Your crush from the early '90s is in trouble and he needs your help. Particularly if you are an executive at Fox television. Also today: NBC announces some new shows, Craig Kilborn is back in the game, and Stephenie Meyer wins again.
Diane Keaton, Laura Linney, Dustin Hoffman, and now another one. Also today: Superman finds a new director, some actors were cast in some movies, and Fox keeps making quality television with great titles.
Ed Norton is celebrating his 40th birthday today. Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg is turning 31. Robert Redford is 73. Patrick Swayze is turning 57. Comedian Denis Leary is 52. Christian Slater is turning 40. Nadine Strossen, the president of the ACLU, turns 59. Newsman Bob Woodruff is turning 48. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter turns 82 today. Jeremy Shockey of the New Orleans Saints is turning 29. Director Roman Polanski is 76. Actor Craig Bierko is turning 45. And Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, turns 17 today.
Britney is planning the "filthiest aftershow party" to ever hit the UK, Lady Gaga wants to bang all the Jonas Brothers at the same time, Lindsay Lohan is seeking to enter fashion as a "creative consultant," and the Susan Boyle crazy breakdown story gets even sadder.
• It seems Michael Wolff is finally coming clean about intern-turned-girlfriend Victoria Floethe: The author and Vanity Fair contributor brought her to a tasting at Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar last week and now admits he and his wife Alison Anthoine are planning to divorce. [P6]
• This will probably come as a huge surprise given his upstanding reputation, but it's rumored Bernie Madoff hasn't been faithful to his wife all these years, and may have cheated on her on a couple of occasions. [R&M]
• A "friend" of Joe Biden's daughter Ashley has been trying to sell a tape of her allegedly snorting cocaine for $250,000. [NYDN]
• Madonna appeared in a Malawian court today to discuss her adoption of a four-year-old girl, but a judge put off a decision until Friday. [AP, NYP]
Sad news for those who are fans of people who were famous about eighteen years ago. NBC has canceled Christian Slater's new spy-with-dual-personalities show My Own Worst Enemy and Brooke Sheilds' the-world-is-a-cold-dead-place lady drama Lipstick Jungle. The latter was something of a miraculous holdover from last year, while Slater's show sputtered and died after only four episodes. This is bad news for the struggling NBC, which had pinned high hopes on Enemy, launching a rather enormous ad campaign. At least the show had one cultural zeitgeist moment before it died. And it had to do with sex! Last month the show made mention of something called The Hummingbird sex position. People were so curious about what this wife-pleasing technique could possibly be that they made it the top Google Trends search of the day. The crusty old ladies at wowOwow even got in the game! (Though it's still kind of unclear what, if anything, it actually is. I'm assuming it means really fast sex against a window.) Oh and it bears mentioning that Lipstick Jungle did invent the Cougarnaut Position, which can only be done with a two year old pair of Manolo Blahniks and a bitter sense of life having pretty much passed you by. So yeah, two once buzzy shows now lost to the ages. We expect more beloved but pretty much as little-watched shows like ABC's Pushing Daisies to follow fairly soon. Pie Maker Position or not. (Blackbirds required.)
A recently unearthed artifact from 1988 offers a mass celebrity humiliation on a scale so staggering, the mind quite simply reels. The setting was that year's Academy Awards ceremony—and what better way to celebrate the most glamorous evening in entertainment that with a nine-minute-long musical number peopled by Hollywood's "brightest young stars," in which they express through singing, dancing, fencing, and moonwalking their, um, desire to become a "super duper pooper scooper" Oscar winner.Along this journey through Satan's lower colon, you'll spot some recognizable faces— Blair Underwood, Christian Slater, McDreamy, Ricki Lake, Chad Lowe, and Corey Feldman, whose bedroom walls we can only imagine were covered in "Bad" posters at the time. You'll also spot some lesser-knowns: Keith "Adventures in Babysitting" Coogan, Melora "Jan from The Office" Hardin, Carrie "Carol Burnett's deceased daughter" Hamilton, plus an elegant pas de deux featuring Tracy "Ricky's daughter/Seinfeld's twin" Nelson and someone by the name of D.A. Pauley. Have we sold this yet? Did we mention Feldman gets a dance solo at the 4:45 mark? Enjoy.
Congrats, Andy Samberg, you've reached the big 3-0! The good news? You still look 24! Others celebrating today: Ed Norton is 39, Patrick Swayze is 56, and comedian Denis Leary is 51. ACLU president Nadine Strossen is 58. Frances Bean Cobain, the spawn of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, is 16. Christian Slater turns 39. ABC's Bob Woodruff is 47. NFL star Jeremy Shockey is 28. And writer, director, and international fugitive Roman Polanski is 75.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our millions of Defamer operatives. We'd like to remind you that this feature is powered by you, so if you want to see more installments of PrivacyWatch, then all you've got to do is to send us your sightings. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw NPH getting all sweaty during a workout. In today's installment: Neil Patrick Harris, Woody Allen, Matthew McConaughey, Brian Grazer, Blake Lively, Pierce Brosnan, Christian Slater, Chris Noth, Jason Lee, Jenny Lewis, John Rzeznik, Dave Navarro, Mark McGrath, Dyan Cannon, Camryn Manheim, Bruce Vilanch and more!WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6 · I was at the Arsenal in Los Angeles last night and saw (HOT)MIKE BORTONE (Survivor), PAMELA ALDON ( I remember her from Grease 2, but now on Californication and King of the Hill) and LIZA SNYDER (Yes, Please). They looked like they were having a great time, drinking & laughing & hanging out with a bunch of fun people. At one point I thought Liza & Pamela were going to get up & dance with the DJ's, but no luck. Good Times. THURSDAY, AUGUST 7 · Saw BLAKE LIVELY at Urth Cafe in Beverly Hills. Amazingly, she mistook ME for one of her friends and stopped me as I walked by and said, "Hello." She realized her error and was very sweet in apologizing. She's as pretty in person as she is on TV. · DYAN CANNON — all 90lbs of her — managed to waft/ tremble/ stumble into my abs class today at Equinox. I thought to myself, "Oh my god, that woman looks like the gorgeous Dyan Cannon, star of my all-time favorite and underrated Al Pacino movie Author! Author! But it can't be her because her surgically enhanced lips are bigger than my ass." While the instructor yelled at us during the "reverse crunch" series ("this targets LBF, people! Lower Back Fat! Nothing attractive about that!"), I determined that it was indeed her. Her body is 15, most of her face is 35, but her lips are just...wow. A very bad decision. Sort of criminal, really, that some surgeon would go through with that. Someone should hire her for something—but first demand she gets rid of the trout pout. · I saw WOODY ALLEN & SOON YI today at MOCA. He does not at all try to hide the fact that he's looking at you. Definitely a people watcher. SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 · While at the Eddie Izzard show at the Kodak, I spotted a very cheery CAMRYN MANHEIM. I always expect her to be in a foul mood but she seemed open and, dare I say, bubbly. As I was waiting for the show to start I felt the cold wave of hack comedy wash over the crowd. As I turn around, I see a T-shirt with a hacky comment and the unmistakable bleached bowl-cut of BRUCE VILANCH entering the room. Watching Izzard perform, Vilanch must have felt like a midget trying to guard Shaq. Hopefully it made him realize he should quit the business and leave the hackiness to butchers, golfers, and Dane Cook. SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 · I saw JOHN RZEZNIK of the Goo Goo Dolls getting his Polish on at Warszawa in Santa Monica. He was with some appropriately punk looking pals, pretty cool, having his pierogi. MONDAY, AUGUST 11 · It was the day of hot rocker boys of the 90’s at Equinox on Sunset. Saw DAVE NAVARRO and MARK MCGRATH. Dave’s always there, so that might not be much of a sighting. Mark got approached by some overeager fangirls and looked a bit confused, then scurried away. TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 · It was a celebrity smorgasbord at Nobu (Malibu) around 8:30pm: BRIAN GRAZER, PIERCE BROSNAN (looking fantastic!), CHRISTIAN SLATER (not so much) and MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY (the usual). They were not all together as that would be just plain weird. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13 · Driving home from work last night (13 Aug) I passed MIA MICHAELS (So You Think You Can Dance) heading in the opposite direction (west - natch!) on the Santa Monica Blvd. at the Van Ness intersection. She drives something big and Jeep-like and black. Naughty lady was at the wheel and using her cellphone. Brazenly! But then, as we all know, celebs are above the law. · While waiting outside of my chiropractors office...I see CHRIS NOTH (aka, BIG) come out of "Miss Barry's Bootcamp". He was shirtless and glistening all over (having just finished being tortured by "Miss"). Anyway, he was very nice and did not seem to mind people checking him out (nice bod for an over 50 man). Needless to say my tiny little life got a lot bigger for a second. · It was a celebrity paradox at Poquito Mas on Cahuenga. First, we see a scruffy yet sexy JASON LEE eating with his son PILOT. He seemed like a typical father with him, very sweet, taking him to the bathroom, making sure he had enough nachos, etc. He had a FULL beard (Jason Lee, not the kid), but it kind of worked on him. Then, just minutes later, an absolutely adorable JENNY LEWIS walked in with a pal. They looked like two sweet high school girls. She and Jason Lee made the awkward "I'm famous and you're famous and we are kind of Silver Lakey-Eastsider cool" nod to each other and I couldn't help but think that they would be an adorable couple. A little too cool for school though, perhaps... THURSDAY, AUGUST 14 · NEIL PATRICK HARRIS and DAVID WALTON (from Quarterlife) are working up a sweat (separately) at Equinox on Sunset.
If you're famous, and you want to do cocaine (or smoke crack), our best advice is: don't do it, because you're a role model. Ha ha. But seriously, hopeless crackhead celebrities; if you're going to do it at least don't be an idiot. Coke is hardly even frowned upon in Hollywood, but getting busted while acting like a maniac can seriously impair your image and earning ability in middle America. So learn from your more unfortunate peers' mistakes; after the jump, five cases of cocaine-fuelled idiocy, and how not to reproduce them.
· Because our lust for all things Richard Corben knows no bounds, and in particular the fantasy-art giant's prodigiously beschlonged signature hero Den, news that the inimitable David Fincher is overseeing Paramount's Heavy Metal remake is being met with a great deal of (solo) high-fiving around Defamer HQ. [Variety]
· Sarah Michelle Gellar works! She'll be taking over for Kate Bosworth in Veronika Decides to Die, a harrowing tale of physician-assisted suicide set in and around Riverdale High. [Variety]
Christian Slater is an actor best known (especially in recent years) for his off-screen antics, including an extensive dating CV and a rap sheet to match.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so put down that hamburger and/or baby in desperate need of changing, and send them in! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell everyone about the time you spotted Paris Hilton training for her upcoming incarceration by forcing herself to spend 15 minutes in a book store.
We loved this funny postcard sent to PostSecret, the website where anonymous folks send their most private thoughts. Our money was totally on Ryan Seacrest as the baby daddy. Until we went to save the image and found that the name of the file was christian.jpg. Seriously, they should just call it "Post."
The time: 1 p.m.
The date: October 4, 2006.
The place: Sant Ambroeus, 259 W. 4th Street.
Sighted: "Guess the sobriety isn't working out so well for Christian Slater, as he is currently downing some red wine at Sant Ambroeus. At an outside table as well. Sunglasses and black outfit not hiding the wine."
If the movie studios could somehow reproduce for a mass market the common Los Angeles-area experience of attending the local multiplex in the presence of our favorite celebrities, perhaps the inevitable, lonely backslide into a DVD-based home-viewing reality could be forestalled even longer. Over the weekend, a reader delighted in the antics of one Christian Slater, an actor most recently seen tumbling ass-over-widow's-peak off a roof at Paris Hilton's party:
· Care Bear John Lesher leaves Endeavor to run Paramount Classics, hoping what he lacks in experience he can make up for in hugs.
· Ashlee Simpson earns her Doctorate in Public Asshology at a Toronto McDonald's.
· Yo, Trop: You got served! (With a lawsuit claiming racism.) Yo, Omar Sharif: Ditto!
· Warner Bros. lets the pink slips fly on Big Harry Potter Payday Eve.
· Brad Pitt and George Clooney have reportedly bought themselves a little gay bar to call their own, which they subsequently deny, deny, deny.
· A truly frightening Halloween: Bunny Paris hops over to the Playboy Mansion with various things stuck to her ass, as does Jeremy Piven, who also makes an appearance at Rick Rubin's bash dressed as a Bruce Lee with a black-belt in satisfyin' the ladies [SFX: Gong].
· Donald Trump's frank sex-talk causes the Great Baby Draught of 2006.
· Cameron Diaz insists acting-deficient boyfriend Justin Timberlake get a pivotal voice-over role in Shrek 3, causing DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg to plan a hit.
