Esquire August 2014

PAGE 50 CAMERON DIAZ: THE BEST SHE'S EVER BEENMeet the Cameron Diaz we've been waiting 20 years for—at her most beautiful and fearless. BY TOM CHIARELLA PAGE 58 WHY WE LOVE FORTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD WOMEN A lot has changed since Mrs. Robinson. BY TOM JUNOD PAGE 60 ESQUIRE FICTION: THAT BUS IS ANOTHER WORLD What does it take to distract a man from being late for the interview of his life? Something evil. BY STEPHEN KING PAGE 64 THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN DOG In this country, no dog is more vilified and abandoned than the pit bull. BY TOM JUNOD PAGE 76 LANCE IN PURGATORY Being pushed out of the cancer foundation he founded and funded was the worst blow to Lance Armstrong—worse than the doping scandal and all the Internet…

INSIDE: Chris Jones on the Roger Ebert documentary, the Alternative Emmys, easy fish stew, a very small picture of Jessica Alba. Sunday brunch, the Red Cat, downtown Manhattan.The longtime collaboratorshave most recently worked together on Boyhood, which was filmed in short bursts over 12 years with the same actors, including Hawke; Ellar Coltrane, who plays the boy; Patricia Arquette, who plays his mother; and Lorelei Linklater (the director's daughter), who plays the boy's sister. SCOTT RAAB: Where do you get the balls to take 12 years to make a movie? RICHARD LINKLATER: When I first sat down and told Ethan about this idea, he got this weird look on his face. That's a crazy idea. He was in like that. Our commitment to this probably really informed the next two…

ABOUT THE JOKESTER: If you aren't a fan of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who, you might not know Karen Gillan yet. The 26-year-old Scot showed up in nearly every home in the UK each week for three years straight as the Doctor's sidekick, while all of America missed out—save for those Anglophile fanboys who'd caught on to the show in the States. "We filmed an episode in Central Park once and hundreds of screaming people showed up. I thought, My God, people in New York know who we are. It was like being in the Beatles for a day." She ought to get used to the attention now that she's starring as the villainous Nebula in Marvel's latest blockbuster franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy (out August 1). Given that…

BEST CHARACTER Tina Belcher on Bob's Burgers. Tina Belcher is a sexually frustrated animated teen-age girl. She writes erotic friend fiction. After developing a crush on her dentist, she gifts him with a subscription to Highlights because "he loves that magazine." She is played by a 33-year-old man. If Tina were live-action, her awkwardness would transcend watchability. Instead: the funniest character on television. SPORTSCASTER OF THE YEAR Josh Charles as his old Sports Night character, Dan Rydell, on ESPN's Olbermann. BIGGEST ASSHOLE Lily on Modern Family. The showrunners solved the problem of a kid who grows up and thus ceases to be cute and mute by making the six-year-old a cynical eye-rolling jerk. MOST POIGNANT WEDDING SPEECH "All emotions and in particular love stand opposed to the pure, cold, hard…

It's wretchedly hot. You have friends coming over. You want to make them something good (see: friends), but you don't really want to work that hard (see: wretched heat), nor do you want to cope with a debris field of dishes afterward (see: full life). The answer? The answer is a big, beautiful fish stew. From the bouillabaisse of Marseille to the cioppino of San Francisco, all the great seafaring stews have two things in common: They're made with ingredients found nearby, and they're prepared in a single pot, simmered to pull out every last bit of flavor. Our take, inspired by the Basque style, relies on authentic Spanish chorizo, peeled so that the unique blend of garlic, sea salt, pork fat, and pimentón de La Vera (paprika made from…

Here's the problem: Whiskey comes in shots and draft beer in pints. In itself, not an issue. But sometimes—okay, a lot of times—I like to have them together, one and one, sip and sip, and it takes me something like seven sips to get through a shot and about 15 to empty a standard pint. (Yes, I counted; it's my job.) So do I have two whiskeys—whether separately or as a double—for every pint? Do I keep working the pint when the whiskey's all gone? Either way, that's a lot of alcohol, particularly if the beer is one of the strong microbrews that we're drinking in America today, and before too many rounds it's welcome to Drunkistan. Or do I, God forbid, park the rest of the pint on an…