Most midwinter dump-jobs are happy just to get some lukewarm reviews and, if they're lucky, $67 million in two weeks of release. But you're really on fire when you've earned a rarer-than-rare "anti-Minnesota" designation.

Yesterday, we relayed the frustrations of gender illusionist/multimedia mogul Tyler Perry in his search for "Mrs. Right"—one of the many sacrifices one makes on the journey up the slippery slope of fame and success.

Though AMC recently set an optimistic summer return date for the next season of Mad Men, show mastermind Matthew Weiner (whose contract dispute remains unresolved) has a much gloomier forecast, he tells E!

• Laura Bush either received $1.5 million for her memoir or $3.5-5 million, depending on who you believe. Either way, it's a lot less than Hillary Clinton's $8 million advance for Living History. [NYP, WSJ]
• Chris Matthews is not running for Senate, according to his brother. [P'ticker]
• A new buyer has emerged for TV Guide. The movie studio Lionsgate is picking up the cable network and website for $255 million. [AP]
• Senior Village Voice staffers are taking 10-15 percent pay cuts. [DW]
• Another reason kids can't find Iraq on a map: Foreign-related news coverage by the three major networks fell to a record low during 2008. [IPS]
• Those ads on the front-page of the Times run $75K on weekdays. [NYP]
• Ogilvy & Mather is cutting 10 percent of its staff today. [AdAge]
• CBS's Lara Logan gave birth to a son. [FBDC]

The Future of Weiner. A rumor that Lionsgate is approaching various agencies in search of a Mad Men showrunner to replace a too-rich-for-their-blood Matthew Weiner was shot down by an insider, who told Defamer the negotiations had just begun, and that while he asked high, they were absolutely "not looking to replace him. He IS the show." Fret not, Mad Men fans still in mourning over the end of Season 2 and sweating the fate of Season 3: the studio is confident the deal will close before Christmas. (And without the celebrity dancing competition Jon Hamm promised in his SNL monologue.)

Oliver Stone is keeping everyone waiting today at Slate, where he's set to engage Bob Woodward and a few other reporters over the facts and slip-ups threading his new film W. Thing have remained mostly civil so far — no Taser jokes or Christian Bale casting rumors — though a few factual liberties have set off a bit of protest in the ranks. Thankfully, while they wait for Stone, Lionsgate now offers a pleasing historical reference for the rest of us. Behold — W. For Dummies.Or, officially, W. — The Official Film Guide, an obsessive, somewhat addictive gathering of footnotes for amateur scholars ("14. Cheney - Unitary Executive Theory") and culture mavens ("80. W. loved Cats) alike, crammed with supporting details and citations behind some of W.'s more out-there moments. Like "W. on Non-Alcoholic Beer":

♦ Bill O'Reilly has signed a new four-year contract with Fox News worth $10-12 million a year. There is good news, though: His radio show may be coming to an end. [NYDN]
♦ More bad news for Harvey Weinstein: A handful of senior execs at The Weinstein Co. have announced their departures. [THR]
♦ How are monthly business magazines keeping up with the financial crisis? They're not, really. [NYO]
♦ The offices of the New York Times received an envelope this morning containing a "white granular substance." [Radar]

♦ Bad day ahead? Stocks fell sharply in Europe and Asia overnight and ugly corporate earnings have investors worried. [MW]
♦ Wachovia, which is being acquired by Wells Fargo, reported a third-quarter loss of $23.9 billion. [Bloomberg]
♦ Yahoo says it will lay off 10 percent of its work force. [NYT]
♦ Federal prosecutors looking into the collapse of Lehman have subpoenaed other firms to find out if their analysts were misled by Lehman execs. [WSJ]

Certainly we'd never wish suffering or terror on anyone, but it's refreshing to see our friends at MGM hand off this week's fleeing-in-terror duties to someone else for a change: A Defamer operative sent word minutes ago that staffers at MTV and Lionsgate have evacuated their positions due to a gas leak in the garage of their Santa Monica headquarters. But where to go, especially without the aid of their threatened vehicles?Where else? "Everyone is now having drinks at the Daily Grill," says our source of the shellshocked line of refugees filing across Colorado for some extra dry humanitarian aid — with two olives, and maybe some food. Can they have another minute to decide? Meanwhile, please say a prayer for their safe, swift return to work; if this turns out anything like the building's last crisis in 2006, we'll have an explanation (along with a video of the culprit) by the end of the day.

The longer-than-anyone-expected-or-even-thought-remotely-possible reign of Ben Stein's anti-evolution screed Expelled: No Intelligence Required atop the year's documentary box office is nearing its end, we hear. And naturally, it's the heathens knocking it down: After outlasting withering reviews and a desperate legal broadside by Yoko Ono, Expelled's $7.6 million gross is expected to succumb this weekend to Bill Maher's godless hit Religulous — itself a $7 million earner in two weeks of release. But while Expelled may lose the ticket battle, is it still the winner in the culture war?You could make an argument either way (and believe us — people are), but Lionsgate never left much doubt that it would obtain the top-doc spot sooner or later. Yet while it's never been on more than half as many screens as Expelled — 568 to 1,062 — Religulous had the compounded advantages of a Toronto Film Fest launch, Maher tearing up Sherri Shepherd and anyone who would sit still for him on national TV, aggressive, conspicuous marketing, and a furtive NYC/LA residency to help qualify for its forthcoming Oscar nod. In the end, all that topping Expelled means this weekend is that Lionsgate's $3 million diatribe might break even earlier than expected. Expelled's budget was about the same, but stunned observers by finishing in the top 10 its opening weekend with little more than a grassroots push by the marketers who brought you The Passion of the Christ and other Christian-themed hits. Among them, Kirk Cameron's Fireproof carried the baton into fall with $17.2 million in less than three weeks. All due respect to Maher and Co., but that might be the long-term business to be in during bleak industry patches like this. Just avoid chihuahuas — you can't lose.

Despite the skeptics, Oliver Stone and Lionsgate have made bringing a film to market in five months flat look relatively easy. But a Defamer operative points out that they clearly underestimated the work required to produce W.'s Web site in the same time, offering us the accompanying Latin dummy text in place of actor Ioan Gruffudd's biographical background. (NB: It's pronounced "YO-han GRIF-fith.") Perhaps the actor never sent it, or maybe it was in Latin, or maybe this is just one of many quirky Easter eggs Lionsgate is loading into its W. campaign. Considering how well the Taserrific bar-brawl worked a few months back, we wouldn't put it past them. Let us know your theory after the jump. [Lionsgate]

In keeping with this site's insatiable need to know, our ongoing questions about Tyler Perry — that Emperor of All Black Media who's most handsomely paid to wear a dress — got the best of us today as his new film The Family That Preys opens in theaters. Far more than our previous subjects of Defamer Answers, Perry is a man whose mythology is both cultivated and oddly removed from his fame; having earned a combined $250 million in less than four years, his audience does his speaking for him. Is he gay? It doesn't matter; TBS just bought 100 episodes of House of Payne. Why do critics hate him? It doesn't matter; Madea's Family Reunion opened at number one. Well, enough — it matters to us. Follow the jump and learn along with us as we figure out who the hell this guy is who needs 300 people to run his operation and has Oprah admittedly reaching for her Excedrin.I. KNOW YOUR TYLER Emmitt R. Perry Jr. was born Sept. 14, 1969, to Maxine and Emmitt Perry Sr. He later adopted the name Tyler to distance himself from his father, who he's claimed abused him verbally and physically while growing up in New Orleans. He dropped out of school at 16 and but later acquired his GED, eventually heading off to Atlanta in 1992 — right around the time he followed an Oprah Winfrey Show guest's advice to hash out one's emotional turmoil on paper. Perry produced his first play, the forgiveness-themed musical I Know I've Been Changed, in 1998 with $12,000 saved from selling used cars, construction work and other odd jobs. He drew 30 people to a 1,200-seat theater on opening night and, according to USA Today, was homeless within a week. After a more assiduous grassroots push, he staged it again later that year at Atlanta's House of Blues, where it was a hit. Perry and the show traveled from there, with another nine plays following before the touring shows ended in 2006. He and his father reconciled (Perry reportedly brings Emmitt Sr. onstage at some shows); he continues to maintain homes in Atlanta and Los Angeles. II. KNOW HIS CANON Essentially, Tyler Perry is the John Hughes of what's still known as the "chitlin' circuit": A moody, funny, staggeringly prolific writer/producer/director best known for rocking floral prints and an Adam's apple as no-nonsense grandmother Mabel "Madea" Simmons. It's minstrelsy and it's melodrama — dinner table close-ups of fried chicken and sweet potatoes, drawn-out taxonomies of hos — yet ironically postmodern and not entirely unfunny: He also does the upstanding black male (lawyers, husbands, etc.) and Madea's ornery brother Joe, occasionally in the same scene and with a kind of modulated conviction that makes us wonder why he's not in more of other people's films (J.J. Abrams apparently thought the same thing, casting Perry as the Starfleet Academy Chief in his upcoming reboot of Star Trek). Perry's world is one where moments of heart-rending candor end in earnest confessions like, "I love you... I got it so bad for you I go to the grocery store and buy you feminine products, I swear." Or where, in Meet the Browns, a romantic rib-joint rendezvous between Angela Bassett and Rick Fox is broken up when her friend races in to say her otherwise heroic teenage son was gunned down in a drug deal. (One guess as to whether or not he survives.) Still, as high moral dudgeon goes, the last 40 minutes of Diary of a Mad Black Woman are half Bergman and half church revival. Indignance is just, as long as it's just temporary. If Perry takes any shortcuts, it's in the reconstitution of most of his plays as films — plays he's also distributed as "recorded live" DVD's since 2002. His original screenplays, including last year's Daddy's Little Girls and The Family That Preys (opening today), push similar themes of spirituality, responsibility, forgiveness and family through the prism of urban melodrama. And all of it — along with his TBS hit House of Payne and his bestselling Madea tome Never Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings — is some of the most consistently profitable work being produced today. We'll get to that. III. KNOW HIS ACCOLADES Perry won two BET Comedy Awards out of the gate for Diary of a Mad Black Woman and has since been a near-perennial annual NAACP Image Award, Black Movie Award, and Black Reel Award nominee. Yet he loathes the 'Mainstream,' a reviled crossbreed of critics and journalists who have long sniffed at the quality and reach of his work. "I don't read stuff about me Good or Bad because most of the time it's wrong and negative and because most of these 'Mainstream' folks don't get it," Perry wrote April 22 on his Web site's message board. "So, what's the point?" And that was in response to positive piece. To this day, despite all the forgiveness his characters encourage and broker among each other, he forbids advance screenings of his films for the press. IV. KNOW HIS STYLE Unremarkable mall-chic, the kind of thing that happens when the personal shopper you hired on Craigslist gets loose with $2,000 at Rochester Big & Tall.

• Gordon Ramsay says he's partnering with Victoria Beckham to open a restaurant in LA. Yes, a restaurant. Whether she'll actually taste any of the food served there is anybody's guess. [P6]

So Mad Men creator/EP/spiritual shepherd Matthew Weiner realizes he's sitting on something pretty special with his cast of desk-hopping, Brylcreemed creatives over at Sterling Cooper. Perhaps it was the 16 Emmy nominations that tipped him off. ("Don't think of them as Emmy awards," his inner Don Draper will intone on the big night, "Think of them as tiny angels, flapping their pointy wings to a place where fear doesn't live. They're saying, 'You are OK, Matt...It's all...OK.'") Weiner's contract with the show's studio, Lionsgate TV, is up at the end of this season, and Variety reports he's been shopping himself around town to the highest bidder:

We're nothing if not realists, and we know that Disaster Movie's unfortunate timing — opening on the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (and three days before Hurricane Gustav's landfall) — and tepid $7 million four-day opening won't likely kill the spoof franchise the way discriminating audiences might hope. But even as the stakes plunge for its purveyors at Lionsgate, the series represents a boon of potential for stories like this one from Houston, where a noted critic's selfless attendance at a midnight screening offered a revelatory new perspective on the movie's bladder-challenged target audience:

Our skepticism regarding the five-month turnaround on W. was founded as much in Lionsgate's potential to move the marketing as it was in Oliver Stone's curious capacity to work that fast. And while we're not necessarily wrong yet, this new, pre-GOP Convention clip making the rounds hints that the whole thing may come together yet — as a date movie! Who knew? Follow the jump for a glimpse at the introduction of librarian Laura Welch to future husband and president George Bush Jr. ("Call me anything but 'Junior'") — two drawling souls joined forever in what's since been recognized the Backyard BBQ Come-On Heard 'Round the World. Awww! [YouTube via Spout]

· Tyler Perry, whose syndicated sitcom House of Payne could wind up earning him $200 million, now has a series pickup from TBS for a show based on Meet the Browns. Asked how he'd spend all this money, Perry squealed, "Zac Posen said he'd custom-design me a whole line of frumpy dresses. How 'bout that for starters?!" [Variety] · Meanwhile, on the movie front, former co-president of Paramount production Alli Shearmur has hopped aboard Tyler Perry Productions vanity imprint Lionsgate, where she'll oversee a slate of six-to-eight releases a year. [Variety] · Warners will produce Coco Avant Chanel, with Audrey Tautou playing the legendary fashion designer. No word yet on who'll play her little dog. [Variety] · Burn After Reading's world premiere was the hot ticket at the Venice Film Festival, where crowds four-deep piled around the red carpet to cheer on guests of honor Brad Pitt and George Clooney, screaming, "Hey—whatever happened to that gay bed and breakfast you guys were fixing up? Is that still happening?" [THR] · ABC ordered another season of Here Come the Newlyweds, a fun twist on the honeymoon game show genre that requires couples to swap sexual partners, then hunt each other to the death with assault rifles on "human newlywed game preserves." [THR]

· The Humanitas Prize has announced its short list: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Juno, and Lars and the Real Girl have all been singled out for having explored "the human condition in a way which affirms the dignity of the human person and reveals common humanity." We love those three movies so much, we wish we could just smush them together into one movie: The Diving Lars and the Junofly, a tender story about an alienated youth with "locked-in" syndrome who accidentally impregnates his teenage physical therapist, who's actually a Resusci Annie doll. OK, we'll stop now. [Variety] · ABC has gone on a pickup feeding frenzy. Ordered to series: Castle, about a horror novelist who solves crimes, The Unusuals, an NYPD cop dramedy starring Amber Tamblyn, Cupid, and—we're sorry, did we just say "an NYPD cop dramedy starring Amber Tamblyn?" We believe we did! And we're damned if we know how we're supposed to feel about that. Oh, what the hell. We're jazzed! [THR]· The Olympics gives NBC its biggest ratings in years, winning all 17 nights and earning the network an incontinence-inducing $1 billion in advertising revenues. Anyone with a medal gets a show! Just call Jeff Zucker. [Variety] · Movie download site Jaman.com closed a deal with Lionsgate that would give users access to 100 of their titles for a rental charge, though expect to pay through the nose if you expect to watch 90-minute living painting The Christmas Cottage anywhere around the holidays. [Variety] ·National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus will spoof movies like Gladiator, 300, and Troy. We're not jazzed. [THR] · Woody Harrelson has signed on for Zombieland, a horror comedy from the guys who brought you cult-classic reality hoax The Joe Schmo Show. We're jazzed again! [THR]

The forthcoming Bill Maher/Larry Charles satirical doc Religulous has been on Lionsgate's release calendar for what seems like forever; we remember seeing teaser posters for it at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, where it was recently announced as a world premiere this year. Confusing! But not as confusing as the revelation that you and yours can see the film this week in one of those increasingly en vogue "Oscar dump runs" in LA and New York. The tactic mirrors that of HBO, which last spring sneaked Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired into two theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration — except that Religulous actually has an Oct. 3 release date in the States. So what gives, and where can you see it? Find out after the jump.Academy rules dictate that documentaries must screen for at least one week in Los Angeles County and Manhattan before the qualifying deadline of August 31. Thus, if you're up for a schlep out to the Laemmle Claremont 5 or, in NYC, the Coliseum Quad in Washington Heights, you can be the among the first to see Maher and Charles torment the Christian Right and other supposed fanatics. The early run is especially unusual in the context of Toronto, where the "premiere" classification is generally sacrosanct for distributed films of this size and budget. But hey — it is just Claremont, and most observers seem to agree that major papers won't run reviews the way they did for Polanski, potentially undercutting the unveiling up North. That said, we're happy to air your opinions below if you've got the much shorter journey in you in the days ahead. We think we can wait for October.

Still reeling from their recent poster contretemps with self-declared marketing genius Dane Cook, the crew at Lionsgate was quick to reclaim its edge with yet another shrewd move on behalf of Oliver Stone's forthcoming W. Having successfully leaped from the innovative "Shreveport Arrest Phase" to the "Benson-esque Trailer Phase" of its campaign, a new step-and-repeat poster onslaught has taken over Denver — host city of this month's Democratic National Convention. The art, viewable after the jump, features Josh Brolin doing his best imperious-child act beneath the tagline "A life misunderestimated"; we expect its GOP Convention analogue — perhaps with the flight-suited Commander-in-Chief grinning alongside the even more succinct slogan "Four more months" — to infiltrate Minneapolis-St. Paul by the end of next week.