The salacious title of the Weinstein Co.'s new Kevin Smith flick Zack and Miri Make a Porno is proving to be a bad decision. It's already screwed up the movie's marketing efforts. Must it lead to stilted reviews as well? "And so it will hardly be shocking that 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno' is about two people, named Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), who make what my copy editors would prefer that I call a pornographic movie," writes A.O. Scott in the Times today. To be fair, the Times is full of pussy-ass hoes.

♦ What does Bravo have in the works to replace Project Runway if it moves to Lifetime? There's a Runway ripoff called The Fashion Show. There's also Celebrity Sew-Off, in which "celebrities" will compete in a competition for their own clothing label, which should be totally awesome because we've always wanted to buy jeans designed by Jill Zarin. [THR]
♦ The sponsors for Bravo's fifth season of Top Chef? Campbell's Soup, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Quaker. [AdAge]
♦ Because you haven't heard enough about Bravo today, the NYT magazine profile of Bravo boss Lauren Zalaznick (left) is now online. [NYT]
♦ More details on the cuts and layoffs at Condé Nast. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast's glitzy Fashion Rocks show is no more. [AdAge]

How do you raise extra funds when you're a restaurateur who is $1.8 million behind in taxes? Overcharge customers for shaved truffles! At least that's what Nello Balan is being accused of doing by a jilted customer who took his wife for lunch at Nello's on the Upper East Sidea few months back and says he was overcharged to the tune of $530 for two plates of pasta that weren't even that good. We're not sure how Balan will be able to blame his accountant for this error, but we're sure there's a waiter somewhere ready to take the fall. [Page Six]

Happy Halloween, everyone! Who doesn't love Halloween? Besides all that candy and the fact that it gives frat boys everywhere the perfect excuse to indulge a year's worth of cross-dressing impulses, it also brings some of our favorite TV personalities in costume. We already gave you a sneak peek of the ladies of The View, done up as various U.S. presidents (and commend Joy for refraining from remarking to Ronald "Elisabeth" Reagan, "You should only wish for Alzheimer's. That would be the least of your problems."), while the cast of the Today Show embodied their fairytale fantasies (Pinocchio Viera will give you nightmares), and Ellen DeGeneres came out in some kind of matador/coin getup that really marks a step backwards in her fashion evolution. But we highlight for you Regis and Kelly, not so much for the execution of their celebrity chef costumes of Gordon Ramsey and Paula Deen, but rather for the stream of filth spewed forth by Regis throughout the episode.If the beloved Oscars bumbler was just trying to emulate the Hell's Kitchen star, we think a British accent might have helped the illusion along. Instead, it just seems like a spectacular uncorking of decades of bottled rage. Years pressed beneath Gelman's thumb, having to remember all those dumb celebrity names while listening to your shrill co-hosts yammer on at length about their upcoming children and Christmas albums—it's all enough to drive any mild-mannered TV fixture to lose it. Live! [Regis and Kelly]

CNN just loves to hep it up on election and convention nights by "hosting" bloggers, corralling them into a blogger pen where they can feel like they might actually be part of the MSM, if only for a night. November 4th will be no different—New York dating columnist Julia Allison has already Twittered that she'll be there, unwittingly proving once again how ridiculous (and ridiculously all-inclusive) this little gathering is. After the jump, see the invite to "select bloggers" promising "wireless Internet access and small TVs... And of course, there’s complimentary food and open bar throughout the evening."

Senator John McCain will appear on the popular "sketch comedy" television program Saturday Night Live this weekend. McCain hosted the show in 2002, so he's no stranger to their fun-loving antics. The only difference is that this time out, McCain is, we're told, running for president, and the election is on Tuesday. So, sure, hanging out in New York City sounds good, why not. Barack Obama was rumored to be considering an appearance too, but it seems like he might spend the weekend before the election campaigning in swing states? He has spent enough time on network TV, thank you. (Though someone could still make a stilted, unfunny, stunt cameo during SNL's Monday night prime time election special! Keep hope alive!) [AP]

Tesla Motors, the automaker which is Silicon Valley's best hope to build an electric-car industry, will run out of cash in three months if it does not raise new financing. CEO Elon Musk has confirmed Valleywag's report that it has spent most of its customers' deposits and is running low on cash. In an interview with Reuters, CEO Elon Musk conceded that the company only has $9 million in the bank, as a concerned Tesla employee told us yesterday. Tesla's contract with customers specifies that deposits can be used for "working capital" — but last I checked, "working capital" means liquidity available to a company. It does not mean "money that has gone out the door." So Tesla may arguably be in breach of contract with the 1,200 customers who have put between $5,000 and $60,000 down for its Tesla Roadster. Tesla has only delivered 50 cars.Musk has previously said that Tesla will be able to turn cash-flow positive in nine months, if it receives new investment. He now says he's seeking an additional $20 million from Tesla's current investors, and expects to get it next week. Do the math: If Tesla has $9 million in the bank, and requires another $20 million to get to positive cash flow over the next nine months, then it is burning at least $3 million a month. And that's after it laid off 24 percent of its workforce and announced plans to shutter its Detroit office.

Poor Missy Chase Lapine. The beleaguered cookbook authoress wrote a tome called The Sneaky Chef, about how to deceive children, that was later plagiarized (maybe!) by Jerry Seinfeld's wife Jessica in a book called Deceptively Delicious, which was also about lying to little ones. Lapine was brave/stupid enough to publicly accuse Seinfeld of plagiarism, which awoke the sleeping giant Jerry. He went on talk shows and said things like: "If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins. Mark David Chapman and, you know, James Earl Ray. So, that's my concern." Lapine says this was "devastating" and is now suing Seinfeld for slander: "I have never felt so frightened and vulnerable as the day my daughter, 7 years old, came home from school and asked, 'Mom, what is an assassin?," Lapine told the court. She also said that she maybe "made a big mistake talking to any reporters because now this billionaire is angry and attacking me everywhere." Which is probably true! You do not want to get billionaires angry. Hell, you don't want to get millionaires angry. They'll just mess with your life as long as they want because they have more money than you and you'll always have to stop first. So, whether or not Lapine was plagiarized doesn't really even matter anymore. The Seinfelds already won, as they always will. Oh, and the saddest part of the whole thing? She'll never be on Oprah. "Four times I attempted to be a guest on Oprah. I was rejected each time." Devastating indeed. Image via New York Times

Remember when people aspired to be magazine editors? So archaic. Editing a magazine has become pedestrian. Now one must be a magabrand curator, lording over an entire stable of loosely related titles that make up your own media mini-empire. Why should Anna Wintour settle for editing Vogue when she could become the "editorial director" of a whole slew of Vogue spinoffs? That was good aspirational thinking. Until yesterday. Yesterday, Men's Vogue folded. That was a major embarrassment for Anna Wintour. She was a force in the women's fashion world, but she thought she was destined to build her own fashion magazine empire in her own little corner of Conde Nast. MV was supposed to be a big part of that. Now it's dead, along with Fashion Rocks, the huge advertorial project that Conde Nast put on each fall. Teen Vogue is rumored to be shaky as well! That means fashion advertising is weak overall, and Anna's dream is deferred. If not dead. You know who this should be of concern to? Dave "Abs" Zinczenko! And every other aspiring magabrand mogul. Dave Z made his name editing Men's Health, but now he oversees a bunch of "Health" titles, writes ridiculous "Health" books, and goes on the Today show as an expert all the time. He's not an editor, he's a brand name. Until the advertising collapses! Then he's back to being just another dude checking copy and approving pages and hopefully getting out of the office in time to go to the gym, not so he can look good on TV, but just so he can feel good for himself. Don't worry. Pretty soon you'll be thankful just to have those editing jobs. [Pic via Reuters]

Happy Halloween, and welcome to another edition of Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and potentially stillborn at the movies. Today we survey a wasteland of R-rated comedies, Disney leftovers and Oscar-season prestige offerings, all battling the holiday for audience dollars. Among them we'll spot this week's likeliest underachiever and its most worthy underdog, with a few worthwhile DVD releases bringing up the rear. As always, our opinions are our own, but they will be the envy of all your friends when sorting through your candy later tonight.WHAT'S NEW: The Pepto-Bismol is on ice at Weinstein Co. headquarters, where Harvey awaits the numbers for Kevin Smith's hopeful studio-savior Zack and Miri Make a Porno. But anyone who has followed our own prophetic Zack and Miri coverage since last summer is at least a couple steps ahead: Our predicted $14 million opening is right about where the raunchy Seth Rogen/Elizabeth Banks comedy is tracking, faced with heavy competition from holdover Saw V and other holiday hellraising outside the 'plex. Still, it's not a terrible showing; it will fall about $4 million shy of High School Musical 3's number-one spot, but should have relatively strong legs in weeks two and three, which is about the most Harvey can hope for with a movie he can't even market accurately. Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie's Changling killed last week in limited release ($33,000 per screen) on its way to an 1,800-screen expansion today. Jolie portrays Christine Collins, whose son's kidnapping in 1928 led to one of the most damning police-corruption scandals in Los Angeles history. Plenty of critics are down on the star as some hysterical dervish chewing up Eastwood's period scenery, but we don't see the point in criticizing an unapoloegtic melodrama for being successful at what it does. Eastwood cranks out lugubrious movies for adults, emphasizing presence and technique; Jolie matches him step-for-step. What's the problem? It's a likely top-three finisher at $10.7 million and probably the best thing going wide today, and either way it's preferable to dealing with costumed punks at your doorstep for three hours. Also opening: The animated suspense anthology Fear(s) of the Dark; the midnight-movie horror-comedy-romance Just Buried; the indie gorefest Splinter; and the bleak circus dramedy Little Big Top. THE BIG LOSER: The teen-possesion The Haunting of Molly Hartley has little but a brow-furrowed turn from Chace Crawford and a laugh-out-loud trailer voiceover from the late Don LaFontaine to recommend it. If this breaks $4 million this weekend en route to Flopz, we will personally finance the sequel ourselves.

Oh, swoon. Just when we thought we couldn't like him any more, Mad Men star Jon Hamm has to go and do a guest-spot on funniest show ever 30 Rock. As a potential love interest for Liz! So that's pretty great. He ably hosted Saturday Night Live last weekend, so we're confident he'll bring the funny. Is this guy on track to be the next George Clooney or what? He's charming and amiable but stern at times, has rugged good looks, and a relaxed but assured masculinity. He's got it all! Or does he... I mean, he's still living pretty modestly. The first season of Mad Men, given that it's an AMC show, probably didn't pay much and his second season contract most likely didn't give him a huge raise. Last we checked, he was living in Los Feliz and driving a leased Audi. So he's not quite tooling around his own Clooney Manor on Lake Como yet. Nor is Mad Men an enormous success or the Hamm name a household one. Yet. Actually he sort of reminds us of those young lads from Good Will Hunting who stood, some 11 years ago, poised to conquer the world. One went one way, the other another. And that has made all the difference. Mr. Hamm is, yes, about ten years older now than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were when they broke out, but he's arguably at the same career crossroads. So now does he go the Affleck route and try to make his movie star name in cheesy blockbusters and just become a Big Famous Person? Or does he tread more stealthily, choosing diverse and difficult actor parts with fancy directors, like Damon did with The Talented Mr. Ripley and All The Pretty Horses. We know how all that turned out, so hopefully Hamm will take Damon route and do the art house pictures and become big ticket popcorn star. Just like Mr. Clooney, really, who zipped his way through good schlock (the Ocean's movies) and bad schlock (Batman & Robin) before he could really exercise some muscle and get his own creative pet projects made. Clooney has, really, the perfect acting career—a mixture of dark, substantive work and fun lighter fare—and Damon looks to be following ably in his footsteps. We hope that Hamm can do the same. Right now he's got both an indie and a big blockbustery thing in the can, so... two roads diverge.

Search engine marketing guru Danny Sullivan says small-time businesses are stealing other's listings in Google Maps. "Florists, locksmiths, payday loan companies and others have found their listings hijacked in this manner." It's a hack so obvious I'm surprised no one at Google thought of it: You can edit the listing for your competitors to include your business name, URL and phone instead of theirs. Wikipedia meets the Yellow Pages! Vint Cerf totally saw this coming. Too bad no one listens to him.

Radar magazine has come and gone for the third time, folding suddenly last Friday—but as Michael Musto pointed out, when a party's already been paid for, you might as well go ahead with it. And so a mockup of the magazine's last cover, featuring actress Shannen Doherty, sat on the red carpet in front of Citrine, where editor Maer Roshan was smiling for photographers. As of 11p.m., neither Shannen nor the party's promoter had been made aware that the magazine had unceremoniously folded, and that she was gracing the cover of its last issue. Directly in front of Maer, asphalt was being dumped onto the street and stamped into place by construction workers, leaving the people in line to cough on the fumes while they adjusted their Halloween masks. Was this irrational hubris or performance art?"You'll be seeing us again in some way!" he told us without blinking or laughing once. Performance art. "You're killing me," sighed the flack at the door when we were finally plucked from the line and had the audacity to bring in a guest. No, we're killing print! It did seem a bit ironic that the final Radar party was wildly oversubscribed. So Maer, how are you feeling? "We put out sixteen good issues," he said, adding that he'll be an editor-at-large at Tina Brown's Daily Beast, "helping out." Will he have to go into the office? "Only when I feel like it." Meanwhile, we heard the rumor of a party guest who was laid off at Radar on Friday, hired at Culture + Travel on Monday, and laid off again on Wednesday when that magazine folded. And this was all before covergirl Shannen Doherty arrived, who showed up dressed in black shiny leggings, looking like a sexy cat. (We were promised absolutely "no access" to her.) As Nick Denton wrote in 2005,

We hadn't seen Bruce Wasserstein—billionaire financier, Lazard chairman, owner of New York magazine—for quite some time until he made this appearance yesterday at a breakfast for Fortune. We're very happy to see he appears to be keeping up New York's "Best Doctors" issue: The new Bruce is trimmer, his skin looks is taut and smooth, and those unsightly bags under his eyes have completely vanished. We don't know who deserves the credit for this impressive transformation (Sherrell? Dan? Pat?), but whoever it is, please know that we fully approve of Bruce 2.0!

The LA Times would like you to meet the undecided voters. There are a lot of mean rumors about these undecided voters, like about they're stupid and ill-informed and dear god what world do you live in where you can't figure out if you want a hawkish old Republican or a moderate young Democrat in charge. But let's hear from an undecided voter in her own words: "I have cats, but I love dogs, and I've been thinking about it like five years already if I should adopt a dog." Ha, she lives in Florida, too!

"Where have Silicon Valley's Republicans gone?" laments CNET News writer Declan McCullagh. George W. Bush backer Tim Draper has switched to the Obama team. There are a few stalwarts: Former Valley CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have campaigned for McCain. And the two are going to be special guests at an election-night party thrown by Lead21. The group, which describes itself as "an influential political organization formed by entrepreneurial business leaders," is coy about the location of the party.But we're not. A source told us it's being held at the rented mansion of Facebook board member Peter Thiel, the former PayPal CEO and founder of Clarium Capital, a hedge fund. Thiel backed Ron Paul in the primaries, but what we really want to know is: What is the gay investor's position on California's proposed gay-marriage ban? Festivities start at 6 p.m. Oh, need directions? Thiel is listed in the phone book. Update: Lead21 chair Sonia Arrison writes:

Sarah Jessica Parker making phone calls last night at a Barack Obama campaign center ... Macaulay Culkin standing on the sidewalk ... Katie Holmes and Suri wearing matching orange dresses in Central Park ... Philip Seymour Hoffman walking in the West Village ... Ashley Olsen and Paul Rudd posing outside the Letterman show ... Tyra Banks getting some frozen yogurt ... Lindsay Price carrying her dog on the set of Lipstick Jungle ... Keira Knightley walking with her boyfriend, Rupert Friend ... Becki Newton on the set of Ugly Betty ... and Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon outside a Halloween party at Marquee.

Cartoonish plutocrat Stephen Schwarzman would rather not be known as a cartoonish plutocrat! You may recall how the multibillionaire CEO of Blackstone Group threw himself a $3 million star-studded birthday party (with Rod Stewart!) last year and thereby became the living symbol of the wretched excesses of Wall Street money-jugglers in this modern boom era. Well now that everybody is broke he regrets doing that stuff, okay:

Alberto Rottura is the man who cuts Michael Bloomberg's hair. (His cuts cost $35.) He's also the man who tends to the locks of Betsy Gotbaum and Tom Wolfe. One person who used to be a client but no longer shows his face around Rottura's salon any longer? Eliot Spitzer. "Then he got entangled in an escort scandal, resigned and never came back, Mr. Rottura said." [NYT]

[Ashley Olsen, mogul, outside the David Letterman show last night; image via INF] Aaron_Altman's new line beats the original, Tiny Star Stands Before Her Daily Judging Committee.