The 48 Hours Experience

After amost a year of having Cindy on the 'net I received a phone call from CBS people saying that they were in town and wanted to feature us in a story. I took the position that any publicity was good publicity so I agreed to the "interview" which took place over 3 days. The reporter in charge was Erin Moriarty. There were two crew people, a videographer and a sound man, a producer and I think that's it.

They began with me sitting down with Erin to look at the site pictures. Of course, I was encouraged by her to show her all pictures, hoping she would find something really problematic. There was a picture with Cindy walking along with her sister at the Texas State Fair, taken from behind. Erin said I was trying to exploit Cindy's rear end. So now, the gloves are on, no more good roads fair weather. Erin had many questions about many pictures, hinting at the possible exploitation of a minor. As anyone who went to Cindy's site would know, these pictures were perfectly suitable for a family album.

Erin interviewed Cindy. Cindy was 14 at the time and 5'4" tall. Erin tried to make Cindy feel like she had no chance at mainstream modeling because of her height. Yes, grown up models are typically 5'8" or more but Cindy had many years to reach this height before she would be 18. She is now 5'9" and utterly stunning. But I digress.

The next day we all went to Cindy's apartment. They put in a younger man to do the interview there, whose name escapes me. He seemed like he was wanting to make a name for himself by exposing member's names. He had Cindy show the gifts she had received from fans, clothes and teddy bears, etc. I had to stop the interview several times admonishing the interviewer several times to keep him from asking for members name's. Questions like, "Who sent you this?"

We finally finished. I interviewed Cindy for CBS. They didn't show the interview but it certainly caused much of the crew to lean on Cindy's side. One important thing was when they went to Eileen Ford's Ford Agency, a mega model agency, they took some pictures to ask if any of the model's shown in this 48 hours interview had a chinaman's chance of succeeding in the modeling agency. Ms. Ford said that these girls were not up to their standards and they would never make it in mainstream model.

This little segment left out the footage of Ms. Ford's comments on Cindy, which were very complimentary saying Cindy had a major chance at modeling.
Maybe it didn't fit into the agenda that 48 Hours had in mind before they undertook this mission. This begs the question, how many "investigative reports" are merely vehicles to further the "Investigator's" cause rather than a fair-minded search for the truth.

The producer of the show, a seeming fair-mided guy, told me of the Ford episode.

Cindy was so upset by this whole episode that she quit modeling. This only lasted for thirty days. She came back with a vengence.

Our next blog will feature The Opra Experience.

Early and Multiple Beginnings

In 1987 I had a photo studio in Deep Ellum, a wearhouse district in Dallas with many lofts, pricey hair salons, cool t-shirt stores, hand-made jewelry and hundreds of young people from 15 to 30 cruising the sidewalk looking for meaning in life. I was 45, young enough to be on the fringe of relevance and old enough to be trusted in a business sense. I did mostly family portraits and an occasional portfolio of a beginning model. My wife, Mary, did all the hair and make-up. I would ride my bike to work. Life was not opulent but the ship was floating and I was regarded as being hip.

One night there was a party in the mode of Andy Warhol gatherings where the super-hip could see and be seen. My assistant, darkroom specialist and brother-in-law, Bob, attended this party, took a camera and shot some pix. He found that one of the girls he shot was with a new modeling agency, Esprit, I think, and sent the 8x10 to them along with the contact number of Curt Newbury Studios. The pix were flash-on-camera snaps without any artistic merit, but Esprit started sending me beginning models to do headshots and portfolios. Now I was "fashion photographer." How hip can you get?

Next thing you know, I was getting models from Esprit for model portfolios and models from other agencies. We got pretty busy from opening to closing. I was learning the parlance of the fringe of the modeling game, (I don’t think that look is right for you. You need to key in on those legs, girl.

Often, we, in house peeps (the Curt Newbury Studios staff), found that most of the models were pure wannabe's, not meeting the standards of the fashion industry. Many were charming, all of them between 13 and 30, but, truthfully, it didn't seem fiscally responsible to decline shooting them. After all, every attractive girl, even if moderately so, should have a portfolio and these girls were getting their day in the sun plus pictures to prove it for about a $100. I thought it was win, win. To be truthful, it was a steal.

The girls would have their modeling pictures in nice portfolio, their comp card (card with four or so poses) with the name of the agency on it and the ability to, without reservation, tell everybody that they were models. The cowardly lion got his heart from the wizard, authenticating his courage and the girl's got their pix and comp cards.

After a period of time the girls would find that they didn't get any requests to actually model professionally. They did get lots of requests to buy purses with the agency's logo, invitations to "commercial acting classes," or anything to convince the model to part with his or her money. I did a very unsophisticated survey and found that aspiring models spent more money buying classes, introductions to game changers and overnight bags with the agency logo than they ever got from the agencies.