Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women (43 page)

M
IKE
R
EINHARDT
: “I was with Barbara Minty four years. I lived over Carnegie Hall and used it as a studio, too. The first time I saw Janice was before she went to Paris. I was leaving on a trip, I was preoccupied, and she never let me forget that.”

J
ANICE
D
ICKINSON
: “Mike was so incredibly rude. He was a total narcissist. He would just stare at himself in the mirror. I remember saying, ‘Excuse me, I’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes, will you have a look at my book?’ He goes, ‘Not today,’ and then he walks away. I was hurt and I thought to myself, What a rude prick. I’ll get him someday.”

R
EINHARDT
: “She couldn’t get a photographer to test her, and one night she was walking in the rain, and she met a man who obviously took a fancy to her and gave her a ticket to Paris.”

D
ICKINSON
: “Isn’t that typical, Mike trying to make me look like an old whore? Mike fantasizes that he was the man who gave me the ticket. He never gave me anything. I gave him all his French
Vogue
covers. They were all my ideas.”

R
EINHARDT
: “When Janice came back to New York, she came to see me again. I was shooting, but I kept her here. She showed me her book. I pointed my camera at her and fell in love. Our relationship started through the camera. She was incredible.”

D
ICKINSON
: “I was very selective. I knew that if [I got involved with a photographer], my name would get out. I went on trips with Patrick Demarchelier and Alex Chatelain. I worked with Stember and Pierre Houlès and Jean-Paul Goude, and you can ask them, I touched no one’s feet. It just didn’t go down. They’re all a bunch of pussies anyway.

“I avoided Mike for a couple of bookings. He was after me when I was married, and I don’t cheat when I’m married. He used to call me from all parts of the world, and I just said, ‘Forget it,’ and put the phone down. Finally he had a French
Vogue
booking for me. I said, ‘Airplane tickets? What’s the money? OK, I’ll take it.’ So we did a couple French
Vogue
shoots, and then we went back to New York, and I guess the relationship began. He finally had somebody who understood photography.

“I was working all over the place, France, Italy, England, Germany, Japan, Paris. I was still with Wilhelmina. I was rockin’ and movin’. I was a star. I was booking anywhere that the larger digits came in, and I controlled it, honey, they didn’t control me. I brought a lot to everything, and Mike took all my money. I was naïve enough to give it to him. He started smoking a lot of pot, and he started to get nuts because he wasn’t the star, I was the star. He wasn’t like that in the beginning. He changed.”

R
EINHARDT
: “I’d been a big grass smoker. I started in Paris, and it became the love of my life. I was smoking morning to night. Eventually it affected my work. I got repetitive. I’d smoke just to stay even. I went out with Lisa Taylor around that time, but I don’t remember when. See how much pot I smoked? But when I was with Minty, I stopped. I was vegetarian, doing transcendental meditation for three or four years. Janice was also clean at the beginning, but slowly it dilapidated [
sic
].”

D
ICKINSON
: “Let’s get it straight. I did my share of drugs. What’s the big deal? There were times when it was appropriate, like after work, sometimes during work. I mean, it was the disco era. It was the fast lane. Every playboy, every shah of Iran, every movie star, every rock’n’roll star, they all wanted me. But it was just really a lonely time for me.”

R
EINHARDT
: “Janice brought an unfortunate vibration to my life. Things started getting crazy. Nobody would mistake Janice for sane. We’re both crazy. In hindsight we were a bad combination, but we had good work energy. You fall in love with a model, and then you work with her. She would do anything, and I thought it was really great. When I see her now, I think, How could I? but I adored everything she did. Now I think it’s very bad to work with your girlfriend. You know each other too well. But we helped each other. We worked. And we fought like cats and dogs when we were working.

“Nothing could be done without much ado. We were noisy. Other people thought we were obnoxious, but I thought we were great. One night in Paris we were having dinner with Alex Chatelain, and Janice got on the table and mooned somebody.

“Janice had a boyfriend before me, a French model humper. She was mad at him because when she left Paris, he had an affair with Debbie [her sister]. We were in Paris for French
Vogue
, and we decided to get this guy. She called him and said, ‘I’m in Paris, and I’m
dying
for you.’ We were in town, but she said she was working at the airport, staying at the Sofitel, and leaving for Germany the next morning. Would he drive out there with four dozen oysters, some sea urchins, and champagne because that gets her really horny? She said, ‘Get a room and I’ll be there at six.’ She called him every half hour and said the shoot was still going on. Then at midnight she called one last time and said, ‘You’re an asshole. Fuck you!’”

D
ICKINSON
: “That’s not true. That’s not true. I’m gonna sue him for that. Did he name names? I’ll sue him for that. That’s libel against my sister. I don’t appreciate that. And it was Mike who was doing the mooning, OK? Mike was the mooner.”

C
ASABLANCAS
: “Mike was just on a power trip, smoking joints all the time, crazed with all kinds of things. He was a nightmare to deal with.”

M
ONIQUE
P
ILLARD
: “Janice was brilliant. She made Mike, let’s face it.”

R
EINHARDT
: “I didn’t know that we defined our moment. I wish I had, but I was too involved with drugs. I looked down on the business. I didn’t realize what I had.”

B
RINKLEY
: “Then came the model wars. I was with Elite and Ford simultaneously. Then John wanted me back with him in New York. I agreed with his philosophy, and I felt I had to be faithful, and it made sense to me, so I went into the Fords and I said, ‘Please don’t take this personally, but I have to help him out.’ I can’t say that they were pleased, but they were very gracious. Eileen and Jerry said something like ‘We think you’re making a big mistake. We can do a lot more for you in your career, and when you come to realize that, we’ll welcome you with open arms.’ To me, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

C
ASABLANCAS
: “I will always remember that Christie asked me, ‘Am I the first model who will join Elite?’ There was Maarit, but I said, ‘Yes, you are,’ and she said, ‘Then I’m coming.’ She hated Eileen’s guts. Eileen represented everything that she didn’t like: big business, American hypocrisy. She was really the young wife of a French idealist. She was becoming a big star, but she was very, very, very sweet. Our relationship continued in that way as long as she was married.”

D
ICKINSON
: “I left Wilhelmina to go to Ford. I don’t remember when. I was working every day, every night, in a different studio, with a different photographer, in a different country. Willie wasn’t a good negotiator. Eileen was a better negotiator. I always threw [what had happened between us] in her face. I said, ‘Listen, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You didn’t want me anyway.’ Jerry always backed me up. But Eileen’s a money-maker. She’d yes me to death. I was hot.

“Then John came to me on bended knee and asked me if I wanted to go with Elite. I said, ‘Yeah, how much? What’s in it for me? I’ll go with you if you bring Monique Pillard, my booker, and you give me the commission that you get from the client, plus you pay me my percent.’

“What do you think model agents are? Pimps. Meat market. But John Casablancas made no money off me. And I was the only model in his agency that he hadn’t slept with. He was sleeping with all of them, twosomes, threesomes. But he had to take my orders, and he had to kiss my ass. I was making a pretty good living. And Mike had nothing to do with this, OK? I made all my own decisions.”

C
ASABLANCAS
: “Mike Reinhardt, who was my friend, could not tell Janice to change agencies, because he would have been held responsible for it. He explained to me. He couldn’t do anything because ninety-nine percent of the models he booked were with Ford. But Janice probably started to become a little bit obnoxious. Instead of being smart and saying, ‘She’s trying to be obnoxious,’ Ford got rid of her. This was like a present from God, you know. So I took Janice, but I said, ‘I don’t want to lose my health on you. Not only don’t I want to take a commission for you, I’m going to return to you the twenty percent the client gives me [on these conditions]. I don’t want to hear your name; I never want to see you in the agency; I never want to talk to you. You’re going to get the best financial deal in the world, but I don’t want to
see your face or hear from you or from Mike.’ They were obnoxious. For a while this was the deal.”

