Bill Zehme, who elevated celebrity profiles to an art form, dies at 64.
Mr. Zehme brought humor and a literary voice to profiles of Warren Beatty, Frank Sinatra, David Letterman, Sharon Stone and other stars.
One day in the 1990s, Bill Zehme lay down naked next to actress Sharon Stone, who was also naked. They were not married. They were not dating. They barely knew each other.
Mr. Zehme, the grand bard of magazine celebrity profiles, was visiting Stone, who was sometimes naked in her starring roles, at her Las Vegas home for a profile in Esquire. She scheduled a massage.
Take off your clothes and lie down,” Stone told him, as Mr. Zehme wrote in Esquire.
It would be a couple’s massage.
As he disrobed, she said, “Oh look! It’s your butt,” to which Mr. Zehme replied that he had seen hers too — on screen. “Who hasn’t?” she said. “Anybody with seven bucks can see my ass, buddy. What’s your excuse?”
His excuse was, metaphorically, a hallmark of his two-decade career writing for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Playboy and Vanity Fair — to elevate the formulaic celebrity profile with humor, a literary voice and the polish of a short story. That was the only way Mr. Zehme, who died March 26 at age 64, could accept his fate performing what many writers consider one of the lowest forms of journalism.
“I hate celebrity journalism,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “My way to rebel has been to find a funny way to do it. I try to make it comedic and also find why a certain person touches the rest of us, the essence of why we care about this person.”
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Bill Zehme attends the premiere for a Johnny Carson documentary in 2012. Mr. Zehme was the last journalist to interview the former “Tonight” host, in 2002. (FilmMagic/Getty Images).
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Washington post.
