July 13, 2001

The Meta-Monica Mythology

By ELAINE SHOWALTER

Early in April, HBO invited professors and students from the New York area to participate in taped interviews with Monica Lewinsky that will be the basis for a documentary to be televised next January. While Lewinsky herself had pitched the idea of a program about her recent years of "intense growth and perspective," Sheila Nevins, head of HBO's documentary unit, had the idea of organizing it around academic discussions with students of constitutional law, women's history, psychology, and