Sex-Having Sex Priest Gets His Own TV Show
It's true. A famous priest who angered the church by following his natural urges will soon be a national TV star. Also today: news from Sundance, some good and some bad, plus James Franco's getting into the porn world.
Father Alberto Cutie, the Miami-based priest who left the Catholic church after being caught with a woman (and being plagued by gay rumors), is getting his own national self-help talk show, the first religious official to land such a gig since the 1950s. His show will cover "everything from sex to salvation," as the bestselling motivational author peddles his sinful brand of free-love Christianity. In related news, your Italian grandmother is shaking her head with the kind of sad, resigned disgust that only Italian grandmas are capable of possessing. (Greek grandmas sometimes come close.) [THR]
James Franco, vocal porn appreciator [NSFW!!], may be getting into the business himself. Well, no, not the actual business, but he is reportedly in talks to join the cast of a Linda Lovelace biopic starring Kate Hudson. (Ew.) Franco would play Chuck Traynor, the pornographer who was married to Lovelace around the time she shot her famous Deep Throat. Lovelace later divorced Traynor and said that he'd forced her into porn and prostitution using violence and hypnotism. Well, OK. Hypnotist pornographer sounds like the next logical step in Franco's beautiful career. [Deadline]
Shockingly, NBC is having a little trouble with The Cape, their bizarre superhero drama that exists in some strange netherworld between funtimes camp and serious Dark Knightedness. The show has fallen nearly 40% in ratings since its premiere, settling last night at a low 5.8 million viewers. Yikes! And here NBC's Monday lineup of The Chuck, a show about Chuck, The Cape, and Harry's Law, about Kathy Bates wanting to buy a summer house, seemed so strong! I mean, who wouldn't want to watch all three of those shows?? Television is full of mysteries, I tell ya. (Well, OK, it seems as though Harry's Law is actually doing well.) [THR]
Producing partners Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green are close to nailing down the remake rights to the Sundance documentary Knuckle, about a feud between two Irish families that regularly devolves into bare-knuckle fights and, in recent years, trash-talking videos being sent back and forth. The Eastbound and Down guys plan on turning it into a series for HBO. That basically sounds perfect for their particular brand of gonzo male aggression. Which is usually funny! But sometimes is a little scary? [Deadline]
News from Sundance is that the new film Son of No One, starring Al Pacino, Katie Holmes, and living pastrami edifice Channing Tatum, was not very well liked at its screening. People apparently walked out during the viewing and there was minimal if any applause when the credits rolled. This is not good news for director Dito Montiel, whose A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints was lauded at the same fest a few years ago, and not terribly great news for Tatum, whose quest to evolve from a self-aware jumble of meat molecules and sawdust into a real human actor had been proceeding along apace until this point. Hopefully his sexy slave boy Roman romp will wipe away any memory of this failure. Otherwise the fairy's spell will be broken and it's back to the deli counter for ol' Channing. [The Wrap]
Aha. Fox has picked up a pilot from Liz Meriwether, the screenwriting It Girl who wrote No Strings Attached, the world's best romantic comedy. The show will be called Chicks and Dicks (for now, at least), because jokes about penises are funny, and it will be about "the sexual politics of men and women," because that topic has never been covered before. Well, except in No Strings Attached. But that's it. [Deadline]
[Photo via AP]