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Short Ends: Closure: Gregory Peck’s Star Replaced November 30, 2005

grant-peck-star.jpg· Gregory Peck”s pilfered Walk of Fame star has already been replaced, with honorary mayor Johnny Grant generously offering to look the other way should the guilt-wracked thieves decide to return it. We really don”t agree with this course of action, for we”ve always believed that it is more important for a fake mayor to be feared than loved.
· We find ourselves in the strange position of leaping to Tara Reid”s defense, but we have to say it: We”re pretty sure those are the old new boobs, not new new boobs.
· Tom Cruise, amazed by the fantastical Far East talking machine known as the “cell phone,” demonstrates his amazing mastery of Chinese: “Hello. Xie xie. Ni hao. How are you?” Legal clarification: By linking to this story, Defamer does not intend to suggest that Mr. Cruise “goes around talking Chinese all day to anyone who will listen.”
· This rendering of a NYT-controlled Gawker is probably the most brilliant thing we have seen in years.
· Wendie Jo Sperber, star of Bosom Buddies, one of the favorite sitcoms of our youth (really–even the opening credits, set to Billy Joel”s “My Life,” crack us up), has died of breast cancer. There”s a very nice sentiment from Tom Hanks in the story, but the best tribute he could pay would be to let someone finally air Buddies again.*

*A number of you have reminded us that Bosom Buddies is airing on TBS. Our V-chip must block that channel. We regret the error.

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Comparisons To Barbra Streisand Drive Nellie McKay To Nervous Breakdown

nelliemckay.jpgA truly gifted singer/songwriter usually can convey emotion and inner life through a few simple chords and some heartfelt vocals. Sometimes, however, it requires a little more. A reader sends in this report from last night”s Nellie McKay performance:

Nellie McKay had a great show at the Troubadour [last night], but had a minor…actually, pretty severe on-stage meltdown near the beginning.

She was talking to the audience about the problems she”s been having with Sony and someone shouted “Shut up and sing!” This seemed to touch a nerve with dear Nellie. After politely explaining to the miscreant that “If this continues with Sony, I will leave the music business, BITCH. And NEVER SING AGAIN,” she started screaming and crying and “They say I”m just pulling a Barbra Streisand,” and “You have NO IDEA WHAT I”M GOING THROUGH,” and corporations are raping the world, etc. etc. As the audience, who had previously been laughing and hawing at everything she said, stood there in uncomfortable silence.

It was very Fiona Apple. Then she pulled it together and played for another hour and a half (in that respect, perhaps not so Fiona Apple). Despite this, awesome show. Love her.

In a recent LA Times review of her Wiltern show, Apple”s stage demeanor was likened to an exorcism (”…she clutches her dress, twists her head and shakes her shoulders as if trying to exorcise the building tension inside”). Paired with the McKay report, it safely sounds like we are entering a Golden Era of Cute Singer/Songwriter Chicks on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Look in coming months for forever cred-hungry Ashlee Simpson to once again ape the wild antics of her musical mentors, though her psychotic between-song patter threatening never to sing again will likely be greeted with thunderous applause.

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To Do: Nellie, Anne, Lovitz

· The Week Is 60 Percent Over Music Round-Up: Red Lightning at the Knitting Factory; Nellie McKay sticks around town to play Largo; the Cribs at Spaceland.
· Anne Rice, the Queen of Literary Darkness, turns up at Vroman”s in Pasadena to read and sign her new book, but there are scary rules to be observed! Warns the store”s website: “Anne will sign one copy of any backlist title, paperback or hardback, and unlimited copies of Christ the Lord. She won’t sign multiple copies of old books, comic books, graphic novels, collectibles, or any other materials, like DVDs (or body parts). She will personalize with names only, no messages. No posed pictures.”
· And we mention this because a nice work of charity is involved, not because of the barrage of e-mails we got virally plugging the show: The guy who bid $7,600 on eBay (the money went to the Red Cross for disaster relief efforts) to open up for Jon Lovitz will take his ten minutes of stage time tonight at the Laugh Factory.

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Welcome to Googlewood

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The Great Internet Giants Battle for Hollywood is upon us, pitting interactive media colossus (and Gawker content bodysnatcher) Yahoo! against the indomitable, ubiquitous search-entity Google. Yahoo! struck first, hiring former co-chairman and co-chief executive of Warner Bros. Terry Semel to guide the company through the murky jungles of show business dealings.

But with news that Google has now hired a former entertainment executive to its board of directors, albeit from the very computer-friendly PIXAR, media watchers are saying the struggle for multimedia control of our lovingly crafted product could get bloody:

Ann Mather, 45, a former executive at Walt Disney and Pixar, becomes the first Google board member to come from the entertainment world. Mather, who was Pixar”s chief financial officer from 1999 to 2004, will chair Google”s audit committee.

Mather”s appointment is a “potential harbinger” of things to come, as the major entertainment and Internet companies warily begin to embrace each other, said UBS Internet analyst Benjamin Schachter.

“Mather”s appointment gives Google”s board a media perspective that it currently lacks,” said Schachter. “This is the first person on the board without a purely technological or academic background.”

While the payoff potential is great, one must also consider what of ourselves we may lose in the exchange–it could be less than a decade before the fanciful illustration above becomes a daily eyesore reality. And yet, LIGHTS! CAMERA! GOOGLE? [NY Post]

  • Can Yahoo Sign On to Hollywood? [LA Times]

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    Defamer Premiere Report: “Brokeback Mountain” Unholstered In Westwood

    gyllenhaal-bb-preem.jpgOnce again (and this one really stings), our fancy Hollywood premiere invitation appears to have been pilfered by the mailman, as we spent a night on the couch ignoring some Barbara Walters special instead of enjoying the open-bar-and-finger-food largesse of the Brokeback Mountain premiere in Westwood. (Yes, the untold thousands of dollars in secret studio kickbacks we”ve been getting for chronicling every gay cowboy-related sound-bite of the past six or so months are great, but sometimes it”s nice not to feel like a discarded whore, you know?) Luckily, a Defamer operative took copious mental notes on the festivities, sharing this quite detailed report with us and somehow reducing the pain of not greedily devouring free crab cakes in the general vicinity of Lupe Ontiveros:

    Tuesday night (11/29) at the clusterfuck Brokeback Mountain premiere in Westwood - Jaime Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest gave us the “we’re rich people!” eye as we ate our mini quesadillas at Baja Fresh beforehand; New SAG president and Marg Helgenberger lesser half Alan Rosenberg did his schmoozing, “I’m going to take over the world one DVD royalty at a time” thing in the lobby of the Mann National before the movie; Bryan Greenberg, he of the “his penis is so cute I want to knit a hat for it” Prime fame, talking to some friends, and perhaps needing to carry around some facial oil blotters if he knows what’s good for him;…

    …extremely nice “Hey! It’s that guy”! Jon Polito and I shared a moment in the crowed lobby; Gay substitute gardener Ryan Carnes and dead Mama Solis Lupe Ontiveros, who no longer have jobs on Desperate Housewives, were mulling around the theater; pocket-sized James Madio, Perconte from Band of Brothers, sat a few seats down from us and it took everything within me not to yell “Where’s Gonorrhea?!”; Randy Quaid was not wearing a man muumuu, thankfully; Kate Mara is absolutely stunning; In the bathroom, Crazy Piper Laurie and her big purple coat apparently distracted me from noticing The Lohan and her makeup being attended to by her 5 person entourage. Whether the 5 of them were previously in a stall together, for an undetermined period of time, I do not know. However, I can tell everyone that when I finally saw her at the after party, SHE WAS EATING. FOOD! A decent amount of it, in fact! Glory be! And finally, “See, I’ve got manly facial hair! I’m not Toothy Tile, really!” Jake Gyllenhaal was holding court in a corner of the restaurant, with Linda Cardellini and Busy Phillips nearby, while Miss Maggie Gyllenhaal and her bf Peter Sarsgaard mixed more with the industry plebes in the middle of the room. I’d give you a Defamer Food Report, but I didn’t eat any of it. It looked chi chi, meh, and pretentious, much like the film itself.

    [Photo: WireImage]

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    Rick Springfield Returns, Housebound Women Rejoice

    springfield.jpgThe world of daytime dramas is a showbusiness subculture unto itself, with its own bizarre set of rules and customs. For example: once you are cast, you stay in that part pretty much until your dying breath, and even then creative ways are often employed to get a few more shooting days out of your corpse. So when it was recently announced that exception-to-the-rule Rick Springfield would be returning to the General Hospital role that made him a star 22 years earlier, very little shuffling had to be done to pick up where Dr. Noah Drake had left off:

    He began shooting his episodes at the beginning of November. The plot: Dr. Drake, who left Port Charles to become a neurosurgeon in Atlanta, is urgently needed at General Hospital to operate on a patient with severe brain damage. Unfortunately, Dr. Drake is less sober than he once was. “Things haven”t gone well for Noah,” Mr. Springfield said with a laugh.

    The four days have turned into a longer storyline. “I think we all need to see how it pans out,” Mr. Springfield said. “No one”s going, “Where do I sign?” or “We”re done.” ” […]

    Because actors on soap operas often have long careers there, many of Mr. Springfield”s 1980″s colleagues are still on the show. Most relevant to Dr. Drake, Bobbie Spencer, the love of his life, is still in Port Charles - Jacklyn Zeman has played Bobbie since 1977. “There will be a connection between them,” Ms. Phelps said. “Yes, you will see Bobbie and Noah together. We”re not going to play out a full-on - well, I”m not going to tell you what we”re going to do.”

    We congratulate Springfield on his triumphant return to the showcase that brought his rugged good looks and Jesse-coveting songwriting prowess to the world stage. With the SAG-rate paychecks steadily coming in, we imagine there will be no more Craigslist furniture liquidations come rent time.

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    Gawker T-Shirts: Express Holiday Love Of Your Fellow Man With A Simple Purchase

    assistant-shirt.jpgThe starter”s pistol has been fired, signalling the start of the holiday-season retail orgy (yes, our orgies always feature gunplay) that distinguishes this great Nation from the Communist puppet regimes that once plagued Eastern Europe.

    What were we talking about? Oh, right. The folks back at the Gawker Media Retail mothership have generously decided to help fill your seasonal gift-giving needs by offering some brand-new t-shirts at our online shop. We”re featuring the first Defamer-logo”d shirt (pictured at left), which illustrates in vivid detail what you”d like to do the next time your cruel boss asks you to “put a pin in it” while he attends to the pressing matter of his Free Cell game. You, however, are too smart to resort to actual violence, knowing that one day you”ll be running this town, and will serve your ice-cold revenge in due time. Until then, why not channel your rage into an impulse t-shirt purchase? Go on, do it now, before the boss returns from lunch and begins a fresh round of afternoon torture. You owe it to yourself.

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    Trade Round-Up: Above-The-Title Piven To Wrestle Angry Forest Creatures

    · Jeremy Piven is in final talks to star in an untitled New Line “man vs. nature” comedy. Get ready for it: “Piven will play a smug Portland, Ore., real estate developer who accepts a challenge from his real estate mogul boss to develop a pristine forest in the hopes of being promoted to partner. He gets more than he bargained for when the area”s animal residents start taking their revenge on him and wreak havoc on his every attempt to develop the land.” Piven finally gets the lead, and he has to do an angry-raccoons-attacking-uptight-suit” flick? He should fire his agent. Again. [THR]
    · SATC creator Darren Star leaves behind the world of shoe-shopping and funky spunk to develop an hour-long BBC soap about Formula One racing, “an enormous sport overseas that barely exists here.” Next up: Star”s sassy look at the world of cricket players” wives. [Variety]
    · Annals of stunt casting: Tom Selleck will guest star on Boston Legal as Candace Bergen”s ex-husband. [THR]
    · Shitergy alert: USA and Bravo will pay sister company NBC Universal $1.4 million an episode for cable rights to House reruns, a hefty sum that should nip in the bud any notions that the cable nets got some sort of sweetheart deal from their corporate sibling. [Variety]
    · In fairness, NBC doesn”t get trounced in the ratings every single night. Last night”s Biggest Loser finale did big numbers, giving them their highest (non-Olympic) rating in that timeslot in four long years, prompting president Kevin Reilly to immediately demand that his Loser finalist regain their weight for a live, two-hour special “pound-off” during February sweeps. [THR]

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    Julia Roberts Retains Money Title, Agents All Over Town Reassure Also-Rans That They’re Still Pretty

    roberts-baby.jpgThe Hollywood Reporter has finally unleashed its annual list of the highest-paid actresses in the business, providing us with a handy metric that helps take the guesswork out of evaluating the true worth of the big screen”s fairer sex. And in an utterly unsurprising non-development, Julia Roberts once again triumphs in the only contest that truly matters:

    1. Julia Roberts — $20 million
    2. Nicole Kidman — $16 million-$17 million
    3. Reese Witherspoon — $15 million
    4. Drew Barrymore — $15 million
    5. Renee Zellweger — $10 million-$15 million
    6. Angelina Jolie — $10 million-$15 million
    7. Cameron Diaz — $10 million-$15 million
    8. Jodie Foster — $10 million-$12 million
    9. Charlize Theron — $10 million
    10. Jennifer Aniston — $9 million

    Even though there”s some reshuffling of the names beneath the repeating champ, sometimes we wonder if these also-rans even want to be Number One. While Roberts carelessly frittered away a prime earning year chasing around her career-stalling rugrats, the top spot was there for the taking, yet Nicole, Reese, and fading Cameron failed to capitalize. Where”s the desire? Bewitched, Just Like Heaven, and whatever it was that Diaz did that didn”t involve overemoting into a Shrek voiceover mic aren”t going to defenestrate Queen Julia.

    Better luck in 2006, ladies.

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    Kevin Costner and the $8 Million Conversation

    kevincostner.jpgIf your movie is set, the old adage goes, on a baseball diamond, golf course, or postapocalyptic, sea-covered Earth, then the Kevin Costner is your go-to leading man. Certainly that”s what producers at Ascendant Pictures were thinking when they entered into a verbal agreement with the grouchy, divorced actor to play the “grouchy, divorced” lead in their new golf (well, at least golf-related) picture, Taming Ben Taylor. But when they called off the production, Costner got extra-grouchy:

    Kevin Costner sued Ascendant Pictures on Tuesday, claiming the company broke an oral agreement to pay him $8 million to act in the romantic comedy Taming Ben Taylor. […]

    The movie was never made. The script was about a grouchy, divorced man who refuses to sell his failing vineyard to the golf course next door.

    The suit should make for an interesting legal exploration of just how binding an oral agreement is in a town where “Love ya, want to work with ya!” is considered standard salutation etiquette. Power lunches just wouldn”t end on the same punchy note if a producer left the talent he was courting with, “I acknowledge we have eaten together and that I am making a movie. Any other connections you may derive from this are purely circumstantial. Farewell.”

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    Kelly Brook Topless On The Beach

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    Kelly Brook celebrated her 26th birthday with her boyfriend Billy Zane at St. Barths, France. Nobody would care if she wasn”t walking around topless. We have to say that exposing your boobs is a nice way to remind the world that it”s your birthday. But when we see these pictures, we find it kinda funny that Kelly tried to ban nude scenes from her new movie, Three.

    The following pics are NSFW!
    5a5_kelly1_1  7ab_kelly8  E03_kelly10_1  9e6_kelly6  67d_kelly4_1  Ba3_kelly7  136_kelly3  D60_kelly2_1  8d2_kelly5

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    New “Apprentice” To Save Expensive Movers Fees For Fame-Whore Rejects November 29, 2005

    don.jpgNo sooner had we adjusted to the thought of a brave, new nightlife landscape where the words “Open Bar 10-11 p.m. sponsored by Trump Vodka” flowed as freely as barrel-bottom potato-vinegar from a goat-legged bottle, comes yet more Donald Trump news: the Apprentice is heading to LA.

    NBC announced Tuesday that it had picked up The Apprentice for a sixth season. However, the reality series will be filmed in Los Angeles, as opposed to Manhattan, where the previous editions have taken place.[…]

    [A]ccording to reality guru Mark Burnett, the move is at least partially due to the amount of business Trump is currently conducting on the West Coast.

    “Donald has so many recent West Coast projects that it made perfect sense to change locations and along with it change the flavor of the weekly tasks,” Burnett said. “Seeing Donald operate in Southern California will provide yet more insight into his remarkable world.”

    Let”s give a warm Angeleno welcome to Donald & Co. when they hit town, and feel free to approach them with suggestions of ways to locally “flavor” their “weekly tasks.” For example: in an episode with generous brand integration of the talent management company The Firm, each team is assigned a once A-list star, whom they then have to blow off in as many creative ways as possible within a set amount of time. The winners then get to be ignored by a Blackberrying power player over lunch at Barney Greengrass, while the losers face elimination in Donald”s Beverly Hills Hotel cabana cum-boardroom.


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    To Do: Haggis, Nellie, Frank

    · The ArcLight hosts a screening of Crash and post-show Q & A with writer/director Paul Haggis. Watch in amazement as what at first seems like an innocuous meeting with an intense, blue-eyed man in the concession line ripples throughout the storyline of your evening, culminating in the heavy-handed master”s climactic answer-session anecdote about your shared moment by the popcorn!
    · Double-awesome, two-item music round-up: Precocious piano-pounder Nellie MacKay at the Troubadour; cute alliteration resistant rockers Super Furry Animals at Avalon.
    · Pulitzer-winning author Frank McCourt reads from his new book about his experiences as a NYC public high school teacher, Teacher Man, at the Skirball Center.

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    One Night At The Grove: Adrian Laughs At “Rent,” Paris Smells Like A Stoner’s Dorm Room

    If we were a well-known actor or actress, we”re pretty sure that we”d avoid the Grove, that little man-made substitute for an actual urban shopping experience, like the proverbial Plague. On any given night, it”s overflowing with gawkers, tourists, and (perhaps most gallingly) unfamous people with ready access to e-mail accounts, and there”s the ever-present danger of tripping over those damned trolley tracks and being crushed beneath a conveyance whose sole purpose is to give visitors from Japan a clearer view of The Cheesecake Factory”s patio. Still, these brave celebrities risk rubbing up against the masses to partake in some retail therapy, or more frequently, to take in a flick while surrounded by people dressed as bellhops. Two readers share their amusing, Grove-based brushes with the B-list from last night:

    I unfortunately had the privilege of sitting next to Adrian Grenier at the Grove theater last night with an unidentified nobody while viewing Rent. The nobody talked and checked his phone the entire movie. At one point in the beginning he asked if they were going to keep on singing. I wanted to tell him it was a musical, dumbass, but I refrained. The worst though came at the end of the film, after [SPOILER ALERT, we think] Angel has died, everyone else in the theater was crying and Adrisn and his friend started to laugh. I have never sat next to two more disrespectful people in my life. Before the end, they got up to leave, I assume because Adrian thought his two fans in the world (whoever they are) might mob him.

    The other encounter follows after the jump:

    It”s surreal to see Paris Hilton mingle amongst us simpletons, but that”s what happened Monday night (11/28). Paris and the Greek Shipper Part Deux were actually waiting in the ticket line at the Grove around 10:00PM. She was “gasp” looking stunning while waiting in line, while the Greek Shipper had some sweatshirt hood over his head (like we really care, buddy). And the best part…both smelled so bad like ol” Mary Jane. It was an unbelievable waft, like college all over again. An usher even made a joke about it after they went into their movie. Don”t know what they saw but Syriana had the closest playing time to when they walked in. There”s no way, though. My money is on Just Friends…and as a result of the striking similarities, her and Nicole will patch it up within the month.

    Kudos for our operative for being able to differentiate Hilton (though surely the smell helped) and this week”s Greek Shipping companion from the throng in the theater lobby. More than one time while waiting in line for tickets, we”ve felt as if we were completely surrounded by Hilton”s cloned celebutante army, and might at any moment have to flee for the unfashionable safety of the nearby PacSun or risk an angry trampling by ludicrous, furry boots.

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    American Idol To Taunt Us Until We Die

    idolfox.jpgHere”s some exciting news for fans of the sadistic exploitation of shameless, fame-hungry minors: American Idol has been renewed well into the next decade! After a nail-biting “will he or will he?” episode involving a legal dispute, ill-fitting-muscle-shirt-wearer Simon Cowell has signed on for another five seasons, with no word yet on the involvement of the show”s other standbys, narcotized, differently abled clapper Paula Abdul, “A”ight” aficionado Randy Jackson, or recently crowned Carnaval Queen/Idol host Ryan Seacrest.

    CKX owns 19 Entertainment, the British creator of the wannabe-celebrity series Idol. The company said it reached a joint agreement with producer FremantleMedia, Fox, Idol celebrity judge Simon Cowell and record label Sony BMG to continue the series for four more seasons with an option to renew for an additional two seasons.

    Cowell has agreed to stay on for at least five more seasons beginning with the next installment of the series in January.

    The mind dances at the thought of five more Idols, to say nothing of their five sexually ambiguous runners-up; it”s a bounty of talent that should more than satisfy the show”s one-Idol-per-radio-format quota. If all goes according to plan, this year”s finals should pit 26 year old Lowell Vigwald, a deathmetal enthusiast from Armada, Michigan, against contemporary Christian songstylist SueAnn Duprey, 19, of Clinton, Nebraska. May the most inoffensive, Soundscan-friendly vocal powerhouse win.

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    Trump: The Booze: The Poster

    trump-poster.jpgOur earlier lamentation about our meager Photoshop skills inspired this reader-submitted act of charity, which takes our nod to classical bacchanalia and incorporates Trump”s well-publicized satyrical bent, creating a radical–yet pleasantly pastoral–branding experience unprecedented in the super premium vodka space.


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    Richard Gere And Lionel Richie Recycle For A Great Cause

    richgere.jpgIt appears Rent fever has trickled up to the pantheon of celebrity do-gooder gods, as Richard Gere has penned his very own AIDS song, with just a little help from Lionel Richie”s desk drawer of abandoned sheet music:

    Richard Gere has co-written a song with Lionel Richie to raise awareness about the spread of AIDS in India.

    The Pretty Woman veteran is following in the footsteps of Sharon Stone who helped write new track “Come Together Now” in a bid to raise money for the victims of August”s Hurricane Katrina.

    The Buddhist actor has pledged to help spread the message about HIV to India”s youth via the country”s version of Pop Idol and American Idol.

    He explains, “We did some stuff with Indian Idol. I asked Lionel Richie if he had a song like “We Are The World,” and he did.

    “We changed some lyrics and created a song around HIV and responsibility, they (contestants) performed it on the show.”

    Their hearts are true, but may we humbly suggest that in future interviews, Gere and Richie drop the tad-too-honest song recycling backstory? It kind of gives the whole affair a slapdash feel, which is not exactly the tone you want to hit when encouraging the youth of developing nations to go the extra safe-sex mile. Even Stone managed to work through her “what rhymes with Katrina?” hurdles and throw together a few original bars for her disaster relief effort.

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    Inside VPage: The Year Of The Animals

    var-animal-collage.jpg
    With the movie premiere season rapidly drawing to a close, Variety“s VPage takes a somber photographic journey back through 2005, which history will remember as The Year When Animals Rose Up And Overthrew Their Human Co-Stars. The actors” smiling faces belie the horror that uniformly followed the cascade of flashbulbs; our memories of two of the premieres” most regretable tragedies, Vin Diesel”s near-fatal genital-pecking by Gary the Duck at The Pacifier bow, and the white python”s grisly constriction of George Lopez (mere days after his kidney transplant) at a Lemony Snicket afterparty, are incredibly poignant.

    Mark our words: No more! In 2006, the humans will rise again and return to red carpet dominance.

    [Photos: Getty Images]