Good morning,

Welcome back to The Backstory, your weekend review of the most-worthy new work at Puck.

It was another exhilarating week: Matt Belloni sat down with Jon Favreau to trade notes on The Mandalorian, A.I., and the new Lucasfilm regime; Kim Masters weighed the industry’s appetite for a Joel Silver second act; Eriq Gardner flagged a Ninth Circuit ruling that could rattle the NFL’s media empire; Dylan Byers revealed Jim Bankoff’s plan to sell Vox Media for parts (and broke out New York’s revenue for the bankers); Bill Cohan diagnosed Bill Ackman’s family office meltdown; Ian Krietzberg clocked Silicon Valley’s Anthropic R.O.I. anxiety; John Ourand gamed out Sunday Night Football’s future suitors; Julia Alexander wondered when Roger Goodell would hand Amazon the Super Bowl; Lauren Sherman scrutinized Louis Vuitton’s place in the LVMH empire; Rachel Strugatz documented the rise of a MAGA beauty brand; Sarah Shapiro checked in on Nordstrom’s private-company glow-up; Malique Morris dissected the latest leg in Nike’s comeback tour; and Marion Maneker toured the Acquavella family’s Matisse stronghold and kicked off a new series with art market oracle Clare McAndrew.

Meanwhile, down in D.C., Peter Hamby chronicled the Eric Swalwell implosion; Leigh Ann Caldwell evaluated the Democrats’ impeachment itch and pressed Sen. Todd Young on his Iran endgame vision; Julia Ioffe deflated the liberal fantasy around Viktor Orbán’s defeat; and Abby Livingston read the midterm tea leaves with Senate seer Jessica Taylor.

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

Lauren Sherman probes Louis Vuitton’s stature inside Bernard Arnault’s house of brands and spills the tea on Kering’s investor day.
and…
Rachel Strugatz highlights the beauty industry’s underserved MAGA market through Brittany Aldean’s Vada launch.
meanwhile…
Malique Morris dissects the status of Nike’s turnaround under Elliott Hill, while Sarah Shapiro checks in on Nordstrom’s Saks-fueled ascent.

Marion Maneker illuminates the Acquavella family’s stewardship of the Matisse market, reviews MoMA’s Duchamp retrospective, and unpacks the industry’s $59.6 billion year with Clare McAndrew.

Matt Belloni uncovers a CinemaCon civil war and sits down with Jon Favreau to discuss The Mandalorian’s jump to theaters.
and…
Kim Masters weighs Hollywood’s appetite for a Joel Silver sequel.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner flags the Ninth Circuit ruling that could undercut the NFL’s TV empire.

Ian Krietzberg captures the Anthropic R.O.I. anxiety at HumanX and pressure-tests Dario Amodei’s Mythos doomsaying.

James Wolcott offers a deep meditation on the Anna Wintour–Miranda Priestly metamorphosis.
and…
Carolina de Armas and Paulina Prosnitz provide the definitive (and degendered) Air Mail literary guide.

Dylan Byers walks through the sale process for Jim Bankoff’s Vox Media breakup plan.
and…
Julia Alexander prophecies how journalism will reinvent itself in the age of A.I.

John Ourand envisions a potential forthcoming streaming brawl over Sunday Night Football.
and…
Julia Alexander contemplates whether (and when) Roger Goodell might actually hand the Super Bowl over to Amazon.

Bill Cohan diagnoses the family office drama threatening Bill Ackman’s I.P.O. roadshow.

Peter Hamby unearths the root causes of Eric Swalwell’s implosion and its California aftershocks.
and…
Leigh Ann Caldwell clocks the Democrats’ impeachment temptation and presses Sen. Todd Young for an Iran endgame, presented by the Association of American Railroads.
and…
Julia Ioffe punctures the liberal fantasy around Viktor Orbán’s defeat.
meanwhile…
Abby Livingston decodes the midterm map with Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor.

Dylan and former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim philosophize about legacy TV news survival on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and Dylan dig into The New York Times’s Russini-ghazi on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren and 032c fashion editor-at-large Brenda Weischer cut it up about Coachella red carpets, Met Gala tech bros, and Devil Wears Prada mania on Fashion People.
and…
John Heilemann and Kara Swisher get into the longevity-industrial complex on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Lucas Shaw hash out the Bieber, Ye, and Ackman–UMG music-biz trifecta on The Town.
and…
Peter and Julia Ioffe get into Pete Hegseth’s beef with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll on The Powers That Be, while Leigh Ann grills Sen. Young about what’s next in Iran.

As a reminder, you can update your profile at any time to get more stories like these directly in your inbox. Click here to customize your email settings.

All Photos: Patrick McMullan/PMC/Getty Images

On Monday evening, during the unseasonably warm April twilight, I set out from Puck’s Lower Tribeca offices and trudged up West Broadway en route to the Odeon. Like most people who grew up in Lower Manhattan and came of age in the media business, the iconic restaurant has been a rare and timeless monument amid the city’s never-ending metamorphosis—a veritable bohemian UNESCO site, a totem of the creativity that defined the ’70s and ’80s, largely unchanged since it was enshrined in the pages and on the cover of Jay McInerney’s canonical Bright Lights, Big City.

In many ways, the night was devoted to this heritage. My partner Julia Vitale, the editor-in-chief of Air Mail, which Puck acquired late last year, was co-hosting a dinner at the Odeon in honor of Jay’s new novel, See You on the Other Side. Happily, the evening was also intended to commemorate his new column at Air Mail, which will be devoted to the oenophilic arts. The first installment, which captured some of the essence of the dinner and explained his own indulgence journey from Bolivian marching powder to Agrapart champagne, dropped this morning, and I couldn’t recommend it more strongly.

It was a beautiful event, and a true New York pinch-me moment—dinner at the Odeon in honor of the man who ushered it into the cultural lexicon, all on one of those gorgeous nights during which it’s impossible to imagine that life exists anywhere outside New York. Julia curated a mighty and eclectic mix to soak it all in. In addition to Jay and his wife, party co-host Anne Hearst McInerney, the joint was jumping with a resplendent crew: Air Mail’s new fashion and style guru, Rickie de Sole; Emily Ratajkowski; Peter Malachi; Morgan Entrekin; Ari Melber; Adam Rapoport; Batsheva Hay; Cynthia Rowley; Eric Ripert; Flynn McGarry; Risa Heller; Liz Gough; Ginger Chan; Ken Auletta and Binky Urban; Ash Carter; George Pendle; Carolina de Armas; Paulina Prosnitz; Elena Clavarino; Jeanne Malle; Dana Brown; Nancy Bass; Cristina Cuomo; Debbie Bancroft; and many more. Mesmerizingly, the evening was captured on camera by the legendary party photographer Patrick McMullan. (Look him up, kids.)

Context switching is perhaps my favorite part of the job, and the next day I was off to Washington for my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell’s latest Puck Power Breakfast—an interview with Sen. Todd Young, who sits on the prestigious and quite relevant Senate Intelligence Committee. Sitting in an elegant conference room at the Ned, overlooking the White House and all those cranes in pursuit of the president’s ghastly ballroom, Young came out firing regarding Trump’s little excursion in Iran. “I read a witty line the other day—that the only thing that has not ceased is firing,” Young told Leigh Ann during the conversation, which forms the basis of her excellent piece Young & The Restless. “So, do I think this whole thing is going to hold? The Iranians have had some success with their horizontal escalation strategy, which should have been predicted. I think they’ll continue to maintain that leverage. So it’s hard to tell. But the president is our commander-in-chief. It’s his charge to come up with a strategy to get us out of this.”

Young is a passionate and forthright guy, and I appreciated his candor. Yes, it’s true that he doesn’t have to worry about running for reelection until Trump is out of the White House, but he also vividly articulated numerous concerns that dominate so many private conversations inside the Capitol. If you have a moment this weekend, I encourage you to curl up with Young & The Restless for a cogent reminder of the rules of engagement in the Middle East, and the political calamity that can befall any politician who can’t handle the straight talk when the lights are truly the brightest. It’s one of the definitive storylines of our age and precisely what you can always expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006