Eastwood hired him to sue a rniture
company that was marketing a matching
chair and ooman called the Clint and the
Eastwood. Some Hollywood lawyers get
rich on the numbing minutiae of contracts;
Harder’s bread and buer was so-called
right-of-publici cases, in which he’d find
people who were using his clients’ names
or likenesses without permission. He told
me: “Clients would say, ‘It’s not acceptable,
because people pay me millions of dollars
to say yes to what they just stole.’ ” It was
an honest, lucrative, and fairly boring living.
But, as Harder sees it, he’s been working
toward this current moment for nearly
two decades. As a young associate at a
Los Angeles entertainment law firm
in the late ’90s, he was relegated to legal
scut work. In Hollywood, at the dawn
of the Internet, this oen meant policing
online pornography. e various stars
who retained Harder’s firm to vet their
contracts and protect their endorsement
deals also tasked it with making sure
that people weren’t Photoshopping their
faces onto pictures of naked bodies and
more porn than anyone in the office,”
Harder says today. “I had been doing sex-
tape cases my whole career!”
It was only natural, then, that Hulk
Hogan would hire Harder when he had his
own sex-tape problem. Indeed, Harder
had even tangled with Gawker before. In
2012, he’d threatened to sue the website
for copyright infringement when it posted
a copy of Lena Dunham’s book proposal;
Gawker subsequently removed the
proposal—one of the rare instances in
which the site took something down.
“I think there needs
on the irresponsible
Harder tells me.
By the time Harder went to work for
Hogan, Gawker had already rebuffed
aempts by his client’s personal aorney
to remove the video from its website, so
Harder dispensed with the customary
threats and went straight to filing a lawsuit.
He initially sued Gawker for copyright
ANDREW HETHERINGTON/REDUX
infringement in federal court, but aer a
couple of adverse rulings there, Harder
dropped that suit and moved Hogan’s case
to a state court in Florida, where Hogan
lived. It turned out to be a crucial decision.
Harder diplomatically calls the Florida
court a “fair venue.” “Favorable” is the word
other legal observers would choose. Judge
Pamela Campbell—who, as a lawyer, once

represented the parents of the brain-
damaged woman Terri Schiavo in their
legal bale to prevent the removal of
their daughter’s feeding tube; and who, as
a jurist over the past four years, has
reportedly had her decisions reversed more
than any of her colleagues in the Florida
coun in which she sits—repeatedly ruled
in Hogan’s favor throughout the three-and-
a-half-year case. Meanwhile, the six-person
jury—made up of four women and two
men from the Tampa area—awarded Hogan
$40 million more than the $100 million
he was seeking. e ruling was especially
ruinous for Gawker because, earlier in
the case, Harder had abruptly dropped
Hogan’s claim of “negligent infliction
of emotional distress”—the only claim in
the suit that put Gawker’s insurance
company on the hook for the company’s
legal-defense costs as well as any potential
damages. Without insurance to cover
such a judgment—even if the $140 million
total is lowered or dismissed on appeal—
the ruling effectively destroyed Gawker.
Which may have been Peter iel’s
intention from the outset. Harder re ses
to discuss the details of the Silicon Valley
billionaire’s involvement in the Hulk Hogan
suit. Indeed, he claims that for the entire
duration of the case, he didn’t even know
the identi of the person paying his client’s
legal bills—other than it was an altruistic
person who felt bad for the former wrestler.
“We researched to make sure it was a
hundred percent ethical and a hundred
percent legal, and it was,” Harder assures
me. It wasn’t until aer the trial, when the
Forbes reporter who broke the story of
iel’s role contacted him for comment,
that he learned the altruist’s identi.
iel, who was outed as gay by a Gawker
blog in 2007, has said that his financing
of the Hogan suit was “one of my greater
philanthropic things that I’ve done” and
• Dirty Harry Don’t Work for Free
Before he was a fearsome media slayer, Charles Harder was an attack dog for the stars. Which
mostly involved finding companies profiting off celebs on the sly. Achievements include...
Clint Eastwood Reese Witherspoon
Beat a company Stopped Sears
peddling Eastwood- from selling a
themed furniture. “Reese ring.”
1 6 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
that it was “less about revenge and more
about specific deterrence.” But what,
exactly, he was hoping to deter is open to
interpretation. Was it the publication
of sex tapes or the revelation of a person’s
sexuali? Or was iel—whose various
businesses were subjected to a good deal of
legitimate scrutiny by Gawker—seeking
to deter something more? And will other
billionaires eager to escape similar
legitimate scrutiny now follow his lead?
“e impact of the Gawker case is
both substantial and dangerous,” says the
venerable First Amendment lawyer Floyd
Abrams. “Most important, I think, is
the deeply troubling visage of a billionaire
seing out to put a publication out
of business and succeeding in doing so.
Whether you’re talking about The New
York Times or The Washington Post or other
of our most prestigious media entities,
they have limited finances compared to
those of the billionaire class.”
Harder himself isn’t terribly troubled
by these concerns. “A billionaire can
target anyone. A non-billionaire can target
someone. A crazy person can kill their
estranged girlfriend, and that happens, and it
sucks,” he says. “But just because billionaires
exist and media companies exist doesn’t
mean that journalism ceases to exist.”
We’re siing on the terrace of the Beverly
Wilshire hotel eating lunch. A couple
of Los Angeles legal heavyweights—one
the lawyer for Taylor Swi, the other for
Gwyneth Paltrow—have just stopped
by to offer Harder their regards. He’s been
geing that a lot lately. “When I took
Gawker down,” Harder had told me earlier,
one of his high-waage celebri clients
called him. “She said, ‘Way to go!’ ”
“I think there needs to be a chilling effect
on the irresponsible writers,” Harder
continues. As he sees it—even aer Hulk
Hogan, even aer iel—the deck is still
Lena Dunham Jude Law
Got her leaked Sued a Canadian
book proposal fireplace-maker
taken off Gawker. using Law in ads.
G Q I N T E L L I G E N C E
M E D I A
unfairly stacked in favor of the media.
“e courts are largely pro–First
Amendment,” he complains. “Media
companies have a whole lot more money
than the vast majori of individuals.”
at’s why Harder argues that the “actual
malice” standard in libel suits should
be done away with. Established by the
Supreme Court’s The New York Times v.
Sullivan decision in 1964, the standard
holds that in order for a public figure to
success lly sue for libel, he must prove
that the false information published about
him was printed with reckless disregard
for the truth. “ere are a lot of celebrities
and public figures who don’t bring
lawsuits because the standard is so high,”
he says, “and you have to kind of get into
somebody’s head as to what they were
disregarding and what they were regarding.”
Of course, the “actual malice” standard
exists because, prior to the Sullivan decision,
racist public officials in southern states
were ing up The New York Times and
other media outlets with costly litigation
that prevented them from covering the
civil rights movement. So I ask Harder—
whose only decoration in his office, save
for some abstract paintings, is a black-
F R O M L E F T : J A S O N L A V E R I S / F I L M M A G I C / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; TAY L O R H I L L / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; D D I PA S U P I L / F I L M M A G I C / G E T T Y I M A G E S ;
and-white photo of Martin Luther King Jr.
standing in front of a picture of Gandhi—
what protections, absent the “actual malice”
standard, would protect the press from
going back to that wretched past.
“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I’m not
on the Supreme Court. It’s not my job to
come up with the perfect thing. I really
live in the realities. I mean, my job is, I’ve
E L I S A B E T TA A . V I L L A / W I R E I M A G E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; G R E G G D EG U I R E / W I R E I M A G E / G E T T Y I M A G E S
got a client or a potential client calling me
up, saying here’s the situation, and I give
them the realities.” e realities, it seems,
are increasingly tilting in Harder’s favor. 
JASON ZENGERLE is GQ’s political
correspondent.
Sandra Bullock
Fought a company
hawking a watch
she wore in a film.
 MEN
OF
THE
YEAR
2Ø16

1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 7 3
 SUPERHERO

YAN REYNOLDS
tells Blake Lively we’re
headed to the war room.
More accurately, he
tells her we’re going to
the barn, which sits
on an old upstate New
York farm that nctions
as Reynolds’s family
center and creative
headquarters. It was
on this estate, which
he shares with the very
The last time we talked to Ryan Reynolds, he was merely pregnant Lively and
their daughter, that he
the handsomest, charmingest, Blake Lively–est actor
co-wrote the screenplay
alive. His quirky superhero movie, Deadpool—an for Deadpool and where
obsession, to put it mildly—was a few months from being he’s currently working
on its sequel with
released. He was, you know, enjoying your standard co-writers Rhe Reese
incredibly successful Hollywood career. But now, more and Paul Wernick. is
farm—or Reynolds
than a year and a handful of box-office records later?
himself, ass planted on
He’s a superstar. A heavyweight. You might even call the farm, where he
seems to be happiest—
him an auteur. But it wasn’t a transformation. We all just
is the star around
finally caught on by Anna Peele which all bodies of
the Reynolds system
orbit. So although
Lively is due literally
any minute, Reynolds
has chosen to hold
this interview here.

1 7 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
OPENING PAGES
suit $4,300
shirt $770
tie $210
Dior Homme
shoes (this page)
Tom Ford

ALASDAIR McLELLAN
 SUPERHERO
would put me on his lap
and just dispense incredible
life advice and guidance,
and I would go out into the
HAT HE’S ABLE to have a casual chat as the timer world and execute it
is about to ding on his wife’s second pregnancy beauti lly. From my earliest
speaks to his experience living like a Mafia don memory of him, my father
conspiring in the back of a gelato shop. Reynolds’s was that stereopical tough
front was a couple of decades of mid-size film guy. But it was just a veneer.
hits and clever talk-show appearances. Of course, e hardest part for me
the hidden racket was Deadpool, which went on to is that he was always kind
become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. of a mystery. I just don’t
But, like, why? Why Deadpool? Because Deadpool feel like I ever had a real
is one of the most unique protagonists to appear conversation with him.
in a blockbuster. He’s a movie character who’s
aware of how absurd it is that he’s a movie character. Did you try?
A mutant who literally says, “Whose balls did A lot. And I would get
I have to fondle to get my very own movie? I can’t an engineered response,
tell you, but it does rhyme with Polverine.” e like I put a coin in the
comic-book hero who basically asked the rest of Response-O-Matic and out
the genre: “Why so serious?” would come this fortune
Okay. But how did Reynolds prophesy that cookie–sized answer. I might
audiences would respond to the character he ask, “What was your first
spent 11 grueling years forcing onto movie screens? girlfriend like?” He’d say,
Because he is one of the most unique figures “She was dandy. Her name
in Hollywood. He’s a movie star who’s aware how was Nancy.” And that
absurd it is that he’s a movie star. A celebri would be it. I’d be like, “Do
who poses on the Met Ball red carpet or at Taylor you want to try Googling
Swi’s Fourth of July par and looks into the her? Let’s see what happened.
camera with a smirk that suests he knows Maybe she’s a serial killer!”
how many of us would fondle balls to be in his I always thought that the
position. Reynolds recognized himself in a great father-son relationships
beloved character and spent a decade persuading have this kind of Butch-
doubters to let him blow up the superhero- and-Sundance quali.
industrial complex with the role of his lifetime.
Among stacks of cookbooks and a bust of the In a few hours, you’re going
character who changed his career, Reynolds to be a father of two.
sits on a sofa, poised to reflect on the magnitude I’m on the precipice of having
of his accomplishments. But first, he wants to a real American family.
give me shit about a conversation we had in the I mean, I always imagined
GQ fashion closet two days ago.… that would happen, and then
it happened. Every idiotic
RYAN REYNOLDS: Remember how awkward it Hallmark-card cliché is true.
was when we were talking about my dad?
Speaking of delayed
GQ: I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he had passed dreams: Why did it
away. When you said he was “scattered to the take Deadpool so long
wind,” I thought you meant, like, metaphorically. to happen?
I love situations like that. I really do. I actually didn’t I’ve been on the train for
know I was stringing you along. I thought you were 11 years trying to get it made.
totally hip to the fact that he was super-dead. But no! We did every iteration of
that script we could to allow
Ugghh. You had just mentioned your them to make the movie
estrangement, so I was confused! that looked vaguely like the
I had a rough ten-year patch with my father. So movie we wanted to make.
we were estranged. Now we’re really estranged. But
I actually had that sort of epic moment that only You Trojan-horsed your
happens in films, where I saw him before he died Deadpool in through a
and closed the loop as much as I could. regular superhero script.
We thought, “Okay, if they
As you get older, holding grudges about your let us do this, we’ll actually
childhood starts to feel petty. shoot this and hope lly
We’re all just hurtling through space in this green, they won’t notice.” Once
spinning shit-wheel of devastation. At some point, the test footage leaked,
you just kinda goa live and let go. I always wanted that created a groundswell
that father that was like Wilford Brimley, who of support. And the
G Q M O T Y
studio responded to that
groundswell by saying,
“Okay, here’s the absolute
bare minimum amount
of money that we will give
this character. Let us know
when the movie’s done.”
I heard you personally paid
$20,000 to use a picture
of Bea Arthur in the movie.
It was more a question
of talking to the estate and
the family personally and
just reaching out and saying,
“We’re gonna take care of
this.” And there was a lile
donation made to her chari.
What was the charity?
I forget. I may have donated
a lot of money to hunting
exotic, endangered animals.
When did you think, “All
right, this is a hit”?
When the ursday midnight
numbers were so excessive
that I just went, “Whoa.”
We made our production
budget back on Friday. ere’s
a certain vindication that
comes with that, especially
because the studio—granted,
under different regimes—
for years just kept telling us
to go ck ourselves sterile.
Is Fox shoving money
at you now?
Are you insane? It’s not like,
“We really want to shoot this
on $70 million,” and they’re
like, “We insist: It’s 150.”
at never happens, trust me.
And the first time, it was
almost like the more Fox took
away from us, the stronger
we got. ere’s two moments
of the movie where I forget
my ammo bag. at’s not
because Deadpool’s forget l.
at’s because we couldn’t
afford the guns that we were
about to use in the scene.
It sounds relentless.
I felt like I was on some
schooner in the middle of
a white squall the whole
time. It just never stopped.
When it finally ended,
I had a lile bit of a nervous
breakdown. I literally had
the shakes. I went to go
see a doctor because I felt

like I was suffering from a
neurological problem or
something. And every doctor
I saw said, “You have anxie.”
What were you so
anxious about?
I say this with the caveat
that I completely recognize
the ridiculously fortunate
position that I am in. But the
aention is hard on your
nervous system—that might
be why I live out in the
woods. And I was banging
the loudest drum for
Deadpool. I wasn’t just trying
to open it; I was trying to
make a cultural phenomenon.
How weird to be courting
attention you don’t want.
Well, I’m courting aention
for the film.
But you are the film.
It is genuinely like an alter
ego I can turn on and off.
Is using humor to deflect
the same as your dad only
telling you Nancy is dandy?
Comedy is a thick buress
that can get between
intimacy and you. My father
is one of the places I got
it from. But I believe I’m
self-aware enough not
to bring that into my home.
Your voice is different
right now than when you
go on talk shows. When
you’re “on,” you almost
sound like Phil Hartman.
Oh, I loved Phil Hartman.
You just seem more
comfortable being yourself
than you have in the past.
I think that was a slightly
fear-based reaction—I never
wanted to reveal too much.
Even now I’m a lile nervous,
because you’re having a
conversation with somebody,
and you could say something
suit $2,995
shirt $375
Dolce & Gabbana
watch
Piaget
glasses
Tom Ford
where to buy it?
go to GQ.com/style
/fashion-directories
that either (a) just exposes your uer explosive ignorance about any
given subject or (b) could be misinterpreted. I used to just shut down, like,
“Okay, only crack jokes and cover the subject at hand in a very kind of
cursory way.” But I’ve embraced the fact that I’m smart. I’ve embraced the
fact that I’m an idiot. I’ve embraced the fact that I’m nny. If this were
five, four, three years ago even, I wouldn’t have been like, “Come on in to
my home, meet the baby.” It’s all human life. Take it or leave it.
When did you know it was going to happen with Blake?
Probably aer the sex. No, we were hanging out at this lile restaurant in
Tribeca that’s open really late, and this song came on and I was just like,
“Want to dance?” No one was in there, so it was just totally emp. And it
was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, it was
like, “Oh, I think I just crossed a line.” And then I walked her home. And,
uh, you know, I don’t really need to go into what happened aer that.
Do you remember the song?
I do, but I’m not gonna say. You’re shut out.
Chris Pratt said that he’ll use lines he wrote years earlier, and
that the best acting he does is pretending he’s coming up with them
in the moment.
Yes, exactly! I oen will write out bullet points before a talk show. I don’t
care who you are, going on Letterman was always a pants-shiing experience.
You never want to be that guy who’s like, “I just goa work this in somehow.”
Everything you write, you have to be just as willing to throw away. I don’t
do it for pillow talk with my wife, and sometimes I do just improvise. But
yeah, it’s a lot more manufactured than people think. (continued on page 233)
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 7 7
VISIONARY
Make one good movie and
maybe it’s an accident.
But two? With the bold,
unsettling Nocturnal
Animals, menswear’s
most cinematic
designer proves he’s
just as potent in
the world of cinema
OM FOR D
thinks about death all
day, if you want to know
the truth. “I look at a
puppy and I think, ‘Oh
my God, that puppy’s
so beauti l. Oh, it’s
just going to be old and
die.’ And that makes
that puppy even more
beauti l. I like flowers;
they’re beauti l. I think,
‘Well, they’re going to
be dead in three or four
days, but my God, aren’t
they beauti l now?’ ”
He sits in his office, which
is nothing but shades of
white, black, and stainless
steel, and he thinks of death
in there, too. Years ago
the thumbprints on the steel
would have bothered him.
Years ago, he tells me, he
would have sat up straighter
SEBASTIAN KIM
and made sure his suit was falling exactly right.
Years ago he gave wild interviews. But it’s
not years ago. It’s now, and he’s more interested
in having a good talk than a wild time. He’s
sober now. Or maybe it’s age that’s mellowed him—
he’s 55—or maybe it’s that he has less to prove
these days, now that just about everything he’s
tried has turned out not just okay, not just
success l, but singular and exquisite. He's still
a perfectionist, of course—but he's decided he can
survive a thumbprint or two.
He has now made not one but two movies that
are devastating and beauti l to watch, movies that
linger with you for days aerward. First there was
2009’s A Single Man, a quiet and gorgeous film about
a man in mourning for his partner. Now Nocturnal
Animals, which on its surface looks like a story of
revenge. But if you look harder, Ford says, it’s about
something even more elemental than that: “It’s
a movie about finding the people in your life that
mean something and not leing them get away."
In 2011, on the recommendation of a friend,
Ford read the book that Nocturnal Animals is based
upon and he bought the rights immediately, even
though he didn’t know what he’d do with it. He
put it in one of the art galleries in the back of his
mind, leing it incubate. at’s how he works.
When he was finally ready to write the screenplay,
it took only six weeks. It’s the story of an art
dealer in Los Angeles whose ex-husband sends
her a copy of the novel he finally wrote—the
one he says she inspired. e movie goes back
and forth between her story and the story in
the novel, until they align in a way that still had me
thinking about it more than a week aer I saw it.
Tom Ford has much to lose. He’s always
had a lot to lose. He’s been with his husband,
Richard Buckley, for more than 30 years. He
has a success l career as a fashion designer for
his own house aer leaving a success l career
as a fashion designer for other houses (upstarts
Gucci and Saint Laurent). For a certain generation
of cool people—Jay Z and Russell Westbrook,
to name a few—a crisp and perfect Tom Ford suit
is still the gold standard. But now he has a
4-year-old son, Jack, and maybe in one small way
he’s just as boring as the rest of us—the way
we only start considering all we have when our
hearts reach a tipping point. So he has work to do.
“I look at my son and he’s so happy and joy l
and I say, ‘Richard, it’s because he hasn’t learned
the secret yet. And the secret is that he’s going
to die.’ ” is focuses him, too. He knows he has a
small amount of time to create new worlds—the
urgency of existence comes down on you like
a foot on your throat. “Jack doesn’t yet feel the pain
that humans, all of us, feel and will feel.”
But Tom Ford is still Tom Ford, and so when that
child presents him with a cherished pair of light-up
dinosaur sneakers, Tom Ford says, “What does
Dada say about the dinosaur shoes?” And Jack replies,
“ey’re tac .” “And when are we allowed to wear
them?” “On weekends.” And so Jack looks longingly
at his light-ups as the Stan Smiths with the Velcro
strips go on his feet, and Tom Ford counts the days
that Tom Ford has le.—TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER
G Q M O T Y 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 7 9
COURTNEY B. VANCE SUIT AND SHIRT DOLCE & GABBANA KENNETH CHOI SUIT AND SHIRT BURBERRY | TIE DOLCE & GABBANA

CUBA GOODING JR. SUIT LOUIS VUITTON | SHIRT DIOR HOMME SARAH PAULSON BLOUSE EQUIPMENT | EARRINGS ELIZABETH STREET AT ROSEARK

G Q M O T Y
 RE-ENACTORS

Tackling the recent past is

risky—not least because it can
require playing real figures
who are still alive to watch you
do it. GQ salutes the cast of
The People v. O.J. Simpson for
turning the Trial of the (last)
Century into the Trial of 2016

MORE Interviews with the cast GQ.COM

BRUCE GREENWOOD SUIT AND SHIRT BOSS STERLING K. BROWN SUIT Z ZEGNA | SHIRT AND TIE ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA

DAVID SCHWIMMER SUIT CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION | SHIRT BOSS | TIE THOMAS MASON FOR ADDITIONAL CREDITS, SEE PAGE 233

PETER HAPAK 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 8 1
 MASTER
It was made by a man in Italy, Travolta explains
to everyone over and over, in a tone that is not so
much boast l as quietly in awe of Italy, of the suit,
and of the man who made it. Picture time.
Six feet two and 62, John Travolta in his seventh
decade has broadened from a loose-hipped
hearhrob into something more commanding, like
a bank president’s oil portrait. His mouth is the
same as it was 40 years ago, but his face has filled
out, so that his lips, once pou, are now simply
proportionate. His peerless profile is as tranquil
and confidently sculpted as an Easter Island moai.
It is the day before the Emmys and Travolta’s
contribution to the People v. O.J. Simpson ensemble—
as Simpson’s schmoozy, snoo, primly rage l
OHN TRAVOLTA defense aorney Robert Shapiro—has earned him a
arrives for his close-up nomination. It was a classic Travolta performance, in
camera-ready—a state a modern context: weekly scenery-chewing, with just
enough gusto to distract you from his famous face,
of perfection he has and generous enough to fit flawlessly into a gied
aained without aid or cast. For most actors, starring in the year’s biest
interference from the cable drama would transform their careers and upend
squadron of makeup their lives—but John Travolta is already so famous, it
artists, fashion people, is hard to imagine anything making him more famous.
So, a ridiculous question: Did being on this smash-
and on-set Ukrainian hit, soon-to-be-Emmy-winning show change his
seamstress whose job life...at all?
today is to get John Travolta’s answer is essentially a polite: Not really,
Travolta camera-ready but it feels fantastic.
“You have these points in your career when
for his close-up. He you are associated with high quali, with depth,
is ready even before communication, and things that maer on a social
anyone lays eyes on level. And when you hit those notes—whether it
him—possibly before his be Primary Colors, or on the cover of Time magazine,
or Pulp Fiction, or Saturday Night Fever, or Urban
private jet touches down
Cowboy—where you’re affecting the socie on a
on California concrete global level, then you feel a different kind of pride.
(piloted by himself), and It’s beyond the pride of success. It’s the pride of”—he
certainly by the time he hesitates—“of integri, I guess? You’re not always
emerges from his luxury guaranteed to be involved with projects that will hit
those notes. When you are, you really do register it.”
SUV (driven by someone Is it challenging, I ask, to balance pride in this
else). He is wearing a project with the knowledge that it sprang from a
suit from his own closet. brutal double homicide?
1 8 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
By now, we should be used
to it. Every few years,
he re-appears out of
nowhere to remind us that
he’s still one of a kind
Travolta answers slowly, care lly. “is is a
power l, tragic, true, yet entertaining program,
which is a very unusual combination,” he says. “But…
it’s magnetic in the level of quali that it was done.
It’s a definition of entertainment that’s quite different
from, you know, Grease. It helps that perhaps it creates
understanding in other people. I had an African-
American preacher come up to me. He said to me—”
Travolta slips into an accent that might be
P R E V I O U S PA G E S A N D T H I S PA G E , M E N ’ S G R O O M I N G : D AV I D C O X AT A R T D E PA R T M E N T. P R E V I O U S PA G E S , PA U L S O N ’ S S T Y L I S T : VA N E S S A S H O K R I A N AT
described broadly as “African-American preacher.”
“ ‘I want to thank you for that O.J. show, because
my congregation has been di-VAH-ded for years. You
have put together a show that has explained...and
C E L E S T I N E A G E N C Y. H E R H A I R : B R I D G E T B R A G E R A T T H E W A L L G R O U P. M A K E U P : A D A M B R E U C H A U D A T T O M L I N S O N M A N A G E M E N T G R O U P.
now I understand both sides and why it caused the
thing that—’ ”
Travolta catches himself doing an impression of
a black person thanking John Travolta for explaining
the O.J. trial. He snaps back to his own voice.
“I don’t mean to imitate him, but I’m trying
to give you the reali of the impact that the
show had on someone.… When you understand
the broken legal system, you can’t help but get
enlightened. And then it becomes worth it to tell
the tragic story. If you’re doing it for the glee of
that, it’s off-puing. But I believe that we thought
we would enlighten and create some level of
understanding. And there’s been empirical situations
where that’s happened.”
We sail past our alloed talking time, but John
Travolta is much too courteous to end an interview
himself. His rep approaches to plead for his freedom.
He has a video to record, an official FX dinner to
aend, Emmys to help collect, planes to fly home.
He needs to get back to being one of the most
famous people on earth. I manage one last question.
“Is it hard to fly a plane?” I ask.
He appears to give this real thought.
“Not once you know how,” he says.—CAITY WEAVER
PETER HAPAK
custom suit,
cardigan,
shirt and tie
Matteo Perin
 This is the year that the sidelines, benches,
and vapid awards shows of America suddenly
became political, controversial, and important.
Mark Anthony Green deciphers how athletes seized
their platform, and why it was a long time coming

a good backup. As of the

• THE TIME and place Kate Upton was up
couldn’t have been in arms! She called athletes’
more trivial. A pre- siing down or kneeling
during the national anthem
season football game “unacceptable.” Rob Lowe:
between two mediocre also perturbed. He tweeted
teams. A second-string that it was unacceptable,
quarterback, following but with the proviso that it
was only unacceptable on
the worst season of 9/11. Trump said Colin (like
his career. A patriotic lots of other people) should
ritual as routine as leave the country. Kid Rock
it is boring. And the added his own double-wide
poetic coda: “Fuck Colin
most passive gesture
Kaepernick.” But then there
known to nature: were the millions who
siing. Yet, in August, instantly championed No. 7
Colin Kaepernick took as a truer patriot for his act.
these ingredients and Obama sided with Kaepernick
and then, being Obama,
created 2016’s most asked if maybe folks could
polarizing debate. In a listen to one another a lile
nation where anything more. Members of the armed
and everything is ripe forces created the hashtag
#veteransforkaepernick, to
for satire and criticism,
back his right to protest
who knew the national
printing of this magazine,
Kaepernick’s jersey was the
second-most-purchased NFL
jersey of the 2016–17 season.
Kaepernick’s protest
became the poster moment
for what was already on
its way to being the most
peculiar, political year for
black athletes to date. A high
school squad in Aurora,
Colorado, kneeled like Colin
during the anthem; members
of the Michigan Wolverines
held up their fists. Formula
One driver Lewis Hamilton,
basketball player Maya
Moore, and ballet dancer
Misty Copeland—they all
invoked Black Lives Matter
via social media, on T-shirts,
etc. In mid-July, LeBron
James, Dwyane Wade, Chris
Paul, and Carmelo Anthony
took the stage to open the
ESPYs. They stood shoulder
to shoulder; their mood
was militant and their look
fashionable—picture
Donatella Versace dressing
Huey P. Newton and such.
And then, before a single
award was given or corny
joke told, they proceeded to
violate the unspoken rule
that the ESPYs must be the
blandest and try-hard-iest
two hours of television. They
issued a call to action for
every athlete present to speak
up against the recent killings
of unarmed black men by
police officers. In September,
Serena Williams, arguably
the most dominant American
athlete of all time—and front-
runner for Miss Woke 2016—
penned a raw confession
Luther King Jr. This while
she was also manhandling
beat reporters all year who
asked dumb, coded questions
like: Why don’t you smile
during interviews? (Side note,
if you’re wondering why
she might not be so smiley:
Serena is 19-2 in matches
against Maria Sharapova,
but when Porsche wants to
give a female tennis player
lots of money to pretend
to like their products, they
hire Sharapova, who was
the highest-paid female
athlete for the past decade
and change.) Even Michael
Jordan, patron saint of
Republicans Buy Sneakers
Too, spoke out about the
cop killings and said, “I can
no longer stay silent.”
All this, of course, brought
a whole new scrutiny to
athletes who happened
to be black and what they
were and weren’t doing when
it came to loving America.
This summer, during the
Olympics, 20-year-old
gymnast Gabby Douglas
forgot to put her hand
over her heart during the
national anthem. Sensitive
conservatives who probably
can’t touch their toes let
alone flip seven times into a
split, criticized her. They
thought she was making a
militant statement. She
wasn’t. In fact, the Olympics
in general are like a
bizarro version of America.
SEE ADDITIONAL CREDITS.

anything he wants (especially on Facebook about her African-Americans make

anthem was off-limits? inequali in the country they
at by ignoring fight for). And South Park
it you could provoke made the kind of commentary
only South Park could make
death threats and by taking the national anthem
cause news anchors and changing the lyrics to
to have aneurysms. Cops are pigs / Colin Kaepernick’s
genuine fear of police and
re-emphasized her support
of the Black Lives Matter
movement. “ ‘There comes
a time when silence is
betrayal’… I won’t be silent,”
she wrote, quoting Martin
up 13 percent of the
population, but 42 percent
of our Olympic gold-
medal winners were black.
When young black men from
Cleveland or Chicago are
shot (continued on page 230)

1 8 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
 PATRIOT

• IT WASN’T about the

gold medal. There
was no doubt, really,
that they’d win the
gold-medal game. The
various Dream Teams
haven’t lost a game in
three Olympics. And
it wasn’t even close.
But the real triumph
was a two-minute
video of Carmelo
Anthony’s reaction to
their win, a cocktail
that was equal parts
bravado and tears.
It had even the most
stoic Twitter trolls
in their feelings.
“Despite everything
that we have going
on in our country
right now, we have
to be united,” an
emotional Melo said.
It was as if he knew
that in a year when
we suffered through
history’s most
toxic presidential
election, police
violence and civil
unrest, fake Rio gas-
station robberies
and a new Carrie
Underwood album, we
needed a moment of
true patriotism.
“I’m not an emotional
person, so people
knew it was genuine,”
he says now. “It
was bigger than
hoodie a gold medal.” A
Rick Owens genuine moment
DRKSHDW
that will serve as
tank top and the punctuation
sweatpants
John Elliott on his Hall of Fame
sneakers
career—because
Jordan Brand the Knicks damn
watch sure ain’t winning
Rolex a title.— M . A . G .

SEBASTIAN KIM
jacket and tie
Tommy Hilfiger
Tailored
shirt
Eton
rings, his own
 HOMECOMING
KING

• “SOMETIMES you have

to give people what
they don’t know they
want,” says Donald
Glover. Before he was
the creator and star
of FX’s Atlanta, he was
kind of a professional
friendly face. (See
Community, The
Martian.) But with
Atlanta, we saw
something different.
“People want the myth
of Atlanta, but we
didn’t want to give
them just that,” Glover
says. So instead of a
half hour of voluptuous
women, Ferraris, and
rappers eating lobster
platters—which is
how every hip-hop song
depicts the city—
Atlanta is about how
everyone else in
Atlanta lives. The
weirdos and conspiracy
theorists. The ones
still chasing their ATL
dream. And it’s sneaky-
brilliant—Louie if
Louis C.K. were young,
black, and not
depressed. Like when
Glover created a black
Justin Bieber—as in,
a black actor playing
Justin Bieber. “In
a show grounded
in reality”—Glover
giggles—“it’s pretty
cool to make Justin
Bieber black, right?”
—MARK A N T H O N Y G R E E N
G R O O M I N G : D AV I D C O X F O R K E V I N M U R P H Y

188 12-2Ø16 G Q M O T Y
suit, polo shirt,
loafers and watch
Gucci
pocket square
Charvet
necklace
Miansai
bracelets and
top ring (above)
Degs & Sal
other rings, from left
David Yurman
#203 Jewelry

PETER HAPAK
 TERROR

At first, I just think good

things. And then…boom.
In a year of uncompromising tragedy, the Orlando shooting— Gilberto was at Pulse.
a terrorist attack that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, e last time Javier saw him
was on the dance floor, on
a crime of inhuman design—stands out as among the most his back, arms at his sides.
He looked peace l, as if he
difficult to comprehend. This story is not about what were sleeping instead of dead.
happened that night but, rather, what happened in the He also was in color, which
was curious: Everything else,
days and weeks and months that followed, as a community— the other bodies and all
the blood, so much blood,
a community of unbreakable young men and women—found for a moment receded
into shadow, as if Javier’s
it within themselves to forge ahead by Sean Flynn mind had focused a spotlight
on his friend. And then
Javier screamed, so abruptly
that he startled himself.
Just…boom. Gilberto’s dead.
In the car, it all floods back,
immediate and crushing, like
HE BULLET IS STILL IN HIS BELLY, but the he told Javier, “Just stay a small dam in his mind
close, and if anyone bothers collapsed. Simon and Oscar are
wound is healing nicely, the abdominal muscles
you, you tell me.” A touch dead, too. Peter and Jean Carlos
readjusting, strengthening. ree months aer Javier of gentle menace. Made a and Rodolfo, all dead. And now
was shot in an Orlando nightclub, he can stand friend feel safe. Javier is weeping in his car. It’s
and walk and even carry trays in the restaurant. Gilberto was 25 years hard to drive because it’s hard
old, born and raised in to see, but he has to get home
He is geing beer. Javier can feel it. An entire summer Puerto Rico, studied health- and he has to calm down. He
has passed, a whole season, since that night: dozens and care management. Javier doesn’t want Adrian to know.
dozens shot dead or wounded, all by one man with two guns met him when Javier and He won’t tell Adrian, not for
in a club called Pulse. Javier spent five nights in the hospital Adrian got married last weeks. ree months have
and weeks in a wheelchair. But now he’s back at work, May. Gilberto helped move gone by. Javier is supposed
nctional, normal again. He’s untangled the worst of Javier’s things into Adrian’s to be fine by now. Didn’t the
ROBERTO GONZALEZ/ZUMA WIRE

the grief and horror, too, combed it into strands he could apartment, and looked therapist tell him that?
examine and understand. A therapist had asked Javier aer him when Adrian had
questions and listened to his answers and said he was doing to leave town. Javier had
fine, that maybe he could help other Pulse survivors. only been in Orlando a
Javier leaves work late in the middle of September, gets in few months, didn’t know
his car, drives through downtown Orlando. e radio is on. He many people, appreciated
hears something—a song, a phrase, it doesn’t maer—and it the company.
Thousands
reminds him of Gilberto. He smiles. Always the exuberant one, Javier is driving and gathered on June 13
Gilberto. Funny, but in a ridiculous way, confrontational but remembering and smiling. for a vigil in
protective, like that time in a club, crowded and swea, when He believes he is happy. downtown Orlando.

1 9 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y

HE MAN WITH THE TWO GUNS walked into
Pulse at two o’clock in the morning on
Sunday, June 12. He carried a Sig Sauer MCX
semi-automatic rifle, which he’d bought
legally a week earlier, and a Glock 17 semi-
automatic pistol, which he’d bought, also
legally, the day aer he got the rifle.
An off-du police officer working securi
at the door tried to stop him—tried, in
fact, to shoot him—but was out-gunned,
took cover, called for backup. e man
with the guns continued inside, through
the vestibule, toward the dance floor,
which is when he started shooting people.
Shooting and reloading and shooting
again, he remained inside for more than three
hours. Dozens of police swarmed Orange
Avenue, but they couldn’t storm in. ere were
hostages inside, hiding in bathrooms and in
closets and under desks and behind bars.
Maybe the shooter had a bomb, like he told
a police negotiator. Maybe he’d wrapped
explosive vests around four strangers and
scaered them to the corners of the building,
as he supposedly also said. He claimed to be a
soldier for ISIS, a claim that was as convenient
and self-arandizing as it was emp.
When it was over, when the police broke
through a wall and shot him to death, Omar
Mateen had killed 49 people and wounded 53.
It was the worst mass shooting in American
history, and the deadliest aack in the United
States since 9/11.
ere were, as a maer of course, universal
pronouncements of horror and shock.
And there was immense grief, acute and
unfathomable in Orlando, rippling out
everywhere into something duller and
wearying. Most of the victims were Latino,
and most were gay, and for a brief while
rainbows were appropriately prominent—flags
and balloons and lit-up buildings—in
mourn l tributes. People, strangers, in Texas
and Arizona and Ohio and everywhere else,
sent money and supplies for the wounded
and the families of the dead, $29.5 million to
the largest nd alone.
Weeks passed, a month, then two more.
It happened so long ago, aer all, before the
summer even officially began. No one forgot,
exactly, but memories scab over.
1 9 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
TERROR
Except if it happened to you. Even when you think it’s
over, when the therapist says you seem fine and you believe
it because you’re working again and you can barely feel
the bullet anymore and you’ve stopped looking over your
D R E W A N G E R E R / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; R A F A F E R N A N D E Z D E C A S T R O / F U S I O N ; R E D H U B E R / O R L A N D O S E N T I N E L / T N S V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S ; D AV I D G O L D M A N /A P P H O T O ( 2 )
shoulder, you’ll hear something on the radio and it all comes
back, as raw and sharp as ever, and then you’re sobbing in the
car. It keeps happening, at an unpredictable frequency and
with its own malevolent rhythm, because June 12 isn’t when
it happened. at’s just when the shooting stopped.
• • •
JAVIER USUALLY WORKS LATE, but he got off early that
Saturday night in June. Oscar and Simon were just back
T H E S E PA G E S , C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T : C A R L O A L L E G R I / R E U T E R S V I A Z U M A P R E S S ; C O U R T E S Y O F R AY C H E L B R I G H T M A N / N E W S D AY ;
from a short vacation, Niagara Falls, where they’d taken
a photo of themselves pointing at the rainbow in the mist,
and they wanted to meet Adrian and Javier at Pulse.
In 12 years, Pulse had become one of the hubs of Orlando’s
gay communi. It opened in 2004 and is owned by Barbara
Poma, who named it as a tribute to her brother—his pulse of
life, as it were—who died of complications from AIDS in
1991. It was divided into three separate, adjoining spaces:
a main one in the center, with a bar on the back wall and
a stage just to the le of the entrance; a smaller room, with
another stage, on one side of the building; and, on the other
side of the main room, a patio with a separate bar. ere
were go-go dancers and stage acts and DJs, and the crowd
skewed young. (“Anytime anyone turns 18,” says Michael
Slaymaker, of the Orlando Youth Alliance, “they go to Pulse
for the birthday par.”)
It would be too narrow, though, to define Pulse as simply
a gay club. It hosted educational forums and nd-raisers and
opened its doors to a demographic jumble.
“When College Night happened,” says a dancer and theater
owner named Blue who used to be the entertainment
director at Pulse, “it just became this safe haven for young
people—gay, straight, bisexual.”
“For me, it was always an open bar,” Adrian says. “Anyone
could go, and it was like a family. Maybe some drunk people
might act stupid, but it was always happy.”
Saturday was Latin Night, which meant Adrian, who was
born in one of Havana’s outer boroughs, and Javier, who was
originally from Mexico Ci, would know a lot of the crowd.
ey got to Pulse about 12:45, stayed inside for a while,
went out to the patio because someone wanted a hookah,
went back inside to dance. Adrian and Javier were in the
main room, near the bar. ey heard a bang.
Adrian thought someone had dropped something.
More bangs, fast pops. Adrian thought they might
be firecrackers.
en he was on the floor. He doesn’t remember how he
got there or how long he was there. Fieen minutes? Five?
G Q M O T Y
A body was on top of him. Could have been a man, might have
been a woman, maybe dead, possibly not.
He found his phone, slippery-wet with blood, and looked
up: Everyone was on the floor, except a man by the main
door with a gun.
Adrian got up and ran to the patio, away from the shooter.
Where was Javier?
Adrian started back inside, saw the man with the gun, heard
more shooting, stopped. He called Javier’s cell, then realized his
husband might be hiding, that the ringing might give him away.
e police moved him to a safe spot behind a bagel shop.
ere was nothing Adrian could do but wait.
• • •
JAVIER KNEW THE SOUND was gunfire. An argument, he
assumed, some drunk with a gun, firing bullets at someone.
en more shots, people on the floor, a quick, hot pinch
on the right side of his belly. A hole in his shirt.
He saw a stairway behind the bar, thought it might go to
the roof. He ran up it, holding his side. ere was only an office
up there, five people already huddled inside, one shot in the
leg. Javier stuffed himself under a desk with two other people.
He called 911, but he was whispering and maybe he lapsed
into Spanish. e operator couldn’t understand him. He gave
his phone to a woman who explained where they were, that
two men were shot. While she talked, she kept a knee pressed
into Javier’s gut to try to keep his blood from leaking out.
Javier mapped the building in his head, realized he was
above the main dance floor. If the shooter raised the barrel
of his rifle 30 degrees, he could put a magazine of bullets
through the office floor, kill them all.
ey waited, six people in an office. e police pinned the
shooter in a bathroom, cleared the main room, told everyone to
In the days following the shooting, the
hospitals and churches of Orlando were inundated.
Survivors like Javier and Adrian (both pictured
third from right) were among the fortunate but
were by no means left unscarred.
come down from the office, hands in the air. Javier could only get his right
arm up, his le pressing on his abdomen. An officer grabbed him at the
boom of the stairs, propped him up, helped him step around the bodies.
He saw Gilberto, peace l and in color.
He saw a body dressed all in white on the patio and wondered how he
got there to die.
He saw Adrian running toward him, and, for an instant, he feared the
police would shoot him.
• • •
THE MORNING AFTER, the theater owner Blue—Blue Star, Baby Blue,
or just Blue—woke up at 6 A.M. to the incessant chirping of her cell phone.
“I probably missed a hundred calls, a hundred texts,” she says.
Blue is a fixture in Orlando’s LGBTQ communi, involved in philanthropies
and forums and boards. Atlanta-born and classically trained in ballet, she
danced professionally in New York before she moved to central Florida to
study sound engineering in 2000. She worked at Pulse for years, then
opened her own theater, e Venue, in the Ivanhoe Village neighborhood.
e phone messages were overwhelming, disorienting, fantastical.
She was out of town for the weekend, holed up in St. Augustine
to write; she stages and performs in plays and burlesque shows, including,
every few months, at Pulse.
She switched on the television. e cable anchors said it was true, said
there were at least 20 dead. “You know,” Blue says now, “when you turn
on CNN, it’s always another town, another ci. You get the emotional waves
that come with it, but that’s our lile club on Orange Avenue.”
A hundred and seven miles away in
Lakeland, Robin Maynard had been up since
five, jostled awake by her cell. She’d been at
her 30th high school reunion the night before,
had helped plan it, which was ironic because
she le aer her junior year, when she realized
she was gay and didn’t want to be and thought
a small, Christian school could wring it out of
her. She runs a breast-cancer non-profit now,
Libby’s Legacy, named for her mother. Robin’s
not much for dance clubs these days, but she
knows everyone in Orlando and at Pulse;
the club had a Pink Par benefit for Libby’s
Legacy. For awards ceremonies and in bios
for some board or another, a friend sometimes
pes “G.S.D.” aer her name, where the Ph.D.
or the M.D. would go for a doctor. It stands for
“gets shit done.” (continued on page 227)
 LEGEND

It took Warren Beatty 18 years

to make his latest movie,
a labor of love that seems to
be about Howard Hughes but
is not-so-secretly a meditation
on the twin obsessions
that have driven his entire
career: sex and death
by Amy Wallace

1 9 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y ALASDAIR McLELLAN
suit $3,595
shirt $495
tie $195
Ermenegildo Zegna
sunglasses, his own
location
Fox Studios
where to buy it?
go to gq.com/style
/fashion-directories

H I S I S M Y S P I E L , ” Warren
Beay says. “I quote Cocteau:
‘e poem’s never finished. It’s only
abandoned.’ ” Eleven of us have
packed into a tiny Technicolor
screening room in Los Angeles to
see Beay’s new film, Rules Don’t
Apply, the first movie he’s starred
in and directed since 1998. While
he really likes the print we are
about to watch (“I think it’s good,
see?”), he acknowledges he can’t
stop fiddling with it. He made
changes just two days ago and may
make more. No wonder this
screening has been scheduled, then
postponed, three different times.
He looks good—almost 80, yeah, but
limber and loose and comfortable in
his skin. Standing there in his jeans and
white tennies, with a tan buon-front
shirt falling open to reveal a white tee,
he seems fit and sharp, even if he
sometimes has to lean in and ask us to
repeat our questions. Once known as
the consummate lady-killer, these days
he talks more about his kids than his
conquests. (He refers to his offspring
with his wife, Annee Bening, as “four
small Eastern European countries
that inhabit the house.”) Asked why this
film has taken so long, he says he’s
had the luxury of not having the need,
financially at least, to make movies:
“I always say making movies is like
vomiting. I don’t like vomiting.
But there is a time when you say, ‘I’ll
feel beer if I finally throw up.’ ”
By one estimate, Beay has wanted
to make this film since 1973. (“From
the time I met him,” Bening says, “there
was always a Howard Hughes script,
always a Howard Hughes idea, always
a Howard Hughes movie that was
going to happen, maybe, at some time.”)
But Beay tells us the story isn’t really
about the billionaire/inventor/ladies’
man. “Since I haven’t done an interview
in 100 years, I haven’t really talked
about what this movie is about. It is not
a biopic of Howard Hughes,” he says.
Instead, “it has something to do with the
consequences of American Protestant
guilt—and sexuali.” And with that,
he heads for the door.
e lights go down, and the film
begins with a Hughes quote emblazoned
on the screen: NEVER CHECK AN
INTERESTING FACT. e plot follows
LEGEND
two young lovers (Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich) whose
fates are entangled with that of an aging Hughes. Beay plays
Hughes less as the tortured eccentric Leonardo DiCaprio gave
us in The Aviator, and more as a crazy-like-a-fox Old Hollywood
mogul who knows everyone that maers and speaks with
impeccable comic timing. Mahew Broderick, who has a part
as a member of Hughes’s trusted inner circle, will tell me he
still marvels at Beay’s connection to motion-picture history.
“Warren got to Hollywood right at the end of the studio system,”
Broderick says. “He really knew and learned from some of
these great old geniuses. ere are very few directors who can
quote William Wyler”—the Oscar-winning director of Ben-Hur—
“to you. He does a Samuel Goldwyn impression, you know?
It’s very exciting to get to touch that world from a distance.”
Beay has now been making major motion pictures
longer than anyone else alive. (Clint Eastwood runs a close
second.) Over six decades, he has earned 14 Oscar nominations
and one win: best director for Reds, which he also co-wrote,
produced, and starred in. And he’s received the Academy’s
highest honor, the Irving G. alberg Memorial Award, which
honors a filmmaker’s body of work.
Rules Don’t Apply reaches back to 1958—the same year Beay
arrived in Los Angeles. e camera lingers lovingly on the
Hollywood Bowl and the Beverly Hills Hotel, places that were
already landmarks when Beay first discovered them. During
those early years, Beay lived for a time at the Chateau Marmont
and dated actress Joan Collins. She later wrote in her memoir,
“the endless bonking was exhausting.” O P P O S I T E PAG E : R O L L S P R E S S / P O P P E R F OTO/G E T T Y I M AG E S .
As we sit in the dark and admire Beay’s vision of a bygone
Hollywood, it turns out that if Beay le the theater at all, he
T H I S PAG E : R O N G A L E L L A / W I R E I M AG E /G E T T Y I M AG E S .
came right back. He’s been watching us watch him. So intently
has he monitored our movements that, aer the credits roll,
he will call out a Variety writer for checking his iPhone during
the film. (Beay will nail him by repeating the poor guy’s
four-digit securi code back to him, asking pointedly, “What
do these four numbers mean to you?”) is is Beay the
press-averse grump, whom I’d been expecting. But I know he
has another side—Beay the seducer—that I’m eager to see.
• • •
ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I arrive at his mansion on
Mulholland Drive. ere’s a gate and a buzzer, and soon I’m
aiming my dir Prius up a winding drive. Beay, dressed
in jeans and a black fleece pullover, is waiting outside.
He looks sporting, though only vaguely at ease, as he leads
me to a table on a raised patio shaded by a huge jacaranda
G Q M O T Y
 among the things Beay will inquire about: where I grew up, how old I was
tree. It’s spectacular, his breathtaking 180-degree view of
Los Angeles, and I will have a long time to appraise it: when I lost my virgini, how old my mother was when she lost her virgini,
how many times she’s been married, where my father lives, how old I am
We’ll spend the next four hours talking here, just outside the
10,000-plus-square-foot Mediterranean-sle home he now, what college my son goes to, how long I’ve been divorced, what my
shares with Bening and their kids. new spouse does for a living (“Who is your husband?” is the way he puts it),
and whether a close friend of Beay’s (whom I’ve also wrien about) ever
Beay’s disdain for interviews is a maer of record. “I’d rather
hit on me. (When I say no, he shakes his head and says simply, “Yes, he did.”)
ride down the street on a camel than give what is sometimes
To evade my questions, he will sometimes pretend not to hear me or
called an in-depth interview,” he once said. “On a camel, nude, in
will say, “I won’t tell you, because once I tell you, I would have to go
a snowstorm, backwards.” To me, he confirms the quote, adding:
“During the Macy’s anksgiving Day parade.” into detail.” Certain moments become so awkwardly un-illuminating that
at one point I openly empathize with his discomfort, and he replies,
Beay and his sister, actress Shirley MacLaine, grew up
somewhat stiffly, “I can protect myself.” Don’t think for a minute that he
surrounded by Baptists in Richmond, Virginia. MacLaine has
can’t. Even when I toss him a soball—“What do you think the biest
said that “even as a kid, Warren had a private world no one
misconception is about Warren Beay?”—he responds with the rhetorical
could penetrate. He could shut everyone out.” Or, if that fails,
at least shut them down. equivalent of a Möbius strip: “To respect that question enough to answer
it would imply a level of narcissism on my part that I would prefer
e producer and onetime studio chief Robert Evans once said
Beay never answers questions—he only asks them. Indeed, to deny.” At which point I can only laugh and concede, “Well done.”
And yet on topics he cares about—like sex—he
can be startlingly forthcoming. On a phone call
before I visit his house, he volunteers that he lost
Beatty charms Geraldo Rivera and Julie Christie at the same time. his own virgini at a relatively advanced age.
Like Gosling today and Cruise in the ’80s, Beatty ruled the 1960s. “Despite what happened to me aerward,” he tells
me, “I delayed the unspeakable act until I was
almost 20.” What happened to him aerward, of
course, is that he became one of Hollywood’s
all-time great Casanovas. Just how great? A juicy
2010 biography by Peter Biskind asserted that
he’d bedded 12,775 women, give or take.
I ask Beay if it’s a coincidence that a sleazy
biographer character in Rules Don’t Apply is
named Richard Miskin. Beay demurs, then
laments that our post-truth Internet era makes it
impossible to separate fact from fiction. “I could
say I met you at Technicolor and I grabbed you
by the back of the neck, and I took you into
another room, and I threw—you know, I had my
way with you. And you were just fantastic. And
if you denied it, you would be only 50 percent
redeemed,” he says. I’m still reeling at the thought
of our imagined tryst when he adds, “When you
reach my age and have been famous as long
as I have, the possibilities for invented memory
from other people are staering.”
He should know. “I think I’ve had 16 books
that purport to be a biography of me. I’ve
never cooperated with someone. And I hope
you’ll believe me, although you probably won’t,
I haven’t read more than 15 pages of any of
them. Because I read the first 10 or 15 pages, and
I say, ‘Well, please. What kind of masochistic
exercise is this?’ I haven’t read them on purpose,
because I like being able to say that I haven’t
read them. I really haven’t. I swear.” A beat. “I will
confess to having them all.”
• • •
BEATTY’S BIG-SCREEN DEBUT was Splendor in
the Grass, a tale of sexual frustration that co-
starred Natalie Wood as a “good girl” who won’t
put out and Beay as her blue-balled high school
sweetheart. In the movie, Beay doesn’t put the
wood to Wood’s character, Deanie (though that
would eventually happen in real life—Wood
fell into Beay’s arms aer leaving her husband,
Robert Wagner). Instead his character, Bud, goes
for a girl of looser morals (continued on page 228)

1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 9 7
 Fresh faces,
ginormous talents,
and outrageous
debuts…styled in
the clothes th at
defined the year

A G E : 34 W H E R E E L S E YO U ’ V E
B R E A KO U T R O L E : S E E N H I M : Stealing
As Naz on HBO’s scenes in Nightcrawler
The Night Of, on which and Jason Bourne
he transforms from a W H E R E E L S E YO U ’ V E
gentle dude in the wrong H E A R D H I M : Rapping
place at the wrong time as Riz MC
into a prison-hardened WHO DIDN’T HEAR
maybe-murderer H I M : Elderly Brits.
DJs thought his track
“Post 9/11 Blues”
was too controversial,
but the song took And then I never heard “Ah, I remember that
off on MySpace. it again. For years.” film you did in 2008,
SPEAKING OF HEARING ON GOING FROM and that track you did
H I M . . . “Riz came N E R D - S C R AW N Y T O five years ago.”
to New York,” says PRISON-SWOLE H O W A M E R I C A N FA N S
The Night Of co-writer TO HEROIN-SWOLE A P P R O A C H H I M : “YO,
and director Steve IN ‘THE NIGHT OF’: NAZ! DID YOU DO IT?”
Zaillian, “and that was “I was working W H AT ’ S N E X T ?
the first time I heard his out like a beast the A little film called Rogue
natural English accent. whole time.” One: A Star Wars Story
H O W B R I T I S H FA N S
APPROACH HIM:

1 9 8 1 2 - 2 0 1 6 G Q M O T Y STEVEN PAN
 THE UN-BLACK
LEATHER
JACKET
jacket $7,345
Dolce & Gabbana
+
henley $345
Dolce & Gabbana
pants $650
Dries Van Noten
bracelet
David Yurman

dress
Dsquared2
location (this page)
Metrograph, N.Y.C.

A G E : 31
B R E A KO U T R O L E :
As the star of Pedro
Almodóvar’s Julieta,
about a young woman’s
journey through
marriage, motherhood,
and life, generally
W H E R E E L S E YO U ’ V E
S E E N H E R : If you’re
from Spain, all over
the place. If you’re from SHE CAME TO BE HIS
the U.S., see above. L AT E S T M U S E :
H O W A L M O D Ó VA R “I went to the audition,
DESCRIBES HER: and they were like,
“Inexhaustible.” ‘We cannot tell you
WHICH IS GOOD, BECAUSE who the director is,
H E ’ S : “Insatiable.” because it’s a secret.
THE CLANDESTINE And we should respect
P R O C E S S BY W H I C H all this process.’ ”
W H I C H S H E : Did, coming
back three times to
audition in completely
different styles
before learning she’d
gotten the part.
HER PREVIOUS
EXPERIENCE WITH
A L M O D Ó VA R : Unrequited
longing. “I didn’t allow
myself to dream that
one day I would work
with him, because it
was impossible. I didn’t
want to be frustrated,
so I tried to avoid all
his films.”
HOW SUCCESSFUL SHE
WA S AT T H AT : Not very
W H AT ’ S N E X T ? The
American release of
Julieta on December 21

G Q M O T Y 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 1 9 9
 BREAKOUTS

A G E : 35
B R E A KO U T R O L E :
The quietly forceful
Mildred Loving,
one half of the
couple who push the
Supreme Court to
protect interracial
marriage in Loving
H E R A C C E N T : Irish-ish
I S H ? Negga was born
in Ethiopia and raised in
Limerick and London.
W H E R E E L S E YO U ’ V E
S E E N H E R : As a badass
gunslinger on Preacher
(season two premieres
next year)
WHERE ‘LOVING’
WRITER-DIRECTOR
JEFF NICHOLS HAD
S E E N H E R : “Jeff had
never heard of me.”
WHEN NICHOLS
KNEW SHE GOT THE
PA R T : “When Ruth
said ‘American Civil
Liberties Union’ exactly
the way that Mildred
says it. I gave her a
note about her ‘spine.’
I wanted to say
something to come
off mildly intelligent,
like I knew something
about the character.
As soon as she left
the room, I said, ‘Well,
I guess we’re done.’ ”

INTERVIEWS BY
Sarah Ball
Zach Baron
Benjy Hansen-Bundy
Lauren Larson
Peter Martin
Mariah Smith
MORE
Full stories
on all the
Breakouts
G Q.C O M

coat and dress

Tom Ford

2 0 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
MODERN,
MUSCULAR
TWEED
coat $1,295
Michael Kors
+
tank top $40
(for three)
pants $175
Michael Kors
boots $610
O’Keeffe
bracelet
Caputo & Co.
watch
Bulova
necklace and ring,
vintage

A G E : 26
B R E A KO U T R O L E :
A drug dealer in the
final third of Moonlight,
Barry Jenkins’s
triptych about growing
up gay in crack-
devastated Miami
HOW HIS ‘MOONLIGHT’
AUDITION WENT:
“I kicked his ass out,”
says Jenkins.
WHICH TURNED OUT
T O B E . . . A good thing.
Jenkins asked him
to come back in and
read for the character
he wound up playing
in the film.
H O W P L AY I N G T H AT
V E RY D A R K C H A R A C T E R
CHANGED RHODES’S
R E L AT I O N S H I P W I T H
T H E YO U T H O F A M E R I C A :
“I walked around
L.A. hating everyone
because they were
happy. Little kids
smiling? I wanted to
slap the shit out of them.
It was the strangest
thing, because I like
being personable!”
W H AT ’ S N E X T ? Terrence
Malick’s Weightless,
opposite Ryan Gosling,
Christian Bale, Cate
Blanchett, Michael
Fassbender, and Natalie
Portman

G Q M O T Y 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 0 1
N o a h S c h n a p p 12
C a l e b M c L a u g h l i n 15
G a t e n M a t a ra z z o 14
F i n n Wo l f h a r d 13
M i l l i e B o b by B r ow n 12
B R E A KO U T R O L E S :
A gang of pre-
adolescent heroes
who take down a
monster from an
alternate dimension on
2 0 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
the Duffer Brothers’
1980s-set sci-fi Netflix
hit, Stranger Things
H O W T H E C R E AT O R S
S AY T H E K I D S D I F F E R
F R O M A D U LT A C T O R S :
“Winona Ryder and
David Harbour aren’t
slapping each other
across the face as a
prank between takes. HOW BROWN DESCRIBES Wolfhard:
We’d have to be like, HER ROLE IN THE GROUP: “We have to be,
‘Guys! You’re turning “I keep the boys in like, prissy.”
your faces red!’ ” check. I’m quite proper.” Matarazzo: “I’ve
W H E N T H E Y S AY W H I C H T H E B OYS gotten more British.”
“ G U YS ” . . . They’re C AT E G O R I Z E S L I G H T LY W H AT ’ S N E X T ?
not talking about D I F F E R E N T LY: Season two of
Brown. “Millie was McLaughlin: “When Stranger Things is
seasoned. She’d ask she’s here, it’s more currently filming
for another take— like we’re girls.” in Atlanta.
something adult actors
do, but never kids.”
G Q M O T Y
 BREAKOUTS

RAMPED-UP
SKATER GEAR
FROM LEFT
ON NOAH SCHNAPP
sweater and shirt
GapKids
pants
Palm Angels
ON CALEB M C LAUGHLIN
tracksuit
Adidas Originals
t-shirt
Cooke Collective
ON GATEN MATARAZZO
jacket
Neil Barrett
t-shirt
GapKids
jeans
John Elliott
ON FINN WOLFHARD
sweater and pants
Gosha Rubchinskiy
t-shirt
American Apparel
skateboards
East River Skate
Shop, Brooklyn
for additional credits,
see page 233.

ON MILLIE BOBBY BROWN

jacket, skirt,
and boots
Coach 1941
t-shirt
Marc Jacobs
socks
Topshop
 BREAKOUTS

A G E : 19
B R E A KO U T RO L E :
As a mouthy teenager
recovering from his father’s
death in Kenneth Lonergan’s
Manchester by the Sea
SHOULDN’T HE BE IN
S C H O O L? Who ah you, his
fathah? He’s taking a
year off from UNCSA to
live and work in L.A.
H OW H E G O T T H E B O S T O N
ACCENT FOR THE ROLE:
“I studied a lot of news
reports—local people being
interviewed. I also had
a dialect coach, who told
me to watch ‘Shit Boston
Guys Say’ on YouTube.”
“ S H I T B O S T O N G U YS S AY ”
FASHION JOINS
I M PA C T O N H I S S H I T - TA L K I N G
THE NAVY
S K I L L S : “One of the
peacoat $3,540
very impressive things Prada
is how good he became +
at verbal sparring,” shirt $1,020
Lonergan says. “Casey pants $1,400
Affleck and I really like Prada
to abuse each other—I shoes $650
Allen Edmonds
wanted that for Casey’s
and Lucas’s characters.”
S H I T - TA L K I N G I M PA C T CELEBRATORY
ON THEIR OFFSCREEN VELVET
F R I E N D S H I P : “I was like ON SHAMEIK MOORE
the younger brother at blazer (yellow)
a sleepover with my older $2,000
Jeffrey Rüdes
brother. My relationship
shirt $1,250
with Casey in the film Bally
is extremely similar to
jeans $198
real life.” J Brand
W H AT ’ S N E X T ? A role in
loafers $750
Greta Gerwig’s directorial Louis Leeman
debut, Lady Bird
ON HERIZEN GUARDIOLA
dress and heels
Marc Jacobs
ON JUSTICE SMITH
blazer $1,395
shirt $550
jeans $595
for additional credits Burberry
and production, sneakers $480
see page 233. Golden Goose
where to buy it? Deluxe Brand
go to GQ.com/style location (right)
/fashion-directories Metrograph, N.Y.C.

2 0 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
S h a m e i k M o o r e 21 · H e r i z e n G u a r d i o l a 20 · J u s t i c e S m i t h 21

B R E A KO U T R O L E S : ON THE COUNTER- there’s nobody that

On the 1970s Bronx-set INTUITIVENESS OF BAZ would play Shaolin
Netflix series The Get LUHRMANN MAKING better than me.”
Down, Moore plays DJ A SHOW ABOUT THE W H AT L U H R M A N N S AYS
and graffiti virtuoso BIRTH OF HIP-HOP: THE CAST BROUGHT TO
Shaolin, Guardiola is a “Baz approaches T H E I R R O L E S : “Herizen
singer who sheds choir the story with so growing as an actor or
robes for the disco floor, much humility,” Smith Justice asking, ‘What
and Smith portrays a says. “I see him is this scene?’ And,
quiet protégé who finds stepping back and of course, Shameik,
voice in his verses. letting producers like who brought into
W H E R E E L S E YO U ’ V E Grandmaster Flash, the circle since day one
S E E N T H E M : Moore Kurtis Blow, and a genuine connection
starred in Dope, and Nas take the reins.” and involvement
Smith in John Green’s S P E A K I N G O F H U M I L I T Y. . . with hip-hop. Those
Paper Towns. If you “My agents were like, relationships were
know Guardiola, it’s ‘Yo, this man Baz real in life.”
because you’ve heard Luhrmann, he’s done W H AT ’ S N E X T ? Season
her music—this is her The Great Gatsby, two of The Get Down
first major acting role. Moulin Rouge!…, ’ ” says premieres this spring.
Moore. “And then I
met him, and the show
has to do with hip-hop?
It was perfect, because

G Q M O T Y 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 0 5
 CHEF

Sean Brock is one of the South’s leading chefs. But for years, he’s been
secretly suffering from a mysterious disease—exacerbated by working too
hard, drinking too much, and being too angry (i.e., the chef’s disease)—
that rendered him nearly blind. After a long-awaited treatment this year,
Brock was overwhelmed by a creative surge that has led to a genius revamp
of his first Charleston restaurant, McCrady’s. But will all that’s required
of a high-profile opening bring back the sickness? by Brett Martin

2 0 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y PAOLA + MURRAY

VERY MORNING this week, Sean
Brock has woken up and vomited.
is is not, in and of itself, that
unusual. Brock inherited a tric
gag reflex from his father, and
the smallest thing can sometimes
set him off: picking up aer his
dog, for instance, or the toothbrush
scraping too far back on his tongue.
is week, though, the throwing up
has been from nerves. In ten days, he’s
scheduled to complete the re-invention
of his flagship Charleston restaurant,
McCrady’s. e first stage, which opened
a few weeks ago, was McCrady’s Tavern,
a bustling, meat-heavy canteen with
a menu inspired by Brock’s collection of
19th-century cookbooks. e second
will be housed in this small, rectangular
space: 18 seats, 12 of them around a
U-shaped counter, and a tasting menu
that aspires to compete with the
imaginative culinary standards of the
best restaurants in the world. Brock
says it’s everything he’s ever wanted as a
chef. Which is enough to make him barf.
What the ture looks like, at this
moment, is four men staring silently
at a white plate. Brock and three of his
top chefs are gathered in the gleaming
open kitchen of the new McCrady’s.
Strewn about are crates of crystal
wineglasses, boxes of flatware, a small
forest of bonsai trees to be used in
the presentation of the restaurant’s first
course. “I’ve wanted these ever since
I saw The Karate Kid,” Brock says.
e men are regarding a dish that,
on closer examination, contains
an arrangement of food as white as the
china it’s plated on: an ivory rectangle
of poached cobia, a tumble of brunoised
matsutake mushrooms, and a pool
of white sauce made from green, or
uncooked, peanuts. It is the consistency
of tahini but tastes loamy and raw.
“We peel each peanut by hand. It’s
a fairly fast process,” deadpans John
Sleasman, McCrady's chef de cuisine.
Like the others, he’s wearing a look best
described as “pursued by werewolf.”
"Nobody's been doing a lot of sleeping
around here," Brock says.
He peers at the dish from beneath
the flat brim of his black baseball hat. If
there is a template for southern chef
these days—burly, bearded, bespectacled,
baseball-capped, and bedraped in
taoos—it is in large part a look based on
Brock’s. Tonight he’s wearing sneakers,
2 1 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
CHEF
a chef’s jacket over a Slayer T-shirt, and a cap reading M C , for
McCrady’s. He can almost seem to have two faces: At times,
boyishly mischievous, quick to break into a barking laugh. At
others, blank as an Easter Island statue and older than his 38 years.
is is already the tenth iteration of the cobia-and-matsutake
dish. At about the 12th or 13th, as the night wears on, the chefs
hit on the idea of mixing the peanut sauce with a shot of liquefied
lovage; at the 16th, of pouring out the combined sauce in front of
the diner, creating a spidery puddle of green and white.
Brock takes a bite and goes for a lile walk away from the plate,
as he oen does while tasting. “at’s really delicious,” he says
finally, smiling for the first time. e cooks imperceptibly relax,
like the unwiing subjects of a Columbo interrogation, before
Brock turns back with just one more thing: “Should it really be
just one piece of fish?” And the whole process starts again.
Several more versions
down the line, Brock removes
his hat and runs his hands
through his hair and across his
face. “I’m about to boot this
whole dish out onto East Bay
Street,” he muers. Sensing
a break, the other chefs depart.
Brock sits down heavily on
a stool, traces a finger along
the line of solder that runs
the length of the black-
walnut counter. “is is the
restaurant I’ve always wanted
to have. is is the place I’ve
dreamed about and never
thought I’d be able to open,”
he says. “Every person in this
building and every person
in the public is expecting
Sean Brock at the revamped
something big, something
McCrady’s in Charleston important, something
Clockwise from top left: impressive,” he says.
wood-fired oysters; muscadine Part of the quiet mood
grapes, sorghum, and milk ice
cream; popsicle of strawberry
tonight, he explains, has to
marshmallow coated with do with the fact that he
foie gras and almonds; duck exploded at his team earlier.
glazed with watermelon e specifics are already
molasses in a basil puree
fading, but the effects haven’t.
“I feel sick. I feel like I got
beat up,” he says. He holds
up a hand, swollen and weirdly crooked, to show the knuckle
still bleeding from when he punched a wall.
“ese dishes we’re working on, I could taste them in my head
as soon as I came up with them,” he says. “It’s just not coming
out onto the plate.”
And there’s something else. Brock sighs and rubs his eyes:
“I haven’t been able to see a cking thing all day.”
• • •
THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 16,000 photos on Brock’s iPhone.
By rough estimation, about 10 percent of those are of various
iterations of matsutake and cobia. Another 20 percent are of
Ruby, his French bulldog. And the rest are of eyes.
ere are bruised eyes. Baered eyes. Eyes leaking actual
tears of bright red blood. ere are eyes with stitches and
eyes with bandages. Eyes drooping as though draed down
by fishhooks and eyes goling in a grotesque simulation
of surprise. Eyes hidden behind patches, shielded by stained
gauze, buried beneath great sock ls of ice.
All of them are Brock’s eyes. (continued on page 231)
G Q M O T Y
 PHOTO CREDIT FOR MINOR CREDITS AND STYLING

NAME TK
G Q M O T Y
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
2 1 1
 We thought we knew when Usain Bolt won gold

in 2008 in preposterous fashion (with his shoe untied!).

But somehow he got smashing his Olympic

records in 2012. This year, at the ancient age of 29, the

man in history grabbed three more gold medals,

making the case that he was right when he declared himself

“T H E G R E AT E ST AT H L ET E TO LIV E”

by Devin Friedman

2 1 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y ALASDAIR McLELLAN
GOLD STANDARD

SAIN BOLT FAVORS the supine.
Given the chance, the feet will go
up on something or the ass will
scoot down on something. He
looks very natural on a couch
in the “fourth hour of watching
sports on television” position.
e first aernoon we meet—in
the living room of his home in the
verdant hills on the outskirts
of Kingston—Usain is splayed on
a chaise, powering through his
Instagram. He is wearing skinny
black jeans, white fashion high-
tops, a white T-shirt. He’s six feet
five inches but extraordinarily
well proportioned. Power l
forearms, broad shoulders. His
house, comfortable but modest
considering he’s one of the
wealthiest people in Jamaica, is
decorated in the contemporary-
nationless sle, like a luxury
condo in Dubai. Lots of black and
white, lots of cold tiles. He’s in
the midst of having three months
off—it’s October now, but he
won’t get back on the track again
until November. He says it’s
a schedule that suits him.
“I’m prey lazy,” he tells me. “I’m a
lazy person.”
is is the most time he’s ever had
off since he started competing seriously
at age 16. It’s a reward he’s given to
himself for winning three gold medals
at the Rio Olympics this year (for the
100 meters, the 200 meters, and as part
of the 4 x 100–meter relay team). For
not only holding the world record in
the 100 and 200 (which no one seems
to be able to come close to) but also
being the only runner in the history of
the world to win three gold medals in
three sprinting events in three separate
Games. It’s hard to even come up
with a name for it—the triple three-
peat? e nine-peat?
I ask: Is it difficult to be physically
inactive for that long?
“I like to chill out,” he says. “Watching
TV. at’s me.”
So we talk about what he likes to
watch on TV. Action movies, he says. He
likes them violent. He wants jaws
broken and heads exploding. He liked
GOLD STANDARD
the last Captain America movie, but the end was bullshit.
He thinks the Bourne movies are good, but they’re all
the same. e last really good movie he saw? e Ninja Turtles
movie: “It was about Krang, the villain, who came from
another world and tried to take over the world with Shredder;
then he betrayed Shredder and the Ninja Turtles have to
save the world from this war-machine crap. It was good!”
Oh, and Veep. He digs Veep, too.
I don’t believe you’re lazy, I tell him. You can’t be lazy and
win nine Olympic gold medals.
“It’s true,” he says. “I’m lazy. I’ll call someone upstairs and say,
‘Pass me the remote.’ ”
He says it’s good that he’s acclimating so well to the Ninja
Turtles-movie-reviewer lifesle, because in less than a year
Usain Bolt plans to be retired from track and field. is was, he
confirms, his last Olympics. He will train for one more world
track championships, in London next summer. And then... Well,
that’s prey much it.
You’re not going to miss it,
I ask. (He shakes his head: No.)
But you like running, right?
“Yeah. I like to compete.”
If you watch all of Usain
Bolt’s Olympics in order—
Beijing in 2008, then London
in 2012, Rio this year—you’ll
notice something. At first, in
Beijing, he seemed to be
made out of some other kind
of material entirely. He was
so far ahead aer 80 meters
that he actually let up, looked
back, and raised his arms. is
look on his face we’d never
quite seen before on a world-
class athlete. It was as if he
were so good he couldn’t
resist watching himself win
Usain Bolt seems to have the the race. It was a tease—just
how good could he be? He
rare ability to be both the guy
who crushes his opponents and can’t be bothered to let us
the guy watching and enjoying
the spectacle.
know. But over the course of
the following years, the
field began to catch up. Inches,
feet at a time. In Rio, Usain
won convincingly, but he’d become almost human. e weight
of the flesh seemed to have just about caught up with him.
I ask: Could you come in third or fourth place and still
love it, because you’re really competing against yourself? He
shakes his head again: No.
“I’m too competitive,” he says. “at’s why it’s time for me to
go. e drive—I know it’s going to start going down.”
Truth be told, he says, he had a hard time staying motivated
this year. ere’s no way he could do it again.
• • •
A D R I A N D E N N I S /A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S
A Brief Romantic Interlude
I CAME IN, I will admit, wanting in part to discuss the romantic
exploits of Usain Bolt. Aer he won his medals in Rio, he
seemed to go on a world tour of barely dressed women with
the same overt sense of joy with which he greets his medal
victories. e Internet is liered with lo-fi Vine-length clips
of Usain Bolt in the company of young females. A photo
surfaced of Usain cuddling in bed with a woman identified as
the widow of a deceased Brazilian drug lord named Dina
Terror. I read alarmingly detailed reports in the British press
G Q M O T Y
 coat $9,300
Bottega Veneta
shorts
Puma
necklace
Renvi
watch
Hublot
ring, his own
where to buy it?
go to gq.com/style
/fashion-directories

But Wait—Are
You Really Going
to Retire?
I THOUGHT ABOUT IT for a
while. I let it sit. Later in
the aernoon, I asked him in just
those words: But wait—are
you really going to retire? Because
there won’t be anyone telling
you that you’re the fastest man in
the world anymore. Paparazzi
are very annoying when you’re
trying to wine on ladies but
might become something you
miss when you wine on ladies
and no one cares, and then when
no one cares there are suddenly
no more ladies to wine on.
But he insists. “I like the
simple life,” he says. “I’m from the
country. And aer I retire, I’m
going to live in the country. I like
dirt bikes and football and stuff.
Just nature, and just chilling.”
Yeah, I say. But you enjoy the
nightclub, too.
“Yeah, but aer a while that’s
gonna get boring.”
• • •
Usain Bolt Doesn’t
Play Defense
OUT OF the darkening streets,
Usain Bolt arrives at the Football
Factory on a speedy Japanese-
made motorcycle that, against his
of the various nightclubs he frequented in various districts six-foot-plus frame, looks almost like a child’s toy. It is dusk, off a street
of London aer the Olympics—the Libertine nightclub in thronged with traffic snaking upward from the congested flats of the ci
Fitzrovia, Drama and Tape in Mayfair—and with whom and into the hills, lighting up the faces of Jamaican schoolgirls in their British
by which door he entered and exited. colonial uniforms as they wait at bus stops. e Factory is an outdoor
“e British press is always trying to make me out to be this public soccer facili wedged between a school and the street, available for
bad guy who loves women and how all I do is women and stuff.” rent by the hour. Bolt rode over here alone, in his Puma slides, with no
Why are you a bad guy if you love women? securi detail—Kingston is a notoriously dangerous ci, but, Usain says,
“I was telling this English press guy,” he says by way of “I have no issues in Kingston. ere’s always a lot of love.”
response. “You can’t judge a different culture by your own ey play on these miniature fields with walls, he and his friends. How
culture. In England when you get famous the first thing you do it works is the game lasts for ten minutes or until someone scores. Usain
is get married and have kids. In Jamaica it’s different—like my has been coming here twice a week for three years. One of his good
parents had me and they got married 11 years later.” friends, a guy named Gussy who works as an air-traffic controller, is here.
And his behavior at nightclubs, he says, it isn’t exactly what ere’s a lile man with a caved-in chest and tiny wrists about whom
it appears to be. “In Jamaica, we wine on each other. It’s our I think: No way does this guy play soccer. (But he does. Man, does he play
culture. People see it the first time, they’re like, What is going on? soccer.) ey’re not all impressive physical specimens like Usain Bolt. Some
It’s like they’re having sex in the club! No, that’s just the culture. of their bodies might be lumpen, or atrophied, or molded by desk work
It’s how we are.” into stiff curves. But everyone’s really, really good (continued on page 233)

1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 1 5
 DESIGNER
CEO, Marco Bizzarri. “He
knew everything,” Bizzarri
says. e history of the house.
e best, boldest possible
version of its ture. “In a
UCCI HAS BEEN AROUND, in one company like Gucci you can
form or another, since 1921. Its sales go up. lose millions and millions
Its sales go down. Right now they’re up in a second,” Bizzarri tells
17 percent. ey’re “Smells Like Teen Spirit” me. “It could’ve been much
easier for me to appoint
up. ey’re up in the way that every article
someone famous.” But Michele
of clothing made by everyone else is subtly persuaded him otherwise.
sliding Gucci’s way, trying to get in on the Bizzarri asked him to produce
action. You walk into a nice store now, any a new men’s collection in
store, and what had been a reliable display just five days. Michele hasn’t
had a real day off since.
of somber blacks and grays—sturdy, angular, His hair is long and
calm clothing—has erupted into Gucci’s tangled, like he’d climbed
newly signature riot of color and appliqué down off a stained-glass
animals, buerflies and snakes and tigers, window. He gestures
at a board in front of him
everything opening its mouth to scream. displaying each of the 75
is is all thanks to Alessandro Michele, the label’s looks he’s about to show. “It’s
newest creative director. Fashion Week in Milan is a way to talk about love,” he
where the dream gets reflected back to the dreamer. says. e show is called Magic
In the outside world, Michele’s vision exists only Lanterns; someone hands
in bits and pieces. In fragments. But here, backstage, me the notes, and I read the
in a winding former train station on a flat white words “sensual panic,” a
day in September, it’s all looking back at him: Men translation of the French
in exquisite, high-colored double-breasted suits, philosopher Roger Caillois.
trench coats draped louche around their shoulders Michele is ostensibly showing
like elk dangling from the necks of hunter-gatherers. women’s looks today, but my
Women in flower-and-bird-appliquéd Gucci jeans. eyes, wandering the board,
Dakota Johnson in a jacket seamed with studs. sele on one for men: a black
Michele has only had this job since January 2015. peak-lapel tuxedo, with a
He’d worked in the back of the house, under his big divided bow tie, generous
predecessor, Frida Giannini, for almost a decade. high-cropped pants, white
“I tried to survive, to be very professional,” he sneakers. Sensual panic
says. He was anonymous; even he felt anonymous. It is more or less what I feel.
made him an unlikely—impossible, really—choice to
succeed her. On what was supposed to be Michele’s
way out, he had a conversation with Gucci’s current
Just two years ago, Alessandro Michele was an unknown: a back-of-the-house
veteran at Gucci—no one’s idea of a revolutionary. But that’s exactly what
he’s become, thanks to a blur of colorful, floridly embroidered, eminently
wearable clothing. Sometimes it takes decades to become an overnight success
2 1 6 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
Covetousness. Like a twisting
pain in my stomach.
I know this feeling by now,
having looked at my share of
Michele’s clothing. It’s lovely—
like the unicorn tapestries
at the Cloisters, or Jeff Koons
sculptures minus the soul-
deadening cynicism. It’s bright
and generous and on some
seductive level suests that
dressing well is easy—just put
on this emerald green bomber
jacket, this T-shirt with a
“Peanuts” character on it (“I
think that there is not really a
difference between a ‘Peanuts’
and a beauti l Renaissance
painting,” Michele says), these
embroidered jeans, and you
will somehow look…normal,
which is unlikely enough,
but also special. Like yourself
but beer. You will look
ready to play anksgiving
football. But also equipped
to escort a beauti l woman
to the Met Ball.
Michele has quickly
remade Gucci in his own
image. In February, for
the first time, the house will
show men’s and women’s
looks simultaneously. “For
me, the company is my big
movie, and I don’t want to do
a movie for men and a movie
for women,” he says. “ey
have to live together to make
the most beauti l movie.”
He’s the director. And here
come the stars.— Z A C H B ARON
PARI DUKOVIC
 LEADING MAN

2 1 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y ROBERT MAXWELL
 • “I’M FROM A
relatively small
town and a rural
place, and I think
you see that in my
hands and my face,”
Joel Edgerton
says. It’s this
earthbound quality
that appealed
to director Jeff
Nichols, who cast
Edgerton in two
2016 movies,
Midnight Special
and Loving—
a certain rough-
hewn stoicism,
a quiet openness
to the world.
In Midnight
Special, Edgerton
plays a cop caught
up in something
beyond his
understanding; in
Loving, he’s a man
whose marriage to a
black woman (played
by Ruth Negga; see
page 200) results
in a precedent-
P R O D U C E R : T R I C I A S H E R M A N AT B A U E R F E I N D P R O D U C T I O N S . S T Y L I S T : M I C H A E L C I O F F O L E T T I

establishing 1960s
Supreme Court case
out of Virginia.
For all its social
import, Loving
is an understated,
almost serene
movie—a film about
a marriage that
A T A R T D E P A R T M E N T. G R O O M I N G : D AV I D C O X F O R K E V I N M U R P H Y.

survives—shorn of flight jacket

R13 at Barneys
the usual histrionic New York
moments we’ve t-shirt
grown accustomed T by Alexander
to seeing in Wang at
Bloomingdale’s
period dramas.
“In Hollywood,
we often tell plaid shirt
a true story, but A.P.C. at
Bloomingdale’s
we don’t tell
t-shirt
it truthfully,” Visvim
Edgerton says. For
jeans
doing so, Nichols, Levi’s
Negga, and Edgerton
boots
all find themselves Dolce & Gabbana
in the Oscar watch
conversation. Take Boca MMXII
that, Hollywood. hat
—ZACH B A R O N Stetson

G Q M O T Y 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 1 9
 ICON

‘ P R I N C E , M U S I C I A N , N E W YO R K , A P R I L 9, 1 9 9 5 ’

He was a legend, a virtuoso, one of the true gods of music. But he was
© T H E R I C H A R D AV E D O N F O U N D AT I O N

also (at times, anyway) a person in the world like anyone else. He liked to
send goofy Internet memes to his friends. He made really good scrambled
eggs. He rode his bike a lot, went to the hardware store, called old friends
late at night. Chris Heath spoke with band members, fellow artists, and
Paisley Park veterans about the life and times of Prince Rogers Nelson—the
real Prince, the man so few people got to know before he was gone

2 2 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y RICHARD AVEDON
 ICON

Really, I’m normal. A little highly strung, maybe. But

normal. But so much has been written about me
and people never know what’s right and what’s wrong.
I’d rather let them stay confused.
—PRINCE, 2004

