Yesterday, an e-mail announcing that UTA's apparently Willy Wonka -themed holiday gift (Johnny Depp's a client, natch, and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD is still available at a retailer near you!) hit the inbox of potentially lucky assistants:
While we were trawling for a high-powered sugar mama perusing yesterday's THR list of the industry's most powerful women, we found ourselves wishing, nay craving a fictionalized examination of the Entourage-worthy shenanigans of Hollywood's Sex and the City-equivalent wild girls, preferably with a title accessible enough to suggest the fluffiest of Malibu beach reading while simultaneously explaining the concept in three words or less. Courtesy of the Publisher's Lunch book deal e-mail round-up, relief:
With the end-of-year holiday quickly approaching, it's time for agencies to show their appreciation for the gatekeepers who prevent their Very Urgent Messages from disappearing into circular-file oblivion by greasing their palms with token "assistant gifts." A Defamer operative embedded on one of the big studio lots demonstrates his gratitude by offering this review of the trinkets CAA just dispatched to the call-rolling class:
All those dire predictions about Canada shutting down Hollywood look like they may come to pass after all, but not because of runaway production. An Ottawa-based company called Research In Motion, which provides North American BlackBerry email service, is in a messy patent dispute. Result: all U.S. BlackBerry service is on the verge of a court-ordered shutdown.
Late yesterday, when we were mercifully free of our online shackles, news that Brittany Murphy had been dumped by both agency ICM and management company Brillstein-Grey hit our inbox. (How many more hours of waterboarding will it take for us to finally learn to never, ever leave the computer?) Radar Online has the story, hearing from a source that she was dumped for the vague-but-foreboding "personal reasons":
· Sensing a chance to finally behead momentarily weakened New Year's Eve immortal Dick Clark, Fox recruits Regis Philbin to host a competing ball-dropping special to ring in 2006. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance, Dump The Sharks Edition: Gary Oldman flees CAA to cozy up with ICM. [THR]
· Disney crosses the international box office billion-dollar mark, making them the third studio (along with Fox and Warner Bros.) to do so this year. Please join us in celebrating the further enrichment of faceless multimedia conglomerates! Huzzah! [Variety]
· Penguins still red-hot, tragicomic bear-wranglers not so much: The Academy shortlists a record 15 documentaries for nomination, including March of the Penguins, but not Grizzly Man. [Variety]
· Because nothing says gravitas like the words "From the star of The Waterboy and the creative force behind The Mind of the Married Man," we can't imagine anyone else collaborating on a 9/11 drama but Adam Sandler and Mike Binder. [Variety]
Bar Mitzvah Disco, the between-hard-covers celebration of Jewish coming-of-age campiness that overtook America's affluent suburbs in, according to the book, mostly the 1970s and 1980s, hit bookstores last week. While we continue to find the book vaguely disconcerting when it's used to sell hipster t-shirts to the goyim, we also find it charmingly amusing when it's sitting on our Semitic coffee table. And so we spent a good chunk of Sunday afternoon poring over it, during which we learned several things.
· With an eye towards cleaning up at next year's holiday box office, Fox signs Ben Stiller for A Night at the Museum, in which Stiller will star as a security guard who "unwittingly unleashes a curse that brings to life the bugs and animals on display." Excuse us. Stiller will star as a twitchy, neurotic, and impotent-rage-prone security guard who "unwittingly unleashes a curse that brings to life the bugs and animals on display." [Variety]
· Despite CBS's killer hurricane and NBC's live debate on The West Wing/two-hour L&O:SVU counterprogramming Hail Marys, America still preferred to watch the creepy, gay-seeming pharmacist contemplate date-raping Marcia Cross on Desperate Housewives. [THR]
· Michael Douglas mercifully chooses a role which will probably not require any further restorative plastic surgery, signing up to play "an eccentric and manic-depressive father who becomes obsessed with his belief that there's buried treasure in the San Fernando Valley" in the Alexander Payne-produced King of California. [Variety]
· Now that an Everybody Loves Raymond spinoff looks like a longshot, Brad Garrett realizes that he might need someone to find him a job, hires William Morris to hunt down the appropriate sitcom second-banana roles and CBS MOWs. [THR]
· It's William Morris Signing Day! Catherine Zeta-Jones returns to the welcoming arms of longtime WMA agent George Freeman, whom she jilted for CAA two years ago. [Variety]
· Pierce Brosnan will shake things up by playing a family-dismantling kidnapper in Butterfly on A Wheel for Icon Entertainment, inevitably prompting audiences to wonder, "Hey, why is James Bond acting like such a dick?" [Variety]
· In a clear attempt to fill the huge hugging void left by the imminent departure of John Lesher, Endeavor promotes three agents (read: six fresh, bear-hugging arms) to partner. [THR]
· Bruce Willis, once arguably the biggest movie star in the world, agrees to be the guinea pig in "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video director Samuel Bayer's feature debut, Black Water Transit. [Variety]
· THR gets in on today's Cockblocker fun. Hey, enjoy the title while it lasts. [THR]
· "OK, those fucking penguins killed for Warner. Brainstorm time, guys. We need another animal that says cold, cute, maybe fluffy. What's a marmot? Sounds cute, but do they live on ice and shit? No? Fuck. What else we got?" [Variety]
It seems that Endeavor superagent and HuffPo powerblogger Ari Emanuel has already hit the creative wall. In just the sixth installment of his wildly popular "Ari's Frustration of the Day" (really, is there anyone in Hollywood who doesn't know what bug Ari is excising from his hindquarters on a particular day?) Emanuel's succumbed to madness, offering barely a nod to his reflexive Bush-bashing in the service of utter nonsense:
It's official: Endeavor agent John Lesher is taking over Paramount Classics, touching off the inevitable discussion about whether or not it's a good idea to put someone with no actual "experience" making movies in charge of a studio that "makes movies." We do know one area in which Lesher's bonafides are unimpeachable: hugging. A quick stroll through WireImage reveals that the man is a master in the art of the Hollywood clinch, pulling off manly one-arms, full-body smothers, reclined reacharounds, and the high degree-of-difficulty "four-man flying wedge" (top left). With these estimable people-smothering skills, we have no doubt he'll make a fine studio executive.
· The New Paramount™ president Gail Berman loves to laugh, telling Var, "Comedy, comedy, comedy. I love comedies," Who knew? She's greenlit a Jackass: The Movie sequel, demonstrating her ardor for chuckling at guys who staple their scrotums to various objects. [Variety]
· Reese Witherspoon is developing the dramatic thriller The Reckoning as a starring vehicle through her Type A Films shingle at Paramount. Clearly, Gail Berman's seen Just Like Heaven and realizes that comedy, comedy, comedy might not be the way to go with Reese right now. [THR]
· More on the Warner Bros. layoffs: Warner Independent production head Michael Andreen is also felled in the bloodbath. [Variety]
· CBS wins a sixth straight week in the Nielsen wars, mass suicides in NBC's utterly demoralized programming ranks to follow. [THR]
· ICM suddenly finds itself with $100 million in new investment capital, but what to do with all this cash? Buy an agency? Encourage senior members to retire with fat pockets? Hire a small army of gold-plated hookers to service the entire staff? Yeah, they'll probably go with that last one. [Variety]
Why is Official Agent Dance mascot Ari Emanuel frustrated? Because he just hates it when rumors that were originally circulating months ago resurface, making the Agent Dance feel stale. But we keep hearing the whispers that Emanuel's shark-in-arms, Endeavor's John Lesher, might finally—finally!—take over Paramount Classics after all. Do we know this for sure? Of course we don't. Are we passing along the chatter anyway? You bet. Revisiting suddenly revived July rumors makes us feel all summery in our naughty places, even with Ari frowning down at us.
The British seem to have developed a mysterious tolerance to Hollywood's box office crap, as the nation's moviegoers have fled the theaters in smaller numbers than those in other foreign markets. [Variety]
· The Weinstein Co. announces a multiyear marketing deal with L'Oreal Paris, pacting to co-host various events and provide mutual promotional support. Most crucially, only L'Oreal cosmetics will be used to cover up all Harvey Weinstein-inflicted bruises, an estimated two million dollar a year value. [THR]
· ICM gets a $75 million investment from equity fund operator Suhail Rizvi, which CEO Jeff Berg plans to lend to Paradigm so that the rival can finally purchase his agency and finally put an end to months of nasty acquisition rumors. [Variety]
· NBC gives a pilot order to the suspense drama Kidnapped, which will track a family's search for their abducted son, at least until the show itself mysteriously disappears during sweeps. [THR]
· The WGA East and West finally settle their differences with a minimum of bloodshed, but a maximum of incredibly boring bullet points. [Variety]
Let's face facts, Angelenos: we live in a solipsistic bubble. Mention Broadway, we think Chinatown. Refer to ivy, we think patio dining. And drop the name Ari in a local crowd and see if anyone blinks. Who else could you be talking about but Ari Emanuel, eco-friendly Endeavor overlord and now high-profile blogger with a stubbornly persistent case of the crabbies?
Variety carried the (somewhat old) news yesterday of a "premiere Gotham lit agenc[y's]" recent demise. Collins McCormick — home to some of our favorite journo/author folks, like Hard Newser Seth Mnookin, menschy cad Rick Marin, and an earlier, now-Transomisitic, incarnation of ourselves — broke up a week ago, and the Hollywood trade repeats the farewell email from primo partner Nina Collins:
We are embarrassed by Endeavor superagent Ari Emanuel's recent commitment to blogging. While we require an A-list death (or a particularly compelling paparazzi photograph of Britney Spears looking heavier than we might like) to work on the weekend, it takes little more than a burning desire to share a frustration to lure Emanuel to the keyboard on a Saturday:
