Graydon Tosses Buddy Barkin Career Life Raft.
Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue features double-page photos of Hilary Swank as “The Body,” Jamie Foxx as “The Man,” and a surprise: “The Return Engagement,” Ellen Barkin, who could just as easily have been labeled “Editor-in-Chief’s Boating Buddy.” Her photo was shot aboard her husband Ron Perelman’s yacht Ultima III as it bobbed off the coast of St. Barts on New Year’s Eve, during the same week Graydon Carter was aboard too. “Half the staff was against putting her in it,” says a Condé Nast source. “The only person who wanted it was Graydon.” This would not be the first time Carter has skirted the traditional church-state divide between what Vanity Fair covers (Hollywood) and his personal dealings; there was last spring’s brouhaha over the $100,000 “consultant fee” he got from producer Brian Grazer and the $1 million deal he shared in with Miramax Books. But Vanity Fair’s spokeswoman says Barkin’s being on deck was merit-based. “Graydon had seen the Todd Solondz film Palindromes, and he thought she was extraordinary. She mentioned all the other magazine shoots she was doing, and he said, ‘We should do it first.’ ”
—Jacob Bernstein