Wednesday, January 14, 1987

It was a beautiful warm day. Went to the office and Ian McKellen was there for lunch, it was Fred’s lunch, and Sarah Giles from Vanity Fair. And he was so cute, he’s so sexy, his play Wild Honey just closed on Broadway and I really wanted to see it, it looked so good in the TV ads.

Went to the Dolly Parton party with Sam and Len down to the Gotham (cab $3.50). Dolly was arriving right when we got there and she gave a speech saying that this was a party to celebrate signing with CBS Records after being with RCA for twenty years. She just turned forty and she looks absolutely beautiful, but like everything’s been done. She’s really tiny but her tits are so huge they have to be implants because you just can’t get that thin and still have those big tits— I’m sure they would’ve shrunk. Barry Diller came with Calvin and Kelly, and David Brenner came.

Dolly was sweet. Danny Fields was there and I told him I want to tape his life story and he said he would let me.

All the Details people were there and they had the new issue with Stephen Saban’s pictures that he took in a photo booth in ‘65 when we were down at the University of Pennsylvania for my first art show. I guess at the time he was a student and he had me sign one picture and Edie signed another and Gerard signed another. It’s a full page and it looked great. Annie Flanders was there and Michael Musto. James St. James was wearing four-inch heels and so was Dolly. And a black guy named Childs was there and he said, “I’m Cedar Bar,” meaning he was somebody who used to hang around there, and he looked at young Sam sitting there with his snotty attitude and said, “I see these young kids and all I can think is, ‘Pay your dues.’ “ And he was right, Sam has a lot to learn and I hope he learns it. I spoiled him, taking him to glamorous places when his mind wasn’t ready for it. Now he thinks that’s what he deserves and he’s fresh to everybody.

And then Paige and I walked over to Nell’s. It was beautiful weather, in the forties or fifties. And Nell’s was so glamorous. Fred was there with Ian McKellen and his I guess boyfriend Sean. And against the wall was Claus von Bulow and Cosima and Andrea Reynolds, and Nell just goes around taking pictures of people like Fred passed out on the divans. She has a funny picture of Taki whispering in Bob Colacello’s ear and Anthony Haden-Guest trying to hear it. And Sting was there, he wears Cerutti clothes now, and Nell asked him how his career and all started and he said this and that happened and then he said, “And then Andy made me a star.” Maybe we were the first to put him alone on a magazine cover. He said he wants to do plays now. I don’t know why Sting would ever do that Frankenstein movie, The Bride. If it had been a singing Frankenstein, that would’ve been something.

And then Nell left her chair and then Bob Dylan came over and sat down and he said he’d just seen my photography show at the Miller Gallery—that he’d literally just come from there. And then Nell came back and pretended she didn’t know who he was and said that that was her seat.

I want Nell to take pictures for Interview, but she only takes color pictures so I left her some of my black and white film.

I introduced von Bulow to Nell and then to Dylan. I lost my scarf and I was glad because I hated it. But then I found it. That cashmere scarf I ordered from Brigid’s friend who knitted it on a machine and it was supposed to be like the red Halston one I’d lost, but the Halston one was somehow so light and this one is so heavy. Paige dropped me off at 2:00.

And poor Bess Myerson’s on suspension. She’s really in trouble because they say she sort of bribed a judge to reduce her married boyfriend’s alimony payments. I can’t believe all these men fighting over this sixty-year-old lady.