Learning a foreign language is an excellent way to enhance cross-cultural understanding and foster communication amongst diverse groups. Becoming a prostitute is an even simpler way to open yourself up to wholly unknown worlds. Why not try both at once?

With what new angle could a reporter possibly respond to the all-encompassing, all-powerful juggernaut that is the Gossip Girl publicity machine? Given that the actors who play Blair, Serena, Jenny, Dan, Chuck, and Nate are about neck and neck media attention-wise with the presidential candidates, you wouldn't think there'd be many. You would, course, be wrong: Today's story is about how the dining and drinking haunts frequented by the characters, like Geisha on East 61st Street and Gilt at the Palace Hotel, are pulling in business from viewers who want to order the same dishes and sit at the same table. "We have men in their 50s asking for the grilled cheese sandwich and asking where Blair and Serena sat,'' says The Palace. Mmm, creepy. But presumably they also get teenagers ordering cocktails and expecting not to get carded—because Chuck and Blair never do!

A high-level Defamer operative was stymied in his attempts to catch one of the perpetually sold-out screenings of Brokeback Mountain last night, but was rewarded with an encounter with one of celebritydom's best examples of stable matrimony as he opted for a couple of hours with the geishas instead:

· The trades react to the sad news that Richard Pryor died of a heart attack on Saturday. Var calls him "groundbreaking," and "talented and tormented," while THR reminds us that Pryor nabbed $4 million for the awful Superman 3. [Variety, THR]
· Paramount will try to defray the cost of Friday's impulse-buy (when Brad Grey sees something he likes in a store window, money is no object!) of DreamWorks by flipping the studio's 59 title live-action library to a third party for $1 billion. [Variety]
· The WB benefits from Friday's bombshell Paramount/DreamWorks announcement, pink-slipping about 20 network workers while everyone was worrying about how much richer Steven Spielberg and David Geffen were about to get. [THR]
· Brokeback Mountain and Memoirs of a Geisha set limited release box office record. The gay cowboys wrangled $108,910 per theater, while the controversially Chinese geishas did $84,194 per. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, British Import Edition, Part XXIV: Fox greenlights a pilot for The Worst Week of My Life, based on a BBC series about a "hellacious" week (read: wackiness ensues!) before a couple's wedding. [THR]

Anxious to avoid another Mask of Zorro-type costumed misadventure, Memoirs of a Geisha producer Steven Spielberg took no chances, beginning his campaign months ago to dissuade sartorially exuberant Sony chief Amy Pascal from painting her face white and showing up to the film's premiere in a kimono. The persuasive Spielberg largely succeeded, his lone concession being Pascal's socks-and-platform-sandals flourish (not pictured).