Original subtitles

♪♪

We're back on "Larry King Live" with John F. Kennedy Jr.

It's very good to be the son of a legend.

Uh, I mean, it's -- it's complicated.

Gillon: I think John, his entire life was spent

trying to find out who he was.

And the one constant was his desire

not to be treated as if he were his father's son.

Couric: You haven't given up the notion

of maybe going into politics.

Maybe, maybe not.

Oh, come on, John. [ Laughs ]

There was a pressure -- "You're a Kennedy.

You're going to be successful.

You're going to be well-respected.

John was just, like, a little bit more of a free spirit.

Politics isn't dry. It isn't dull.

He just did things differently.

Jackie had raised John to be media-savvy.

There was no shucking off of this celebrity.

Man: Can I please get a couple shots, John, please?

You've kind of grown up being this public figure

even before you knew you were a public figure.

-Come on, John. -Oh [bleep]

Sometimes I wish it wasn't always that way.

Rigueur: He will forever be that little boy,

even as he is jaunting through New York City,

even as he is struggling to pass the bar,

even as he is launching his own political career and magazine.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet George.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Woman: Being John Kennedy Jr. sets the bar so high.

And I think that there's less room for error.

Man: Oh, come on. [ Laughter ]

It's obviously a very difficult job.

Gillon: That was John's lifelong struggle --

to not be crushed by the burdens that were placed on him.

Woman: Are we going to see you go into politics?

It's something that, you know, you never say never.

And it's obviously a source of interest.

Radziwill: Being in that family, people like to think it's,

you know, it's like good and bad and black and white.

Reporter: John Kennedy managed to keep his wedding

to Carolyn Bessette so private.

They don't know the real story and the heartbreak

and the heartache that we were all feeling.

CNN has confirmed now that the U.S. Coast Guard

is conducting a search for a private aircraft.

Even after his death, John continues to be part

of this larger American mythmaking.

So it's always about, what would he have done?

What would he have been?

Hello. I'm John Kennedy.

♪♪

♪♪

Man: He returned to Washington to be greeted

by the skipping figure of his 2 1/2-year-old son, John-John.

My first guest is, of course, somebody we've all watched

since he was a little boy in the White House.

Some of you know him as John-John.

Reporter: The boy the country knew as John-John.

When John-John...

Cover it with a picture of John-John.

We want to believe that John-John is pure and wonderful.

Radziwill: This whole John-John thing,

I don't know where it came from.

I think it was a press thing.

Something happened where people thought

that maybe his family called him John-John.

So people just sort of started saying that

to imply that they were close to him.

But I promise you, his sister didn't call him John-John.

His mother, no one in his family,

even, like, the extended cousins ever called him John-John.

Winfrey: I hear he doesn't like to be called that,

but he's all grown up now, so we will just call him John.

Soren: It was remarkable, the kind of aura around him.

Unless you know him personally, he is a myth,

even if he's standing in front of you.

I was at a dinner party with him once.

I wasn't talking to him because I just felt like

everybody's always trying to talk to him,

and just give the kid a break.

I was nervous, but it was coupled with

trying to have some compassion

for this person who is under a microscope,

because he comes with an entire lifetime of baggage

in us knowing things that we probably shouldn't know

or maybe understanding things that aren't true about him.

Man: How you doing, John? Good. How are you?

Pretty good.

John became the biggest celebrity in America

when he was conceived.

♪♪

Narrator: In Georgetown, a hopeful crowd

waits for a glimpse of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.,

first-baby-to-be, who is whisked by

heavily swaddled against the subfreezing weather.

Gillon: He made the front page of every major newspaper

when he was born.

You have to realize that JFK came to power

just as television was becoming the primary source

for people getting their news.

The candidates need no introduction.

The Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon,

and the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy.

Gillon: The White House that John was born into

was really the beginning of the combination

of celebrity and politics.

His mom was a cultural icon.

His father was the most powerful man in the world.

[ Crowd cheering ]

I liked them, what their feelings about things were,

their politics, everything, you know.

And they were a hope, a big, big hope.

There was something about them that was good and true.

And you felt that.

Only you can decide what you want,

what you want this country to be,

what you want to do with the future.

De Niro: That was his public persona,

and everybody really needed it.

Even saying things like...

Ask not what your country can do for you.

..."but what you can do for your country,"

those were very good things.

Kennedy: We can organize our life so that our people

will find themselves living in a world of peace and freedom.

Soren: You're talking to an Irish Catholic person

whose parents are New Englanders,

who had a picture of Jesus, literally,

and JFK next to each other over the couch.

He meant so much to my family.

[ Indistinct singing ]

I'm a professor of counseling psychology

at Fordham University.

And I do research in psychobiography

and multicultural psychology.

My family was always interested, you know, in President Kennedy,

the first Catholic president, immigrant Irish family.

So that launched my interest in John F. Kennedy.

Then in recent years, I was saying,

"Can you imagine young John F. Kennedy Jr. being born

into that umbrella of notoriety and fame of his father?

How does he find his own identity?"

Gillon: When John was a little kid,

you know, growing up in the White House,

there was this tug-of-war going on

between his father and his mother.

His mother wanted to protect his privacy as much as possible.

Jackie is trying to put up these large trees

to block people from taking pictures,

and JFK is having them torn up

because he wants people to see him.

He understands that political value of a wholesome family.

[ Gunshot ]

Man: It appears as though something has happened

in the motorcade route.

Something, I repeat, has happened in the motorcade route.

President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time.

Soren: The whole country endured this assassination.

People remember exactly where they were when this happened

and stood in front of their televisions and cried.

Man: There's only one word to describe the picture here,

and that's "grief."

John became not just a young son of an assassinated president,

but John became almost like a nephew or a younger cousin

or even a son to the millions of people watching.

Man: John, what happened to your father?

Young Kennedy Jr.: So, he's gone to heaven.

He's gone to heaven? Yeah.

Do you remember him? Yeah.

What do you remember?

I don't -- I don't remember anything.

The Kennedys, I think, are the epitome of the American dream.

But they are also the epitome of everything

that Americans hold in ambition, right,

the politics, the wealth, the mystery.

And then in an instant, it's cut off.

So now we don't know what that possibility is.

But when we see his 3-year-old son John

saluting the casket,

the American public immediately casts all those aspirations,

all those myths,

all those understandings about John F. Kennedy

and his unfinished legacy onto his son.

And so we see, I think, a kind of heightened intensity

and focus on John, the boy who would be king.

The great burden John had was to play the role

of John F. Kennedy Jr.

And in many ways,

his mother unintentionally raised those expectations.

I think every woman wants to feel needed.

And in politics, you are,

so much more than in many other fields.

You're always living in a state of crisis.

You're always being demanded to meet a challenge.

And when you meet it, it's a great satisfaction to me.

Gillon: She was so determined to preserve the legacy

of her husband that she created the myth of Camelot.

As Jackie Kennedy said in her interview in Life magazine

just a few months after his death,

"Let's not forget there once was a Camelot.

There may be other great presidents,

but there will never be another Camelot."

Gillon: That myth is what would carry forward.

When people saw John, they saw him as the person

who was going to bring Camelot alive again.

And I think that became a burden for him.

Ginsberg: I mean, he was 3 years old when his dad died.

His uncle was a big part of his life.

When Bobby asked him what he wanted to do as an adult,

I think he told Bobby he wanted to be a chef.

Bobby was like, "Are you out of your [bleep] mind?"

[ Laughs ]

[ Applause ]

Gillon: His family's greatest accomplishments were public.

They were presidents and they were senators.

They left a legacy of accomplishment.

John was the heir.

If you were to have a son,

would you encourage a political career for him?

Yes, and I hope if I had a daughter,

I might encourage her to play some part.

But I would, definitely.

I would hope he would grow up to be if not a politician,

I would hope that whatever he did do

that he would have some sense of responsibility for what went on.

Radziwill: People had the expectation

that John was going to grow up and probably go into politics,

and he may have eventually,

but I think he envisioned, you know, this other life.

Ginsberg: I was a paper boy for seven years on one block

outside of Buffalo, New York,

and I told people when they asked,

"Where are you going to college?"

I said, "I'm going to Brown University."

And to a person, they all said,

"Isn't that where John-John Kennedy goes?"

I met him the first week of sophomore year, his junior year.

We were both taking a European intellectual history class,

and we were in a smaller seminar with the professor.

And so we had to one time do a conversation

between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Kant,

and neither of us had a clue how to do it.

And I got up and I gave my conversation.

It was like a two-minute conversation,

and she just looked at me,

kind of shaking her head like, "What?"

Then John gets up, and he gives what I think

is an equally obtuse, inane conversation

between these two intellectuals.

And she says, "John, that was so profound."

And I thought, "Damn, life is not fair."

It was called the JK Factor, which he later coined,

which was there was always that kind of special --

he got a little bit special treatment

that the rest of us didn't get.

Gillon: I was a graduate student at Brown

when John was an undergraduate.

You know, I was older than him.

You know, I understood the role I played in John's life.

I was the professor.

We spent a lot of time together.

I felt I really got to know him.

Two, three times a week sometimes,

we'd hop in his little blue Honda, and we would go there

and we would have these really intense games of racquetball,

and then we would lift weights

and then we would go and get something to eat.

And, of course, John never had any money.

So I was a graduate student living on $5,000 a year,

and I'm buying him -- Of course, it's Wendy's.

Jackie knew that John was scattered.

She knew that he was not good at making deadlines,

filling out applications, so she used to do it for him.

Jackie filled out part of John's application to Brown.

Ponterotto: His mom was a very powerful, strong figure.

She had to be a loving, nurturing mother

but also a stern father as a single mom.

Gillon: I referred to her as the "hidden hand" mother.

She did things behind the scenes so John didn't know it.

Like this letter to a professor.

She writes, "Dear Mrs. Romer, I received today my copy

of your letter to my son John Kennedy,

telling him that he needs to complete two courses

to be in good standing.

I have never asked for special consideration for my children,

but there was an extra burden John carried this year.

He was asked to campaign almost every weekend for his uncle."

I come here today to ask for your help and your support.

Gillon: "And he thought he could carry both loads."

Ponterotto: John had an adventurous streak

and somewhat of a risk-taking streak,

and I think Mrs. Kennedy wanted to make sure

that there was balance there

and John did not get himself into trouble,

which he did at times.

Gillon: He always said, you know,

"I don't want to do what people expect me to do."

He needed to do something that stood out,

so that next year, he graduated and went to India.

Every once in a while, he would write me a letter.

"Dear Stevie, I've spent most of my time

traveling around to different projects in different regions.

Of course, the inevitable thought is

about what to do when I get back.

Might you keep your eyes and ears open for me?

And if anything passes your way, perhaps you pass it on.

Later, John."

While he was in India,

he thought about going to law school.

But John didn't want to be a lawyer.

For John, it was kind of a, "You know what?

What the hell?

My mom wants me to do something serious.

It's serious. I'll do it."

John was at NYU's law school when I was at NYU.

Yes, it was always a good day if you had a JFK Jr. sighting.

He went to law school when I was graduating.

So he was always, you know,

asking me about what law school was like,

'cause, you know, I was seeing him all the time.

John loved New York City.

He was so much a part of the landscape of New York,

like, you know, 'cause he rode his bike everywhere,

played football on the city playgrounds,

if you can believe it.

He wanted to live a normal New York life.

From East Harlem to Chinatown,

from Mott Haven in the Bronx to the Lower East Side,

there is no place quite like New York.

Radziwill: He wanted to maybe break some rules,

and then he did.

It sounds silly, but, like, he moved downtown to Tribeca

when his whole family lived on the Upper East Side.

And it just was like in these little ways,

you're making boundaries and you're creating independence

and you're creating this other life.

Rigueur: There is no such thing as a private,

normal day in the life of John F. Kennedy Jr.

He is repeatedly a focus of not just tabloid fodder,

but also fawning public adoration.

De Niro: The first time I met him,

he lived around the corner from where I lived.

He would be followed more than, say, I was followed.

Well, he was John Kennedy Jr. [ Laughs ]

Who wouldn't be interested in him?

He had those good looks, and he was a regular person.

People were just -- they couldn't get over him

or get enough of him.

Newspapers kept, you know, selling because of him.

And once you got the tabloid TV,

it kept being so popular because of him.

That's when he became the most desirable bachelor in New York.

His dating life was just, you know,

the frenzy of the gossip columns.

You dated John F. Kennedy Jr. once. I did, yeah.

A few times. Yeah, for a while.

Great guy.

The stuff about being sexy and attractive...

Listen, people can say a lot worse things about you, right,

than you are attractive

and you look good in a bathing suit.

John Kennedy's going to be in my class?

I can get you a spot right behind him.

He has got a great butt.

He looks like his father.

His mother was, you know, the most iconic beauty in the world.

And they were America's royal family, essentially.

And John Jr., you know,

looked like he had everything going for him

that could make him a real spear carrier

for the next gen of that karma, essentially.

Rigueur: There is an intense amount of scrutiny around,

what is John F. Kennedy Jr.'s thing going to be?

Do you think you might be interested

in going into politics?

Well, I'm completely busy and consumed by what I'm doing now.

And, you know, obviously, I find public issues interesting.

And I can't help but find

a convention like this interesting.

But I'm just --

You know, I'll see what happens,

and I'm happy doing what I'm doing.

Ginsberg: We studied for the LSAT together.

It was not a natural thing for us.

And yet he didn't care.

You know, he was willing to put himself

into uncomfortable situations

and overcome whatever limitations

he thought he might have to succeed.

You know, God willing, I'll be back there in July

and I'll pass it then or I'll pass it the next time

or I'll pass it when I'm 95.

Normally it's a private experience

when you fail the bar, right?

Your parents know, your siblings know,

maybe a couple of co-workers.

the entire world knew.

Unfortunately, flunked again, and unfortunately,

the media was just as vicious.

He was able to finally pass it by his third try.

Slow news day, I guess, huh?

Man: How do you feel about it?

It tastes pretty sweet at the moment.

Gillon: John felt he needed to redefine himself to the public.

He didn't want to be remembered as the hunk flunks.

He didn't want to be remembered as the sexiest man alive.

He wanted to have some accomplishment.

You going to stay here in the DA's office?

Sure, absolutely.

What kind of cases are you looking forward to?

[ Indistinct singing, cheers and applause ]

Ginsberg: In 1992,

John was watching the campaign really closely

because Clinton had captured the imagination

of a much broader group of voters and personalities

and people to bring them into the political process.

America can be made forever young,

the idea that drove John Kennedy to the presidency in their time.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Bill Clinton really just zeroed in on young people.

It's like, "If I can get the young vote,

I can win this election."

Education, the environment, AIDS, the economy,

why young people don't vote.

Governor Bill Clinton will be here to answer

those questions and more next.

Until Bill Clinton,

I had always thought of presidential candidates

as about probably my grandfather's age.

One reason for the alienation of young people

is this is a more diverse society

than you can tell by looking on television at night

at the people running it.

For me, the two snapshots of the entire campaign in 1992

are doing a town hall with Clinton

and having him be asked questions

that showed his humanity.

If you had it to do over again, would you inhale?

Sure, if I could. I tried before.

[ Laughter ]

The other snapshot for me

is being on the back of a moving train

with the person I was interviewing,

who happened to be George H.W. Bush.

The message isn't really getting through.

The Republican platform says abstinence.

Well, I'm a little concerned about 13-year-old pregnancies.

Maybe others aren't. I'm very much concerned. Well, but --

May I finish, please?

When Bush is interviewed by Tabitha Soren,

it is one of the most awkward

political-meets-pop-culture interviews.

Bush doesn't understand the culture in a way

that translates to MTV's audience.

All of a sudden, Clinton is conveying a stark contrast

to all the other options,

and he's using non-traditional media to do it.

[ Saxophone playing ]

[ Cheers and applause ]

Carmody: Politics was becoming --

I don't want to say sexy,

but it was becoming more part of the mainstream.

You know what your drummer said? What?

He said, "If this music thing doesn't work out,

you can always run for president."

[ Laughter ]

Soren: You can't be dismissive of young people,

and young people insist that you move with the times.

And because JFK Jr. was a young person,

he didn't need any convincing.

What he needed was the ability to create,

you know, some sort of entity to further those ideas.

So, John is working for

the New York Office of Business Development,

I believe, and Michael Berman,

who was a very successful advertising executive,

was volunteering one day a week,

and they met, and they bonded right away.

And they decided after a while to go into business.

You came from PR, right?

Right. I had a public relations and marketing company.

We launched products in the marketplace,

so that was my forte here,

and combined with John's, you know, incredible knowledge

and passion for politics.

Ginsberg: Michael had a very commercial mind.

He was more of a businessman.

He understood numbers. He understood marketing.

He understood how to sell a product.

He brought a certain discipline to the process

that John perhaps lacked.

In addition to the fact

that political magazines wouldn't sell,

the experts early on advised us of just one other key point --

Never go into business with a friend.

Well, being right one time out of two ain't bad.

It was a process of hashing it out.

I think it was during that period

when I had my first conversation with John about it,

and he obviously had bought into the idea

and was very excited about it.

So the two of them together created George.

Brown: John's relationship to the press was extremely wary.

They wanted quotes. They wanted scandal.

They wanted a piece of him.

And yet because he had been a celebrity all his own life,

it is also very much something he understood

and wanted to be a player in.

[ Indistinct talking ]

John held journalists, in a slightly exalted place.

His father was a journalist before he went into politics,

and Jackie was a photographer, then she was an editor

for a major book publishing firm in New York.

Ginsberg: So I would presume that there was a part of her

that actually really liked the idea

of John starting a political magazine.

Gillon: She was putting him in touch with influential people

in the magazine world that would normally not have met

with two people coming up with an idea

that had no background in magazines.

John didn't like to be treated differently most times,

but his mom was the one who was calling in the favors

and not him, and I think that made it a little easier for him.

Radziwill: In any family that has that kind of rich,

long history,

everyone kind of has roles, right?

Everyone has a role in the family.

Even in typical families, I think everyone --

There is, like, the middle funny child

and the bossy older sibling,

and everyone kind of takes on a role.

And I think John was just, like,

a little bit more of a free spirit.

There was a lot of, "Oh, John, what is he doing now?

What did he get himself into?"

This was his, like, tagline.

Anthony was his cousin.

They grew up together from childhood,

and they were always playing jokes on each other.

They were just fun together.

Anthony and I started dating

eight months after I first met him in L.A.

We were together sort of casual

because we were both at ABC News

and we just felt like, "Let's just keep this quiet."

But, of course, it was the '90s.

Everyone was hooking up at work.

The weekend I met John, he was out at the beach with Carolyn.

She was sort of extraordinary in so many ways.

We were in our late 20s at the time,

and she was the first girl I ever knew who really was,

like, this much overused expression, girl's girl.

She was so beautiful.

South: I met Carolyn when she worked for Calvin Klein.

I was at Vanity Fair.

I was the kind of person on the editorial side

who was meant to have

the best relationship with the advertisers,

and Calvin was certainly one of the biggest.

Carolyn was one of those people that the moment you met her,

she kind of filled the room.

I mean, she was incredibly beautiful.

She was very, very smart. She had a serious brain.

They met -- He had come in

to get some suits fitted or something,

and she was sort of Calvin Klein's muse

and also ran PR.

She was very sophisticated in that way.

And that's how they originally met.

And then two weekends later, he brought Daryl Hannah,

who he had had a previously pretty long relationship with.

He said that Daryl decided to move back to New York --

she was living in L.A. or something --

and that he felt like he owed it to her

to try to see if it could work

that they were both living on the same coast.

His mom did have concerns with Daryl Hannah, the movie star.

Christina Haag, who he dated after Brown,

you know, once said, "To love John,

you need the approval of his mom first."

Radziwill: And I'm sure he loved Daryl.

They stayed together for a couple years

until his mother got sick.

Reporter: Through a family spokeswoman,

the former first lady has revealed she is being treated

for a form of cancer of the lymphatic system,

the lymph nodes scattered around the body

that play a major role in the immune system.

The 64-year-old Mrs. Onassis

found out she was suffering from the disease

after going to her doctor last month with flu-like symptoms.

It was very traumatic because my husband --

well, at that point, my fiancé, you know, was battling cancer.

He called Jackie to tell her, and he's like,

"I have something to tell you."

Then I remember him saying, "Okay, you go first."

And she said, you know, "I have bad news,

that I've been diagnosed with lymphoma."

The former first lady is suffering

from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer.

A spokeswoman says Mrs. Onassis

will not have any further treatment.

The disease has progressed

and there is nothing doctors can do for her.

All day long, family and relatives

paid visits to her apartment on Fifth Avenue.

You know, the end came pretty quickly.

I remember, like, it was Sunday when we all were together,

and Thursday she passed away,

so it was a very short little window.

Reporter: Bettina, family members are now leaving

the apartment building on Fifth Avenue in New York

across from Central Park where Mrs. Onassis died

now almost three hours ago.

John did say to me one time --

He said, "I'm too young to be an orphan."

He was just absolutely devastated.

Kennedy Jr.: My mother passed on.

She was surrounded by her friends and her family

and her books and the people and the things that she loved.

And she did it in her own way and on her own terms.

And, uh -- And we all feel lucky for that.

Ginsberg: This is a note that John's mom wrote to John

days before she died

and only to be opened after her death in May of 1994.

"I understand the pressure you'll forever have to endure

as a Kennedy, even though we brought you

into this world as an innocent.

You especially have a place in history,

no matter what course in life you choose.

All I can ask is that you continue to make me,

the Kennedy family, and yourself proud."

Gillon: So he had this whole drama going on

with Daryl Hannah, who he had really broken up with.

But, you know, so this is like --

This is John's life, right?

His mom dies. He's mourning his mom.

But he's afraid that if the public knows

he's broken up with Daryl Hannah,

the media is going to focus on that and not on his mom

and his mom's life.

So he went through the pretense of still being together,

and they went rollerblading down Fifth Avenue,

I think, just so everybody could see them together.

That's the kind of calculation John has to make

that most of us don't have to make.

Radziwill: John and Jackie, they were very close.

He was heartbroken, and it was a really hard time for him.

But there was almost like, I would say, like an emancipation.

I think for the first time,

he felt free to do what he wanted to do in a way

that he wouldn't have when his mom was alive.

And, you know, there's -- a lot of good came out of that.

He reconnected pretty quickly with Carolyn,

and, of course, he had started working on the magazine

years earlier.

This was like a rebirth for him, in a way.

He just felt free.

-CNN. John! -John!

Andersen: I was the editor of New York Magazine

when John Kennedy, whom I'd never met, said,

"I'd love to have lunch with you and my partner, Michael Berman."

And we did, of course, at the Royalton Hotel.

And it was -- I was impressed by him.

He was, you know, intelligent, thoughtful, charming,

not arrogant-seeming, not entitled-seeming,

although, of course, the most entitled human being

in existence, probably.

But I liked him, and he wasn't stupid.

I thought you were a lawyer.

I was.

You were a DA. Are you now --

This is it? This is going to be your life?

Editing, publishing, magazines, writing, is that it?

I don't remember the specific presentation,

"This is what I want to do,"

but I understood it to be a magazine

about politics and political figures

that would be smart

but in a in a sassy, glossy way.

I thought, oh, this is worth --

some version of this is worth a try.

One of the challenges for us was

how you come up with a magazine about politics

that somehow gets around the word "politics."

John wanted to take this arcane process of lawmaking

and popularize it.

So he said, "I'm going to use graphics, use diagrams."

Make it accessible and make it familiar

and create an identity.

He said George is to politics

with Sports Illustrated is to sports

and Allure is to beauty and music is to Rolling Stone.

Ginsberg: He wanted people in the middle of the country to read it.

He wanted to make it post-partisan,

because I think Bill Clinton had this aura of post-partisanship.

He shattered the perceptions

that somehow you have to stay within the two-party system.

If you could turn on people

who'd never really considered themselves politically oriented,

turn them onto politics somehow through this magazine,

that would be a success for us.

Gillon: I was skeptical.

John's launching a magazine that's designed

to blur the line between liberal and conservative

just as American politics were becoming more polarized

between left and right.

We're going to be open to working with everyone,

that we will cooperate with anyone,

and we will compromise with no one.

Politically it was a pretty wild time, 'cause think about it.

Like, Clinton wins in '92.

And then midterms...

the Democrats got trounced

by the whole Newt Gingrich revolution.

You've got Gingrich waging war on the government.

You know, he tried to shut it down,

if you remember, with the budget.

We also begin to see the success of Rush Limbaugh

during this period.

Limbaugh: You people in the press

have got to understand something.

This country is conservative. It has been for a long time.

Get used to it.

You tried to change it, and you failed.

It was an incredibly risky thing for John to do,

and he could have taken the safe route.

But John's fiercely competitive, right.

Brown: Starting a magazine is so hard.

I had heard that he'd talked to people.

My immediate instinct about it

was it was a vanity project for him

and was very skeptical that it would be any good.

But when I first met him

and I saw him to be this kind of rather gentlemanly figure,

he was more kind of courtly and slightly old-fashioned,

actually, than I'd expected.

And he understood that he was a star

and that he really could have whatever he wanted.

Carter: I knew John, and when he started the magazine, we had a chat.

If I'd been his father or an uncle or something,

I would have said, "Go work at another magazine

for three years before you do this."

You know, "Get your feet under the desk on somebody else's dime

and figure out all the things you don't want to do

and do want to do before you actually launch it,

because it's going to be big at first

and it's going to get noticed."

And it's a tough job. There's no school to get --

You know, there's a school -- you need to get a license

to practice real-estate sales and home -- and decorating.

There's nothing to be an editor

unless you've worked at a magazine.

And he hadn't done that.

Ginsberg: Finally, we were ready to go.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

John and Michael -- they were pitching everybody.

And everybody would take the pitch

'cause they all wanted to meet John.

So he had a lot more pitches than the average person.

But it also meant he had a lot more rejections.

And they would come back, and, you know, it's like,

"Great meeting, great meeting," and then you'd find out

a day or two later they'd get a phone call it's a no-go.

George was a huge risk for John.

Look, George was a risk for any person

wanting to start a magazine.

You were starting a political magazine,

which, by definition, never worked.

It was a risk for anybody.

And if it weren't, Condé Nast would have done it.

It was a huge risk.

That fearlessness is what drove him

throughout his adult life, ultimately to his detriment.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

The 1980s and 1990s in New York

were great times to be in the magazine business.

I mean, there's nothing that could touch

what magazines could do. They drove the culture.

Gillon: So, just when John and Michael think it's over,

and this dream they have of creating this magazine is dead,

they meet a guy named David Pecker,

who was then the CEO of Hachette.

So, at Hachette, we don't shy away from taking chances.

A magazine launch is a commitment from a company

in the upwards of $20 million.

Pecker was the kind of guy who John avoided his whole life.

I'm sure glad I picked up the check.

Andersen: David Pecker was a funny figure in my eyes,

a diminutive man in a mustache and a big smile.

He was a hustler

and years later was involved with the National Enquirer.

And he was not top-drawer

in terms of the publishing industry.

I mean, David was a complicated person.

Um, you know, I can't lie

and say that it wasn't part of it was the allure of John.

You know, I guess the Kennedy thing didn't hurt, okay?

[ Chuckles ]

But I think David also

was entrepreneurial enough

to understand a good idea when it was pitched to him.

Ginsberg: Hachette said yes. It was really exciting.

You know, it wasn't ideal.

They didn't have any history of publishing

a first-rate, high-quality political magazine.

It wasn't Condé Nast.

Put it that way.

Gillon: So, what happens is, day one,

you know they meet with the editorial director,

who says they're gonna change the name of the magazine

to Crisscross.

And John's like -- John was furious.

And they also told him that, you know,

Hachette always wanted George

to be essentially a celebrity fan club,

with John as the main celebrity.

John's a passive guy, but he was furious.

And he went up to David Pecker's office, and he said,

"We're done.

This relationship isn't gonna work."

Eventually, Pecker backed down.

But this was a constant source of tension

throughout the life of the magazine.

Radziwill: At that time, he was really focused on the magazine,

and Carolyn was really focused on the magazine.

I feel like it was just as much her baby

as it was his, in a way.

Like, she was definitely a driving force

in keeping him focused and keeping him out

of the side circus shows that he could have gotten involved in.

Ginsberg: She was fiercely protective of him.

She was always saying to him,

"John, you're being taken advantage of by X,"

or, "You're being played by Y."

Radziwill: She made him feel,

probably more than anyone in his life,

that he could be his own person,

he didn't have to follow what people expected of him.

Of course, the magazine --

that was a real departure from anything

anyone in his family had done before.

It was a really physically and emotionally taxing time.

John lost -- I don't know -- like 30 pounds, 20 pounds.

I don't remember exactly.

We wanted to prove the doubters wrong.

Also, he was carrying around a ring.

When you're John, you know, it's a big step.

He knows it's gonna have, you know, major implications.

Radziwill: They were in the vineyard, and he, um...

I think it was kind of a surprise for her.

She called me.

They had just gotten back to New York,

and she said that John had proposed

with a ring that his mother had called her swimming ring,

and it was a band of sapphires and diamonds.

She was happy, but nervous.

She didn't want to tell anyone.

Interviewer: Why?

Because both within the family

and then, obviously for them publicly,

it just became -- it became something else.

Everyone started hearing about it and started realizing,

"Oh, she's just not just another girl that he's hanging out with.

Like, he's really serious.

He's gonna marry her."

And there was a higher expectation, I think,

even in the family.

She wanted to stave that off, I think, as long as possible.

Woman: Hi. Yeah, my question --

I'm just sitting around with a bunch of friends tonight,

and we're curious to see, um,

how John proposed to Carolyn.

News anchor: Liz, I'll give you that question.

I wish I knew.

There's a kind of frenzy around this.

I think it's great. Everyone should be happy.

Wright Rigueur: The world's most eligible bachelor

is off the market,

but it's still about America's 3-year-old growing up,

about him moving on into the next phase of his life.

And when you introduce a woman into that...

Man #1: Are there any little Johns on the way?

Man #2: John, we're not getting you. Can you look over?

...that's going to spark an insane level of curiosity.

Who is she? What makes her tick?

Why is she so special?