COREY TOLLEFSON (Minneapolis-based entrepreneur and fan; attended events

at Paisley Park for over 20 years): e thing that was nny was you never saw
Prince [first], you smelled him. He always smelled like lavender. And you knew
when he was there because you’d turn around and go, “Holy shit, I smell
Prince.” And then, ten seconds later, you’d see him.
VAN JONES (political activist; met Prince
KANDACE SPRINGS (singer; befriended by Prince via Twitter after he discovered after he tried to make a sizable donation to
her cover of a Sam Smith song online in 2014): He smelled like lavender. Dude, Jones’s charitable organization anonymously):
I’m not even kidding you. Overtime. My sister burns lavender in my house and He always said the same thing whenever
I’m, “Oh God, it smells like Paisley Park.” at’s Prince. he was geing on the phone: “is is
Prince.” Not “How are you doing?” Not
MAYA WASHINGTON (photographer; befriended by Prince after he discovered “What’s up?” Kind of low: “is is Prince.”
her online in 2015): Before you meet him, you have the idea of him being this
• • •
thing: He’s untouchable, he’s a unicorn, he’s a meta-planet. So the first thing
I was taken aback by, and a lot of people are taken aback by, is his size. Because I want to tell you a little bit about
I’m short, I’m five three…and he’s shorter than me. But, that aside, he is a myself. I was born in Minneapolis.
unicorn. He’s somehow floating when he’s talking. My father taught me how to
play the piano.… When I got a little
MORRIS HAYES (keyboard player; Prince’s longest-serving band member, older, I started doing things my way.
1992–2012): I remember taking him to the hardware store in my camping van. —PRINCE, ONSTAGE IN ATLANTA,
He wanted to go buy a lock. And we go to Ace Hardware—it’s snowing and APRIL 14, 2016, A WEEK
freezing—and I say, “Okay, Prince, you stay in the car.” So I’m picking stuff up BEFORE HIS DEATH

T H I S PA G E : C O U R T E S Y O F I N S TA G R A M / P R I N C E L I V E T H E B E S T. O P P O S I T E PA G E : L A R R Y FA L K .
in the aisles, I look over, he just cruises by in a turtleneck sweater and his
zzy boots, and people are looking like, “Oh my God, Prince is in the hardware JILL WILLIS (Prince’s publicist,
store!” He comes and finds me and he’s got a hand l of crap—like, “Can we 1989–90, and co-manager, 1990–93):
buy this?” I’m, “What did you do with the car?” He says, “It’s out there—it’s just He was always dressed in what
running.” I said, “Prince, you can’t leave the car running—somebody could could look like show/stage clothes: a
just steal the car.” He said, “is is Chanhassen—nobody’s gonna steal the car.” couture suit, matching handmade
So we get out to the car and sure enough it’s out there, just running, smoke boots from a shoemaker in Paris, his
coming out of the tailpipe. And he’s like, “I told you.” hair done and ll makeup. One
time, I had taken the red-eye from L.A.
CARMEN ELECTRA (dancer and singer; discovered by Prince in 1991): to Minneapolis and went home long
He never slept—he couldn’t sleep. I would wake up alone: Where’d he go? And his enough to shower, threw on a baseball
housekeeper said, “He’s in the studio.” Or he would leave the sweetest lile cap, jeans, sweatshirt, and drove over to
notes on the stairs that would say: “Had to work! Couldn’t sleep. Come see me.” the studio. I went up the stairs and
Prince was coming down the hall from
SPRINGS: I saw his room and all that. His room was so small compared with his office. “Going fishing?” he asked.
everything I saw. You’d never expect him to live there. It was kinda homey—
he had this lile queen-size bed, and a huge-ass TV, like a 52-inch flatscreen. HAYES: We have a thing called Caribou
He had a lile private bathroom right there, a big-ass bathtub in there, and fake Coffee in Minnesota, which is like
palm trees and a tan-colored floor—doing a lile beach look. I saw his Starbucks. He’d go over there, and he didn’t
bathroom because I le my hair dryer at the hotel and I needed to do my Afro have any pockets. He didn’t have a wallet
for the show, and he let me use his hair dryer. or any credit cards. He just had cash he’d
carry in his hand—like, a $100 bill. And
MISTY COPELAND (principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre; appeared in a whoever took his order, they’d have a
Prince video and live performances): He never called from a number you’d good day, ’cause he’d buy his coffee drink
recognize, so you’d never know it was going to be him. Loved to speak in and then just leave the whole hundred.
different accents—British and French…everything. Sometimes I’d be, “Who is He doesn’t wait for any change because
this?” It would go on for a while, and then finally he’d laugh and it would be him. he doesn’t have anywhere to put it.

2 2 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 G Q M O T Y
JONES: He was very interested in
the world. He wanted me to explain
how the White House worked. He
asked very detailed kind of foreign-
policy questions. And then he’d ask,
“Why doesn’t Obama just outlaw
birthdays?” [laughs] I’m, like, “What?”
He said, “I was hoping that Obama,
as soon as he was elected, would
get up and announce there’d be no
more Christmas presents and
no more birthdays—we’ve got too
much to do.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t
know if that would go over too well.”
DANIELLE CURIEL (dancer; sang
with Prince in her short-lived group,
Curly Fryz): He was always sending
me memes and nny videos. He
liked memes of him when people take
his face and write captions on his
pictures. He was always sending me
those. One, he had a duck face on,
and it was HOW LIGHTSKIN DUDES
ROLL DICE or something.
WASHINGTON: When you get to
know him he’s really nny and has a
wild sense of humor. He spends a lot
of time looking up comedy. Laughing
at things and sharing videos. I would
always make n of how pale he was—
I thought he was super pale. I’m, like,
“Prince, you need to tan.” Like, you
need some vitamin D in your life. en
he sent a meme of himself wearing
glasses, saying SHE THINKS I NEED A
TAN. He made it. He makes a lot of stuff.
He likes to mess around on his computer.
BRIANNA CURIEL (Danielle’s 13-year-
old younger sister; Prince flew her to Paisley
Park to sing with his band): At Paisley
Park he would always have Finding Nemo
playing, and he loved that movie. Actually,
that’s my favorite movie, too. He would
have loved to see Finding Dory.
CAT GLOVER (dancer and rapper, ‘Sign o’
the Times’ and ‘Lovesexy’ tours): Prince was
never an eater. He would usually smell his
food. Literally. I never really seen Prince
eat. I’ve seen him make pancakes—he
made me pancakes, he made me es. But
he’s not the pe of person that eats a lot.
JILL JONES (backing vocalist for
Prince, 1982–91): Prince did the cooking.
Scrambled es. He put curry and a lile
bit of Cheddar cheese in them. It was
really good, actually. You know, he barely
ate. I was always starving around him.
I was always freaking hungry!
COPELAND: Yeah, he has made me
scrambled es. Breakfast was his forte.
He liked to use a lot of seasoning.
Like Lawry’s, or one of those all-purpose
seasonings. ey were delicious.
PRINCE (interview, 2014): I can cook.
But only one thing. Omelets.
People say I’m always wearing
heels cuz I’m short. I wear
heels because the women like ’em.
—PRINCE, 1985
JILL JONES: I’d never met anyone
like him before. Not at all. It was just
his confidence. And he was really shy,
too, so there was this childlike thing
that went with it. He totally threw me
off, because he didn’t do what every
other guy did—like, come to your house
at the right time and pick you up, meet
your mom and dad. Prince would throw
rocks at your window while you were
sleeping. He did things that were almost
like something from a fairy tale.
CHAKA KHAN (singer whose picture
Prince had on his wall as a teenager and
whom he first met in 1978; much later
signed to his NPG Records label): Somehow
he got my hotel number. At the time, Sly
[Stone] and I were really close buddies.
And Prince is a very good mimic and
he mimicked Sly on the phone and said,
“I’m up here at Electric Lady Studios—
come up here and chill.” I said, “Okay,
I’ll be right over.” e studio looked
completely emp. Finally I found this
A fan’s Instagram photo of Prince
bicycling in Minneapolis.
In the studio in February 1977,
before his first record deal.

short lile guy in this one studio with a
guitar. I asked, “Where’s Sly?” He said,
“at was me.” I said, “Who are you?” He
was just everyday about it. I wanted to
strangle him. I said, “Okay, nice meeting
you,” and I le. So that’s how we met.
He never let me forget it for a long time.
He thought it was one of the nniest
things that ever happened to him.
In the late ’70s, when Prince
was still just a guy in Minneapolis
whose parents named him Prince.
With his first wife, Mayte, at home
in Spain in 1999.
GLOVER: Back in 1986 I was on Star
Search, and one girl on Star Search with me
invited me to Prince’s house for dinner.
I was wearing purple. Aerward, we all
went to a club and he kind of whispered,
asked me if I would dance with him when
a good song came on. I think it was a
Robert Palmer song. Anyway, every time
he did a step I would follow him, and
he noted that I could keep up with him.
I always said: If he ever saw me dance,
he would love the way I dance. I just knew
it. A month aer that I was at another
club, Vertigo. Prince saw me and he
tapped me on the shoulder, and he says,
“Hi…I would like for you to be in my
band.” And I kind of blushed, and before
I could pull my head up he disappeared.
You know, he disappears really quickly.
at happened to us a lot. e next
week, he came back and asked me again,
2 2 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
ICON
and this time I said, “Wait a minute—
don’t leave before I answer you.” And
I told him: “Yes.” And then he walked
away. at’s how he is. He was always
real slick with the mystery.
ELECTRA: He called me and said,
“I have a flight booked for you tomorrow
morning to Minneapolis.” I packed up
my lile tiny suitcase, and I had maybe
$20 and four or five outfits. As soon
as I landed, a purple limo was waiting
outside. I stayed at his house for a lile
while—I thought I was going to go
to a hotel. But he was a gentleman. ere
was a lot of makeup in the guest room,
and someone said, “We’re gonna get all
that stuff out for you—that’s Kim
Basinger’s.” I think she had maybe just le.
JILL JONES: We shared clothes a lot—
he’d see something I was wearing, the
next day he would be wearing it. e first
day I got [to Paisley Park] I found these
pants in his closet, these black-and-blue
kind of leopard-print things. I went to
this rehearsal and this beauti l black girl
walked up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Kim.
You’re Jill, right?” And I said, “Yes,” and
she was like, “ose are my pants.” I was
so mortified. I was such a child then—
I was, “Do you want me to take them off?”
en she took my hand and she basically
took me aside and kind of schooled me
on Prince’s ex-girlfriends. I think he liked
it. I think he liked all of us.
ELECTRA: I don’t know one beauti l
woman who didn’t want to be with
him. But it did hurt me. It hurt me really
bad. And I was too young to really
communicate with him, so I just kind
of pulled away. And during that time
I went out with a guy—I hadn’t slept
with this person—and Prince found out.
He said, “I wrote this song about you,”
and then he played “I Hate U.” It was
hard to hear. And it was even harder to
hear the parts of the song that said it
could have been a completely different
way. en to say “I hate you because
I love you”—I literally cried in front of
him. I think he just wanted me to
hear it and know that he was really upset.
en he flew me back to Los Angeles.
JILL JONES: With him it was kind of
like Groundhog Day. A repetition. He’d
drive to his dad, he’d see his mom—those
were the same introductory things and
they never changed, no maer what
woman came in. ey all took the 6 A.M.
drive. And the late-night things—I don’t
think I was the only one to say that
Prince threw rocks or came and picked
them up in the middle of the night. You’d
go to a record store, you’d watch some
movies, you’d make some popcorn. He
was definitely a creature of habit.
GLOVER: I had a boyfriend at the time.
at was one thing [Prince] respected.
ey actually played basketball together.
He was, “It’s nice to meet you, man—
I heard a lot about you.” I told him, “at’s
the stupidest thing you could say!
Everybody’s heard a lot about Prince!”
SPRINGS: He was actually very
respect l. I mean, I never got with
him like that. If I did, I would tell
everybody! He definitely did try, I’m
not gonna lie. [laughs] He tried to hold
my hand in the movie theater. And
he would send the most flir e-mails—
he would make it very clear.
WASHINGTON: First, when you go on
the bike rides, you’re like, “Wow! I went
on a bike ride with Prince down to Lake
Minnetonka!” It’s n. And you think
you’re special. en I stayed there long
enough that I’m like, “Oh—this is his
thing.” is is what he does. He has the
movie theater where you go to watch a
movie—he’ll buy out the theater. He has
his routine with all these young girls
who come in: movies, bike ride, possibly
a jam session. at sounds about right.
• • •
The first line of that song is “Your butt is
mine.” I’m saying, who’s going to sing that
to whom? Because you sure ain’t singing
it to me. And I sure ain’t singing it to you.
So right there we got a problem.
—PRINCE, IN 1997, ON WHY
HE DECLINED MICHAEL JACKSON’S
OFFER TO JOIN HIM FOR
T H I S PAG E : R O B E R T W H I T M A N . O P P O S I T E PAG E : S T E V E N PA R K E / I CO N I C I M AG E S .
A DUET ON THE TITLE TRACK
OF HIS ALBUM ‘ BAD ’
BOBBY Z (drummer, the Revolution):
I don’t know what Michael was thinking,
but he just didn’t know the fierceness
of Prince. I know that he didn’t want any
part of that. You don’t come to Prince
with a song like, “Who’s bad in this song—
Prince or Michael?” It’s gonna be Prince.
It’s not gonna be Michael. He loved
Michael Jackson. He was just at a level
now where he was competing. He was
a fierce competitor—he wasn’t going
to do anything that looked like they were
buddies. He was gonna win. And he won
with the movie. He won with Purple Rain.
GLOVER: On the plane, he brought up
Graffiti Bridge as something he wanted to
make into a musical. He said, “It’s gonna
be you and Madonna.” She was actually
supposed to be the lead of the movie.
G Q M O T Y

[Glover describes how Madonna later flew
to Minneapolis to discuss the project.]
He said he was having a hard time with
Madonna and would I come down? He
couldn’t deal with her by himself, is what
he told me over the phone. So I came
down and Madonna and Prince started
arguing over the script. She was nny.
I liked her. ey both started raing on
each other. Madonna said she didn’t like
the script and Prince said to Madonna,
“Well, I don’t like your shoes.” at’s how
it all started. I was siing there going,
“Oh my God, here we go.” So Madonna
told Prince, “I don’t like your shoes, either.
Look at ’em with those peace signs and
zippers and shit all over ’em.” And Prince
was saying, “What are you wearing? Are
those shoes or boots?” ’Cause Madonna
had on these cowboy-boot shoes. is is
what happens when you get two big
egos in one room. It was jokey and
serious. ey’re the same way.
In a 2004 sketch on ‘Chappelle’s Show,’ Eddie
Murphy’s brother Charlie told an absurd,
but substantially true, story about a late-
night basketball game at Paisley Park
between Murphy’s and Prince’s entourages;
Prince ran circles around Murphy’s team,
then fed his vanquished guests pancakes.
GILBERT DAVISON (worked with Prince
from 1984 to 1994, rising from bodyguard to
president of Paisley Park): e backstory
to that was—and this is the part Charlie
doesn’t tell—Eddie had wanted to play
Prince his new album. So during that
basketball game, Eddie’s music was
playing, via boom box, on a cassee. Aer
that game, Prince goes over and he tosses
the cassee out of the boom box, and he
says, “Let me ask you a question: Do
you see me stop my show to do comedy?”
• • •
What we did was take a microphone and
place it on Mayte’s stomach and move
it around with the gel till we get the right
spot. And then [imitates heartbeat],
you know, you start to hear that and then
we put the drums around that.
—PRINCE, IN 1996, EXPLAINING
HOW HE USED THE HEARTBEAT
OF HIS AS-YET-UNBORN BABY ON A
NEW SONG, “ SEX IN THE SUMMER ”
HAYES: Prince is one of them kinda
dudes—he’s an all-in kinda cat. So even
before the baby was born, Prince had
built basically a shrine to the baby, this
big giant playground with swings. All
this infrastructure was put in place. Like
he had a back room that got converted
into this pink-and-blue baby lair. He just
shied into that mode. He basically was
gonna take a few months off.
In October 1996, Mayte, Prince’s first wife, gave
birth to a son. The boy, reportedly born with
severe skeletal abnormalities, died a week later,
a death that Prince declined to acknowledge
publicly. A second pregnancy ended in a
miscarriage, and he and Mayte later divorced.
HAYES: Oh man, that was devastating.
He was devastated. It’s like he never
had any foresight that anything could
ever be a problem. And I think that not
being able to do anything and to be
helpless was a real thing for him to come
to terms with. Everything he did, he
already saw it done—that kid was already
out and playing with kids and everything.
He already saw it. And for it not to
turn out that way was a very difficult
thing—I think it really humbled him.
NEAL KARLEN (Minneapolis-born
journalist; wrote Prince’s 1985 and 1990
‘Rolling Stone’ cover stories and maintained an
unlikely friendship with Prince for the rest of
his life): We’d really communicate over the
phone. Over 31 years. From oen to regular
to irregular to nothing at all. Several times
a year, on average. A few years, I’d say from
four to ten times a year. And some years
none, some years 20. I always teased him
that we weren’t really friends. at he
knew I’d be up, because I stay up late. In
the beginning, he’d call between three
and five. On my phone it would either be
a friend or it would say “Unknown”—if it
was “Unknown,” I knew it was him.
I mean, no one else called me at four in the
morning. He’d say, (continued on next page)
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 2 5
 P R I NCE
continued from page 225
“Did I wake you up?” I truly am an incompe-
tent person—the only thing I can do is have
a 4:48-in-the-morning conversation with
friends about life, death, and loneliness, because
I have enough Jewish angst to discuss that
at 4:48 in the morning. It wasn’t just sexist,
macho bullshit—he wanted kids and a wife
and a family, you know. And we talked about
death a lot. From the age of 25, he was always
talking about heaven and what it would look
like. And would he get there?
• • •
“Let’s Go Crazy” was about God and Satan.
I had to change those words up—the
de-elevator was Satan in that song.… And “Let’s
Go Crazy” was God to me...stay happy, stay
focused, and you can beat the de-elevator.
—PRINCE, 1997
JIM WALSH (Minneapolis-based music writer;
covered Prince for decades): I said to him, “Come
on, man—don’t you want to make another Sign
o’ the Times, another Purple Rain?” I don’t know
if I framed it exactly like that, but he said, “No,
no—Jim, I’ve been to the mountaintop. ere’s
nothing there.”
In 1998, Prince persuaded bass player Larry
Graham, legendary for his work in Sly & the Family
Stone, to move to Minneapolis and help guide his
Bible studies; in 2003, Prince was baptized as a
Jehovah’s Witness.
IAN BOXILL (engineer at Paisley Park, 2004–
09): We’d take breaks to go to the Kingdom Hall.
He prey much blended in—I guess they were
used to him there. I believe he did door-to-door
stuff. As a maer of fact, there was one particu-
lar couple that, I think, he had knocked on their
door and they ended up coming and being
Jehovah’s. He actually recruited them.
GR A H A M: We’d go out in the ministry, he’d
walk around like anybody else. We’re witness-
ing about God. at’s what you do.
In keeping with his new faith, Prince culled his most
explicit songs from his repertoire, and he began to
require that those around him refrain from profanity.
PRINCE (2004): ere’s certain songs I don’t
play anymore, just like there’s certain words I
don’t say anymore. It’s not me anymore. ere’s
no more envelope to push. I pushed it off the
table. It’s on the floor. Let’s move forward now.
VA N JON ES: Prince is always duali. You
know, the sacred and the sexual, black and
white, male and female, all those kind of things.
But later in his life, the biest dynamic was
worldly versus otherworldly. His religious
2 2 6 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
faith versus his growing political and humani-
tarian concerns. e Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t
much approve of him weighing in on this stuff,
and that was important to him, so it was a con-
stant kind of balancing act.
KH A N: He seemed to get a lile more para-
noid on one hand, and on the other hand he
became more of a human being. He became
more humane. You get older and wiser, and
you see the commonology of man, how we are
all intertwined, we are all the same. It seemed
like he’d come to that sort of recognition in life.
I was happy to see that.
• • •
I count time different.… There’s no
such thing as time, really, once
you study the orbits of the planets.
—PRINCE, 2010
VAN JONES: He’s six hours off from every-
body else. So when it’s midnight to you, it’s
only 6 P.M. to him. And when it’s 6 A.M. to
you, it’s only midnight to him. But time just
kinda stops working around him. It’s hard to
explain. Suddenly four in the morning doesn’t
seem so late, because whatever is going on
around him is so free. Paisley Park is the one
place, besides a couple of experiences that I’ve
had at church, as an African-American man
where I’ve ever felt truly free and human.
HAYES: Nobody was allowed to say “dead-
lines” around him. He hated that word. He said:
“That’s arbitrary and stupid. What happens
when I go over the line? I’m dead?” Prince
would always tell us “time is a trick.” I remem-
ber one day I was late, and he was, “You’re late,
Morris!” and I said, “Well, you know, Prince,
time is a trick…” It didn’t work. He was, “How
about I Jedi-mind-trick that check when you
don’t show up again?”
WILLIS: e middle-of-the-night calls from
Prince were a consistent reality. Two, three,
four in the morning—having the phone ring
was not uncommon. And if you didn’t answer,
he’d call back. Or call someone to call you to say
that Prince was trying to reach you. “Got a
pen?” was the way many of those conversations
started. A not unpical story: being awoken at
three-ish in the morning on a weeknight. “Um,
got a pen?” “Not under my pillow. I’ll be right
back. Okay, I’m back. What’s up?” “I’m not sure
which morning show it was, but one of them
was doing a story on this woman—I think she
was in Boston. Somewhere in Massachuses.
She has spent most of the past ten years trying
to save money to buy a building for feeding
homeless people and she’s found a building
but doesn’t have enough money. I want to find
her and give her the money.” “Okay. Did you
catch her name?” “No.” “Okay. We’ll find her.”
“Let me know. ank you.”
VAN JONES: He was really inspired by the
Black Lives Maer movement. He wrote this
song “Baltimore” [sample lyric: Does anybody
hear us pray / For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray? /
Peace is more than the absence of war]—he was in
Baltimore within weeks of the upset there.
Onstage he said something so profound that
most people missed it. To African-American
young people who were there, he said, “e next
time I come to Baltimore, I wanna stay in a
hotel owned by you.” He was saying: Don’t burn
it down, build it up. Don’t just protest injustice,
create justice. Create your own economy, create
your own enterprises. at was his view. His
response to Trayvon Martin was to say: “When
black kids wear hoodies, people think they’re
thugs—when white kids wear hoodies, they
think, ‘ere’s the next Mark Zuckerberg.’ ” Like,
we need to create some black Mark Zuckerbergs.
You’ve got to create a situation where when a
cop sees a black kid wearing a hoodie, they
think, “Wow, that kid could be the next Mark
Zuckerberg.” We have to create that. is guy’s
such a genius. Everybody else is talking about
racial injustice and Trayvon Martin, and Prince
instead keys in on a fashion statement.
WASHINGTON: He was supposed to do some-
thing with Netflix, a reali show on Paisley
Park. He’s, “Why don’t you help me?” I’m, “I’d
love to, but you’d have to be in it.” And he’s, “No,
no, no, I’m not in it.” I’m, “Why not? You’re so
nny—why don’t you want anyone to see your
sense of humor?” And he would shut it down:
“Maya, I can’t be nny. I have to save the world.”
SPRINGS: e night of my birthday—that’s the
last time I saw him—he took me to the Dakota
club [to see Living Colour]. ere was a huge
ll moon that night. Like a super moon, I guess.
And he was, “Whoa.” So we actually went the
other way to see if we could get a beer view of
the moon. But then the clouds got in the way—
we couldn’t find it. We’re, like, driving in circles
in the neighborhood just trying to find it.
TOLLEFSON: ere’s an electronic gate at the
front of [Paisley Park]—most of the time it was
wide open. Now you’d just get a tweet—you’d
know if there was a party because around
eight o’clock he’d start tweeting it out on his
Twier handle. Twen years ago, you literally
had to drive by Paisley, and if you saw the pur-
ple light going through the pyramid, that
meant he was there.
A LBERT M AGNOLI (director, editor, and co-
writer, ‘Purple Rain’): I learned that the entire area
of Minneapolis, before a storm, the skies would
turn this amazing blue-purple before the rain
came. It was a phenomenon. So for me, the con-
cept of “purple rain” was very specific in terms
of the feeling you get just before the clouds
would open up and literally gush raindrops.
Later on, when Prince and I were working at
Paisley Park, we would go outside prior to a
rainstorm and just stand in the field, looking at
the s together. Waiting for the rain to drop.
And those skies went purple.
VAN JONES: ink about it: He grows up this
poor black kid on a march to nowhere in a
nowhere white town, and when the news
announces “Prince has died”—there have been
princes for 10,000 years, there must be princes in
Saudi Arabia and Europe and Africa right now—
nobody said “Prince who?” e color purple has
been part of the universe since the big bang.
Prince dies, they bathe global monuments in
purple, nobody says, “Why?” I think from a racial
point of view, from a class point of view, it’s such
a profound achievement. You know, this guy is
the one genius that every other genius says is a
genius. And he was able to pull that off. 
CHRIS HEATH is a GQ correspondent.
 O R LANDO: THE D A Y A F T E R
continued from page 193
She listened to her first voice mail. It was
from a woman named Angela. Her granddaugh-
ter didn’t come home the night before. She
always came home. She had to find her. Robin
had to find her.… She kept going through the
messages, the TV on, the enormi sinking in,
even though the official number of dead then
was less than two dozen. She made calls,
checked on friends. And then, by all rights, she
could have curled up with her fiancée and cried.
In the aftermath of a mass shooting, it is
easy, even instinctive and reflexive, to be over-
whelmed by the magnitude of the violence.
But the violence is pixelated into dozens of
individual tragedies in which people have
immediate, desperate needs. ere are innu-
merable details, mundane and frantic all at
once, that need to be dealt with, and someone
has to have the presence of mind to do so.
Along with Blue, Robin was one of those peo-
ple. She used to be a crime-scene investigator
for the Orange Coun Sheriff’s Office. She can
separate, for a while at least, the emotion of a
slaughter from the logistical response
required to help the families, friends, and vic-
tims. She can get shit done.
e two of them, Blue in St. Augustine and
Robin in the corner of a hotel restaurant in
Lakeland, worked their cell phones and com-
puters. Pulse has a legal capacity of 300. In
those early hours, all anyone knew was that 20
were dead, then 50. Whose son? Whose hus-
band or wife or daughter? Whose friend?
Facebook became a clearinghouse. Pictures
went up of the missing. Names of those iden-
tified as safe were posted (like Angela’s grand-
daughter, in a Panera Bread).
They kept at it, both of them, until early
afternoon. And when Robin finally got into
downtown Orlando, she made a point of driv-
ing the perimeter police had sealed off, passing
out water and bananas and jer to cops stuck
standing in the Florida heat.
• • •
THE SUN WAS LONG UP before Adrian le
the police station, where he’d been taken to give
a statement. He went straight to the hospital
from there. Everyone was admitted under a
code name to keep strangers, like reporters,
from pestering the wounded. A nurse took
Adrian to a room, but Javier wasn’t in it. A sec-
ond room, a third, and still Adrian couldn’t find
his husband. They have a Javier, Adrian thought.
But is it my Javier? Panic started to slip in. e
last time he saw Javier, he was holding his belly
on the right side, blood staining his shirt, a
police officer helping him out of Pulse.
ey found him in the fourth room. He was
in good shape, all things considered. Javier
had been hit by a bullet that either ricocheted
off the floor or a wall or went through another
body first: knocked down the veloci, slowed
it enough to mitigate the damage. The sur-
geons sewed him up but le the bullet inside,
decided to wait until it worked its way closer
to the surface.
Adrian was waiting for a phone call. He did
not know from whom, but he was certain a
voice would tell him that he met Oscar and
Simon at Pulse, that everyone went home safe.
Nothing else was real. No one was dead.
Reporters called instead. Adrian talked to a
Colombian television station—how did they get
his number so fast?—and then stopped answer-
ing calls from numbers he didn’t recognize.
Javier went home five days later, in pain and
in a wheelchair. He had a nightmare, but only
one: He was in a club, or maybe a restaurant,
lights bright and clear, so he could see every-
thing. There was a gunman. He shot Javier
in the head.
Adrian didn’t sleep much at all. He was usu-
ally awake until two in the morning before he
drifted off, and never for long. Who knows
what’s there when your eyes are closed? Six of
their friends were dead, but they did not go
to the nerals. “I don’t want to stay with the
memory of them in a coffin,” Adrian said
later. “I want to remember all my friends as
people that were happy.”
Javier physically couldn’t work. Adrian just
couldn’t. Couldn’t leave Javier, couldn’t go back
to the deli at the Wawa station, couldn’t put
himself into a bright public space, exposed and
unguarded. “I thought,” he said, “that somebody
was going to come back and look for survivors.”
It’s not a wholly rational thought, but on
June 11, neither was the idea that a stranger
would murder six of his friends and shoot
96 other people, too. Perspectives shi with
experience.
• • •
ALY BENITEZ WAS walking her dog when
she got the first text, from the husband of the
owner of Pulse. e death toll was 20. By the
time she got to Pulse, it was 50.
Aly is a lawyer and, like Robin and Blue,
well-known in Orlando, involved. She assumes,
knows, that millions of dollars will be donated,
because more people are decent and kind than
not. Indeed, two days later, Orlando mayor
Buddy Dyer announced the formation of the
OneOrlando Fund. e Walt Disney Company
put up a million dollars; the Orlando Magic and
JetBlue, $100,000 each; Darden Restaurants
(Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and
such), $500,000. Eventually, those millions
would be divvied up and dispersed. “But in the
meantime,” she says, “what do we do about peo-
ple being evicted, about the mother living with
her son and the son was the one working, about
the people who were working three jobs and
now can’t work any of them?”
Four days after the shooting, Aly founded
Pulse of Orlando, to get cash to people as
quickly as possible. Not a lot, $750 each at most,
but a cushion, enough to keep people fed and
housed in the short term. “It was just an instinc-
tual ‘What can I do to help?’ ” she says. “Literally,
a knee-jerk reaction: I have to do something.”
It’s a small operation (and also one of several
funds established to help victims, including
Pulse employees), run by only five volunteers,
including Aly’s friend Robin Maynard. But
Pulse of Orlando was able to distribute $28,500
on June 30, less than three weeks after the
shooting. By mid-October, it had raised a quar-
ter-million dollars and given out $200,000.
Robin is in charge of veing the people who
apply to the nd. She’s well suited to the job,
considering her background investigating
crime scenes. Logistically, veri*ing whether
someone was there is not especially difficult:
Nobody went to Pulse alone, so time lines can
be checked against friends’ and Instagram
feeds and text messages and Facebook pages.
“All we knew how
to do was hug
each other,” Blue
says. “There’s no
handbook for this.”
But no one simply says: I was there. ey tell
Robin what happened while they were there.
One girl tells Robin how she hid in a bath-
room stall with six other people and then the
gunman sprayed the stalls and all six fell on
her and she waited there for three hours,
under bodies bleeding out, until the police
killed the bad guy.
One young man, 22 years old, told her he had
just signed a lease on an apartment, invited nine
friends to a housewarming party, suggested
they all go to Pulse about eleven o’clock. Five of
those nine are dead. And his back is wrecked
because he crouched in a closet, too scared to
move, for one hour and 47 minutes, texting
good-byes, and even though he was prescribed
Lidocaine patches, he can’t afford them.
Javier told Robin how he hid under a desk, a
stranger’s knee pressing on his belly, afraid
bullets would come through the wall, the
floor, kill everyone. Adrian told her about the
fear of waiting, of not knowing where his hus-
band was or if he was dead, the impotence of
not being able to save him. In early August,
when they each received a check from the
nd, a few dollars in their pockets meant they
could stop worrying if they would have a roof,
at least for a while.
Even the heroic stories ended badly: A
woman watched a man take a bullet for her,
save her life, and while she hid under a table,
she watched that same man crawl toward her,
watched him die. ere was the kid who wrote
“mom” next to the phone number for his emer-
gency contact. Robin needed a real name, but
the kid didn’t have one. She was his friend’s
mom. His own mother disowned him when
she found out he was gay.
“It’s like an onion, all these different layers,”
Robin says. Many of the victims were Latin, from
Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican
Republic. But did they speak English? Were
they documented or not? And if they were gay,
were they out to anyone but their closest
friends? Were they forced out simply for hav-
ing the miserable misfortune of geing shot on
Latin Night at a predominantly gay nightclub?
Latin culture, broadly speaking, has not his-
torically embraced gay culture; people heard
about the Puerto Rican father who re sed to
accept his dead son’s body.
Robin listened to those stories all summer
long, 200 variations on a horri*ing theme. She
held people while they wept. “Robin,” Adrian
says, “she’s one of those angels.”
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 2 7
 ORLANDO: THE DAY AFTER continued
And then, in September, she dropped her
phone. e screen cracked.
“I had a meltdown,” she says. “Like, you-
kicked-my-dog-and-threw-him-in-the-lake
meltdown.” ere was screaming and wailing,
stomping and raging, and none of it was about
her stupid phone.
• • •
JAVIER’S MOTHER FLEW UP from Mexico
City. So did Javier’s son and the mother of
his son; she was the only person in Mexico
who knew he was gay. He le in 2005, slipped
over the border, made his way to North
Carolina. He was there—Kinston, Wilmington,
Fayetteville—for a decade, until he went to
Orlando’s gay-pride celebration in October
2014. (Orlando does Pride in October, because
June is too damned hot.)
“I just fell in love with Orlando ci,” he tells
me. “The weather is good, and it’s safe, you
know? You compare it to Mexico City, to…
everywhere, I think. Here is safe.”
Then he got shot in a nightclub and the
Mexican media swarmed him—he was the only
one of four Mexican natives at Pulse to sur-
vive—and his mother and son and old girl-
friend came to nurse him.
His mother thought he had a roommate, not
a husband. She shrued at the revelation.
“She was really good,” Adrian says. “She
didn’t say, ‘But…’ or ‘What if…’ or ‘How about…?’
She was just, ‘Okay, it’s your life.’ ”
It helped, having Javier’s family there. The
weeks went by, and the days didn’t seem quite as
emp or the nights as long. Adrian and Javier
made it through the Fourth of July fireworks at
Eola Lake, telling each other they’d be all right, in
a crowd at night with a lot of loud bangs. ey
had those few dollars from the Pulse of Orlando
nd, kept themselves afloat financially.
Adrian finally went back to work in August.
Two weeks later, a piece of bacon got stuck on
the oven exhaust fan and tripped the smoke
alarm. Startled by the sound behind him,
Adrian jerked his head over his le shoulder.
And he remembered, for the first time, that he’d
done the same thing when he heard the initial
bang at Pulse. He still couldn’t piece together
the rest, the minute or minutes before he
looked up from the floor. He tries, but a head
jerk is the only fragment. “If I go into my mind,”
he says, “it’s a blank.” He considers that. Maybe
he doesn’t want to remember.
• • •
THERE IS NO standardized schedule for
recovering from trauma, no checklist of what
should be remembered or rationalized or pro-
cessed or in what order, no assigned path for
stumbling through grief. Everybody has her
own pace, his own process. In late September,
Blue hosted a support group at e Venue for
Pulse employees. “Some of them, they’re just—
just—starting to come out of that fog,” she
says. “Just starting. And that fog is dense, it’s
thick, and it’s a mile long. And they’re just
starting to push it away.”
Cases of water are stacked under the stairs,
leovers from the first days. Everybody sends
water. Still, Blue and the others were able to
organize a practical inventory: If they needed,
say, toilet paper, they put out the word and toi-
let paper would start coming in. Whatever was
needed appeared: e Venue was the overflow
site for the main depot, and eventually there
2 2 8 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
was an overflow for e Venue. At one point, it
was simpler to ask for gi cards, and $30,000
worth came through Blue’s theater alone. No
one worried much about fraud or theft.
Orlando is tight, most people aren’t despicable.
“In our world, in Orlando right now, every per-
son you turn to is in the same boat,” Blue says.
“And what a beauti l way to lead the country.
We led with love. And hones. And hope.”
Staying busy, being use l, also helped keep
the emotional enormity at bay. She knows a
time will come when the ll magnitude, all the
grief and horror, will rear up like a rogue wave.
It almost did, at the very beginning, when
thousands of people gathered for a vigil that
following Monday and bells tolled for each of
the dead. “And it was like it went on forever,”
she says. “It just kept going and going and all
you wanted was for it to be over.”
And there was a second time, when she was
arranging the music for the fireworks at the
fall’s Pride celebration. She opened with
Prince—dearly beloved, we are gathered here today
to get through this thing called life…—put “Over
the Rainbow” in the middle, closed with Estelle
singing “One Love.”
“It was like a counseling session for me,” she
says. She cried a lot.
• • •
THE ORIGINAL THOUGHT, Aly Benitez and
Robin Maynard say, was to close the Pulse of
Orlando nd in October. Four months, a stop-
gap, a temporary bridge until OneOrlando div-
vied up the $29.5 million in donations.
ey knew in September, though, that that
wasn’t going to happen. Money is tangible, a
physical thing that can be deposited into an
account. e amount won’t change anyone’s life,
but it can make it easier, keep the collectors at
bay, eliminate, for a while, one practical worry.
But what about everything else? What about
jobs, getting people employed and strong
enough to go to work? Or even out of their
houses? How does that happen?
“at first night, people would come in with
these looks on their faces,” Blue says. “And all
we knew how to do was hug each other.” She
lets that hang for a moment. “ere’s no hand-
book for this,” she says.
Months later, she sees individual triggers
just starting to manifest themselves. e people
who flinch at strobe lights and sirens, the ones
who startle at the tumble of Jenga blocks.
e men who hear a sound on the radio.
Javier saw a counselor aer he was shot. Saw
him just twice. He answered all the questions he
was asked, and he was told he seemed to be
doing prey well, that maybe he could even help
some of the other survivors. “I felt like I was
going up,” he says, slowly raising his hand along
an imaginary slope. He stops, flips his fingers
toward the table. Javier didn’t get therapy. He
passed a quiz. “And then I was going down.”
He didn’t tell Adrian at first, but he found a
new therapist, a woman who speaks Spanish.
e first time he talked to her, she explained the
fight-or-flight response, how adrenaline floods
the body and the brain. And she gave him a
help l analogy: e shock of June 12 had, in a
sense, anesthetized his brain. It took a while for
that anesthesia to wear off. And that’s why it
hurts so much now, all these months later. She
told him, too, that it’s okay to cry. 
SEAN FLYNN is a GQ correspondent.
continued from page 197
while Deanie loses her mind. e movie, which
was directed by Elia Kazan, came out in 1961,
setting the 24-year-old Beatty—tall, full-
lipped, dashing—well on his way to becoming
both a star and a legendary stud.
Today, Beay says Splendor in the Grass was
not just a critical and box-office success;
it was a eureka moment that deepened his
appreciation of American sexual denial.
“I remember having a meeting in Cannes,” he
says, leaning back contentedly in his chair.
“It must’ve had something to do with the film
festival in 1961. Me and all these great Russian
directors who I’d never met were sitting
around—Kalatozov and Chukrai and this
whole group—and we were talking about
Splendor in the Grass, and they were being very
complimentary. At a certain point, one of
them stood up and said, ‘We like movie very
much. Acting very good. e movie very good.
But one thing we don’t understand.’ And the
room went silent for a minute, and I said,
‘Yeah?’ He said, ‘Why don’t they ck?’ ”
As he delivers the punch line, I see his teeth
are very white and his face is lit with delight.
“It was like a silver dollar dropped in my
brain—not a penny, but a silver dollar—and
I thought, ‘Aha!’ ”
His subsequent films have been more
explicit about America’s complicated relation-
ship with sexual desire. In 1967’s Bonnie and
Clyde, Beatty’s Clyde Barrow can’t get it up
(until, that is, his crimes gain him the ultimate
aphrodisiac: fame). e movie marked a seismic
shift in Hollywood, ushering in the artfully
violent, director-driven 1970s auteur period of
Coppola, De Palma, Friedkin, Lucas, and
Scorsese. Shampoo (1975), which features
Beay as a Beverly Hills hairdresser who has a
way with the ladies, changed the paradigm
again, tapping into the era’s liberated go-go sex-
uali with dialogue that rocked ’70s moviego-
ers: “Most of all,” says Julie Christie, “I’d like to
suck his cock.” Beay says that line was meant
to stun a culture in which only men were
allowed to openly express lust. (“When it came
out, people said, ‘Well, Shampoo, he was trying
to show how sexy he is,’ ” he tells me, exasper-
ated. “For me, it had so much to do with femi-
nism and politics and sexual revolution.”) Even
in Reds (1981), the three-hour-plus epic he built
around John Reed, the early-20th-century
journalist and social activist dubbed “the play-
boy of the revolution,” Beay says he couldn’t
resist including a line from the writer Henry
Miller, who says, “ere was just as much ck-
ing going on then as there is now.”
Dustin Hoffman remembers being on the
set of Ishtar (1987) in Morocco as Beay, his
friend and co-star, explained a “difference of
opinion” with the director, Elaine May.
Suddenly, Beatty stopped mid-sentence. “I
 WARREN BEATTY continued
looked at what he was looking at: a person in a
djellaba—that full head-to-toe outfit, like a
bathrobe,” Hoffman says. “You could barely
make out it was a female. He just watched her
until it seemed like she disappeared into the
sand, and then tried to pick up where he le
off. At that moment, I said, ‘Warren, you’re so
passionate about what we were talking about,
yet then this girl walks by who you can barely
see.’ I said, ‘I’m just curious: Is there any
woman in the world that you wouldn’t make
love to?’ He considered it, looking s ward for
probably 30 seconds, and then he said, ‘No,
there isn’t.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And he said,
‘Because you never know.’ ”
Hoffman, though, thinks those who focus
too much on Beay’s reputation as a woman-
izer miss the bier picture: a man whose drive
and aention to detail made him an unstoppa-
ble force in Hollywood. Remembering how
determined Beatty was to make Bonnie and
Clyde a hit, Hoffman repeats a piece of
Hollywood lore: Beatty supposedly went
around the country to every theater screening
the film, personally inspecting each projector
and replacing the old bulbs. His focus on find-
ing a mate was marked by a similar persistence.
“Warren would get fascinated by one woman,
and he would pursue her, and it didn’t maer
how long it took,” Hoffman tells me. “It was like
being in pre-production on a film. It wasn’t just
to have a one-night stand. It was a romantic
idea: That’s the one!”
For a time, Beatty was known for high-
profile love affairs with a Who’s Who of
Accomplished and Ravishing Women.
Reportedly among them: Julie Christie, Jane
Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Carly Simon, Twiggy,
Joni Mitchell, Jackie Onassis, Diane Keaton,
and Madonna. Cher claims to have had a one-
night stand with him when she was just 16. Yet
as Joan Collins wrote in her memoir, not even
sex could impede Beatty’s hustle: He some-
times answered phone calls while inside her.
To me, he says proudly, “e people with whom
I had serious involvements I’m still on very
good terms with, always have been.” He also
seems to wish he’d seled down sooner, if only
so he could’ve started having kids before the
age of 53—which he terms “very late.” Still, he
says, “had I gone ahead earlier and gone
through 143 divorces, I would have felt very
guil. I think I would have handled it badly.
And more importantly, it wouldn’t have been
these kids or this wife.”
• • •
“WARREN’S L.A. is very different,” Oliver
Pla tells me. “You know, it’s a very rarefied
L.A., but not rarefied in the way you think it’s
going to be. It’s not elitist. It’s a deli on Ventura
Boulevard that he loves that’s not one of the
famous ones.” Pla says that when Beay cast
him in his 1998 satire Bulworth (the movie that
nods most directly to Beay’s lifelong fascina-
tion with politics), it took until their third or
fourth meeting before Beatty even told him
what the film was about. “I sort of congratulate
myself for having the wisdom to understand
that it was beer not to ask. I slowly started to
figure out that I was playing him just the way
he wanted to be played. He was dying for me to
ask, and the fact that I wasn’t asking was turn-
ing him on.” Beay enjoys that dance, I suest.
“Well, there’s a much simpler word for it: seduc-
tion. at’s what he loves.”
Alden Ehrenreich tells a similar story about
Rules Don’t Apply. “A couple years into meetings
with Warren,” he says, “I still wasn’t sure
whether I had the role or not. I would say it’s not
100 percent clear until you’re actually shooting.”
And then there’s Matthew Broderick, who
barely knew Beatty when he was invited to
Mulholland Drive for the first time. Bening
made spaghei; Beay asked if he’d like to read
the script, and Broderick was shown to a lile
room. “I’m a slow reader, so by the time I finished
and we’d talked about it, it was late. I said, ‘I’ve
got to go.’ And Warren said, ‘You can sleep over.’ I
slept in a guest room, and the next morning, I
wandered into the kitchen. Warren was there
making oatmeal, so I had some oatmeal.”
Later, during production, Broderick lived in
Beay’s guesthouse and borrowed one of his
cars. “He didn’t keep feeding me oatmeal. at
was just to lure me in,” Broderick says with a
laugh. But the point is clear: Beatty’s life is
charmed but normal, thanks largely to the
domesticity he’s built with Bening over the
past 24 years.
Their wedding was no-frills. “We went
downtown to a judge’s office,” Bening tells me,
offering a few details about a ceremony previ-
ous press reports have always described only
as “secret.” She wore a simple flowered dress
that she’d had for years. Aerward, “I think we
just went home.” Who proposed to whom?
“ere wasn’t like one moment where one of us
said, ‘Will you marry me?’ ” she says. “It just
seems like it was something we were going to
do, and then we did it.”
ey’d met when Bening was being consid-
ered to star with Beay in Bugsy, the story of
gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Bening says that
when she and Beay got together for lunch for
the first time, “the thing I remember most is
that I was impressed with how smart he was.”
She got the job playing Siegel’s moll, Virginia
Hill, and they fell in love during production.
Beatty’s reputation as a Lothario scarcely
crossed her mind. “I was more concerned, I
guess, with what was going on between us,
which was prey serious prey quickly.” eir
first child was born before they wed, and they
had three more since.
“I got luc ,” Beay tells me. “I mean, I met
her and I thought, ‘Oh, I think I see where this
is going.’ ” We’re still on that patio, and the
California sun is starting to set. Bening, casual
in blue jeans, a simple navy blouse, and Tevas,
has just come out to say hello and snip some
rosemary before heading back inside. “You
want to go to that ai place for dinner?” Beay
calls aer her.
“I’m so much more interested in my wife and
kids than anything else,” he says when I press
him about his professional legacy. “I don’t want
to be mushy about it, but having four kids is
definitely the best thing that has ever happened
to me, and each kid is to me more fascinating
than any five movies. You know, the DNA of it
all kind of does get to me.”
is last comment has an analogue in Rules
Don’t Apply, when Hughes, speaking of his late
father, insists that “Daddy” isn’t dead; “he’s in
my DNA.” Beay is clearly taken by the idea
that by having children, one can live on, chro-
mosomally at least. He’s never smoked ciga-
rees or drunk much alcohol, he’s disciplined
about exercise, and he’s been a lifelong health
nut. “I’m care l” is how he puts it. “I’ve been
around longer than other people. I actually
knew Adlai Stevenson and Jack and Bobby
Kennedy. Now there are people missing. I’ll go
to bed, I’ll be thinking of someone. I think, ‘I’ll
give them a call.’ And then”—he mimes picking
up his phone—“Oh, yeah. Of course.” By which
he means: ey’re gone.
James Toback, who wrote Bugsy, says that to
understand Beay, one must start with this:
“He has a healthy contempt for those who
don’t share his uninterrupted awareness of
looming mortali. At the same time, he is par-
adoxically ambivalent about being reminded
of it by others—namely me—because he hates
being confronted with problems to which
there is no solution.” Beay arguably spent
years fighting mortality by having sex—by
being as alive as he could be with as many
partners as he found interesting. As Toback
notes, “The orgasm, as the French say, is la
petite mort: the lile death. You’re constantly
geing resurrected aer killing yourself.”
The work, however, always took priority.
When Toback directed The Pick-Up Artist, he
says, Beay told him, “You should not have sex
at all during a production of a film. e film will
be better if you never come. On Bonnie and
Clyde, I never cked once.” e story reminds
me of something Beatty told me during our
first phone call. “I really prefer to speak about it
as lovemaking, rather than sex or cking,” he
said. “But sometimes it’s beer to say fucking
when you’re trying to make a point.”
• • •
IF ‘RULES DON’T APPLY’ ends up being
Beay’s final film, Lily Collins—whose charac-
ter (a Natalie Wood look-alike) has a drunken
love scene with Hughes in the film—will be the
last actress ever to be seduced by him
on-screen. “I know: It’s so crazy,” Collins says
when I mention that possibili. “It’s going to be
something I forever go down with. It’s a huge
honor. It’ll probably be on my tombstone.”
For decades now, when people have specu-
lated about the Hughes script, it’s been
assumed that Beay wanted to play Hughes
because Hughes was Beay before Beay was
Beay. But from our first conversation, Beay
has been hinting that he relates more to the two
younger characters. Earlier he told me that in
his first L.A. apartment, he slept on a bed that
pulled out of the wall, just as Ehrenreich’s char-
acter does in the film. He also admitted that
“the things that happen in the movie have all
happened in real life.”
Before I leave him on the patio, I ask whether
he relates less to Hughes than to Frank, the
character Ehrenreich plays—a young man from
a modest, God-fearing family, experiencing
L.A. for the first time. When it’s been drilled
into you, as it was for Frank, that sex outside of
marriage is wrong, falling in love can seem
dangerous. For a man like that, it can take a
while—years and years, even—to sele down.
“Already,” I say, “the drumbeat is starting about
this film: ‘Warren Beatty plays Howard
Hughes, with whom he has so much in com-
mon.’ But in some ways, the real Warren Beay
story in this film is told through Frank.”
“I didn’t hear you,” teases Beay. “You can
quote me on that.”
“Very cray,” I say, “but I’m onto something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Beatty concedes, but only
momentarily. “I didn’t say that. You did.” 
AMY WALLACE is a GQ correspondent.
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 2 9

continued from page 184
and turned into hashtags, it’s odd that other
young black men, from the same neighbor-
hoods, are being celebrated as ambassadors for
the country by all the crimson-hat-wearing peo-
ple watching on TV. Was it not patriotic enough
that Gabby Douglas was basically wearing a
stretchy, bejeweled American flag with enough
red-white-and-blue glitter to make Chuck
Norris aroused? Was it not patriotic enough that
she was bringing literal gold and honor back for
her nation several times over? Or that all this
20-year-old girl had ever done with her life, as
she finished her second Olympics, was compete
on behalf of her country?
But there need to be some awards given for
athletic lack of awareness, too. For example,
Floyd Mayweather Jr., a tiny little man who
has made over $700 million in his career but
has some kind of spiritual problem with giv-
ing to charities, joined the All Lives Matter
shitwagon—the only group as tacky as his
self-titled “Money Team.” Or O. J. Simpson.
This was also the year O.J. rose from the ashes
and crop-dusted his insanity all over the pop-
culture Zeitgeist. “I’m not black, I’m O.J.” is
always infuriating to hear, even if it’s com-
ing out of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Emmy Award–
nominated face. But people tended to watch
both the documentary and the drama as if that
type of thinking was a thing of the past. But
is it? Because Cam Newton, formerly Black
America’s quarterback until he was returned
under warranty for having faulty wokeness,
basically said the same thing multiple times this
year. I’m not calling Cam diet O.J. He’s missing
two brutal murder charges, that domestic vio-
lence, probably several hundred bad cocaine
trips, and one snug Isotoner. But Cam is a tall,
handsome, charismatic black football stud who
this year, no matter what, refused to acknowl-
edge that racism exists. As video after video
surfaced of young black men being shot by
police—some with their hands up, some with
their hands up while lying on the ground—Cam
Newton was quoted in the hallowed pages of
GQ magazine: America is beyond race.
This was also the year we lost Muhammad
Ali, the prettiest and greatest boxer there ever
was—and the North Star for black athletes who
care about something other than their Money
Team. And I think he would have been proud.
Proud that we live in a society where it’s starting
to become more controversial to deny that rac-
ism exists than to call it out. That Beats by Dre
is more likely to pull its endorsement if you’re
called out by Jesse Williams or Harry Belafonte
than if you’re called out by Bill O’Reilly. This
is the #influencer era. And people want more
from their heroes. What, exactly? Well, I believe,
some actual real-deal heroism. 
MARK ANTHONY GREEN is GQ’s Style Guy.
2 3 0 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
continued from page 207
I expect that my relationship to her will be one
that says, “Your campaign and my campaign
worked very hard to dra the Democratic plat-
form,” which is the most progressive platform
in the history of the United States of America.
We’re going to work together to implement
that platform.
You think the platform that you helped
draft before the convention will be an
actual enforceable document?
That’s my intention. The Democratic Party,
I think, has begun to understand that it’s far too
removed from the needs of ordinary Americans.
And for them to regain the trust of the American
people, they’re going to have to come up with a
very progressive agenda, which means, essen-
tially, taking on the one percent, taking on Wall
Street, taking on corporate America, and fight-
ing for the interests of ordinary people.
Do you feel that Clinton would not have
moved to these positions had it not been for
the primary challenge that you gave her?
Yes.
Did you ever have any conversations with
her about that?
Look, we’ve chaed, but not at great length. It
doesn’t maer. I’m not interested in the whys
and wherefores. I’m interested in where we go
from here. I’m not going to psychoanalyze
Hillary Clinton, but for whatever reason, there
is a document, and Hillary Clinton is talking to
people about the need to make public colleges
and universities tuition-free for families mak-
ing $125,000 or less. Do I think that she’s going
to fight to implement that program? I do.
Hillary Clinton is talking about an agreement,
that we reached, for double nding for com-
muni health centers. Do I think that she will
go forward on that proposal? Absolutely.
Why do you think you had such success
with voters under 40?
I’ll tell you something. We ended up speaking to
about 1.4 million people during the course of
the campaign. And probably the best compli-
ment I ever got, one guy came up to me and he
said, “You know, Bernie, what I like about you
is you treat us as if we are intelligent human
beings.” And what that means is that, in all of
the speeches that I gave, I doubt there was any
speech less than 45 minutes, and most of them
were over an hour. And generally speaking,
people stayed. But that was not about my great
oratorical abilities; it was, I think, because there
is a hunger in America for a real understanding.
Media does not provide that. Most politicians
don’t provide that. I think we underestimate
the intelligence of the American people and
their desire to learn about what’s going on.
I saw you in Iowa, and you had made Glass-
Steagall into an applause line—one of your
loudest ovations included a reference to a
banking bill!
Exactly. You got it. You got it. You got it. And I
think a lot of politicians underestimate the
American people. And they give them lile pat
lines and lile sound bites, and we tried not to
do that. So the negative for us: It meant that we
bored the national media.
I know you’ve said the campaign was not
about you, but obviously you’re the one who
lived it. What experiences really stood out?
Some people go into the Beverly Hillses of the
world and raise money; we went to some
of the poorest areas of poor states. We went
to the housing projects in the Bronx and
Brooklyn in New York Ci and talked with
people there. We went to Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation in South Dakota. We went to
Puerto Rico. God, what we saw there.… Jesus
Christ. e housing conditions were deplor-
able, and, unbelievably, the teachers there and
the parents [he gets choked up for a moment]
have created an excellent school, excellent
school, in the midst of all of that poverty,
which tells you what people who are deter-
mined to do the right thing can do.
Were things worse than you imagined in
these places? Were you aware, as a senator
from Vermont, what these places were like?
I saw things I was not familiar with and met
people whom I did not normally come in con-
tact with. Before every rally, we did a meeting.
Wherever we went, we focused on Native
Americans, Latinos, African-Americans. And
you learn a lot! People talked about the local
problems facing their communities—the
unemployment, the opioid problems, the drug
problems, the police problems. It’s a very good
learning experience. If you want to learn a lot,
run for president.
Of course, other things happen when you
run for president, too. What was it like to
become a pop-culture figure?
e good news, from a political point of view, is
that having Larry David imitate you on
Saturday Night Live has a real political impact,
no question about it. But my major lament of
the campaign is that the media go overboard to
make sure that we do not have the kind of seri-
ous discussion we need. It’s strange that you
have to go on a comedy show in order to have
five minutes to talk about serious issues.
But you did a good job finding unlikely
interlocutors, like the Atlanta rapper Killer
Mike, who became an outspoken supporter.
Killer Mike is a serious guy.
Exactly. Your web-video interview with
him was fascinating.
It turns out that Killer Mike is an extremely
bright guy.
I assume somebody had to explain to you
who Killer Mike was.
Yes, they did. e name got me a lile bit ner-
vous. But Killer Mike has never killed anybody.
It’s just, he’s a killer rapper. 
JASON ZENGERLE is GQ’S political
correspondent.
 S E AN BROCK
continued from page 210
For the past three years, Brock has been
sick—most of that time mysteriously and
secretly so. In March, aer countless doctors,
blind alleys, and medical red herrings, he finally
received a diagnosis of what had been plagu-
ing him: myasthenia gravis (MG), a rare neuro-
logical auto-immune disease that inhibits the
body’s abili to interact with its own muscles.
If, as Susan Sontag wrote, “everyone who is
born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of
the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Brock
passed through customs to the wrong side in
January 2014. It was a hard season: He had
just completed the arduous opening of Husk
Nashville, a version of the Charleston restau-
rant that had propelled him to new heights of
acclaim. He was spending nearly all his time in
Nashville now, in the late stages of a difficult,
guilt-ridden divorce from the woman who
had been his high school sweetheart. Coming
home from dinner one frigid night, he slipped
on a patch of ice and went down hard on one
knee. A driver pumping gas some 50 yards
away nevertheless claimed he could hear the
crack as Brock’s kneecap smashed into the pave-
ment. He was incapacitated, unable for several
weeks to even make it to the bathroom alone.
For a while, it seemed that this might be a back-
ward blessing, an enforced vacation from the
stress of the kitchen that Brock would never
take on his own. “It was the first time I had not
worked six or seven days a week since I was 19,”
he says. He and his girlfriend, Adi Noe, holed
up in their apartment through that unusually
cold winter, binge-watching Breaking Bad.
en they both ended up with a bad case of
food poisoning. Brock spent one night vomit-
ing so violently that he was almost bemused
to wake up the next day to find he had double
vision. “Man, I must have pulled something
throwing up,” he thought. A few days later,
though, the symptoms remained. The two
consulted the chamber of horrors known
as WebMD. “You do not want to Google dou-
ble vision,” Noe says.
After a few weeks, the parade of doctors
began: ophthalmologists, neurologists, neuro-
ophthalmologists, oculoplastics surgeons.
And the tests: One consisted of repeatedly
placing ice up against his eyes and gauging the
response. at was a spa treatment compared
with the next test, in which a recording nee-
dle was inserted into the junction between the
muscles and nerves of his eye and le there for
45 minutes, gathering data.
MG is a sneaky sickness, often called the
snowflake disease because it seems to mani-
fest in as many unique ways as there are peo-
ple who have it. Why it strikes is a mystery,
but as with all auto-immune diseases, the
body mistakenly attacks itself, in this case
disabling receptors for a substance called
acelcholine, which acts as the crucial connec-
tion between one’s nerves and one’s muscles.
is short-circuits both voluntary movements,
like raising and lowering your eyelids, and
involuntary ones, like breathing.
All of Brock’s symptoms were in line with
an MG diagnosis, but, perplexingly, he tested
negative for the disease’s telltale rogue antibod-
ies. Meanwhile, his condition worsened. e
double vision made it difficult to walk, much
less drive. One morning, he stepped outside
to walk Ruby and tried to squint in the bright
sunlight. His eyes re sed to obey. Back inside,
he looked in a mirror to discover that one
eye had drooped to nearly closed while the
other was stuck wide open.
“You can’t go out looking like that,” he says.
He took to wearing sunglasses at all times, both
because the mildest light was blinding and
because he was so keenly self-conscious. e
glasses, though, had their own problems: He
worried that he looked like the kind of asshole
who wears sunglasses in restaurants at night.
Life began to shrink, a series of waiting
rooms and doctors’ appointments and torturous
surgeries, five in all: Believing the problem was
fourth cranial nerve palsy, a surgeon detached
his eyeball to tighten its surrounding muscles;
attempting to treat the ptosis, or drooping,
doctors snipped through his eyelids, inserting
stitches to raise and lower them like Levolor
blinds while cuing tissue from the undersides.
“I wasn’t a chef anymore. I was a patient,”
Brock says. “It was the most depressed I’d
been in my whole life. I was thinking about
suicide. I didn’t want to leave my house.”
He had always had a collecting streak, the
acquisitive glee of someone who had grown
up poor enough to worry about being able to
afford school lunch. Among other things, he has
amassed collections of Danelectro guitars, vinyl
Mississippi-blues records, and southern folk
art. Now he poured his energy into learning
everything about bourbon, building a world-
class collection of American whiskey. Amply
documented on Instagram, the shelves filled
with Pappy Van Winkle and Wille seemed like
the happy outgrowth of a life well lived. But it
was also a beachhead against a terrible possibil-
i: that he would never be able to cook again.
After each procedure and recovery, the
symptoms would abate for a week or two but
then come back. Brock began strategically
scheduling the procedures for when he needed
brief periods of sight, like when he traveled to
Modena, Italy, to take over the kitchen of Osteria
Francescana and cooked Italian culatello in
southern redeye gravy and shrimp and grits in
Parmigiano-Reiano whey.
He began to privately confront what had
begun to seem inevitable: “I may not ever be
fixed,” he said. “I may have to deal with this for
the rest of my life.”
• • •
IT’S TEMPTING TO see Brock’s restaurant
empire as a manifestation of his own body:
The Tavern—where, he says, the menu is “a
list of my favorite things to eat”—is his stom-
ach. Husk, with its devotion to showcasing
southern ingredients, is his heart. And the
new McCrady’s is his brain. (It would be too
cynical to say that Minero, Brock’s taqueria,
with branches in Charleston and Atlanta, is his
wallet, but nobody has ever gone broke selling
Americans hot cheese and beans.)
McCrady’s occupies a brick building that
dates from the late 1700s, a block away from
the marshy shallows of Charleston Harbor.
It’s a sprawling space of hallways, stairways,
and kitchens, the kind of place a man could
rale around in forever, like the Phantom of
the Opera, barely seeing daylight. Which is
more or less how Brock has been operating in
the weeks leading up to the McCrady’s open-
ing, emerging only late at night to hop in his
beat-up pickup strewn with cassee tapes.
He navigates the building like…well, like he
could do it blind. is has been his home base
since 2006, when he first arrived as head chef,
a 27-year-old wunderkind recruited from the
Hermitage Hotel in Nashville, where he had
been making improbable waves with 30-course
modernist tasting menus inspired by the likes of
e French Laundry and WD-50. All but three
members of the staff quit within his first week.
He won a James Beard Award making
brainy, overtly modern food at the original
McCrady’s. But it was Husk, which opened
down the street in 2010, that made him
famous. Husk was the culmination of Brock’s
emergence from the kitchen as one of the
action-intellectuals of the food revolution. Not
content to just cook with southern ingredi-
ents, he decided to grow his own, persuading
his investors to lease land for a farm on nearby
Wadmalaw Island. He began breeding his own
hogs. He became a seed evangelist, obsessed
with the mission of reviving crops long lost to
the rise of industrial agriculture. At Husk, the
steadfast rule was that no ingredients could
be used from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Brock became both a local hero and an interna-
tional one, the hard-drinking, Waffle House–
loving Southern Delegate to the international
conversation about where food was going.
ese days, he pauses every four hours in
response to an unheard alarm, reaches into
his pocket, and discreetly swallows a pill, one
of a seeming pharmacy he consumes daily.
In March, having hit a diagnostic dead end,
Brock’s doctors decided to start him on the
treatment for myasthenia gravis—a combina-
tion of the steroid prednisone and a drug called
“I couldn’t stop
cooking. I couldn’t
stop creating,”
Brock says.
“It was like I had
superpowers.”
Mestinon—in the hopes that he was among
the sliver of MG patients who test negative
but nevertheless respond to medication. e
morning aer he began treatment, Noe woke
early to find him already downstairs in the
kitchen, whistling and cooking breakfast. “It
was like magic,” Brock says. “One of the great-
est days of my life. I was reborn.”
On the one hand, this was the confirmation
he and Noe had feared for nearly two years:
ere is no cure for MG, and at its worst it can
be fatal. On the other, there was finally some-
thing to do, action to be taken. Brock quit drink-
ing. He cut gluten out of his diet, and most
sugar. “All of a sudden, I was springing out of
bed at 6:30 in the morning. Everything started
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 3 1
 SEAN BROCK continued
pouring out,” he says. He was filling notebooks
with ideas, dreaming of dishes and then wak-
ing up in the middle of the night to scribble
them down. “I couldn’t stop cooking. I couldn’t
stop creating. It was like I had superpowers.”
Waiting to absorb this burst of creativi was
McCrady’s. As the tenth anniversary of Brock’s
arrival there approached, discussions about a
revamp were already under way. McCrady’s had
always been a somewhat awkward chimera:
part modernist experimenter, part traditional
restaurant, a mix that reflected its clientele. For
every diner willing to commit to one of Brock’s
tasting menus, there were at least two or three
who wanted a steak and a salad—oen at the
same table. It was impossible to serve both mas-
ters as well as Brock wanted.
Now the Tavern would handle Brockian
versions of classic dishes—an aged New York
strip steak goosed by a crust of shio koji; cav-
iar service with tater tots—while at the new
McCrady’s, he would be free to create the kind
of rarefied place he had seen and fallen in love
with while traveling far beyond South Carolina’s
borders. It was, he felt, an overdue return. Husk
had made him famous, but life as an Orthodox
Southerner could also be a straitjacket.
“I’m tired of making burgers,” he says. “I’m
tired of making fried chicken, I’m tired of mak-
ing corn bread. I’ve been doing that every day
for six years and I’m sick of it. I love eating it,
but I’m tired of making it. Because I know these
other dishes are swimming around in my head,
and they’re being wasted.”
The restaurant he envisioned was a chef’s
dream of total control: 36 prepaid covers per
night, a set menu. It would move quickly, send
diners out the door stimulated instead of stag-
gering. “I want you to leave like you just went to
a spa. I want you to feel like you just had a mas-
sage, like you just meditated, like you did yoga. I
want you to feel like you’re nude,” he says.
For a model, Brock looked to Japan, both in
the kitchen—where he adopted ingredients
like miso, kombu, and koji—and spiritually.
Japanese culture presents a seductive fantasy
for many chefs, one of simultaneous intense
control and Zen sereni. Never mind that the
evidence suests such intensi has its own
price: a Japanese suicide rate one and a half
times that of the U.S., for starters.
Never mind that there’s a price for everything.
In late August, still reeling from the gruel-
ing process of opening the Tavern and begin-
ning work on the new McCrady’s, Brock and
Noe were driving on the Ravenel Bridge,
between Charleston and Mount Pleasant.
Brock was behind the wheel. Suddenly, the
road split and lurched into two. For the first
time since he started treatment, Brock’s dou-
ble vision was back.
“I just punched the steering wheel as hard
as I could,” he says. “I thought, ‘I can’t. I can’t be
back here again.’ ”
In the passenger seat, Noe felt her heart
drop. It was true that as the novel and relief
of Brock’s treatment had subsided, he had
grown less care l about his health. ey had
both allowed themselves to believe that the
sickness might be in the past. But in the com-
ing weeks, as the symptoms started appearing
at night, and then earlier and earlier each day,
the cruel irony became clear: e very thing
that the miracle treatment was allowing Brock
to do was the thing that would inevitably bring
the disease roaring back.
2 3 2 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6
IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?
at is the question that lurks in the mar-
gins of Brock’s story. Chefs’ health—mental
and physical—has become much discussed
lately. As cooking has made the transition from
blue-collar work to professional, it’s only nat-
ural that chefs would begin to challenge the
oen brutal conditions previous generations
took for granted. On the face of it, the need for
change is self-evident, but the knotty prob-
lem is that those same conditions mimic the
kitchen culture’s agreed-upon virtues: perfec-
tionism, intensi, stamina, toughness, drive.
And it is often these very things—not, say,
love of food or cooking; those come later—that
made the kitchen aractive in the first place.
He grew up in deep rural Virginia. His father,
the owner of a fleet of coal trucks, was a gen-
erous and successful man who died when
Brock was 11, plunging the family into pov-
er. Such is the stuff that chefs are made of:
Dead fathers, cruel fathers, physically or emo-
tionally absent fathers—all are so common
behind the stove as to be axiomatic. One of the
reasons professional kitchens have remained
so stubbornly resistant to gender equali is
that their bonds are so deeply patrilineal, so
downright Freudian.
Brock’s first kitchens were a twisted hybrid
of boot camp and surrogate family, and he
loved it. To be 16 years old, on the line for the
first time, Metallica blaring from the boom box,
surrounded by rough men braing about their
overnight binges and conquests… Who cared if
half the steaks you sent out to the dining room
got sent back? “It was the greatest feeling I’d
ever had,” he says.
Later, he thrived in the hotbox of kitch-
ens run on screaming. Like many young
chefs, when he took over his own kitchen,
he assumed it was the only way: “I was just
yelling and screaming all day. I was the most
miserable, angry person you can imagine.”
Aer one early bad review at the Hermitage,
he pledged to his staff that he wouldn’t take a
day off until they were reviewed again. It took
ten months, during which Brock slept at the
restaurant most nights.
“We’re insane. We shouldn’t be doing this
to our bodies and to our brains. at’s sick.
at’s an illness,” he says, though not without
a touch of pride. “But, look, somebody’s goa
feed everybody.”
So is there another way?
There’s no way of knowing whether the
chef’s lifesle caused Brock’s myasthenia gra-
vis. What is clear is that it does exacerbate it.
It is a one-to-one equation: When Brock gets
upset, his eyesight blurs. When he loses sleep
or drinks a lile bit, he pays in the days aer. It
falls to Noe to remind him of these things. “She’s
the only one who can keep me in line,” he says.
Still, there are limits to what even love can
do. “Look, this feeling in my chest is tempo-
rary,” Brock says on the eve of the McCrady’s
opening. “In two or three weeks, I’ll be standing
at that counter enjoying myself eating, and then
I’ll go back to Nashville, get some nice rni-
ture, build a fence for my dog, and chill out.”
It is, of course, the Junkie’s Creed: “Tomorrow
everything’s going to be different. Tomorrow
I’m going to be fine. I’m just waiting for every-
thing to line up perfectly and then it’s all going
to be smooth sailing.…” Meanwhile, plans
are moving forward for a Husk in Greenville,
South Carolina, to open this coming spring,
and Husk: Savannah after that. His dog, one
starts to fear, may have to learn to live without
a fence a lile longer.
But is there another way?
Brock sighs, slightly lubricated now, at e
Griffon, a dive bar nestled among the hotels and
manicured facades of downtown Charleston.
He’s allowing himself a drink, or several,
tonight, in part because Noe won’t be back
from Nashville until later; in part, one fears,
guiltily, because he feels that doing so is part
of the Official Sean Brock Experience for vis-
itors; and in part because the McCrady’s team
has just completed its final dress rehearsal
before its official opening tomorrow night. It
was a roaring success.
“Tomorrow we start from scratch, but...,” he
says, trailing off. “It happened to me tonight:
The same thing that happens every time I’m
doing something I worked really hard towards.
I’m in the kitchen, and I just start geing waves
of highs. I feel this amazing rush. My arms
break out in goose bumps. I imagine it’s what
heroin is like. I’m so happy. is is me at my
happiest: cooking this food in this place. I feel
like I just won the football game. Like I won the
heavyweight championship of the world. It’s
the greatest thing you can imagine.”
But is there another way?
“Dammit, I don’t know that I want to do it
any other way.”
• • •
THE NEXT NIGHT, opening night, McCrady’s
is filled for the first time with 18 strangers. e
front two-thirds of the rectangular space are
bathed in a warm, amber glow that reflects
off the black-walnut counter. The kitchen
seems to be caught in the flash of a silver
strobe light, framing Brock and his chefs as
they bend over plates, tweezers at the ready,
as though playing a game of Operation. ings
move fast and light: ere’s an oyster secreted
in a fog of seawater and dry ice; a square of
uni-and-pawpaw ice cream that unfolds in
the mouth like a perverse gobstopper; and, of
course, the cobia and matsutake, which in its
24th or 25th iteration has emerged as a space-
age diorama: equal-size chunks of fish and
mushroom arranged, Stonehenge-like, around
a green-and-white psychedelic pool. It looks
like a Yes album cover, and it tastes of sea and
forest and also somehow like an aer-school
snack of peanut buer spread on celery. Brock
seems relaxed, loose. At one point, he peers
at the dining room through the tree line of
bonsai like a twinkle-eyed giant. Who knows?
Maybe he’s right. Maybe everything will soon
go back to normal. When the last dessert, a
tiny lozenge that explodes in the mouth with
an invigorating menthol blast, is dropped, the
kitchen lights snap off, as though a curtain has
fallen, and the chefs silently march out the
door. e guests applaud.
Upstairs, in the Long Room, where George
Washington once dined, Brock and his team
sit at a banquet table. Nobody talks. ere is,
strangely, an air of deflation. Everything was
flawless, and yet… “It’s so weird,” Brock says.
“ere’s a disconnect.”
Perhaps this is just the crash that follows
geing what you’ve always wanted. Or, Brock
has another idea:
“Maybe it wasn’t hard enough?” 
BRETT MARTIN is a GQ correspondent.

continued from page 215
at soccer in a way Americans just aren’t yet.
ey trudge onto this lile Astroturf field, and
for a few hours several times a week they are no
longer air-traffic controllers or etc.
If you want to know whether he’s good at
soccer, the answer is yes. Usain Bolt is very
good at soccer. His game isn’t natural to this
miniaturized field—he looks boled up. But he
scores a lot. He also likes to lie on the ground
and laugh when he takes a tumble, as the game
moves on around him.
Also: Not one person ogles or approaches
Usain Bolt in his capacity as Jamaica’s sole
international megastar. ere are other fields
filled with strangers, and from those fields I
detect not even a rtive glance in his direction.
Either they have some really professional
poker faces, or they sincerely see Usain Bolt as
just a guy they kind of know.
After an hour or so, his girlfriend, Kasi,
arrives. The girlfriend who, while Usain
was on his international wining tour, let the
Twier world know that he was risking his
future back home with his “goddess.” Usain
kisses her, and they sit next to each other look-
ing at their phones until it’s his turn to play
again. Then he’s back on the field and she
sits by herself waiting for her boyfriend to
be done playing soccer.
At 10 P.M., their time is up. e group that’s
rented the field next is waiting. Usain buys a
round of beers for everyone, and they all go sit
at some picnic tables. Usain leans against a
chain-link fence and drinks a Guinness. Kasi
stands next to him, trying to look natural, now
waiting for her boyfriend to decide that he
wants to go home. He’s already beginning to
live the ture he’s been talking about—a guy
who’s aging into normalcy, with a fallible
body, whom people will point at and say:
Hey, man, that’s Usain Bolt, he was the fastest
man alive. A guy who gets together with his
friends a couple of times a week to play soccer
and inhabit his body the way he used to and
then hang out aerward listening to music,
while off in the distance the lights of the rest
of the world twinkle on.
Before I leave, Usain wants to make a final
point. “Just write down,” he says, “that I scored
three goals. e most goals.”
His friends laugh. He smiles, too. It’s nny
that he’s being competitive about this game,
right?
“Yeah, but you were kind of hanging out
near the goal,” I said.
“What do you want? I’m a striker,” he says,
mostly serious. “Strikers don’t get back on
defense.”
It’s nny that he’s being competitive. But he
still wants me to know: He won. 
DEVIN FRIEDMAN is GQ’s editorial director.
continued from page 177
What are your favorite Ryan Reynolds
movies?
Buried, Adventureland. The Voices, Mississippi
Grind. I love Deadpool with my last beating
heart. I like Van Wilder. If you watch that, I’m
just wholesale robbing from Chevy Chase.
He has that same kind of detached quality
that you sometimes do.
ere’s an empathetic arrogance that he has.
Despite the fact that he’s telling you “Do not
like me” and he’s writing lines for himself that
are meant to impale your sense of good taste,
you’re aracted to him.
What’s next?
We all sat around and wrote Deadpool 2 in
here, actually. Rhe and Paul were staying in
the two bedrooms right down there on and
off for about four months. I have Life, which
is also wrien by Rhe and Paul—the whole
film takes place on the International Space
Station, and they discover a form of extrater-
restrial life. I’m friends with Jake Gyllenhaal,
and this was our first working experience
together. ey literally manufactured the ISS
on a soundstage in London. I showed an astro-
naut the inside on FaceTime, and he was like,
“Oh, my God! at’s amazing!”
Your life seems so good right now.
Are you content, or are you like, “It’s all
downhill from here”?
e needle doesn’t move as much as you think
it does—I really think that people just come
down the chute a certain way. There’s this
idea that when somebody’s just a misera-
ble son of a bitch and they win the lottery,
they’re ecstatic for like six months, but when
you catch up to them a year down the line,
they’re still a pessimistic person. And when
a super-happy optimist loses everything in
life, they just sort of figure it out and go back
to their baseline. My baseline’s prey good, I
think, aside from a few prey intense anxie
hiccups over my life. I wouldn’t say I’m quan-
tifiably happier now than I was when I lived
in my shithole studio apartment on Wilcox in
Hollywood. I’m also old enough to understand
what’s an illusion and what’s real, and that it’s
foolish to try to think that I can control any-
thing from here on out.
Very Zen.
Undercut the Zen part with the same fears that
everyone else has. But I wasn’t a miserable ck
before I did this for a living, and I would hope
that I would never turn into one, because I’m
luc . at’s a Man of the Year quote right there.
Jesus Christ. 
ANNA PEELE is GQ’s culture editor.
Page 154. Yogurt: Ed Endicott/Alamy. Eggo: Michael Neelon/
Alamy. Fried chicken: Svetlana Foote/Alamy. Pie: Svetlana
Foote/Alamy. Carrots: Sergejs Rahunoks/Alamy. Sausage:
Sergejs Rahunoks/Alamy. Meatball sub: Mediablitzimages/
Alamy. Sprees: Bon Appetit/Alamy. French fries: Digifoto
Diamond/Alamy. Jerky: Edd Westmacott/Alamy. Ribs: Dave
Crombeen/Alamy. Chicken leg: Handmade Pictures/Alamy.
Pizza: Feng Yu/Alamy. Cookie: Design Pics Inc/Alamy.
Stuffing: Bert Folsom/Alamy. Doughnut: D. Hurst/Alamy.
Asparagus: D. Hurst/Alamy. Corn: Organics Image Library/
Alamy. Muffin: Food and Drink Photos/Alamy. Mushrooms:
Incamerastock/Alamy. French toast: Joel Katz/Alamy.
Potatoes: Fabrizio Troiani/Alamy. Peanut-butter-and-jelly
sandwich: Hera Food/Alamy. Zucchini: A. Astes/Alamy. Red
Bull: J.F.T.L IMAGES/Alamy. Pierogi: Aaron Bastin/Alamy.
Coffee: Judith Collins/Alamy. Ice cream: Radius Images/
Alamy. Broccoli: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy. Onions: Agencja
Fotograficzna Caro/Alamy.
Pages 180–181. Top left, glasses and ring: his own. Top
center, ring: his own. Top right, tie: John Varvatos. Bottom
left, pocket square: Tommy Hilfiger. Bottom right, pocket
square: Eton. Tie bar: The Tie Bar. Watch: Daniel Wellington.
Pages 184–185. Producer: Lauren Gross at North Six. Hair:
Bobby McLean. Grooming: Kumi Craig using Soko Glam.
Pages 198 & 200. Produced in London by Ragi Dholakia
Productions. Ahmed and Negga, hair: David Harborow at
Streeters. Makeup: Florrie White using Bobbi Brown.
Manicure: Michelle Humphrey using Chanel.
Pages 199, 201 & 202–205. Produced in New York by
Nathalie Akiya at Kranky Produktions. The Stranger Things
kids (including Brown), Guardiola, and Ugarte, hair: Thom
Priano for R+Co haircare. The Stranger Things kids (boys
only), grooming: Jodie Boland using Lab Series Skincare for
Men. Brown, makeup: Carrie Lamarca using Lancôme.
Guardiola and Ugarte, makeup: Jodie Boland using Chanel;
manicure: Ana-Maria for Chanel. The Get Down cast (men
only) and Rhodes, grooming: Barry White at
barrywhitemensgrooming.com.
Page 202. From left, 1. Cap: BDG at Urban Outfitters.
Sneakers: Vans. 2. Cap: ’47 Brand. Sneakers: Adidas
Originals. 3. Sneakers: Vans. Bracelet: Caputo & Co.
Bracelets on other boys: Burkman Bros. 4. Beanie: Neff.
Necklace: Giles & Brother. Sneakers: Vans.
Page 204. Bracelet: A.P.C.
Page 205. Left, bracelet: Renvi. Ring: his own. Center, her
pink bodysuit (beneath dress): Cosabella. Long drop earring,
bracelet, and rings: Delfina Delettrez. Small earring (on other
ear): Catbird. Right, his ring: Degs & Sal. Bracelet: his own.
All pocket squares: Tom Ford.
GQ IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK
OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC.
COPYRIGHT © 2016 CONDÉ NAST.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME 86, NO. 12. GQ (ISSN 0016-6979) is published
monthly by Condé Nast, which is a division of Advance
Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast,
One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. S. I. Newhouse, Jr.,
Chairman Emeritus; Charles H. Townsend, Chairman; Robert
A. Sauerberg, Jr., President & Chief Executive Officer; David E.
Geithner, Chief Financial Officer; Jill Bright, Chief Administrative
Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at addi-
tional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement
No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration
No. 123242885-RT0001. Canada Post: Return undeliverable
Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 874, Station Main, Markham, ON
L3P 8L4.
POSTMASTER: SEND ALL UAA TO CFS (SEE DMM 507.1.5.2);
NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: Send address
corrections to GQ, P.O. Box 37675, Boone, IA 50037-0675. FOR
SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS,
OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to GQ, P.O. Box
37675, Boone, IA 50037-0675, call 800-289-9330, or e-mail
subscriptions@gq.com. Please give both new and old addresses
as printed on most recent label. First copy of new subscription
will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address
all editorial, business, and production correspondence to GQ
Magazine, One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For
reprints, please e-mail reprints@condenast.com or call Wright’s
Media 877-652-5295. For re-use permissions, please e-mail
contentlicensing@condenast.com or call 800-897-8666. Visit
us online at www.gq.com. To subscribe to other Condé Nast
magazines on the World Wide Web, visit www.condenastdigital
.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to care-
fully screened companies that offer products and services that we
believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive
these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box
37675, Boone, IA 50037-0675 or call 800-289-9330.
GQ IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF,
OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLIC-
ITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ARTWORK (INCLUD-
ING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS,
AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICIT-
ED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS,
PHOTOGRAPHS, ARTWORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS
FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS,
UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY GQ
IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND
OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED
BY A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE.
1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 2 3 3
 B A C K S T O R Y

An Adult Coloring Experience

Coloring
books: They’re
not just for kids
anymore. In fact,
they’re actual
New York Times
best-sellers.
For grown-up
humans and Kate
Hudson (she’s
C O L O R E D P E N C I L S : M AT T M A R T I N

a fan). Here,
an exclusive
excerpt from the
commemorative
2016 coloring
book we wish
existed. We call
it: America
Kisses the Frog

2 3 4 1 2 - 2 Ø 1 6 ZOHAR LAZAR