Joan Juliet Buck | |
|---|---|
 Study for a portrait of Buck byReginald Gray, Paris 1980s (graphite on canvas) | |
| Born | 1948 (age 76–77) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, editor, actress |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Spouse | |
Joan Juliet Buck (born 1948) is an American writer and actress. She was theeditor-in-chief ofFrenchVogue from 1994 to 2001, the only American ever to have edited a French magazine.[1] She was contributing editor toVogue andVanity Fair for many years, and writes forHarper's Bazaar. The author of two novels, she published a memoir,The Price of Illusion, in 2017. In 2020, she was nominated for thePushcart Prize for her short story, “Corona Diary.”
Born in 1948,[2] she is theonly child ofJules Buck (1917–2001), an American film producer, who moved his family toEurope in 1952 in reaction to the political repression in the United States at the time. Her mother, Joyce Ruth Getz (aka Joyce Gates, died 1996), was a child model and actress, and interior designer.[3][4] Jules Buck served in theSignal Corps withJohn Huston, during theSecond World War,[5] and he subsequently served as a cameraman for the latter.[6] Huston was thebest man at her parents' 1945 wedding, and Joan Juliet learned to cook from Ricki Huston.[7]
Buck grew up inCannes, Paris, and London.[8] As a teenager she metTom Wolfe and became the subject of his piece, "The Life and Hard Times of a Teenage London Society Girl,"[9] which he republished inThe Pump House Gang.[10]
Buck's first language is French and she identifies as Jewish.[11]
Buck dropped out ofSarah Lawrence College to work atGlamour magazine[12] as abook reviewer in 1968. She became the London correspondent ofAndy Warhol'sInterview magazine,[13] then the features editor ofBritishVogue at the age of 23, then acorrespondent forWomen's Wear Daily in London and Rome.[14][15] Buck was an associate editor of theLondon Observer. From 1975 to 1976 she lived in Los Angeles to work on a novel.[16]
A contributing editor to AmericanVogue from 1980 and alsoVanity Fair,[12] she also published profiles and essays inThe New Yorker,[17]Condé Nast Traveler,[18]Travel + Leisure,[19] andThe Los Angeles Times Book Review.
As movie critic for AmericanVogue from 1990 to 1994, she served on theNew York Film Festival selection committee the year its program includedChen Kaige'sFarewell, My Concubine,Jane Campion'sThe Piano, andRobert Altman'sShort Cuts.[20]
She wasFrench Vogue's editor-in-chief from 1994 to 2001,[21][12] having initially refused the offer twice.[8]The New York Times described her selection as indication that Condé Nast intended to "modernize the magazine and expand its scope" from its circulation of 80,000.[22]
Buck replacedHelmut Newton withDavid LaChapelle and other young American photographers and hired American writers and tripled the text.[8] Her first September cover was "La Femme Française," and she had aquantum physics-themed issue.[23]
Buck doubled the magazine's circulation and produced thematic year-end issues on cinema, art, music, sex, and theater.[24] Looking back she described what she envisioned for her employees then: "I wanted the magazine to be fun. I wanted everyone who worked on the magazine to go toward what they liked. Again, it’s that distinction between what you should do and what’s expected, and what you feel, what you want."[16] In thePrice of Illusion, she talks about wanting to upend French cliches such as black sweaters and Helmut Newton-referencing shoots; "French women know how to dress when they’re having sex. They need to know how to dress when they’re not having sex."[25] Penelope Green ofThe New York Times wrote that Buck "upended what had been the magazine's rather staid coverage."[10]
Buck was TV critic for USVogue from 2003 to 2011, also profiling cover subjects such asMarion Cotillard,[26]Carey Mulligan,[27]Natalie Portman, andGisele Bündchen.[28] She also penned profiles on the playwrightTom Stoppard[29][30] andCarla Bruni-Sarkozy for the magazine.[31] ForVanity Fair, she profiled people likeBernard-Henri Lévy[32] andMike Nichols.[33] For theNew Yorker her subjects included the actorDaniel Day-Lewis, chronicler of Russian émigrés in ParisNina Berberova, andPrincess Diana's relics post-death.[34][35][36]
She has appeared in numerous documentaries, among them James Kent'sFashion Victim, the Killing of Gianni Versace,Mark Kidel'sParis Whorehouse andArchitecture of the Imagination. Buck narratedJames Crump's 2007 documentaryBlack, White + Gray, about art collectorSam Wagstaff and photographerRobert Mapplethorpe.[37]
In the early 2010s, she wrote forT magazine,The New York Times's fashion magazine,W, andThe Daily Beast, among others,[38][39][40] and was the consulting editor toDasha Zhukova'sGarage magazine whichThe New York Times called "one of the most intriguing magazines to come along in years."[41][42][43] Her humorous cultural pieces forT included subjects like the culture of high-end bedding and the cross-country tour ofThe Moth storytelling series, in which she participated in 2009 and 2012.[44][45] ForW she covered photographerTaryn Simon, the history of the social scene inPalm Springs, and the contemporaryfemme fatale.[46][47][48]
Since 2015, she has written forHarper's Bazaar. Her topics have includedPatti Smith, the art of the retort, the mother she chose, dressing one's age, and her friendship withLeonard Cohen.[7][49][50][51][52]
As a child, Buck was cast as a Scots waif in the Walt Disney filmGreyfriars Bobby.[53]
Buck began studying acting in 2002, and appears in a supporting role inNora Ephron's 2009 movieJulie & Julia asMadame Elisabeth Brassart, head of the famedLe Cordon Bleu cooking school.[24][54][55][56] She wrote about the experience of auditioning for Ephron after the latter died in June 2012.[11]
In 2009, she appeared in anaction theater piece duringPerforma09 at New York City's White Slab Palace.[57] Curated byMichael Portnoy and Sarina Basta,[58] Buck and another actor held a conversation guided by a third actor's random flashing ofprompt cards.
In 2010, Buck played Mrs. Prest in an adaptation ofThe Aspern Papers, aHenry James novella, directed by first-time filmmaker Mariana Hellmund.[59][60] She playedMarguerite Duras inIrina Brook'sLa Vie matérielle that spring and again in 2013 atLa MaMa E.T.C. theater in New York City alongsideDeadwood's Nicole Ansari[61][62]
In May 2012, she appeared with comedianEugene Mirman, performersIra Glass,Lucy Wainwright Roche, andAmber Tamblyn in a night of interpretations of the Joan of Arc narrative at the Littlefield, a Brooklyn performance space.[63] In 2015, Buck appeared in theSupergirl episode "Red Faced," playing Katherine Grant, the mother of CatCo founder Cat Grant.[64]
In February 2017, she appeared in a production of 18th-century playwrightPierre de Marivaux'sThe Constant Players at theHenry Clay Frick House in New York, directed by Mériam Korichi.[65] The next month she was in a Columbia Stages production ofIsak Dinesen'sBabette's Feast in the East Village, adapted and directed by Pálína Jónsdóttir.[66]
Buck's two novels about multiculturalexpatriates areThe Only Place To Be, published byRandom House in 1982, andDaughter of the Swan, published byWeidenfeld & Nicolson in 1987.[67][68] She was one of a long line of writers commissioned to adapt, for film,D. M. Thomas's novelThe White Hotel. Her version was singled out by Thomas as "faithful and intelligent" among versions that included ones by the writer himself andDennis Potter, but the film has never been made.[69]
In 2009, the story "The Ghost of the Rue Jacob"[70] was a big hit atThe Moth. In February 2012, Buck went on "The Unchained Tour ofGeorgia" headed byGeorge Green on a remodeled 1975 Bluebird schoolbus funded byKickstarter.[71][72]
In March, 2017, Buck publishedThe Price of Illusion, her memoir of her life in Paris,Milan, Los Angeles, New York, London andSanta Fe from the '60s through the '90s.[73] It was reviewed favorably byThe New York Times,People,Entertainment Weekly,USA Today, among other places,[74][75] and was an Amazon Editors' Pick and an "Oprah Pick".[76] It was also a starredPublishers Weekly review, andKirkus Reviews described it as “relentlessly candid and often absorbing account of a complex life spent in and out of the fashion spotlight."[77][78]
The memoir was excerpted inNew York magazine in February 2017[79] and published in paperback in November 2017.[80] It was released as an audiobook onAudible in May 2018.
