HBO announced it was moving forward with a pilot for Washingtonienne, based on the book that lightly fictionalized Senate staffer Jessica Cutler's adventures as an anonymous blogger who took money from politically-powerful men for sex including, famously, for lots of ass fucking. The show, whose development has been previously reported, is to be a half-hour comedy. Cutler sells her body, wacky hijinks ensue, presumably. Sarah Jessica Parker is executive producing, so it sounds like it will basically be Sex And The City, but in DC. Filming is set to begin soon. Does this mean casting has already occurred? Who will play Cutler? Who will play Gawker Media alumna Ana Marie Cox (who publicized Cutler's online diary in 2004)? Vote on this critical civic issue in the comments, even if it's the only vote you cast all year! [Variety]

The Times has a delightful story in this morning's paper on the ruses various celebrities use to evade reporters outside the main criminal courthouse in Manhattan. Actor Rip Torn, for example, once led paparazzi through a park and past a gaggle of chanting construction workers before jumping into the cab of an occupied 18-wheeler, jumping out again, and rolling underneath the truck. Kirk Jones snuck in a side entrance while his driver successfully impersonated the rapper to photographers, sultry actress Uma Thurman enlisted the help of court officers and producer Sean Combs has a mini secret-service brigade. But the most fascinating courthouse celebrity by far is criminally insane singer Courtney Love, who sashays in and out of the building as though surrounded by adoring fans:

Sure drug binges and booze-soaked car accidents are sort of interesting, but when else but during a divorce do you hear the really deliciously sordid details about a celebrity or their beleaguered spouse. Today we learn of former model Christie Brinkley and her sleazebucket husband Peter Cook. Various nasty accusations have been made as they've muddled through the separation ordeal, but today's is so far the most fun. It seems that Mr. Cook posted nude photos of himself online while trolling for young ladies on swingers websites. Terrific! Perfectly debauched and embarrassing. If that's not enough for you, after the jump we'll take a look at a few other recent juicy bits of gossip that slopped out of messy celebrity divorces.

Remember the big paparazzi beat-down by surfers in Malibu this past weekend? Well, there's now supposed to be a big Saturday rumble between the two groups, who have been trading taunts in the comments of pap-run news site X17.com. The original clash pitted a mob of entitled white Malibu denizens against the rough-and-tumble paps, some of whom are ex-gang members and many of whom are immigrants, some illegal. The new fight promises even more fun ethnic tension under the sun:

Katy Perry has a big dance hit with her pseudo-lesbian-curious song "I Kissed A Girl." The singer has been clawing for a break since at least 2001, and it turns out that before discovering the celebrity-making power of girl-on-girl tongue this year, and even before trying to win fame via her "really big boobs" in 2004, Perry pitched herself as a Christian singer. Her debut album was released under her prior recording name, Katy Hudson, and included gospel songs like "Faith Won't Fail" and "Last Call," the latter featuring the phone number for the church where her father was a pastor. UPDATE: Here's what Perry, still in her holy music phase, told Alison Rosen of Seventeen magazine about premarital sex:

Rex Sorgatz arrived in New York six scant months ago, but he's already got it all figured out. After an advanced anthropological study of Internet Microfame, he's published his initial findings in New York Magazine. In explaining the concept, he also instructs the reader on how to become microfamous in three easy steps! "To persevere in the new age of celebrity, you need to return to the well, repeating these steps of creating, oversharing, and responding." Soon you too can dog-sit for Julia Allison. We are all Tay Zonday, Emily Brill, and the Tron Guy now. [NYM]

It's another sad breakup for Julia Allison. The fameball's sweetheart, six-figure gig as editor-at-large for Star magazine has come to a close, the Post's Keith Kelly is reporting. A few months after a fling with AM New York, the self-promoting young dating columnist was hired one year ago by Star under the tenure of American Media editorial director Bonnie Fuller. Her work for the tabloid consisted not of writing, but of showing up on cable news shows to talk about, say, the Texas polygamists ("I was sitting there seriously disturbed"), or about singer Britney Spears' love life ("the guy is a user, a loser and a mooch"). With Fuller gone, save for her own editor-at-large gig, Allison's yearlong contract was allowed to expire. Star isn't talking publicly about exactly why that is.

When ancient and respected old magazine The Atlantic put Britney Spears on their cover for an utterly so-so story on the celebrity-industrial complex or whatever (it was OK but Rolling Stone's piece was better), everyone (i.e. us) mocked them for selling out and claimed it was a cynical ploy at boosting newsstand sales or something. Well. Mea culpa! Because if it was a cynical ploy at boosting newsstand sales, it failed miserably. "The magazine sold approximately 24,000 copies at the newsstand, some 21,000 less than March and nearly 30,000 less than its January/February issue." According to Atlantic Media president Justin Smith (the man who destroyed The Atlantic), they meant to do that.

Yesterday, Daily News columnists Rush & Molloy speculated that maybe, just maybe, the novel from the wife of comedian Denis Leary (above, right) is autobiographical, since it's about a wife whose famous husband is good friends with a hot Australian movie star, sort of like how Leary is friends with hot English actress Elizabeth Hurley (above, left). In the novel, the actor's wife is upset by his "schoolboy crush" on the friend. We wrote that Ann Leary had "sadly channeled her frustrations into a thinly-veiled 'novel.'" But she replies that Gawker is "crazy," and told Choire Sicha of the LA Times that we're just clawing for cheap attention. Well, that last part is true. But at least we can admit it!

Britney Spears is at all times, in public at least, surrounded by a gang of ex-con illegal-immigrant paparazzi with no regard for traffic laws, so it's probably no surprise that the Los Angeles district attorney's office now says one of the paps intentionally got himself run over, presumably so he could sue the singer. The unidentified photographer asked county prosecutors to investigate an incident in which, he claims, Spears ran over his foot with her SUV. He wanted her brought up on charges. The DA looked into it — Spears had a parking lot hit-and-run incident once — and found that, actually, if the collision happened at all, it was the photographer's fault:

Why are we getting constantly LaBeouf'd? Shia LaBeouf, that actor who plays the same snarky, zippy prick in every movie, is everywhere these days, gracing two Vanity Fair covers in as many years and now looking gray and smoky for GQ's June issue. Plus he's getting plum roles in big rock 'em sock 'em movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of What the Hell Is Going On and Transformers. He's got the lead in a fall thriller, Eagle Eye, and Entertainment Weekly has just named him one of the 15 members of Hollywood's "Next A-List." Ugh. What's going on? Isn't he bland and uninteresting at best and a smartass punk at worst? Why is he getting this big push, all of these ringing endorsements?

"The recordings, made by former Globe managing editor Jim Mitteager, capture him talking with his reporters and sources about stars who allegedly have undergone cosmetic surgery and abortions, as well as been treated for mental illness, bulimia and AIDS." [Daily News]

The birth of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's twins is, for celebrity tabloid editors and producers, like a presidential election night, the Superbowl and a moon landing all rolled into one, and the incredible pressure is destroying them one at a time. Bonnie Fuller was an early victim, losing all grip on reality at the end of March, when the magazine she then ran, Star, described a New Orleans wedding between the power couple that never took place. Then, earlier this month, Entertainment Tonight reported that Jolie had given birth to the twins in France, a story that was swiftly denied by reps for the couple and that is raising questions about the show's standards (apparently it was like the New Yorker of celebrity journalism). Now, Fuller's replacement at Star is also messing up the Brangelina story, cropping a month-old photo to make it look like Jolie "collapsed" in the south of France:

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's unborn twins are worshiped by the entertainment press as a sort of double celebrity messiah. Bidding for exclusive first pictures has reportedly reached $15 million and is poised to rise further. So it was with no small measure of elation Friday that Entertainment Tonight delivered news that the twins had just been born in the south of France, a big scoop. But People and Us Weekly soon reported denials from reps for the couple. Brad Pitt attended a Grand Prix event across the border in Italy, which would be an odd decision for a new father. The celebrified Associated Press, which obtained a denial from Pitt's manager, asked, "Was Entertainment Tonight punk'd?" Maybe not. Maybe it is the victim of a MASSIVE ANGELINA JOLIE CONSPIRACY.

HarperCollins hopes the whiff of scandal will push sales of Tatum O'Neal's memoir higher, based on the line (OK I'll stop now) the publisher is selling in a new press release touting the three-year-old book. The oh-so-tasteful bit of flackery leads with the "BREAKING NEWS" of O'Neal's arrest Sunday night for attempting to buy cocaine near her Lower East Side apartment, and concludes with a not-entirely-freshened-up bio: "... this talented, spirited young woman has endured and triumphed over everything from childhood neglect and spousal abuse and heroin addiction, only to suffer a recent heartbreaking relapse from hard won sobriety... Tatum's life story is the ultimate victory-in-the-end tale." Tatum's life can be a victory in the end, especially if you buy her paperback, which via the magic of royalties will literally provide the fallen actress with microseconds of legal services, drug rehab or cocaine ecstasy. Full press release after the jump.

At last, the buzz over the Sex And The City movie premiere is being deflated. It got so bad earlier this week that even the Times was reduced to hyping the official PR line about the opening in a cutesy video while failing to note the hundreds of unwitting publicity slaves turned away with tickets in their hands. But now the backlash stories are coming in waves, tearing down some small edifice of the celebrity-industrial complex before our very eyes. We've learned that many tourists in line paid "hundreds of dollars" for their worthless passes. It emerged that one of the stars made have shown up high on cocaine. The woman with the bum $19,000 ticket was lied to worse than anyone thought. Even the food sucked! There's talk of the show being way past its prime (you don't say!). And now movie producer New Line has been reduced to public bickering with Radio City Music Hall over who is at fault for the whole Tuesday night fiasco:

It's no secret that the gossip business tends to be driven by self-promotion, grudges, favor-trading and image-polishing. But the press release after the jump is enough to make one yearn for the vicious, but still very human, world depicted by Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success. The release is headlined "Gossip item, Press advisor, Gossip item, Press advisory, Press" and claims that reality TV star Kim Kardashian was recently "saved from stampede of 13 year olds" at a hotel. It's hard to say what ulterior motive is behind this "gossip" — touting the demographics of the show, perhaps, or deflecting attention from something juicier — but one would hope the likes of Page Six and Us Weekly would at least make celebrity publicists go through the motions of pretending their gossip isn't manufactured. Check the papers tomorrow to find out if they do.

Also-ran music channel Fuse is looking for some aspiring musicians, for a reality show, but it definitely isn't interested in your squeaky-clean, David Archuleta-from-American Idol types. According to a flyer (left) spotted last night in SoHo by an email tipster, Fuse wants someone who is interested in being the next — WINK WINK — Amy Winehouse. A "wild party girl." Someone who can handle being filmed smoking something mysterious (ahem) and then being questioned by police in connection with said film. Or, alternatively, the channel is open to landing a more serious type who models herself after a certain female rapper who was incarcerated for a year in connection with a shooting involving two associates. Whatever, either way is fine, as long as you are female. But, either way, hurry! Interviews began yesterday. Email and phone contacts are after the jump for those who "live the rock & roll lifestyle:"

Singer Beyoncé's fashion collection, House of Deréon, is pushing a new kids line, for which it created the ad pictured at left. The reviews are rolling in, and they go a little something like this: "I don't know about you, but the words 'fuck me pumps' and 'pre-schoolers' do not need to go together in the same sentence." Taking racy pictures of underaged girls seems to be the fashion of the moment. Beyoncé is just staying on the cutting edge! But at least Miley Cyrus had a track record of sexual photos before her controversial Vanity Fair shoot; these girls are, what, five or six? And, more importantly, however will Annie Leibovitz take edgy pictures of them when they reach the next break in the celebrity pipeline if they've already been dressing like this for ten years? Larger photo of the ad after the jump.

"Some of the most celebrity-centric, entertainment-obsessed news media outlets have added a heavy dose of political news to their lineups, taking space normally devoted to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ... The gossip-magazine editors appear to hold the cards most of the time. When President Bill Clinton submitted an essay for publication in Us, it did not pass muster with [Us editor Janice] Min. 'It was the magazine equivalent of watching C-Span,' she recalled, a slight shudder in her voice. 'I was a little mortified to do it, but we kicked it back to the president for a revise.'" [Times]