Both the NYT's and LAT's stories on Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's cozy relationship with Hollywood have hit the street. Carter received a $100,000 "finder's fee" for suggesting to Imagine producer Brain Grazer that the book a A Beautiful Mind should be made into a movie. We would have scraped up $100,001 for Carter to keep his mouth shut and spare the world from the cloying piece of Oscar-baiting garbage that the movie eventually became. The LAT also casts a dubious glance at Carter's ties to Mirmax's Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who paid Carter and two others $1 million for a Spy retrospective book.

Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs has recently sold a script to Revolution Studios (albeit with two writing partners). Her Exorcism For Dummies is about a slacker who pretends to be an exorcist, but then discovers he actually has "the gift" and has to undo the damage he unleashes on the world. No director is attached yet, but does Hoffs' husband, Austin Powers director Jay Roach, love her enough to get involved with this, ahem, sterling logline?

Variety reports that Josh Schwartz, The O.C's. boy mastermind, is close to a deal with Fox to develop a "companion" series to the hit drama. It won't be a spin-off, but will "mirror The O.C.'s mix of younger and older characters, but with the overall skein skewing slightly older than The O.C." But it looks like we're going to have to wait until January for the tough kid from Cerritos to stir up shit in Laguna Effing Beach.

Molly Shannon is hooking up with 20th Century Fox TV in a rich deal to develop a sitcom for her to produce and star in, according to THR. Shannon was seen most recently in Fox's extremely short-lived Cracking Up, whose abbreviated existence was plagued by feuds between creator Mike White and Fox executives. White (who wrote the screenplay for School of Rock, but is whiffing big-time on TV—Pasadena, anyone?) was fond of throwing fits any time an executive so much as looked at him, and finally quit in a tizzy. Luckily, the ratings weren't good enough for it to matter much. In any event, better luck at Fox this time, Molly!

Paramount Pictures has optioned the rights to former hit television series/paisley fever dream The Partridge Family. Just in case you were momentarily afraid that some iconoclastic, genre-bending genius is behind the Partridge plans, producer Billy Gerber said, "We aren't looking to make it some campy remake but a mainstream family movie in the vein of School of Rock." Whew, that was close. We feared a producer was going to have an original thought and deprive us of a comparison to a recent hit.

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.]

Wired's and BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin has the story of AOL customer service rep turned Hollywood player Heather Robinson, who used her position to get personal information on celebrities and producers and use it to strike up online friendships. She used these friendships (and the dirt she turned up in naughty IM conversations) to score a couple of movie deals. The Perfect Man, which stars Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear and is based on Robinson's real-life exploits creating a fake suitor for her mother, should be in theaters next year. Her second, even more brazen project is E-Girl, which pretties up her scamming of Hollywood personalities to get a career in the movies. Which, we're really, really hoping stars Tara Reid.

First we have Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban producing movies and starring in his own reality show, The Benefactor, in which he gives away a million dollars. According to the Hollywood Reporter, now the Maloof brothers, owners of the Sacramento Kings and the Palms Casino in Vegas, getting into television production with MGM. And guess what? They're going to have a show where they give away a pile of cash, just like Cuban.

Obviously not content to let their sexually uninhibited daughter hog all the camera time, Kathy and Rick Hilton have signed on to do the The Good Life for NBC. On the show, Kathy will scour the country for 10 young women with "unrealized potential" (must. resist.) and set them up in a variety of career fields (resist.sex.tape.joke.) to see which one suits each of the girls best. At the end, the Hiltons will choose one of the girls, give her a year of free rent in the Waldorf-Astoria, and a job in her best career field. Then they will starve the girl until she's emaciated, drape her in skanky couture, and creepily insist on calling her Paris.

Variety reports that Lord of the Rings team Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens are in talks to direct the adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones.