Just two days away from officially stepping down as CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner is seeking a new, reduced role within the company, and, more importantly, an office in which to spend time wistfully staring out the window while listening to the hypnotic clack-clack of his favorite desk toy, remembering the good old days. From the LAT:
· David Geffen called off talks for NBC Universal to buy DreamWorks, stepping away from the table when NBC Uni reduced their offer "on the 1-yard line," noting partner Steven Spielberg's supposedly "ambivalent" attitude about the deal. Who will buy the Geffen-Spielberg lovechild? [dramatic organ music] Will Geffen's ploy to negotiate in the trades pay off? [somewhat louder, dramatic organic music] Stay tuned! [Variety]
· Why We Love Hollywood, Part Thirty-Five: Benderspink and New Line come up with the idea for the comedy Boob Job during a company lunch, when a NL exec "told a really funny story about a guy whose wife had gotten implants and it ruined the guy's life," With that kind of thoughtful storycraft, there is no way this movie can possibly fail. [THR]
· Giddy from signing Family Guy showrunner David Goodman to a two-year development deal, 20th Century Fox TV president Gary Newman lets down his guard and describes Goodman as "a fantastic piece of manpower." Wow. That must've been some hot, closed-door negotiation. [Variety]
· Judging from her premiere Nielsens, fictional Commander in Chief president Geena Davis is easily more popular than George W. [THR]
· Says Var about Michael Eisner's final public address as head of Disney: "Call Michael Eisner the anti-Cher: While most aging icons' farewell tours are loud, frenzied and never-ending, the Walt Disney CEO seems determined to go out like a lamb." The anti-Cher? This pretty much kills Eisner's post-Disney plan to make a living doing campy cameos on Will & Grace. [Variety]
On Monday, we passed along a reader report about a fender-bender in Hollywood supposedly involving Diana Ross and an unfortunate Mustang. Some readers have written in to clarify that it was Ross's son (Evan, we're told) involved in the crack-up, not Ross herself. Here's one of the e-mails, from someone claiming to be at the scene of the accident:
Even if Garner wasn't acting when she let it slip on national television that she's having a girl, this wasn't nearly as big an oopsie as getting "inadvertently" knocked up by Ben Affleck. Sometime during the fourth hour of labor, the actress will "accidentally" punch her husband in the genitals for convincing her that the pull-out method is an effective form of birth control.
Flight attendants have their adorable little aprons in a bunch over the Jodie Foster how-did-I-lose-my-possibly-imaginary-daughter- in-such-a-confined-space movie Flightplan because (HERE COMES A SPOILER, TURN AWAY IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH) one of the fictional attendants turns out to be a bad guy. Unacceptable in these times of tense air travel!, say the aggrieved retrievers of thin blankets and tiny pillows, and boycotts ensue:
· Tom Cruise will be giving a series of free lectures on "The Modern Science of Mental Health" at the Celebrity Centre, which is a little like Nicole Richie speaking at a pro-ana meeting about healthy weight-loss strategies. In case you're wondering about how well-balanced an examination of the issues at hand will be offered, the first lecture is called "How Psychiatry Invented Schizophrenia, and What Scientologists Can Do About It." In the third seminar, Cruise will personally—personally!—burn a psychiatrist at the stake.UPDATE: A reader who called the Centre tells us that the lecture series is a fake. A "complete fabrication," actually. Our bullshit detectors were at half-power by the end of the day. Sorry! Pretty good parody, though.
· "No, Viggo, no! You're doing it all wrong! Now please stand aside as I fuck my wife and show you what I'm looking for."
· If Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher did actually get married last weekend, how long will it last? Oddjack breaks down the betting line.
· Anna Nicole Smith is dragging her dead husband's $474 million bones all the way to the Supreme Court, where a suspiciously sympathetic Clarence Thomas awaits, booby-trapped Coke can in hand.
· Flavorpill says that the documentary Nobodys "offers the ultimate in edgy, art-infused independent film, giving inquiring minds a behind-the-scenes look at graffiti, everyone's favorite illegal act." Well, we suppose "favorite illegal act" probably depends on the archaic laws of your municipality, but it still sounds like a pretty interesting time.
· Gain hours of "Who's on First?" style fun as you tell your friends that you're going to see "the guy from The Band": Robbie Robertson signs copies and discusses the new CD and DVD box set, The Band: A Musical History, at Borders in Westwood.
· Comedy Death Ray presents an evening of potential mayhem at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater by mixing stand-up comedy with sketch comedy. Go and see if the the explosive results have Zack Galifianakis picking pieces of Dana Gould and Winchester Preparatory Sketch Academy out of his beard.
With its high density of seemingly sexually available actresses, the sleepy upscale beach town of Malibu has lately become a hotbed for stalkers. Recently, Jennifer Aniston obtained a restraining order for an unwanted love interest with bad timing, and now The Smoking Gun has Pamela Anderson's filing to prevent a British homeless man's future offers for creative collaboration:
Earlier today, a reader forwarded us a link to this picture (link not safe for work) of Kevin Costner's "bulge," and maybe we're a little unpracticed in the art of schlong-spotting (though we can spot a nipple through two inches of opaque cocktail dress at a range of thirty feet, look how hetero we are, etc etc), but we're totally at a loss for what we're supposed to be looking for here. If anything, we think we left off a couple of arrows.
40 Year-Old Virgin director Judd Apatow is keeping a diary on Slate this week, where he's been killing some downtime while producing the upcoming Will Ferrell NASCAR comedy in North Carolina by holding forth on such varied topics as the usefulness of Barney in the rearing of young children, Being Bobby Brown, and today, The Aging Comedy Writer Workout:
Either the local coke trade has become so competitive that dealers need to turn to direct mail to increase their client base, or the Underhyped blog has crossed paths with the world's most inept narc. The note's a little hard to read, but Underhyped transcribes: "Hi. My name is Ron XXXXXXX. I sell co-caine on Wilcox. If you would like to buy some for your showbusiness friends call me. Thx Ron." It's reassuring to know that the Disneyfication of the Hollywood area hasn't killed the entrepreneurial spirit. Look for the forward-thinking Ron to soon expand his operation to the neighborhood's exploding club scene, where he'll slip notes reading "Do you need some co-ke? Check a box [ ] Yes [ ] No" under occupied bathroom stalls and set new standards for drug-dealing convenience.
Finally, the fuzzy, inconclusive paparazzi money-shots we've all been waiting for! At left, Britney Spears and mother Lynne lovingly take two piles of dirty laundry out for a stroll by the pool; at right, grandma gives the world its first-ever sneak peak at a partially shaved coconut in a blanket. While the Spears ladies taunted helicopter-borne photographers outside, proud daddy Kevin Federline stayed inside and treated young Preston Michael to his first lesson on how to repair a cranky toaster with a single, wet salad fork.
· More WGA inside baseball: Both Var and THR report that the new-look Writers Guild has canned executive director John McLean and replaced him on an interim basis with David Young. Defamer is a non-Guild sweatshop, so we can't be bothered to make any sense of this move. [Variety, THR]
· The Wall Street Journal reports that DreamWorks and NBC Universal are calling off their acquisition talks for now, freeing up Steve Spielberg's studio to continue to hemorrhage money without the interference of a corporate parent. [THR]
· Infinity Broadcasting will replace the satellite-bound Howard Stern with multiple hosts across different markets (looks like we're getting Adam Carolla in LA), eventually getting down to one after they've all had a chance to prove how adept they are at striking a stripper's ass with a piece of bologna at ten paces. We know we keep going back to that stripper-ass-and-cold-cuts thing, but that's a part of the job possibly more crucial than the singing of "The Beetlejuice Song." [Variety]
· David Caruso's last-second field goal gives CSI: Miami (and CBS) a win over Monday Night Football in last night's ratings game. After the game, Caruso humbly thanked Les Moonves, from whom all blessings flow, for giving him the strength to perform under pressure. [THR]
· NBC is developing a legal drama, Class Action, with activist/Julia Roberts Oscar-enabler Erin Brockovich, who will executive produce and "lend authenticity" (read: receive a token script in the mail once a week) to the project. [Variety]
We've been away for a couple of days, blissfully unaware of the recent celebrity decouplings, but bear with us as we take a quick inventory: Kenny "'Fraud' Means Exactly What You Think It Means" Chesney and Renee Zellweger, annulling. Tori Spelling and that guy, divorcing. Two very pretty people from a WB show we've never seen, but whom were married for about ten minutes, separating. And in what we're sure will make for a terribly poignant thirty second segment on E!'s 50 Least Consequential Semi-Celebrity Divorce Filings, Kathy Griffin and her much-suffering husband are calling it quits. Are we caught up yet? Clearly, God is punishing us for taking time off (we're having flashbacks of the time we took a shower and missed the announcement about the Brad and Jen split); we expect that if we take a lunch hour today, He will test us by sending down a frog-storm of news of life-changing importance, perhaps about how Donald Trump's sperm is still motile. What? Oh, shit.
Until cultural anthropologists discover the hidden bomb shelter on whose walls Courtney Love has been secretly scrawling a diary in her own blood for the past twenty years, our best shot at truly understanding the troubled rock star's inimitable brand of crazy might be her mother's upcoming memoir. It seems that Love had a pretty typical childhood, if one's idea of "typical" is playing a game of "Let's Feed the Baby Some Acid and Make Her Look Like the Blacklight Poster." From Page Six:
Perhaps proving once and for all that the Democratic party is secretly controlled by a cadre of giggling Republican Congressional interns, the Washington Post's Reliable Source column reports that Virginia Dems might want to recruit high-profile John Kerry baby-eater Ben Affleck (who's apparently looking for a place to live in the Charlottesville area) for a Senate run:
Hi, everybody, Mark Lisanti here. I know that some of you were a little shaken up (read: delighted) by my sudden and unexplained absence, but unlike the father that refused to pretend that he was just "going out for cigarettes" and plainly told a five-year-old Defamer "I never much liked you, kid, and I'm leaving forever because of you—do you hear me?—it's your fault, you little bedwetter," I have returned. I will immediately resume disappointing you in the manner to which you've become accustomed.
· One Tree Hill co-stars Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray have separated after five months of marriage. I was going to say something witty and bitchy about it, but you know what? I'm sorry things didn't work out. What?! I'm outta here soon and I'm feeling shmaltzy.
· Never underestimate what can come out of a bored queen with too much time and a pile of crystal-meth on his hands: He-Man and friends do 4 Non Blondes. Sound definitely required, and make sure to watch through to the very end.
· While you're at it, keep your sound on for www.iiiiiiii.com.
