According to today's Variety, mercurial starlet/plastic surgery controversy-magnet Lindsay Lohan is in final negotiations to star in Fox's Lady Luck for $7 million large. Now that she's starting to command serious money, maybe it's time that she takes out a Lloyd's of London policy to protect her "talents" so that she can continue to entertain us for years to come.
We don't want to date ourselves here, but we remember the days when fake celebrity pages were the exclusive province of Friendster. (On the web, any sentence name-checking Friendster might as well end in a story of walking barefoot in the snow to the internet dial-up cafe, uphill both ways.) Now a curious reader submits the supposed MySpace profiles (think Friendster, but louder) of Hollywood lovebirds Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst for evaluation. Because we are cynical and our heart is black, our first reaction, whether we're ruling on the authenticity of jailbait racks or social-networking profiles, is always: Fake. But taking a closer look here, there are enticing candid photos in both profiles, and no over-the-top nonsense in their prose. Maybe those crazy kids are trolling for the third, non-famous part of a three-way? We told you our heart is black.
Yesterday's NYT magazine reported on the making of "Outfoxed," a new documentary that blasts Fox for its conservative take on the news. Today, Fox pissed on the Times article at the Ritz Carlton, at the end of "Outfoxed" director Robert Greenwald's press conference. [Ed. Note: this introduction has been clarified — the media people got me all persnickered with "actual events" and shit. The devil mixes lies with the truth!] Our intrepid intern Neel Shah reports.
Defamer's Intern X files this report comparing the first round of Marlon Brando tribute ads in the trade papers. One thing is clear: Movie studios really relish the chance to throw a little money at pretending to care about the death of a screen legend. If it were financially expedient, each ad would be accompanied by the tatters of a garment supposedly shredded by a mourning studio exec, or a little vial of their tears. In the meantime, full-page spreads will have to suffice.
The Smoking Gun continues its shallow vendetta again Sharon Stone, publishing a document from California's labor commissioner ordering that Stone pay former assistant Deana Bolton $19,382 in back overtime and vacation wages. Please join Defamer tomorrow afternoon as we lead a parade of aggrieved assistants from the talent agency corridor of Wilshire Boulevard to the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, celebrating this momentous victory in the battle between Tinseltown peons and their rich, unappreciative bosses. At the end of the parade, we'll change the giant tote-board in front of the Kodak to read, "Hollywood: 13,784; Wage Slaves: 1" in commemoration of this joyous event, then toss hot Starbucks coffee at an effigy of Stone. Sorry, Sharon, someone had to lose eventually.
Our newly-appointed Correspondent On Former SNL Star Mind-Control Rays files this dispatch on the casting of the upcoming Will Ferrell/Nicole Kidman update of Bewitched. According to our correspondent, Ferrell is using his newfound box-office clout to populate the movie with his friends and former co-stars [all-caps theirs]:
Yesterday, Rush & Molloy (NY Daily News) ran an item about director M. Night Shymalan's supposed opposition to the SciFi Channel's airing of the documentary The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, in which SciFi's camera followed the director as he filmed his upcoming The Village, due to a "pivotal event" from Shyamalan's past that the doc crew uncovered during filming. Included in the item is the ludicrously ominous quote, "There's one secret that's surrounded by others. We felt that we were finding breadcrumbs through this forest and we followed them." Um, right.
Today's Rush & Molloy column has more post-mortem on recently-expired screen legend Marlon Brando. The reclusive star was fiercely protective of his privacy, and his surviving friends and family are insuring some questions have only vague answers.
While we were out celebrating the Fourth of July, a strange e-mail "press release" heralding the imminent arrival of a "kinky S&M Cameron Diaz film" landed in our inbox. Somehow, between vomiting off a roof in the South Bay and nearly losing our genitals to a suspiciously well-aimed bottle rocket, we forgot about the mysterious press release. Then foot-mirror-enthusiast sister blog Fleshbot started getting e-mail announcing the Cameron Diaz video had hit the internet. We've seen the trailer for the video, and in it a much younger Diaz displays a bit of craft you won't hear about on Inside the Actor's Studio, unless James Lipton finally cracks and does the show on mushrooms: Cameron perks up her nipples with a can of freon or compressed air, giggling "Whoa! Look at them, look at how big they got!" We've nearly fainted wondering about what goodies the full-length offering must hold!
While formerly reclusive screen legend Marlon Brando was being cremated in a private ceremony in Los Angeles, fans were setting tributes to their deceased hero on his star on Hollywood Boulevard. An inventory of the devotional items left by Brando fans, clockwise from the top left: a note, secured by two small stones; a bunch of flowers (color unknown); what appears to be a candle, featuring either a young Brando or a clean-shaven Jesus Christ; a white flower; a red rose.
Writer/blogger Daniel Radosh either uncovers a mystery about some missing voice-over from a reel of Fahrenheit 9/11 in Sacramento or prints an unhinged e-mail from a conspiracy theorist that would have been scrawled in crayon if the technology allowed. Free speech issue or crackpot with a vivid imagination? You decide. We just wish that Moore would get the guts to reinsert Fahrenheit's controversial-yet-lyrical 30-second animated sequence of an elephant with George W. Bush's head sodomizing a mouse in a pink tutu labeled "The American Public."
Sometime between last night and this afternoon, Marlon Brando was officially declared dead. Weirdly, the story seems to have started on a radio station in Phoenix, picked up by Fark, and massaged by Drudge. Southwest outlets were running regularly with it as early as 4:30 this morning, CBS went with it, CNN hit it at 11:30 a.m., and then some general chaos followed this afternoon. Could the esteemed Mr. Brando at least have had the courtesy to die at Spago or something? What the hell was all that?
Marlon Brando [Google News]
The MPAA's home page posts the press releases announcing Jack Valenti's retirement from his position as the organization's leader and the appointment of former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman as his successor. We're a tad wary; the guy doesn't look nearly angry enough. And this quote from the release naming Glickman as the new chief isn't reassuring. He just sounds so reasonable.
The Smoking Gun, your home for all headache-inducing celebrity-excess documents, has Sharon Stone's five-page contract rider detailing her perks. Among her demands are a $3500/week "per diem" (isn't that really just an obnoxious way of saying $500 per day?), an assurance that "no one receives better facilities" for their trailer, three nannies, and a draconian ban on all on-set cigar smoke. We wonder if she's slowly dropping some of these demands after watching herself gradually disappear from Catwoman's promotional campaign. Even the buzz-deficient disaster wants to bury her in the litter box.
What's on Matt Drudge's mind today? Check out the picture of Spider-Man Drudge selected to dangle over his Drudge Report headline "'SPIDERMAN' OPENS HUGE." Tobey Maguire must not have filled out certain parts of the Spidey costume to suit Drudge's taste, as an older incarnation of the superhero is featured. Also notable is the picture's crotch-eye view, Spider-Man's seeming "that's right, Matty Boy, it's THIS big" gesture...and the gigantic phallic structure rising behind him, disappearing into a looming, tight circle.
The MPAA's night-vision goggles program is paying early, pirate-nabbing dividends. A projectionist at the Pacific Winnetka theater in Chatsworth caught a 16-year-old trying to record Spider-Man 2 on Wednesday, possibly reducing its projected opening-day $30 million take by dozens of dollars. Said an MPAA spokeman of the arrest, "In theaters nationwide, there are now thousands of eyes looking for camcording-pirates and this incident proves that pirates who use these devices in theaters will be caught." Now that the first phase of the anti-piracy campaign seems to be up and running, the MPAA can start arming minimum wage ushers in preparation for Phase Two.
