Any Straight-to-Flopz masterpiece can top out below $100,000 theatrically, but it takes a special kind of crap to do so with a real star above the line. Take Surfer, Dude, the new Matthew McConaughey adventure-in-shirtlessness that found exactly zero takers at Rotten Tomatoes and not many more upon its release in 96 theaters nationwide: $36,497 worth, to be precise, likely prompting the actor/producer/placenta vintner to wonder if perhaps he should have saved the comma in the film's title for the total gross. It's too late for that, though, and in any case, he has good — if slim — company in the so-called Nickel Club: A-listers with recent films that couldn't break $100K domestically before heading off to home-entertainment oblivion. Take a deep breath of equally rare air after the jump.· Jessica Simpson, Blonde Ambition — $6,422 Like several of her fellow Nickel Clubbers, Simpson fared much better internationally. A lot better. As in, 99.6% of Ambition's $1.4 million gross was earned overseas. But things will come around once she pays her dues; it doesn't get much harder than a minty love scene with Dane Cook. · Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie — $27,696 Another global sensation who nevertheless couldn't hack it at home, Hilton has since moved into documentaries. We salute her new strategy and wish her only the best. · John Cusack, Grace is Gone — $50,899 An oft-told tale of hubris, mistiming and waste: Cusack's award-winning Sundance drama cashed in at Park City with $4 million of Harvey Weinstein's money. The mogul dumped the film and his Oscar-campaign plans by the end of the year. NB: Cusack's follow-up, War Inc., did 10 times the business last spring almost entirely via word-of-mouth, never creeping over 33 screens. Honorable Mention: Katherine Heigl, Zyzzyx Road — $30 Filmed not long before Heigl broke through on Grey's Anatomy, history's lowest-grossing release sold exactly five tickets during a one-week run in Dallas in 2006 — one of which was purchased by its own makeup artist. It has picked up nicely as a cult DVD, on wwhich Heigl receives top billing. [Photo Credit: Getty Images]

When John Cusack called us up and asked, "If I answer your questions, will you stop writing nasty shit about me?" we demurred — sadly, he didn't try the same tack with the New York Post. The left-leaning actor is a juicy target for the conservative tabloid, and after Cusack was asked to contribute an essay to the new HuffPost Chicago by his friend, "the good and great Arianna," the Post tore it wide open like a disgruntled Must Love Dogs ticketbuyter. What they allege they've found is a whole host of errors and made-up childhood reminiscences:

Last week the Say Anything actor and Hilary Duff mentor wrote a 732-word celebrity blog post commemorating the launch of Huffington Post Chicago — hey wait I thought the internet meant the end of 'placeness'!? — that contained somewhere between eight and infinity errors. Yeah, and it was about his childhood. Most have been fixed, though they are keeping his misspelling of playwright Eugene O'Neill's name, for authenticity's sake presumably. Page Six picked up the story today, noting that even the non-patently false details of John Cusack's love letter to Chicago sports are disingenuous! But if the blogs are to be believed — and in this case they are pretty credible — Cusack made one error so bad, so grievous, so fundamentally retarded, Page Six apparently couldn't bear to share it with you:He misspelled the name "Michael Jordan." No yes, as one blogger so eloquently noted, "Michael freakin' Jordan!" So here's the thing. Blog mistress Arianna Huffington doesn't exactly make a secret of the fact that she has lots of celebrity friends she sweet-talks into writing pointless celebrity blog posts for her big online benefit dinner; I mean, the whole first paragraph of John Cusack's post is about how Cusack was actually in Bangkok — conjuring images of Jayson Blair filing stories about the DC sniper from the Times cafeteria, a little! — but the relentless blog matron had tracked him down the night before to write the thing and for whatever reason — the accent? because writing an incredibly short sentimental missive on one's childhood is not a very difficult task, trust me? — he dutifully complied. But like, why? And why did Huffpo commission Ryan Reynolds to write that inexplicable rumination on competitive eating that one time? And then all the Jamie Lee Curtis stuff? Why did they even give a bio page to my friend Don? If no one at Huffington Post is reading this shit — at least not closely enough to catch a misspelling of the name Michael freaking Jordan — why are we expected to? Oh right! In the event that someone will make some retarded error that the intermob can point at and say: "Wow, that was retarded!" Great. How about: Emily is right, everyone needs to get off the internet already? But barring that: ever read a celebrity blog post you found to be monumentally pointless and/or error-ridden and/or just deeply inane? Be a dear and send it to me so I can cobble together a pointless listicle! [Page Six]

John Cusack is suing Intermedia Film Equities USA for breach of contract in the amount of $5.6 million, after production was canceled on his upcoming film Stopping Power. Originally scheduled to shoot in Germany, Cusack signed on to star after Intermedia guaranteed him a "pay or play" fixed compensation of $4.5 million, along with an additional $50,000 to cover the cost of Cusack's staff while on location. $50,000? Who knew Lane Meyer was so high maintenance? Fortunately, we here at Defamer were able to get our hands on a top secret copy of Cusack's rider. We break down exactly where that $50K would've gone after the jump.

Dear Reader: Please pay no attention to John Horn, who should be ashamed of himself today — not just for his facile collection of "lessons" studios have "learned" so far this summer, but for daring to suggest that The Happening was anything but a success for Fox and Manoj Night Shyamalan. The effrontery! Even the most casual of observers would know that Manoj's Mint has yielded more than $113 million worldwide in two weeks of release, which is more than fine for all parties involved. (Never mind the 66% drop during its second weekend — it's all profit for Manoj!) Then there's this silly matter of viewers rejecting darker-themed movies like War Inc. (John Cusack would beg to differ) and Horn's pedestrian observation that "Paramount is on fire." And anyway, that's not even accurate — Paramount has topped $1 billion for the year, and Universal is on fire. Christ, John — get it straight! [LAT]

Oh hey, look, it's John Cusack, campaigning against John McCain in a MoveOn.org ad! Cusack's War, Inc., which was a sort of Dr. Strangelove-meets-the-Iraq War, got weak reviews, but points to the actor for including a very, very difficult POP QUIZ in this commercial. Spoiler: The correct answer to every question is the same: "I have no idea, but Lloyd Dobler is DREAMY." Ad/quiz after the jump.

We'd spent no shortage of time around here in recent weeks lamenting John Cusack's one-two professional plunge of box-office allergic Grace is Gone and critic-allergic War, Inc. Then came last weekend, when War, Inc. nabbed the second-highest per-screen average in the country: $27,252, second only to Indiana Jones 4. Heady, eye-opening stuff, to be sure — but not quite as eye-opening as when Cusack actually phoned us an hour ago to talk about it.

Defamer Attractions returns today with another round of movie scanning for your Memorial Day weekend. We already know you're planning at least two excursions to view Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (once out of drunken impulse, and once to make sure that really was the ending you saw before blacking out), but Indy alone does not a holiday make! At least one of the poor bastards sharing this opening weekend is bound to tank the worst, and yet another is a fine bit of foreign-language counterprogramming worth your consideration. And of course we've got a few new DVD choices for the agoraphobic, hungover and/or the cheapskates among us. As always, our opinions and projections are A) our own and B) impeccably fail-safe. Where should we start?

We've been following the bouncing Uwe Boll for what seems like months now, but once the consummate self-promoter and sworn enemy of 279,452 filmgoers (and counting) wound up playing the victim in the Sunday New York Times, the shark was considered jumped. But an eagle-eyed tipster points out one of the more fascinating signs yet of the loathed filmmaker's resurgence: On a week when his new film Postal has reportedly been banned from multiplexes, it's also pulling a better Rotten Tomatoes score (33%) than "mainstream" offerings Made of Honor (12%), What Happens in Vegas (28%) and John Cusack's bomb-to-be War, Inc. (23%). It's also neck-and-neck with Sex and the City and a mere percentage point behind the tentpole Speed Racer, which is still stalled at the gate with 34% positive reviews.

After the implosive one-two punch comprising his recent tandem War. Inc. and Grace is Gone (not to mention, of course, his spellbinding online short film featuring Diablo Cody as "Girl Who Thought He'd Be Cooler"), fortune may yet favor the slumping John Cusack. Or at least that's the only option our optimistic hearts will allow upon reading about the actor's reported next project, a massive-budget, honest-to-goodness end-of-the-world film by apocalypse maven Roland Emmerich:

Like an Iconoclasts that thanks you for the add, MySpaceTV's Artist on Artist pits star vs. star in a Battle Royale of Big Ideas and Mutual Tucheslecking. The only loser? You! See if you can pin the following quotes from Diablo Cody and John Cusack's recent Artist on Artist pairing to the appropriate speaker. To heighten the difficulty level a bit, we've also thrown in a few quotes from beloved TV landscape artist, Bob Ross:

John Cusack's meander through his second-consecutive anti-war film is coming under heavy fire at the Tribeca Film Festival, where War, Inc. bowed this week to the kinds of reviews that made his previous Iraq entry — the $50,899-grossing Grace is Gone — positively shine in comparison. While he and his agent sift around for a more reliable rom-com follow-up, our preliminary poke through the wreckage yields yet more smoldering evidence that Iraq is officially over as a dramatic subject. We piece together the eyewitness testimony after the jump:

