Each day this week, the SF Chronicle is publishing Sean Penn's (very serious) account of his recent (terribly important) trip to Iran, in which he meticulously documents the activities of his unofficial ambassadorship...have you stopped caring yet? Yeah, we thought so. Anyway, we've pushed back our immature mental chants of "Spicoli's in Tehran! Spicoli's in Tehran!" long enough to follow along through the first three days, and, finally, Penn gets around to some movie talk (why is it always politics this, politics that with this guy?) at a dinner party:

Whether or not you believe that the studios are making less money at the box office this year, there is hardly anything more entertaining than a reporter (this time, it's Sharon Waxman of the NY Times) using The Slump to corner some high-powered film executives and make them admit that many of their movies are, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty shitty:

Q: What's the better high-concept, dangerous-things-in-confined-spaces movie idea? Snakes on a Plane

Perhaps the only thing creepier than one Tom Cruise is three well-dressed guys who look and sound like the genuine article hanging out together. If our operative hadn't already been snooping around the Mission: Impossible 3 set at Paramount, he might have fled for his life, convinced that the invasion was finally nigh. Instead, we get this report:

Come Oscar time, Joaquin Phoenix wants people recognizing his hard work and preparation, not talking about how he took the easy way out by using his personal pain to play Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. Phoenix gets upset about the subject in Newsweek:

Shortly after we wrote about the charity auction of a two-week internship having one's flesh melted off the bone in uber-producer Joel Silver's Hollywood crucible, the auction was abruptly ended, and a spokesperson from Warner Bros. got in touch to inform us that the auction "wasn't real." (We did get assurances that it wasn't unreal in the "hoax" sense.) Fortunately, someone did a better job of explaining the details of the auction's irreality to Variety:

The Larchmont Charter School is holding an eBay charity auction for the opportunity to spend two weeks as an intern embedded within [Ed.note—How do we say this without winding up an orphan with cracked ribs?] famously passionate uber-producer Joel Silver's office. The description:

While tax incentives have lured bottom-line-obsessed studios to far-off lands like New Orleans, the newly Hollywoodized locations are also reaping the (perhaps) unexpected consequences of the money-bringing industry invasion: local alcohol shortages induced by thirsty underage starlets, caddish foreigners making a mockery of the Seventh Commandment, and the crushing guilt of realizing that your tax breaks have made abominations like Big Momma's House 2 possible. From the LAT:

Even in an article about 40 Year Old Virgin star Steve Carrell's ascendance from Daily Show player to above-the-title comedy star, a piece that has nothing to do with Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo or any of Rob Schneider's other films, the sensitive, beleaguered SNL alum must suffer the malicious slings and gratuitous arrows of journalists using him as a tossed-off punchline. From the NY Times (bold ours):

• Upon hearing that Paris Hilton's latest cinematic venture was slated to flop on the same day as that of Nicole Richie, Team Nicole pushes up the release of Kids in America to October 21. That's what It's an exciting race to see who can shamelessly promote themselves first! [Page Six]
• Jessica Simpson fans rip her clothes off while she innocently tries to shop. Apparently, the starlet didn't enjoy this, and her lack of enthusiasm sends father Joe into a violent, Jesus-fuelled rage. [R&M (2nd item)]
• After Cannabis Culture editor Marc Emery was arrested in Vancouver for selling millions of dollars' worth of the good stuff, maybe High Times might want to reduce the number of seed-selling ads in their pages. [Lowdown]
• Fridays are for Friedman, and Roger is all atwitter for the release of Stevie Wonder's latest album. Pray for a Grammy, Rog. Just pray. [Fox411]

Attention concerned parents, media watchdogs, or any upstanding Americans who spend at least an hour a day Googling the phrase "more evidence of our country's moral decay": Some billboards for R-rated comedies, like the one featuring the fictional Deuce Bigalow artfully posed in front of the world's biggest off-kilter phallus, may not clearly reflect the movie's adults-only ratings.

Since we noted the promotional auction of a "date" with the 40 Year Old Virgin a little while ago, the bids have soared from $51 to $4050. But did current bidder ladave323 realize that he wasn't betting on a chance to steal away an actual virgin's closely guarded virtue, just some premiere tickets? One reader raises an interesting question:

After we posted about yesterday's LAT article asking some of Hollywood's deepest thinkers to explain the sudden Death of the (Awful) Action Movie, a couple of readers pointed out this piece from Zap2it.com, where The Island producer Walter Parkes nearly jabs himself in the eye in a flurry of finger-pointing. The Island's problems? A bad title and small actors:

Click to enlarge, if you dare.

Not even eBay, haven for the gray market exchange of items that may or may not have touched celebrities, is immune from the ideas of movie marketing visionaries, who've decided that "Hey, the kids love the online auctions, don't they?" and seemingly offered the virginity of a 40 year-old virgin to the highest bidder:

With would-be action blockbusters The Island and Stealth bombing in consecutive weeks, it's time for Hollywood's greatest minds to stroke their chins and offer their ruminations on Why The Action Genre Is Flailing. While lower-wattage intellects like Michael Bay burn off precious brain cells in the process of commanding their fingers to point in every direction but inward, deep thinker Rob "XXX/Fast the Furious" Cohen mines the collective unconscious to formulate a larger theory about why this summer's audiences are shunning the cutting edge offerings of the blowing-shit-up genre:

How many times does the MPAA have to tell us to respect copyrights? Another camcorder-wielding, one-man piracy sleeper cell has been accused of trying to destabilize the entertainment industry, but his greatest crime might be his horrible taste:

The AP reports that Murderball star Mark Zupan is "embracing the fame brought by the documentary," but it's not clear if the interview was conducted before or after Steve-O stapled his scrotum to Zupan's wheelchair on the red carpet at a recent E! party.

First Chappelle, now this? We're not going outside today, because we're pretty sure the next thing is going to involve a torrential downpour of boiling menstrual blood. The Big Mogul in the Sky's really backed himself into a corner with this one.

During a press event in Toronto to promote the upcoming release of The Dukes of Hazzard, star Johnny Knoxville proved himself to be a little delicate when it comes to questions about politics: