Post gossip great-aunt Cindy Adams got the fresh dirt from Hollywood mega-producer Scott Rudin as to how, exactly, that crazy Oscar-nommed "No Country For Old Men" came to be. "Look, you never know when something great's going to come through the transom. I do movies, plays. I'm always looking. My office covers lots of material. I have people who read books and manuscripts all the time. There was no great aha! moment. This didn't come by wrapped in a big pink ribbon and ushered through with great fanfare from some superimportant VIP with a 'must read' sticker on it. The thing came to us simply. As an unpublished manuscript." Yes. A real Hollywood fairytale, optioning novels by world famous, award-winning, ICM-managed authors is. Then Rudin took a chance on a couple of complete unknowns from far away Minnesota named Joel and Ethan Coen, and the rest is history. (After the jump, for kicks, the Hollywood Reporter story announcing the NCFOM deal.) [NYP]

Celebrity TV news magazine Extra is launching a search for the New Face of Extra in Las Vegas (the contest is being announced on air today.) So let me get this straight. I get to report for a show where decency, style, and shame go out the window daily, I get to (probably) meet failed Sugar Ray lead singer and now co-host Mark McGrath, AND I get to live in beautiful, not at all horribly depressing Las Vegas?? Screw you, Denton. I'm outta here.

Christopher Lawrence of the Las Vegas Review Journal does not like Harvey Levin or his schlocky celebrity reportage show TMZ on TV (based on the best selling website, TMZ.com) He hates it so much that he decided to watch the show for a week and document how much he hates it. And wouldn't you know it? What he recorded is pretty hateful. Some selected moments from the reporter/bit of a square's week in hell:

Here are the first pictures of Baby Max, newborn son of singer, Christina Aguilera. Awww, isn't he cute? And he'd better be: People, part of Time Inc.'s struggling magazine group, outbid checkbook-wielding OK! for the photos. The price: an budget-busting $1.5m, we hear. So buy the magazine, or Max will be the last alpha offspring you ever see. (Read here why there's been such inflation in the price of celebrity baby snaps.)

TMZ's Harvey Levin explained the all-you-can-watch gossip site's philosophy to a class of NYU students: "We're gonna cover Britney Spears the way David Gregory covers President Bush." A blogger called Connie has been inspired by such obsessive pursuit of trivial topics. In a post, yesterday, she applies TMZ's warts-and-all treatment to a Hollywood personality largely insulated from the attention of the gossip industry: Harvey Levin himself. Alec Baldwin, embarrassed by angry voicemails for his teenaged daughter that TMZ disseminated, outed Levin as gay last year. (Big deal: isn't every single gossip mogul?) Levin with lives with his boyfriend, a chiropracter, Dr. Andy Mauer. Sounds respectable, and dull. Except, as Connie helpfully points out, Dr. Andy has another qualification: huge muscles which won him spreads in physique magazines such as Muscle & Fitness, shown here; and chiropracter is often just a fancy word for masseur. Hot! (Background: here's an excellent profile of the Sultan of Sleaze, in Radar. And, after the jump, one of the television performances in which Levin, a failed actor, wrings his hands at the celebrity meltdowns from which he so profits.)

Today, TMZ vampire Harvey Levin visited NYU's journalism department to talk about how he practices his craft and the entire self-aggrandizing mythos of journalism reportedly ate its own tail and then puked it back up in disgust, forever. Our favorite quotes:

Ever notice how Scores, the standard bearer of Manhattan strip clubs, gets such good coverage from Page Six? Not just the various career moves of the club's leaders, like today's item about former frontman Lonnie Hanover's jump to Rick's Cabaret, but all those celeb sightings in the club. Lindsay Lohan dances! Jean-Claude Van Damme gets beat up! Dennis Quaid loses his credit card!

Bonnie Fuller, the salacious former editor of US Weekly and the woman responsible for the Star magazine revamp, is now trading in her pap card and getting all motherly toward the ailingest of ailing pop stars, Britney Spears. In a piece on the Huffington Post, Fuller is upset about Britney's treatment. She suggests that if Britney wasn't famous she never would have been released so soon. (Well, that's probably true.) A great injustice has been done to the bewigged pill popper, she argues, and someone must take action! "...message to Jamie and Lynne Spears: If you love your daughter, now get two 'neutral' conservators," she writes, "and since a hospital won't hold her, see if you can get a 100% Britney sympathetic psychiatrist/babysitter who can treat her." This is all pretty rich coming from the queen of the rags. Bonnie are you feeling pangs of guilt about this whole celebrity experiment? Or are you just looking for a new angle? After the jump, an interview with Fuller from last summer. [Huffington Post]

Britney Spears was released back into the wild today after a week spent in captivity at the UCLA Medical Center mental health ward. She is expected to seek additional treatment for her bipolar disorder. She will most likely return to her natural habitat, BP Connect quick stop shops. [US] Update: TMZ is live at Spears' house. Watch the exciting streaming footage of cars passing by.

Woody Allen hopes that Scarlett Johansson won't end up booze-addled and paparazzi hounded like some of her peers in young Hollywood. He also apparently hopes that she doesn't travel back to 1999, cautioning her against the "Page Six party route." The Post gossip section is still sort of powerful (though, depending on who you ask, emasculated) but it certainly doesn't cover any of the sordidness of young celebrity with the same prurience as these quickly rusting internets. At this point, the Page Six party route is something of an optimistic goal for a young star. Here's hoping rickety old Allen never stumbles upon TMZ by accident. Talk about crimes and misdemeanors! (clunk) [Showbiz Spy]

"During [the American Society of Magazine Editors Awards], I sat between two of my all-time favorite people - one was Tina Brown's husband, Harry Evans; the other was the young writer Christopher Buckley," writes 85-year-old NY Post gossip columnist Liz Smith. "Young" Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You For Smoking, is a fresh-faced 55 years old. (The Post's other gossip columnist, Cindy Adams, is just 82 77). [NYP]

Incredibly, a fake lesbian "makeout" session with a hot friend is apparently still considered a savvy way to generate buzz, when really it's usually a desperate-looking appeal to the most drunken and knuckle-dragging heterosexual men and a clear marker of emotional vacancy. To wit, Paris Hilton and Elisha Cuthbert, reported snogging at Tenjune last night by a source who tells Us Weekly how Paris "loves putting on a show" (rilly?). After the jump,some landmark girl-on-girl couplings in the long, stupid history of psuedo-lesbianism:

Right, so, it turns out that exposing your breasts to a paparazzo is a poor way to start the night, and Britney has learned this the hard way. Spears went on to have some sort of apparent fight with Sam Lufti, her manager and the guy who accompanied her to the dance studio where she flashed a cameraman, the same cameraman who said "thanks Sam." She ended up, sensibly, with Adnan Ghalib, the pap who she disowned, like, last week because he was pimping her to photographers to make money. Also, paparazzi were allowed to prey freely in her driveway for some reason, which makes about as much sense as everything else.

If Britney Spears' desperate ploys for attention are not quite transparent enough for you yet, check out the latest incredibly unintended exposure of Mouseketeer flesh — and nipple! — in the video after the jump. The cameraman didn't even bother to edit out the bit at the beginning where he thanks Spears' manager Sam Lufti as Lufti and Spears head into the building. But no consequence: obviously the photographer scored this lucky shot on his own, and Spears' breasts just happened to fly out of her clothes as occurs regularly at dance studios across the country, while she was facing toward the camera, the camera she totally didn't know about! Also, professional wrestling is real. Totally unscripted video (with, yes, actual Spears breasts, jiggling) after the jump.

"I have been putting off doing this Rate-A-Date because I genuinely liked Paul Janka. I felt bad for him in a way," writes Kelly Kreth, the ousted New York Press sex columnist, PR bunny, and seeker of any and all forms of attention. Paul Janka, Manhattan's slimiest bachelor and minor internet-celebrity, "seemed lost and confused and completely harmless... He is just a man with a compulsion that needs to be addressed... He graduated from Harvard and is pretty smart and intense, but it would seem that a few years ago he became aimless. He worries, too, that he isn't contributing to society." Not with a tract called How To Get Laid in NYC, he isn't. Her five-hour date with him is full of frankly disturbing scatological descriptions that cross the line into the clinically weird. It also reminds us where all the smart girls are on a Sunday night: not going on dates as a "media joke."

• Angelina Jolie wore this hideous Hermès dress to the Screen Actors Guild Awards, even though they're the new Oscars, and so now everyone thinks she's pregnant. [LA Times, Mail]

Nice job to the gentleman who returned photographer Annie Leibovitz's assistant's iPhone, found in the back of a cab. But, as the Daily News reports, it was very naughty of him to sync up her contacts beforehand, linking the photographer's contacts like Maureen Dowd and the Bush twins with his dirty gay hookup list! What does that iPhone contact list look like now, after the merger? (Much like Ben Widdicombe's own, probably!)

We never thought such a natural pairing could possibly break apart but sadly, the relationship between Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib has come to a close. Naturally, it involves a restraining order filed by the "pop star.". Sam Lufti, Brit's manager guy, showed the document to the photographers helping babysit Britt, the best way to keep something secret. We won't pose any theories as to why Lufti made this move because we don't care. Now, let the circus continue. [Page Six]