Annoying, Appalling, Hilarious

By JAY COCKS

There were two possible explanations for the high head count at the first- anniversary party Spy magazine tossed for itself at its downtown Manhattan office building a few weeks back: an open bar and fear. Show up, smile, and stay on Spy's sunny side, and maybe you won't appear in some future issue, pinned down photographically on the "Party Poop" page and identified, with the magazine's characteristic cheekiness, as a "mummified boulevardier" or "beaver-faced mogul."

Since its debut issue last October, Spy has honed its unique editorial combination of good humor and bad manners into an upscale switchblade that has nearly doubled circulation: Publisher Thomas Phillips Jr. expects it to hit 50,000 in time for Christmas. Success seems to have come in direct proportion to the magazine's nastiness. The current "gala, semi-thick anniversary issue" has more ads than ever bolstering a cover story on "The Spy 100," a pointed and often hilarious conscription of the "most annoying, alarming and appalling people, places and things in New York and the nation." (Ivan Boesky and the incumbent President grab the top slots; Dwight Gooden and blackened redfish finish in the bottom six.)

Editors Kurt Andersen, 33, and E. Graydon Carter, 38, nurtured the idea for Spy in 1984, over lunch hours away from their writing jobs at Time Inc. Carter, who worked at LIFE, wanted an editorial voice "engaged in real life, that is wicked and adversarial at the same time." Andersen, who still moonlights as a TIME contributing writer, thought "it would be fun to have a forum that could be your sandbox." Together they produced a list of 100 possible articles and features, which Phillips, 32, used to attract start-up money: an initial $1.5 million, followed by another $1.5 million this July.

Happily acknowledging a "certain amount of scabrousness," Andersen says they are trying to develop the "hybrid of a comic point of view and journalistic reportage." To that end, Carter adds, "we decided to make the magazine all fact, rather than parodies and funny stories." Fact checkers (two full time, three part time) make sure a story's aim stays true, while a lawyer vets each story in case some society wives take umbrage at being characterized as "Overage Debs from Hell." There have been no libel actions to date.

Carter chose the magazine's name (Spy was the nom de plume of an illustrator for the old British Vanity Fair, as well as a snoopy, brash newsmagazine parodied in The Philadelphia Story), but the prevailing tone of backhanded derision and inside irony is borrowed from Britain's Private Eye and strongly influenced by television, especially David Letterman and the gonzo irreverence of vintage Saturday Night Live. A few Spy articles sputter like misbegotten skits, but increasingly pieces like "Rupert Murdoch's Screwball Search for Josef Mengele" and J.J. Hunsecker's pseudonymous column about low doings at the New York Times have piquant information as well as good punch lines.

Right now Spy draws 80% of its circulation from the New York City area, but Andersen talks about tapping an "urban sensibility that goes beyond the city limits." The magazine is already available in 26 cities coast to coast, and the staff is working up a pilot for a possible half-hour series next fall on ABC. Meantime, there are growing indications that Spy is drawing blood from its target audience. A flack for the "churlish dwarf billionaire" Laurence Tisch was moved to call the editorial offices and point out, "Look, Larry is not technically, medically, a dwarf." Next issue, the technicality was duly noted, with appropriate sarcasm. Spy is not the kind of magazine ever to get , hung up on a technical foul.

With reporting by Naushad S. Mehta/New York