Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your Saturday review of the best of Puck.

It was yet another fabulous week: Matt Belloni and Kim Masters debated the Kimmel fiasco; Julia Alexander assessed David Ellison’s WBD fetish; Bill Cohan examined David Zaslav’s deal optionality; Eriq Gardner reported on a Hollywood A.I. war; Dylan Byers chatted with the Times’s C.E.O., Meredith Kopit Levien; John Ourand hunted down an NFL mystery; Ian Krietzberg interviewed Sen. Mark Kelly about his new A.I. bill of rights; Lauren Sherman broke some Oscar de la Renta news; Rachel Strugatz documented Hailey Bieber’s Sephora triumph; Sarah Shapiro scrutinized the Ralph Lauren earnings; and Marion Maneker parsed Elaine Wynn’s estate sale.

Meanwhile, Leigh Ann Caldwell chronicled Chuck Schumer’s roiling shutdown nightmare; Julia Ioffe investigated a State Dept. H.R. saga; Peter Hamby read the crosstabs on a surprising Charlie Kirk poll; and Abby Livingston portrayed the Democrats’ latest case of Biden-itis.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

Lauren Sherman documents the latest Saks micro-drama and breaks some news from inside Oscar de la Renta.
and…
Rachel Strugatz unearths Hailey Bieber’s latest beauty conquest.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro presages a Ralph Lauren market opportunity.

Marion Maneker details Elaine Wynn’s trophies and gets the latest museum tea.

Matt Belloni and Kim Masters dig into the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner cross-examines a Hollywood A.I. war.
and…
Julia Alexander contemplates an HBO Max–Paramount+ combination.

Ian Krietzberg chats up Sen. Mark Kelly about his A.I. moon shot.

Dylan Byers discusses the Times’s future with C.E.O. Meredith Kopit Levien.
and…
Julia Alexander scrutinizes the NBA’s TikTokification.
meanwhile…
John Ourand reads the tea leaves on the NFL’s next media rights negotiation.

Bill Cohan conceives the Ellison–WBD dealbook.

Leigh Ann Caldwell hears from Rep. Tom Emmer and offers some Schumer-ology.
and…
Abby Livingston presents a talmudic reading of the Democrats’ gerontocracy crisis.
and…
Peter Hamby examines Charlie Kirk’s real appeal.
meanwhile…
Julia Ioffe exhumes a State Dept. micro-scandal.

Dylan and Julia Alexander weigh in on the Kimmel crisis on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and WME Group president Mark Shapiro discuss the evolving sports media landscape on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren asks Karlie Kloss all about her growing media business on Fashion People.
and…
John Heilemann assesses the Charlie Kirk aftermath with the Times’s Robert Draper and The Atlantic’s David Frum on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw review the Emmys results on The Town.
and…
Julia Ioffe and Peter Hamby discuss a Foggy Bottom witch hunt on The Powers That Be.

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On Monday morning, I hopped off the train and headed to Second, a Marais-ish event space in the heart of Midtown, to take in Puck’s first art world summit. My partner Marion Maneker had curated an extraordinary conference, titled The Art of Influence, that coalesced around the roiling dramas and deliberations inside this often opaque, extraordinarily lucrative industry.

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

Of course, the art market has been in a malaise ever since the pandemic receded. The most expensive works now often trade privately rather than at auction, and all the feverish dealmaking is occurring in the least expensive price thresholds. Anxiety, as you know, is contagious. From collectors to curators, everyone is poring over the data looking for harbingers of a turnaround.

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

This collective search would define our inaugural Art of Influence event, hosted in partnership with Glenn Fuhrman and his FLAG Foundation. During the course of a full day of programming, Marion and Glenn held spellbinding conversations with A-list collectors, such as Mike Ovitz and Dasha Zhukova Niarchos; top curators; Sotheby’s chairman Charlie Stewart; the transformational artist Nicolas Party; and private dealers. During the keynote, Marion interviewed the inimitable Larry Gagosian, whom I was personally thrilled to meet. In addition to his Zelig-like career in the culture, I’ve always admired his aptitude for conceiving and managing a business centered entirely on creativity. As a result, Gagosian has become more financially successful than many of the people his firm services.

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

Marion will be publishing some of these conversations in his extraordinary private email, Wall Power, which I suggest you sign up for, yourself. Meanwhile, I can at least reveal that Gagosian took a very long view on the current market slowdown. He reflected vividly on the crisis in the ’90s and the post–Great Recession downturn, both of which, in his retelling, had seemed far more calamitous. Instead of blaming market sentiment or dislocation, he offered a more nuanced assessment, and gestured at the future state of the recovery without overtly tipping his hat.

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

His discourse was a reminder, if one were needed, that we’re living through strange times—and that the future doesn’t always mirror the present or recent past. I had this in mind a couple days ago, as I co-hosted a Puck breakfast in Washington with my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell, who interviewed Rep. Tom Emmer, the G.O.P. majority whip—Mike Johnson’s iron fist behind the scenes. In a riveting conversation that touched on everything from cryptocurrency to Jimmy Kimmel, Emmer offered a deeply candid, on-the-ground perspective on how Washington is changing before our very eyes. State of Emmer-gency is required reading for all concerned citizens and students of market forces.

Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Puck

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I urge you to curl up with Matt Belloni and Kim Masters’ dissertation on the Disney saga: Kimmel, Iger, and the Culture of Capitulation. In brilliant detail, Matt and Kim reveal how the resolution of the Kimmel crisis will reverberate not only throughout the culture, but also the F.C.C., future M&A, Disney’s C.E.O. succession plot, and so much more. In many ways, it’s a controversy that touches nearly all of our nation’s power corridors—a true story of our time, and something you can always expect from Puck.

Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Puck

Have a great weekend,
Jon

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

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