Monday, February 23, 2004

Interview With the Vamp
by Philip Weiss

source: New York Observer

A few weeks back, a friend handed me model Janice Dickinson’s autobiography and said it was a juicy tell-all, but under that was a cold understanding of the currency of fashion: the drooling agents and clients, the callous celebrities, the routine personal abuse, the blurred line between prostitution and modeling, etc.

I read No Lifeguard on Duty at once and wasn’t disappointed. Janice Dickinson is a funny and fluid narrator. And while her book got peed on in The New York Times for its unwholesome descriptions of former lovers (Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Liam Neeson), what makes it interesting is her scathing inventory—from age 47, in Los Angeles—of everyone’s desperate behavior, including her own. Young Janice would break down doors to make it, dress like a French whore, do almost anything to get what she wanted. And so would the men she ran into. "You really can sing," Muddy Waters told her, and she believed him, and believed Bill Cosby when he told her the same lie—that is, until she didn’t want to go to bed with him and he blew her off.

I called ReganBooks and learned that Janice Dickinson was coming to New York. I could meet her at the Omni Berkshire Place on East 52nd Street.

I’d been in the Guggenheim room on the second floor all of 10 seconds when I understood Janice Dickinson’s true nature: She’s a viper.

She was coiled in a corner on the floor saying loudly into a phone, "I danced with Justin Timberlake—it was dope," then unfolded her otherworldly legs to introduce herself with crisply condescending formality—"Hello, I’m Janice"—and a fine, long-boned handshake, promptly forgetting my name before stretching out on a window sill to have her makeup done by a guy in faux-lizard pants.

Finding the sun, she swept aside a tabloid with Hillary Clinton on the cover.

"Hillary needs to drop some weight," she said. "She needs better designer clothes."

"Why?"

"She could gain a lot of votes," Ms. Dickinson said.

"From who?"

"Gay makeup artists."

"I don’t think we should talk about politics."

She finally noticed me, with a poisonous look.

"O.K., what do you want to talk about? Plastic surgery? Astronomy? Shoes?"

"Whose shoes are you wearing?"

"Christian Lacroix. They’re Fakkame shoes. That’s Japanese for ‘fuck-me’ shoes."

Too quick and slightly out of control, with a raw edge of need, ribs showing under a slithery dress, the viper was also hungry. She slid off the window sill and sat down to room-service mozzarella and tomato with prosciutto. I sat across from her. The dress was Dolce & Gabbana and low-cut. A heavy green Art Deco amulet teetered over the billowing split of her cleavage. In addition to that—or them—you could see the spirit that it had taken for a young ethnic model to make it, dismissed by stupid people, she said with unsoftened anger, as a "Polish-mutt niggerlips in the era of Dairy Queen Cheryl Tiegs." She was angry today and had been calm yesterday, she filled in candidly, because she was PMS-ing big time, and I felt that she was taunting me with her sexuality.

("When did you come to New York—do you come often?" I said witlessly. "I try to come every day," she replied.)

I pushed her to reflect on how the industry works.

"You made it because you were so tough and driven," I said.

"No, because I was drop-dead gorgeous. I was lusted after walking down the streets of New York. It wasn’t the kind of appreciation I was getting from the agents. It wasn’t till I got to Europe that people started kissing my ass."

"Janice, there are lots of beautiful girls. Very few make it."

Suddenly some tone: "I grew up studying ballet; I grew up honing my craft. I looked at every Vogue that came out every month. I’m able to move like no one else you’ve ever seen in front of a camera. I find the light and work it, work it, work it."

"Sure, but your abusive childhood made you so desperate that you did things other people would never have done."

Jaw muscles tensed, ready to strike: "What’s your name? O.K., look, Phil—what was I supposed to do? I weighed out my options. Do I hook? Do I model?"

I thought of the time in the book when young Janice needs cash and Wilhelmina, her agent, says "I know just what you can do," and the next thing Janice is a waitress at an after-hours club where models are offering their sexual services.

"Was Wilhelmina sending you a signal when she told you to be a waitress there?"

Janice was quiet for once.

"I have to think about it. The answer is no. I’m trying to remember. Other agents do sell their models out to Arabs. She wasn’t inferring that to me. But yes, it’s a horrific, horrible business and abuses girls."

The book suggests that there’s a lot of sexual trade in the business. I brought up the Cosby story. Sweet and nice and Mr. American Television, till she says she’s too exhausted to come into his room.

From the book:

"‘Exhausted?’ he asked, and it was clear he was trying hard to keep his temper in check. ‘After all I’ve done for you, that’s what I get? I’m exhausted …. ’"

"‘Well gee Bill, if I had known it was going to be like this—’

"He waved both hands in front of my face, silencing me. Then he gave me the dirtiest, meanest look in the world, stepped into his suite, and slammed the door in my face."

"Oh, he’s so sad," Janice Dickinson said. "He dangled a TV role. And he called me in rehab to come to Tahoe. In rehab! I was shell-shocked, and I’m getting bushels of fruit from Jagger. No one gave a rat’s ass about my sobriety. But you see, that’s the gilded prison of fashion. We’re riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely. And trying to fill up the vapid hole with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll."

It reminded me of what an angry player on the Knicks had said a few years back: We’re paid millions of dollars but we can’t open our mouths. It’s just slavery, but for a lot of money. I told Janice Dickinson that story, but couldn’t remember the player’s name.

"Spencer Haywood, I think," she said.

"No, no. This is long after Spencer Haywood. I think it was Larry Johnson."

"Well, Spencer Haywood said the same thing. I used to go to games with his wife, Imam."

"Maybe we shouldn’t talk about basketball."

In a far window, the young blond publicist in a suit was making wind-it-up motions. Janice Dickinson hung in there, with a menacing, nervous high energy.

"That guy in The Times called me a fucking has-been, so I called that motherfucker up," she said. "I led him down the road. I said, ‘I really liked your style of writing.’ ‘You did?’ ‘Yes. I really think you write with aplomb. O.K., now you’ve heard all my superlatives—how can you call me a has-been? I’m a mother of two—the mere fact that I’m not on the society pages, going to crass, dumb, boring-ass parties! I’m a soccer mom in the American microcosm of Bel Air.’"

"What did he do?"

"He apologized. He said he was really sorry. What’s his name?"

"Guy Trebay."

"Yeah. Well, Guy Trebay can eat my ass."

"Were you always this ballsy?"

"Always. God granted me this gruff exterior. But basically, inside, I’m a piece of fluff."

I haven’t conveyed the soul of Janice Dickinson’s book. She was able to write such an honest account because she has been in a 12-step program for alcoholics and survivors of abuse, and was therefore able, she says, to cut off fibers of her being and put them in a book. Janice Dickinson’s childhood was a true horror show. Her father, a Merchant Marine whom she describes as a shit-kicker from West Texas, had three beautiful daughters and abused the eldest sexually. He demanded the same of No. 2, but No. 2 refused to roll. Janice got beaten up for that, but she learned to scare her father back (and seems in the end to have actually killed her father by throwing out a heart prescription he needed). By 14, she was drinking like a Mardis Gras pineappled drunk, she says, and ready to spit venom whenever anyone tried to take advantage of her, all the while dressing like a French whore to make sure that people tried.

The best scenes in the book involve John Belushi. She and Belushi hung out for a while, their manic self-destructive sides calling to one another, and the brilliant Belushi took her to an Atlantic City casino, shouting out across the floor, "Does anyone have any pot?"

When people crowded Belushi for autographs, he showed Janice Dickinson off.

They’ve got the best hookers in the world here, he said. Look at this girl. Where else in the world can you get a girl like this for a hundred bucks?

Between binges, Belushi explained his psychological theories of talent.

"This shit with your father, Janice. What a fucking monster. Telling you you’d never amount to anything. Don’t you see what it’s doing to you? … You keep falling for guys who make you feel like you don’t amount to anything. … It isn’t about any of those assholes. It’s about you; it’s about what happened to you. They’re just assholes. Unfortunately, they’re the assholes you happen to be attracted to, because they remind you of your father. That’s why I’m here …. To tell you that your life would be a lot easier if you were attracted to nice homely fat guys—guys like me."

Belushi was dead a few months later, in spring 1982. Apparently they never had sex, though here the story gets uncharacteristically fuzzy. ("Because he has a widow," Ms. Dickinson explained. "I’m careful about hurting people. Did I fuck John? No. Did I find him attractive? No.")

I was somewhat disappointed by meeting Janice Dickinson because she’s so manic. The book prepares you to meet someone who has stepped out of the fashion world, then calmly sold it out, when the truth is more complex: Janice Dickinson is still in it, still trying. Dancing with Justin Timberlake, showing off her breasts. And not really that interested in another person. In the end, she’s like all forces of nature—you take them on their own terms.

"I suppose I’m being turfy because I’m a writer," I said, "but I wonder how you got down all that great dialogue."

"I have a very vivid imagination," Janice Dickinson said. "And let’s put it this way—" She bent forward with a conspiratorial friendliness. "Everyone steals from something or someone. The great directors do it all the time. I borrow bits from everyone. In all parts of my life. What toothpaste I use. How I fuck."

I looked for a comeback, but had nothing. I was like the mouse after the snake is done, an empty mouse suit with the meat gone. "Why did you write this book?"

"To enable a young child to come out and tell her secrets. I want to give a shout-out to incest survivors and people who might be abused, to get into a program. The secrets almost killed me. I kept the secret of incest. I got hit so hard that I saw stars. It took ’ludes to give me the courage to tell my mother."

"But Janice, without that psychic wound, you’d just be some suburban mom—it gave you fire."

"No, it didn’t! I was born with that fire. I have to wake up and drink chamomile tea to slow down. I have incredible fucking energy!" One last forward lunge of the carnivorous cleavage: "I should bottle it and call it ‘Sexy Bitch.’"

"Thank you," I said, and she was gone.
Wild thing: supermodel Janice Dickinson bares it all. (Buzz).(Interview)
Los Angeles Magazine, Sept, 2002, by Amy Wallace

"LA JANICE" LIES ATOP A TABLE IN A sweltering photo studio. She is on her back. She wears no shirt. Her silicone-enhanced breasts--"my 36C rad puppies"--jut out beneath her black satin brassiere. Her tummy is flat and caramel colored. There are silver rivets running up the seams of her size 6 blue jeans. Her feet are bare, and the way she rests them on the wall above makes her glitter toenail polish catch the light. She is a model. She is 47 years old. She is, she admits, a head case.

Janice Dickinson is getting ready to do the thing that, back in the late '70s and the '80s (what she calls "the Jurassic era of modeling"), put her on the cover of every major fashion magazine in the world: pose. Her makeup man, Kevin, is stenciling on her eyebrows and fixing her face; her hair man, Chad, is blowing out her red-brown mane. It will take hours to become perfect, but that's all right. Dickinson--muse of Versace, lover of Jagger (and Beatty, and Nicholson, and Stallone ...), and mother of two--has much to say to pass the time.

"If you think I'm over-the-top," she says, "I am."

Leaning her head back, she sends her hair cascading over the table's edge, and the words come spilling out of her--just like they did when she sat down to write her new autobiography, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (Regan Books). She talks fast, sometimes borrowing phrases from people she's met ("Dahlink!" Dickinson says, adding helpfully, "I'm doing Ivana Trump") or from cultural icons ("Willll-bur!" she whinnies, channeling Mr. Ed). In her head, Ivana and the horse complete each other's sentences. Is she wack for wack's sake? It's hard to tell. Especially when she keeps interrupting herself, reciting fragments of disco lyrics ("Don't stop 'til you get enough!") and the phone number of her plastic surgeon ("Call him for comment. Seriously. He's a master. That's why I would let only him touch my face. And my chest. And my ass").

"I got a book deal without even turning in one shred of a writing sample," she says, remembering the day she called the celebrity book editor Judith Regan to pitch her story. "I was having an invincible moment. I told her how difficult it was for me growing up with an abusive father, how when I went to New York to become a model I was rejected for a year for being `too ethnic.' Judith said, `Okay, I'm in.' And I hadn't even gotten to the A-list actors yet. Because it's not about the men that I dated. It's not about sleeping with Jack Nicholson."

Well, okay, maybe part of it is. In the memoir Dickinson lists a cavalcade of famous suitors. She says Liam Neeson is endowed like a barnyard animal and that Bruce Willis, prestardom, was the kind of sweetheart who bounds out of bed in the morning to go buy you breakfast. Beatty "knew where everything was and what to do with it" (though she reports that as much as he liked sex, he loved staring at himself in the mirror more) Jagger was "indefatigable." Stallone is said to have uttered the phrase "Bam ham slam" after their lovemaking. And Nicholson? The graphic, arrogant thing he supposedly told Dickinson after a night of passion cannot be reprinted here. But it's in the book, she says, because nobody tells Dickinson what to do.

"The reason that line made the book is because he told me not to say anything. And I will never, ever respond to anybody--man, woman, vegetable, or mineral--who tells me to keep my mouth shut. Alter what I've been through, I don't think so, pal," she says, arching a hennaed brow. "Wait until you read book two. I'll really throw in the guys. I didn't even begin to broach the subject."

A regular at Studio 54, Dickinson hung out with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and John Belushi. Her book is rife with recognizable names from the worlds of modeling, photography, fashion, and Hollywood, and its plotline is something you've read many times before: An ugly duckling's hidden shame makes her fight all the harder to become a swan. Dickinson's "Polish mutt" look--full, "waterbed landing pad" lips, dark tresses--was the opposite of the fair-haired, thin-lipped all-American ideal (think Cheryl Tiegs) of the late 1970s. But Dickinson helped prove that exotic, too, could sell.

Dickinson claims she "kicked the damn door in," making it easier for nonblonds like Gia Carangi, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington to make it. That's not all she takes credit for. She says she coined the term "supermodel," for example, and that she's the one who gave Calvin Klein the idea to market underwear. Even at the height of her modeling career, however, when she was commanding top dollar and being photographed by the likes of Richard Avedon and Horst P. Horst, she says the memory of her father's brutality pushed her to abuse alcohol and drugs. Eventually she hit bottom.

"You can leave out my chronological age, dear. Or leave it in. I don't give a rat's ass. When I hit 45--ba da boom!--I couldn't stop crying," she says, in an imperious Norma Desmond drawl. If not for Tony Peck, Gregory's son, who helped her find a 12-step program near her Bel-Air home, Dickinson says she might not be here today, having Evian sprayed on her cheeks.

"Because of my father, I developed a crass, acerbic-witted, in-your-face attitude of defiance at an early age," she says, shutting her eyes as Kevin, the makeup man, applies a fine mist. "I couldn't focus in school. They thought it was ADD."

"It wasn't ADD," says Kevin. "It was DAD."

Dickinson laughs--a throaty crackling sound. "Write that!" she orders. "That's great. Without gay men, I am nothing." She can be a mensch. Dickinson looks fondly at Kevin. "He's taking my face from the unhealthy straggling insect chick to, like, a total diva."

"Do you know what I say when I go to Starbucks, just to give myself a little ego pump?" she says. "When they ask for name, I tell them, and they write it on the cup, and when my coffee's ready, they yell, out, `Diva Goddess!' and I say YES!'"
Janice Dickinson on Dr. Phil



"I've been on the cover of every magazine in the world," says supermodel Janice Dickinson. "But as a young model, I never felt as beautiful as I looked. I masked it well with alcoholism. I grew up in an abusive home and was told on a daily basis by my father that I would never amount to anything and that I looked like a boy. One of the main reasons I had a lot of plastic surgery was because of the voice of my father. I've had my boobs and eyes done, my forehead lifted, and my stomach done. Every six months I fly to Dallas to get botox and I also get collagen injections. I'm addicted to cosmetic surgery! But plastic surgery hasn't stifled the voice from my father. Dr. Phil, how do I make this go away?" asks Janice.

"Was this [plastic surgery] a job tool or something that you did for you?" asks Dr. Phil.

"Both," answers Janice.

"I'm always interested in what the motive is and what the expectations are," says Dr. Phil. "Yours is layered. You sold your appearance. That was your livelihood. As someone who is so focused on appearance for their livelihood, do you think you confuse body image with self image?"

"Absolutely," says Janice. "I became addicted to the confusion."

"There are good reasons and bad reasons to have plastic surgery," explains Dr. Phil. "I'm always interested in whether people are trying to solve a psychological problem with a physical solution...Isn't there a point at which you will have to accept the aging process? You will have to accept gravity?" asks Dr. Phil.

"I'm caught up in this," says Janice. "To me, this has been a cycle."

"What do you consider a wrong reason to get it?" asks Dr. Phil.

"To fill up the void inside of me," says Janice.

"When the buzz wears off, and gravity sets in again, you are still the same person," explains Dr. Phil. "If you have a perception of yourself that you felt you needed to change [with plastic surgery], those perceptions are still there [after the surgery]. This is something you need to change from the inside out instead of the outside in. As long as [you hear] the voice [of your father], there is nothing you can do externally to shut it off. That is not an external switch. It's an internal switch."

From: Billie (pusssykatt@aol.com)
Subject: Tabloid BITS AND PIECES 10/10
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
Date: 2002-10-10 06:46:03 PST


STAR MAGAZINE....

--TALK about lip service! Supermodel Janice Dickinson says she was so wild
about JFK Jr. she made out with him outside a ladies' room – even though he
was dating future wife Carolyn Bessette! "I kissed him hard," boasts Dickinson,
45, who was one of the world's top models in the 1980s. "He was a fabulous
kisser." Dickinson told Steppin' Out magazine she met the Camelot heir on a
"blind date." He took her to New York's fabled Studio 54, where she says they
made out "on top of the bubblegum machine near the ladies' bathroom. He had a
girlfriend he didn't tell me about. Her name was Carolyn (Bessette)." JFK Jr.
wasn't her only beau. Dickinson says she bedded Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty,
Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Prince Albert, Liam Neeson and others. She
also claims a sexy lesbian romp with Kelly LeBrock, ex-wife of martial-arts
star Steven Seagal, and a naughty threesome with Rocky IV bad guy Dolph
Lundgren and James Bond villainess Grace Jones.
From: claire (nowayjose@yahoo.com)
Subject: Liz Smith 12/11
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
Date: 2003-12-11 18:13:40 PST

December 11, 2003 -- 'I ALSO have a porn tape floating around
out there somewhere. Doesn't every model?"

So says onetime supermodel/party girl deluxe, Janice Dickinson.
Miss Dickinson was musing about stray videos because she has approved Paris
Hilton to star in the film version of her best-selling memoir "No Lifeguard
on Duty."



Janice says, "Paris has been begging to play me since day one.
You know I was a socialite in another life." (In her real life of catwalks,
late nights and Sunset Boulevard, Janice lured such as Sly Stallone, Liam
Neeson and Jack Nicholson.) Paris would have to go brunette to portray
Janice, but "anything for her art" is the Hilton heiress' motto.

Anyway, Volume Two of Janice's life and loves hits bookshelves
in April with "Everything About Me Is Fake and I'm Perfect." In this book we
get her picnic in the Park with John Lennon and her make-out session with
John F. Kennedy Jr., among other treats.

And there's a third book on the way - a relationship guide to
dating with some handy tips on orgasms. "I am the 'Lord of the Rings' of
supermodels" says Janice of her hot trilogy. Well, whatever Janice was in
another life, you can bet she wasn't modest.
From: X-Nico (X-Nico@XNico.com)
Subject: Re: An amusing look at Janice Dickinson (Sly Stallone's ex)
Newsgroups: alt.showbiz.gossip
Date: 1999/01/18

Dickinson, Janice
Born: Brooklyn, NY, USA
Raised: Hollywood, FL, USA
Ethnicity: Polish, Scot, Irish
Skin: Olive
Hair: raven black Agency/Representation: Keswick/Hamilton
Supermodel survivor of the late 70's. Has had covers on every
major fashion magazine. Used to make $30k a day. Now has two children,
Nathan(7) and Savannah (fathered by Slyvester Stallone during a 2
year affair) now married to real-estate tycoon Albert Gerston as
of Feb 14, 1995. Started "Models Anonymous", the unofficial support
group for [her words] "anguished beauties". Is experiencing a
comeback as more designers are returning to the models with
memorable personalities and very recognizable faces. J.D's lips were very
controversial when she first worked. Modeling for Versace and
recently appeared in the German edition of Playboy. Is a "Fashion

Reporter" for _American Journal_.

"I was huge," brags Dickinson. "I did covers in more countries
than you can count, I had the biggest lips and the exotic look
that broke the mold for models like Christeeee and Cindeeee and
Naomiiii," she sings. (excerpted from Marie Claire USA iss. #2)

Coral Amende put Dickinson in her list of "Gay or Bisexual Women" in her
book "Hollywood Confidential".

Two Dickinson quotes:

"Fuck Helmut Newton. Why should I take my clothes off for him? I took my
clothes off for his wife."

"Fag... fag hag." (on Mick Jagger/ Jerry Hall)

She also cites Dickinson as saying that Stallone regularly offered
breast augmentations as presents to women he was involved with, though
it wasn't mentioned whether Dickinson took him up on it. (Brigitte
obviously accepted.)
From: Beeb E. Rebozo (BBRebozo@iwon.com)
Subject: Janice Dickinson
Newsgroups: alt.fan.howard-stern
Date: 2002-08-22 18:19:58 PST


Toward the end (around 9-9:30) of today's (Thursday's) show, Howard
had on 47-year-old ex-model Janice Dickinson, whose sole claim to fame
is that she has had sex with some famous men and has written a book
about those experiences. She was like the devil child of Vinnie
Favali ("you rock, Howard ... Howard, you're great ... Beth is so
beautiful") and Tara Reid ("I was the original supermodel ... I'm a
hottie ... I have 20-year-old men lined up around the block to go out
with me.")

But I warn you that she may be back on sometime, because:

1. She had some great stories about the celebrities she slept with
(Bill Cosby wasn't that great in bed, Jack Nicholson was, Warren
Beatty got out of bed after sex to stare at himself in a mirror)

2. Dickinson's publisher is -- guess who -- Judith Regan, Howard's
old publisher.
From: Um Huh (umhuh2003@yahoo.com)
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.showbiz.gossip
Date: 2004-01-24 23:04:20 PST

Subject: Supermodel Janice Dickinson: "I'm The Rosa Parks" of Modeling

Weary critics are in for another shock from former supermodel Janice
Dickinson, now a judge on America's Next Top Model. Dickinson, who is
white, says the U.S. modeling agencies told her, "Your look is too
ethnic." She tells of going to Europe in the 1970s and crossing a
model picket line.

"Somebody had to do it. I was the Rosa Parks," she says, referring to
the black civil-rights pioneer who refused to give up her seat to a
white man.

One baffled critic asks whether she wants to revise that comment.

"I think I'm the Lord of the Rings of supermodels," she says. "You can
write that."

Reality is creating a new kind of star, and she isn't always pretty,
no matter how attractive her looks.
From: Lili2 (lili2@aol.com)
Subject: Janice Dickinson not done kissing & telling
Newsgroups: alt.showbiz.gossip
Date: 2002-09-27 01:18:28 PST


NY POST...PAGE 6

OUTRAGEOUS original supermodel Janice Dickinson, who has blabbed about bedding
Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Prince Albert
and Liam Neeson, isn't done kissing and telling.

Janice, promoting her best-selling memoir "No Lifeguard on Duty," told Steppin'
Out magazine's Chaunce Hayden a few carnal kernels that didn't make it into the
book. She says she:

* Enjoyed a threesome with Grace Jones and "Rocky IV" musclehead Dolph Lundgren


* Had a sex romp with Kelly LeBrock, the model ex-wife of Steven Seagal. "She
was fabulous," Dickinson dishes. "We were all coked out of our minds!"

* Made out with John F. Kennedy Jr. "I kissed him hard. I had a blind date with
him once, but he had a girlfriend he didn't tell me about. Her name was Carolyn
[Bessette]."

Dickinson, who claims to have coined the term "supermodel" when she was one of
the world's top mannequins in the early 1980s, also blasted Angelina Jolie's
depiction of her friend Gia Carangi in the HBO movie "Gia."

"HBO paid me to come to New York and tell all the stories that I knew about
Gia," Dickinson says. "But I don't think they did a good job. Angelina didn't
nail it. Gia was the hottest broad going. She was a big ol' bull dyke who hated
men for whatever reason. When I first met her, she pulled out a switchblade."

Janice, whose modeling days are over, is working on her second book "Everything
Is Fake - I'm Perfect." She's also in talks to star in a reality TV show, and
has written a musical about Studio 54.

We hope her next tell-all is as entertaining as the delightfully trashy "No
Lifeguard On Duty," which is packed with dishy details like Stallone's habit of
saying "Bam Ham Slam" after sex.

Dickinson is still as wild as ever. During the Steppin' Out interview, she kept
asking writer Hayden if he wanted to "bang" her, put her foot between his legs
under the table, and licked his ear to demonstrate how easily she could turn
him on.

As they were leaving the Omni Berkshire hotel, Dickinson ran into Keith
Richards' wife, Patty Hansen, and cracked, "At least I never bleeped your
husband!"

Reflecting on how her two young children will react when they read her
titillating tell-all, Dickinson was philosophical.

"My son Nathan will read this book one day and probably be embarrassed, and I'm
sorry for that. But you know what? I'm not ashamed of my behavior. I
experienced life. I tasted it. I breathed it. I bleeped hard and played hard. I
lived life and I'm still living it." You go, girl!
Source :NY Post Page Six

'I GOT BORED KISSING JFK JR.'

February 19, 2004 -- OUTRAGEOUS original supermodel Janice Dickinson - who blabbed about bedding Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Prince Albert and Liam Neeson in her first book, "No Lifeguard on Duty" - isn't done dishing on celebrities.

The jabber-jawed judge on TV's "America's Next Top Model" spills more beans in "Everything About Me is Fake and I'm Perfect" (ReganBooks), in which she recalls her encounters with another batch of bold-facers, including:

* Getting bored while locking lips with John F. Kennedy Jr.: "We made out for about five minutes while women who passed by struggled to contain their jealousy. 'You are so damn hot,' I told him when I finally came up for air - which wasn't an easy thing to do, believe me.

" 'Well, the so-called Sexiest Man Alive wanted to plant one on the sexiest lips alive,' he responded, then French-kissed me hard . . . As our tongues met and he held me in his tender embrace, I wondered, What ever happened to Jackie O's First Lady wardrobe?

"God forgive me, but that's what I was thinking while I was smooching the Prince of Camelot. I think he knew my attention was wandering elsewhere, and he finally broke the kiss. 'You know what, Janice?' he said. 'I have to go.' And he was gone"

* Putting up with Madonna's body odor when she used to boogie all night at Danceteria in the early '80s:

"Before the Material Girl got it together and started removing hair from her pits, she had the most vicious odor coming out from I don't even want to know where. Believe me, it was no holiday dancing next to Madonna way back then." Mee-yow!



* Stealing Donald Trump's stretch limo outside Studio 54: After Dickinson and another model drove off in an unattended limo and abandoned it a few blocks away, she learned that the car belonged to Trump.

A few weeks later, Dickinson ran into the tycoon at a Vera Wang fashion show and confessed that she had stolen his car. Dickinson writes that Trump replied: " 'Now you've stolen my heart,' he said winking."

* Hitting Charlie Sheen where it hurts: After the former bad boy showed up two hours late to a dinner date, only to ask Dickinson to do cocaine with him in his car, Dickinson recalls:

"I screwed up my face and landed a fake sneeze smack dab in the middle of that tray of coke. Charlie's drug of choice blew all over that rental car.
Top model show plan
From The Eye
February 13, 2004


HIT US show America's Next Top Model has a cult following in Australia and fans can brace themselves for a local version.

Tyra Banks sets a fine example.

Foxtel's director of television, Brian Walsh, confirmed yesterday that Fox 8 had secured the rights to the US reality hit and would likely produce an Australian version.

"It's one of the hottest formats around at the moment and has all the right ingredients, reality TV with pure drama, week in week out, and unlike other reality formats, all the cast are stunning," he said.

America's Next Top Model is hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks and is full of wonderfully cringeworthy moments. A host of wannabe models are put through a series of tests each week, including photo shoots, catwalk shows and client meetings, and, at the end of each episode, the girl who isn't presented with a photo of herself must leave the building immediately.

Banks hilariously tells each remaining contestant she's still in the running to be America's "nexttopmodel" as if it's all one word.

And former supermodel Janice Dickinson is gloriously bitchy as an expert judge.

The first series in the US broke ratings records for cable network UPN, and the second series is doing the same.

The second series is running here, too.

Both series have included an interesting mix of models, from young innocents to tough cookies to religious types.

Let's hope Foxtel secures one of Australia's very own supermodel's to host the show – we think Elle Macpherson would be a perfect choice.

Herald Sun
Janice Dickinson Chat Transcript from UPN

JANICE DICKINSON CHAT

Top Model Host: Hey everyone!! Thanks for joining us for our AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL chat. You all have a lot of great questions for Janice, so let's get begin! Thanks for being here today, Janice. Are you ready to take some questions?
Janice Dickinson: I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

CDOG: Hi Janice, what can we expect to see on the premiere tonight?
Janice Dickinson: Sexy women, cat fights, curves, lace, stiletto heels, Tyra Banks hair weaves, my breasts, fashion fashion fashion on me, Dolce and Gabanna, heat-seeking missile wit from Janice D. A lot of fumbling, some fondling. A lot of sex, drugs and Rock and Roll.

The general activities are trying to teach baby heifers how to properly saché down the runway. Trying to teach the girls to wake up on time--duh--to get to their first jobs on time (next time buy an alarm clock).

Weight gain, weight loss, irreverence, politeness. The Intrepid aircraft carrier is the location on the first episode for the women's first fashion show. The audience, ladies and gents, the U.S. Navy--how hot is that? Forget the contestants, let us talk about the Naval officers gawking at the wannabe models.

The locations take place in New York City photo studios, where Nigel, noted photographer, shoots these girls naked to the world, with the only adornment body paint and high heels and wigs and lashes, and a whole lot of attitude. The male model arm pieces clearly are naked. Further into this, Milan, Italy auditions, more attitude, more weight gain, more catfights, and the first major fashion show by the D-Squared brothers.

I can't remember which episode where the D-Squared brothers are the judges on the show, and they absolutely go off on the fashion industry, go off on the girls. I think they were having an acid flashback of what the industry does to girls. I think it's an important episode because it shows the intense pressure and scrutiny these poor kitty cats will remain under during the show, and hopefully the winner will get a lifetime of being placed inside a fish bowl.

Manda5: Janice, in comparison to last year, how does the cast fair this season?
Janice Dickinson: I was blown away at Tyra Banks' choices. I don't know how the hell, out all the thousands of contestants, that she narrows it down to 12 wannabe modelettes. Her array of contestants varies across all nationalities, which will make this show the most unique on television. We've got Afro-American, Asian, Spanish, Italian, Caucasian, and also some girl who lives out on Jupiter. This season's girls are fresher, angrier, hairier, sleeker.

If I had any annoyances to voice, this would be the one, and I'm not pessimistic. I was bothered that the girls seem to have me figured out, and that annoys me because no one can figure me out. When I asked my questions to the girls ... the girl I was plugging for was a girl who spoke from her heart, not the most commercial, had a terminal disease, and was fighting against all odds to become a model and for her life.

So to answer your question, there's just so much more heat.

Buddy: Janice, I know you didn't think Adrianne should have won, do you see her having a hot future in modeling?
Janice Dickinson: Stop right there with that mundane question. Perhaps there should have been two winners. My choice with Elyse stemmed from the fact that a girl must maintain weight. An agent has to be sure that a girl is not going to put on four to seven pounds a month due to what she eats, stress, family, death, divorce or moving.

A model absolutely must be able to squeeze her skinny little ass into a less than zero sized, hand-sewn, one of a kind piece of couture. End of subject.

HootersGirl: I think that Jenascia is the best looking one on the show, but she is also the shortest. Did you the judges make an exception for her?
Janice Dickinson: In my day as a supermodel, pant leg sizes were designed on girls 5'7" and over. Kate Moss blew the industry wide open and changed a trend, enabling shorter models to have a shot. For a short model to succeed in this industry it's a phenomenon. The last one who came along was the waif-like Kate Moss.

evilolive: If you could write one of the competition challenges, what would you like to see the girls do?
Janice Dickinson: I would like a photo lineup of major international photographers, starting with the fabulous 60s, 70 and 80s. I would like to see the models on a screen and see if the girls can identify how the photographer shoots a subject. I'd like to see if the model can identify how and who the fashion photographers are by the photograph on display.

MandoV: Were the girls better prepared for the competition this time around, or as clueless about modeling as many of the season one girls were?
Janice Dickinson: Two of them were wannabe pros already and acted like they knew even more than me. The rest hadn't the faintest idea of how to fasten a buckle on their shoes.

Chris: Why are you so harsh in your judgments of the models?
Janice Dickinson: Yo Chris, great question. I can answer honestly. I'm saving the girls a lot of time by my candid honesty. Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone were like me?

Manda5: Does our favorite runway coach return this season? We love him!
Janice Dickinson: Dearest Manda, I'm so glad he's your favorite, because in my opinion he's teaching these girls how to walk like Clydesdales. But if you like him, keep on trucking. He's back with a vengeance.

DivineStasia: What's your view on plus-size models?
Janice Dickinson: Take the chicken out of your mouth at the Sunday picnic. Try jogging around the blanket. Just kidding. That's the nature of the beast. There's an amazing world out there of plus-size, and more power to you. It just doesn't work for this AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL judge.

I spent a lifetime of dieting, proper nutrition and exercise, to keep my ass off the back of my kneecaps.

justwhatever: Has being a model ever had a negative effect on your life?
Janice Dickinson: Are you kidding me? I ended up in drug rehabs, jail, lost three marriages. In fact you can read all about it in No Lifeguard on Duty, which is going to be a movie soon.

blueberrygirl: What do you think is the best age for girls to break into the modeling industry?
Janice Dickinson: It depends on the girl and what her assets are. But clearly, finish high school. 18-22, and 22 is pushing it.

blueberrygirl: What is the most important beauty product in your arsenal?
Janice Dickinson: Aloe vera gel. Also, Jafra cosmetics, face and night creams, I swear by them.

jlover: How many of the girls on the show do you honestly think could make it as a model in the real world?
Janice Dickinson: Dearest J-Lover, I love your name, what are you wearing? This season, 3, and that's pushing it

janice_u_rock: Did you have anyone early on in your career who gave you brutally honest opinion? How did you take it?
Janice Dickinson: Ha ha ha, Dearest Janice_U_Rock, I'm sure some model agent's facelift was slipping when she told me as a young girl when I walked into her office with a portfolio of three of the worst photographs you've ever seen, and sporting very ethnic looks, as opposed to blonde, blue-eyed Miss Apple Pie, all-American girl next door ...that I'd never make it in the industry, that it was clearly was against all odds that I would make it.

candyland: What happens to the contestants that get voted off?
Janice Dickinson: They have to go to the elephant model graveyard. Who knows? I'd like to see them continue to follow their dream.

Chris: Is Simon Cowell your role model?
Janice Dickinson: Absolutely not. I look better in a thong than Simon ever will. Simon can't even sing, and I'm still modeling.

Tristan: From your experience, how common is the model stereotype of "drugs, eating disorders and diva attitudes?"
Janice Dickinson: Still quite prevalent. As an editor for More magazine, I was backstage at all the NY City collections last February. I saw more drug abuse, more alcoholism and more girls running back and forth from the toilet than ever before. They should all read my books. I address these issues in the April release of Everything About Me's Fake…and I'm Perfect.

joeboo: Do you regret anything you said during the first season?
Janice Dickinson: Dear Joe-Boo, I regret nothing.

Buddy: What did you think about Robin's apparent disgust for gay people, yet she was happy to receive help from them on the show?
Janice Dickinson: Dear Buddy, Robin's mentality should be locked away on an island in the Pacific and never let off. This is 2004, and I'm here to announce, that Janice D., the world's first supermodel, is really a gay man in a supermodel's body. Gay men made me what I am today, Without their expert help, genius, expertise in design concept, hair, makeup, photography, Kraft service catering, food, the industry would never have been an industry at all.

tracy: I love all of Tyra's weaves--who does her hair?
Janice Dickinson: The natural museum of science and history.

DivineStasia: What is the biggest mistake aspiring models can make trying to break into this business?
Janice Dickinson: Not finishing school. Saying yes to alcohol and drugs, and not having a parent or guardian accompany them to studios, if under 18, or even over 18.

Belle: What are your views on cosmetic surgery? Should some of the bigger model types get lipo?
Janice Dickinson: F-yeah. Wire your jaws shut and stop eating.

cherry: Janice, Do you and Tyra get along
Janice Dickinson: I worship Tyra. Tyra is helping girls that normally wouldn't have a shot in the world at becoming anything. I adore that in her.

Tina: Have you ever worked with Armani since you called him Gianni?
Janice Dickinson: No. But I've worn his clothes and I adore his style.

traymay: Will you censor your statements this year or will you send the models home crying again?
Janice Dickinson: Dear Tramaey, it's not my problem that girls don't have a thick skin. I'm helping them apply layers. I'm hired to apply brutal, candid honesty and that's what I'm going to do.

joeboo: Of the current top models, whose success is a surprise to you?
Janice Dickinson: Robin.


evilolive: What is your favorite type of modeling? Print, runway, etc?
Janice Dickinson: All. Anything having to do with celluloid, I'm in.

Miss_Supermodel: What is the most important feature for a supermodel?
Janice Dickinson: Attitude.

DivineStasia: What was it like working with the late, great Gianni Versace?
Janice Dickinson: Divine, the most out-of-body, incredible, blessed union I've ever collaborated in. Being Versace's muse for eight years and allowing me to work Mr. Richard Avedon has given me the experience, knowledge and unique instinct of who I am today. I've never gotten over his death.

joeboo: In real life, don't most agencies sign girls based solely on looks and worry about teaching them the rest later?
Janice Dickinson: Yes.

Top Model Host: I am sorry to say that our hour with Janice is up. Janice, thanks so much for being here to chat with us today. Do you have any final comments for the Top Model fans?

Janice Dickinson: To all the Top Model fans in this world and in the next life: I would like to say, we must write letters in to the film studios and magazines and anyone concerned to bring back the era of the supermodel, for it is a dying breed. Return the supermodels to the covers of magazines where they used to be. I wish you all a rocking, slamming-fun for the season's viewing. Watch for me on Rock Me Baby on UPN. Happy Model viewing, and God bless.
source: ETonline ( February 3, 2004 )

Also back for a second season is "Model"s version of SIMON COWELL -- JANICE DICKINSON -- who is every bit as caustic as the Brit wit.

"I'm not here to bull****," says the former supermodel of her harsh comments to the wannabes. "I'm here to state the truth. A lot of people say, 'Oh, she's the mean one. She's like that Simon character.' I have more experience than Simon. Simon never sang a note, but I fell off a lot of runways in my life, so I'm here to just state the truth."
source: TV Guide

Top Model's Janice Strikes Again!
by Bruce Fretts


oh yes, I know am beautiful
Janice Dickson



When we started thinking about judges, Janice Dickinson was one of the first people who popped into my head," says Tyra Banks, host and executive producer of UPN's America's Next Top Model (tomorrow at 9 pm/ET). "I'd never met her, but I'd heard the stories." One of the world's first supermodels (she claims to have invented the term), Dickinson lives up to her diva-may-care reputation with her merciless commentary on Top Model — and while talking with us. Meow!

TV Guide Online:What do you bring to the show?
Dickinson: Real-life experience, know-how, and a lot of frickin' fire. People want to get into brawling matches with me because I'm brutally honest. I feel I'm saving the girls a lot of time by telling them A) You're too fat, B) You're too old, C) You're too short. Tyra's way too nice. I'm not.

TVGO: Do you consider yourself the Simon Cowell of Top Model?
Dickinson: I look much better than Simon in a thong. Simon is truly just a judge. I am still a working supermodel. Simon's not even a singer. There's no comparison.

TVGO: Last season, why did you prefer skinny Elyse over plus-size Robin?
Dickinson: You have to be waiflike to be a model in today's world. When Robin was standing next to Elyse, I wanted to throw up — and that would've been good.

TVGO: Are the contestants more cutthroat than real-life models?
Dickinson: They aren't competitive enough. When I was starting out, girls like Gia [Carangi] walked around with switchblades in their back pockets.

TVGO: Has Top Model increased your recognizability?
Dickinson: Everywhere I go, I get recognized as, "Ain't that the model lady from the show?" Mostly urban ghetto chicks — they dig the show.

TVGO: Do you think more men will watch the show this season?
Dickinson: Are you kidding me? Last year, guys were just tuning in to see the girls' bikini [lines] get waxed. This year, the boys are going to want to see even more because the girls are much more sexy. Sexy, crazy, cool.

TVGO: How was the show received within the fashion industry?
Dickinson: The fashionistas can't get enough of this show. I'm not just blowing smoke up TV Guide's ass. The panel of judges is the full spectrum, from photographer to supermodel to editor to J. Alexander, that tacky queen who teaches the girls how to walk. We're all at the top of our game. People also will be tuning in to just to see what my breasts are going to be squished into in each episode.

TVGO: How realistically does the show portray the industry?
Dickinson: It's not artificial at all, because the industry is so artificial. The only thing that's artificial on the show are my breasts.

TVGO: Great. That covers everything.
Dickinson: Will you be running a picture of me, please? Thank you.
48 hours: Addicted: Model Misbehavior

Oct. 18, 2002

see Janice interview Click FREE VIDEO" at top of article

(CBS) Janice Dickinson was the original supermodel. In her prime in the mid-1970’s, her face appeared regularly on the covers of fashion magazines.

Janice, now 47, was on top of her profession, but over the top with her addictions. By her own account, she was out of control.

“I was the loudest and the wildest. I liked the money, the attention was great, the clothes, the limos, the planes,” she says. Bill Lagattuta reports.

She was hooked on the spotlight: “Just being so in demand. That’s what I got off on.”

“Janice was — is — vibrant, amazing, fantastic,” says hairdresser Harry King. “We were all over-the-top. It was the times. You had to be over the top, otherwise you wouldn’t be famous.”

Part of the problem, Dickinson says, was constantly being told that she was beautiful. “It was very destructive, because what happened to me was I began to believe it,” she says.

Then there were the men. “I’d need an accounting firm to remember,” she says, laughing, of all the men she has slept with. Among those on the list: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Bruce Willis, and Liam Neeson.

She has also slept with Sylvester Stallone. At the time, the tabloids suggested that he was the father of her daughter. “He was one of the contenders. I had a lucky month that month,” she says. “It just so happens I am a famous supermodel and I slept with more than one man that month. And, oops, I got pregnant.”

“I have no shame,” she says. “Well, I have a little bit of shame. I didn’t sleep with one of the Beatles.”

But she did sleep with one of the Rolling Stones: Mick Jagger. “When I was being followed by Mick, I really didn’t fancy him,” she says. “He pursued me. He was Mick Jagger, you know? I had a good story for my grandchildren. I dated the lead singer of the Rolling Stones and he was great.”

She says she is proud of her relationships: “Hell, yeah. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it the same. Yes, I’m very proud.”

She has lived a life of extreme excess. “Drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, plastic surgery. Anything I could do to escape, to numb myself.”

Janice says she was numbing herself to erase the effects of her childhood. Her mother was detached, she says, while her father sexually abused one of her sisters, and physically and verbally abused her. “Every time, I look at a photograph of my father, I get vivid memories. They always come back and I wish they’d stop,” she says, crying.

“He would say to me, ‘You’ll never amount to anything. You’re nothing but a two-bit punk. You should have been born a boy, you’re just—you’re less than zero.’ He said this on a daily basis. I developed severe low self esteem,” she says.

“It was awful, but as I was hearing them, I knew that I was better than what he was saying—it just fueled me to strive for perfection in becoming a model,” she says.

After three marriages, she is now a single mother to 8-year-old Savannah and 14-year-old Nathan.

These days, she still does some modeling, and she’s written a book about her glory days, filled with all the personal tales of drugs, rock and roll, and sex.

“I wrote the book to help young children. If they’re having a problem with their parents, like I did,” she says. “Please, tell someone and seek help at an early age, because it could prevent a life of excessive alcoholism and drug abuse, like what happened to me. Please don’t make the mistakes I made.”

A 12-step program got her past drugs and alcohol, and her children now anchor her life. But Janice still has an addictive drive to succeed, to always be in the limelight.

She says her father’s cruel words still drive her. “That’s probably stayed with me for the entire career, that’s what put me in the spotlight and kept me there. I did prove him wrong, didn’t I?”


© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved
source: vacationbookreview.com


Average review score: four and a half stars out of five

Janice is HEAT!
My only knowledge of Janice Dickinson was that she supposedly had Sly Stallone's child and there was some type scandal. I bought this book because I love beautiful women and biographies about the fast life in the 70s. This book satisfies on both counts. Not only is Janice beautiful but also virtually every other supermodel till the 90s is mentioned or pictured in the book.
Janice describes her destructive family life and through the typical desire and luck worms her way into the modeling business. Still only on the fringes of the business, she describes her European trips and how she is finally able to generate the heat necessary to grow into a supermodel. Of course, this leads to the failed marriages, self-destructive life style including sex and drugs, and an attitude to eventually hurt her career.

But this wild life makes an interesting read even though it is lightly written.

A second part of the book deals with life after modeling, her final two marriages, birth of her kids, her Stallone affair and the death of her father. It's almost sad at this point to see a person who had it all and how she had so many problems living happily. But that's the interesting part of the book seeing how she copes.

Some of us are built to go to work every day. And some, like Janice are built to live on the edge and reach for the stars. She may not be perfect but it was an interesting lifestyle although I suspect the Christian Coalition wouldn't agree. Read the book for fun.



Very Enlightening and Inspirational

Janice Dickinson is the first exotic supermodel who emerged from the 70s. Her look during that time was very controversial although her lineage was Polish, Irish and Scottish, she could have passed for Latin, Asian and other ethnicities, this propelled her to front international fashion magazine covers all over the world.
Her tale of abuse is very sad but she doesn't wallow in her own mistakes as an adult. She openly admits to her own drug problems and wild behavior, but it was because she never had a grounded childhood to prepare her for the fast life as a top model.

I've always wanted to know more about her but couldn't find enough on the Internet to really know the person. Now that I've read the book, I recommend it to all persons with an interest in fashion, to be inspired and just something entertaining to read.



Honest memoir by an early super model http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/detail/stars-5-0.gif

Janice Dickinson was one of the first models who not only broke the mold of the blonde, pale and WASP-y supermodel but turned it on upside down, in the tradition of Gia Carangi, Cindy Crawford and Beverly Johnson. Born with looks that turned heads and drove men to their knees, Dickinson was not as blessed when it came to her personal life and self-image. She seemed destined to self-destruct but somehow managed to recreate herself until time, drugs and her past caught up with her.
Does this sound like just another dreary tale of a beautiful woman who let fame go to her head. drugs muddle her brain and life pass her by? Think again. Pick this one up and I doubt you'll put it down again till you've read every sentence. FOr one thing, Dickinson has the courage to spill almost all about the ups and downs of her life (although I'd LOVE to read what she doesn't reveal) and that, in itself, is compelling. She's honest about many of her flaws and revealing about the lives of celebrities who cross her path, including Sylvester Stallone, Christie Brinkley, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and others. This makes for a juicy read. I'll leave it to you to decide what is true and what isn't. What I CAN say is that this book definitely isn't boring or dry. CAUTION: There are some nude photos in the photo spread so, depending on your values, you may not want to leave this one lying around the house.
Move over Simon ... heeeere's Janice!


upn.com

Janice Dickinson and Tyra Banks


Douglas Perry
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jul. 18, 2003 05:00 PM


Supermodel Tyra Banks, the show's host and executive producer, was "supposed" to be the star of the UPN guilty pleasure "America's Next Top Model." Along, of course, with the phalanx of barely dressed young women vying for runway glory.

So how did a guffawing, 48-year-old "former" supermodel end up being the one everyone was talking about?

"Because I'm a heat-seeking missile," exclaims Janice Dickinson, who served as one of the judges on the show. Dickinson calls herself "Next Top Model' "s "opinionated voice of reason." Viewers, and the show's wannabe models, would agree with at least the first part of that description. (This voice of reason said of one contestant: "There's so many "teeth" in her mouth. Maybe she should have a few removed.")

"America's Next Top Model", which crowned a winner last week, garnered 4.4 million viewers for the finale - a rare success in a downer summer for reality shows. UPN has already said there will be a second "ANTM", with Dickinson on board. Could she be the next Simon Cowell?

Dickinson says that would only be natural for her. She's already been a celebrity model, a celebrity photographer and a celebrity author. "Now I'm a huge television celebrity," she says. "I'm aiming to become the white Oprah."

And just who is this not-particularly-Oprah-like TV phenomenon? Dickinson, for those who didn't have a subscription to "Vogue" or "Cosmo" in the '70s and '80s, was a supermodel back when the title required more than killer looks. The Florida native trawled fashion runways and fashionable clubs in a drug-and-booze-fueled frenzy with the likes of Christie Brinkley, Jerry Hall and Iman. She had sex in closets, saw her breakup with Sylvester Stallone strafed across the cover of "National Enquirer," took up photography and finally got herself into rehab. She detailed it all in the 2002 memoir "No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel."

Is the book any good? Sure, if you like wild tales about sex, drugs and beautiful people - with a dash of sobered-up wisdom (and sex) thrown in at the end to tidy things up. But what makes Dickinson's tome stand out from all the other Hollywood memoirs is that she has a cheeky sense of humor about her self-absorption. Here's a snippet from her party-girl heyday:

""Calvin Klein showed up. I thought he'd be mad at me, given our recent blowup at his runway show, but he was very friendly. He kept telling me how hot I looked. "Fabulous. Yummy." And I "did" look hot. I was wearing a beautiful Sonya Rykiel cashmere dress, with pearls, and my hair was f---ing perfect. Just thinking about it now makes me hot. Excuse me for a moment . . .

"So where was I? Oh, right - in Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell's office, with Calvin and Iman. And Calvin invites us back to his place.' "'

Needless to say, that's about the tamest paragraph-and-a-half in the book (a few sentences later, Klein strips down to his underwear and knee socks - yes, you read that right, "knee" socks).

To her own surprise, Dickinson lived to tell about those party-hearty days - and the far more harrowing story of her father's sexual abuse of her. Now she's working on a "No Lifeguard" follow-up, which is due in April, while raising her son and daughter.

Which brings her back to that sobered-up wisdom. Dickinson says she is raising her children to recognize that "beauty is an afterthought, a footnote, to what's real, what's important in life. My kids really don't spend a lot of time in front of the mirror."

Of course, this new-found grounding in what's real doesn't mean it's easy to break old habits. In the "four" pages of acknowledgements in "No Lifeguard", she thanks "Dr. John Joseph for incredible Botox," two pages before she gives props to Alcoholics Anonymous and the man who "got me sober."

"What can I say?" Dickinson says with a laugh. "As the saying goes, I want to be the best-looking corpse there is."
"America's Next Top Model" Review

By Shawn McKenzie 05/21/2003

You could say that UPN’s “America’s Next Top Model” is the first show in what I am calling “the summer of reality.” I know…ever since “Survivor” debuted, every summer has been called that. The reason I think this summer will be distinctive is because the new fall season lineups are almost reality-show free (see the lineups here), so they want to get all their reality shows out of the way now. They figure people would rather watch relatively cheap-to-produce reality shows than reruns, and I would agree. This show is definitely a good way to kick the summer off.



Supermodel Tyra Banks created the show, which she also executive produces with Ken Mok. Twenty women tried out for one of the finalist slots in the competition. The women chosen will live together in a New York penthouse and will compete for a Grand Prize package featuring the opportunity to receive a Revlon modeling contract and to be managed by Wilhemina Models, in addition to a guaranteed appearance in Marie Claire magazine. Each week the women will be put through several tests, like complex catwalks, extreme physical fitness, fashion photo shoots, and publicity skills, all of which decides who makes the cut. Banks has many responsibilities on the show. In addition to executive producing the show, she also acts as a mentor to the women, and she is among the panel of judges who decide which women stay and which go. Billy Crystal’s Fernando would be out of place here; the women are judged on personality as well as beauty and modeling skills, so it is just as important to feel good as it is to look good. Other than Banks, the judges are made up of leading fashion industry experts that include former supermodel Janice Dickinson (who is the most opinionated of the judges), Marie Claire fashion editor Beau Quillian, and Baby Phat creative director Kimora Lee Simmons. In addition, a new special guest appears each week to judge in his or her area of expertise (in the first episode, the guest judge was Douglas Bizarro, the photographer who had shot their first photo session on a rooftop in the freezing cold.) The judges will examine each competitor and eliminate one potential each week.



Surprisingly, the show didn’t feature the audition process, or at least they didn’t show the tons of obvious losers. They did feature the audition process of the women who made it to the finals. I guess what I mean is that we didn’t see the auditions of the tons of girls fooling themselves into thinking that they are going to be a supermodel. They did reduce the finalists from twenty down to eight hopefuls in the first episode, but the ones left over were certainly potentials. It was bumped up to ten finalists, because, as Banks says, she likes “round numbers.” She conducted a nationwide search to find two more model potentials (the process of which we didn’t get to see.)



The ten finalists were certainly a diverse group. Ebony, 24, is a tall, bald, black lesbian, who doesn’t let any of that stop her. Elyse, 20, is a waifish, Winona Ryder-looking girl who claims to be a militant atheist. Shannon, 18, is the innocent Christian virgin who quotes the Bible all the time and says she has only gone as far as to kiss guys, since she is saving herself for marriage. Giselle, 18, and Katie, 21, are the two Latino girls in the house, so they feel that they share a common bond. Also sharing a common bond are the sleepy-looking Adrianne, 20, and Tessa, 19, because they are the only two in the house that smoke. Robin, 26, is the oldest and largest (in body weight) of the group, so she acts as sort of the Mother Hen and representation of plus-size models (though I wouldn’t call her fat…she is actually the healthiest looking one of the bunch.) Nicole, 22, impressed Bizarro with her ability to take directions. Kesse, 21, impressed Banks so much that she said that the girl could be her baby sister. Smoker Tessa was the one who was eliminated in the first episode, mainly because of her attitude and her awkward photo shoot. Ironically, she was one of the two finalists (along with Giselle) added to round out the competition.



When I heard about this show, I was dreading it. I thought it would either be a bad model version of “American Idol,” a physical beauty obsessed piece of crap like “Are You Hot?,” or just a boring competitive show like “All American Girl.” Fortunately, it is not like any of them. It isn’t exactly unique; various MTV shows have been doing this show’s style of reality for years, from “Road Rules” to last week’s “Surf Girls.” Actually, like “Surf Girls,” it is very specific in its interests. It is serious in the world of modeling, but unlike that MTV surf show, the competitors are a little more interesting. I couldn’t care less about modeling or style, but it was interesting to watch the personalities, especially of Elyse and Robin. It’s just like I don’t have any desire to be a singer, yet “American Idol” and “Nashville Star” drew me in because of the personalities of the competitors and the judges (the latter also because I am a huge country music fan.) I have two rules for a reality show to be considered good. Either they have to be an original concept or they have to have interesting people. It helps to have both. This show only has the latter, but that is okay. Some have neither.

“America’s Next Top Model” may not be the most original show, but it is a good way to kick off the 2003 “summer of reality.” It might also serve to help any potential girls wanting to be a model by showing them what they will have to go through. I am a little curious now…the show is called “America’s Next Top Model,” not “America’s Next Top Female Model.” Where is the next Tyson Beckford? (Yes…it’s sad that I know who he is…)


Janice Dickinson and Paris Hilton on the catwalk (right); Nikki Hilton, Tara Reid and Rhea Durham in the audience—this was a night of spectacle at the famed Studio 54 nightclub

by Richard Spiegel with Jack Yan

Photographed by Richard Spiegel



JANICE DICKINSON might not be the most likely choice of model to open a show at Studio 54, since legend has it that she once ODed there in the late 1970s. But Lloyd Klein, the Parisian designer now more based out west in Los Angeles, has never been afraid of a little glamorous spectacle—and his spring–summer 2003 collection at the infamous nightclub certainly had glamour and spectacle. Dickinson might have made some headlines with a dress with a plunging neckline and her new occupation as an author (No Lifeguard on Duty recently launched), but she did share the stage with socialite–model Paris Hilton, who appeared and closed the show in a flowing, open wedding dress. And in the audience were none other than her sister, Nikki; between the pair of them they have not only appeared more in the press but their enfants terribles image has steadily disappeared. ‘It's the Hilton sisters’—and we look forward to that, rather than fear where they might next appear (refer features’ editor Phillip Johnson’s article from the Swarovski show last year). Their mates Tara Reid and Rhea Durham added to the A-list spectacle at the event. Fitting, after all: Pink had worn Lloyd Klein clothing in her videos.
There is a slight change from mere black, a Klein staple in some past collections, with white tossed in as contrast. Another welcome addition we noticed was the increase in the number of proper dresses, including some reaching floor length. Laced backs were another feature.
Klein has also continued his small menswear line that had a few looks in the show. Straightforward jackets and slacks for the boys as well as Lloyd Klein underwear. We found the underwear cute with pink swimming sperm logos but will it fly? Perhaps—the cheeky new lad humour might just make it across the Atlantic and Lloyd Klein could herald this.
Opinion was divided at this office about the collection: some felt Lloyd Klein's fall 2002 collection was stronger stylistically; others felt this was an evolution brought on by the economy (reliable colours) and not any slip in the designer's style. •

Visit Lloyd Klein

Purchase No Lifeguard on Duty: the Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel, by Janice Dickinson

Richard Spiegel is New York editor of Lucire. Jack Yan is founding publisher of Lucire.
No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel
Janice Dickinson - Regan Books - Hardcover




Books written by famous people often have an air of phoniness to them, as if to say, “Sure, this book is about me, but I don’t want to let you know too much about my life.” Say what you want about Janice Dickinson, she doesn’t hold back. The Florida native -- a model and photographer whose work on both sides of the camera has graced the covers of most of the major magazines in the world – has written a pretty candid book about her tumultuous life.

From her deeply troubled her relationship with her parents (her father beat her and sexually abused her older sister, as her mother stood by doing next to nothing to help her children) to her many problematic romantic relationships (she’s been married three times, and, it seems, dated half the heterosexual men in the fashion and entertainment industries) to her early struggle to succeed as a model and her battles with drugs and alcohol, Dickinson’s life has been packed with drama.

Dickinson left home in her teens to pursue a modeling career and found doors slammed in her face, because she was an exotic brunette at a time when all-American blondes were the rage. However, her persistence and drop-dead beauty won out and she went on to become a huge success, particularly overseas.

No Lifeguard on Duty charts her journey to the top, and the problems she encountered both along the way and after she attained success. It’s fairly typical celeb-bio stuff. The thing that makes it interesting is Dickinson’s complete candor. It’s no wonder so many of the people she encounters seem so enchanted with her. She has no fear of speaking her mind. Her reflections on the past are littered with profanity, pointed observations about herself and others and even humor.

Best of all, she doesn’t feel the need to depict herself as a martyr or saint. Dickinson knows she’s made some mistakes in her life and, while many of them are connected to the abuse she suffered as a child, she acknowledges that a lot of her pain comes from an inability to properly confront her past. Her ability to look back on her mistakes with fairly clear eyes lends her memoir a certain depth.

It’s not too deep, however. It still has many of the features of a typical Hollywood autobiography – name-dropping, detailed depictions of glorious decadent fun in Europe and domestically. But at least you can tell that Dickinson really is trying to examine her life and change it for the better. And that is truly refreshing.


© 2002 by Amanda Cuda for Curled Up With a Good Book
Saga of the world's first supermodel
By George Epaminondas
October 1 2002
The Sun-Herald


Janice Dickinson was the world's first supermodel, or so she says. She also bedded Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone, insulted Giorgio Armani and tried to drown a traumatic past.

Her descent on the world of modelling in the 1970s was like a scene from Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman: a female colossus with skyscraper limbs, unquenchable desires and hell-raising spirit. Janice Dickinson was predisposed to dancing on tables, to seducing well-known men, to imbibing a blizzard of cocaine and guzzling a river of champagne. At a fashion show for Valentino, she famously stepped off the runway into the lap of a horrified Sophia Loren. She called Giorgio Armani by the name of his arch rival, Gianni Versace. She went skinny dipping in a public fountain in Rome, causing fights to break out and the police to arrive. Dickinson was hell on heels.

Before she careened headlong into the New York glamour scene, the era of apple-pie beauties such as Cheryl Tiegs, Lauren Hutton and Christie Brinkley, models were a white-bread bunch. At first Dickinson, with her dark, exotic looks, was considered too unorthodox, too edgy to join their virtuous ranks - she was even told so by modelling matriarch Eileen Ford. Still, nothing could stop the reincarnated Amazon.

"I had to fight like hell to convince people I was beautiful in my own Polish half-breed way," she writes in her titillating new book, No Lifeguard On Duty: The Accidental Life Of The World's First Supermodel, a real-life Jackie Collins saga.

Describing Dickinson's pill-popping, bed-hopping ways, the autobiography is every bit the page turner, and is already strutting the bestseller lists in the US. As a model she was fearless; there was nothing she wouldn't do for a picture. Photographer Peter Beard once had her scale a bask of sleepy crocodiles in her G-string. As a writer, Dickinson is equally dauntless. Her visits to rehab, her two abortions, her three marriages and the legacy of her abusive father are all here in lurid detail. The reader learns that she lost her virginity on LSD. That her first husband was a heroin addict. And that she once had a breakdown in a closet, only to be rescued by a concerned friend.

Now 47 and the mother of two kids, Nathan, 15, and Savannah, 8, Dickinson is a photographer and occasional mannequin based in Los Angeles. You might presume, given all the years that have flown by, that the original dragon lady of modelling might have mellowed a bit, but you would be wrong. When she calls on her mobile phone, riding in a car with her new boyfriend, whom she refuses to identify, she is as riotous and as righteous as ever. "Is that George of the Jungle?" she asks teasingly. Words leave her lips at a spitball pace, and many of her observations are peppered with the braggadocios of the woman who allegedly coined the term supermodel.

Asked, for instance, what she makes of the current constellation of models orbiting fashion, Dickinson admits she feels only pity. "I really do feel sorry for them. Celebrity is hawking make-up, cars, everything; it's shifted. In my day, I, being the first supermodel, I hawked everything. Today the new girls can't even hawk their way out of a paper bag, although these bitches are getting top dollar. They're not able to reap the harvest of their notoriety." Point out that Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen seems to be doing well for herself, Dickinson agrees: "She's the reigning ruler. Could play me in the movie. She could be mini me. She could be the one."

The dark undercurrent in the book, and in her life up until recently, is Dickinson's torrid relationship with her late father. Growing up in sun-dappled Florida, the second of three daughters, Dickinson was subjected to a tirade of physical and emotional abuse, hence the book's title. Though she resisted her father's incestuous advances, Alexis, the eldest, was not as fortunate. "He was rageaholic, he was a paedophile, he was a very dark creature," says Dickinson, thinking back. Her mother, a nurse with a penchant for prescription drugs, was oblivious to it all. Burnt into Dickinson's psyche was her father's constant curse: "You'll never amount to nothing!"

So even when her career was sizzling with the attentions of the leading magazines, photographers and advertisers of the day, Dickinson was plagued by insecurities instilled by the "rat bastard", as she calls him.

"No amount of Vogue covers, Harry Winston diamonds, couture, mansions ... nothing filled that hole," she says. She tried filling it with other things. Cocaine for one. And a rapid succession of men, from whom she craved unconditional love, validation and approval - everything her father had never given her. She veered dangerously close to self-destruction, and she lost many friends along the way, including the model and addict Gia Carangi.

Along with all the Sturm und Drang unveiled in the bio is Dickinson's wicked humour. Models get a bad rap for being dumb, she writes, but "most of us can actually walk and talk and snort coke at the same time". At a Calvin Klein show in Asia, she reached for what she assumed was a vitamin C capsule - but it was a Quaalude and she promptly collapsed. To this day, Klein has never forgiven her. Even more tell-all are her sexual exploits. After shooting with the macho French photographer Mike Reinhardt, a man she would later move in with, Dickinson writes, "I wanted him so bad my Little Flower barked." She is also prone to addressing people directly in the book, apologising to Anjelica Huston for sleeping with her partner at the time, Jack Nicholson.

No Lifeguard On Duty reads like a memoir of all the men the author has enjoyed carnally. As a lover, Nicholson was passable. "You were OK, Jack," she writes. As she was leaving his hotel room, Nicholson offered this titbit of advice: "Don't tell anyone you've got star cum inside you." Warren Beatty was better at pushing her buttons, but he was a narcissist given to staring at his reflection for hours on end. Not surprisingly Dickinson also connected with the notorious modeliser Mick Jagger. "Our mouths were like two oversized electrical hook-ups, made for each other." And this of actor Liam Neeson: "He peeled off his pants and an Evian bottle popped out."

Dickinson's most meaningful celebrity dalliance was with Sylvester Stallone. For a while it seemed as if the mighty midget ("I couldn't believe how short he was," she quips in print) had fathered her daughter, but an extended paternity suit, played out in the tabloids, proved otherwise.

Like Nicholson, Stallone employed a curious post-coital refrain: "Bam ham slam". "Actually, it should have been 'Bam slam ham'; that was a misprint," says Dickinson, and she still sounds aggrieved by it. "How the hell would you feel after Sly Stallone gets done mounting you and all you get from the experience is 'Bam slam ham'? I was astounded. That's all you have to say to the goddess?" Do they still talk? "No," she sputters, "he's a married man."

The French have a term for an unconventionally good-looking woman: jolie laide. Dickinson, you could say, was jolie laid, the sex-you-up supermodel who frequently appeared in magazines "wading through a piranha-infested swamp in the African bush, looking like I'd just been laid - by an entire village". Early on, the sexy, salacious work she did in Paris must have appeared threatening to the American editors. But eventually they all wanted a piece of her. "I was hot and I knew it and it went to my head," she writes.

Dickinson helped to hike up model fees, demanding $20,000 ($A36,000) for an advertising job when the going rate was $5,000, switching agencies in the process.

Years later, Linda Evangelista would be widely quoted saying she didn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. "Puhleeeze. I couldn't believe it," fumes Dickinson. "She must have had a coke hangover that morning. I thought that was the most ridiculous, selfish..." she stops herself. "Well, we all make mistakes. I enjoy getting out of bed in the morning. I enjoy posing. [Esteemed British photographer] Norman Parkinson said, 'Janice, jump' and I would say, 'How high?' There's a difference: I was grateful.

I really wanted to make it and I broke open the market and the mould for these exotic types like Linda. They wouldn't have got arrested if I hadn't come along."

Dickinson is adept at burnishing her own legacy. But her claims of coining the expression, as well as inventing the profession, of supermodel are unfounded. Says Michael Gross, the author of Model: The Ugly Business Of Beautiful Women, "With all due respect to the ever-amusing Miss Dickinson, Anita Colby, Dorian Leigh, Suzy Parker, Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy were all supermodels before Janice, even if the superlative hadn't yet become popular." In his book, Gross traces the etymology of the term to a small-time model agent, Clyde Matthew Dessner, in 1948 - seven years before Dickinson was born. "But I like Janice," adds Gross. "The first time I saw her was in the men's room of an Italian restaurant with her hand down some guy's pants."

Even off-camera she burned, swinging past the velvet rope at Studio 54, hanging out with Andy Warhol, Keith Richards and John Belushi. Decades before Naomi Campbell walloped her personal assistant, before Kate Moss stood by a hotel-trashing Johnny Depp, Dickinson was the original bad girl of modelling. Of all her crazy stunts, perhaps the nuttiest was the time she hightailed it to Rome, rented a nun's habit and had sex in a church confessional with a man she barely knew. What prompted that? "Running from the devil. Unresolved child conflicts once again. Excessive behaviour and sexual perversion was part of that. I was young and wild and woolly and I wasn't married. So I had sex in a confessional - big f***ing deal. Would I do it again? I might."

The scene where her father dies is gut-wrenching and must have been a challenge to write. Dickinson is standing next to the trolley in the hospital screaming, "Die - I hate you!"

"I wish it could have been different," she says, sounding dispirited. "Just last Sunday, in the middle of this gruelling book tour, I was able to relax in a jacuzzi, and I saw a father embracing two of his young children. They were bouncing on his knee, they were safe, they were happy, and a feeling came up from the abyss of my soul which means this stuff still hurts. I didn't have that feeling of safety and innocence as a child. Thank God I was sitting in a jacuzzi and no-one saw me sobbing."

Writing the book was a cathartic experience, and Dickinson is already at work on a sequel called Everything About Me Is Fake: I'm Perfect. "It had taken me 40 years to figure out that I'd spent my entire life seeing myself as my father had seen me," she writes in an epiphanic moment.

She's been sober for two years and says she still attends AA meetings. She certainly hasn't lost any of her sassiness, though. Being Janice, before hanging up and speeding off into the LA sunset, she offers up her own version of bam slam ham. The voice comes down the phone line insistent and slightly demented: "I hope you nail this interview - and if you don't I'll cut your cock off."
Fun on the Sly!

Stallone scores a KO for his bed work with Dickinson

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Amy Reiter Salon Magazine

Feb. 13, 2002 | Guess they don't call Sylvester Stallone "Rocky" for nothin'.

In her upcoming autobiography, "Car Wreck Woman: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel," excerpted on Glamour.com, model and serial celebrity-dater Janice Dickinson says that of all the men she's slept with -- John Kennedy Jr., John Cusack, Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson included -- sassy Sly was able to go the most rounds in the sack.

"Stallone is the most incredible lover I've ever known," Dickinson gushes. "Until you've been thrown in bed and Rambo-ed all night, you cannot understand the meaning of great sex. I had bells going off in my head."

So considerate a lover was the heavy-lidded heavyweight, he offered to treat Dickinson to a new set of breast implants.

But the model refused the gesture.

"I already had my own," she said.

Translation: Just send a check, Sly.
source: Vogue.com

DICKINSON'S STORY


SIXTIES supermodel Janice Dickinson claims that Jerry Hall once threatened her with a gun for embarking on an affair with Mick Jagger. Details of the shocking episode emerge in her forthcoming no-holds-barred autobiography, which is bound to rock the fashion world. "My story is a cautionary tale about incest, drugs, sex, rock 'n' roll, Studio 54 and fashion, fashion, fashion," she tells the New York Post. "Along the way I dated a few Academy Award winners. But there is substance and ingredient there." Dickinson's book, No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel gives detailed accounts (including marks out of ten) of her affairs with numerous high-profile men, including Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. It is a book that is likely to shock, entertain, and no doubt upset a great many of the celebrity friends she has left. But the 47-year-old poser doesn't care. "Are the men I wrote about going to be upset? So what?" she asks. "They were fair game. They were single. I was the hottest girl at the moment. I wrote the book longhand. The words just flew. It wasn't hard at all. Every page has punch." (August 23 2002, AM)


The September 2, 2002 issue of US Weekly contains an article about Janice Dickinson by Anna David. The quote and pic of Janice and Sly accompanies the article.

- Craig Zablo
[August 18, 2002]
Janice Dickinson
Biographical Information

Janice Dickinson, The World's First Supermodel
Photo from: Janice Dickinson Photo Gallery
Conde Nast Inc.
Birthday: February 28, 1955
Birth Place: Hollywood, Florida USA

Biography:

Say what you like about Janice Dickinson because she doesn't care. From Paris to New York to Milan Dickinson broke down barriers in the fashion industry all while maintaining her image as a Studio 54 wild child. In the late 1970's Dickinson's career hit its peak with Dickinson recieving campaigns with Revlon, Calvin Klein and countless magazine covers. However, due to substance abuse, Dickinson's career began to wane in the mid 1980's leading her to reinvent herself as a successful photographer based in Los Angeles. In 2003 Dickinson appeared on the hit UPN television series 'America's Next Top Model' and became an instant sensation once again. Currently single she is the mother of a son, Nathan and a daughter, Savannah. She resides in Bel-Air, California.

source: TVTOME
Saturday, September 28, 2002

A moment with ... Janice Dickinson, model/photographer/author

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF


Days after graduating from high school in Hollywood, Fla., Janice Dickinson headed for New York seeking a modeling career. She'd won a national competition, "Miss High Fashion Model," and thought New York was waiting for her. Wrong! Eileen Ford, head of the legendary modeling agency, declared Dickinson, who is Polish, "Much too ethnic. You'll never work."


Photos from her book "No Lifeguard on Duty" show Dickinson during her modeling career.
In the 1970s, blue-eyed blondes ruled runways, magazine covers and the ads inside. But another agency owner, Wilhelmina, thought she had an interesting look and signed her on. French and Italian designers and photographers adored her. She returned to New York as one of the first supermodels, earning $2,000 per day when the going rate was about $75.

Drugs, alcohol and a new crop of models pushed her from the limelight. At 33 she moved to L.A. to "reinvent myself." At 40 she hit bottom. Today, at 47, she's clean, sober, a PTA member. And she's written a book, "No Lifeguard on Duty" that tells all -- from childhood abuse to sexual encounters with everyone from Mick Jagger to Sylvester Stallone.

On modeling today: "It's an ugly, dark industry. Last week in New York (working as a guest editor for More magazine) there were still empty Champagne bottles backstage at shows. Mothers don't let your daughters grow up to be models unless you're present. Photo shoots for underage girls are like letting an ant walk around with honey. Savvy (her daughter) wants to be a veterinarian and that's fine with me."

On self-help books: "Self-help books are for the birds. Self-help groups are where it's at. Or, use 'No Lifeguard on Duty' as a No. 1 self-help book. I've been the queen of dysfunction and made every mistake one can make."


On surviving three marriages: "Because I'm an alcoholic and drug addict, because I spent my life running and drowning, I wish I knew (then) what I know now, thanks to my recovery program. I wish I'd gotten sober at a younger age. I got moral. My children are raised morally."

On her mantra ("Fake it till you make it"): "It came from the 12-step program. It means 'act as if': Act like a courteous person. Act as if you're a human being. I made mistakes by being a narcissistic bitch."

On her best pickup line: "I can wrap my legs around my neck. (She demonstrates.) Can you? It worked with Stallone."

-- Susan Phinney
Subject: A model who thinks she's *too* smart
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
Date: 2003-06-04 06:48:40 PST


NY POST / By DON KAPLAN
----------------------------------
HERE'S a new reality show twist: a brainy model-wannabe is begging to be thrown
off "America's Next Top Model" because the other contestants are so "dumb."
Elyse Sewell - a raven-haired, clinical researcher from Texas with degrees in
Spanish and biology - may be the most fascinating character on reality TV right
now.

She startled viewers last week when she verbally sliced up her fellow
contestants on the UPN show - calling them "vapid. . . wasteful . . and dumb."

Then she announced she really had no business being on the series - a sort-of
"American Idol" for models - in the first place.

Sewell wants to be a doctor and said she'll be in medical school by August if
the whole supermodel thing doesn't work out.

The best part is it appears now that she has a good chance to win the
grand-prize - including a big-bucks deal with Revlon and a contract with
Wilhelmina Models.

"She absolutely has what it takes. Her attitude rocks," says Janice Dickinson,
one of the show's judges who is credited with being the first supermodel.
Sewell - who is sequestered by the show until the end of the show (or is thrown
off) and is not permitted to speak to reporters - got everyone's attention last
week with a blistering tirade delivered out of earshot of the judges and other
contestants.

She called one contestant: "worthless . . . wasteful, bitchy, stupid. Your
parents must be ashamed of you." Then added: "I don't have the will to walk on
the catwalk. It's so irrelevant. Eliminate me. Do it!"

But on last night's episode Sewell seemed to have found a second wind. She won
a makeup contest and night out to meet fashonistas who could boost her
potential career as a top model.

On the show, 10 women move into a New York loft and are schooled in the ways of
modeling. One gets axed each week by a panel of judges that includes show's
executive producer, supermodel Tyra Banks.
Subject: Tabloid BITS AND PIECES 10/10
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
Date: 2002-10-10 06:46:03 PST

STAR MAGAZINE....--


TALK about lip service! Supermodel Janice Dickinson says she was so wild
about JFK Jr. she made out with him outside a ladies' room – even though he
was dating future wife Carolyn Bessette! "I kissed him hard," boasts Dickinson,
45, who was one of the world's top models in the 1980s. "He was a fabulous
kisser." Dickinson told Steppin' Out magazine she met the Camelot heir on a
"blind date." He took her to New York's fabled Studio 54, where she says they
made out "on top of the bubblegum machine near the ladies' bathroom. He had a
girlfriend he didn't tell me about. Her name was Carolyn (Bessette)." JFK Jr.
wasn't her only beau. Dickinson says she bedded Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty,
Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Prince Albert, Liam Neeson and others. She
also claims a sexy lesbian romp with Kelly LeBrock, ex-wife of martial-arts
star Steven Seagal, and a naughty threesome with Rocky IV bad guy Dolph
Lundgren and James Bond villainess Grace Jones.
"Until you've been thrown in bed and Rambo-ed all night, you cannot
understand the meaning of great sex. I had bells going off in my head."

- Janice Dickinson
Subject: Models of bad behavior
Newsgroups: alt.gossip.celebrities
Date: 1998/09/29


source: NATIONAL ENQUIRER


JANICE: A Sexual Hellcat

Hell-raiser Janice Dickinson is living proof that beauty is only skin deep!
JANICE duped Sly into thinking he was father of her baby. The brunette model
plopped herself in President Ronald Reagan's lap, called JFK Jr. a bore and
dubbed Jack Nicholson her "most amazing lover."

But her baddest conquest came when she tricked Sly Stallone into thinking that
her baby was Stallone's daughter!

"In the week I conceived, I had made love with five different men,"
bed-hopping Janice later confessed.

Janice's pregnancy ruse lured Sly away from younger model Jennifer Flavin. An
elated Sly paid Janice's medical bills and gave her $19,000 a month in spending
money.

Things got "Rocky" when he set eyes on little Savannah.

"She didn't have my coloring, and it caused an alarm to go off in my mind," Sly
told The ENQUIRER.

When friends hinted he'd been duped, Sly asked that the baby undergo DNA tests.
Janice scoffed the tests were faulty, but when three of them came back negative
Sly knew he wasn't the tot's dad.

"I felt Janice had made me a fool in front of the world!" he fumed.

Sly and Jennifer made up, married and started a family. Janice married -- and
divorced -- Hollywood nightclub owner Albert Gersten.