Not at all coincidentally, if you call CAA and ask to speak with Willis's agent, the same message urging patience while they "take Bruce to the next level" plays while you hold.

It will be Bruce Willis who finds himself in a million little pieces, probably in an unmarked garbage bag in the alley behind Harpo Studios, after word gets out of his recent pro-James Frey rant to a reporter from iFMagazine:

We'd love to stop writing about Fake Writer James Frey, but we don't have a choice (miss your beat and face the brank, as they say around Gawker HQ). And when remarkably-hunky- despite-the-balding actor Bruce Willis speaks out on Frey, we owe it to every last one of you to share the wealth. Of A Million Little Pieces, Willis opines:

· More perfectly timed holiday layoff fun: MTV Networks let go close to 100 employees, a move the suddenly scary-looking Tom Freston might have been hinting at when he told THR yesterday, "We're looking very closely at a much leaner corporate overhead." Merry Christmas, pinkslipped "overhead"! [THR]
· Paramount signs a term sheet to sell the DreamWorks library to a number of private equity firms for somewhere between $900 and $950 million. We will not even attempt to sex up this move. [Variety]
· Time Warner cable will roll out "Family Choice Tier" cable package of "smut-free" programming. You know, the kind of smut that you find on Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network, which are not a part of the package. [THR]
· After the disappointing Wednesday numbers for King Kong, execs are clinging to the hope that word of mouth, school vacations, and the South thawing will lure fans of the little monkey out of hiding. [Variety]
· Sometime actor Bruce Willis will take some time off from his promising vigilante-financier career to star in Morgan's Summit, playing a professionally nice guy who goes crazy for vengeance once a brutal crime changes his life. [Variety]

Brooke Burns, swimsuit model, Dog Eat Dog host, star of Single White Female 2: The Psycho and Bruce Willis' ex-fiancee, (not to be confused with swimsuit model, Rock Star: INXS host and star of Need for Speed: Underground 2 Brooke Burke) came face to face with the fury of the shallow end yesterday:

· Former movie star and current monied, vigilante freedom fighter Bruce Willis is offering a million-dollar bounty for the head of Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants. This selfless act of patriotism should bring no attention to his current acting projects whatsoever.
· We don't like to get into our personal lives too much here, but one longtime hobby of ours had been spelunking in prickly caves of danger. But after reading this dispatch from our beloved ladies of Fug, we're abandoning all danger-cave adventures immediately. Sure, you might make it past the saw blade booby trap at the entrance to Omarosa Cavern, but then you've got to deal with the three-ton boulder bearing down on you, all the bleached skeletons of your predecessors, and the chance that you'll lose your hat and whip.
· We don't know what's got the TV Gasm guys so bent out of shape. That hot dog looks pretty good to us.
· Someone has given the Worth 1000 crew unfettered access to our nightmare tapes from the sleep clinic.
· This Harry Potter countdown clock is not at all creepy because Daniel Radcliffe is a teenage boy and it was set up by a woman.

· 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]

...And this little piggie ran aaaall the way home, but then the sixth little piggie walked over to the neighbor's house, and got an A-list star who probably needed to get his mind off of things anyway to sign on to her latest project:

· All kidding aside: How Bruce Willis has avoided suicide this long is one of Hollywood's biggest mysteries. If the sight of that fedora didn't make him blow his brains out all over Kutcher's white suit, nothing will.
· Just in case you're the last person on earth to hear about today's release of the video iPod, onto which you can download day-old episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives thanks to Steve Jobs' unholy alliance with Disney, here you go. And if somehow this link that goes directly to Apple's site makes a free one show up in our mailbox, so be it. We are not ashamed of being whores to our shiny, white master.
· We are willing to bet that this MAC ad is not very popular among a select group of very high-powered publicists.
· "All the girls ended up getting naked in the movie. It’s really amazing, they want $30,000 to $40,000 a day to pose for Playboy, but we got them to do it for $200 a day, scale!” Don't forget, that low, low fee also includes the golden showers.

· Creepy Stunt-Casting Alert! Former Demi Moore spouse Bruce Willis will appear on an episode of That 70s Show with current Moore boyfriend/possible impregnator Ashton Kutcher. Self-referential jokes about sharing the same woman will certainly follow (and, we suspect, a surprise Moore cameo). Creepiness-mitigating silver lining: Willis is donating his fee to the Red Cross. [Variety]
· Paramount enables Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese to author a fourth chapter in their cinematic love affair, optioning the rights to the Teddy Roosevelt bio The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Sounds like an Oscar-baiting vehicle in which DiCaprio gets to physically transform himself from an asthmatic, 25 year-old wimp to a "burly," somewhat less wimpy-seeming Rough Rider. We'll do our best not to laugh at Leo in Teddy's signature moustache. [Variety]
· Monster's Ball director Mark Forster will direct the adaptation of the mega-best-selling The Kite Runner for DreamWorks. Or for Universal, or for whatever big studio eventually buys up what's left of Steven Spielberg's dreams. [THR]
· Fox wins Sunday night with football, The Simpsons, and The Family Guy. [THR]
· Ang Lee's gay cowboy yarn, Brokeback Mountain, wins the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion. But American audiences have to wait until December 9th to witness Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal's hot cowpoking action. [Variety]

With Sean Penn very ably handling the situation in New Orleans, Bruce Willis is freed up to launch his own search...for Italy's greatest beauty!

· Undeterred by the abandonment of two of his partners, Revolution's Joe Roth will take a more "hands-on role" in ensuring that the studio continues to reliably churn out five or six flops a year. [Variety]
· Buoyed by the inexplicable success of Fantastic Four, director Tim Story signs a deal with Fox to develop and direct two pilots. [THR]
· Billy Bob Thornton to star in the comedy Astronaut Farmer, in which an astronaut returns to—wait for it—the family farm, written and directed by the Polish Brothers of quirky Twin Falls Idaho fame. [Variety]
· The MPAA rules that Saw 2's severed-finger marketing campaign is "unacceptable," helpfully giving the movie more attention than the ads themselves would have attracted on their own. [THR]
· Bruce Willis will co-star with Halle Berry in Revolution's psychological thriller Perfect Stranger, which is "set in the world of the internet," hopefully proving once again that there is nothing quite as cinematic as a fevered exchange over IM. [Variety]
· ABC and Touchstone are sued by a local writer who claims Lost was stolen from his plane-crash-survivors-on-a-creepy-island idea from 1977, also called Lost. ABC immediately dispatched a jungle-loving polar bear, an invisible monster, and three inscrutable plot twists to deal with the aggrieved scribe. [THR]

It looks like Bruce Willis made the "great and interesting" cut at the Tropicana bar at the Roosevelt, which might currently hold the title of "most celeb-infested liquor hole in all of Hollywood." From Page Six:

Earlier today, France continued its proud tradition of celebrating some of American cinema's most underappreciated icons by making Bruce Willis an officer in the Order of Arts and Letters, one of its highest honors in cultural achievement:

Yesterday's report about the alleged "mixed-age grope" between Lindsay Lohan and fading action star/father stand-in Bruce Willis was a lock for a swift publicist denial. From Page Six:

Bruce Willis is suing schlockhouse extraordinaire Revolution Studios over an injury he suffered on the set of Tears of the Sun. Willis was hit in the forehead by a "projectile" that struck him while some special effects "squibs" were detonated around him to simulate gunfire. If we hadn't written about him moments ago, we'd suggest that it's hilarious to re-read the complaint and substitute "injured by the projectile" with "injured by images of Ashton Kutcher having sex with the mother of his children in a variety of acrobatic positions." (We'd like to sue for that one as well.) Instead, we'll speculate that maybe Willis' injury is to blame for his extremely loud, public cellphone conversations.

· Details' list of "well-endowed men" includes Liam Neeson, Matt Dillon, Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis, Jason Priestley and Sean Penn. "One celebrity stylist claims to have heard (from gossipy ex-girlfriends he's worked with)" that Tobey Maguire, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell are also eligible for the list. [Page Six]
· Mayor Bloomberg, Heidi Klum and Kyle MacLachlan were spotted getting a sneak peak at John McDonald and Steve Hanson's new Dos Caminos Soho on West Broadway. (Oddly we were there as well, but at least one of us was paying too much attention to the margaritas to notice the mayor or Heidi Klum.) [Page Six]
· Actor Nathan Lane, responding to producer Cy Feuer's attack on the 1992 revival of "Guys and Dolls", saying Faith Prince was "too tough" and Nathan "incapable of playing a Jew" : "Faith won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards and became an overnight star. I was nominated for my first Tony and won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards...and now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for Hebrew School." [Liz Smith]
· What Heidi Klum looks for in a man: "Good body odor. When they get really musky, it can be real good." [Liz Smith]
· John Kozero, a spokesman for Fireman's Fund (an insurance company that underwrites a number of reality shows) on the proliferation of reality-show lawsuits by participants claiming to be hurt or humiliated: "This is a litigious society, and there are a lot of underemployed attorneys out there who need to make money, [But] it's clear that producers seem desperate to top one another in terms of stunts and effects." [NY Daily News]

· Saddam Hussein owns a $90 million stake in Hachette Filipacchi. [Page Six]
· Judith Regan was nearly struck by lightening. Literally. [Page Six]
· "Queer as Folk" star Gale Harold on the show's straight female following: "Why is that a surprise? A big thing with heterosexual men is watching women together. So maybe our show has discovered some new aspect to female sexuality. Can that be bad?" [Liz Smith]
· Bruce Willis says recent events made him want to join the military, but friends told him he was too old. Simon and Garfunkel are considering doing a free show in Central Park. [NY Daily News]