"With more than 100 celebrity guests attending ABC's party at the Beverly Hilton, the hotel's security detail was given strict orders not to let anybody into the ballroom without an identification badge. So when a blond man in a burgundy polo shirt and slacks tried to enter the event unescorted, guards were quick to block him. 'Sorry sir, but I can't let you in without a badge,' the guard says.
As Isaiah Washington continues to unleash a tsunami of silence-breakings upon a public that has long since ceased to care about the vast, gay-winged conspiracy responsible for his dismissal from Grey's Anatomy, one key player who has succeeded in not speaking about the controversy was series creator Shonda Rhimes—that is, until yesterday's press-tour panel for Grey's spinoff Private Practice, when the EP was cornered by a pack of quote-hungry reporters who wouldn't take "no comment" for an answer. According to an interview with TVGuide.com, the weary showrunner was on the same page as her ABC overlords when she made the fatal call:
After all the heartache we've already suffered this summer from our vicarious incarceration with Paris Hilton, where our souls died a death from a thousand undignified paper cuts delivered over those draining 23 days, there's nothing left for Nicole Richie, who was just sentenced in connection with her Vicodin-fueled, wrong-way joyride on the 134.
Before you make the assumption that Baldwin's Iraq solution involves driving a van through the streets of Baghdad and using a megaphone to berate any cowering insurgents for being "rude, thoughtless little pigs" who refuse to return America's calls in a timely fashion, realize that this is not just another Hollywood dilettante popping off about the war: this man has a unique perspective on bloody conflicts that drag on for years, and when he discusses how to fight back against enemies that are "bold, vicious and unflagging in numbers" and who want to put "their boot heel into our neck," he speaks from a place of weary experience.
Early yesterday, we discussed how fearless celebrity newsmagazine Entertainment Tonight challenged us all to question the Santa Monica Police Department-sanctioned version of events we'd been spoon-fed since Tuesday morning, daring us to plumb the dark places in our souls that seduced us into assuming that Lindsay Lohan was the driver of the assistant-pursuing Denali and the owner of the cocaine-laden pants that were the actress's undoing. This morning, however, TMZ has interviewed three men who were along for the ride—both literally and figuratively—during Lohan's DUI meltdown, who share the story of their harrowing experience as hostages of the road-raging starlet. The Today Show has condensed much of the story into an easily digestible video package (see the clip above), but you'll want to read TMZ's four-part epic, dramatic scenes from which are excerpted here:
· A special thanks to the Official Star Wars Blog for saving us the trip to Comic-Con to learn that Karen Allen is returning for Indy 4. Still no word on when they're going to announce Short Round's surprise involvement.
· The Lohan-Vac: for all your handheld, coke-hoovering needs.
· Al Jean picks out his favorite Simpsons guest stars of all time.
· Celebrity couples reproduce, just like Us!
· Rock of Love fans wanting to know more about the contestants' fine work in the adult film field might want to read this. [NSFW, at all. You've been warned.]
As we all undoubtedly realize, the tragic, coke-in-someone-else's-pants-related events of early Tuesday morning created certain challenges for the people behind I Know Who Killed Me, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle opening tomorrow that will henceforth be associated with her most spectacular meltdown to date. Still, the cast and crew soldiered on last night at a private premiere screening, refusing to be defeated by circumstances outside of their control. The Defamer Special Correspondent On Well, It's Not Like We Can Just Burn All the Film and Pretend This Never Happened filed this report on the event: [warning: some spoilers ahead]
We're not entirely sure what to make of this Pringles-can-eye-view of Rosie O'Donnell recently uploaded to her Flickr stream. Perhaps the digitally altered portrait is message-art, there to remind Drew Carey—recently chosen over her to host The Price is Right—that despite his recent casting coup, the planet still very much revolves around O'Donnell's blinding star, and that he should remain grateful that she doesn't choose to dispense of the bespectacled comedian by incinerating him with her sapphic UV rays or one blow of her hurricane-powered super-breath.
· Music round-up: Sea Wolf and Midnight Movies at the Hammer; Chromeo at Echoplex; The Bangles at House of Blues; Say Hi To Your Mom at the Knitting Factory.
· The Aero hosts a special 25th anniversary screening of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the movie that taught millions of teenage boys that it was OK to masturbate to their Phoebe Cates fantasies. Special guests to be announced.
· Poet Douglas Kearney reads from his new poetry collection, Fear, Some, at SkyLight Books.
