Yesterday's "call to arms" to resist the MPAA's cloying "Respect Copyrights" PSAs is off to a great start. In fact, some readers took the protest to the next, completely awesome level, leaving us somewhat ashamed that we didn't think this up in the first place. Pirate taunts!

Crazy-eyed The Brown Bunny fauxteur Vincent Gallo was on the Howard Stern radio show this morning, and his tour-de-force appearance nearly won us over. He slagged Buffalo 66 co-star/Eastside staple Christina Ricci as a good actress when she wasn't drunk on the set and lit into her publicist for promoting "fag movie" The Opposite of Sex over his. He took down an entire generation of actors as "DeNiro clones." He ably defended himself when Roger Ebert called in to remind everyone that the version of TBB that he saw in Cannes was "the worst movie ever made," even shifting his famous cancer curse on Ebert over to Paula Froelich at Page Six. [Ed. note—Paula, the man has creepy powers. Please take care of yourself.] He admitted to having sex with Paris Hilton, whom he insisted was "sexual" (um, duh) and "bright" (Gallo please). We were enraptured, for he might indeed say anything.

The NYT takes a crack at solving the "mystery" behind director Ted Griffin's quickie firing from The Untitled Ted Griffin Project, or The Untitled 'The Graduate' Project, or Otherwise Engaged, or whatever it's being called these days. And, amazingly, it seems no one was to blame! Griffin's agent (Steve Rabineau, agents love to see their names in print) claims Costner wasn't yet filming and so couldn't have ignited a mutiny; Jennifer Aniston's manager (Mark Gurvitz, ditto for managers) said she "had never looked at dailies and had never called the studio," therefore could not have been in the conservatory with a candlestick when Griffin got bludgeoned. We're so glad they cleared all of this up for us. It should have been obvious that Griffin decided after one week that he wasn't any good at the directing thing and engineered his own firing.

A reader offers this anecdote in defense of "Respect Copyrights" movie star Manny Perry, proving that even if Jack Valenti's brainwashing can turn Hollywood's below-the-line workers into anti-piracy agitprop icons, it can't necessarily taint their character:

A reader elaborates on a mention of the Bruce Willis flick Hostage in the Variety article about Miramax's updated release schedule (which we linked to earlier):

Recently, we were respecting the entertainment industry's copyrights in a $14 Cinerama Dome seat when Hollywood stunt coordinator Manny Perry began his impassioned plea for us to further respect copyrights by visiting the MPAA's scary website after leaving the theater. A chorus of groans rose up from the audience as the dreaded words faded into view: "Manny Perry Makes Movies." We don't personally blame Manny Perry for his misguided participation in the MPAA propaganda, as we assume that Jack Valenti was holding his wife hostage at gunpoint while threatening to feed his infant daughter to a poorly-bred pit bull in Manny Perry's ranch-style home in Chatsworth, but that doesn't mean that others are so understanding. Here's a representative sample of our readers' frustration:

Filmmaker (and Pulp Fiction co-writer) Roger Avary calls bullshit on QT's Diary, the supposed Quentin Tarantino blog that everyone's been so hot for the last few days.

Writer Kim Morgan muses on her Sunset Gun blog that Without A Paddle is really just about the average straight guy's fear of butt-rape, and so imagines a more logical and fulfilling end to the buddy comedy's trip down the river. So why not? Burt Reynolds is still looking to save his career; he'd probably be up for the edgier climax. We smell some bonus material for the DVD.

Screenwriting guru John August fields another sticky query from an online acolyte who asks the Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle scribe if a writer should be laughing at his own jokes.

Chloë Sevigny finally tries to explain what's going on with her involvement in The Brown Bunny, and as it turns out, people just can't understand an artfully-rendered, cinematically meaningful blowjob the way that they should. Said Sevigny, "I knew people would not understand it. It's a shame people write so many things when they haven't seen it. When you see the film, it makes more sense. It's an art film. It should be playing in museums." Well, there's that one museum in Amsterdam, but we're pretty sure they have enough fellatio footage and their movies are probably better plotted. See, there we go again, making judgments without having seen the movie.

We imagined the premiere of Vincent Gallo's latest film, Brown Bunny, to be the sort of freakish indie carnival we dream about, populated with the unwashed masses of hip people performing fellatio. But we were misguided. Gawker Embedded Reporter Jared Abbott reports from the "inside" and finds Vincent Gallo ranting about the evil alternative press.

Blogger A Fly On The Wall hears that it was a constantly bitching, second-guessing Kevin Costner (and not Jennifer Aniston) that got first-time director Ted Griffin axed from the Untitled Ted Griffin Project. It couldn't have been easy for the rookie to get anything done with Costner loudly deep-throating his Best Director Oscar every time Griffin tried to set up a shot:

Neil Strauss' profile of Tom Cruise in the new Rolling Stone has us scratching our heads, as it seems to toe the line between full-on reacharound and tip-toeing hit piece. (We haven't seen the full, print version, just the online excerpt, so we're reserving judgment until we steal the neighbor's copy.) But after Cruise's recent press binge, he should be begging Pat Kingsley to take him back and lock him up in the dungeon where she's kept him all these years, safe from his bizarre publicity impulses. The guy really does seem to love Scientology, though, and he might just snap your neck if you've got a problem with it:

We hear that the long-awaited Miramax layoffs finally began this morning, with the beheadings starting in the NY publicity office. NY readers: Keep your eyes peeled for people lugging cardboard boxes around Tribeca, drinking a little earlier in the day than normal, and comparing odd scars through tears of joy. Developing...

New York and LA have had premieres this week of downtown uber-hipster-film-maker-Republican Vincent Gallo's blowjob-endurance flick "The Brown Bunny." The reviews are in — of Gallo's exposed man-business, at least. Reports after the jump, to protect your tattered dignity. I mean really, is Vinnie's meat baton something you need to read about?

Yesterday, we linked to this post on The Movie Blog about the gathering storm of bad buzz hovering over Alien Vs. Predator. And now the guys at TMB think a Fox mole tried to slip in a good word about the coming sci-fi bomb in their blog comments. This comment, from someone posting as "Christine," seemed a little suspicious:

Blogger Dave White takes the bullet for all of us (we never get invited anywhere!) and attends a press screening of The Brown Bunny for an upcoming review on E! Online. All of the controversy that director Vincent Gallo stirred up by erecting a monument to his moment cinematic triumph seems to have er, petered out, as the screening was not exactly well-attended. But way to go on the penis, Vincent! At least you've got that thing to distract from anyone looking you directly in those crazy eyes and instantly succumbing to madness. We'll assume that's what happened to Chloë Sevigny.

Even if Fox scrapped the Alien Vs. Predator premiere because the movie was still being fluffed in post-production, the fact that editors are still hacking away at it two days before its release still makes it sound like the movie is poised to shit the box office bed. A reader tips us to some of the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and it sounds like Fox might be fitting the Predator for one of those latex cat-suits.

Things aren't looking good for Alien Vs. Predator. Fox canceled the premiere it had scheduled last night at Grauman's Chinese, and now even the creepy "entrepreneurs" who hang out in front of the theater probably wouldn't be caught dead in a cheap Alien costume, trying to make Romanian tourists fork over five bucks for a Polaroid. The Movie Blog elaborates on the two reasons why the premiere would be scrapped:

Blogger The Corsair transcribes a Jamie Foxx interview from this week's People promoting Collateral, where Foxx, with his leading-man star rising, manages to get in a plug for Tom Cruise's heterosexuality. Cruise's lust for women is so potent it could bring back slavery (the female-only kind, naturally) if the actor chose to abuse his Messianic, super-straight-guy powers: