Good morning,

As always, it was another fabulous week: Matt Belloni ran the numbers on a generation of potential box office saviors; Julia Alexander scrutinized a Peacock pivot; Eriq Gardner presaged a Trump tax on Hollywood; Dylan Byers assessed the Times activist investor sitch; John Ourand dug into the YouTube-Fox dispute and the Belichick media blackout; Lauren Sherman got to the bottom of the Natalie Massenet nightmare; Rachel Strugatz unearthed clues of an Estée Lauder turnaround; Sarah Shapiro performed some back-of-the envelope math on the tennis economy; Bill Cohan waded into the president’s bond portfolio; Marion Maneker offered some refined Sotheby’s-ology; Julie Davich picked through the Karpidas lots; and Ian Krietzberg caught up on the new wave of A.I. visual effects tools.

Meanwhile, Leigh Ann Caldwell previewed the fall’s biggest congressional battles over Trump’s total rule; Julia Ioffe dissected the latest Russia-Ukraine kremlinology; John Heilemann asked emerging Democratic star James Talarico about his Senate ambitions; and Abby Livingston foreshadowed the next steps of the redistricting mess.

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

P.S.: If you’re in D.C. on September 2, Abby is hosting a special Puck Live event with House Agriculture Committee chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson from 5 to 8 p.m. ET, presented by the Modern Ag Alliance. You can RSVP here.

Lauren Sherman breaks down the Massenet scandal.
and…
Rachel Strugatz details the latest twists in the Estée Lauder Cos. soap opera.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro evaluates the growth of the tennis retail market.

Marion Maneker considers the possible fallout from Sotheby’s employees’ side dealing habit.
and…
Julie Davich canvasses tastemaker Pauline Karpidas’s fabulous collection.

Matt Belloni gets his hands on some exclusive data about Gen Alpha’s surprising affinity for the big screen.
and…
Eriq Gardner ponders how Trump might apply his Intel standard to Tinseltown.
meanwhile…
Julia Alexander explains the strategy underpinning Peacock’s rollout plan for its spinoff of The Office.

Ian Krietzberg interrogates the C.E.O.s of two companies making A.I. tools for Hollywood creatives.

Dylan Byers surveys a new activist investor gambit at The New York Times Co.
and…
John Ourand explores a Fox–YouTube TV carriage brawl and the Belichick intrigue.
and…
Julia Alexander examines a YouTube micro-innovation.

Bill Cohan lifts the hood on Trump’s bond portfolio to offer a theory on his ulterior motives.

Leigh Ann Caldwell previews a post–Labor Day Capitol Hill throwdown.
and…
Abby Livingston has the latest on the burgeoning redistricting crisis.
and…
Julia Ioffe analyzes the post-Anchorage Summit state of affairs.
meanwhile…
John Heilemann chats up emerging Democratic star James Talarico.

Dylan welcomes former NBC News chairman Andy Lack to The Grill Room.
and…
ProFootballTalk’s Mike “F’n” Florio prophesies some Goodell succession options with Ourand on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren huddles up with bridal designer Danielle Frankel on Fashion People.
and…
Heilemann and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul chew over the Anchorage tête-à-tête on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Scott Mendelson grade the summer box office on The Town.
and…
Peter Hamby and I discuss MSNBC’s next wave of challenges on The Powers That Be.

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Last Thursday evening, I got a text from my partner Lauren Sherman that made me smile. Technically, we were both trying to take a couple late-summer days off before the usual business acceleration on the other side of Labor Day. I was with my family in Bay Head, a beautiful and untouched little beach town along the New Jersey coastline, and she was ensconced in Santa Barbara, overlooking the Pacific. But at 9:48 p.m. she pinged me: “Worth breaking vacation boundaries…” and attached a link to a Daily Mail story detailing the tragic personal and professional dissolution of Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and Imaginary Ventures, and Erik Torstensson, also a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of Frame, the L.A. denim line.

The details of Massenet’s complaint were explosive and horrifying. Massenet accused her former partner of spending more than $95 million on real estate, lifestyle expenses, and vacations—money that he had promised to “repay … in kind.” Worse, she accused him of essentially being a social climber and grifter, a fashion industry Kato Kaelin who had traded on her name and connections for his own gain. And, yes, there were also plenty of prurient accusations that turned this affair of the heart-and-wallet gone wrong into a veritable tabloid bonfire. 

Not only was this spicy stuff, it was also economically consequential. The couple had inadvisedly intertwined love and commerce in ways that were hard to untangle. To give but one example: Imaginary’s most appreciable investment is a position in Skims, which was started by Torstensson’s current and former business partner in various ventures. (Torstensson has a piece of the company, too.) Massenet’s complaint began with an old but telling quote that Torstensson had given to an L.A. Times reporter: “Natalie once said, ‘You’re my best investment. I hope.’”

Anyway, Lauren and I are both workaholics, and she wanted a quick gut check to ensure that she shouldn’t break free of her family to put something together for the following day’s issue of Line Sheet, her sui generis private email on the fashion industry. I respected and admired the urge. And under different circumstances, I might have taken her up on it. But I also knew that, as the authoritative voice of the fashion industry, she didn’t need to weigh in first. Her eventual contribution, whenever she produced it, would become the defining statement on this whole sordid affair. And, frankly, I savored the notion that the entire industry would be salivating in anticipation of the Massenet-Torstensson imbroglio receiving the Lauren Sherman treatment.

On Thursday evening, a full week later, Lauren published her long-awaited Weapons of Massenet Destruction, which elegantly sorted through the personal detritus of the breakup and laid bare the dizzying financial dynamics. Indeed, Massenet released her complaint just as Imaginary was closing a new fund, and while the Skims I.P.O. chatter continues to hum along at a high octave. And, yes, there were some personal details, too. “Should Massenet have taken the high road and pushed Torstensson privately to pay what she believed was his share of expenses in order for her to maintain their lifestyle?” Lauren wrote. “My understanding, from multiple parties, is that Massenet believed there was no other way forward than the nuclear option, no matter the reverberations. Massenet, a former journalist, may have calculated the impact of a narrative that reversed the traditional power dynamic: a case in which a towering business visionary, who was bankrolling an exploitative younger bimbo, had run out of patience.” I can’t recommend this piece strongly enough, especially over a long weekend.

But since it is a long weekend, I’ll turn your attention to one more—Bill Cohan’s customarily brilliant piece on Trump’s machinations around the Fed, Nothing But a Jay Thing. Among other issues, Bill connects Trump’s lust for lower interest rates to the president’s personal stock and bond holdings. Sometimes uncomfortable personal details emerge in a court filing. These days, though, they’re often just sitting there in plain sight. That’s one of the leitmotifs or our time, and precisely what you should expect to read about in Puck.

Have a great long weekend,

Jon

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