It’s hard to tell where the parody of morning shows like Today and Good Morning America ends and the parody of Nancy Grace begins. But so long as you spend your tax rebate cheque at Home Depot and start stimulating this here economy, does it really matter?
Gag gift of a person Victoria Beckham has admitted to dating 80s movie star Corey Haim way back in 1995, before he was selling his teeth and before she was unsalvageable. But, the Spice Girl says she did not have sexual relations with that teen heartthrob.
How is Alex Rodriguez dodging all those rumors about hooking up with Madonna? The charitable way!
Today he was spotted leaving his New York City apartment (he might’ve called the paps, or maybe they were just staking out his place because of the new scandal) with a boy from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, headed off to the Yankees game. Perhaps the stunt will ensure a 24-period of coverage that, at very least, will have the press including a mention of his mitzvah today before rumormongering about Madge. [Photo: INF]
After a Coca-Cola spot airing before the American Idol finale, television advertisements from Dominos Pizza, Topps Major League Baseball Cards, E-Trade, General Mills, and the movies You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Sex and the City were, according to TiVo data, among the least fast-forwarded through in May, a category otherwise known as “just tolerable enough.” [TVD]
Clay S. Felker, who started New York magazine as a standalone title with the $1 million severage he received from the New York Herald Tribune, where the publication existed as an insert, has died. He was 82. [WaPo]
Know how it used to be a running joke that reality TV shows would, in the credits, scroll the names of the writers, even though a reality TV show is supposed to, you know, be based on reality? And not need writers?
Then here’s a new one for you: Fox News is looking for a “fact writer.” CONTINUED »
You’ll have to wait ANOTHER FULL QUARTER!!! to learn whether Bonnie Fuller, having left AMI as editorial director, earned the $2 million severance package she was gonna get if she left the company in March, since she stayed until May. In the meantime, know this: Fuller was on track to earn $2.4 million in 2008, up from $2.1 million in 2007 — both more than David Pecker’s paycheck of $1.6 million in ‘08. [WWD]
The reviews for Hancock, which had its grand premiere yesterday in Hollywood, are here. And they’re not very good, unfortunately. According to various reviewers, despite the great cast and excellent concept, the movie starts to suck in the second half. Incidentally, these are almost the exact same reviews that I Am Legend got last December, and it ended up breaking box office records. So its doubtful that Will Smith is very worried.
While OK! and Us Weekly insist Madonna and Yankees star Alex Rodriguez are having themselves a little extramarital affair — hey, she did write a song called “I Love New York” … a secret love letter perhaps? — People shoots back with the official response from Madge’s longtime rep Liz Rosenberg, who tries to put the kabash on all this nonsense.
“It’s nothing new that people are airing tons of dirty laundry Madonna’s way lately – much of it untrue,” says Liz, who adds that Guy Ritchie just arrived in the U.S. not as a last ditch effort to save his marriage, as some aggressive headline writers might suggest, but to be with his wife and kids.
Except it’s also quite plausible, inside the gossip industry where even the Today show is playing, to assume Ritchie came to the States just to give the appearance of normalcy, and quell reports that both he and Madonna have consulted with divorce attorneys.
For its part, Us is standing by its sources, who seem to be phoning in A-Rod reports from the front desk of her Manhattan apartment building. The tabloid’s latest report? That the baseball player visited Madge the night after his wife gave birth to their second daughter.
But as hard as Rosenberg works to play this story off as a non-issue, which she’s been doing for more than a year, speculation about the end of Madonna’s marriage isn’t going anywhere. And here’s why: CONTINUED »
When Heath Ledger died, Warner Bros. marketing executives behind the new Batman movie Dark Knight, where Ledger stars as The Joker, immediately grew worried that the beloved actor’s death would overshadow their summer blockbuster, and potentially get in the way of them turning a heavy investment into a worldwide hit amid cries of “tasteless!,” especially given his dark role in the film.
And then, between Hollywood’s outpouring of support and some brilliant PR, the mood changed: Dark Night would instead be a tribute to Ledger. The situation went from bad to good to amazing last week, when critics got their first look at the movie and began called for a posthumous Oscar for Ledger.
So how do you take a roller coaster ride from a Doomsday scenario to a sure-thing back down to the horror story level? By news reports of a 17-year-old fella, visiting Six Flags with his church group, getting decapitated while hunting for the hat he lost on the tracks of the Batman ride, where he got stuck and was decapitated.
Gossip boy Chace Crawford’s recent mouthing off about the television show that made him isn’t exactly on par with the lashing Katherine Heigl gave Grey’s Anatomy’s writers and producers, but he’s made clear he’s sees himself as a big enough star not to follow strict orders. He tells OK!: “There was an episode where we were crashed out on the sofa after a big night out and they wanted me to wake up in my boxers, so I argued with them about it. I mean, first of all, who gets wasted with their buddy, and smokes weed and then strips down to their boxers before they pass out on the couch?! No one does that. Why am I naked on my buddy’s couch? It was weird so I fought it.” Um, asked and answered?
Know what you get when you build a customer base around Americans who are all hopped up on caffeine? Jittery complainers with a nervous tick called whining. Ever since Starbucks began trying to turn around the company — shorter coffee machine to see customers, actually brewing espresso, fewer music offerings to reduce clutter, launching a social network-y website — the company’s execs have seen what change can wrought: Pissed off consumers. And with its new Pike Place Roast, which replaced the trio of brews Starbucks used to regularly served, the addicted masses who throw at least a couple bucks Starbucks’ way are revolting. CONTINUED »
Because he still does not understand the power of Us Weekly, just its profit potential, Jann Wenner is willing to unload the tabloid, and Men’s Fitness, but reportedly wants to hang on to Rolling Stone, an ailing music title with declining circulation and ad pages. Nevermind that trying to sell Us for a rumored $750 million might be a little difficult in the middle of this credit crunch. And the fact that purported buyers, like the oh-so-reputable Conde Nast, would also find itself defending its sometimes-invented cover stories each week. [WWD]
If you won’t believe Entertainment Tonight, might you believe French magazine Closer that Angelina Jolie has given birth? They’re reporting the twins were born Wednesday morning after Jolie went into labor Tuesday night (mind the time difference!). Who knows if it’s true! But maybe ET will finally be able to return the headline to its homepage.
Don’t expect to see many black models at Paris Fashion Week. Top designers, who are doing some preemptive damage control, say so themselves. They blame the agencies, which they say have a limited selection of models and color and an overwhelming number of Eastern Europeans.
Sunday marked the twentieth year that Anna Wintour has been editing Vogue. Ex-staffer Robin Givhan sent up her former boss, reporting said the editrix was celebrating the milestone “by doing . . . nothing.”
Twenty years atop a magazine is an astonishing feat by itself; that Wintour, seen here in 1988 and 1989, has spent it running Vogue, the fashion bible, is even more impressive. And while she’s weathered more than one scandal, plenty of nasty gossip column items, and the refusal to acknowledge the word “blog,” there’s one thing that, in two decades, hasn’t changed. And the photo pictorial to prove it is below. CONTINUED »
Women-hating British newspaper The Daily Mail calls supermodel and Celebrity Circus contestant Rachel Hunter a heifer, then compliments her by reminding readers Playboy just named her one of the best ever Bunnies. [Daily Mail]
That’s what Washington City Paper Angela Valdez is asking to mostly deaf ears. The National Enquirer ran with a story about CBS star Lara Logan having Baghdad romances with CNN’s Michael Ware and U.S. State Department contractor Joe Burkett, and the New York Post picked it up from there. The story even made it to Howard Kurtz’s CNN show Reliable Sources (video here), where he played Jossip’s favorite game: Cover the gossip by reporting on the coverage of the gossip, and asking whether we should be reporting on this at all. Well, perhaps somebody like Kurtz shouldn’t be wasting air time with it, but the Enquirer has a history of reporting on our news men and women; it just so happens that Logan’s story involves sex, with multiple partners, and she’s a pretty lady. So should we be upset by it? Maybe — it’s likely Logan got heavier treatment because she’s a woman, while plenty of male on-air sex trysts go unreported. But also: She’s a high-paid attractive public figure who brought together the words “sex” and “Iraq” for the first time since this war began, and shouldn’t the gossip industry be celebrated for that?
Rupert Murdoch is upset that his BSkyB has to compete in Britain with the BBC on bids for American programming, and wants the publicly funded channel to be banned from the practice. [Variety]
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 »
Editorial Director
