Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in and authored by our eagle-eyed readers; send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line)and let the world know that Fred Savage might not be able to fit his huge cellphone in his pants.
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, All-Worlds Edition: Paramount brings in Steven Spielberg, the world's leading expert on expensive remakes with "Worlds" in the title and movies dealing with deadly threats from outer space, as producer of the re-do of 1951's When Worlds Collide. [Variety]
· The world's leading expert on bad movies involving CGI critters and ancient curses, Stephen "The Mummy" Sommers, steps out of the above-mentioned When Worlds Collide project to take over Fox's Night at the Museum, about "a goodhearted but bumbling security guard at the Museum of Natural History who accidentally trips an ancient curse that causes the animals and insects on display to come to life, wreaking havoc in the area." [THR]
· Scott Rudin, Hollywood's unofficial Friend of Literature, puts up his own money [Ed.note—Gasp!] to acquire the rights to soon-to-be-released Benjamin Kunkel (for blog-lit nerds: he's the N+1 guy, there is hope!) novel Indecision. [Variety]
· HBO orders comedy pilot from Lydia Dean Pilcher, about thirty-something Manhattan women juggling their families and careers, but otherwise bears no resemblance whatsoever to Sex and the City. [THR]
· The Island continues to become somewhat less of a disaster overseas, winning a third straight weekend at the foreign box office and crossing the $100 million mark. [Variety]
You've got to admire MTV's resiliency. It takes guts to shrug off God's warning shots, a life-taking, Biblical hurricane (it seems He's far more angry with the New Hollywood and hates runaway production as much as the Governator) and a bullet to Suge Knight's leg, and defiantly continue the proud traditions of celebrating music videos that no longer play on their channel and giving away scads of free shit to rich people. If only Jessica Simpson's assistant had fallen down and turned an ankle while fumbling with an armload of goodie bags, they might've endured enough hardship to merit a very special movie of the week on VH1. They'll probably just have to settle for a True Hollywood Story.
The Sunday LAT goes long-form with Robert Downey, Jr, who's willing to talk (and talk and talk) about his checkered (read: black tar heroin-abusing) past to promote his nth comeback in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a profile bearing a 70/30 drugs-to-plugs ratio. Given Downey's gift for rambling on in colorful, confessional metaphors about What It's Like to be a recovering addict/movie star, almost the entire article is a potential pullquote, but how could we resist one that starts with a teenage Downey, James Spader, and the Chateau?
Welcome to the final Monday Morning Box Office report of August 2005, which will suffer from 2.5% less effort than the one from the corresponding Monday morning of 2004.
· Musician-related litigation round-up: Axl Rose Sued by Former Bandmates and Eminem Sued Over Tour Bus Accident.
· Was NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove hoodwinked by a tough-talking, ex-con producer? The Reeler is on the case.
· Mike Schramm interviews literary wunderkind Niki Yan, author of the soon-to-be-acclaimed My Love For You, Tom Cruise: A Desperate Chinese Girl’s Confession. Bert Fields to demand immediate clarification re: love for Tom Cruise.
· We have no idea what possessed TVGasm to attend a live Real World event, but their irrational lust for all things reality cannot go unlinked.
· Our pal Claire Zulkey, who once utterly wasted twenty or so questions on us, fails to induce writer AJ Jacobs to badmouth Maddox Jolie.
· Michelle, you know you want this/Back then ho's didn't want me/Now I'm hot ho's all on me
Friday
· Ann E. Wrecksick & the Odyssey of the Bulimic Orphans at the Cavern Club Celebrity Theater is, quite logically, a musical comedy. What's not funny about pukey bastards?
· Because so many of you asked about him yesterday, Chuck Klosterman will also read/sign/plug his novel tonight at Skylight Books. Bret Easton Ellis does a similar read/sign/plug at Vroman's in Pasadena (and again Saturday at...you guessed it, Skylight).
Saturday
· The 25th Annucal Sunset Junction Street Fair is a celebration of a neighborhood, music, and getting blindingly drunk in public at an unreasonable daylight hour.
· Anti-comedian Neil Hamburger hosts a night of Bingo with live music, prizes and more at Artshare. What's a hipster to do with two events like these vying for their attention?
· The David Taylor Catastrophe is a midnight variety show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, with sketches, standup, and at least one guy performing Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love" on the electric autoharp. No shit.
Sunday
· On the second day of Sunset Junction, the music seems a little louder, the beer colder, and the assless chaps on that sausage vendor somewhat shinier.
· Sunday Comedy at Room 5 features Greg "She's Just Not That Into You" Behrendt, Paul "The F is for Fucking Hilarious" F Tompkins, Laura "Much Taller And Perhaps Funnier Than Jack Black" Kightlinger, and some other people we will decline to saddle with stupid nicknames.
Several readers have alerted us to a special event over on E!'s Wilshire Blvd. campus, where the new(ish) executive regime might be trying to make a clean break with the past. That's right—yard sale! They're not only selling off t-shirts of long-canceled shows, they're hawking their former CEO's old furniture:
Defamer's Special Liaison to Tom Cruise, high-powered Hollywood attorney Bert Fields, has once again delivered a nicely scanned missive on legal lettehead to our inbox. Since you already know what one of these looks like, we've simply excerpted the parts relevant to these clarifications desired by Team Cruise regarding the actor's onetime childhood Halloween costume:
We've got a good feeling about this week's projections; total ambivalence usually does wonders for our accuracy.
This nice note, inexplicably sent to our "tips" e-mail but addressed to onetime acting legend Robert De Niro, landed in our inbox early this morning. We felt it would be irresponsible not to pass it on, hoping that someone can help direct it to its intended recipient:
We pause once again, as we are wont to do at about this time on Friday afternoon, to join in a hearty "Huzzah!" in support of this week's sponsors. They're the peachiest bee's knees a girl could ever want to take to the sock hop! If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and tantalize and enthrall the universe's sexiest consumers, see this page
· Steve Carell Is The New Poker, Part 2: Carell's Bruce Almighty character will take the lead in the sequel Evan Almighty, in which he embarks on a (hilarious!) quest to build an ark. Additionally, Carell may earn ten times his $500,000 40 Year-Old Virgin payday, making him the first actor to earn five trillion dollars for a single film. [Variety]
· Fox picks up Ivan Reitman's half hour comedy script That Guy, about a 35 year-old who decides to start living like he's 21 again. Or, in other words, like he's living a completely unremarkable life in Hollywood. [THR]
· Sensing an opportunity to get more than 15 people to take interest in one of their shows, UPN launches the biggest promo campaign in its history to make sure that each and every person in America is aware of Everybody Hates Chris. [Variety]
· Hurricane Katrina proves terribly inconvenient for various pre-VMA bacchanalia. Damn, you, Mother Nature, Carson Daly needs to get his schwerve on! [THR]
· The Weinsteins decide that "The Twins of Tribeca" sounds better than "The Psychos of SoHo," decide to stay put in their old neighborhood. [Variety]
For whatever reason (ambivalence, unpleasant mental images of Vince Vaughn pumping away on top of Jennifer Aniston, etc), we never lent much credence to the tabloid/weekly speculation that The Break-Up's stars were engaging in some hot, off-screen action. It seemed too tidy, too convenient. Today, however, Rush & Molloy's spies claim to have seen Vaughn and Aniston locked in a tonsil-tasting competition at their movie's wrap party:
Let's make sure we have this straight: Natalie Portman will let the V for Vendetta hair department shave her head and glue a strip of carpet down the middle because it makes sense for the role, but won't go topless when playing a stripper? OK, maybe this argument doesn't exactly track. We still have a lot of work to do before we've worked through our complicated feelings about Closer.
Unfortunately, this is just one of those serendipitous computer-generated photo/story mismatches, not a gripping account of how the world's prettiest and least-threatening stalker wandered into Jennifer Aniston's home.
· Matt Damon on being the "poor man's Johnny Depp" (fifth item): "I stared at him harder, and Terry [Gilliam] finally admitted: 'Matt, you're my second choice.''"
· Three months from now, everybody in Echo Park will be fucking on mattresses left on the sidewalk.
· This might look like a mistake, but if you click on the link below Regis Philbin's photo, you can discover the tenuous link between the hyperactive host and dinosaurs.
· We're sorry, Ray, but it seems that someone would like to respectfully disagree with the assertion that you are universally adored.
· Porn, weed and chili music round-up: The New Pornographers do an instore at the Tower Records on Sunset, while Snoop Dogg and the Red Hot Chili Peppers play the Greek.
· Pop culture savant Chuck Klosterman begins his three-night book tour of Los Angeles at the Borders in Westwood for his latest, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story. Go and ask him what it's like to be namechecked on The OC.
· We don't know about you, but we'd feel 10 percent smarter if we could read the titles of the two movies screening at the Egyptian tonight, SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE and SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE TWO AND A HALF, without moving our lips.