"Misunderstood" John Cusack fan Emily Leatherman was arrested Sunday outside the actor's home for violating the restraining order Cusack obtained in 2006 that stipulated she stay at least 500 feet away from him. Leatherman, who at the time explained that her actions were less about stalking Cusack and more about seeking his help to convince the police they should investigate her claim that she was drugged and raped in 2001, had taken a cab to Cusack's but couldn't pay the fare — a rom-com set-up if we ever saw one! But instead of covering the charge and then having Leatherman pay him back over a lengthy period of time (during which their improbable encounter would surely blossom into love and a satisfying marriage held in a taxi), the actor flagged down cops who had responded to the situation and told them the following: bitch crazy!

Pity John Cusack, who in the span of one junket for an earnest and well-meaning film has now been subjected to the advances of single-n'-ready-to-mingle The View guest hosts, The Chris Farley Show-caliber interviews with overzealous TV cooks, and now, this:

For American women of a certain age—let's say, somewhere around the Ricki Lake/Rachael Ray generation—the utterance of the very name John Cusack is enough to instantly reawaken first stirrings of celebrity puppy-love ecstasy. Give those women their own talk shows and a captive audience with the boombox-hoisting object of their romantic adolescent fantasies, however, and things can quickly get pretty awkward.

If you can manage to get past the slow preamble to this interview on The View with Grace Is Gone star John Cusack (truth be told, we drifted off ourselves, but we're almost positive we heard Sherri Shepherd asking the actor how he manages to so accurately recreate his performances each and every time she plays one of his movies on her Jesus-powered DVD player), there's a small reward waiting for you at the end:

· Phil Spector showed off his new hairstyle at the closing arguments of his trial today, clearly hoping throwing some mid-'80s Liza the jury's way might earn him some last-minute sympathy votes.
· Michael Lohan has reportedly reunited with his estranged daughter Lindsay at Utah's Cirque Lodge, where he presented her with a brand new cartoon depicting her Denalijacking and subsequent arrest as yet another hilarious misadventure of the Archie gang.
· John Cusack gets real about his legacy.
· Good thing those Philadelphia morning show hosts didn't give away the promotional bullet-proof baby carriage.
· Time's "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME" is surely going to be the source of much debate, beginning with the glaring absence of The Powerpuff Girls.

· We're impressed with Variety's show of headline-pun restraint with this one: The plug has been pulled on Stopping Power, Jan De Bont's planned action thriller starring John Cusack, after funding fell through at the last minute. [Variety]
· Conflicting with other reports, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution "thrilled" Venice audiences. One journalist asked if the graphic sexual sequences were real, to which the director responded, "Have you seen the film?" Funny—we always felt what The Hulk could have used were some Brown Bunnyesque elements. [Variety]
· ABC orders a script for The Fixer, about "the most powerful woman in New York." We knew it was only a matter of time before Leona Helmsley's dogwalker had her own show. [Variety]
· NBC and Apple have a parting of the ways, with NBC's content disappearing from iTunes as soon as December. Why can't Steve Jobs and Ben Silverman just iron this bullshit out over a couple of primo bong hits? [THR]
· Giovanni Ribisi is pulled in by the CAA Death Star's tractor beams. Run, Giovanni! They're nothing but a greedy and secretive institution that want to have undue influence over your life decisions! [THR]

This month's Vogue—the one with not-so-reformed shoplifter Winona Ryder on the cover—profiles Hillary Clinton's traveling chief-of-staff Huma Abedin, in an article that both reveals more and says less about Abedin than the Observer's April profile of her. (The Observer piece, as Vogue helpfully points out, was done without Abedin's cooperation.) Abedin comes across as an incredibly effective, stylish, attractive, über-woman without whom her boss would be lost. (This is accurate!) And also a control freak. There's this telling bit when the writer, Rebecca Johnson, is allowed to look at Abedin's BlackBerry—but only if she agrees not to write who's in it. ("Some of the most famous names in America." Mmkay!) But then, why the non sequitur about John Cusack and Lance Armstrong?

According to the Reporter, after winning an all-night, $4 million bidding war for the rights to John Cusack's Grace is Gone at Sundance, a resurgent Harvey Weinstein pounded his chest and issued forth this barbaric, dealmaking yawp, serving notice to the industry that Weinstein Co.'s misplaced groove has been reacquired: