According to E! Online's "Watch With" Kristin Veitch, ABC may be following through on its pledge to take the Isaiah Washington situation "very seriously" by prejudicially shitcanning the slur-repeating actor from Grey's Anatomy without the benefit of a tear-soaked farewell episode dramatizing his sudden departure from the hospital:
· Al Pacino will play flamboyant artist Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story, a project which should provide the actor with an exciting opportunity to dramatically wave around a paintbrush while shouting, "Melting clocks! Hoo-ah!" [Variety]
· Robert Redford "came out swinging" at Sundance's opening press conference, taking shots at the Bush administration and decrying those who would use his swag-suite-riddled festival as a film buyer's market instead of a pure time for appreciating independent moviemaking, then jetted off to shoot his Tom Cruise movie. [THR]
· United 93's Paul Greengrass will write and direct movie about life in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion for Working Title and Universal, right after he finishes up the latest Bourne flick for Uni. [Variety]
· ABC and CBS score big ratings numbers on Thursday with Grey's Anatomy and CSI, Smallville, while Fox gets a reminder about the disaster that is their non-Idol schedule, landing right back in the Nielsen toilet on a night without Simon Cowell. [THR]
· Var's Peter Bart takes the temperature of Hollywood's pol-fuckers, looking at the state of Obamamania, Hillarymania, Edwardsmania, and Goremania. [Variety]
Despite appeals from gay rights groups to apologize, Isaiah "I love gay" Washington remains stubbornly tight-lipped regarding his use of the word "faggot" to disparage Grey's Anatomy co-star T.R. Knight, a wound reopened when he shouted it again in a denial of the incident to a roomful of reporters at Monday's Golden Globes. ABC brass, realizing they have to say something, has released this preliminary statement on the matter:
Even on Hollywood's Second Biggest (And First Drunkest) Night, Isaiah "Dr. McChokey" Washington found himself unable to escape the lingering spectre of Chokegate, in which the homophobic slur Washington allegedly hurled while in the middle of a high-minded debate with co-star Patrick Dempsey over their professional relationship launched other co-star T.R. Knight out of the primetime closet. While Washington offered a red carpet soundbite expressing his unbridled enthusiasm for all things queer ("'I love gay. I wanted to be gay,' he said. 'Please let me be gay'"), the controversy-hungry press corps wouldn't let him off the hook when he arrived backstage following Grey's Anatomy's Globe win. Reports Access Hollywood:
As audience members were still dabbing their tear ducts with linen napkins in response to America Ferrera's moving acceptance speech for her Best Actress In A Television Series - Musical or Comedy win for Ugly Betty, off-camera goons clearly directed the overcome young actress Maria Menounos's way for her mandated, "You just won a Golden Globe! How does that make you feel?" moment of backstage awkwardness. Ferrara stood helplessly as Menounos parroted the prattle fed into the earpiece skillfully hidden beneath her flat-ironed hair, then bravely attempted an escape before tear-gas and tazer-equipped NBC gold coats helpfully ushered her back in front of the camera so she could answer such pressing, big-moment-deflating questions as, "What do you say to all those people out there who did not want you to play Ugly Betty?" before fearfully rejecting her interrogator's insistent demands that she use the compulsory screen time to provide a list of names she might have forgotten to thank in her acceptance speech.
While the big bomb dropped at yesterday's TCA press tour events involved Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse unexpectedly announcing that they're looking to identify a creatively valid "end point" to their series (and ABC president Steve McPherson's seeming annoyance over the showrunners' yapping about those ongoing discussions) and rob ABC of an opportunity to explore the mysterious fates of heretofore unseen survivors from the "cargo hold" and "wing" sections of the doomed plane (the "Holdies" and "Wingies," respectively) in syndication-padding eight and ninth seasons, we found this nugget from the TV Week's Critical Eye junketblog an even more enthralling behind-the-scenes look at the series:
Marcia Cross, heavy with double child, has been ordered to bed rest by her doctor, but try explaining that to millions of rabid Desperate Housewives fans who could care less about healthy prenatal development if it gets in the way of tying up the "Kyle McLachlan's ex-wife is moving down the block and Bree still doesn't have any idea!" loose-ends Season 3 has presented for her anal-retentive homemaker character. For producers, there was only one solution—bringing the party to Cross:
With Steven Spielberg pushing back his plans for Lincoln in order to get Indiana Jones 4 done before arthritis finally robs Harrison Ford of his whip-cracking abilities, Liam "Honest Abe" Neeson ceases his beard-fittings, freed up to take a job starring in Luc Besson's kidnapping drama Taken. [Variety]
Foreigners love Ben Stiller! Night at the Museum leads the international box office for a second straight weekend with $29.8 million. [THR]
Buoyed by a brief cameo appearance by a convincingly lifelike animatronic version of the show's superannuated namesake, the Ryan Seacrest-hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve trounces Carson Daly, MTV, and Fox's ball-dropping offerings. [Variety]
Eight-year-old Bindi Irwin, precocious offspring of recently deceased Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, will kick off her American TV career this week, appearing on The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Late Show, where she will grapple with a variety of tiny (but deadly) reptiles to promote her new show, Bindi, the Jungle Girl. [THR]
NBC Universal TV lures Without a Trace creator Hank Steinberg away from Warner Bros. TV with a "pricey" (read: "fuckload of money") overall deal. [THR]
The CW tries to make Josh Schwartz feel a little better about yesterday's announced demise of The O.C., greenlighting his Gossip Girl pilot, his second pilot pickup in the last two days. Nothing helps dull the pain of cancellation better than a couple of hefty checks. [Variety]
Fox uses some sneaky math to claim a new worldwide box office record, combining the grosses of all of its divisions to come up with a $3.6 billion take in 2006. [THR]
ABC can't buy a comedy hit—trust them, they're trying—as the heavily promoted premieres of midseason replacements The Knights of Prosperity and In Case of Emergency bomb into fourth place in most Nielsen categories. [Variety]
· The trades weigh in on Robert Newman's unexpected defection (a "jaw-dropper!" raves Daily Variety) from ICM to Endeavor. [THR, Variety]
New Line responds to a disappointing™, Snakes on a Plane-hampered 2006 by giving senior executive VP (and Seth Rogen doppelganger) Richard Brener a fancy new COO title, pledging that the new year won't be as shitty as the one they've just put behind them. [Variety]
Mexican director Juan Catlett is suing Mel Gibson, claiming that the director lifted scenes from Return to Aztlan, his own, earlier movie about the end of the Mayan empire, for Apocalypto, allegations obviously orchestrated by Gibson's Jewish tormentors to further impede his already dim Oscar hopes. [Variety]
Pilot pick-up mania! NBC greenlights three drama pilots: a dysfunctional cop show from Dennis Leary and pals, a spy dramedy from The O.C.'s Josh Schwartz, and a new, probably ill-advised stab at The Bionic Woman. [THR]
Dancing with the Stars runner-up Mario Lopez is already reaping the impressive career benefits of not winning the high-rated celebrity waltz-off, replacing the guy from Desperate Housewives for the coveted gig of hosting the Miss America pageant on Country Music Television. [Variety]
THR triumphantly declares 2006 the Year of the Comeback at the international theaters, erasing the bitter memories of 2005, the Year That Too Many Sunny Weekends In Germany Sent Hollywood Into An Overseas Box Office Freefall. [THR]
Adult Swim nerds rejoice: The Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie is getting a March release date on 800
screens. [Variety]
Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry will be the first to host the traveling "The CSI Experience" exhibit, an interactive experience in which children will learn about forensic science by imitating their favorite moments from the TV franchise, like passing a blacklight over a defiled corpse for evidence of sexual battery. [Variety]
ABC greenlights a pilot for a TV version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which will pick up six months after the events of the film and center on the show's married assassins settling in a new 'burb and backsliding into their bickering, fighting-or-fucking ways. No word on casting, but the network and studio hope to find two leads willing to become romantically involved during the pilot shoot and publicly break up their marriages right before the upfronts. [THR]
Cheeky Var topper Peter Bart encourages our hobbled Governator to liberate his previous Caleeforneeyah from the tyranny of American statehood. [Variety]
Time-stopping, "breakout" Heroes star Masi Oka is in talks to play a supporting role in the true-story inspired blackjack card-counting drama, 21. [THR]
CBS locks up Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! through 2012, confident that TV viewers will never tire of watching Alex Trebek chide contestants who make the unforgivable mistake of forgetting to phrase their answers in the form of a question, or of waiting for Vanna White to finally snap and take out everyone on the Wheel set in a hail of gunfire. [Variety]
We realize not all of you will be out traipsing around your town this coming New Year's Eve, choosing instead to spend your final moments of 2006 in the comforts of your homes with ABC's own Father Time and Baby New Year—i.e. Dick Clark, whom they promise will be "back, live," and his bushy tailed yet meticulously manscaped replacement, Ryan Seacrest. And while we were giddily combing through photographs of the final touches being put upon the famed Times Square ball whose descent will be counted down by millions, it suddenly occurred to us that it was she—that shimmering, totemic orb symbolic of our communal progression—whom Seacrest should have been planting one on all along, and not Teri Hatcher! Congratulations, Ryan: You are the future.
We wanted nothing more in these last few hours before the Christmas break than to report that a legitimate miracle had taken place: That Donald Trump, having been visited by various ghosts of real estate development past, present, and future throughout the night, had awakened in the wee hours soaked in a pool of his own, gilded sweat, and realized that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. With a yank of the braided velvet rope hanging by his bedside, he'd slide silently off his black satin sheets, careful all the while not to wake a slumbering Melania; he'd then tiptoe onto the solid-gold-and-glass elevator that would bring him to the roof of his spectacular residence, where a "T"-emblazoned helicopter would instantly rush him over to Rosie O'Donnell's home.
You've by now had some time to savor every last morsel of Donald Trump's buffet of fat jabs and stupid-lady jokes aimed squarely at Rosie O'Donnell. We can finally share with you the attack that started it all: a spirited invective in its own right from O'Donnell, in which she first performs an amazing approximation of the Manhattan land baron's otherworldy hair, then calls him out for his self-serving "pardoning" of the cokey-boozy reigning Miss USA, and concludes with heartwarming Hannukah wishes for Trump to "sit and spin, my friend."
ABC yanks both the stillborn Day Break and Nielsen bed-Shatter Show Me The Money from its airwaves, spackling episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos, According to Jim, and George Lopez into the resulting cracks in their schedule. [Variety]
Bob Yari picks another Oscar season battle, this one with Warner Brothers over their lack of support (quotable gripe: "Someone up there wants the film buried.") for The Painted Veil. [THR]
Judith Regan's late Friday firing from HarperCollins, ostensibly over the PR shitstorms caused be her O.J. hypothetical murder confession book and Mickey Mantle sex novel, leaves the media with many questions regarding the ownership of certain properties, as well as the future of the ReganBooks imprint. [Variety]
The Survivor: Cook Islands finale gives CBS a Sunday night ratings win over football and Christmas specials on competing networks. Unfortunately, we missed the show and have no idea which race finally proved its superiority in building boats out of driftwood and tolerating Jeff Probst's smarmy presence. [THR]
· USA Network beats other basic cable networks for the rights to Casino Royale with a $20 million offer, with Spike eventually bowing out because it ultimately "felt a little gay" bidding up a movie in which James Bond repeatedly doffs his shirt to show off his abs. [Variety]
Chingchonggate may finally be blowing over, but even casual watchers of The View know Rosie O'Donnell's tenure at the yapfest won't be long. Case in point: O'Donnell's rambling diatribe on the alien, rich-lady ways of Barbara Walters (pay special attention to Walters' patented DeathStare), whose penchant for throwing dinner parties not featuring a communal macaroni salad bowl led O'Donnell to practically rally the audience to rise up against her boss and join a people's revolution. Now, a press release from Extra gets Rosie to address rumors that she wants to take over from retiring Bob Barker to host The Price is Right:
To bring you up to date on what the media (well, Gawker) has dubbed Chingchonggate, People's 2006 Scariest Lesbian Alive Rosie O'Donnell first addressed the ongoing controversy—her personal "macaca"—on her website, putting some of her thoughts on the matter into her trademark blogku verse. She finally addressed the matter directly on yesterday's The View, saying, "Apparently 'ching chong,' unbeknownst to me, is a very offensive word" to "Japanese people," a gaffe that instantly made us nostalgic for the days of Michael Richards reaching out to the "Afro-American" community. She then apologized, though tempering it by saying "there's a good chance I'll do something like that again...'cause that's how my brain works." Apparently, that wasn't good enough:
Whether lending out her couch for love-trumpeting acrobatics, her ear to the plight of African orphan-snatching pop icons, or simply launching a new generation of grating and ubiquitous talk show hosts groomed in her own branded image, America's spiritual shepherd Oprah Winfrey has always made it a point of giving something back. Now the Winfrey charity bonanza is coming to prime time, with two weepy, feel-good reality TV specials that promise to give audiences that magical, "I just gave everyone I know a Pontiac!" feeling:
