Landlord and handbag designer Sharif El Fouley is suing the New York City Board of Education for nonpayment of rent on a building he owns in Astoria. Despite how dull that is, Fox 5 really wanted to land an interview with El Fouley for a segment on last night's news. Funnily enough, the "investigative" reporter on the segment, Mary Garofalo, mistakenly sent an email meant for El Fouley to someone else. It said: "Hi Sharif- Please feel free to call me after my story tonight. I absolutely love it. Your hand bag company gets a plug too!" Well there's your Murdochian investigative journalism at work.

· Neither a second straight mind-scrambling week of screening its contestants' application films nor a renewed, audience-distracting focus on host Adrianna Costa's cleavage has increased interest in Fox's deeply fucked troubled On the Lot, which drew just 2.9 million viewers and now stands accused of poisoning people against perfectly good House reruns. If things don't turn around quickly (or if the show isn't mercy killed by the end of June), look for EP Steven Spielberg to withdraw the $1 million DreamWorks deal prize, leaving the scrambling network to replace it with a four-week intership as the guy in charge of getting hot extras' phone numbers for Week One judge Brett Ratner. [Variety]
· What's Jennifer Aniston up to these days, besides appearing on the cover of Us Weekly underneath headlines about her ongoing struggle to cope with her 2005 divorce from Brad Pitt? You know, this n' that, a little producing, a little acting. Just stuff! [THR]
· Tapping the same creative mother lode that yielded plans for a Ice Cube-led Welcome Back Kotter remake, Screen Gems is updating The Big Chill with an African-American cast. The full talent roster isn't set, but Terrence Howard is in early negotiations to reprise Kevin Costner's casket-filling role. [Variety]
· William Hurt joins Ed Norton and Tim Roth in Marvel Studios' Hulk project, which continues its curious obsession with collecting talented actors for a comic book movie. [THR]
· Rachel Weisz will star in the Peter Jackson-directed adaptation of The Lovely Bones, a fine choice for a movie we're actually looking forward to. [Variety]

Hoping to capitalize on the media attention being lavished upon the recent meltdowns of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, billionaire reality television personality and premium-meats magnate Donald Trump is developing his next surefire hit for the downmarket Fox network, perhaps worried that The Apprentice partner NBC's oft-invoked obsession with "quality" might hamper the execution of his vision for the just-announced Lady or a Tramp. (Barely rejected original title: Trump Sluts.)

· Director Steve Miner is given the opportunity to exploit Jessica Simpson's prodigious acting talent in Major Movie Star, the story of an amazingly Jessica Simpson-like Hollywood bimbo who joins the Marines to prove that she can play the part of someone in the military. [Variety]
· Yesterday's overall-deal-granting insanity bleeds into today, as even the No.2 guy on Bones is getting seven figures for his writing and development services over the next two years. Gushed 20th Century Fox TV president Dana Walden as she stuffed handfuls of high-denomination currency into burlap bags emblazoned with cartoonish dollar signs, "He can write comedy, drama, character pieces, procedurals ... he can do it all!" [THR]
· Broadway casting shocker! Nathan Lane to star in a musical comedy. [Variety]
· Puzzlingly, the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent is grumbling about not being offered raises for next season. Don't these delusional ingrates know how easily they can be replaced by the cheaper talent that foams Dick Wolf's cappuccinos each morning? [THR]
· Little-publicized ensemble drama Ocean's 13 hopes to prove that labors of love can be profitable at the box office. [Variety]

As this afternoon drags on, we've become increasingly desperate for any material not related to either The House-Arrested Socialite Who Shall Not Be Named, At Least In This Post or the imminent destruction of various entertainment industry outposts along Wilshire Boulevard. But salvation finally arrived in the form of this reader-supplied cameraphone photo of the sky above the Fox lot, illustrating ABC Family's efforts to publicize Kyle XY, a basic cable television show that our research has revealed to be about a teenage boy's struggles to remove a tight-fitting undershirt. Additionally, the bothersome buzzing of skywriting biplanes (really, this stunt never gets old!) prompted some others to document the difficult of properly rendering a airborne promotional message on a windy day:

For those of you who prefer to live in the recent past, peering wistfully over your shoulders at the halcyon days when a neon-bethonged Kazakh reporter delighted audiences with his naïve take on sister-pimping and fist-shaped dildo usage, we bring to you news of yet more Borat-related litigiousness. No, not even the movie's Fleeing, Freaked-Out New York City Guy was able to find the humor in his brief but memorable cameo, as his somewhat late-to-the-party lawsuit outlines. Reports The Smoking Gun:

· Despite Fox's attempts to boost the struggling On the Lot's fortunes by editing the show into a more compact, once-a-week, we-will-give-five-dollars-to-anyone- who-can-explain-what-the-fuck- is-going-on-at-any-given-moment format, the show draws just 3.1 million viewers in what we assume will be one of its last airings. We did, however, enjoy Michael Bay's guest judge appearance, during which he repeatedly shared his moviemaking philosophy of "get a good editor and cinematographer and they'll cover for your lack of talent," then seemed barely able to restrain himself from hitting on the director of his favorite film. [THR]
· Shadowy Hollywood Foreign Press puppetmaster Phillip Berk is replaced by five-time president Jorge Camara, who assumes the important tasks of coordinating his organization's locust-like decimation of the industry's free buffets and the handing out of meaningless awards to shitfaced actors. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance Mini Edition: UTA poaches agent Sarah Clossey from Paradigm, potentially absorbing a middling client list that includes Amanda Peet's Shouty NBS Boss and The One Jim Could Never Love As Much As Pam. [THR]
· Peter O'Toole joins the cast of Showtime's The Tudors for seven episodes as Pope Paul III, a performance that's preemptively been nominated for an Emmy. [Variety]
· Judd Apatow Comedy HegemonyWatch: The Apatow-produced, Seth Rogen-starring Pineapple Express is given a summer '08 release date following the success of Knocked Up. [Variety]

It's been way too long since we've read a good story hinting at the unspeakable horrors that would inevitably follow a potential Writers Guild strike, but today's Variety piece on how a work stoppage will impact reality TV production has at least temporarily given us the testicle-retracting scare we've been craving. While Var says that it's "not necessarily the case" that a strike would good for the unscripted sector, it's impossible not to imagine the networks quickly devolving from the mere reality-riddled disappointments they currently are into full-blown, post-Apocalyptic, Mark-Burnett-controlled hellscapes in which nary a union writer credit will be found:

· Local comedy monopolist Judd Apatow continues to integrate the industry's mirth-making entities into his rapidly expanding humor-producing conglomerate, collaborating with Jack Black, Knocked Up's Harold Ramis, Superbad's Michael Cera, and an Office writing team on Year One for Columbia. [Variety]
· The dust is finally starting to settle at a post-Albrechtgate HBO, with "longtime Albrecht right-hand man" Michael Lombardo reportedly being promoted to a new job overseeing all west coast operations. [THR]
· Jim Carrey will star in the dark comedy I Love You Phillip Morris (by Bad Santa's Glenn Ficarra and John Requa), an idea pitched as Catch Me if You Can meets Brokeback Mountain. There is no direct Judd Apatow involvement that we can discern, a fact that could doom the promising project to eventual turnaround. [Variety]
· Imagine superproducer Brian Grazer's unparalleled Bacon-attaching skills lead to ubiquitous actor Kevin joining the cast of Frost/Nixon, the big-screen adaptation of the Peter Morgan play. [THR]
· The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals throws out the FCC's "capricious" rulings against Fox over Cher saying "fuck" and Nicole Richie "shit" during broadcasts of the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards, a landmark decision that reaffirms an awards show presenter's right to "accidentally" swear on live TV. [Variety]

After seeing two nights' worth of disastrous, Univision-test-pattern-quality ratings for Fox's much-hyped On the Lot yesterday morning, we called for the official CancellationWatch to begin. Our fears that Steven Spielberg might never discover the next cinematic visionary through the evaluation of one-minute comedy shorts about hilariously unlucky coins have become suddenly more acute, as the network has announced that it's downsizing the show into a single, hourlong competition-and-results mash-up each week for the rest of its scheduled run. Should that drastic measure not quickly improve the series' fortunes (and really, what could possibly go wrong?), look for Fox to repeat the ratings-fixing voodoo it attempted after Lot's underwhelming debut week, when it sacrificed original host Chelsea "Somewhat Recognizable to TV Audiences" Handler to the Nielsen gods and replaced her with the far bustier Adrianna "Who?" Costa; the blood offering of a second TelePrompTer-reading albatross might buy the network another episode or two before it has to tell Spielberg that it's ending his failed experiment to bring the noble, talent-nurturing spirit of Project Greenlight to the wasteland of summertime network television.

· Finally, some good news for Lindsay Lohan: After convincing Poor Things producers Shirley MacLaine and Rob Hickman that she's confident she'll be able to step right in and disrupt their production with blown call times and suspicious absences the moment she gets out of rehab, they've agreed to rearrange their shooting schedule to accommodate the troubled actress's inconvenient trip to Promises. [Variety]
· Proving once again that there is no comic book franchise Hollywood won't take a crack at adapting, Warner Bros. is producing a live-action version of DC sidekick title (Robin! Kid Flash! Aqualad! The Bastard Son Who Keeps Tagging Along When Green Lantern Is Trying To Fight Sinestro!*) Teen Titans. [THR]
· Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt, contracted to script a remake of the 1939 comedy Midnight for Universal, might need to get some better dreams: "Being given the chance to update the film with Reese [Witherspoon] in the lead is simply a dream come true." [Variety]
· Just throw a brick through your TV screen and buy a new one in the Fall: So You Think You Can Dance wins Wednesday night for Fox. [THR]
· How hot is 1939 right now? Writer/director Diane English is going forward with a long-gestating remake of 1939's The Women, assembling what she hopes is the ultimate chick flick cast, one that spans generations and levels of acting ability: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing, and Candice Bergen. [Variety]
[*Probably not a real character, so please, no e-mails.]

· Let the CancellationWatch begin: After finishing fifth on Monday night with about 3 million viewers, On the Lot's ratings creep up to a still-anemic 4 million on Tuesday. We recommend that you enjoy judge Carrie Fisher's desperate attempts to marry off her daughter to the "next Spielberg" while you still can. [Variety, Variety]
· But here's some news sure to cheer you up: Dane Cook continues to work, and is in negotiations to star in comedy Bachelor No. 2, in which he'll play an asshole who tries to drive girls back to the guys they just dumped by taking them on hilariously bad dates. [THR]
· As if sleeping underneath an autographed photo of NBC legend Brandon Tartikoff as a child didn't prove new NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman's love of all things Peacock, he lets the industry know just how badly he ached for the gig: "I am taking a massive financial hit, which is a testament to how passionate I am about this job." Ah, there's nothing more heartwarming than a former agent publicly disclosing the pay cut he's allegedly taking to chase his Hollywood dream. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, Silverman will remain involved at Reveille (with which NBC extended its first-look deal for another two years) as a silent owner and won't have a financial stake in its new shows, a well-thought-out arrangement that is sure to be utterly free of troubling conflicts of interest. Everyone wins! [Variety]
· Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films signs an overall deal with CBS Corp., a move that clearly establishes the Punk'd star and up-and-coming producer as the eventual successor to Les Moonves, himself a former terrible actor with boundless ambition. [THR]

· Sandra Bullock will star in The Proposal, a romcom about a "demanding female boss" who winds up in a sham marriage to her "young male assistant" in order to avoid deportation to Canada. Hopefully this won't put any bright ideas into the heads of nebbish agents who hired their call-rollers based on their fuckability alone. [Variety]
· Fox has bought the rights to The SIMS videogame series, which they feel has great potential for "traditional story telling," something the simulated gay cowboy love story Brokeback SIMS Mountain has already poignantly proven.
· Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is on a course for a box office bounty as bloated and incomprehensible as the movie itself. [Variety]
· Despite producers having taken out a full-page ad trumpeting Nicolas Cage would play young(er) Al Capone in The Untouchables' prequel, "scheduling conflicts" won't allow the actor to participate. They can take great comfort in knowing that not only have they dodged a massive bullet, but that white-hot breakout Spartan Gerard Butler is on board, taking over for Sean Connery in the role of Jimmy "That's the Chicago Way" Malone. [Variety]
· TV Networks scan the 2006-2007 ratings data, then promptly crap their pants. [THR]

· While the two-hour American Idol finale-clusterfuck dominates the ratings, it was down about 20 percent from last year's season-ender. Might this have been God's way of punishing Fox for allowing the ludicrously drawn-out show to stretch nine minutes over its allotted running time, fucking over DVR owners who didn't think to also record the local news if they actually wanted to see who won? Are we bitter? Nah, not much. [Variety]
· Just in case you missed the make-up announcement late yesterday afternoon, Alec Baldwin and CAA are back together. Always fucking or fighting, those two! [THR]
· CBS Corp. head Les Moonves is named MIPCOM "Personality of the Year." In an unrelated story, the family of the trade show's president, who had mysteriously gone missing at the beginning of Personality of the Year voting, was returned to safety shortly after the announcement. [Variety]
· Mary-Kate Olsen returns to TV (we know what you're thinking, but nope, no Ashley this time—free at last!) in a recurring role on Showtime's Weeds, in which she'll play a troubled customer whose eating disorder is so severe she can't even eat Mary Louise Parker's delicious pot brownies without purging. [THR]
· Warner Bros. acquries the rights to children's fantasy book Skulduggery Pleasant, hoping their possible movie franchise will turn out more Harry Potter than Lemony Snicket. [Variety]

Unless you've been napping in a sensory deprivation tank buried a mile beneath the earth's surface for the last ten or so hours, by now you know that Jordin Sparks (just 17, as we were reminded every 30 seconds of this past season) is this year's American Idol, a conclusion so foregone that runner-up Blake Lewis put in an application to run the mechanical bull at Saddle Ranch mere minutes after the finalists were announced last week. Indeed, the only real questions left unanswered before the bloated two-hour finale began were: What sexagenarian-and-up singers would call in favors to perform in front of a television audience of tens of millions of teenage girls? (Answer: Tony Bennett, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, a hologram of Fat Elvis, and the ghost of James Brown.) And: What washed-up celebrity would be this year's David Hasselhoff, caught weeping while lost in a transcendent moment in which all melts away but him, the singer who has reached down deep inside him and caressed his very soul, and Idol's all-seeing, audience-scanning cameras? The answer to this query comes after the jump, at precisely 3:44 of Midler's moving performance of that one song she does:

With American Idol soon set to crown its winner and its audience teetering on burnout—even the phone-in results have felt a little phoned-in since Sanjaya was sent packing—Fox is hoping to recapture the nation's sizzling love affair with the couchbound minting of new creative superstars through its latest reality venture, On The Lot. In keeping with current Hollywood trends, no step of the search for the next Spielberg (or, more realistically, the fauxteur apparent to judge Brett Ratner) will remain untouched by the almighty brand-integration dollar:

It's Day Four of the upfronts, that special mid-May week during which network executives lure advertisers to fancy venues, use elaborate presentations about their Fall programming to trick the media buyers into believing that spending their money on unproven shows is any less risky than letting their entire budgets ride on a single roulette-wheel number, and then retire to after-parties to toast their mutual delusions with free booze. Today, Fox wraps up the festivities with the announcement of their slate of new shows, coyly refusing for a fifth straight year to abandon their largely useless development process and switch to a year-round, all-American Idol format.

· Fox reaches into a hat containing slips of paper with the names of actors, wacky situations, and clichéd expressions written on them, producing the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher project What Happens in Vegas, the story of two people who wake up to discover they've gotten married—and won a huge jackpot!—following a night of debauchery. [Variety]
· Get on the phone with your friends and figure out who's going to host the viewing party: The The Hollywood Reporter's 36th Annual Key Art Awards are coming! [THR]
· Elijah Wood playing Iggy Pop? Sure, why not? After yesterday's announced Tim Allen/David Mamet project, we're open to anything. [Variety]
· Fox signs up 24 for two more seasons, keeping Kiefer Sutherland in beer money through 2009. [THR]
· Cannes kicks off today! Obviously we're not there, so we feel we can be bitterly dismissive of all the Rivieria-side orgies we're missing out on. [Variety]

· NBC has pre-upfront pick-up fever, renewing the critically beloved, but anemically rated, Friday Night Lights for a second season. ("First be best, then be first" is the Peacock motto stitched into a throw pillow on Kevin Reilly's couch.) Also making the schedule: new dramas The Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life. [Variety]
· Barry Sonnenfeld is in talks to direct supernatural adventure The Box for Fox, prompting the best headline of the morning: "Sonnenfeld Ponders Fox's 'Box'." Can't wait for "Barry All Up Inside Fox's Box" when the deal closes. [THR]
· You already know all about Ari Emanuel's opinion of the Chris Albrecht ouster, but the industry's feelings on the matter remain complicated. Recovering addict/friend/Deadwood producer David Milch says Time Warner did the right thing even if they were just afraid of the bad press: "All these people saying the corporation should have forgiven him, what they're really saying is the corporation should have kept him sick."[Variety]
· Forgiving the franchise for its later floppy-eared, jive-talking transgressions against their craft, The Visual Effects Society recognizes Star Wars as having the most influential special effects of all time. [THR]
· Var boldly predicts that Spider-Man 3 will crush new competition Georgia Rule and 28 Weeks Later, but does note Spidey's fallen off the record-setting pace of last summer's Pirates sequel.. [Variety]

While it's far too late for us to offer to help the following anonymous Craigslist poster find a lift so that he wouldn't miss his obscenely early call time, we feel we nonetheless should pass along his admirably responsible, late night plea for a designated driver (or, as the job is commonly called in the industry, a "PA"):