• Ben Silverman and NBC have come to terms on a new contract. [B&C]
• Jeff Bewkes is taking over as Time Warner's chairman. [Bloomberg]
• As expected, Newsweek is trimming both staff and circulation. [WSJ]
• Do his 8 Golden Globe nods mean Harvey Weinstein is on the rebound? [THR]
• CBS Interactive is restructuring and making major cuts. [PaidContent]
• Hugh Jackman will be hosting the Oscars next February. [THR]
Oh happy day, awards season has really started! The Golden Globe awards nominations have been announced, sending some hopes soaring and others to dash themselves on the rocks and die a quick death.
Laid off recently? Still mourning the loss of a paycheck and the perks you'd grown accustomed to, like car service, gym memberships, and free meals? Here's one thing you can now save money on: razors! "Unemployment beards" are all the rage right now, reports the Wall Street Journal, which says more and more unemployed execs are growing their facial hair while they "take stock" of their lives. Given all his problems as of late (and more bad news yesterday), this does have us concerned about Harvey Weinstein's scruffy look. Planning ahead, perhaps?
Times continue to be tough for Harvey Weinstein and his Weinstein Company. Already suffering shrinkage and hobbling away from the shoulda-been-as-big-as-Superbad bust Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the company is now forced to watch as its big Oscar-hope flick The Reader fails to resonate with critics. Weinstein, who has been touting the holocaust tale as the film that would save his company, had waged a bitter war with producer Scott Rudin to get it into theaters in time for eligibility. Big things were hinged and waged on this, and the returns look to be diminishing.
The culmination of our dedicated coverage of The Reader — from Rudin/Weinstein blow-ups to Oscar prognoses to its sexual audacity — arrived this weekend when director Stephen Daldry phoned Defamer HQ. "Sorry, I overslept," he said in his dignified brogue — a forgivable lapse under the circumstances, with his Kate Winslet film following his Billy Elliot stage adaptation by mere weeks on his late-'08 calendar. Nevertheless, we got him properly caffeinated and settled in for a rousing installment of Five Questions (plus one, just for appropriate awards-season breadth):
When we awoke this morning to discover California hadn't yet crashed into the sea, we had little choice but to acknowledge that the culturally cataclysmic worst was behind us. Another profound symbol of recovery arrived shortly thereafter, when we heard that Harvey Weinstein actually paid tribute to exiled Reader producer Scott Rudin at the film's premiere Wednesday night.
Flaccid Rankings: In an attempt to rebut the cruel patriarchy of Mr. Skin's women-only list of the year's top nude scenes, The Frisky has published their own Top 10, detailing the best bare men of the year. As a commentary on this year's slim male pickings, two of the winners went nothing more than shirtless, one was onstage, and the winner was Jason Segel from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Alas, The Reader continued its nude scene shutout. Old Harvey would have gotten Kate Winslet on this list somehow, even without a penis! The full list, after the jump:
♦ People got Alex Rodriguez to open up about his relationship with Madonna. Or, you know, maybe not. The slugger claims that they're just "friends—that's it." He also says he's never been on a plane with her, despite the countless photos that clearly indicate otherwise. [People]
♦ Have Tea Leoni and David Duchovny reunited? Star reports they were spotted holding hands at a Tasti D-Lite on the Upper East Side and they've picked up a $7.5 million apartment in the East 70s. [Star]
♦ It looks like Harvey Weinstein and Scott Rudin may have buried the hatchet after Harvey publicly thanked Scott at the premiere of The Reader on Wednesday night. [P6]
♦ A London jury has found Boy George guilty of false imprisonment for having handcuffed a Norwegian male escort to a wall. [People]
Harvey Weinstein is the co-founder of the Weinstein Company, the struggling studio that has produced very few hits over the past year, has seen a handful of senior of execs flee for the exits in recent weeks, and has been immersed in a nasty legal spat with NBC over the fate of his one big hit, Project Runway, over the past few months. (Further evidence of his financial woes: He owes Cindy Adams $10,000 and has refused to pay up.) Lev Leviev might be a less familiar name to you. He's the Ubekistan-born, Orthodox Jewish diamond and real estate billionaire who lives in Israel and controls the Africa-Israel Group, which dominates the diamond mining industry in Angola and owns a good deal of real estate, too, including the former headquarters of the New York Times.
The New York iteration of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrated its opening last night with a party in the new SoHo space. Attendees like Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Theodora Richards (left) mingled with Taylor Momsen, Molly Sims, Matthew Modine, Ciara, David Foote, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Liz Lange, and Ryan Locke, listened to performances by Debbie Harry and Dave Mason, and inked their names on a plywood wall. [Paper, Wireimage, PMc, GoaG]
Poor Harvey Weinstein just can't catch a break for The Reader! So far, his pushy campaign to ready the film for awards glory has resulted in the loss of both Scott Rudin and a million-dollar bet, and now his efforts have resulted in further ignominy: Kate Winslet's very naked performance was denied a spot on Mr. Skin's Top Celebrity Nude Scenes of 2008. Could this be an Oscar precursor? Let's hope not, considering who came in first:
♦ No official confirmation yet, but media insiders say David Gregory has been tapped to take over as host of Meet the Press. [Politico]
♦ It's rumored Carine Roitfeld is replacing Anna Wintour at Vogue. [Gawker]
♦ A former employee of Charles Kushner is accusing him of funneling cash from his real estate empire to prop up Jared Kushner's Observer. [Daily Intel]
♦ Harvey Weinstein owes Cindy Adams $10,000. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast has shuttered its social networking site Flip.com. [Gawker]
♦ CBS is producing a new hidden camera show with Ashton Kutcher. [NYT]
♦ Katie Couric has a new haircut, in case you haven't noticed. [HuffPo]
♦ Arianna Huffington's how-to book for aspiring bloggers. [Jossip]
♦ Ever fantasized about having lunch with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? You can—for $2,500. [NYO]
At last night's opening night party for the New York City Ballet's David H. Koch Theater, guest of honor David Koch and wife Julia mingled with Candace Bushnell, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alicia Keys, Al Roker, Debbie Bancroft, Lisa Falcone, Mary Alice Stephenson, Alexandra Lebenthal, Zani Gugelmann, Annie Churchill, Peter Martins, Veronica Webb, Mark Indelicato, Blythe Danner, Valentino, Rachel Roy, Derek Lam, Peter Som, and Vanessa Williams, who all ate, drank, and danced to inaugurate the new Lincoln Center venue. [Wireimage, PMc, Style.com]
Apparently not encouraged by the spit-take and crotch-veil buzz surrounding its forthcoming releases, the struggling Weinstein Company axed "roughly two dozen" employees this afternoon. The New York Post reports that human resources broke the news to the staffers — about 11% of the Weinsteins' workforce — in a purge related not to the studio's ongoing money woes, but rather a bit of bearish anticipation of the fast-approaching recession. Still, we're as shocked as you are: The Weinstein Company has a human resources department?It's true! And with the recent flurry of departed execs and now 24 layoffs in the trenches, they'll be staying busy with paperwork for a while: TWC is paying severance based on time with the 3-year-old company, and it's estimated that the cuts will save Harvey an amount "well into the millions." But just to restate, says an insider, the negatives in the climate-controlled Delayed-Movie Vault are doing just fine — as are the Weinsteins, for that matter:
Whenever he's had a glaring problem in his business, Harvey Weinstein — legendary manipulator of the press — has always been a master at deflecting attention away: No Oscars recently? Just look at how much money the lowbrow genre films his brother Bob have been raking in! No big genre successes? Well, look at our home video business! The home video business is struggling? Well, we've got an Oscar film coming up! The cycle can be repeated over and over, but financial facts always trump spin. And today, the Weinstein Co. laid off 24 of its employees, 11% of its total staff, according to the New York Post, in what will only provide more chum in the water for those not-so-quietly rooting for the final downfall of the Weinsteins.The reason cited today was, of course, "the economy." But all of the bright spots the Weinsteins once pointed to at their company