Here's the actual launch memo announcing "fox 21," Fox's new, low-budget production arm that's "aimed at producing edgy and inventive scripted and alternative series on lower budgets." [Ed.note—"Alternative series" sounds a little like "strike insurance." But what do we know?]
All of the filthy details of a former Friends writers' assistant sexual harassment lawsuit against the show's writers came out a week or two ago (we like page 7). But FindLaw columnist Joanna Grossman discusses whether the writers' comments on their "personal sexual preferences and experiences...emphasizing anal sex, oral sex, big breasts, young girls and cheerleaders," their doodles of "cheerleaders with exposed breasts and vaginas," or their pantomimed "male masturbation" might be legally permissible as a job requirement, justified by "creative necessity."
After a two-day break to consider proposals, the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are returning to negotiations, trying to avert a strike that would wipe out the world as we know it. The WGA's agreement with the studios expired at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, but talks have continued amid a media blackout.
Disney is blocking Miramax (a Disney division) from releasing bullhorn-wielding/Oscar night grandstander Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 911, which criticizes President Bush's actions surrounding September 11th and links the Bush family to prominent Saudis, including the bin Ladens. Way to go, embattled Disney CEO Michael Eisner! Taking a stand to protect your President! Maybe you sympathize with him—you know, two swingin' young guys desperately trying to hang onto their jobs. Sure, it might sound like censorship, but that's all the rage now. You gotta ride what's hot, even if you have to mud wrestle with Harvey Weinstein.
In discussing the possibility that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher might have recently married in a top-secret, Kabbalicious ceremony, we wondered what said ceremony might look like. Protocols (tagline: "A group of Jews endeavors towards total domination of the blogosphere") blogger Steven I. Weiss actually picked up a phone and tried to find out. [Ed. note—That sounds uncomfortably close to "reporting." You're a blogger, now put that vodka bottle back in your craw and keep typing, monkey!] Of course, what follows is totally expected, except that Weiss doesn't mention the part where they try to sell you a case of their magical water:
The sickies over at Fleshbot have pointed out that pictures from the Gena Lee Nolin sex tape have finally hit the internet. This doesn't have nearly the same world-shaking implications of the Paris Hilton tape (anorexic socialites don't snap in half during sex? Damn!), but there's something to be said for seeing naked celebrities, even if they're so far off the radar that it takes "leaked" doggystyling video to get people to say "Oh yeah, she used to be on Baywatch or something, right?"
The London Daily Telegraph has an early review of the upcoming mega-budget, mega-blockbuster, Troy. According to critic John Hisock, it's so sweeping that it "comes close to justifying the enormous amount of money spent on it." Just how much money Warner Brothers poured into it is, as usual, up for debate—the studio claims $175 million, but others guess at a quarter of a billion dollars. (Apparently, thousands of sweaty Greeks in metal skirts don't come cheap. Who knew?)
Movie Poop Shoot's "Hollywood Elsewhere" columnist Jeffrey Wells puts out a plea to find his son a summer job in Los Angeles. The kid's got his own car, and according to the proud papa, "good-looking"—he included pics of the kid (nope, we're not posting them, but that's Dad on the left) just in case someone wanted to pre-screen based on purely superficial criteria. This is Los Angeles, and without your own car and some nice features the best you're going to do is, well, he'll probably wind up running Disney next week. And, according to the elder Wells, he works cheap. (He's an Internet columnist's kid, not a Katzenberg.) Hey, is he Jewish? Maybe we can get him hooked up with an Olsen, too.
Blogger NewYorkish assembles a timeline of Matthew McConaughey's hairline. If the dates are correct, it looks like the mane of his youth receded like the tide, only to come majestically crashing back as he matured. That's usually the way it works, right? There are also great pics of Nicolas Cage and Harry Connick, Jr, with some very angry-looking, accusatory arrows jabbing at their terrorized follicles. Maybe Cage just wanted to look a tad more hirsute for his alleged, secret fiancée.
We're hearing that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have tied the highly age-inappropriate knot in a private Kabbalah ceremony in Florida. In Touch Weekly will run the cover story this week. Developing, as those other, filthy gossip rags say...
Fresh off the Web press, The Hollywood Reporter's Brooks Boliek sits down for a dialogue with Motion Picture Association of America president and CEO Jack Valenti. Boliek asks him about the MPAA's seemingly Luddite-like/Hulk-smash-interweb! anti-technology stance. "Contrary to popular notion, there are many terrifically smart people in the movie business who have vision and know where the industry is going," defends Valenti.
In the triumphant spirit of Rain Man, I Am Sam, and A League of Their Own, Rosie O'Donnell will play a retarded woman who spends her days riding city buses in a CBS made-for-TV movie, Riding the Bus With My Sister. [Ed. note—We checked, and Rosie's character in League wasn't actually retarded, but close enough. This is a blog. Rock on.]
Zap2it.com has a very handy schedule of all of the 2004 television season finales. For instance, tonight is the last episode of Scrubs on NBC at 9:30 p.m. And we all know that Friends goes away—FOREVER—this Thursday. But is Zap2it a master of subtle parody? Not only does it seems like they're making up shows for the schedule (come on, both a Like Family and a Happy Family?), they're making up entire networks. UPN? ABC? We're pretty sure we've never heard of either of those.
A spy reports from the filming of the first half-hour of the upcoming, hour-long Friends series finale. Beware, and continue only if you want some of the details of the final episode ruined for you. We love spoilers, so we read them, and were really surprised that Chandler was deported to Mexico and Phoebe was fatally mauled by ferrets. Trust us, it all makes sense in context. Read on...
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This is Tina Fey's 1992 UVA senior class photo. Yeah, we miss the glasses, too.
Defamer's Hollywood obsessions include celebrity agent-swapping, aborted pilots, producer bully tactics, aggrieved production assistants, ridiculous script deals, the newest technology in breast implants, and, above all, sweet, sweet box office. We think the gossip in Hollywood has focussed a bit too much on the glamour, and not enough on the important stuff — namely, the cold hard cash. (And, even better, the promise of cash that never materializes.) The real stars of Hollywood, after all, aren't even household names... yet. We hope that L.A., the greatest, cruelest city in the world, is finally getting the gossip rag it deserves.
Gossiplist has a potential Bachelor spoiler (so read only at your own peril). It seems that possibly-cut Giants third-string quarterback and rose-bearer Jesse Palmer might be taking his snaps from contestant Tara, as a local paper in her Oklahoma hometown has spotted him there (though we suppose he could have been there for an on-camera "Meet the Parents"). And Tara likes the football types; she got engaged to one that played for the University of Oklahoma during their 2001 Rose Bowl appearance. Perhaps he can hold down a roster spot in the NFL better than Palmer?
While the rest of the media zigs under a rock to avoid FCC censure in the wake of the Premeditatedly-Exposed Titty That Ate The World, HBO zagged and crammed at least 63 permutations of the "f-word" [Ed. note—"Fuck"] into last night's episode of Deadwood, according to Ann Oldenburg of USA Today. She fails to tally the instances of "cocksucker" in the Western's dialogue; our unofficial count came to "Jesus, they swear a lot on this show." We're going to assume that while Oldenburg could demurely refer to the "f-word" [Ed. note—"Fuck"] in her article, it would have been a little harder to work in a reference to the more obscure label "CS-word" or the phonetically-minded "See-Esser."
