I have been making a conscience effort of late to expand my horizons, to get out of (magazine reading) comfort zone. To that end I have cast my reading net out from the usual news rag, and started reading a new diverse set of magazines, including Esquire, Ebony, Business Week, US, People, Popular Science, Jet, Car & Driver, Essence, Laptop Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Cooks, and Interview Magazine, just to name a few.
For a person like me who usually frequents the aforementioned news magazines, Interview Magazine is like a culture shock. First off the magazine is large; larger in fact than any magazine you might find on the newsstand or in the local chain book store with the exception of Rolling Stone. Second the magazine is printed on thick paper stock, which has a gritty feel to it; say good-bye to glossy and hello to matte and muted colors.
Interview Magazine features advertisements, wall to wall advertisements; the interviews with up-and-coming and established celebrities interspersed throughout the pages of the magazine seem almost coincidental. I am currently reading the April 2007 issue, with a large inviting picture of Liv Tyler on the front cover. To the magazines credit it does try and cover the full spectrum of entertainment from fashion to music, from art to the movies and places in between.
Most of the interviews—especially those done on up-and-coming stars and starlet’s—are mere snapshots of the persons personal and or professional life; there is little sink my proverbial intellectual, or even mildly interested teeth into. There is just enough there to try and goad me into find out more. The in-depth interviews are a lot more fulfilling; most of these are done by other celebrities; for instance in this issue Rose McGowan is interviewed by Quentin Tarantino, and Liza Minnelli interviewed musician Gerald Way. Past issue have followed this same formula, with mostly good results, meaning I have enjoyed the interviews and images.
But the one huge downside to Interview Magazine is its slavish devotion to advertising. In fact the first 50 pages of this issue are devoted to wall-to-wall cutting edge, youth-inspired clothing and fragrance advertising. The masthead of the magazine is stuck somewhere with this advertising soup, but the table of contents did not show up until one third of the magazine was leafed through—very annoying! Not only that, but every celebrity image was accompanied by a solid paragraph on who made what they were wearing, who styled their hair, who did their make-up, and incredibly, what fragrance they happened to be wearing during the shoot!
Is this an example of advertising run amok, or am I being far too sensitive and demanding in wanting Interview to at least be a magazine and not a run-on poster board for the chic and impossibly unfettered youth of America (New York City) and Europe is wearing? But so many magazines follow this advertisement-on-every-page formula; is this the new norm, and should I get used to it?
I could in Interview Magazine’s case if most of the writing were not so rushed and devoid of substance. This is something I alluded to above; sound-bites have their place, but not inside the covers of a magazine name Interview, where I at least expect to learn something more about an artist than where they were discovered, their age, or how often they frequent Starbucks. It’s called substance and Interview Magazine just doesn’t have enough to justify its larger than life existence.
I subscribe to Interview Magazine but I will not be renewing my subscription; in this case my bid to broaden my horizons found a mostly vapid landscape full of wasted paper, muted colors, and questionable prose.
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