These quotes in the NY Times from the contestants/future White Lotus waitresses on the WB's Apprentice/ANTM knockoff The Starlet make it seem like their casting staff merely coaxed some wannabe actresses from the porch of the Coffee Bean on Sunset Blvd into a van and called it a day:
After receiving the news that her network had "dominated" the February ratings sweeps, Fox entertainment president/Arrested Development booster Gail Berman took some time out from high-fiving everyone in the office to send out this e-mail crowing about their big win. She brags about how the network didn't even need that little Super Bowl thing (really, that was just piling on), but we're left with one question that's pretty easy to answer: What if you take away American Idol? A: Berman gets fired! Given that the alternative to victory was the Hollywood breadline, yeah, we'd be boasting too.
The NY Daily News's Rush & Molloy lead today's column with a healthy salad-tossing for the salad-impaired Kirstie Alley and her upcoming show:
You heard it here first: Big-breasted psychics are white-hot right now. In an effort to stay in-step with their competitors' catching of the juggsy-medium Zeitgeist, later today ABC will introduce a six-episode Desperate Housewives arc featuring Anna Nicole Smith as a lesbian professional poker player who's spooked by her ability to commune with the dead.
· Jennifer Lopez cancels her European tour, succumbing to the celebrity mystery plague that's also delayed the Michael Jackson trial and caused countless problems on the set of Lindsay Lohan's movie in New Orleans.
· For just under two, glorious, Disney-slamming minutes, Robin Williams revives his once-mighty powers of comic improvisation. Did he rediscover coke? [via BoingBoing]
· Don't be fooled by the rocks that they got...even if they finally make it to the altar, their marriages won't last a year.
· We really want to believe that Dave Chappelle blew his $50 million from Comedy Central on weed and nearly wets himself laughing every time an executive calls to ask how the writing is going.
· Not exactly breaking news: In Hollywood, the Rich Get Richer for Free
If Fat Actress has any hope (slim as it may be) of succeeding, the producers are going to have to stop surrounding Kirstie Alley with bloated actors that actually make her look slim by comparison. Being in the same frame as John Travolta's head is cheating—the pre-speed Anna Nicole Smith would look like, well, the post-speed Anna Nicole Smith when shot next to the swollen ham Travolta's smuggling at the top of his neck. (And we know that Alley and Travolta worked together before, but did he need the $10,000 that badly?)
Every television actor in Hollywood has his or her own way of dealing with the uncertainty about the status of a show on the verge of cancellation. Some go on a long vacation, some hit the bottle or swallow handfuls of Vicodin, and some devote some of their newfound free time to helping worthy causes.
Jason Bateman hosted this weekend's SNL, where Lorne Michaels and the gang generously let him turn his monologue into a plea for people to watch the not-yet-canceled-but-probably-canceled Arrested Development. (They even lent him Amy Poehler, who's married to AD co-star Will Arnett, to help with the pitch so that the couple can keep things "good in the bedroom," a worthy cause if ever there was one. Surely America will want to help the lovable Arnett get some ass!) But Bateman has no illusions about the show's timeslot competition, the juggernaut Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: "Who's going to watch us when they can watch a hot, shirtless guy build a skate ramp for a kid with no bones?"
Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman comes down from the Murdoch Empire mountaintop to answer the anxious Arrested Development fans who are e-mailing her, afraid the show is about to be canceled after its original episode order was reduced. Of course, by "comes down from the mountaintop" we mean "makes her second assistant send out boilerplate responses while she kicks off early for a pedicure." Here's the short version: Watch more and we won't have to cancel it. Longer version below:
It didn't take long for an online campaign to save Arrested Development from a possible cancellation to crop up. The Save Our Bluths page on the Amazon Honor System is accepting donations to raise a thousand bucks to buy some "custom-printed banana stress balls" to send to Fox president Gail Berman, hoping that a day squeezing foam toys is going to make her ignore the show's ratings for a little while longer. Maybe that grand would be better spent supporting an effort to kidnap local, rosy-faced McDonald's fry cooks, in hopes of depleting the available talent for Arrested Development's likely replacement (according to an angry David Cross), America's Cutest Retards. Or, you know, trying to convince more people to actually watch the show. They don't keep American Idol on the air because it's a critical darling.
David Cross made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night (hopefully he avoided drinking any of that magical champagne they serve in the dressing room) to promote Arrested Development. After he and Kimmel ticked off all of the awards the show has won, Cross revealed that he "found out on the internet" that production of the show had been shut down (here?). He then speculated about what kind of animated/reality/midget/Who's Your Daddy? hybrid project would replace his show::
