Words and
thoughts from Vanity Fair
Excerpts of pieces up for National Magazine Awards
By Diego Vasquez
Apr 2, 2008
Three years after not being nominated for a single National Magazine Award, Vanity Fair was nominated for four Ellies in 2007, and this year it's been nominated for six, behind only The New Yorker and New York magazine. It's up for general excellence among titles with circulations between 1 million and 2 million, as well as for reporting, feature writing, profile writing, design and photo portfolio. Today, as part of an ongoing series on this year's award nominees, Media Life excerpts passages from three of the Vanity Fair pieces that were nominated.
Reporting
One of Vanity Fair’s nominations is in the reporting category for William Langewiesche’s piece “City of Fear,” about the effect a prison gang had on the Brazilian city of São Paulo. Langewiesche won an NMA in 2007 for his public interest piece “Rules of Engagement.” Here’s an excerpt from “City of Fear,” which ran in the April 2007 issue:
Brazil. The World Cup. The P.C.C. was a soccer team at the start. It was founded in a São Paulo state prison in the summer of 1993 by eight players, seven of whom have since died. The prison sits in the city of Taubaté, off the road to Rio de Janeiro. At the time it was a punishment unit, where troublemakers went for stints of solitary confinement before being returned to larger prisons elsewhere in the state. Conditions there were atrocious. The prisoners lived locked alone into 160 dark and putrid cells, surviving on filthy slops, defecating into holes they could not flush, and subject to beatings by the guards. They were released into the yards only every few days, and in groups of merely five. Some committed suicide. Most, however, were tough, and managed not only to remain vital but also to communicate fully from cell to cell. In 1993, when they lobbied the warden for a soccer tournament, he decided to let them form teams. It is unclear how exactly they proceeded, given that they remained locked in their cells and could not assemble to practice. Through the jailhouse telegraph they gave their teams names in anticipation of battle. Several included the word “Command” for the swagger, but the P.C.C. outdid all the others by calling itself “First,” and staking claim to the “Capital.” In light of subsequent events, the name may sound like a warning. The warden himself was eventually murdered by the monster he had created. But the Primeiro Comando da Capital was born wanting just to play soccer.
The games were held in an enclosed yard, without spectators or guards. The P.C.C. won a few matches, became its cellblock champion, and prepared to play a rival team from another part of the prison. During the run-up to the game, the competition got out of hand when the boasts turned to taunts, and the taunts became threats. Each team vowed to drink the other team’s blood. The captain of the P.C.C. was a killer from the lowest of São Paulo’s slums, a physically powerful man named Geleião (Big Jelly), who had grown up in the gutter, and was now 35. His sidekick was a natural-born fighter named Césinha (Little Cesar), five years younger, who had a reputation for bravery and was to serve as the P.C.C.’s chief executioner over the decade to come. Césinha had been raised in a middle-class family, but even as a child had idealized crime, and at the age of 12 had killed for the first time.
On the day of the match, August 31, 1993, the two teams moved together down a hallway toward the prison yard. The details remain obscure, but it seems that the guards were nowhere to be seen, and that the last P.C.C. player closed a barred door behind them to ensure privacy. Just before they got to the yard, Geleião made the first move. He grabbed an opposing player, and with a single ferocious twist killed the man by snapping his neck. Césinha and the others sprang forward, and with bare hands and shivs took another four lives. There is no evidence that they enjoyed the killing. They inhabited a violent world and had responded necessarily to insults they believed it would have been dangerous to leave unanswered. In doing so they had also condemned themselves to lives of unending vigilance and strength, since every one of the dead men had family or friends who might try to take revenge. Afterward, they swore a public vow of mutual defense. Through the telegraph they declared, “We are united forever now. Whatever happens to one happens to all. We will never betray each other. We are brothers for life.” That simple vow proved impossible to follow, but it established a principle from which all else evolved, and among the prisoners of São Paulo it resonated loudly.
Feature Writing
Another of Vanity Fair’s nominations is in the feature writing category, for Buzz Bissinger’s August 2007 story “Gone Like the Wind,” about the fall of the 2006 Kentucky Derby-winning horse Barbaro. Here’s an excerpt:
It was quiet when Barbaro died that morning in his stall. The laminitis had now spread to his front feet as well. He was suffering, and Gretchen Jackson knew that he just wanted out, the spark in his eye extinguished. He had become a much different horse over the past several days, anxious, flicking his head back and forth, unable to lie down. Dean Richardson had been up several times the night before fielding phone calls from a superb surgical resident, Evita Busschers, about his increasing agitation. He got to New Bolton at about 5:30 that morning, and he knew, and because he knew, he felt nauseous and hollow inside. He spoke briefly to the Jacksons after they arrived midmorning. There was little to say.
Gretchen and Roy were near Barbaro in front of his stall, and so was Dean Richardson. Barbaro was in his sling and had been given a tranquilizer in preparation for his death. "We just love you and love you and love you and thank you and wish you peace and you'll always be in our hearts," whispered Gretchen Jackson.
She looked over at Dean Richardson, and she could see that he was in terrible pain. She knew that, largely because of him, Barbaro had had far more good days than bad ones over the past eight months. Like Gretchen Jackson, Richardson had fallen in love with a horse. But he felt that he had failed because he had not done what he had been so determined to do. He had not saved Barbaro's life. He cried as he said good-bye, stroking him and petting him. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
A solution of barbiturates was given to Barbaro through his jugular vein. The solution coursed painlessly into his heart and then ultimately through the lungs and into his brain. It took barely a minute before he slumped in the sling.
Profile Writing
Vanity Fair was also nominated in the profile writing category for the March 2007 piece by Evan Wright titled “Pat Dollard’s War on Hollywood,” about a filmmaker the writer describes as “the anti-Michael Moore.” Here’s an excerpt:
There is evidence of a possible war crime in the trailer: a Marine clutches the head of a dead Iraqi and raises it in front of the camera like a jack-o’-lantern. (This footage was given to Dollard by troops, and he claims not to know the provenance of the decapitated man, or why a Marine was playing with his severed head.) In Dollard’s presentation, the act of desecration, accompanied by the faces of grinning Marines, is treated as a macabre joke. By intercutting this with actual “Jackass” footage, the trailer seems to suggest that, for the young, wild, and patriotic American, war in Iraq is sort of like the ultimate “Jackass.”
When I mention to Dollard that his severed-head scene might turn more Americans against the war, or even against the troops, he laughs. “The true savagery in this war is being committed by the American left on the minds of the young men and women serving over there by repeatedly telling them that their cause is lost.” He adds, “My goal is to de-sensitize young people to violence. I want kids to watch my film and understand that brutality is the fucking appropriate response to a brutal enemy.”
Dollard’s target audience is the same as any rock band’s: kids—the more disaffected the better. He aims to alter the course of pop culture. “What we’ve celebrated since at least the 1950s is the antihero,” Dollard says. “Today, even though our country has been attacked, nothing has changed. If you are a young man in America right now, the coolest fucking thing you can aspire to be is like a gangsta rapper, or a pseudo bad guy. The message of my movie is simple: If you’re a young person in America, the coolest, fucking most badass and most noble thing you can be today is a combat Marine. Period.”
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