Buzzfeed's story about the history of TMZ quickly gets to the foundation of TMZ's power: It's often not what the gossip site does publish, but what it doesn't. Early on in the article, writer Anne Helen Petersen makes mention of the "TMZ Vault," the affectionate name for Harvey Levin's trove of scandalous, unpublished, and presumably leveraged material. But why should its contents stay secret?
Writers, by nature, are passive-aggressive, easily agitated creatures prone to taking their work too seriously. Those with the "thickest skin" (or "hide" if you're more literary-minded) have developed this imaginary armor usually through repeated bouts of public criticism and have learned to compartmentalize some of their glaring shortcomings by either a) correcting them or b) ignoring them. Both are successful tracks, usually, and those with the most impenetrable outer layers tend to develop immunity and go about their business accordingly, blissfully aware of their station in life.
Does anyone remember Beejoli Shah? She was the former GENERATE media employee whose toes were once slurped by director Quentin Tarantino after the two met at a party in The Hills a couple of years ago. The reason some of you may know this is because Beejoli sent a graphic play-by-play of the toe-coital encounter in an email to 15 of her closest CC's, including visual evidence of her nuzzling in a photo booth with QT himself, which was haphazardly forwarded and then published on many sites across the internet. The world laughed, Beejoli was fired, the world moved on. (Beejoli is still on Twitter, btw, so Follow Friday, Friendsicles.)
Coming soon (and long overdue, in our humble opinion): the doll version of everyone's favorite, hard-partying, all-natural starlet, Lindsay Lohan. According to Mattel, "this doll captures the likeness of Lindsay Lohan, and her fun, trendy outfit complements her fashion-forward sense of style." We've taken the liberty of pointing out the doll's finer features, confident that it will be flying off the shelves of a toy store near you faster than you can say, "You want to see my driver's license? Don't you know who I am?"
You know what they say about retarded celebrity baby names: They always come in threes. Geena Davis did her part after Gwyneth's star turn by squeezing out twin boys, then saddling them with the names Kian and Kaiis. On any other day, we might have harped on the matching K names, the superflous "i" jammed into the latter rugrat's name, and speculated that she's consigned the kids to at best a Doublemint commercial and at worst a career at Chippendale's. But we'll leave Davis alone. She clearly choked under the massive pressure to come up with something truly asinine after Paltrow's breathtaking achievement in produce-department nomenclature.
Drudge reports on Fahrenheit 9-11's reception at Cannes, where the enthusiastic French gave filmmaker Michael Moore a 20 minute ovation. Luckily, Drudge had access to "Cannes stalwart" and apparent French Film Festival Overreaction Statistician Thierry Fremaux, who declared the outburst the "longest standing ovation in the history of the festival." The applause (during which Moore was actually drowned out by the crowd) wasn't the only manual stimulation being administered; the film shows a US soldier "grabbing a prisoner's genitals through a blanket," an arcane sexual practice we've always coincidentally referred to as a "French handjob."
Is Scarlett Johansson trying to tell the Hollywood Jailbait Brigade to enjoy their youth while they still can? Reports from the set of Synergy*, which she's filming with Topher Grace and Dennis Quaid, have Scarlett letting her inner child out for a playdate. She's known to throw temper tantrums, fight with her mother, and scribble away her downtime with coloring books in her trailer. (Sort of makes us wonder if the "unsanitary" things she did with Benicio Del Toro involved a sandbox. Those things are filthy.) In any case, as least someone in Hollywood's not growing up too fast.
The Blueprint reveals that Fox will renew Tru Calling and Arrested Development, saving both struggling series from the brink of television euthanasia. What's really interesting about this is that Fox seems to have discovered an entirely new business model for television networks. At the new and improved Fox, even badly-rated shows can go on losing money and return for a second season. To celebrate this breakthrough, Fox president Gail Berman will officially present the Fall lineup on Thursday with a ceremonial shovelling of cash down an open elevator shaft.
We all know how MPAA chief Jack Valenti feels about pirates. His dreams are haunted with visions of eye-patched buccaneers coming to rape away precious box office dollars from Shrek 2, and he'll natter on to anyone in earshot about the coming evil of widespread, improved broadband internet access, the movie pirate's equivalent of a 10-inch cock.
Happy to derive its laughs from aspiring actors devouring the genitalia of dead animals on Fear Factor and from hopeless nerds trying to lay third-place beauty pageant contestants on Average Joe, NBC's fall schedule will go light on the sitcoms. The only new comedies will be the animated, Siegfried and Roy-inspired (and, disappointingly, mauling-free) Father of the Pride, and Friends spinoff Joey. NBC head Jeff Zucker is banking on Joey to deliver big ratings numbers in the Friends timeslot; if it falters, expect Matt LeBlanc to ingest a yak labia just before each commercial break.
Former Disney president/"Gay Mafia" paranoiac Michael Ovitz claims in a court deposition that he earned every penny of his $140 million severance because he had to use his magical superagent powers to keep CEO Michael Eisner from running the company into the ground. Among these special abilities seems to be a gift for raiding an incredibly generous expense account, which he used to buy extravagant presents to keep Disney executives and talent (like future president Bob Iger and Home Improvement star Tim Allen) from quitting. Of course, "Breguet Aeronavale watches" and "Lichtenstein prints" may just be expense report translations for "hookers."
Wallow in the numbers that make the existential dread of another Monday morning seem a little less Kierkegaard-y:
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin of Coldplay are now proud parents, as Paltrow gave birth to their first child this weekend. Obviously still addled from a central nervous system full of Demerol, Paltrow named the baby girl Apple (full name: Apple Blythe Alison Martin). Our hearts go out to yet another celebrity offspring burdened by their famous parents' "creativity." As always, things could have been worse; we hear the proud couple wanted to go with "Mango Toaster Paltrow-Martin," but someone in the Screen Actors Guild had already registered under that name. Better luck with the next kid, Gwynnie.
Yesterday, we reported on Drudge's report on Jimmy Kimmel's Wednesday on-air collapse. In the great spirit of reporting on reporting, today we update by linking to E!'s story about Kimmel's near-fatal, totally controversial overdose on...Advil? What the fuck? You take too many Advil and your head puffs up like an hydroencephalitic Charlie Brown? We've never really heeded those warnings on the label, especially the ones about not taking Advil after a bender. Wow. Our liver probably looks like the inside of Courtney Love's nose by now.
The Gossiplist blog has a pic of box office darling Lindsay Lohan engaging in some adult partying. (Click the picture at left to see the whole thing.) We know it's less than two months before she turns 18, but is our little girl on the wrong path? Note the troubling presence of a cigarette in her right hand. Last time we checked, cigarette smoking is prohibited by those under the age of 18. Also note the troubling presence of skanky celebutante/night-vision cabaret act Paris Hilton in the foreground. Last time we checked, Paris was performing sexual acts in a little window on our computer. [Ed.note—There is a button that will make the little window fill the entire screen so you don't miss anything.] Lindsay, cut out the smoking before it's too late!
New Yorkish thinks that NBC's spinoff mania won't end with Friends spawn Joey. Looks like the highly derivative Fall schedule at the Peacock is going to be a little confusing. How are we supposed to remember which show is about the character so dumb that he eats his own feces and which one has the dog?
