Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your weekly review of the best new work from Puck.

It was another incredible week: Bill Cohan chatted with Leon Back about his Epstein association; Matt Belloni did the math on Ari Emanuel’s huge take-private; Lauren Sherman explained the Arnaults’ Olympic gold; Julia Alexander analyzed Bob Iger’s streaming reality; John Ourand found David Ellison’s deal sweetener in the Paramount sweepstakes; Teddy Schleifer captured the intrigue and fascination around Rory Gates in D.C.; Eriq Gardner ran the numbers on the S.B.F. sentencing; and Tina Nguyen conveyed the insanity already emerging around Trump’s transition planning.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan talks with Leon Black about his inexplicable relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer reports on Bill and Melinda’s son’s emerging playerdom in D.C.
and…
Eriq Gardner digs into S.B.F.’s remaining legal options.

MEDIA:
John Ourand explains how the NFL factored into David Ellison’s interest in Paramount and explores the next F1 wannabe.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni explores all the dimensions of Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell’s deal with Egon Durban.
and…
Julia Alexander provides a forensic accounting of Disney’s streaming business.

WASHINGTON:
Peter Hamby plumbs the depths of the disinformation sphere.
and…
Julia Ioffe chats with Rep. Michael McCaul about Congress’s Ukraine brain freeze.
and…
Tina Nguyen catalogs the Trump transition circus in Mar-a-Lago.

PODCASTS:
Matt and Sheila Nevins explore the modern documentary landscape on The Town.
and…
Tara evaluates whether Trump’s mail-in voter conspiracy rhetoric is working on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter and Bill chew over Shari Redstone’s preference for Skydance over Apollo on The Powers That Be.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

I’d always imagined Puck as the nexus of our culture’s most fascinating industries. And while our business had come into the world representing the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the media, I’d always had designs on penetrating the fashion industry, too. After all, it’s a multitrillion-dollar global business dominated by colorful personalities, epic feuds, an active M&A market, and seismic disruption. In short, it’s perfect for Puck.

Lauren and I sat down one sunny afternoon in Puck’s Chelsea headquarters and immediately hit it off. As Gen X-Millennial crossovers who had come of age in a previous media ecosystem, we had a shared sense of humor and irony, plus many familiar touchstones and perspectives. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the fashion business, but I’d spent my formative professional years at Vanity Fair in the early and mid-aughts when that industry (and its whims and vicissitudes) accounted for a large part of our revenue. I had appreciation for the art and commerce of the sector, at least.

And while I may have had some gaps in my fashion knowledge, I do know a thing or two about recognizing a generationally gifted writer. Lauren’s work had demonstrated her facility with the tableau of her world. But to listen to her talk about it that afternoon… For me, that’s always the most illuminating moment. Good writers verbally conjure their worlds in compelling ways, sure, but the truly transcendent ones discuss them as if they were veritable cinematic universes. The characters are fully formed and tangible—with entirely dynamic personalities and various motives—and the writer moves among them as a peer. And that, of course, is a considerable piece of the value proposition at a place like Puck, where we report on the worlds populated by our loyal subscribership.

Anyway, it’s all quasi-Homeric, and entirely sui generis, and I could have listened to Lauren delineate the various narratives on her beat, replete with the tangents and asterisked sidebars, for hours. As the meeting ended, I told her we needed to work together. Thankfully, she agreed. A year ago, this week, she launched her industry-defining private email, Line Sheet, which is equally beloved by fashion insiders and curious observers from adjacent industries alike.

In a year, Lauren has manifested a true Line Sheet cinematic universe of its own. Her various persons of interest (Matt Scanlan, Roger Lynch, Phoebe Philo, Tyler Haney, anyone secretly on Ozempic, etcetera) are documented with frequency. Meanwhile, designer musical chairs have become a favored leitmotif, in addition to other micro-dramas: the LVMH versus Kering of it all; the Alessandro Michele sabbatical; Succession fashion and the whims of quiet luxury; and so much more. We’ve also added a third day focused on the beauty industry, helmed by Rachel Strugatz. Some of the schadenfreude-minded readers among us might enjoy her recent piece on Meghan Markle’s complex entry into the beauty and lifestyle trade.

This week, Lauren marked her anniversary with a pair of characteristically brilliant pieces. The Alessandro Resurrection captures the essence of the coveted designer’s decision to land at Valentino, while imagining all the other counterfactual possibilities and explaining why they didn’t come to pass. In The LVMH Olympics, Lauren reveals how France’s wealthiest family has turned the occasion of the upcoming Paris Summer Games into a marketing bonanza for their own family business. In the end, dear reader, there really isn’t any competition between Kering and the Arnaults’ LVMH, which is the largest company in Europe besides Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of… Ozempic. (You can’t make this stuff up…)

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d like to turn your attention to Bill Cohan’s profoundly revealing exposé on Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management and one of the most accomplished executives in the history of Wall Street, whose career and public image was reshaped by relevations of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Black From the Ashes not only marks the first time that the former Apollo C.E.O. has publicly discussed his Epstein ties, but it’s also a breathtakingly candid piece that explores, in unprecedented detail, the work that Epstein provided, the stories he peddled, and the blast radius of his horrific crimes. In other words, it’s the story of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon