The September 16 Issue
Today sees the publication of the 21st birthday issue of Australia’s ‘The Picture’. With the magazine facing increasing competition from the ascendant ‘Zoo Weekly’, publishers ACP took the unusual step of flying in legendary ‘Vogue’ editor-in-chief Anna Wintour to oversee the bumper September 16 issue. Her frequent clashes with long-time ‘Picture’ supremo ‘Tubbs’ Grogan were captured by documentary cameras, and the resulting film, ‘The Devil Wears Nada’, will be released later this year. Here are some of the highlights.
August 25: Wintour and her entourage express dissatisfaction with their accommodations at the Cooee Backpackers in Kings Cross. Flamboyant editor André Leon Talley flies out of Sydney in a huff, after two wasted British students attempt to smoke his tiny poodle, Sebastian. Wintour subsequently kills them both with one of her patented frosty glares.
August 26: Sparks fly at the first editorial conference, when Wintour unveils her vision for the cover: Sienna Miller in a Milan-shot salute to Helmut Newton, captioned ‘The Picture at 21; C’est La Vie.’ Grogan insists they go with the copy as written: ‘PHWOAR-GASM!!! JENNA UNWRAPS HER BAPS FOR OUR 21ST!!!’ Wintour viciously attacks him with an as-yet-unreleased Manolo Blahnik. Grogan agrees to compromise and loses several exclamation marks.
August 28: The cover dispute is settled when Sienna Miller refuses either to pose beneath Grogan’s BAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US banner, or to take part in his 21 SMOO SALUTE. Wintour reluctantly agrees to make JENNA’S GI-NORMOUS JUGS the focus of the cover, on condition that the MAMMOTH MAMMARIES be captured by famed Peruvian photographer Mario Testino. Grogan invites Wintour to inspect his own ‘Testinos’, an offer she declines with an uppercut.
August 30: Wintour turns her attention to the Picture’s ‘News Flash’ page, suggesting that the ‘STOP FUCKEN PRESS’ masthead be redesigned at enormous cost by Obama poster creator Shepard Fairey. ‘I’m not havin’ any fuckin’ fairies workin’ on this issue,’ retorts Grogan, instantly attracting a headbutt from Wintour, making lethal use of her trademark bob.
September 1: Grogan attempts to make peace with Wintour, inviting her to lunch at Sydney’s PREMIER POON PALACE, the Sefton Playhouse. ‘AVVA PERVE!’ he insists, and when Wintour avers, he drops to his knees and claims that ‘Aloof, demanding women make him go off like a FROG IN A SOCK’. When Wintour suggests that the anniversary PHWOAR-PAGE SPREAD be shot not at the Sefton, but at Oscar de la Renta’s villa on the Côte d’Azur, Grogan points out that while the villa is spectacular, it hardly fits the already composed headline ‘THE BAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH’.
September 3: Wintour’s attorney informs Grogan that the famed editrix will no longer curate the September 16 issue, unless a moratorium is placed on the phrases ‘BAP’, ‘PHWOAR’, ‘SMOO’ and ‘SPAM JAVELIN’. Grogan grudgingly agrees, before e-mailing her his ideas for this week’s ‘SHOW ME THE POONANI!’.
September 7: Wintour and Grogan at last agree on something. As she has so often in the past, Wintour insists on introducing more celebrities into the magazine, although tempers flare when Grogan amends her piece ‘Charlize Theron’s Timeless Style’, replacing the words ‘Theron’s Timeless Style’ with the words ‘GETS THEM OUT FOR THE LADS!!!’.
September 10: It’s Grogan’s turn to pout when Wintour fails to consult him before scrapping $50,000 worth of photographs intended for the ‘Home Girls’ section. Without his approval, Wintour had flown several ‘reader’s wives’ to Barbados so that the embattled Annie Liebovitz could reshoot the NEXT DOOR NUBLETS in an elaborate tableau inspired by Picasso’s ‘Guernica’. Unfortunately, despite Grogan’s enthusiastic cries of ‘TOP VAG!’, the proofs fail to earn Wintour’s approval, and she insists on yet another reshoot, using Lars von Trier and recasting the Home Girls from the current New York revival of Rent. Describing this as the FINAL COCK-FLOGGING, Grogan demands Wintour GET THE FUCK OUT OF HIS OFFICE before he PUNCHES HER IN THE SMOO. Wintour, for the first time since arriving in Sydney, raises her Chanel sunglasses and, emitting laser beams from her eyes, goes Grogan IN THE NADS. She then stabs a diamond-encrusted fingernail at an experimental prototype iPhone, causing her instantly to dematerialise and reappear, refreshed, back in her Greenwich Village townhouse.
September 14: The 21st birthday issue of The Picture rolls off the press, containing no evidence of Wintour ever having been involved, aside from three Home Girls sporting pubic hair, a shock departure for the magazine. ‘That’s Anna,’ says Grogan, still nursing his SWOLLEN NUTS. ‘Always trying to bring back fur!’ When asked if he is pleased with the final result, Grogan says he ‘COULDN’T BE BAPPIER’. For her part, Wintour, recalling her stint on The Picture, allows herself a tight smile, executed on her behalf by a harried assistant. Although she claims to have learnt nothing from her time at ACP, one can’t help but notice on the cover of the October Vogue, the headline ‘Scarlett Johansson…BAPS OUT at the PHWOAR-FRONT OF FASHION!!!’
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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