are dimming. The biggest potential break-out movie on this year's slate was Zack and Miri Make a Porno starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. As a Kevin Smith film, it's done fine since opening over Halloween weekend, with just over $27 million at the box office. But that's nowhere near the kind of return they'll need to convince tight-fisted investors to pump more money into TWC. Their cash-generating Project Runway is tied up in a nasty law suit that will keep it from returning to the air any time soon. And the boring side of the business, the 70% stake in straight-to-video distribution arm Genius Products, is now literally a penny stock, closing on Friday at 4 cents per share, valuing the whole operation, which they once touted as a potential billion-dollar enterprise, at less than $3 million. The Weinsteins are running out of lifelines. But they still provide colorful stories. On Wednesday, some people at the Weinstein Co. were told to clean out their offices because a "special guest" would be coming through on Friday. Those same people learned this afternoon that it was just a ruse to speed their exit when they were told they were getting the ax.
The Post reports that Bob and Harvey Weinstein's film company announced plans to lay off 11 percent of its staff, or 24 people, at a company meeting moments ago. The news was apparently delivered shortly after 2 p.m. But the studio would like to make it clear that this does not mean that the Weinsteins are having any financial trouble, even if they have failed to come up with a hit in ages, longtime execs are fleeing, and the company embroiled in a messy lawsuit over Project Runway. "If this was a real financial emergency for the studio, I imagine the layoffs would be greater than 24 people," a source tells the paper. [NYP]
When it moved Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime, Weinstein Company transformed the latter cable network from overearnest television for spinsters into something more chic and cheeky, or so some people said at the time. Weinstein Company was promptly sued by Bravo parent NBC Universal, which won an unexpected victory in court and impounded the show. Lifetime has been stewing, bitterly, and yelling at its cats, like a spurned mistress, and now Lifetime has decided it's going to sue Harvey Weinstein's company, presumably for being a slimy jerk who said the divorce was final when really he wasn't even separated yet. This makes 2008 the year of total meltdown for Weinstein:
♦ Alexander Wang was the big winner at Monday night's fifth-annual CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards at Skylight Studios. Wang and fellow nominees like Richard Chai, Jason Wu, Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai, Irene Neuwirth, Alejandro Ingelmo, Juan Carlos Obando, Albertus Swanepoel, Swaim and Christina Hutson, and John Patrick were feted by John Galliano (left, with Charlize Theron), Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, Sally Singer, Andrew Rosen, Reed Krakoff, Jeffrey Kalinsky, Julie Gilhart, Julie Macklowe, Daphne Guinness, Sasha Heinz, Tory Burch and Lyor Cohen, Andre Leon Talley, Narciso Rodriguez, Maria Sharapova, Penn Badgley, Zac Posen, Vera Wang, Chanel Iman, Juliette Lewis, Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman, Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo, Lauren Santo Domingo, Peter Som, Piper Perabo, Phillip Lim, Lazaro Hernandez, Maggie Betts, Calvin Klein, Damon Dash and Rachel Roy, and James Franco. [PMc, NYO, Style.com, The Daily]
That whole Project Runway lawsuit, between the Weinstein Company and the television conglomerate they dissed, NBC/Universal, is never going to end. Well, not if Harvey Weinstein and NBC head brass Jeff Zucker can't play nice. The New York Times did a little status update for the lawsuit this morning (basically everything is the same: jilted ex-lover doesn't want to let the fashion design show go to its new middle-aged girlfriend Lifetime, because of first refusal contracts, allegedly) that brings up some bitchy new details about their relationship. Basically, Zucker thought the two honchos were besties that he'd never screw NBC over, but Weinstein says nuh-uh:
