Drama and pissiness in the morning! A tipster tells us that some staffers at Good Morning America think a former executive producer ripped off their work to help get himself a book deal.
Jeremy Piven sat down with Diane Sawyer on the set of GMA this morning to clarify his recent bout with mercury poisoning and defend his decision to drop out of Speed-the-Plow. It's a little sad to see Piven spin around in increasingly desperate circles, alternately dropping in the names of the doctors he's consulted while also pointing out that he doesn't normally "do" Western medicine. But at least you can go back to eating spicy tuna rolls without fear. [ABC News]
Maybe Jeremy Piven isn't off the mercury—after all, his attempt to justify his recent behavior to Good Morning America was oilier than a soy sauce-slathered eel roll.
Remember how we all got all mad at the Bush administration for fear-mongering after 9/11? They squandered international goodwill with a dumb war, and they tried to make us all afraid, all the time, so we'd keep voting for them, forever, to keep us safe? What bad, bad people, those Republicans. Anyways. On Good Morning America today, Dan Harris, reporting from Mumbai, announced to a sleepy Monday morning audience that the well-coordinated attack in India is basically guaranteed to be repeated here in America, like there is a 100% chance that terrorists will take over the next hotel you check into and kill your children, and al-Qaeda will do a thousand more 9/11s. Is it too late to vote for Rudy Giuliani? He'll protect us!!!
Faux-conservative political pundit comedian Stephen Colbert is ending a banner year—what with the election and all—with a folksy little homage to Christmas specials of yesteryear, called A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. Judging from the clips we've seen, it looks really funny and refreshingly not completely about politics, and hey! His old Daily Show boss Jon Stewart even stops by for a song. And Stewart can sing. Who knew? Get a snippet of his vocal chops in the above clip. Listen as Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer marvels!
♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]
If you think you've had about all you can stand of whatever controversy Tropic Thunder is shoveling today, try notching down the dosage a bit with Robert Downey Jr.'s appearance today on Good Morning America. Eschewing a straight discussion of his ostensibly incendiary portrayal of an Australian Method actor in blackface, RDJ brought his over-lit facial hair to bear on Chris Cuomo and the rest of the studio crew, whose early laughter fades into a riveted 'stache trance unseen since then-UN Ambassador John Bolton made a news round-up way back in 2005. Try for yourself, but only if you're insured and have a friend nearby to spot you. We can't have that many lost work hours on our conscience, at least not in this economy. [ABC]
So here's a clip of the Good Morning America team talking about their cellphone ringtones. They have "funky little disco tunes" and "computer gibberish." But Diane Sawyer's? Viiiibrate. "Ohhhh," coos noted geigh person Sam Champion. And you can just see everyone go to a summertime place where the sangria flows like, um, wine and the oohs and ahhs come fast and frequent.
Do pop-up ads qualify as "deceptive marketing practices"? Good Morning America says "yes." A free enterprise advocacy group says "no." We say "yes, but don't you know not to click that shit by now?" We guess it's a public service that GMA did a spot last week warning people not to enter their credit card info into pop-ups. But if you're doing that, you are either elderly, or doomed to be snuffed out by the principles of Darwinian evolution in the digital age. Expect the marketing industry to strenuously object; pop-ups are simply an "information channel" in their view, the bastards. Watch the GMA clip, after the jump:
Now that he's the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama no longer has to attract voters with meaningless pleasantries and promises of ponies. No, now he's free to switch to real talk. No bullshit. At his Saturday rally in Oregon, Obama told the United States to stop whining and go on a goddamn diet: "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," he said. But we want to drive around eating corn all day! Can we at least continue criticizing your wife for hating America? Apparently not, as we learned on Good Morning America. Clip of that attached.
Cynthia Nixon is living proof that bad things happen to good actresses. Speaking openly for the first time about her 2006 diagnosis with breast cancer on Good Morning America today, the happily outed actress demonstrated exactly how a public figure maintains grace under fire. And even after telling us how one goes about telling their kids they sorta have to undergo an operation, and how to deal with the public's response to her coming out, one of the most intriguing lessons the Sex And The City star shared had to do with which half of a lesbian couple is called "Mom" and which is called "Mommy." Nixon's life lessons, after the jump.
Megan Meier was a Missouri teenager who hanged herself after bullying from a neighbor girl, abetted by the neighbor's mother. Because most of the bullying took place online, on MySpace, the story has a special appeal to the newsmedia—it's not just bullying, it's cyber-bullying. Good Morning America weighed in on the tragedy in a segment this morning. An excerpt appears above. It illustrates not only the importance of being careful "what you say online," but also the dangers of speaking extemporaneously on live television. Was "hanging on your every word" really the best choice of language there? CLIP »
Didn't Sam Champion come out as gay? Here's a bizarre sighting of the ABC weatherman with a female date at the Royalton's new restaurant. "Friday January 18th, 9pm 44th and 6th Ave: Sam Champion the weatherman making out with his dining companion at Brasserie 44... AND IT WAS A WOMAN! His 'date' climbed on top of his lap (knocking over the vase on the table) and started sucking face. Drawing audible gasps from the people dining nearby." Not explained: whether they were surprised by Champion's return to the closet; or simply amazed that he would bother with such an implausible public show. (In case there were any doubt, here's a clip of Champion discussing the moisturizing value of Crisco.)
The publicity engine for lady-empowering heist flick Mad Money (Without Jim Cramer) rolled on this morning with an appearance by the lovely and talented Diane Keaton on Good Morning America. Diane Keaton spent her segment making Diane Sawyer very uncomfortable. After admitting she'd stolen belts from Bloomingdales 35 years ago (when she was already kinda famous?), Keaton spent a couple minutes expounding on how impossibly hot she finds Sawyer. If Keaton had had lips like Sawyer's, she explains, she never would've needed to work on her "fucking personality." Someone secretly switched Annie Hall with Mary Wilkie—let's see what happens!
Vime-emo boy Patrick Moberg went back on his word last week when he and his New York Dream Girl, BlackBook intern Camille Hayton went on Good Morning America to tell their story of how he saw her on a subway and was hot for her and then put up a website and then found her. He's previously told his fanbase that once he found his dream lover, we'd all just have have to imagine the rest of their picture-perfect romance unfolding, because there would be "no more updates." What gives? Was it all just a publicity stunt? Today, Patrick clarifies, sort of, his intentions. Turns out the whole thing was Camille's idea!
This week has been totally "surreal" for flower-wearing Aussie intern Camille Hayton. First her apartment burned to the ground, forcing her to wear one of her mom's dresses to this morning's "Good Morning America" taping. Then Vimeo employee Patrick Moberg saw her on the subway and made a website about it, but though the site quickly became a "worldwide internet sensation," it didn't come to her attention, she said, until someone "that I work with at BlackBook" mentioned it to her. They met last night for coffee and "totally clicked," so, in spite of Patrick's online avowal that "you'll have to make up your own ending for this," they went on national TV this morning to... show the world that you should believe in flowers and rainbows and romance? Or: To raise the profiles of their employers, Vimeo and BlackBook—or their own brands? We'd like to posit that believing the latter theory doesn't make you a cold-hearted cynic so much as it makes you a sentient human being.
