#147 - The Full Tilt Poker Guide to Manhattan, Part IV - Tina Brown Knows

I found myself at the front door, tagging along with Tony Holden and Steve Martin, trying not to do anything or say anything stupid. This was also my first opportunity to speak to our hostess, Tina Brown.

The first paragraph of a lengthy Tina Brown entry on Wikipedia:

“Tina Brown, Lady Evans (born Christina Hambley Brown on November 21, 1953, in Maidenhead) is an English journalist, magazine editor, columnist and talk-show host, who currently works in the United States. She rose to prominence in the American media industry as the editor of Vanity Fair Magazine from 1984 to 1992 and The New Yorker from 1992 to 1998.”

She was a controversial figure as the editor of both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She was accused of ruining both magazines and, on both, circulation shot through the roof. I’m an outsider to that world, but I regard her as a god. (Or goddess? Is gender relevant to deification?)

If you witnessed my thirty minutes with Tina Brown, you might conclude that talent isn’t hard to spot (either IN her or BY her). I mean, unless you were an insider in the publishing business (and maybe even if you were), would you imagine that you could easily describe what made one person a gigantic success in TWO of America’s biggest and best-known magazines?

Here is a story I heard about Tina Brown.

She was at a dinner. Seated next to her was a movie producer/novelist, who told the story of his daughter’s brutal murder by a man who, despite confessing, served just a short prison sentence. She told the man next to her, “You have to write about this.” Thus, Dominick Dunne became the world’s most famous crime writer, filling VANITY FAIR’s pages with unforgettable tales about the trials of the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and others.

It makes sense that a top editor can spot a story (or a storyteller) better and faster than anyone else. But seeing it in action is an awesome sight, more so when I was the target.

I’m pleased to say that I did not instantly embarrass myself in front of Tina Brown. I merely told her, as she picked up a copy of BIG DEAL, that “The best thing about that book for me is that it made me want to become a poker player and a poker writer.” Then I pointed to BIGGER DEAL. “And that book featured stories about me, now a chum of the author, doing both. How cool is that?”

Sufficiently cool, I guess, that Brown pieced together enough of my vitae, to ask, a few minutes later, “So what are you going to write about next?”

Was Tina Brown just being a gracious hostess, giving a bit of attention to an obviously star-struck guest?

Had I even mentioned to her that I was a lawyer and already piqued her curiosity about writers who start their professional careers doing one thing and later becoming writers? (Remember, she “discovered” Steve Martin, and many others.)

Or did she spot something I myself didn’t even know, simply because she’s Tina Brown?

“So what are you going to write about next?”

Sometimes, when opportunity knocks, you’re fast asleep. But if it’s your lucky day, Tina Brown wakes you up, which she can apparently do even if your catnap has become a two-year coma.

I’ve known for a long time that my next book is not going to be about poker. In fact, I knew that after SUICIDE KING, even though my next book after that, THE FULL TILT TOURNAMENT EDITION, obviously proved me wrong. But I believe my destiny as a writer is to tell stories and I don’t think I can find better stories to tell about poker than the ones I’ve already told.

I even had an idea for the next book. But so much has intervened – good stuff, from the poker world, including my association with Full Tilt and this blog – that I had almost given up on the idea.

Staring into those inquiring blue-grey eyes, I felt I had to say SOMETHING. I babbled, “Maybe about four people in San Diego who caught a serial killer as a hobby.”

“What sort of people do that?”

A half hour later, as Tony and I walked along Fifty-Seventh Street, I told him, “You know, of course, that I’m in love with Tina Brown.”

Tony’s used to this from me. Last summer, I asked him and Des Wilson to introduce me to Victoria Coren, the English writer and poker player. (Please note, this was before she became a poker millionaire by winning an EPT event.) Because they never actually got around to doing it, I would punctuate my repeated requests in ever-more-desperate terms. Like, “I just know Victoria and I are destined to be together, and you know it too. And you can’t handle it so you insist on keeping us apart.” Because they’re from England, I probably tossed in something about the Montagues and Capulets.

Tony might not have thought I was kidding this time, because he told me the love story of Harold Evans and Tina Brown, how when they married 25 years ago the media declared that their marriage was doomed to fail. (Some of these pronouncements live on, framed, in their downstairs bathroom.)

Tony Holden had it right. I was in love all right.

With myself. With my idea. With the promise of renewed enthusiasm about executing it and sharing it with the world.

And that, as near as I can figure from my very limited expertise, is how Tina Brown BECAME Tina Brown.