B
RINKLEY
: “I like business to be business, and I like things to be above-board, and I got wind that certain models were having to pay less commission than me, that there were deals being made. I’m sure he had a deal with Janice, and I didn’t like that. I’d heard all the stuff about young models, too, but I wasn’t going to be swayed by gossip. But when I was told by a model that Janice had this deal, I didn’t like it.”

D
ICKINSON
: “Mike was antagonistic, a Nazi. He wouldn’t let me take trips, because he was a jealous photographer. He hated Patrick; he hated Alex; he hated Albert Watson; he hated Avedon. He was so jealous that I was working for Avedon and Penn it used to make him green. He used to call up the studios, and torture me and make me cry. I’d say, ‘Just shut the fuck up, man. I’m working for these masters, and you’re just this little thirty-five-millimeter jealous B list photographer.’ I’d hang up, and he’d make a scene. I’d switched agencies, and he’d get Casablancas in on it and make havoc for me. He always pitted me against my agents. Any opportunity I had to get out of his studio, I took it.”

R
EINHARDT
: “There was no cocaine in the relationship until the very end. We went on a binge for a few months. But that whole last year, 1979, was pretty drug-ridden. We had a breakup in May. She heard from a male model that I’d screwed his girlfriend. I don’t really remember. I think it was true. I was in Paris, Janice was here, and she flipped out and told me to fuck off and went off with some model, and I think she stopped taking coke. We reconciled. That Christmas Pierre Houlès, Christie, Janice, and I went to St. Moritz. I had to go to Paris afterwards, and when I got back to New York, she was gone. It broke my heart. I was devastated, but I deserved it.”

B
RINKLEY
: “Most of the time that I was friends with Mike, he was going out with Janice. And then they had their meltdown. My marriage broke up around 1980. I got a divorce, and I moved to California. No sooner did I get there than I got a job in New York, and I came back and met Pierre Houlès. I went back to California, and we kept talking. Pierre was very knowledgeable about the business. He had wonderful ideas. Gilles Bensimon and Mike Reinhardt used to call him for advice. Pierre was the least well known, but amongst
that group he was probably the most respected. And so I learned from him. Pierre would give me advice about agents, but I really went more on just a gut instinct.”

D
ICKINSON
: “I was young, you know, and I left Mike because he was sleeping with half the models in the head sheet. He was a pig. Girls that I was shooting with told me, and it really hurt my feelings. I’m a street kid, and I should have been tough; but I really thought I kinda dug this guy for a minute. And it’s just not very nice, it’s not very discreet when other models come up to you and sort of flaunt in your face: ‘Nyaa, I slept with your boyfriend.’ But this is high school shit. I don’t want to talk about it.”

B
RINKLEY
: “Unbeknownst to me, Pierre had another girlfriend, Valerie. But I, being the type that passionately throws myself into things, gave up my apartment in California and went back to New York and Paris. Pierre and I had a very rough relationship. He was trying to appear like somebody who didn’t have another girlfriend. I moved in with him in Paris, and I think Valerie must have been in Carnegie Hall, because I still had my apartment in New York. Anyway, Pierre had come up with this idea for
Elle
, a special issue, just me, but it wasn’t going to be obvious that it was just me. I was to have wigs made, contact lenses, and we were going to start out at a heavier weight and then show a complete metamorphosis. We started it, and that’s when I found out about Valerie. I was heartbroken. So I went back to New York, devastated beyond belief. And Mike picked me up at the airport. He was really my best friend at the time. We had a lot of fun. He’s a good guy.”

R
EINHARDT
: “Pierre and I became estranged because of Christie. She and I were really good friends. She’d just broken up with Pierre, and she came to my house, distraught. Pierre called and said, ‘Kick her out immediately.’ I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I was with Ely at the time, but she’d gone on a trip, and Christie and I were alone in the country, and I was pissed at Pierre for demanding I throw her out. It just happened, and it lasted three weeks. But it felt incestuous. It wasn’t right.”

B
RINKLEY
: “It wasn’t like we ever admitted to being anything more than friends because that’s what we were. But we had a little affair. That was that. And we both realized we’d made a mistake. Valerie and I spent a weekend together talking about Pierre. Once you know the truth, things get resolved.”