Unfortunately, our powers of projection are useless for any lucrative, practical applications such as betting the horses or reading juries at celebrity rape trials.
Hollywood's famous for allowing people to fail upwards, but Disney makes you a rich man for getting fired. Former Disney President/erstwhile superagent Michael Ovitz testified that he should be able to keep his $140 million severance package because he saved the company more than that by "fixing" CEO Michael Eisner's projects during his tenure. Meanwhile, Eisner will keep his entire $1 million base salary (no doubt just a drop in the bucket compared to money earned in bonuses and incentives), even though he was recently stripped of his chairman title.
Good Plastic Surgery takes a very close look at the Olsen Twins' noses and concludes that they used a bit of their tween fortune to have a little nip n' tuck performed. Normally, we'd speculate on how long it would take before they went the (supposed) Lindsay Lohan route, but the girls are so skinny that if they got their chests done someone would have to push them around in wheelchairs. Fun fact totally unrelated to this post: Last weekend, Mean Girls earned $14 million, while New York Minute pulled in just $6.2 million.
Did you ever have the sneaking feeling that behind the face of your favorite actress was a matrix of circuitry and a tangle of wires? Worth1000.com has a gallery of celebrities Photoshopped into cyborgs. Chilling. And, disturbingly, kind of hot. We're overtaken with an urge to proposition our blender.
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.
Fox recently issued a press release announcing it's new "wildly twisted" reality show, Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay (hosted by The Swan's Amanda Byram), in which two straight guys have to convince their friends they're finally coming out of the closet. Then, just hours later, Fox sent out another press release after gay activist group GLAAD protested some of the original's release's content. TV Barn has both the original release and the reissued one with an apology for their "failed," "ill-chosen" and "inappropriate" attempt at humor. The rereleased memo excised the phrase "It’s a heterosexual male’s worst nightmare: turning gay overnight" and a reference to a "jury of their queers."
· Remember all of the buzz over the Friends finale last week? Spoilers flying left and right, hand-wringing pronouncements on What Friends Meant. Frasier ends tonight, and largely no one gives an eff. It did win a record 31 Emmys, but that's sort of like the kid who's just really bad at math and has rosy cheeks winning the Triple Jump at the Special Olympics every year. Anyway, Slate's Dana Stevens manages to use the word "jejune" while kissing Frasier goodbye and declaring the end of the "adult" sitcom.
· Harvey Weinstein is writing his memoirs. He'll probably leave out the part about all the money he probably owes Kevin Smith and Tarantino.
· The Smoking Gun has an old Friends test audience report that should have saved the world eleven years of watching Matthew Perry's head go from tiny to engorged to really engorged to sort of skinny.
· Lindsay Lohan is hosting the MTV Movie Awards. Her agent says they're real, by the way.
· Number of people in Hawaii, according to the Census Bureau: 1.2 million. Number of phone calls from Hawaii ostensibly voting for Hawaiian Jasmine Trias on American Idol last night: 1.3 million.
· No, it's not Hooters. E3: Nerds concoct entire industry just to hold a convention where they can have their pictures taken with scantily-clad women pretending not to be repulsed.
And now some Kabbalah news so hot it seems to have come from THE FUTURE! According to a story with a Friday, May 14th timestamp at Big News Network (okay, we'll admit, we have no idea who they are), Madonna and Guy Ritchie have shaved off son Rocco's hair in accordance with some Kabbalah custom. A tip from a Defamer reader seems to corroborate the GOSSIP FROM THE FUTURE! (Cue whooshing sound effect.) Says the tipster:
Motion Picture Association of America topper Jack Valenti was again in action on Capitol Hill Wednesday, this time to discuss a bill that would allow consumers to make backup copies of movies on DVD, according to Variety. Valenti opposes changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which would allow for the copying of DVDs, claiming that it would "devastate" the market. He further commented, "There are not nearly enough tiny people to hide in the duplicating machinery to enforce our copyrights, and even if there were, these anti-piracy munchkins would have no idea whether someone was making a copy for home use or for nefarious purposes. It's just not feasible. The tinies can't spend their entire days conducting investigations inside set-top boxes, they have gold to hide and teeth to collect."
While pinky-membered hubby Arnold is busy governating and shilling for wacky, Japanese concerns, California First Lady Maria Shriver will sell jewelry depicting the state's landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood sign, and carvings of actors getting blowjobs from hookers that they may or may not know are trannies. Click the image to the left to see the bracelet in all of its glory.
Sure, this isn't the newsiest news we've ever heard, but since we've breathlessly been following the media blackout of the Writers Guild contract talks, it's worth mentioning: The writers and studios have adjourned talks until June 1st. This seems to be good news for the television networks at next week's "upfront" meetings, as they try make advertisers overpay for commercial time on ambitious sitcoms that are doomed to die on the vine and for the fourth iteration of Law & Order.
Drudge reports that Jimmy Kimmel was rushed to the hospital after suffering an on-air allergic reaction in which his face swelled, his voice went raspy, and his eyes closed shut. Thankfully, the crew was there to provide some assistance; if he had to rely on his viewers to call 911, Kimmel could have expired while USC's Beta Theta Pi chapter finished its marathon waterfall chug.
As upstanding citizens of the world's cultural capital, we are proud to shun the Britney's Every Move Industrial Complex. People in Los Angeles are only vaguely aware of this Spears character, and certainly not at all interested in her love life or the color of her nipples. Defamer, as a representative of this fine city, remains blissfully oblivious to the controversy raging over her supposed Playboy shoot, or her ongoing dry-humping of a dancer with a pregnant fiancée. And that's the way we like it. Really, thighs like hers have no business on this coast.
Who are the latest victims of Hollywood's insensitivity? Rural Americans. First Fox exported our celebutante trash to defile a small Arkansas town (not to mention this summer's slut-a-riffic road trip sequel). Now CBS wants to inflict a real-life version of The Beverly Hillbillies on the world and UPN wants to document Amish teens going buck-wild in the big city.
...A delusion that they're going to make it in this town and prove their drama coach back in Skokie wrong? A pair of enhanced breasts that make men wistful for beach balls? No, everyone has a car, silly! The new L.A. Weekly dedicates itself to the city's love affair with the automobile. Pick up the LAW's car issue and you'll learn fun facts like the BMW 760Li is known in Hollywood circles as the "Jew Canoe," or pour over articles with subtitles like "The Blinging of Los Angeles." But don't let all of the car coverage let your four-wheeled passion get too heated. No one wants you singeing your "gear-shift knob" on your ride's tailpipe.
The headline made our testicles [Ed.note—Or ovaries!] instantly retract in horror: "Stars Face Unmade Beds as Cannes Hotel Staff Strike." Another French strike, this time by hotel workers, and Brad Pitt faces the very real possibility of laying his interview-weary head down on last night's pillow case.
What happens when your glossy magazine tries to throw a party filled with celebrities and nobody shows up? You still have your shitty party, and pretend to be thrilled that Jonathan Silverman took time off from watching The Single Guy reruns on A&E long enough to drink your free booze. An attendee details the low-light carnage at last night's Los Angeles Confidential magazine's party at—yes, you're reading this correctly—a Beverly Hills Mercedes dealership. Note to L.A. Confidential: This crowd would've chewed off your arm for a cash bar at Hollywood Geo.
In a shocking turn of events that may cause a sharp, temporary downturn in Disney CEO Michael Eisner's effigy hangings by shareholders, The Walt Disney Company reported a 71% profit increase. It's probably premature to tell the investor mob to extinguish their torches and halt Molotov cocktail production. Don't worry, my pretties, soon the time will come where you can storm Sleeping Beauty's castle like the Bastille. Just be patient and try not to die from heatstroke inside those giant Mickey and Minnie heads.
