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  • The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Cookie Maker

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    Opening a store that exclusively sells chocolate chip cookies, or even just cookies in general, is not a special thing in 2025. Mrs. Fields, Insomnia Cookies, Levain Bakery, Chip City—the list of cookie stores across America is long. In March of 1975, however, when my dad, Wally Amos, opened the first Famous Amos store in Hollywood, the idea of a store that exclusively sold chocolate chip cookies seemed insane.

    It was the type of idea that seemed so harebrained that only a down-on-his-luck talent agent with an at-home hobby of baking chocolate chip cookies would even think of it.
    At the time, Wally had two things going for him. The first was his famous friends. Singers like Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy became initial investors in the company, while his hefty Rolodex from years in the entertainment business provided a customer base full of social influencers. The second was a combination of charm and hustle that would help create more press opportunities for the fledgling brand than he ever thought possible.

    With the help of his oldest friends and PR team, John and Marilyn Rosica, Wally set out on a multiyear, nonstop promo push for Famous Amos that made both him and his cookies household names. The vibes of the early Famous Amos years scream ’70s fever dream. He was hanging out with Quincy Jones and Sidney Poitier. Doing interviews with an up-and-coming reporter named Oprah Winfrey. Riding kangaroo floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and donating his trademark panama hat and Indian gauze V-neck shirt to the Smithsonian. And that always-on mentality really worked. Famous Amos became an overnight business sensation. It expanded across the country and became a part of American culture.

    Of course, while my dad had created the perfect American success story on the surface, that didn’t mean that his business—or his personal life—was built on an actually solid foundation. Eventually, the realities of running a business caught up with my dad in a pretty real way, conveniently right around the time I was born. Because I was around for the fall, but not the rise, of Wally “Famous” Amos, I always breezed past the truly incredible set of circumstances that led to the creation of this indelible American brand. Turns out, it’s a journey worth taking, even if things are bound to get rough ahead.

    To hear episodes three and four of Tough Cookie: The Wally “Famous” Amos Story, listen here or wherever you download your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday.

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    Sarah Amos

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  • Directors Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn On Creating Gucci’s Film, The Tiger

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    SJ: The starting point was a call from Demna: he said he would like the film to be about a matriarch and her family. Then he sent us all the photos of the lookbook, all his new clothes worn by models, with all the names of the individual characters—but maybe I would say they are rather archetypes—explaining what the Italian names he gave them meant, like Il Bastardo. He was very precise, but at the same time very open: an approach that made this work very challenging.

    Was it easy to write the script?
    HR: Well, we were certainly a little bit under time pressure, but that pressure made it very fun. We worked in a very different way than usual—it was unique how much artistic freedom we all had.

    What was it like having two people direct a film?
    SJ: First we did a kind of mind meld, a kind of six-week meditation, like 8 hours a day, to foster nonverbal communication. I recommend it for any kind of collaboration.

    Good advice. If you were to write a short synopsis of this film, for example for Wikipedia, what words would you use?
    SJ: I don’t know, I’m not allowed to edit Wikipedia entries.
    HR: I would just use one question, ‘What would you do if you were in a room with a tiger?’

    Here, what would you do in a room with a tiger?
    HR: I can’t answer that, you have to see the movie. What would you do?

    I would negotiate.
    HR: Makes sense: Negotiate to tame it.

    The soundtrack is fantastic. How did you mix such different songs together?
    SJ: When we were writing the film, I created a playlist that I shared with Halina and Demna: the beautiful Italian song, “Guarda che luna,” he found it. You know, a lot of these songs, like “Mood Swings” and “Nosebleeds,” are songs I’m obsessed with, they’re songs I love by two artists I really like, Little Simz and Doechii. The playlist, which was later completed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, also kind of shaped the story. The whole process was crazy, very fast, almost wild: it’s a 30-minute film, which we edited in three weeks. Usually, it takes much longer. I could almost call it a stream of consciousness: the writing, the shooting, the editing… it was a continuous movement, which we let flow freely, without thinking too much about anything.

    The costumes, of course, are a key part of the film. Did they influence the filming in any way?
    SJ: From an actor’s point of view, I think the wardrobe can define the character in a certain way. When we rehearsed, one of the most beautiful things was to see the outfits in their detail and construction before they were even worn: some of them are incredibly intricate, with all these embroidered beads… I think the costumes helped the actors understand right away and precisely what their characters looked like.

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    Simone Marchetti

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