Lifetime's House of Versace aired last night, and it was excellent to see Gina Gershon in her old thematic stomping ground of playing a coked-up lady boss set on making everyone's lives miserable. Though critically savaged, I'd wager that Gershon's alternately groggy and raving portrayal of Donatella Versace (complete with a caricature of Donatella's rumbling, accented basso) will age about as well as her iconic turn in Showgirls as Cristal Connors.

In William Friedkin's Killer Joe, Gina Gershon's character Sharla is forced to give head to a chicken leg, a penis stand-in held at the crotch of Matthew McConaughey's anti-hero Killer Joe Cooper. Like the peeing scene in Last House on the Left, the marathon gang rape of I Spit on Your Grave, the wire torture that caps Audition and the turtle (and everything else) in Cannibal Holocaust, it is one of those scenes – a bit of celluloid that will define the film's legacy. The image of Gershon's bee-stung lips wrapped around a chicken leg is not something you see everyday or any other day, for that matter, and if you remove yourself from any emotional connection, you can appreciate this as a minor innovation in the catalog of things movies have done to freak people out, a stand-out in the canon of cinematic depravity.

The most stimulating thing about camp cinema is the ambiguity of intention: It's practically a game to figure out how aware the participants were in the creation of something so bad that it's good. Things can look so ridiculous that you'd assume any actors/directors/producers involved would have to realize it, and yet their perseverance in and clear commitment to an inevitable bomb suggests a glorious lack of awareness.

We were not invited to the star-studded New York screening of A Single Man or the afterparty at Monkey Bar last night. Somehow fictional freelancer Betsey Morgenstern wrangled her way in. Here is her report.

Two politicians who have had a hard time keeping their pants up over the years are celebrating birthdays today. Eliot Spitzer is turning 50; John Edwards is turning 56. Other people blowing out candles today: Gina Gershon is turning 47. Elizabeth Hurley is turning 44. Eric Villency, the furniture store heir and husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle, is 34. Faith Evans is 36. ABC News correspondent Kate Snow is turning 40. Journalist Nat Hentoff turns 84. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is 38. Leelee Sobieski is 27. Actress Jeanne Tripplehorn turns 46. Olympic figure skater Tara Lipinski is turning 27. Defense attorney F. Lee Bailey is 76. And nightlife impresarios—and business partners—Mark Birnbaum and Eugene Remm are 32 and 31, respectively.

Unconspicuous consumption is the hot new thing. That $300 million megayacht? Tacky, what with the layoffs. Private jet? Forget about it, after Detroit's debacle. Even the celebrity goodie-bag business is endangered.

We all have to cut costs these days and clearly Ron Perelman is no exception: He's in the process of selling his yacht for $67 million. The 190-foot Ultima III comes with eight bedrooms and a Jacuzzi and is where, according to the Guardian, the billionaire financier has "entertained" Gina Gershon and director Penny Marshall on the "yacht's lengthy sun deck in recent years." We can't imagine serving up drinks to an aged Penny Marshall will go down as Perelman's most memorable moment at sea, but you're welcome to chalk up Gershon's presence as further evidence of her questionable taste in men. Assuming the thought of Perelman and Gershon romping around in the hot tub doesn't put you off—and you have the aforementioned $67 million to spare—you'll find the full brochure here.

Lucky hosted its fifth annual "Lucky Shops" last night inside the Metropolitan Pavilion. Lucky editor Kim France and publisher Gina Sanders welcomed Leighton Meester, Jessica Szohr, Georgina Chapman, Katrina Bowden, Alexandra Richards, Charlotte Ronson, Thalia, Beverly Johnson, Ginny Barber, and Michaela McManus, who all did a little shopping to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation. [The Daily, PMc, Wireimage]

Reverend Jesse Jackson's secretly videotaped vow to cut off Barack Obama's nuts is a wonderful story, combining inter-generational resentment, racial politics and testicles. A wonderful story, that is, for every media outlet except Maer Roshan's Radar. The magazine is backed in name at least by Yusef Jackson, the Reverend's hotter and gayer son, who would have been better advised to stick with glamorous and manly beer distributorship his father arranged for him.

When she's not involved in ex-presidential dalliances (allegedly!) and lobbing litigious bombs at the journalists who write about them, Gina Gershon is something of a Broadway dreamer. To wit, the sultry star's more authorized revelation that she's considered adapting Showgirls for the stage. But just throwing a bitchy NC-17 melodrama on the boards wouldn't be enough, naturally, so behold Showgirls: The Broadway Musical: "Originally I had an idea to do that, and I was talking to a couple of people to write it with me," she told Broadway.com. "If it's my version, it would be great. If it's a dumb version, it would be dumb." We really don't see how a smart version of Showgirls is logically possible, and unless it features a showstopping Joe Eszterhas/Paul Verhoeven duet simply called "Tits," we're probably not even interested. Nevertheless, best of luck to Gershon, and may her Vanity Fair score-settling yield the leverage she needs to make Tony-ready magic. [Broadway.com via Film Experience]

[Gina Gershon, current Broadway actress (in the play "Boeing Boeing") and possible sex-with-Bill Clinton haver, outside the "Regis & Kelly" show yesterday; image via Bauer-Griffin]

It's a great day for sex scandal fans: Not only is Eliot Spitzer celebrating his 49th birthday today, but Gina Gershon, now at the center of a controversy over whether or not she had a fling with Bill Clinton, turns 46 today. Other birthdays: Furniture heir Eric Villency is 33. Hedge funder Richard Chilton is 50th. And nightlife impresarios Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum will no doubt be partying hard tonight when they turn 30 and 31 years old.

There is a rumor going around that Bill Clinton totes kissed Gina Gershon. Perhaps you first heard of this rumor here? 30,000 of you might have. This rumor got reported as one of the many things unnamed Clinton "advisors" were worried about in the recent Vanity Fair piece about Bill Clinton's messy business dealings and possibly scandalous personal life. Which led to Bill calling the piece's reporter a "scumbag" and now, because of the heat and probably because of Britney Spears' tears-of-a-clown-car, popular actress Gina Gershon denied sexing the former president on Regis and Kelly this morning. This is, of course, Ron Burkle's fault.

You have to wonder just how annoyed Gina Gershon is by all this chatter about her alleged affair with Bill Clinton: ginagershon.com hasn't seen this kind of traffic in years! The sultry actress turned up on Live with Kelly and Regis this morning (with Mario Lopez subbing for Rege), an appearance that we're sure had everything to do with her supporting role in Boeing on Broadway and absolutely nothing to do with her part in a political scandal that continues to swirl. Naturally, she took a moment to comment on the story that has had pundits talking their heads off for days:

One day and about 1 million interpretations after Vanity Fair dared to suggest Bill Clinton sometimes thinks with his dick, Gina Gershon has launched a crusade to scrub her name off the list of the ex-president's rumored paramours. Or, more specifically, Gershon's pit-bull counsel at Hollywood firm Lavely & Singer has launched a crusade on her behalf, and they all seem a bit peeved:

• Esquire's editor-in-chief David Granger says he never got a call from Bill Clinton, as the former president suggested in his comments last night when he was asked to respond to the incendiary Vanity Fair story by Todd Purdum. Turns out it was a measly staff editor who emailed. [Politico]

Just in time to wring the last drop of anemic lifeblood from his wife's doomed presidential campaign, Bill Clinton's pervy, protective inner circle gets a close look from Todd Purdum in the new issue of Vanity Fair. And oh, the class: Model-schtupping moguls Steve Bing and Ron Burkle aside (the latter of whose private jet "Air Fuck One" has apparently acquired prime status among the ex-president's transportation modes), we're particularly intrigued to read about Clinton's more comely Hollywood company:

Gina Gershon is the pillow-lipped actress known for playing sexy lesbians and femme fatales in movies like Bound and Showgirls. Gershon grew up in Los Angeles and moved east after high school, attending Emerson College in Boston before transferring to NYU. Her first big movie role came in 1988 when she was cast in Cocktail with Tom Cruise. More than a dozen films followed during the '90s, although none ever quite earned her A-list status in Hollywood. In recent years, she's appeared on Broadway (as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Rosie Alvarez in Bye Bye, Birdie, and Gabriella in Boeing-Boeing), in a handful of indie films, and on a number of television shows (including Curb Your Enthusiasm and How to Make it in America). In addition to her acting credits, Gershon's also written a children's book with her brother and played Jew's Harp on songs by Rufus Wainwright, the Scissor Sisters, and Herbie Hancock, among others. A Vanity Fair rumor suggested she'd had a brief fling with President Bill Clinton in 2008, but little evidence supported it (though she is, despite her notable queer-leaning roles, straight-identified).

The Wall Street Journal, in the newspaper's excellent investigation into the ties between Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle, explains why the former president is disentangling himself from the supermarket billionaire, as Gawker mentioned last month. Clinton will put some distance between his wife, the leading Democratic candidate in 2008, and politically toxic associates of the Yucaipa owner such as the Sheikh of Dubai and the official Chinese news agency. But is that all?

Lesbian icon and general ball-breaker Gina Gershon will be playing eight shows at The Box beginning October 7th. She'll be performing songs from her concept album In Search of Cleo. It's "the true story of the search and recovery of Gershon's lost cat Cleo... [and] the literal and metaphoric experience of the search, not just for Cleo, but for love." For serious. What is going on?