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Joan Juliet Buck
Study for a portrait of Joan Juliet Buck by Reginald Gray. Paris 1980s(graphite on canvas)
Born	Los Angeles, California
Occupation	writer/editor/actor

Joan Juliet Buck is an American writer and actress. She was the editor in chief of French Vogue from 1994 to 2001. Buck currently writes for T magazine, New York Times's fashion magazine, and W, and was contributing editor to Vogue and Vanity Fair for many years.

Background

She is the only child of Jules Buck (1917–2001), an American film producer, who moved his family to Europe in 1952 "in protest against political repression" in the United States. Her mother was Joyce Ruth Getz (aka Joyce Gates, died 1996), a model, actress, and interior designer. John Huston, for whom her father worked as a cameraman, was the best man at her parents' 1945 wedding. Her first language was French.

Career

Journalism

Dropping out of Sarah Lawrence College to work at Glamour magazine as a book reviewer in 1968, Buck became the features editor of British Vogue at the age of 23, then a correspondent for Women's Wear Daily in London and Rome. Later Buck was an associate editor of the London Observer. A contributing editor to American Vogue from 1980 and also Vanity Fair, her profiles and essays appeared in The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review. As movie critic for American Vogue from 1990 to 1994, she served on the New York Film Festival selection committee. From 1994 to 2001 she was editor-in-chief of French Vogue, where she doubled the circulation and produced thematic year-end issues on cinema, art, music, sex, theater, and quantum physics.

She has appeared in numerous documentaries, among them James Kent's Fashion Victim, the Killing of Gianni Versace, Mark Kidel's Paris Whorehouse and Architecture of the Imagination. Buck narrated James Crump's 2007 documentary Black, White, and Gray, about art collector Sam Wagstaff and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Since 2011, Buck has been the consulting editor to Dasha Zhukova on her Garage magazine.

Performance

She began studying acting in 2002, and appears in Nora Ephron's 2009 movie Julie and Julia as Madame Elisabeth Brassart, head of the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. She wrote about the experience of auditioning for Ephron after she passed away in June 2012.

That November, she appeared in an action theater piece with other actors for Performa09 at the White Slab Palace in New York City. Curated by Michael Portnoy and Sarina Basta, it was part of a week of Weimar cabaret, and in it, Buck and another actor held a conversation guided by the third actor's random flashing of prompt cards.

In 2010, Buck starred in an adaptation of a Henry James novella directed by Mariana Hellmund. As a child, Buck was cast as a Scots waif in the Walt Disney film Greyfriars Bobby.

Novels and adaptations

Novels

Buck's novels about multicultural expatriates are The Only Place To Be published by Random House in 1982 and Daughter Of The Swan published by Weidenfeld in 1987.

D.M. Thomas adaptation

She was one of a long line of writers commissioned to adapt D. M. Thomas's novel The White Hotel. Her version was singled out by Thomas as "faithful and intelligent" among versions that included ones by the writer himself and Dennis Potter but the film has never been made.

"Moth" story

In 2009, the story "the Ghost Of The Rue Jacob" was a big hit at The Moth. In February 2012, Buck went on "The Unchained Tour" through Georgia with George Green, founder of The Moth.

Internet

Wowowow.com

In 2008, she joined Liz Smith, Peggy Noonan, Joni Evans, Mary Wells Lawrence, Lesley Stahl, Whoopi Goldberg, Candice Bergen, and others in founding wowowow.com, a website for women.

Controversy over Vogue profile on Asma al-Assad

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Vogue (magazine)#Criticism. (Discuss) Proposed since July 2012.

The U.S. edition of Vogue published a profile of Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by Buck in its March 2011 issue. Buck described her as "glamorous, young and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies." Playing down the nature of the Assad regime, the article noted that "in Syria, power is hereditary" and mentioned substantial "shadow zones" in the country's social and political affairs while quoting the U.S. State Department web site statement that "The Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors."

Buck's profile that caused a furor within foreign policy and media circles, especially among male journalists. Publications and web sites including The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic attacked it as an ill-timed "puff piece" that ignored human rights abuses under Syria's Ba'athist regime. The Washington Post said it "may have been the worst-timed, and most tin-eared, magazine article in decades." Claudia Rosett of the Canada Free Press called it "one of the most mortally embarrassing pieces of journalism produced in recent times." Examining the piece point by point in The Scotsman, Stephen McGinty wrote that it "has plenty of lines that now viewed through the sharp lens of current events, appear deeply ironic."

By May 2011, as the Syrian regime continued to kill protestors, the article was removed from Vogue's website. No explanation was offered. Subsequently, the media spin on Buck's article continued; it was, among other things, satirized in The Philadelphia Inquirer 11 months after its original publication.

Buck spoke to Piers Morgan on CNN February 9, 2012 about the Assads, being one of the few people in the world to have met them personally before the Syrian government's crackdown on its people, and referenced the article saying that she found it "profoundly disturbing to have ever been near who are so disconnected":

I didn't really want to do the piece in the first place because I didn't really want to meet the Assads and go to Syria but when I went, said she was going to cook lunch for me and it was their apartment and there was Assad. It was Friday which was the Muslim Sunday, and he was wearing a sweater, and he kept showing me his cameras and he kept kind of following me around and I got the feeling that he wanted to be interviewed as well.

More than a year after the article first appeared, Vogue editor Anna Wintour issued a statement that read in part, "Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society. Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms."

In Salon.com, fashion journalist Irin Carmen expressed skepticism about Vogue's intentions in publishing the piece but wrote, "hen the Vogue story was published last year I didn't understand what the fuss was about, glossy magazines having been my beat for several years at Women's Wear Daily."

In July 2012, more than a year after the profile appeared and her contract at Vogue had not been renewed, Buck published an article in Newsweek that gave fuller scope to her original interview of the Assads. In addition to describing their purposefully transparent house in Damascus, transparent enough to allow as many Syrian citizens to see them as possible, Buck revealed that her laptop had been hacked and she had been followed. The Vogue assignment, in addition, she wrote, had "destroyed her livelihood" as it had cut her associations off with Vogue magazine which she'd been involved with since the beginning of her career. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles called the article "vexing" and "muddled," while a staff writer for the London Guardian said that Buck's "mea culpa" was "almost as disastrous as the initial interview." The Tablet suggested that Buck "was being used again, this time by Tina Brown", editor of The Daily Beast. Erin Burnett of CNN's OutFront expressed on the other hand that the article was "really worthwhile in reading, it's sort of a minute-by-minute of what saw and what happened. I have to say that I enjoyed it much more than the first article that wrote."

In her defense, Buck had written, “I didn’t know I was going to meet a murderer. There was no way of knowing that Assad, the meek ophthalmologist and computer-loving nerd, would kill more of his own people than his father had and torture tens of thousands more.”

Michael Totten responded in World Affairs, “Assad . . . wasn’t yet a war criminal when Buck wrote her piece, but he was a totalitarian dictator and a state sponsor of the who’s-who of radical Islamist terrorist organizations. Everyone knew this. Everyone. The woman had no excuse.”

Personal life

Buck married, in 1977, John Heilpern, a journalist and writer; they divorced in the 1980s.

References

1. ^ "Jules Buck". London: Telegraph. 2001-08-10. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
2. ^ La Ferla, Ruth (2009-09-17). "Stepping Out of Fashion and Into Film, Without Glancing Back". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
3. ^ "Rich as Creases". The New York Times. 2012-02-28. Retrieved 16 April 2012. Cite error: The named reference "NYTimes" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
4. "Full House". The New York Times. 2010-12-04. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
5. "Taryn's World". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
6. "Blithe Spirit". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
7. ^ "Joan Juliet Buck: No Longer in Vogue". wwd.com. 2012-06-18. Retrieved 18 June 2012.
8. ^ Gussow, Mel (2001-07-26). "Jules Buck, 83, Film Producer And Battlefield Cameraman - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
9. Lauren Bacall (1996-08-21). "Obituary:Joyce Buck - People - News". London: The Independent. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
10. ^ Joan Juliet Buck (2012-06-27). "Joan Juliet Buck on Being in Awe of Nora Ephron". Newsweek the Daily Beast. Retrieved 2012-08-06.
11. "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; French Vogue Names Editor - New York Times". Nytimes.com. 1994-04-11. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
12. William Grimes (1993-08-26). "Film Festival '93: An Emphasis On the Epic, as Seen Personally - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-06-09.
13. "Entrepreneur Dasha Zhukova Is Launching A Magazine Because She Can". TheGrindStone. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
14. Helmore, Edward (2011-05-26). "Dasha, Dasha, Dasha". WSJ. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
15. Pols, Mary (2009-08-17). "Julie & Julia: The Joy of Cooking". TIME. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
16. Reiter, Amy. "Entertainment - entertainment, movies, tv, music, celebrity, Hollywood - latimes.com - latimes.com". Calendarlive.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
17. Goldfarb, Michael. ""Julie & Julia" - France". Salon.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
18. ""The PROMPT (a night club)"". Performa. Retrieved 2012-07-01.
19. http://kunstverein.us/programs/ Kunstverein programs
20. Greyfriars Bobby (1961) on imbd.com
21. DM Thomas (2004-08-28). "DM Thomas: My Hollywood hell | Film". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
22. "The Moth: The Ghost of the Rue Jacob". HuffDuffer. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
23. "The Unchained Tour Rides Again". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
24. "Unchained". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
25. Cowles, Charlotte (2012-06-12). "Vogue attempts to Do Damage Control on Joan Juliet Buck's Asma al-Assad Profile". nymag.com. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
27. ^ Buck, Joan Juliet. presidentassad.net http://www.presidentassad.net/ASMA_AL_ASSAD/Asma_Al_Assad_News_2011/Asma_Assad_Vogue_February_2011.htm. Retrieved 2012-07-01. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
28. "Syria". Travel.state.gov. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
29. ^ Farhi, Paul (2012-04-26). "Vogue's flattering article on Syria's first lady is scrubbed from Web". The Washington Post.
30. Weiss, Bari (2011-03-07). "Weiss and Feith: The Dictator's Wife Wears Louboutins - WSJ.com". Online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
31. "Vogue Defends Profile of Syrian First Lady - Max Fisher - International". The Atlantic. 2012-04-06. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
32. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/48463
33. Published on Thursday 31 March 2011 18:42 (2011-03-31). "Stephen McGinty: Nation bleeds as Assad fights on - News". Scotsman.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
34. Kim Ghattas (2011-04-22). "BBC News - Syria unrest: 'Bloodiest day' as troops fire on rallies". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
35. Justin Fenner (2011-05-11). "Ill-Timed Profile of Syrian First Lady Removed From Vogue Website". Styleite.com. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
36. ^ John Cook (2011-05-10). "Vogue Disappears Adoring Profile of Syrian Butcher's Wife". Gawker.com. Retrieved 2012-04-12.
37. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20120406_The_puff_piece_and_its_perils.html
38. "Piers Morgan Interview with Joan Juliet Buck on Syria". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
39. "Piers Morgan Interview with Joan Juliet Buck on Syria". Retrieved 16 April 2012.
40. Vogue Daily, Editor's Note, 6/10/12
41. "What It Takes to Be in Vogue". Salon.com. 2012-06-11. Retrieved 2012-06-12.
42. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/29/joan-juliet-buck-my-vogue-interview-with-syria-s-first-lady.html
43. http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew/item/joan_juliet_bucks_muddled_mea_culpa_over_her_asma_al-assad_profile_20120731/
44. Khaleeli, Homa (2012-07-31). "Asma al-Assad and that Vogue piece: take two!". The Guardian. London.
45. http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/107926/joan-juliet-bucks-second-mistake
46. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/29/joan-juliet-buck-my-vogue-interview-with-syria-s-first-lady.html
47. http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blogs/michael-j-totten

External links

• The Media Business; French Vogue names editor. The New York Times. 11 April 1994
• Joan Juliet Buck at wowOwow
• Buck's essay about being in Venice with her family in 1970 for T. 30 November 2011
• Fashion Week - Joan Juliet Buck
• Richard Cohen, "Bloom is finally off the Rose in the Desert", Washington Post. 11 June 2012
• The Only Place To Be, Buck's 1982 novel

Template:Persondata

• Articles to be merged from July 2012
• 1940s births
• Living people
• American magazine editors