The Coming Annie Leibovitz Fire Sale
Annie Leibovitz, perhaps the highest-paid celebrity photographer in the world, is profoundly broke. She hocked every photograph she's ever produced and now the high-end pawnshop that gave her $24 million has filed suit to force her to sell it all. Art Capital Group is a financial firm that specializes in lending money for people who own valuable art. They're happy either getting back in cash or taking the art. Leibovitz, whose financial difficulties have been well-documented, mortgaged her homes and all her photographs to Art Capital and yesterday they filed suit for breach of contract, claiming she won't cooperate in their attempts to sell her pictures. Art Capital has loaned Leibovitz a total of $24 million since September of last year. They took as collateral the negatives and copyright to all of Leibovitz's photographs, as well as her homes in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and Greenwich Village. But they also extracted from her, according to a lawsuit filed today by Art Capital, both an agreement to sell her archives to repay the loan and the exclusive rights to arrange the sale. And they claim that she is refusing to honor that agreement, frustrating their attempts to sell the photos and refusing to allow real estate agents into her homes. The suit isn't over the debt, per se. The original loan, according to the suit, was premised on the likelihood that Leibovitz was eventually going to have to sell her archives in order to repay the debt by this September, when it comes due. And according to a sales agreement signed by Leibovitz and included in the suit, Leibovitz agreed to let Art Capital "identify buyers," "solicit offers," and "consummate such sales." But so far, Leibovitz has refused to cooperate. Art Capital took physical custody of Leibovitz's negatives when it made the loan, so it wouldn't have any trouble selling those to recover some of the money if it wished. But the real money is in the intellectual property rights to Leibovitz's portfolio, and for that, it needs her cooperation to get the most value. "The agreement with her was that they'd go out and sell it for more than $24 million," says a source close to Art Capital. "And now, she's not making herself available. Any likely buyer would say, 'Gee, can I meet with Annie?' I don't think anyone would buy it if they don't feel they have a cooperative seller." Leibovitz's refusal to cooperate raises the question of whether she ever intended to pay Art Capital back, or whether she has already surreptitiously sold the archive using another agent. Her relationship with Art Capital began to go south in March, when Getty Images announced that it was taking on Leibovitz under a "a special multi-assignment collaboration." It's unclear what that means, but Getty's release implies that Leibovitz's "name and talent" had been added to the company's "roster of elite photographers available for commission photography." That was a surprise to Art Capital, who, according to the suit, thought Leibovitz had... MORE >>
How OK! Faked Its Jessica Simpson Weight-Loss Cover
OK! magazine wanted to drum up sales with this cover about Jessica Simpson's weight loss. When Us Weekly ran the same basic cover, it was their best-selling cover of 2007 — the same year, incidentally, OK! found Jessica's "new" body. The cover is a before/after spread, tied to a story about how Simpson has "already peeled off 10 pounds in 10 days" (last time around, Us had her losing "20 pounds in two months"). Their "Before!" picture is from a couple weeks after Simpson's infamous chili cookoff pics surfaced and ex-boyfriend Tony Romo took her to the Waverly Inn for Valentine's Day: Click for larger images Now, OK! hasn't laid eyes on the allegedly svelte Jessica Simpson, that's just what "sources" told them. So to illustrate Simpon's purported weight loss, it went to the photo archives and found a picture of her jogging on the set of Major Movie Star in September 2007, more than a year before, we'd point out, the picture labeled with the big "BEFORE!" caption: It would appear the cash-bleeding celebrity weekly really is done paying for fresh art. MORE >>
Anna Wintour Wildly Overestimates Her Sway at the Obama White House
Anna Wintour has come up with a genius way to save the dying fashion business: Why doesn't everyone just collude on prices? So what if it's illegal? She has "friends in the White House." At a "town hall" meeting hosted Tuesday by the Council of Fashion Designers of America intended to address how to get recession-addled shoppers to buy obscenely expensive things they don't need, Wintour, who chaperoned White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers at February's Fashion Week, was thinking outside the box: "Could someone lead a committee that would make ground rules for retailers of when the discounting starts, and then all the retailers can agree to it?" Ms. Wintour suggested. It's so simple, and so illegal. When CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg pointed out that such an arrangement would violate anti-trust laws, Wintour was nonplussed: "Is that something we can change? We have friends in the White House now!" Surely a Vogue cover for the president's wife gets you something, no? Nevermind that the Department of Justice is aggressively ramping up antitrust prosecutions under Obama. After Wintour was called out on her casual approach to the law yesterday, her flacks began spinning to the New York Post: According to a Vogue spokesman, Wintour was merely alluding to designated days for retail discounts that are already in place in certain countries including France and the United Kingdom. "That may be OK over there," says Vano Haroutunian, a New York lawyer focused on the apparel industry. "But here, it sounds like collusion." One anonymous "fashion insider" gave the Post a choice quote that sums up much of what goes on in Wintour's entitled little head: "Either the idea was crazy or it was brilliant, but it wasn't 100 percent crazy," our source said. Photo of Wintour and Rogers snapped by blogger Alex Geana. MORE >>
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