In 2020, Buck contributed to “Corona Diary,” for the literary magazineStat o Rec'santhology,Writing the Virus. It was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.[81]
In its March 2011 issue,Vogue published Buck's profile onAsma al-Assad, wife of Syrian PresidentBashar al-Assad, describing her as "glamorous, young and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She's a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement." The piece was strongly criticized in the US media as reports of al-Assad's violent repression[82] began to emerge in mid-March. In April, formerAtlantic writer-editor Max Fisher[83] attacked it as an ill-timed "puff piece."[84]The Washington Post's Paul Farhi wrote, "It may have been the worst-timed, and most tin-eared, magazine article in decades."[85] "It seems that Ms. Buck's aim was more public relations spin than reportage,” wroteBari Weiss and David Feith inThe Wall Street Journal.[86]
Although it acknowledged that the article had taken "more than a year" to cultivate,[84]Vogue removed it from its website in May 2011.[85]The New York Times subsequently reported that the Assad "family paid the Washington public relations firm Brown Lloyd James $5,000 a month to act as a liaison betweenVogue and the first lady, according to the firm."[87]
InThe Washington Post,Jennifer Rubin also wrote: "It was the Washington liberal foreign policy community that, for years, had fancied Bashar al-Assad as a constructive player in the Middle East." Quoting Lee Smith, Rubin pointed out thatJohn Kerry,Teresa Heinz, andJames A. Baker, among others, courted Assad in an attempt to sway him fromIran. "American liberals and Republican realpolitikers were every bit assycophantic and deluded as Buck," she wrote.[88] Buck's contract withVogue, however, was not renewed.[1][12] (In May 2022, in a business article forWashington Post about a newAnna Wintour biography,Bloomberg'sAdrian Wooldridge wrote that Wintour's decision to commission the piece "went against stiff internal opposition" and that it was Buck, "a Wintour friend," as the author of the piece, "who got the chop."[89])
Buck subsequently wrote inNewsweek that she had not wanted to write the story,[90] and the explanation generated controversy.[91] InThe Guardian, Homa Khaleeli wrote, "It's hard to tell if Buck asked Asma—or Bashar whom she also met—any real questions at all."[92] TheVogue article was satirized inThe Philadelphia Inquirer,[93] and it was republished inGawker in September 2013.[94]
Six years later, Buck recalled that she was "tainted, like a leper" and that "There was so much opprobrium sticking to me. I was so flayed. My life as I knew it had vanished."[10] Will Pavia ofThe Times later wrote that the magazine "left Buck twisting in the wind.... It's hard not to think that Wintour contributed to Buck's woes."[23]
In 1977, Buck marriedJohn Heilpern, an English journalist and writer;[23] they divorced in the 1980s.[24] She currently lives inRhinebeck, New York,[5] keeping a part of her 7,000-volume library in storage inPoughkeepsie.[10]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Greyfriars Bobby | Ailie | |
| 2009 | Julie & Julia | Madame Elisabeth Brassart | |
| 2010 | The Aspern Papers | Mrs. Prest | |
| 2013 | Supergirl | Katherine Grant | Episode: "Red Faced" |
| Year | Play | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Action theater piece | Ensemble | White Slab Palace,Performa 09 |
| 2010 | La Vie matérielle | Marguerite Duras | |
| 2013 | La Vie matérielle | Marguerite Duras | La MaMa E.T.C. theater |
| 2017 | The Constant Players | Ensemble | Henry Clay Frick House[96] |
| 2017 | Babette's Feast | Narrator (16 characters) | Connelly Theater |
| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
