The PR honcho is so over revenge. In the contemporary Panopticon of social media, reality television, and e-mail forwards, Cutrone’s rule is “don’t ever put anything in writing and never say anything when anyone’s around.” Except for, apparently, this interview.
“I don’t really take pleasure in getting revenge anymore,” Cutrone tells Complex. “It used to give me great pleasure to write threatening emails to people but now I know that’s not such a good thing to do on a lot of levels.” Still, this may not be a get-out-of-jail-free card: Cutrone points out that she is a Scorpio and a Sicilian, so she knows from revenge. Okay? Okay.
The interview is lengthy and wide-ranging, covering everything from the plight of drug-addicted Hollywood stars — which Cutrone compared to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti — to the casting of the Madonna vehicle The Next Best Thing, to the proliferation of “designers” as the Internet and amateur culture has hopped over fashion’s barriers to entry (“I guess any time a dollar crosses art, it’s called Prada”). Like any good episode of the shows that have brought Cutrone a measure of fame outside the industry in which she works, it was not without its eye-roll moments, like when she declared, “If you actually kind of slow-mo The City, there’s a lot of really great modern-day workplace advice.”
In fashion, says Cutrone, “You never know. That one cunt-y person could become the new Editor-In-Chief. Sometimes the nasty person wins.” Touché.
Cutrone has some dire predictions for the media, both on- and off-line. “Twenty years ago, nobody would believe you’d get your news instantaneously and for free,” she said. “You used to have to buy something called a newspaper. The whole thing about magazines is that for me, magazines are going to become deeper and more tutorial, and the nature of the magazine is going to change. These little blog sites post: ‘Halle Berry loves Shimmer Me Pink Lipstick at $1.69,’ they’re instant hits and they’re going to move product.” Magazines, she says, should become more like Vanity Fair or Life: publishing the kind of reported content that is, in its way, timeless, so as not to compete with the Internet’s structural advantage where breaking news is concerned.
Cutrone’s take is not an entirely original analysis — nor is it, in my opinion, a dumb one — but how print publications may be able to provide that reporting so as online sources with much lower cost structures compete with them for advertising dollars, naturally, remains unclear. (And besides: there are also a hell of a lot of blogs that abjure the “instant hits” of content that “move product,” and actually tackle stories that fall into more established publications’ rather large blind spots. And besides, isn’t Vogue the market leader in idiotic “Buy This Lipstick, Halle Berry Loves It!” features?)
But we don’t read Kelly Cutrone interviews because she’s a future-of-media guru. We read because she will say things like this:
There was this girlfriend of mine who wrote this movie, The Next Best Thing, with Madonna in it and Rupert Everett. They actually wrote the part of Madonna’s best friend based on me. This girl Mel Bourdeaux wrote the part, and they wanted me to play me. John Schlesinger was the director, and Mali Finn was casting the movie. Schlesinger wanted to see me play the role of myself, and I was telling Mel, “I don’t think this is going to be such a good idea.” I went to meet John Schlesinger and Mali Finn, and Mali Finn called Rupert and Mel Bourdeaux and John Schlesinger afterward and said, “I really like her, but she’s too outspoken and very, very edgy.” So not only did I not get the part of myself, my husband at the time’s ex-girlfriend got the part. So not only could I not play me, but someone my husband used to fuck could play me better.
That movie sucked anyway. Point to Cutrone.
She also said, “I am happy for Lindsay Lohan that’s she’s going to jail. I think she’s going to get sober.” Then she almost immediately clarified, “I’m not happy for her that she’s in jail, but I’m happy that somebody’s going to try to help her get some help.” She adds:
I don’t know anybody who’s ever been alive who hasn’t had like, heartbreak, despair, depression, death, drug or alcohol, or weight problems, or health problems. For her, I think she’s had a combination of those things and I think it’s then super-inflamed by the fact that she is a celebrity. Let’s face it, fucking society loves this type of thing. They loved to do it to Britney, and they loved to do it to Robert Downey. This will be great if she can live through it.
Meanwhile, forget Haiti. Things are bad in Hollywood. “I can’t believe there are all these people going, ‘Oh, we need to raise money for all these kids in Haiti,'” she says. “I don’t get it. Where is everybody? I mean, all these young kids in Hollywood are fucking dying. Brittany Murphy is dead. There’s like all these kids ODing.”
If anyone could found a charity for Brittany Murphy and Lindsay Lohan, it’d be Kelly Cutrone. (But seriously. Give money to Haiti.)
Kelly Cutrone Talks The City, Jay-Z’s All-Black Everything & Hollywood’s Drug Epidemic [Complex]