Yesterday, some scrappy filmmakers blew up this enormous penis outside of the Sundance Film Festival's offices in Beverly Hills to promote their porn-industry documentary Missionary Positions. Unfortunately, we hear that the pneumatic dong only reached fully-engorged majesty for a couple of minutes before villagers arrived with pitchforks and demanded its immediate softening. Prudes! (Click the picture to see a larger version.)
The NY Post wonders if some of the shine on Lilliputian NBC head Jeff Zucker (pictured at left, standing on Matt LeBlanc's shoulder) golden-boy status might be tarnishing. ABC's been resurrected by Desperate Housewives and Lost, while Zucker's network is committing the cardinal sin of ratings, hemorrhaging viewers in the key 18-49 demographic. Right about now he's got to be feeling the heat; he's probably holed up in his office, desperately trying to sell his lieutenants on a very special episode of Father of the Pride where the regular CGI antics are intercut with actual footage of Roy Horn's tiger-mauling. If CBS mastermind Les Moonves had the flopping Pride, he'd personally show up at Siegfried and Roy's mansion with a camcorder and a truck full of tigers that hadn't eaten in a week.
The tabloids are abuzz with fresh Paris Hilton nonsense, as oil bonus baby/Mischa Barton chauffeur Brandon Davis vents to the National Enquirer about Hilton's N-bomb dropping proclivities. Says Davis: "She uses the word all the time, and I've known her all of her life. It's 'n- - - - - this' and 'n- - - - - that.' She's a disgrace. She is a racist! She puts down Jews and other minorities, too. And I'm Jewish. I found it depressing." As if these accusations weren't lacerating enough, Davis further bleeds Hilton with the ultimate rich guy's insult. "Her value as a commodity is severely damaged." No. You. Didn't.
—Oliver Stone defends the hot, guy-on-eunuch action in Alexander, calling it a "more honest time" with "Pre-Christian morality." Whatever turns you on, Oliver. We're not going to judge.
—Amazing as this sounds, there are still no bids on a gas can signed by Jessica Simpson. She's officially over.
—Tale of the tattoo: Britney gets inked, then stiffs the artist on the tip. Also, she tells the Germans she wants to be "Britney Federline." Read at your own peril.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger tells the Hollywood Foreign Press that he's "learned [his] lesson" about groping women—you know, after the tenth or so time he cut himself on Maria Shriver's razor-sharp bones. [seventh item]
—Towleroad takes a very close look at Manhunt, and Nair is involved.
1. In what is sure to be the only televised event capable of dethroning ratings juggernaut Desperate Housewives from the Nielsen throne, the third and final presidential debate airs at 6 p.m. PST. We're confident that this time both candidates will be thoroughly frisked for radio transmitters that might assist their performance. But we suppose we'll never know if the technology manages to game the inspections.
2. The 5-day visual-arts/filmmaking party/throwdown that is ResFest LA begins tonight at the Egyptian.
3. Ageless wonders REM take the stage at the Greek Theater. Well, if you consider skinny, sallow rock stars to be "ageless," Michael Stipe certainly won't disappoint.
Please forgive us if we're giving the news of Nicky Hilton's rumored annulment from rent-a-husband Todd Meister short shrift, but lately we find it hard to get excited about Hilton news that makes a mockery of the institution of marriage without creatively involving a wedding cake in some on-camera sodomy. Call us jaded. We're sure the Pope is on his way to Los Angeles to spin the couple counterclockwise and declare that the marriage was all a bad dream, without so much as pausing to determine if they're Catholic. We wish those crazy, publicity-loving kids all the best in their newly-single lives.
A Defamer operative forwards this choice quote from former MPAA head Jack Valenti's speech last night at the Museum of Television and Radio, where he discussed his career in politics before becoming the movie industry's 400-lb lobbying, pirate-hunting gorilla.
A reader, befuddled by a news crawl running underneath Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, writes in to describe what may or may not have been an attempt at comedy:
The Writers Guild has just issued a press release announcing that they've finally reached an agreement for a new, three-year, $58 million contract with the networks and studios. (By contrast, Kobe Bryant got seven years and a reported $136 million to stay with the Lakers. Sure, it's comparing apples and oranges, but WGA West president Dan Petrie Jr. might have squeezed out extra cash if he made it clear in negotiations that he's not staring embarrassing jail time in the face.)
If you asked us which celebrity we most fervently wish kept an online diary, we would quickly reply, "Melanie Griffith." Oh, wait a minute. We're changing our answer! We are proud to (belatedly, we know) present the free-associational prose stylings of Oscar-nominated legend Nick Nolte. Here, Nolte recounts the type of madcap "only in Hollywood incident" that happens to us at least three times a week:
· The FCC wants to fine Fox $1.2 million for their reality show Married by America, which featured "strippers and partyers in sexual situations, including scenes where a pair of strippers 'playfully spank' a man in his underwear and partygoers lick whipped cream off the strippers' bodies." Maybe if Fox head Gail Berman sends a case of Redi-Whip and a couple of escorts over to Michael Powell at the FCC, this might all blow over. And they might get another show out of it, to boot. [THR]
· Danny DeVito and Kathy Bates sign on to star as Ron Livingston's DNA donors in the uptight-guy-hunts-for-wacky-biological-parents comedy Relative Strangers. Yup, still sounds like Flirting With Disaster. [THR]
· The Disney and Miramax divorce now seems all but official. Disney's supposedly sent Harvey and Bob Weinstein a Dear John letter, but the brothers are still pretending that they never got it. Watch for Harvey to downsize the mailroom in retaliation. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Disney acquires Stick It, a comedy about a rebel in the uptight world of gymnastics. We can't wait for the scene where the plucky little gymnast demands the right to menstruate like other girls. [THR]
· John Singleton will direct the revenge drama Four Brothers, in which, um, four brothers dramatically try to get revenge for their mother's death. Mark Wahlberg is in talks to star. Let's hope Paramount goes all the way and signs up Donnie and the rest of the clan for the added verisimilitude that only stunt-casting can afford. [THR]
The L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke, who broke the news of Christopher Reeve's death on Sunday, has more Reeve-related news in her column this week. Finke reports that at least one Republican senator has put a hold on the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act after it had sailed through the House, presumably because the wheelchair-bound actor was too mouthy in his unsurprising support for stem-cell research.
Since this morning's news is already feeling a little cult-y, we offer up this reader-submitted photo of the long-awaited Kabbalah Centre "Red String" billboard. We're more than a bit disappointed in its reality. It looks like it was merely propped up in an empty parking lot! Faux-religion has never seemed seemed more earthbound. Where are the cherubim lofting the Centre's message of bookselling hope 50 feet above the boulevard? And where is Madonna, atop her velvet-upholstered throne, tossing red string bracelets and half-off coupons for Kabbalah water to a hungry throng of spiritual seekers? It's our own fault for building it up to be so much grander in our imagination.
Today's Page Six speculates that Tom Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner are splitting up Cruise/Wagner Productions. Naturally, the rumor was met with the obligatory, reflexive denial by Cruise's publicist/sister/fellow Scientologist, LeAnn Devett: "Now why would they [split] when they are producing War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible 3 together? Everything is fine." Of course it is! The Celebrity Centre must have instituted a new public relations curriculum, because her denial has sent us spinning into a series of self-doubting questions. If Cruise's own sister says that everything is hunky-dory in Tomtown, then how could it not be? How could they possibly part ways with two blockbusters still waiting to be shot? Do we think that when Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorced, they sold the kids to an organ farm in the Sudan? Isn't it obvious that Tom and Paula will be together forever, without even the limits of mortality dissolving their partnership, and there will never be room for another woman in his life?
1. Legendary Bingo at Brasserie les Voyous is a charity bingo night that includes such, ahem, legends as French Stewart, Taylor Dayne, and Ann Magnuson. Hey, it's for charity—they might as well call them "well-hung Oscar winning demigods" if it helps put fannies behind the bingo cards. Well, the ladies might not appreciate that, but you get the idea.
2. Tonight at the Museum of Television and Radio, longtime Defamer nemesis/crazed, chief MPAA pirate hunter Jack Valenti will take a stroll through memory lane and his life in politics with always-entertaining moderator James Woods. Tomorrow, we expect reports on Valenti's digressions into the time he shook a 15-year-old who illegally downloaded American Wedding so hard that Valenti had to have hip replacement surgery.
3. For you concert-attending pleasure: Wait for one of Badly Drawn Boy's signature on-stage meltdowns at Avalon; Space rockers Cave In play the Troubadour; G. Love and Special Sauce serenade sorority girls and the frat boys trying to get in their Abercrombie minis at the Ford Amphitheatre.
Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our eagle-eyed, actor-stalking readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let Harry Hamlin know you think he's extremely unsettling to look at from distances of less than thirty feet.
Thanks for bearing with us during the painstaking process of flaying the skin off the people responsible for our hosting woes, parading it around Los Angeles like an Ugg poncho, and then finally returning to work. As far as we know, Michael Eisner did not send a team of Disney castmembers to brutalize our servers like a kid that wants one too many Polaroids sitting in Mickey's lap.
In the new Playboy, director/tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone reveals the screamingly Freudian drama of losing his virginity, as Daddy Stone generously took him to a hooker:
· DreamWorks Animation's IPO could raise as much as $725 million, assuring that Jeffery Katzenberg can finally realize his lifelong dream of building a mansion made entirely of diamonds. On Jupiter. But at least we'll have Shrek sequels well into the next millennium! [THR]
· Aaron Kaplan, co-head of William Morris' TV "lit" department, "steps down." (Ironic punctuation ours.) Don't worry, an agent gets the whole unemployment check, not just ten percent. [THR]
· Nicole Kidman is in talks to join Russell Crowe in Hollywood-Aussie vanity project Eucalyptus. If Kidman's schedule can't fit in the project, maybe they can go a different direction and get Eric Bana. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC is set to make a sequel to last season's quake-porn extravaganza10.5. The new mini-series' money shot: It picks up with California drifting out to sea, with aftershocks knocking down every American landmark CGI artists can draw. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· John Ashcroft is getting the Justice Dept. involved in criminal piracy and is "taking several pages from the country's wars on drugs and terrorism" for the fight. Great! We can't wait until they release Manuel Noriega, deport him to Iraq, and use it as an excuse to reinvade. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
