Oh, how we love it when web ad-serving software has a sense of humor. (Click through and you can see that all of the "related link" ads are for eating disorders.) One day, the technology will be sophisticated enough to insert something like Google's "Did you mean: narcotic rehabilitation centers?" in those boxes. Of course we'd then be out of a job, but such is the cost of progress.
We're barely aware that the third season of The Apprentice crept onto the schedule, but The Donald's minions will be scouring Burbank on Saturday for Trump termination fodder for the show's fourth installment. We're unsure of the concept for the next season will be ("MBA chicks with dicks" vs "small-business-owning eunuchs" would get us watching), but one thing is certain: The air in the lobby of KNBC 4 will be thick with the stench of cheap suits, faux-leather briefcases, and desperation.
We hope that Paul Giamatti takes some small comfort in knowing that people are writing about how he got the cruel, throbbing shaft from the Academy. We wouldn't want some cater-waiter at the Vanity Fair Oscar party getting beaten to death by thoughtlessly offering the dejected actor a glass of pinot noir.
Join us in a shout-out to this week's sponsors; to gaze upon them is to look into the blinding light of generosity itself. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and make sure that every agent in Hollywood with money burning a hole in the pocket of his Italian suit sees your product or service, visit our ad info page.
Terence Howard, the star of Sundance's $9 million buzz flick Hustle & Flow, gave a whole career's worth of good copy in a NY Times Magazine story back in early 2001. He's so quotable that we're almost willing to forget that since this piece originally ran, he was in Glitter, Angel Eyes, and Biker Boyz.
A funny thing happened while we're away at Sundance...studios continued to release movies and theaters kept showing them. Sort of. We were under the impression the rest of the world stopped while Hollywood freezes its ass off in Park City.
· Take the cannoli, leave the huge bag of cash: HBO will probably announce today whether TNT or A&E paid through the nose for reruns of The Sopranos. The offer they couldn't refuse (groan) is expected to be at least $2.1 million per episode. That's-a spicy meatball. (Kill us now.) [Variety]
· Angelina Jolie signs up to star with Matt Damon in the Robert DeNiro-directed The Good Shepherd. Let the sweaty trailer sex and destruction of longterm relationships begin! [Variety]
· Now we feel a little better about not sticking around Sundance long enough to catch the Strangers With Candy movie, as Warner Independent snaps it up for a fall release. [THR]
· The SAG/AFTRA establishment will allow opponents of their recently negotiated labor contract (heretofore referred to in the legal paperwork as "The Ass-Blasting") with the studios to complain about the soreness of their hindquarters in a public referendum. [THR]
· Spider-Man 2 and the Seinfeld DVDs bury Sony Pictures under an avalanche of cash. [Variety]
Agents and free festival booze are a recipe for certain disaster. Enjoy this breakdown of their drunken antics at Sundance, courtesy of Page Six:
The Olsen Twins are splitting with their longtime business partner, Robert Thorne, who helped them build the empire that has permanently melted the prefrontal lobes of a generation of 'tweens:
We saw this on the front page of the Courthouse News Service website last night, but it's off the front page. Luckily, we took a screen grab before it disappeared. Is Connolly scamming his agents? You get one role as the only non-retarded toady on Entourage, start dating Nicky Hilton, and all of the sudden you're hiding your agent's cut in a hollowed-out head of lettuce in the fridge? Fame is funny that way. There's only one solution for the actor and his aggrieved representation: Hug it out, bitches.
· Entourage shuts down Main Street in Park City. Looks like there will be a Sundance plot in the second season.
· Breaking news! Paris Hilton buys a bigger dog! Next week, People will cover the first time it takes a dump in Fred Segal. [second item]
· Blogger Matthew Tobey compiles a list of the 500 Best Songs Ever, Sort Of. For some reason, he thought we know something about music and asked us to contribute. We have to admit, we went a little heavy on the DeBarge.
· Chris Rock already has the press eating out of his hand as he prepares for Oscar night. On not being in the Academy: "If you're darker than a paper bag, you can't get in." Also, he dropped only one F-bomb during the press conference. He's ready.
· Poet Dorothy Bridges, wife of the late Lloyd and mother of Jeff, Beau and Lucinda, bring the kids along to discuss You Caught Me Kissing: A Love Story, at Barnes & Noble at the Grove. There's no question that they've supplanted the Baldwins as Hollywood's premiere literary family.
· Concert Round-Up: Dios Malos and French Kicks are at the Troubadour, The Section Quartet with guest vocalists Sam Phillips, Greg Dulli, and Grant Lee Phillips hit the Echo, and all-star band Camp Freddy (with Dave Navarro, et al) play a tsunami benefit at the Key Club with some surprise guests. There's no excuse not to get rocked in some way, shape, or form tonight.
· The Bush Twins Party Hour at the Next Stage in Hollywood features a very special guest...think inarticulate, recently re-elected, and a former cokehead.
Before moving on to your guesses, do some last minute cramming with One Rock Hudson Blind Vice:
Johnny Depp is completely over the whole awards thing. To listen to Depp tell it, last year's ceremony was a personal Gethsemane where he begged his Father to let the Oscar cup pass him by:
The LAW's James Verini gets to the bottom of the now-notorious e-mail (which you can read after the jump) that circulated a couple of weeks ago about a birthday party at Cynthia's on Third St. which was marred by the eponymous proprietor's expletive-filled response to a request for a new lamb dish. (The phrases "asshole," "fucking cow" and "tyrannical cunt" figured prominently.) And what's the lesson we can all take from this incident? Treating your customers like shit (you know, allegedly) is good for business:
We finally got a chance to upload some of the cameraphone pics we snapped while walking around and looking for trouble at Sundance. Enjoy this belated photo essay.
While we were riding the shuttle bus to a screening at Sundance, we fell into conversation with comedian Taylor Negron, whom you undoubtedly remember from his iconic roles as the mailman in Better Off Dead and the pizza delivery guy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Negron was at the festival for the documentary The Aristocrats (one of the hottest tickets of the week, btw), which features comedians telling their renditions of the dirtiest joke in the world, and claimed that his was the filthiest version in the movie. We prodded him to tell it, but he demurred, claiming that the other people on the bus didn't want to hear about "fucking your sister in the ass and fisting dead babies." Despite our assertion that it would depend on the size of the fist, he wouldn't budge, and our stop arrived before we could browbeat him into letting loose.
· Execs try to put together last-minute deals as Sundance draws to a close. The best news: several buyers are eyeballing the Strangers with Candy movie. [Variety]
· Cross your fingers that this will finally cool the heat on poker projects: Drew Barrymore will play Eric Bana's love interest in the high-stakes poker dramedy Lucky You. Get it? Luck and poker? [THR]
· Jennifer Lopez returns from wandering in the agency desert to re-sign with ICM. They're now charged with the task of figuring out a way to increase her overexposure by at least 50 percent. [Variety]
· A Wahlberg is in talks to star in a 70s cop drama for NBC. But don't get too excited, it's just the one from NKOTB. Donnie, we think. [THR]
· Actors come out in support of casting directors' attempts to unionize, trying to ensure that their valuable casting-related sexual favors don't shift any further toward the studios. [Variety]
· Big-time publicist Bumble Ward suffers a mid-life crisis, abandoning the flacking game to write novels. She's generously agreed to help the clients she will one day thinly veil in her fiction find new representation. [Variety]
Wherein we invite our readers to throw away everything they've ever known about the English language and be reborn into the grammar-free linguistic paradise offered by humpy E! gossipist Ted Casablanca, then take a stab at his weekly blind item. This week, we think Ted's talking closeted lesbians. Traipse through the poppy fields of One Rock Hudson Blind Vice:
