Defamer

Short Ends

Short Ends: Hurricane Telethon Countdown Much Shorter Than Expected

· Wow, the Telethon Countdown was much shorter than we expected. NBC Uni's "Concert for Hurricane Relief" will air on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC on Friday night at 8 pm EST, but it looks like we're going to only get the tape delay version of Leonardo DiCaprio and Harry Connick on the West Coast.
· There are only three days left to vote for which half-pilot wins Bravo's Situation: Comedy and goes on to be completely ignored by NBC's desperate programming executives. Don't worry, it's all anonymous, so no one has to know about the secret shame of your viewership. Stephen's Life is totally gonna win, right?
· We knew that there was something fishy about the rumor that Al Pacino is dating Rose McGowan. Especially because we're quietly dating her, and she denied the whole thing to us.
· The "A" is for "Ass-Whoopin'": Vivica A. Fox warns Jimmy Kimmel that a beating may be in his future if he persists in publicly taunting her very good friend, Star Jones.
· Everyone else has already linked to the "black people loot, white people find" post, but we're going to do it anyway.

5:00 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
45 views

rip-taylor.jpg To Do

To Do: Arms, Line, Unveiled

· Wednesday night music round-up: The Blood Arm at the Troubadour, Silversun Pickups with the Golden Arms at Spaceland; the Oohlas at King King.
· J. Keith van Straaten's "What’s My Line?" live-on-stage game show picks up any slack in your midweek plans at the Acme Comedy Theatre with Rip Taylor, three other celebrity panelists, and the obligatory Mystery Guest. Five bonus points to anyone who remembered Taylor's The $1.98 Beauty Show without help from his bio.
· Outfest screens Unveiled, a tale of lesbians-without-borders, persecution, and cross-dressing for the sake of survival, at the Egyptian. Hott.

4:30 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
60 views

morgan-freeman.jpg News

Countdown To The Telethon: Hollywood Hurricane Relief Efforts Start Up

Finally, some news about Hollywood's involvement with the hurricane that doesn't involve fretting about delays to Road House 2 or the the future of tax-friendly productions in New Orleans. Morgan Freeman, the closest thing to the Voice of God that the entertainment industry can muster, is helping to organize an auction for hurricane victims, and Disney's announced it's kicking in $2.5 million for disaster relief. (You can donate to the relief efforts directly via the Red Cross and FEMA websites.) More »

3:54 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
54 views

universal-studios2.jpg Universal

Insecurity At The Universal Lot

Forwarded mass e-mail day continues at Defamer, as a soon-to-be inconvenienced reader sends along a note from the powers-that-be at the Universal lot, which may soon find itself being picketed by the subcontracted security force charged with keeping the studio safe and relatively free of out-of-work actors randomly dropping off headshots in every unlocked office: More »

2:21 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
87 views

janice-dickinson-sip.jpg Theater

What Would Janice Do If She Forgot Her Own Life?

For reasons that are completely inscrutable to us (really, is there no limit to people's appetite for campy crap?), some actual human beings attended "original supermodel" and reality TV personality Janice Dickinson's one-woman show, the imaginatively titled What Would Janice Do?, at the El Rey last night. The Office Monkey blog posts a review of the debacle: More »

1:51 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
147 views

spiderman-chucky.jpg Culture

Eavesdropping On Fake Spider-Man

We've long been irrationally obsessed with the cheaply-attired superheroes and movie characters who stalk the section of Hollywood Boulevard in front the Chinese Theatre, corralling tourists for uncomfortably posed, five-dollar Polaroids. LAist feeds our obsession, overhearing this conversation across the street from the Chinese: More »

1:24 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
99 views

drew-carey.jpg Drew Carey

Drew Carey And The Chamber Of Secrets

A spy for NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove escapes from Drew Carey's Hollywood compound, filing this brief report about a very special room tucked away in the actor's house: More »

1:00 PM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
844 views

ted-harbert.jpg E

E! Tries To Determine Exactly How Cheap It Is

The treasured, undercompensated employees of the notoriously, er, frugal E! network (as the joke goes within the company, you can't spell "cheap" without "E") have been informed that their boss feels their finanical pain. In a e-missive that just went out to the entire L.A. office, fearless leader Ted Harbert has done the second-best thing to giving across-the-board raises to his starving troops—he's commissioned a compensation study (to be completed in "a few months") to determine how his underlings' paystubs stack up against the competition's: More »

11:43 AM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
74 views

stars-flee.jpg Trade Roundup

Trade Round-Up: Trades On Katrina Watch

· Hurricane Katrina causes the evacuation of the productions of Michael Keaton's The Last Time, Lucy Lawless's The Vampire Bats, and, perhaps most disappointingly, Road House 2. Don't miss the "Stars Flee Hurricane Katrina" graphic on the Variety homepage. [Variety]
· "With possibly hundreds dead, many injured and millions displaced — including most of New Orleans, which was underwater — reporters found themselves covering a story that got bigger as daylight rose on what looked on television like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie." Do we really need the Hollywood point of reference when we can see the actual tragedy on TV, not recreated on sound stages? [THR]
· Jim Carrey is in talks to costar with Ben Stiller in Fox comedy Used Guys, about two obsolete "pleasure clones" who are "rendered obsolete by superior models whose enhancements include better listening and lovemaking skills." [Variety]
· Producers continue to flounder trying to fill James Bond's empty tuxedo, with Casino Royale's start date looming in January. They're hilariously picky about who gets to replace to the too-pricey Pierce Brosnan—Broadway-loving Hugh Jackman isn't "masucline enough," Ewan McGregor is "too short," Eric Bana's not "good-looking enough," and we think we all know about what's wrong with Colin Farrell. [THR]
· Need something to take your mind off of the hurricane coverage? How about a story on the Venice Film Festival being on high-alert for potential terrorist attacks? [Variety]

11:02 AM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
70 views

lohan-head.jpg Lindsay Lohan

New Gasoline Tossed On Lohan-Duff Feud

It's been so long since we've heard anything about the once-intense Lindsay Lohan-Hilary Duff feud (starring Aaron Carter as Helen of Troy) that we'd assumed it had sputtered out all on its own; after all, how is Lohan supposed to find the time to actively hate on a bitch while spending seven nights a week haunting Hollywood clubs and monitoring her extreme, puberty-driven weight loss? There are only so many hours in the day. To her publicist's credit, however, Lohan's now claiming that she tried to be the bigger starlet and attempted to finally squash the spat, but Duff's sister was all, I don't think so!: More »

10:28 AM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
158 views

sheard-headline.jpg Deaths

Inside The Obituary: Burying Hitler


It's much easier to headline the obituary with a reference to the just-deceased actor's Empire role (he played Admiral Ozzel, if you didn't know that already) than his apparent struggle with typecasting, as Sheard played Adolf Hitler in Indiana Jones and Last Crusade...and three other times. Somewhat ironically, he didn't land the role in the 1973 TV movie The Death of Adolf Hitler; he had to settle for lesser National Socialist Heinrich Himmler (whom he would also play again). More »

9:47 AM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
135 views

TV shows

The Donald Hand-Picks New Crop Of Apprentices

After none of his personal favorites from the casting process for the third installment of The Apprentice made it through to the show, Donald Trump spent the entire season unhappy with the cast, a prisoner of his own fake boardroom. This season, however, Trump seized control, and the new lineup of Armani-clad firing fodder will reflect The Donald's predictable exquisite taste. From the NY Times: More »

8:33 AM on Wed Aug 31 2005
By Mark
146 views

Short Ends

Short Ends: Martha Stewart Will Not Bite The Doily

· Martha Stewart is callously ignoring our generously offered Apprentice dismissal catchphrase, "Bite the doily," in favor of the unfathomably less catchy "You just don't fit in."
· Anchorwomen, please don't forget that this is a very stressful time for your co-workers in the weather department. They don't need your sass right now.
· The cops are nickel-and-diming Jennifer Aniston's cheapskate stalker: "'The petty theft charge is a result of him taking a cab and stiffing the cab driver,' Los Angeles County District Attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison said. 'He took a cab from Santa Barbara to Malibu and then didn't pay.'"
· Teaching kids to respect copyrights has never been so much fun! "(kid with blue, deformed, football-shaped head) a pirate is what we call someone who steals stuff online, including songs... pirates nowadays don't have to look like pirates, it's just what we call people who steal stuff online. Let's go ask Cookie what to do, come on!"
· The Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum in Graz, Austria, is closing its doors. We hope that his original set of steroid-shriveled testes can find a temporary home until they can one day occupy a permanent place of honor in his presidential library.

5:19 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
105 views

gwyneth-proof.jpg To Do

To Do: Gwynnie, Brody, Janice

· The ArcLight is screening Miramax's long-delayed Proof (filmed, we think, in 1879) with a Q&A with director John Madden and Anthony "Sir Anthony" Hopkins. No appearance by Gwyneth Paltrow is listed, making your heartbreak all the more acute once you fall in love with her all over again during the film.
· A nice little Tuesday night music round-up: Smog at the Knitting Factory; the amazing John Vanderslice at Amoeba; Big Japan, featuring Adam "Seth Cohen" Brody on the skins, at the Viper Room.
· Sometimes (and we know we probably should never admit this) we list things just to make the nonstop barrage of press releases stop (stop, please?). With that in mind, Janice Dickinson's one-woman show is at the El Rey. We're sure she has incredibly insightful things to say about sharing a bathroom with Jose Canseco and Omarosa.

4:54 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
77 views

sag-billboard.jpg Sag

SAG Elections Roll Ever Closer


We feel no shame in admitting our ignorance of the issues at play in the upcoming SAG election, but that won't stop us from playing amateur strategist. If the Guy Who's Married to CSI's Marg Helgenberger is going to park a rolling campaign billboard with his headshot on it next to SAG HQ, then Chandler's Mom* is really going to need to step up her promotional efforts. She can't rest on the goodwill generated by those Old Navy commercials forever. More »

3:53 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
101 views

george-clooney-tux.jpg George Clooney

Experts Skeptical About George Clooney's Classy Casino

It's only been a day since George Clooney and his partners announced their plans to open a "classy" casino and resort in Las Vegas, and already so-called "experts" from the gaming industry are crapping all over their fancy dreams: More »

3:20 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
188 views

hla.jpg Culture

Defamer Location Scout: Hot Lesbian Action In Your Home!

We've long heralded Craigslist as a an invaluable tool for all kinds of Hollywood professionals, from those looking for some help in the casting process to those seeking an assist from the kind of discreet go-getters that can only be contacted through an anonymous personal ad. CL once again amazes with its seemingly neverending utility, this time greasing the wheels of the arduous indie film location scouting process: More »

2:45 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
662 views

roosevelt-biteme.jpg Tropicana

Tales From The Trop: Still No Love For Roosevelt Guests

After dropping a handful of c-notes on their room at the Roosevelt and dining at the hotel's Dakota restaurant, city-hopping brother blog Gridskipper's L.A. correspondent and a friend still found themselves unable to penetrate celebrity-worshipping proprietress Amanda Scheer Demme's perimeter defenses at the Tropicana Bar, prompting this scribbled "comment card" (at left) and yet another chapter in the rapidly expanding canon of anti-Roosevelt/Trop literature: More »

12:50 PM on Tue Aug 30 2005
By Mark
130 views

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