Indeed, not a single celebrity died during yesterday's 5.8 earthquake in Los Angeles. But that's not the only (yes we're morbid) bad news: Mother Nature didn't hamper a single reality television show filming in the area. The jerkoffs on Big Brother, who aren't allowed any communication with the outside world, were told by producers that the reason the soundstage was shaking was not because Kirstie Alley had a new show filming next door, but because tectonic plates were moving about beneath them. But there is one minuscule bit of good news: On Sunset Tan, E!'s hopeless irrelevant show about skin cancer, "sales rep and cast member Holly Huddleston was stuck in a tanning booth when things started to vibrate during an FHM photo shoot."
Kudos to Ryan Seacrest brand extension the E! channel, which is making no secret of its programming mantra: Our stars must go to prison. At PaidContent's EconCeleb conference — where the paparazzi panel bitched at each other over celebrity rights and Harvey Levin explained his moral compass — E!'s CMO Suzanne Kolb weighed in on shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, The Simple Life, and Living Lohan*, where it's common practice for talent to spend some time behind bars. "A lot of our talent have gone to jail and we’ve been very clear on that." And that wasn't even the most amusing line of the whole panel. That award goes to Access Hollywood executive producer Rob Silverstein: "Access Hollywood follows the same guidelines that NBC News follows when it comes to reporting any news story." Wait, so that means checkbooks are kosher, right?
On Monday night's episode, 20-year old Bailey Hanks won MTV's Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods competition. Tonight, at the Palace Theatre, just a number of weeks since the show started taping, she'll take the stage for the first time in Legally Blonde, replacing Laura Bell Bundy.
This is great news for every other singer-actress working the theatre circuit, for Ms. Hanks had never seen a Broadway show, nor auditioned to appear in one, before sending in a tape to MTV to become, in a single effort, both a reality television and Broadway stage star.
Congratulations on having the entire industry already hate you! Break a leg before they do it for you.
With Elle's reality show Stylista in the can, The CW screened the first episode on Saturday for critics at the Television Critics Association's event in L.A. If reports are to be believed, it's quite scathing! As we could tell back in May, the show's real appeal comes from fashion news director Anne Slowey, who's Miranda Priestly-d herself into an on-air diva.
Slowey claims to have carried 32 goldfish in 32 separate bowls to a woman's house, without killing them, as part of her duties on Day One at Vogue. She also claims that on Stylista, she's "just being myself." Heh. CONTINUED »
Despite the fact that Dina Lohan is an executive producer of Living Lohan, her influence over the editing process can't hide the fact that she is a famewhore first and mother second. During last night's episode, Dina was "surprised" by her son Cody and "forced" to perform at the Pearl in Las Vegas in a totally spur-of-the-moment routine with some So You Think You Can Dance hasbeen. It's all too much, and the sooner this show comes to an end, the better.
What's a post-Sex and the City Sarah Jessica Parker to do? Go behind the camera and produce! She's been shopping around the reality series American Artist for a few months and, in Bravo, has finally found herself a buyer.
This is good news for Parker. And bad news for Bravo. CONTINUED »
What magazine isn't getting into the reality TV business? Well, not Vogue! Except they are. They've got a new web series out next month — the annoyingly punctuated Model.Live — that'll track three models as they run from casting calls to runway shows in eight-minute webisodes. Naturally, because this is Vogue doing it, the project is the most expensive of its kind. With a budget of $3 million, the show costs about $31,000 a minute. But fret not! There is sponsorship attached. Express paid a low seven-figure fee to take part, somehow convinced that stocking its clothes in the closets of the models will produce a decent ROI. (It won't. At least not without additional integrations.)
It's Vogue's "at last" foray into the reality segment, because editor Anna Wintour, one who hates the word "blog," passed when Project Runway came calling (you know, in the days before it started charging magazines seven figures to take part). So why this web project? Because everything else that came their way was "not reality at all, just amateurs live," insists Vogue's Tom Florio.
Hah. CONTINUED »
The Peninsula Beverly Hills, which regularly picks up five diamonds from AAA and five stars from Mobil, has a new gimmick that should have it stripped of all of its awards: a reality TV package. If your stay in Los Angeles is not complete with merely shopping on Robertson at the SAME STORES LINDSAY SHOPS AT, the Peninsula will kick things up a notch with The Peninsula Academy — because even without the 200 reality shows on the air, you might still have a problem getting a camera to follow you around as you get sloshed at the par. The hotel's package will "pair you with an Emmy-nominated producer (and crew) who'll follow you around to film you doing…anything you like." Maybe this will include a visit to the new Larry King Square? Once your visit is a wrap and filming goes through post-production — you know, to cleverly edit a storyline into a hodgepodge of footage that includes one mini bar, two blondes, and at least three run ins with Tara Reid — you'll receive your very own DVD to remind you that staying at the Peninsula isn't just a chance to be overcharged for a hotel stay, but an opportunity to embrace all that is disgusting about Los Angeles. [Urban Daddy]
Former teen star Tori Spelling will never know the success of 90210 again, but her Oxygen reality show with husband Dean McDermott, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, is actually performing … well. Thanks to a careful manipulation of ratings numbers, Tori claims Oxygen's best Nielsens for the 18-49 female audience in the channel's history. In total, just under 1 million tuned in Tuesday night to see if blondes have more fun. [NYP]
You might not be aware, but the fifth season of Project Runway, and the last for Bravo, kicks off just one short week from today. Even we, usually so adept at knowing when these sorts of cultural phenomenon are making their return to the horizon, have been caught off guard. So too, television critics — because Bravo hasn't sent out any screeners of the upcoming season, nor do they plan to. And they haven't even unveiled the upcoming cast of contestants, and won't do so until Monday, just 48 hours before the season premieres, even though it's been the network's practice to tell all weeks in advance.
"A representative for the network said it was part of an effort to 'protect the secrecy' of the fifth season," blogs Maureen Ryan. HAHAHAHA, please. You know the reason. CONTINUED »
Having used the July 4 holiday weekend to quietly drop her lawsuit against Joe Francis, former Eliot Spitzer call girl Ashley Dupre is working on her next for-profit venture: reality TV show. She's supposedly in talks with MTV, among other networks, to launch her own dating show, with Dupre becoming the next Tila Tequila as contestants vie to penetrate the Jersey Shore's finest. No deal appears very far along however, and though she's said to be working with execs at Handprint Entertainment — responsible for turning Nicole Richie and Pamela Anderson into even more ridiculous pop culture icons — this news sounds more like a fishing expedition for a deal than an actual indication Dupre will be appearing in primetime by the fall. Either way, since taste doesn't appear to be a concern, the only real obstacle will be scheduling filming around that little public service she agreed to perform — testifying against New York's ex-governor in exchange for immunity.
As July wears on, the humidity is joined with a slate of terrible, no good, very bad television. Do not make us combine the words "celebrity" and "circus" to describe what we mean — you get it. You've watched it. But then there is the low-budget, kitschy alternative that is so simple, so mindless, and yet so adorable, it just makes sense to watch during the summer. We are talking about the Discovery Channel's Cash Cab, where Ben Bailey plays driver and host, asking passengers a slew of questions between pick up and their destination. A small cash prize and 11.2 seconds of fame is what's on offer — the most anybody has won is $4,100 — which makes Cab, which won the 2008 Daytime Emmy award for best game show, besting Drew Carrey's first time out as host of The Price Is Right, perhaps the most basic of all game shows. It's also the most brilliant. And it's also the best thing to happen inside the Taxi & Limousine Commission's boundaries since the "waive your ATM card and get a free ride" HSBC cab.
January's return of American Gladiators on NBC was supposed a signal a sea change of American television viewer interest: Sitcoms out, reality competitions in! Actually, Gladiators' arrival wasn't so much a sea change as a recognition, or a last ditch effort to turn the tide, that very little is pulling in the mega ratings these days. The show had the bonus effect, though, of employing former porn stars (semi-NSFW), and if there's one cause we can get behind … well. But you know what Gladiators, a supposedly steroid-free show, also did? It made outlandish, possibly illegal claims about its stars! At least one inquiring (blog) mind wants to know how NBC gets away with naming Gladiators things like "Venom," for whom "there is no known antidote for Venom" and is "lethal in any dose." Did the suits test this girl in a lab? CONTINUED »
If you've watched just one episode of Fox's dancing competition So You Think You Can Dance — as every member of Jossip HQ has — then you already know the best part of the show is not Cat Deeley's legs, the male dancers' lean and solid torsos, or the female dancers' crotch flashing. It is Mary Murphy, the choreographer and ballroom dancing champion who sits in the judge's chair next to producer Nigel Lithgow. After each performance wraps, Murphy tells the dancers one or more things, which range from, "It just wasn't doing it for me," to, "You've got a ticket on the HOT TAMALE TRAIN!" The number of her shrieks are matched only by the number of times she flashes that toothy smile. Today, she is profiled by the Los Angeles Times, which, according to this graph that charts the paper's coverage of her, is making it her month.
While the hot tamale train used to be Murphy's most esteemed honor bestowed on contestants, her newest top award is "Tra La La," as in, "the Tra La La phase of my heart."
Every notable reality show judge has their "thing." For Donald Trump, it's, "You're fired." For Heidi Klum, it's, "Auf wiedersehen." But those are concocted by producers; they're supposed to stick. Murphy's "hot tamale train" catchphrase, however, seems to have been born organically. It doesn't seem to be an executive producer-coined (in this case, it would've been Lithgow, who created the show) gimmick to deliver each episode. Rather, if our memory serves, she began saying it during Dance's first season, realized how much of a trademark it was, and kept on using it.
What, then, of other reality show judges who have tried to follow her lead? One horrific example sticks in our memory, and MTV's to blame. CONTINUED »
Yes, the woman at right is missing a limb, as are the ladies below. Because of this, each and every day they are faced with unique obstacles most of the rest of the world will never understand, and they’re certainly all the stronger because of it. Good for them. But we’ve got one question: How pretty are they compared to one another?
A new show on the BBC seeks to get to the bottom of that query, so that the world may finally know who is the most beautiful, English, female amputee around.
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