· Fox, apparently tiring of knocking down and stealing the lunch money of wee NBC-Universal head Jeff Zucker, turns its attention to pilfering British ideas. At least this time they're paying for Hell's Kitchen. Think The Restaurant with inedible food, bad teeth, and a third British stereotype of your own choosing. We recommend you go with "cops with no guns," that always cracks us up. [Variety, sub., req'd]
Blog Cinemocracy extracts a "fun fact" from this Variety story (sub. req'd) on the international pirate DVD trade, in which Interpol (no, not the band, silly hipster!) claims movie piracy is the new black of terrorist funding: "One kilo of pirated discs is worth more than one kilo of cannabis resin.”
A mere seven days after Ted Harbert's hiring as head of E! became public knowledge, the network lets its employees know that there's a new celebrity-stalking sheriff in town. We suppose it's only fitting because the world knew about Mindy Herman's firing before anyone drawing a paycheck with that adorable exclamation point on it. Here's the, ahem, E!-mail:
· Hollywood Out of Ideas 10, Cruel Irony Edition: Kim Cattrall is finally willing to show her tits on camera, and now Warner Brothers decides to sign up for another Police Academy movie. Where was her libertine spirit when her on-screen sexual tension with Steve Gutenberg was begging for some full-frontal? [THR]
· Mena Suvari joins the cast of the strange, ill-conceived Ted Griffin re-imagining of The Graduate mythology (whatever, it's a sequel). We love her recent work in Six Feet Under, so too bad she's playing Jennifer Aniston's sister. Hold on, we smell a taboo itching to be broken! [THR]
· UPN tapes Amish teen reality show on the down-low to avoid criticism. They are really in for a backlash when news of their super-secret pilot for Black-Hatters Gone Apeshit In Gentile Society leaks out. [Variety, sub. req'd]
· Is Miramax's Harvey Weinstein going to MGM? Who's buying MGM? No one knows anything! [Variety, sub. req'd]
Blogger A Fly On The Wall reports that electronic listening devices ("bugs," in the parlance of espionage) were found in Disney CEO Michael Eisner's office on the company's Burbank lot during a "routine" security check over the July 4th holiday weekend. Just to make sure everything was nice and bug-free (tiny microphones do wreak havoc on an office's decor), some furniture was hauled away, ostensibly to be replaced by furnishings vetted by Disney's anti-spy squad. We've unfairly imagined Eisner as a disturbed paranoid, fortifying his office against bloodthirsty shareholder mobs. But it appears his fears were justified. What's that saying? "Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean there's not a highly-sensitive, covert listening device hidden in the area that Mickey's privates would occupy, were he not rendered as a rodent eunuch"?
· Harvey Weinstein and Michael Eisner are poised for a showdown over Miramax at the Sun Valley conference, where rich Hollywood studio heads kiss the jewels of billionaire media conglomerate CEOs. Will it be Harvey's or Mike's dangly bits that emerge well-puckered? Will someone finally scare up the $5 billion to buy MGM? We're swooning from the suspense. [THR]
· A guy we've never heard of set to star in incredibly dull sounding drama Boston Legal. It's still just The Practice, don't be fooled by the unknown actors and play into David E, Kelley's evil, no-name casting plans. [THR]
· Wendy Makkena, probably best known as that tiny, shy nun from the Sister Act movies, is set to play Jason Alexander's wife in Listen Up, the CBS comedy based on the life of Tony Kornheiser. TV needs more tiny nuns showing off their acting chops. [THR]
· Scott Wolf, Party of Five's former alcoholic clown Bailey headed to Everwood to sex things up. Treat Williams just doesn't score high enough on the WB's "teen girl tingle scale," so re-enforcements were needed. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Harper Collins makes a deal for the Sean Connery autobiography, with the contingency that he spends no more than 10 pages discussing the last 10 years of his career. Also, at least half of the book must be a photo essay ruminating on the hirsute splendor of his James Bond-era chest hair. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
Variety wastes no time taking some potshots at new MPAA head Dan Glickman. They find him wanting when his "Hollywood" factor is compared to the outgoing Jack Valenti. 'He's certainly not straight out of Central Casting. The balding, slightly pudgy former congressman from Kansas has never been known for his pizzazz or sartorial splendor...Glickman's serious, plain-spoken statements at the press conference also stood in stark contrast to Valenti's florid elocution." And the picture Variety runs, in which Glickman looks like he was once separated from actor Jeffrey Tambor with a chainsaw, isn't helping to sex him up. Maybe he was better off when we stuck his head on Valenti's body.
This Variety headline for their story on the "bidding war" between Time Warner and Sony for MGM has the folks at TW executing a classic, if dangerous, negotiation ploy: the extreme low-ball. "What, the Japanese are offering you five billion? They probably mean yen, that's like ten dollars American. Fuck that, we'll do you a favor and give you five million. Take it or leave it, I got Viacom on the other line and they're offering to sell us Paramount for a hundred dollars and a bag of hammers."
Leave it to the LAT to suck all of the sexy out of Mary-Kate Olsen's' recent headlines, running an AP story on the challenges facing the twins' brand as they grow up and take more responsibility for the Dualstar empire.
It's still only Tuesday, but Variety is going to have to try very hard to write a headline filthier than this one before the holiday weekend is upon us:
A little more news on the hunt for Jack Valenti's successor at the MPAA. An anonymous source tells us that former Clinton Administration Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman (confirming the LAT claim (reg. req'd for link) that he's "at the top of the list") is the Anointed One, and that if he wants the job, it's his. But Glickman's "on the fence about it." No doubt he has some reservations about the boot camp that Valenti will put the replacement through before he can comfortably retire from the post he's held since 1966; we hear the press training is pretty intense. But it's nothing compared to the three-day viewing of Errol Flynn movies as an MPAA "education consultant" applies a cattle prod to the genitals.
Just as the LAT reports that a search for MPAA head/pirate hunter Jack Valenti's successor is in full swing, Valenti manages to seize control of Sen. Orrin Hatch's body at a Capitol Hill hearing on peer-to-peer file-sharing. Said the Valenti-possessed Senator, "In the film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' the leering Childcatcher lured children into danger with false promises of free lollipops. Tragically, some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal, that they can legally lure children and others with false promises of free music." Nodding subtly in Valenti's direction, his eyes dancing pinwheels, he continued, "Children think they're getting the latest Spice Girls song for free, but they're actually downloading rape-crazed pedophiles in eyepatches directly into their home. And after they tear Mom and Dad limb from limb and bugger the family dog, they're coming for Junior. I will spare you the details of what they do with the lollipops."
Proving that anyone with a few million in the bank and no ideas can become a producer, the publisher of favored 'tween spank mags Maxim and Stuff has set up shop in Hollywood. Dennis Publishing's Moving Pictures will focus on "projects that reflect the young male ethos of the Dennis pubs, as well as mining those magazines for potential TV, feature, and DVD treatment." OK, go ahead and make your Maxim movies and TV shows. But if teenagers and frat boys want to jerk off to the comely young stars of the WB, can't they just turn on Smallville and cut out the middle man?
We might have had something to say about this LAT article about MTV Jesus-figure Tom Freston, whom Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone has chosen to "reverse a cold streak" at Paramount in his downtime between executive three-ways. But LA Innuendo editor/blogger Richard Rushfield actually reads the Sunday LAT and took care of it for us. Rushfield doesn't quite get what's so genius about Freston's MTV tenure. He recalls a past experience with the network that merely illustrates his simple application of Hollywood's inversely proportional Words-To-Tits Recipe For Success:
Is the scorching Hollywood trend of straight actors dabbling with gay roles trickling upwards to the boardrooms of media conglomerates? With just a few added ellipses, this excerpt from the NYT's Sunday Q&A with Sumner Redstone on Viacom's new power structure (CEO Redstone on top of co-presidents Les Moonves and Tom Freston) becomes three buddies drinking some wine over dinner "meetings," then letting their more "creative" sides emerge.
Defamer is committed to connecting its readers with employment opportunities within the entertainment industry. Today, we spotlight the MPAA, which is looking for an Internet Investigations Manager/Cybercrime Investigator. If you can handle the following responsibilites, you can help protect movie copyrights while enjoying a most competitive compensation package:
We hear from a well-placed operative within MGM that Sony's rumored $5 billion purchase of the movie studio is a done deal. The news should be announced early next week. In the meantime, we can get back to our favorite pasttime: watching media conglomerates swallow up pieces of Hollywood in pursuit of the ever-elusive "shitergy."
If only there were some sort of objective criteria for measuring success in Hollywood...oh, wait, there is: money. Somewhat adorably, the Forbes Celebrity 100 pretends that other stuff matters as well, but if web hits really counted, Paris Hilton's vagina would have been Number One with a doggy-styling bullet. Since the cash eventually wins out, Mel Gibson triumphs on the back of his graphic torture of his Lord and Savior. Maybe one day, when Kabbalahists rule the world, Guy Ritchie will ascend to the top spot on the strength of his loving big-screen depiction of the disembowling of Madonna.
The LAT reports that Miramax could lay off as much as 20% of its workforce after gobbling up its entire annual production budget like Harvey Weinstein at a buffet full of donuts stuffed with 20-dollar bills. We just hope that our friends at the 'Max got those resumes together in time. With a hundred or so fewer paychecks on the rolls, will the Weinstein brothers be able to buy back their company from Disney on the cheap? Maybe they can knock a little more off the buy-back price if Harvey and Bob start brown-bagging their lunches. [Ed. note—Get it? Harvey and Bob are fat guys!]