Not since the advent of local news station KABC7's patented RichieTracker7000™ have reality-simulating tools available on the internet enabled us to immerse ourselves in a virtual world in which we can experience the defining moment of a troubled starlet's life, but this afternoon, the combination of AccessHollywood.com's Lindsay Lohan timeline map and TMZ's streaming audio feed of the 911 call that led to Lohan's DUI arrest allows us to once again disappear into the Celebutard Matrix. We recommend that the weak of constitution not attempt to follow the map and listen to the audio at the same time, as the psychological overload of becoming unstuck in time along the Lohan Self-Destruction Continuum while being anchored to the present by the anguished voice in the 911 call could result in a fatal aneurysm.
Without question, Mia Farrow's Wall Street Journal op-ed warning 2008 Olympic adviser Steven Spielberg that his failure to pressure the Chinese government about its funding of the Darfur genocide risked establishing him as the "Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games" was a stirring speaking-truth-to-Hollywood-power moment, and one that proved far more effective in getting the director's attention than Brad Pitt's pulling aside Spielberg at the after-party for the A Mighty Heart premiere to tell the legend, "Um, Steven, I think Angie has something she'd like to tell you about The Sudan." But what drove Farrow to risk a DreamWorks disappearing by so publicly criticizing the beloved icon? Slate's Kim Masters reports that after a pair of personal pleas went unanswered, she felt she had no other recourse:
Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, best known as a dark horse in the Anna Nicole Smith paternity sweepstakes and the only man who can please a still-insatiable Zsa Zsa Gabor, has found himself the victim of a random act of violence perpetrated by a trio of armed women (or so the notorious publicity-whoring faux-royal says). ETOnline.com has the details:
Crain's fills us in on the background of viral video's newest breakout star, Merry Miller, the NBC News ABC News personality whose appealingly botched interview of Holly Hunter will probably live on in the YouTubes long after we're all dead: "The same gumption that got Merry Miller a gig playing harp in a Dallas club when she was only 14 allows her to talk celebrities like Harrison Ford, P. Diddy and Joe Torre into teaching courses at The Learning Annex. The former Miss Dallas, who grew up in tiny Mesquite, Texas, has a list of contacts that's the envy of networking professionals all over town." [Crain's]
David Hans Schmidt, aka the Sultan of Sleaze, has made a career out of brokering celebrity smut to the highest bidder. Without him, that storage locker of Paris Hilton's repossessed personal effects would never have found its way online, thereby forever denying the world her racist renditions of popular disco songs and pictures of Cisco Adler's improbably oversized testicles. But Schmidt was operating in a different league when he went after Tom Cruise, offering to sell back the happily married actor a stash of stolen wedding photos for $1 million. From The Smoking Gun:
Jobs! They're the only things* standing between you and a humiliating bus ride back to your hometown, where your parents will greet you at the depot, somberly shaking their heads and trying not to tell you they knew moving to Hollywood was a bad idea in the first place. Better hit the Defamer Job Board and find a gig that will delay that Greyhound Ride of Shame indefinitely.
· Just in case you missed yesterday afternoon's reports of the Steve McPherson/Ben Silverman "be a man" feud at the TCAs, here's Var's take on the "clueless or stupid" row. [Variety]
· A planned Heroes video game could hit store shelves by late 2008, satisfying fans' desire to take control of indestructible cheerleaders or strippers who have homicidal reflections. [THR]
· Guy Ritchie, whose film career once seemed entirely swallowed by the demands of being Mr. Madonna (constantly monitoring his wife's eBay orphan auctions is a pretty time-consuming responsibility), signs on to direct an adaptation of his Virgin comic The Gamekeeper for Warner Bros. [Variety]
· Eddie Izzard replaces Jeremy Piven in Weinstein Co. animated movie Igor, though no reason for the switch has been given. But good news: as CAA reps both, the agency will retain its commission. Everyone wins! [THR]
· Iron Man's billionaire industrialist alter-ego will be an Audi enthusiast. Suck it, BMW. And you too, VW.[Variety]
Extra reports they aren't from sometimes slashfic lover Howard K. Stern, but from little Dannielynn herself: "[She's] got six teeth and she uses everyone of them everyday on me. I'm like breakfast, lunch and dinner!" Further pressed to weigh-in on recent starlet troubles, he adds, "I feel sorry for all these girls that they can't learn a lesson from their own mistakes!"
In this celebrity-obsessed time, where even the seemingly most innocent home visit by a UPS delivery-person, handyman, or allegedly discreet escort specializing in pirate-themed bondage can result in a humiliating four-page, cameraphone-photo spread in Life & Style spotlighting the appalling tackiness of an actor's window treatments, an image-conscious famous person's best friend is the nondisclosure agreement, the first legal line of defense against preventable privacy violations. The LAT today risks third degree burns by getting too close to the sizzle of Hollywood's hottest legal document:
