Kim Kardashian’s origin story has, at this point, passed into legend: Before Ray J, before Kanye, before Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, she was the personal assistant to the original sex tape star-cum-reality-TV personality Paris Hilton. But how did she climb her way past her old boss? According to a dirt-filled new Buzzfeed story: By spilling tea on her to tabloids.
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Anne Helen Petersen makes mention of the "TMZ Vault," the affectionate name for Harvey Levin's trove of scandalous, unpublished, and presumably leveraged material.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?
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?"
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.
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!
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.
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:
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.
From a source on the set of the cancelled Sharon Osbourne Show, which is finally finishing production:
The L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke updates her story on the ongoing LAT and NYT investigations of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. Now the Wall Street Journal is in on the investigation, and the LAT may be the first major news outlet to go to press with the story, possibly as early as Monday. According to Finke's article, LAT writer Michael Cieply has uncovered "six cases already' of Carter benefiting financially from his relationship with Hollywood. And there's a lot of heat surrounding Carter supposedly charging outrageous amounts for his "consulting services."
Both the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times are investigating Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter to see if he is benefiting financially from the magazine's Hollywood coverage, according to the L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke. A possible windfall for Carter because of his regime's loving salad-tossing of its celeb cover story subjects? Sounds juicy to us...DEVELOPING.
For the low, low price of $1,000 per plate, you may be able to get a front row seat for a strangling. Next week's Steven J. Ross Humanitarian Award dinner will honor Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who will leave the safety of his impressive office fortifications to be feted in New York City. Harvey and Bob Weinstein are Journal Chairs (whatever that entails) for the event. And we all know that Eisner is blocking the release of the Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 911, that the Weinsteins are dying to distribute
Did Mean Girls star/jailbait box office champ Lindsay Lohan reinvest some of her Freaky Friday cash into her Torso Fund? Awful Plastic Surgery seems to think so. And if the speculation is killing you and you want to apply a more empirical approach to your questioning, our deranged cousin at Fleshbot chewed through the ropes long enough to post some more revealing pics (NSFW). Seems like Lindsay hasn't had them long enough to have mastered the fine art of keeping them inside her dress.
Blogger A Fly On The Wall has a report from the set of Meet the Fockers, the upcoming Meet the Parents sequel. After Barbra Streisand admonished an assistant director for committing the sin of calling her "Barb," Dustin Hoffman has made it his mission to torture her; he now insists on referring to her as Barb [Ed.note—Is this Hoffman character fucking insane?] and outfitted the crew in "Bush 2004" buttons. Barbra declared Hoffman a "putz" and stormed off the set, and Robert DeNiro had to talk her into returning. We're waiting for the prankster Hoffman to put on a Yentl mask and threaten to have the craft service guy killed because he's out of egg bagels.
We hear a rumor that the esteemed William Morris Agency, in an effort to better focus their money-making power, has started quietly cutting low-earning clients (this is great) alphabetically. Says a tipster:
