Saturday, August 18, 2007
Week In Review: Remembering Merv
12:41PM Defamer Hollywood | · Merv Griffin is probably in Heaven right now, which, let’s face it, is one of the gayest destinations we can think of. · K-Fed’s subpoena spree spares no one. · Sophia spreads her legs for art. · Corey Feldman graciously grants best friend Corey Haim full access to his wife. · Steven Segal wants the FBI to apologise for ruining a promising career. · Paris Hilton’s philanthropic makeover might not have been entirely her own idea. Her Kitson clothing line, we strongly suspect, is. · HBO gives John from Cincinnati just enough artistic rope to hang itself. · Road Warrior Lindsay Lohan’s quarry sues. · AOL Teen spends some time building self-esteem. · “You were both mistakes!” part-time lesbian Britney Spears tells her children. · Ben Kingsley on Mary-Kate’s feisty face-sucking technique. · A bulgestastic script delivery boy brightens the day of the city’s studio receptionists. We have pictures! · So You Think You Can Dance: Way gay. · A banner year for shitty threequels. · Jim Carrey’s zero-figure paycheck. · Everything you didn’t want to know about where Jonathan Silverman bones his wife on Polaroid’s dime. More »
Short Ends: Paris Hilton: Business Genius
12:39PM Defamer Hollywood | · You think the insanity outside Kitson was an accident? Here’s 10 reasons why Paris Hilton is a business genius. · A gallery of pictures from today’s star-studded Merv Griffin funeral, including best fag-hag Nancy Reagan (in–gasp!–white), and a Seacrest-in-mourning, working the same fierce sunglasses as his blonde companion. · Join the crusade to halt filming downtown, possibly saving Nicole Kidman from untold injury. · We forget: Are The Buzzcocks playing the Giant Juiced Dong stage or the Glistening Tube stage? · And finally, enjoy this all-kitten reenactment of poorly received Body Snatchers remake, The Invasion. More »
Finally, An Affordable Way To Dress Like Paris Hilton
9:45AM Defamer Hollywood | While some may attribute Paris Hilton’s recent string of lightly charitable acts of calculated kindness to her crack team of image-rehabilitative professionals, there’s no denying the heiress’s sincere commitment to another area of her endeavours: The affixing of her name to crappy products. Now, in addition to Paris Hilton perfume, records, and mobile phone videogames, comes the Paris Hilton clothing collection, every item lovingly constructed by the tiny hands of Vietnam’s most talented sweatshop toddlers. Its debut last night, at celebrity trend-whoring temple Kitson (who donated 20% of the day’s sales to charity – way to get into the giving-back spirit, guys!), caused a near riot on Robertson Blvd.: Police and city workers were called in to handle the crowd and a lane of traffic was closed as Paris Hilton unveiled her clothing line Thursday at a trendy boutique. The heiress, author, singer, perfume designer and reality-TV star unveiled the line at Kitson, a boutique known for its celebrity clientele. The lane was closed for pedestrians’ safety, a city spokesman said. More »
Ethan Hawke On The Difficulty Of Loving A More Successful Actress
9:40AM Defamer Hollywood | As much as we’d like to see our favourite celebrity marriages succeed, the sad truth is that the majority of romantic unions featuring one or more paparazzi -targets will end in crushing disappointment, as the two slowly come to realise that the disparity in their per-picture asking prices has wedged a permanent rift between them. Still, like so many other blatantly obvious yet unspoken Hollywood truths, that fact is never actually addressed. Instead, we get familiar clichés like “irreconcilable differences,” and publicist mainstay, “the two remain great friends” – all of which makes the former Mr. Uma Thurman’s candidness on the subject at a recently taped episode of Shootout all the more refreshing: “It’s unfair when one person’s career is taking off and the other is really suffering,” the 36-year-old actor tells AMC’s “Shootout” in an interview slated to air Sunday. More »
Trade Roundup: Jamie Foxx Already Preparing Next Oscar Speech
9:30AM Defamer Hollywood | · Jamie Foxx effectively pre-nominates himself for a future Oscar by signing on to star in the DreamWorks drama The Soloist, based on a true story of Nathan Ayers, a homeless, schizophrenic Julliard dropout who plays his violin and cello on the streets of downtown LA, and who developed a special friendship with LAT columnist Steve Lopez. Our hearts are already warmed on the logline alone. [Variety] · We’re overjoyed by the news that HBO has picked up Flight of the Conchords (for our money, the funniest show on TV) for a second season, but thoroughly ambivalent that Entourage is getting a fifth. [THR] · Former ICMer Ed Limato and his A-list roster of clients (Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Steve Martin, Michael Biehn. Wait, Michael Biehn?) end up at William Morris. But most importantly, Limato and new boss Jim Wiatt are still deciding whether or not they’ll continue the agent’s geriatric pre-Oscar blowout. [Variety] · Scarlett Johansson is trying to book every available job in town before the strike hits. [THR] · Dakota Fanning will team up with Djimon Hounsou and that guy from the Fantasic Four (the firey one, not the rubbery one, we think) on the thriller Push, about “a group of young American ex-pats with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities who hide from a U.S. government agency in Hong Kong and band together to try to escape the control of the division.” Whew, no mention of rape. We’re relieved Fanning’s doing something lighter and not revisiting that regrettable phase of her career. [Variety] More »
‘Premiere’ Does The Ranking-Powerful-Hollywood-Women Thing
9:15AM Defamer Hollywood | Frequent visitors of this site know all too well that there is nothing in life we enjoy more than online slideshows and lists that seek to rank the influence enjoyed by members of selected Hollywood groups once they’ve subtracted out all the straight, white males who run the entertainment industry. Imagine, then, our delight at having our attention called to Premiere’s 100 Women in Hollywood feature, a pretty comprehensive celebration of show business ladypower – at twice the size of Var’s recent offering, nearly everyone who’s ever been promoted above the assistant level seems to be included (and even Lindsay Lohan made the cut for showing her fellow influentials how to efficiently squander their career momentum). Enjoy; if you’re anything like us, the rest of your Friday afternoon will be lost to flipping through slide after slide featuring headshots of your favorite triumvirates of Endeavor agents or quartets of CAA gals, any of whom could have you killed with a single phone call. 100 Women In Hollywood [Premiere.com] More »
Steven Seagal Thinks The FBI Should Apologise For Killing His Career
9:00AM Defamer Hollywood | Steven Seagal, star of such three-word-titled, aikido-enhanced blockbuster entertainments as Above the Law, Hard to Kill, and Out for Justice, thinks that the FBI’s overzealousness in drawing him into the Anthony Pellicano Wiretapping Trial of the Century (you may or may not remember the claims that he had something to do with the intimidation of a reporter who was working on some stories the actor may not have thoroughly enjoyed) is to blame for his career never reaching the stratospheric heights achieved by early 1990s peer Jean-Claude Van Damme. Seagal reaches out to the LAT with his hopes for an apology from the feds: “False FBI accusations fuelled thousands of articles saying that I terrorise journalists and associate with the Mafia,” Seagal, 56, said recently in his first public comments on the case. “These kinds of inflammatory allegations scare studio heads and independent producers – and kill careers.” More »
Graffiti Artist Reveals The Actual Reason David Geffen Won’t Return Your Calls
8:50AM Defamer Hollywood | You may at some point in your travels have stumbled upon the art of prvtdncr: Working primarily in spraypaint on somebody-else’s-building, the sloganeering graffiti artist throws up provocative phrases that are meant to hold a magnifying makeup mirror up to certain, unseemly facts about the true nature of Hollywood. As our friends at The WOW Report point out, BUTT magazine’s current L.A.-themed issue devotes eight pages to some of his creations, including a less-than-generous sentiment regarding the Most Powerful Gay in the Universe. More »
Sober Buddies
8:45AM Defamer Hollywood | Fellow celebrity SCRAM endorser Tracy Morgan publicly offers himself as a sober shoulder for thrice-rehabbing starlet Lindsay Lohan to cry on. It seems like Morgan’s been keeping it together, but we’re a little scared about what might happen if these two ever meet, especially if a car is involved. [NY Daily News] More »
