In a post on his obscure political blog last month, an alleged former friend of Carter's, Jymn Parrett, writes "Apropos of nothing, I thought I'd share some late night memories of my BFF pre-teen memories of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter." He proceeds to paint a delightful Portrait of the Graydon as a Young Carter.

Did you know that the young Graydon Carter...

...goofed off in class?

Sometime in grade 8 at Queen Elizabeth school in Ottawa*, Carter and I laughed through the first few minutes of History class quoting Eddie Haskell lines. We spent the last part of class shoveling the rink as punishment, where we continued to break each other up with quotes from Mr. Haskell. I almost failed that grade because I could give a shit. Carter sailed through even he didn't give a shit, either

*Queen Elizabeth school is a public school in the suburbs of Ottawa, where Carter grew up. Motto: "At Queen Elizabeth, we are dedicated to the personal academic growth of every child."

...picked on people smaller than him?

Carter lifted me by my head off my feet in class to show classmates how 'light' it was. (I was a small dude with an even smaller head and not much in it, to boot, so I don't blame him).

...was sort of full of himself?

Graydon always had a smile - no, a sneer - no, a smirk - no, a self-satisfied look on his face.

...OK, really full of himself?

I sent a friend, Signe Hoffos*, to interview for a job at a Canadian rag** where Carter was the editor. He relayed an anecdote of me to her - laughing all the while - where I watched him with awe years earlier skate on my local rink when I was eight. It must be true. I remember watching this guy skating beautifully but I could not skate myself at the time because of debilitating asthma. I grew out of that and was a decent hockey player in my teens. I still do not know what Graydon Carter was doing on my near-poverty rink on Eastbourne Avenue when he lived in a huge house on the hill. Not sure either that Carter ever played hockey, knowing his well-known distaste for that sport, but I was amazed this was the anecdote he chose to relate to my friend.

*Signe Hoffos, Rosemont High class of 1972?
**Most Likely the Canadian Review, which New York Magazine writes was "an award-winning monthly that by 1977 had become the third-largest general interest magazine in Canada."

...had a very tan father?

Carter's father was a pilot who was very tanned.* Graydon said that people mistook him in the States for being a 'Negro'.

*From the "Writer's Almanac": "His father was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who took photographs from the air and helped to make the first maps of northern parts of Canada."

...was full of wonder?

We listened to the mono 45 of Gene Pitney's 'Mecca' over and over at Carter's house and marveled.

..was always destined for "the larger life"?

I was the in-house artist and ticket-taker at the Pineland rock and roll club* in Ottawa in the late 60's. Carter came in and I was too embarrassed to acknowledge him because he did not recognize me, although it was just a few years, and a couple of moves, after our friendship. I already knew then he was destined for the larger life.

*AKA The Pineland Dance Pavilion

This peek into the not-so-humble origins of Graydon Carter is heart-warming in a weird way. And it certainly adds some depth to Carter's public persona as the good-humored, if slightly bumbling, host to Manhattan's glitterati. Here, for example, is how Guardian writer Polly Vernon characterized Carter in a long profile last month: "Humility-despite-it-all is Carter's shtick. He bombards any listener with self-deprecating statements, with anecdotes designed to expose what he sells as his myriad flaws. He is the punch line to all his own jokes." Now imagine young Graydon picking up little Jymn Parrett by his head in geography class.

(We couldn't reach Parrett—apparently a Vancouver-based technical writer who founded Denim Delinquent, an "influential rock and roll fanzine" published from 1971-1976—but the details contained within his post match so well with those of Carter's life that only some kind of Graydon Carter-obsessed stalker could have faked this. More to the point: who's that down in the comments section? Appears to be Graydon himself!)

Let's go straight to some quotes from the interview:

On the Vanity Fair piece: "I stand by it and I'm cool with everything I said. The route I chose to pick was just because they wouldn't let me see my kid. So I didn't really think that there was another way. That was the huge thing that made me do this. I don't want to (say it was retaliation)...I mean, I guess. If they would've let me see my kid, everything's fine, I never would've had to do any of that. They were gettin' scared. They know I know a lot. I still know more than what's out there. Then it got bad again and I said screw it, Vanity Fair article.

And on the custody issues Levi's having now: It's startin' to get bad again. They're making it kind of a pain in the ass again (to see Trip). I know I'm gonna end up (going to court). There're a lot of secrets and a lot of things that I haven't put out there that are bad...so I don't know if I want to. Some of the stuff I got, kept in, would either really hurt her or really get her in trouble. So, I really don't want to say anything else. I'm not that kind of person, no matter how much she pisses me off. I don't want to leak anything huge on her.

Okay, so, questions:

1. Is Levi Johnston screwing with all of us? It's entirely possible. An interesting way to gauge this would be to figure out the timeline on the Vanity Fair piece? Did Levi approach VF? Vice versa? Was there a lag between an offer and the acceptance of the offer? Despite all of the custodial trauma Levi's claiming, you've gotta wonder if he isn't enjoying his time in the limelight. I can't imagine he isn't. On the other hand, walking around L.A. with the same big guys he was seen at Monkey Bar with have been the most egregious extent of his famewhoring. He could, theoretically, be doing much, much worse.

2. What the hell isn't he talking about? And why isn't he? Sure, Levi's claiming principles as the obstacle we're facing to knowing everything he's got on the Palin family, but this 19 year-old kid from the sticks is either as innocent as he's assumed to be, or is far, far savvier than anyone could ever imagine (or at least savvy enough to listen to good advice). Hanging on to whatever he knows and leaking info out in droplets could maybe, possibly, profoundly scare the shit out of Sarah Palin and her oft-projected 2012 run's potential. Then again, maybe she isn't running, maybe she actually is done, and maybe a cost-benefit breakdown of what Levi's leaks could get him as opposed to the trouble it could cause for Palin's entire family really isn't worth it to him. He's a 19 year-old father, though: so what, exactly, is?

3. Will the threat of a lawsuit do anything to the Palin camp? And what could a lawsuit mean for them? Either way, we're gonna find out, and with it, the weight of whatever Johnston may or may not have, and the character of his balls if forced to move it forward. [Ed. Oh, we'll definitely know that soon enough. Intimately.]

Listen to the audio. We read and read about a lot of bullshit. We watch it on TV and in movies. But just the audio track? It's different. There's that dumb line from a movie: the truth just sounds different. Well, man, it does.

'Could be that there's another way for him to earn a buck that doesn't have to do with being in the spotlight—he remembers at the beginning of the interview his prospects in hockey or as an electrician—because Levi sounds down, out, and tired of dealing with all of this shit. Maybe he just wants to see his kid, and move forward with his life as something other than Levi Johnston, Asspain to Sarah Palin.

Or he's an underdog genius who's playing the media and the entire Palin narrative to his liking. At this point, pick one: the odds are about the same. More highlights:

On Sarah Palin's Vice President nomination: "Didn't mean anything to me. I didn't care. I didn't think it was that huge. I'm just gonna sit here and not say a word."

On Palin's personal interaction nature: "You can catch her in a lie a lot of the time. She don't read the newspaper. A lot of the things she's sayin', I know she's lying."

On the outdoorsmen nature of the Palin family: "I'd say (Sarah's) definitely stretchin' it big time. They're not a big hunting family."

On racism in the Palin household: "No, not (Sarah Palin)..no. She never said anything like that. She's not the racist type."

On Palin's loss: "After the election, she didn't want us to get married, really. You could tell that they're all sad about everything. I don't know, just her attitude towards everything was pretty down. I don't think she had much care for anything for a while. She hung around in her room a lot. I think she just wanted to be left alone for a while. She just went through a big depression, I think. She was bummed out bad."

On his breakup with Bristol: "There's no one to blame for it. I mean, if it didn't work, it didn't work."

On what he thinks of Sarah Palin now: "I still don't think bad about her. But...You know, just some of the shit she pulled on me—encouraging Bristol not to let me see the kid and everything else, from her acting like she liked me for four or five plus years, and then going on saying that stuff, is just ridiculous how fake they are...it's just ridiculous."

Again: the truth just sounds different. Is this it?

[Photo of Levi in "happier" times via Getty Images/Robyn Beck]

Mediaite reports the latest gossip: That Graydon is offering laid-off VF staffers jobs at Monkey Bar. The restaurant he owns!

You got laid off from Graydon Carter's magazine but now you can go and be a barback at Graydon Carter's restaurant! Allegedly.

You know just how Graydon likes things, eh? It'll be perfect!

And when Monkey Bar goes under Graydon Carter has some housework he needs done. Allegedly.

[Pic: Getty]

Keith Kelly reports that VF got slammed with layoffs yesterday—layoffs that were made worse by what may have been the company's protection of the magazine during its last round of cutbacks.

Vanity Fair's layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.

Nobody's escaping this recession totally unscathed. The New Yorker did suffer business-side cutbacks, we hear, but its editorial staff was largely protected. Vogue had a handful of layoffs last week. And, of course, the rest of the company's magazines have almost all taken hits as well (the most recent being a half dozen layoffs at GQ yesterday, according to WWD).

But Vanity Fair got hit hard. It seemingly wasn't spared a bit. Which makes one think that Graydon Carter's level of influence (unlike David Remnick's) is no match for economic reality. And the nastiest part: the Post says that Graydon didn't even show up in the office yesterday when all the layoffs were happening.

UPDATE: And now, a source tells us: The word inside the building is that Graydon was absent from work yesterday because he was on a private jet to Bermuda. Repeat: Sources say Graydon Carter missed layoff day at his magazine because he was on a private jet to Bermuda. We've asked Conde Nast about this and we'll update with their reply. [Know more? Email us].

Bad form, Graydon. You keep this up and you may find yourself a full-time restaurateur.
[Pic: Getty]

Newhouse confirms to us that she was laid off today, as first reported in a tweet from Britten Leigh Heft. Newhouse writes she's one of two people she's aware of being let go from the sales/promotion side of the magazine. The decision, she said, was based on seniority: "The two newest people in our department were let go."

That sounds like admirably fair treatment for the wife of Jesse Newhouse, whose father is a Newhouse newspaper executive, whose grandfather was an early partner in building the Advance Publications empire that owns Self parent Condé Nast and who is the son of a cousin of Advance CEO Si Newhouse Jr.

When Newhouse was hired, it arched our eyebrows along with, we were told at the time, those of some people within Self. Condé had already been through several rounds of layoffs when Newhouse was hired. Her discharge could stand as proof that nepotism is a weak force, at best, in the Newhouse empire. Newhouse did come into the promtoions job after running her own events and promotion company, after all. But it could also be a sign of how desperate the company's magazines are to cut costs.

After all, today also brings word of still more cutbacks in a seemingly never-ending stream for Condé Nast: a tipster tells us Vanity Fair is laying off six people from the business side, including one ad director, two sales positions and three people from creative services, including one "very senior level" person. We called a Condé Nast spokeswoman for comment and are waiting to hear back.

Newhouse, meanwhile, isn't eyeing an immediate return to the family business. She writes:

For the moment, I feel it's best to return to running my own company, 007 Events, which I haven't allowed to lapse. Should there be an opening at some time in the future at Condé Nast where my experience in event planning and promotions would be valuable again, I would definitely consider returning. It was a great experience to work with such a dedicated and hardworking group.

A dignified exit, then. Newhouse-ian, even.

Dreier's that hot shot lawyer who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for selling phony promisory notes and raking in about $400 million for his "law firm." Then he was caught and now his name's synonymous with dirt. So, why'd he do it?

Dreier's been saying all along that he wasn't motivated by greed, as some would assume, but because he had an insatiable thirst for success. Or, as he explained it to the 60 Minutes' audience, his plot was akin to a midlife crisis:

I was very disappointed in my life. I guess some people would say maybe a lot of men reach a so-called midlife crisis. I was 52.... I remember being at a place in my life where I was perhaps desperate to better myself and to make a place for myself.

But even his ambition-fueled thievery was topped. Sure, he was a media sensation for a minute, but Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme soon broke and became the amoral financial litmus test. At his sentencing, the judge even said, "he is not Mr. Madoff from any analysis, and that's why I can't understand why the government is asking for 145 years." Ouch.

Now poor Dreier, so filled with ambition, so eager to be the best, comes with the moniker "mini-Madoff" and has to whore himself out to 60 Minutes and — yeesh! — Vanity Fair.

And the worst part? He has to come up with some bullshit self-analysis to explain it all and, we guess, elicit some sympathy from the masses. Well, it didn't work. Now we just think he's a sad sack coward. At least just fess up and say you liked money and yachts. That's what a real man would do.

The Observer caught Lebowitz at a Graydon Carter-hosted book party last night and asked her what she thought of the McKinsey consultants descending on Condé Nast:

"Well, I don't think it's anyone working there who hired them!" Ms. Lebowitz said. "The thing is, everyone seeks a lot of advice now. People who make $40,000 a year have financial consultants. 'How should I deal with my money?' Don't spend all of it! It's just common sense."

Annie, you should listen to Frannie.

In today's NY Times Gail Collins writes she feels sympathy for Palin because of Levi's story, where he calls Palin a bad mother who was never around and claims that she tried to adopt his and Bristol's child to pass it off as her own.

But even if he were an Eagle Scout with a scholarship to Harvard, can you imagine anything worse than discovering your daughter's teenage ex-boyfriend has been given a national platform to discuss his impressions of her mom's parenting skills?

Yes, we can. How about being an 18-year-old boy who is trotted out by a conservative succubus and an unqualified, ambitious woman in some lame attempt to appease voters who believe that abstinence exists and that abortion and adoption are bad? Yes, Levi is shamelessly cashing in on his brief moment in the sun, but if it weren't for the GOP and their collective delusion about the realities of teenage life, he never would have had a platform to begin with.

And really, how harmful is Levi? He's only riding Sarah Palin's coattails — VF gave her top billing — thus keeping her in the spotlight. Besides, what is this distracting America from? Palin's in-depth explorations of American foreign policy with Russia. Yeah, he's a not-very-bright, opportunistic burgeoning gay icon who is making the most of his very limited shelf life. He's Kato Kaelin with a hunting license, and he seems to know it. Seriously, when is a dim bulb from Wasilla ever going to get a chance to burn so bright again?

And a fun flame-out it has been. Aside from being courted by Graydon Carter with trips to the Monkey Bar and an appearance as Kathy Griffin's date to the Teen Choice Awards, there was also a bidding war by gay porn companies to get the kid to show off his magical impregnating device. His next step is an underwear shoot for Playgirl! Does it get any more wonderfully ridiculous?

If anything, Sarah Palin and the Republican ideologues are being outsmarted by their pawn. They dragged this kid away from hockey practice to try to save their asses and now he's using the same public-profile-as-theater-of-the-absurd tactics to stay in the spotlight. Besides, Sarah Palin needs a way to stay in the headlines somehow. And for that, Levi Johnston, we salute you.

After reading on Gawker that Levi was game for posing nude, the guy who puts together Playgirl's photoshoots, Daniel Nardicio, emailed Johnston's manager Tank Jones about having his client pose nude for their website. (The print version of the magazine closed earlier this year). Tank referred the matter to Levi's lawyer Rex Butler (how many handlers does one Alaskan babydaddy need?) who emailed back: "There are people out there that want to see such a shoot of Levi and we are ready to do it if the proposal is right." The only hitch, Levi's not willing to do a nude shoot, only pose in his skivvies.

And since a nearly nude Levi is better than no nude Levi at all, Playgirl's down and there's an agreement in place to do the shoot. They're in final negotiations to get the thing together right now.

Funny thing is that Playgirl's biggest get in years doesn't have a clue about who reads the male flesh mag. As he and Tank joke in the Vanity Fair video, Levi says, "I'm assuming it's where a dude poses for women."

Oh Levi, don't be ashamed to go down the gay icon route. Just wait until June, when you'll be introducing dance diva Amber at Cincinnati Pride!

Media recession signal: This list—once a big generator of freelance work, and given splashy placement in VF—is now a web exclusive. UPDATE: VF tells us that a truncated version of the list is running in the October issue. Print lives!


By Profession
Corporate CEOs/ Company leaders: 18
Media mogul/ CEO: 18
Hollywood moguls/ power players:16
Media talent:11
Wall Street bankers/ Private equity: 7
Superstar Investors: 6
Hollywood stars: 5
Politicians/ Political officials/ advisers: 5
Ex-politicians: 2
Young Internet CEOs: 2
TV producers: 2
Authors: 2
International money managers: 1
Financial analysts: 1
Other celebrities: 1
Architects: 1
Scientists: 1
Athletes: 1

Biggest gainer: John Malone, from 86 to 21


Biggest loser: Stephen Colbert, from 45 to 79


Who got "down" arrows?: Rush Limbaugh, Bill Keller, Jeff Zucker, Evan Williams and Biz Stone (pictured), Steve Ballmer


New to the list: Lauren Zalaznick, Lebron James, Craig Venter, Anil Ambani, Jason Kilar, Simon Fuller, Bobby Kotick, Paul Krugman, Todd Phillips, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, David Einhorn, Meredith Whitney, Harvey Levin, the Politico guys, Stephenie Meyer, Glenn Beck, Wang Chuanfu, Matt Blank, Alber Elbaz, Richard Plepler, Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett, Lorne Michaels, Dan Doctoroff, Michael Bay, Ryan Kavanaugh, Tyler Perry, Meryl Streep, Gao Xiqing, Mike Duke, Desiree Rogers, JJ Abrams, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse, Larry Fink (pictured, the highest ranking new entry, at #6)

Sure. Sure he did. The story is not online, so we don't know how long it is or what form it takes but it does explain why Levi was at Monkey Bar. Because now he's a Vanity Fair contributor! Si will probably lend him money to buy some real estate in Wasilla.

The cause was bladder cancer, a family spokesman said. The spokesman had initially declined to confirm the death, saying the family had hoped to wait a day before making an announcement so that Mr. Dunne's obituary would not be obscured by the coverage of Senator Edward M. Kennedy's death.

Yes, but his own magazine had an obituary and a tribute up yesterday before 5 p.m.. Not confirming it at that point would seem to be a bit futile.

Still, no one wants to die right after a Kennedy. We suspect there may be as many as four celebrities who are dead right now but refuse to admit it. (Has anyone heard from Gore Vidal lately? There's someone whose pride would cause him to die on a slow news week.)

Dominick Dunne's People Waited So He Wouldn't Be Overshadowed By Ted Kennedy [Notas/Guanabee]

Update: New York Social Diary reported Dunne's passing a little after 3 p.m. yesterday, followed by the Observer and Huffington Post. We're told nearly everyone who knew the news early yesterday was "sworn to 'secrecy.'" VF may have meant to comply with the family's wishes and hold the announcement for a while, but once the news was out on the internet that probably wasn't a option.

He was diagnosed last year, and his decline was sudden and largely unexpected, though Liz Smith reported on his condition just yesterday.

It was a long and fascinating life. Dunne was a World War II vet. He was a TV director and film producer. He was one of the druggiest of the '70s Hollywood druggies until he cleaned up at age 50. He was a television star. When his daughter Dominique was murdered in 1982, he became a journalist.

His professional home of many years lists his credits:

Dunne—who joined Vanity Fair in 1984 as a contributing editor, and was named special correspondent in 1993—famously covered the trials of O. J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and Phil Spector, as well as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He wrote memorable profiles on numerous personalities, among them Imelda Marcos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Claus von Bülow, Adnan Khashoggi, and Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. His monthly column provided a glimpse inside high society, and captivated readers.

"He became our first star writer," Tina Brown says in After the Party, a documentary on Dunne. She hired him to write a story on the trial of his daughter's killer for Vanity Fair, and she calls him "the defining voice of the magazine."

Dunne covered the trials of "the rich, the powerful, and the famous," he said in the same documentary. And "the reason I can write assholes so well is that I used to be an asshole."

He's survived by sons Griffin and Alex and granddaughter Hannah. There is an obituary and a nice remembrance from Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair.

One of the sweetest sounds in the world was Corky making the rounds up here on the executive floor, saying in his laid-back voice, "I feel like boffing some bimbos in the Caribbean. Anybody like to come along?"

It's almost like you're right there on the executive floor. Anyhow the writing's not bad as long as you can forget that this story was almost certainly inspired by Tom Wolfe standing in a long line at the airport.
[Pic via]

The Leibovitz meltdown has reached the point where even the British edition of Vogue, which is owned by her own employer Condé Nast, felt compelled to weigh in with a web item today, which strikes us as exceedingly back-stabby.

Barring the intervention of an angel, it seems highly likely that Leibovitz will file for bankruptcy before the Art Capital loan must be repaid next month. Here's the current state of play:

Leibovitz owes Art Capital $24 million. If she doesn't pay it back by September 8, she will be in default on the loan. But she may already be in default on the loan—according to a lawsuit Art Capital filed against Getty Images in April, Art Capital was at one point demanding a $1 million loan payment. It's unclear whether she made that payment or not, but if she didn't, that failure may have triggered a default. And in its suit against Leibovitz, Art Capital accuses her of failing to pay "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in fees associated with the loan—another failure that may have triggered default.

What happens if Leibovitz defaults? Well, for one thing, the 10% commission Art Capital gets from the sale of her homes and artwork under the terms of the loan gets a boost up to 25%, according to Bloomberg. Art Capital claims a "first priority security interest" in "every photographic image ever taken by Ms. Leibovitz" as well as he homes in Greenwich Village and Rhinebeck, N.Y. A "first priority security interest" means Art Capital gets in line ahead of other creditors if there is a bankruptcy. In order to know for sure what a default means, we'd have to see the loan agreement. But it's likely that, if Leibovitz hasn't made good by September 8, Art Capital would be entitled to take steps to sell off the assets to recoup its debt.

Except Art Capital appears to be already entitled to do that: Its deal with Leibovitz gives it the right to sell her homes and artwork before September 8:

Leibovitz's failure to cooperate in those sales is why Art Capital sued her in the first place.

So in terms of her relationship with Art Capital, September 8 doesn't change much: She may already be in default anyway, and Art Capital already has the right to sell everything off. What will probably change is that Leibovitz will file for bankruptcy—or be forced by one of her other creditors to do so—on or before September 8. According to Bloomberg, that is her best shot: It will put decisions on how to dispose of her assets in the hands of a judge, and it would halt any other creditor lawsuits against her and give her a chance to come to terms with her situation. Art Capital would still likely be able to force the sale and recoup some or all of its debt, but a judge might be convinced to reduce the amount, modify the interest rate, or alter the sales agreement under which Art Capital gets commission on the sale.

Is there another way out aside from bankruptcy? Well, Andrew Goldman reported this week in New York that Goldman Sachs owns a piece of the Art Capital loan, and Bloomberg reported yesterday (without giving New York credit for breaking the Goldman Sachs tidbit) that the bank is seeking to "terminate the current loan agreement with [Art Capital] so that [it] can work directly with Ms. Leibovitz" in order to "resolve her financing needs." Art Capital responded that it would be happy to receive a bid from Goldman for the loan, but Reuters' Felix Salmon is skeptical that Goldman will swoop in to save the day:

[M]y guess is that if Goldman wanted to buy Art Capital out of this deal, it would have to pay the best part of $30 million to do so. And then they would be owed $30 million by Annie Leibovitz, a woman whose decades-long history of repaying debts is uniformly atrocious. Somehow, with the best will in the world, I don't see this deal happening. And the one thing you can be sure of, when it comes to Leibovitz and Art Capital, is that there's no good will at all. Which means that Leibovitz is probably stuck with Art Capital for the foreseeable future, and Goldman Sachs is not going to be able to work out a white-knight deal.

So if Leibovitz doesn't declare bankruptcy and Art Capital manages to sell the portfolio, which it values at $50 million, it stands to get its $24 million back, plus $2.9 million in interest, plus a $12.5 million commission, assuming the sale occurs after Leibovitz defaults. That's roughly $40 million, leaving $10 million for Leibovitz. If she does declare bankruptcy, whatever Art Capital gets will be up to a judge, but it's likely that they would at least get back the principal.

So it actually appears to be in Art Capital's interest to sell the portfolio off before Leibovitz files for bankruptcy, and it appears to be entitled to do so. The trouble is, no one is going to buy it while all this legal wrangling is going on and without Leibovitz's consent. Bankruptcy, at the very least, would settle all the claims and free up the archive to be sold without any entanglements. It looks like that's where all this is heading, and it will probably get there by early next month.

Goldman's write-around profile of an artist in crisis goes a long way toward explaining exactly how the world's most celebrated celebrity photographer wound up hocking her photographic legacy to keep up with her mounting bills. Mostly it's that she never cared about how much anything cost, was an obsessive perfectionist, and trusted the wrong accountant.

Here's Annie the spendthrift:

Leibovitz had also built a life that had become extraordinarily expensive to maintain. It wasn't just the mortgages on the homes. It was the Range Rover, the trips to Paris, the chef and housekeeper, the handyman, the personal yoga instructor, the terrace gardener, and the live-in nanny. There was only one man Leibovitz deemed qualified to work on anything involving air-conditioning or ductwork at either residence, and he lived in Vermont. "She wanted her life to be like a magazine spread," Kellum says. "Everything beautiful, nothing out of place. She wanted everything to be perfect."

Along the same lines, Goldman reports, she flew in kid-song star Dan Zanes and Rosanne Cash to perform at her daughter's first birthday party.

As for Annie the perfectionist, in 2007, former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown asked Leibovitz to take the author jacket photo for her book about Princess Diana. Leibovitz showed up with two cars bearing a stylist, an assistant, a wardrobe, and a wind machine, and tried to extend the shoot to a second day after she was unsatisfied with the first days' results. Leibovitz was bearing the cost of the shoot herself.

That sort of behavior tends to pile up the debts, and in 2007 Leibovitz—who had an extremely hard time doing simple things like signing her own prints in order to make a lot of money selling them—fired her accountant Rick Kantor and manager Jimmy Moffat, who told Goldman that they had done what they could to rein in Leibovitz's spending. She replaced them with an accountant named Kenneth Starr (no relation), who had worked with Wesley Snipes (!). It was Starr who introduced Leibovitz to Art Capital Group. Goldman says Leibovitz didn't run the loan by her family or agent, and had no idea what she was getting into. She was shocked by a New York Times article reporting that she'd put her photos up as collateral:

"Trust me," says her sister Paula. "She thought it was a pure loan. That New York Times article was as much news to her as it was to anybody else."

Interestingly, the loan was financed by Goldman Sachs, which seems to be behind every epic collapse these days, and Goldman is now distancing itself from Art Capital: "We are deeply troubled by recent developments concerning Annie Leibovitz and Art Capital," Goldman (the firm) told Goldman (the writer). "Goldman Sachs owns a portion of the loan underwritten by an affiliate of Art Capital to Annie Leibovitz, but we have no involvement in the current sales-agreement dispute between Art Capital and Ms. Leibovitz. We have proposed to Art Capital that we terminate the current loan agreement with their affiliate so that we can work directly with Ms. Leibovitz to help her resolve her financing needs."

The one question that Goldman doesn't answer: Where did she get the money that she was spending so liberally? When Leibovitz went to Art Capital, her mortgage debts totaled $15.5 million. Half that, Goldman notes, was owed to her employer Condé Nast itself. (We broke that story two weeks ago, but Goldman doesn't credit us. We forgive him both because he is a stand-up gent and because he found out about it independently before we did, but sat helpless while New York's publication schedule worked its slow magic and the internet kept going.) But Leibovitz borrowed $24 million, indicating that there was an additional $9 million or so in debt she was facing—otherwise why borrow that much more than she needed for a short-term loan? There were other debts, including about $700,000 in lawsuits from unpaid vendors and a million or so in tax liens. But no matter how you cut it, Leibovitz appears to have owed millions more than we currently know about. We have a good idea what she spent it on, but where did it come from? Who else was loaning Leibovitz money? It's an especially interesting question because Leibovitz was never a good credit risk—as far back as the 1980s, Goldman writes, she had trouble getting an American Express card even as she was shooting ad campaigns for American Express (an ad agency intervened and arranged for her to get a card after Leibovitz lost an envelope full of cash she kept handy to pay vendors).

Somehow, it seems, Leibovitz managed to get nearly $10 million in the hole over and above the mortgages on her homes. Was that all on her AmEx? We don't think so.

Art Capital loaned Leibovitz $24 million last year to help her consolidate her gargantuan debts to her employer Condé Nast and others, taking the rights to Leibovitz's homes and photo archive as collateral. The deal also granted Art Capital the exclusive right to agent a sale of Leibovitz's photos, including any future photo shoots. The company sued Leibovitz last month, claiming she refused to cooperate with its attempts to sell the archive, which Art Capital says is the only conceivable way it will recoup the loan.

When we reported on that suit last month, we mentioned that Art Capital was also mad at Getty Images for announcing what looked like an agency agreement with Leibovitz in March, in apparent violation of the Art Capital deal. What we didn't know at the time was that Art Capital had actually sued Getty in April, claiming that Getty pretended to be interested in buying Leibovitz's photo archive in order to gain competitive advantage in negotiating its own agency deal with her.

According to a judge's order allowing parts of Art Capital's suit to go forward, Art Capital claims that Getty CEO Jonathan Klein and vice president Matthew Butson masqueraded as potential buyers for Leibovitz's photo collection, gaining access to information about it including the "number of shots, rolls of film, exposures, and public works" in the archive, the precise terms of Leibovitz's arrangement with Vanity Fair, and the fact that Leibovitz owned some of her work for Rolling Stone "without restriction." As part of Art Capital's negotiations with Getty, the order says, Art Capital proposed that Leibovitz promise to do eight photo shoots for Getty over the next two years. All-in-all, Art Capital—which made Getty sign two confidentiality agreements—valued the package at $50 million.

But in March, Getty offered a "low-ball bid" of $15 million, and Art Capital stopped negotiations and turned to another buyer. Eight days later, Getty announced its own deal with Leibovitz, which Art Capital says "used verbatim the two-year, eight-shoot collaboration with Leibovitz that [Art Capital] had proposed." In other words, Art Capital claims, Getty violated its confidentiality agreement in order to get closer to Leibovitz and figure out what she had, what she was worth, and what she was willing to do. Getty didn't buy the archive—just the eight shoots—but Art Capital says that Getty's interference scared off another unidentified potential buyer, presumably because the Getty deal appeared to muddy the legal waters as to who was actually representing Leibovitz—and who wants to spend $50 million on pretty pictures when a raft of lawsuits is in the offing?

Interestingly, according to the order, Art Capital was apparently demanding a $1 million loan payment from Leibovitz the week before the Getty deal was announced. And the Getty deal itself apparently paid $1.1 million, which Art Capital contends is "far less than her market rate." So it may be that Leibovitz was desperate for cash to make her payment, which Getty used against her as a bargaining chip.

The reason we didn't know about the suit until now is that Art Capital filed it under seal, and the complaint itself isn't available via the New York Supreme Court's web site (we haven't gone down to the courthouse to check the physical file). What is available, however, is a judge's order allowing two of Art Capital's claims against Getty to go forward and laying out the basics of the dispute. CityFile found it yesterday and linked to it—pointing out that the judge repeatedly misspelled Leibovitz's name. In addition to allowing Art Capital to proceed with claims of breach of contract and tortious interference, the judge denied Art Capital's motion to keep the case sealed, so presumably the full case file will be available soon.

Spokespersons for Getty and Art Capital did not immediately return phone calls.

You can read the order here.