After the roughly $27 million opening of The Departed marked his best U.S. film opening to date, director Martin Scorsese is finally figuring out how make sure people start panting over his whereabouts so much that they offer him carte blanche on his next movie: announce that you're avoiding studio pictures in favor of a passion project, throw around the word "risk," and then immediately back off your statement just in case anyone takes it too seriously.

We all remember how Jack Nicholson's dedication to craft led him to lobby his The Departed director Martin Scorses to juice up the realism of his sex scenes with liberal amounts of dildos and blow. Now Radar reports that Jack was even more hands-on during shooting than previously suspected:

· Actor Tim Robbins confronted Reliable Source columnist Lloyd Grove at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, because Grove recently quoted Robbins' mother-in-law (mother of wife actress/activist Susan Sarandon) as saying Sarandon had brainwashed her kids. Robbins to Grove: "If you ever write about my family again, I will hunt you down." [Page Six]
· The New York Times told British MP Boris Johnson that he couldn't use the expression "Gee, thanks" because, "Gee is an abbreviation for Jesus, [and] for a century this has been a Jewish-owned newspaper and we have to be very careful about anything that might offend Christian sensibilities." [Page Six]
· Lizzie Grubman boycotted the Oscars. "The Oscars should have been canceled," she said. "There are prisoners of war and American soldiers are dyingto go out and party is disrepectful and not appropriate." [Page Six]
· Tough-guy actor Michael Madsen's response when the police called to tell him his pet snake, King, had slithered out of his Hollywood office and would be taken to an animal shelter if it wasn't picked up: "It's 4 a.m...No way!...Finelet him sit in snake jail for a few days. That'll teach him to run away." [Page Six]
· Martin Scorsese on Roman Polanski: "How great that Roman Polanski won Best Director. I love his work. I study him. Even today I learn from him." Best Actor Adrien Brody: "But while all that's happened is wonderful, what's really wonderful is that my mother, who lives in Bushwick went to the YWCA and there they hung a newspaper photo of her with me on the wall. She was thrilled. I was, too." [Cindy Adams]
· Hollywood superagent Ed Limato "tossed his drink on [Page Six columnist] Johnson, 'olives and all,' calling him a 'lowdown motherfucker' and asking Johnson if he wanted to fight back." after Johnson wrote an item referring to him as "the second most unpopular man in Hollywood." Colin Farrell on Peter O'Toole's Oscar speech: "He's an inspiration. Did you hear the eloquence of his speech? Look at him, at his age, drinking red wine. He's beautiful. I'd fuck him myself." [NY Daily News]

Greg Allen on why Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese should get the Best Director Oscar over Chicago director Rob Marshall:

Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein has been saying for years that several of his movies would have been better if he had directed them. Now he's getting his chance. He's currently working on "Mila 18" with screenwriter Hossein Amini. The film will be produced and edited by Martin Scorsese and Anthony Minghella and directed by Harvey Weinstein. Harvey to Hollywood: I can't direct? Wait, how many Oscar nominations did my films get this year? How many? I'm sorry, I can't hear you. How many? Oh, right. Nearly all of them. I'm pretty sure I could cast myself in Catherine Zeta-Jones' Chicago role at this point and no one would blink. Hear that, Disney?
Weinstein planning to make directorial debut [Zap2it]

· Martin Scorsese wants to cast Nicole Kidman alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in his next film, "The Aviator"a biopic about Howard Hughes. [Page Six]
· "I'm prettier than Claudia [Schiffer]!" whines Kate Moss. [Page Six]
· Another book about the magazine world: Strawberry Saroyan's Girl Walks into a Bar: A Memoir discusses her encounters with David Lauren, Anna Wintour, James Truman and Tina Brown. [Page Six]
· Kevin Spacey on his year-long hiatus from film: "decided after I finished 'The Life of David Gale' I'd stop. I really feelI make a joke out of thisthat if I was sick of me, I could imagine how the rest of the country felt." [Cindy Adam]
· Quote from a letter to NY Mag: "Internet personals are just another dab of lipstick applied to the blind-date pig." [Liz Smith]
· Betsey Johnson's daughter Lulu has quit her mom's business after waiting to take over the reins, and not being handed them. [NY Daily News]

Miramax, with Chicago and Gangs of New York among other movies in contention, drew 40 nominations yesterday. Last time a single studio cornered the market to the same extent was back in 1940. So the New York Times gives Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax, his due. Everyone's making nice to Weinstein again, even Martin Scorsese, with whom he famously clashed during the making of Gangs. Well, not entirely.

· Dominick Dunne, distressed over the Gary Condit lawsuit, cancels public appearances. [Page Six]
· Vogue is featuring plus-size model Mia Tyler in its April issue. [Ed. note"plus-size model"? Are we sure Anna knows about this?] [Page Six]
· The pot haze at Guastavino's was pretty thick on Sunday, but Presidential cousin Billy Bush swears he didn't inhale. [Page Six]
· Weinstein and Spielberg call a truce to support a "Best Director" Oscar for Martin Scorsese. [Page Six]
· Pete Hamill's New York novel, Forever, is being optioned and former Tri-Star Pictures Chairman Mike Medavoy and his wife Irena are suing Botox maker, Allergen. [NY Daily News]

LAT movie critic Manohla Darghis suggests that Martin Scorsese may be getting the DGA lifetime achievement award because people feel sorry for him. "I think that what the Guild is really doing here is rewarding Scorsese for having survived Gangs of New York and, in particular, for having survived uber-producer Harvey Weinstein."
Ask Manohla Dargis [LAT]

"I think Scorsese is a tremendously interesting director...As a director, I adore him. As a man, I cannot bear him. Because he doesn't smoke. [Isabella Rossellini] invited me to dinner at their house, and in order to smoke a cigarette I had to go in the bathroom. So each dinner became a nightmare. I had to bend from the window of the 58th floor, risking to precipitate down on the sidewalk, and I came to hate him and to forget that he was such a good director."
The rage of Oriana Fallaci [Observer]

Oh dear, Harvey Weinstein will be really insufferable now. Last night at the Golden Globes, Miramax won best director for Gangs of New York, best drama for The Hours, and three awards for Chicago. Cue a chorus for the great leader that wouldn't have been out of place at a Ba'athist party conference.

"You never brought a camera into where I grew up; you weren't allowed to bring a camera. A motion picture camera, forget it. That would be outrageous. And then for "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" [1968], I was able to shoot [in the neighborhood] a little bit, and in "Mean Streets" very, very little; but my father had to talk to certain people to make sure."
The last temptation of Martin Scorsese [Salon]

There's a Scorsese movie, After Hours, a great movie, in which Griffin Dunne stumbles around Manhattan, as if in an...