Sorkin goes from White House to front line

You make the call: MPAA-backed raid of suspected German movie pirates or terrifying anecdote from the Nazi occupation?

Maybe we weren't kidding about Paramount head Sherry Lansing buying the rights to the stories of the two lot security guards who helped police capture a Hollywood killer. This email (sent to us by a spy) from Lansing and outgoing, beloved Viacom chairman Jonathan Dolgen reveals that the grateful studio will to fete its heroes early next week.

This week's Entertainment Weekly catches the buzz of internet hottness barometer Reuters and their May 27th Rance article, sending an investigative reporter deep onto the front page of Rance's blog to evaluate the prevailing theories about the supposedly A-list actor's mystery diary of doom. EW's conclusions on the leading contenders are after the jump. It can't be long before he's flushed out of his Bel Air mansion with his iBook in the air as a harried assistant tries to throw a coat over his head...

What's worse, working for Miramax or getting canned by Miramax? We all know that it's not not exactly known for being the happiest of places, but pretty soon there might be a lot fewer people for Harvey and Bob Weinstein to make miserable. A spy hears whispers inside the company that layoffs are coming soon. As in, "tomorrow" soon. And they're supposedly coming in large numbers, with 100 harried employees possibly getting the axe. But the spy was too busy to elaborate past this: "Everybody's working on their resumes. Gotta get back to mine too!" Does "ability to withstand humilation by physically intimidating studio head" count as a "Special Skill"?

In honor of our raging hangover, enjoy this picture (taken by one our favorite, wrong-coast readers) of Ben Stiller, splayed on the pavement outside David Letterman's Ed Sullivan Theater. Really, is there nothing Stiller won't do to promote DodgeBall? Should we expect him to roll around on the carpet on Jay Leno, after insisting that the anvil-headed late night milquetoast kick him in the jewels to prove a point about how much it hurts to get racked by one of those red balls?

The DodgeBall backlash continues, but now we have to wonder if this is really Ben Stiller backlash. E! Online has an entire article on Stiller's recent overexposure. complete with cute graphics measuring precisely how sick they are of him in each of his recent or upcoming films (ranging from "Still Love Him" to "Stiller Overkill.") Not that anyone listens to the folks at E! other than to craft creative deaths for Joan Rivers, but this can't be good for Stiller. When even E!, the network whose mission is to stick its fingers into the anal cavities of celebrities and tout their befouled digits as popsicles, is sick of you, maybe it's time to take a little breather.

Like a red ball hurtling towards your unprotected genital region, DodgeBall backlash whistles through the internet. An angry Craigslist NY poster rants against Ben Stiller and meaningless references to Scott Baio vehicles from long ago:

Blogger Boi From Troy reports that celeb-frequented West Hollywood gym Crunch is going to offer "DodgeBall 101" classes as a tie-in with the movie's Friday release. We can see that first game now...the gay team on one side, clutching their balls and comparing their biceps. And the celeb team...well, probably on the same side. Crunch is going to need to import some players for that second team. Maybe the marketing visionary at Fox that came up with this idea can convince a couple of the struggling actresses working out at the gym that getting smacked in the face with some balls will be good for their career.

On this morning's Howard Stern radio show, Ben Stiller phoned in to promote his new movie, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. Stern made him run through his entire sexual history with celebrity partners, nothing unusual there. [Ed. note—Calista Flockhart?] But notable among the rote movie-pluggery was Stiller's repeated invocation of the phrase "I stand behind this movie." Are those campaign reform laws that require political candidates to declare that they "approve this message" on their commercials creeping into Hollywood? Think of how many people could be saved from ill-advised ticket purchases if stars were required to give their explicit endorsement of their shitty movies—or the truth: "I'm Bill Murray, the voice of Garfield, and someone at Fox has video of me reenacting Behind The Green Door with five donkeys."

Security guards on the Paramount lot in Hollywood turned away a homeless man from the studio's gates, then recognized him on a newscast about the slayings of a 91-year-old screenwriter and a 67-year-old physician neighbor. What we want to know: How quickly was Paramount head Sherry Lansing trying to lock up the rights to her security guards' story, so she can massage it into a $100 million buddy picture where the unassuming guards have to act quickly to thwart a serial killer on the loose in a big Hollywood studio? This could be just what Lansing needs to save her gig in the wake of the shake-ups at Paramount parent Viacom. But who are we kidding? It's a Paramount movie, it would totally bomb.

Last night was the Fahrenheit 911 screening at the Ziegfield; our Correspondent for Overhyped Rabble-rousing Filmmakers was there. His concise report:

Now that Viggo Mortensen is enjoying "substantial success as an actor," ex-wife (and former X lead singer) Christene Edge, is hitting up the actor for a bigger child support payment. Naturally, The Smoking Gun has the court document in which Edge wants Viggo's contribution to balloon from $3,000 to about $18,000 a month. Let this serve as a warning to all divorced actors who pine for "substantial success": You're probably better off getting your ass kicked by Demi Moore than becoming the king of Middle Earth.

Newsweek looks at next summer's attempted resuscitation of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins. Warner Bros. is anxious to finally revive the comic book hero, but without any of that troubling leather-and-rubber [Ed. note—Gay.] fetishism that director Joel Schumacher ladeled on Batman and Robin like hot fudge at a Robert Mapplethorpe photo shoot. New director Christopher Nolan has been charged with butching up the production, but the Newsweek article is sending some mixed signals about the Caped Crusader's de-sissyfication:

According to Rush & Malloy, some New Line Cinema executives are a little skeeved by a scene in the movie Birth, in which Nicole Kidman takes a bath, sans wardrobe, [Ed. note—Naked! Who'd expect a naked bath?] with a 10-year-old boy she thinks is the the reincarnation of her dead husband. What's more, the movie reportedly has a scene in which Kidman's character and the tot—um, how do we put this delicately—suck face. Wasn't getting married to Tom Cruise enough transgression for a Hollywood career?

Wherein we use the LAT's "Hot Property" real estate column and some ellipses to depress both ourselves and the Los Angeles housing market:

Can foes shave 'Harry' legs?

When we recently carped, "What, No Lasagna?" in an earlier post, we hoped that there was indeed lasagna at the Fox News Cafe. An adventurous gourmand on the lot sends in this brief review of an item on Fox's Garfield-themed menu.

The Blueprint has this phonecam shot of today's menu at the News Cafe on the Fox lot. Nothing like some co-branded cafeteria food to get the worker drones ready for the failure of your dead-president dissing, CGI talking-cat nightmare movie. Click through to see the full pic here.

A disgruntled former staffer needs to get some Miramax rage out of their system. Did he/she not get a ticket to a Fahrenheit 9/11 screening from Harvey Weinstein?