Part– not all– of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 2012 finances have been published. I say part because the HFPA pulled a neat trick. They’ve separated their charitable donations into a different 501 c 3 that is not registered with GuideStar and hasn’t been published. That’s another story.

From what has just been published we can glean a couple of interesting notes: Dr. Aida Takla O’Reilly, president in 2011-2012, gave her job title a 38% raise. She made $84,612. The prior president, Phil Berk, had a salary of $61,000. Not bad. Dr. O’Reilly had only made $3,445 in 2010 when she overlapped with Berk as president.  According to the Form 990, O’Reilly worked 30 hours a  week. The four other officers, listed at 20 hours a week, made an average of $40,000 in 2011-12.

Altogether, the HFPA officers picked up about $50,000 in total increases in 2011 over 2010.

More importantly: HFPA spent a whopping $12.3 million in legal fees for their ongoing conflicts with Dick Clark Productions and NBC. That’s $2 million more than NBC paid them to license the Golden Globe name. You see, NBC is in ironically funding the HFPA’s legal fight to escape from them and from Dick Clark Productions. Without the annual NBC license fee, HPFA would have no money. They only took in $1,739 in membership fees in 2011-12.

HFPA did manage to spend $1 million in travel in 2011-12. That’s interesting since the studios pay their freight just about everywhere, from Cannes to Venice, to Telluride, Sundance, and so on.

What about the $1,570,000 HFPA announced in summer 2012 as charitable donations? For the first time the group has split into two 501 c3’s. The donations are not listed  on the Form 990 which was filed in May under Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Instead, they claim to have donated the total amount to an entity called Hollywood Foreign Press Association Charitable Trust. But GuideStar has no separate listing for that entity. If there is a filing, it hasn’t turned up yet.

Lisa Marie Presley is a name you hear in Memphis quite a lot. Tonight (Saturday) she’s performing at an outdoor venue right at the same the massive Blues Ball is taking place across town. Her show’s ticket price was cut from $500 to $300– and the reason given wasn’t that sales were slow but because LMP “wanted more people to be able to afford it.” Whatever.

More imporantly, the event tonight is significant because it’s not for anything to do with Scientology. “She’s out,” a local music insider  confirmed to last night. The concert at the Levitt Shell is free because it’s the place where Elvis Presley got his start in the 1950s. But afterward comes the Presley fundraiser at Graceland with a tour, a Q&A, and a photo session. That’s what the $300 buys. “A percentage” of the money goes to WorldVision, dubbed LMP’s official charity partner of this tour.

And no, WorldVision has nothing to do with Scientology, Barbara Walters’s new approved cult. They bill themselves as “an Evangelical Christian Humanitarian aid, development, and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice.”

Okay, I love old people. But maybe it’s time for Barbara Walters to wrap it up. Why wait til next May? She defended Scientology’s educational system on The View today. Sherri Shepherd jumps right in, and Barbara continues. Why? Radaronline.com, which picked this up originally, surmises Barbara is trying to get some kind of interview with Tom Cruise. If she really sticks to this, Walters is having her own Nixonian meltdown. When Shepherd says “Didn’t we have someone on who said she [had a bad time with with Scientology] Walters responds, “I’m not talking about that aspect of Scientology.” No, she’s only interested in the aspect that deals with celebrity interviews. Radar got Jenna Mascavige Hill to criticize Walter’s stand. www.radaronline.com. Frankly, I’m horrified. But this Walters showing her truest self. Watch the clip. Shepherd is very deft when dealing with this ancient mariner.

We are here in Memphis, Tennessee and have hit the ground running. The occasion is the 20th annual Blues Ball, thrown by Memphis’s doyenne of doyennes Pat Kerr Tigrett to raise money for local charities. This year, R&B legend Sam Moore is the honoree for Lifetime Achievement, and he will be performing on Saturday night in front of 2,500 formally attired Memphians.

Tigrett’s annual event is a magnet for all of Memphis’s famed musicians, and this year is no exception. Expected tomorrow night are the creme de la creme of Stax-Hi Records-Sun Records including Jerry Lee Lewis, Al Green, Ann Peebles, Carla Thomas, Marvell Thomas and so on.

When I was here filming “Only the Strong Survive” in the summer of 1999, the lot where Stax Records once stood was an empty field of weeds. The neighborhood had gone to hell in a handbasket. It was pretty bleak.

But a couple of years later thanks to brothers Andy and Staley Cates, Stax was re-born. They raised the money to build a museum and charter school and music academy on the property. A whole campus has risen around it since then, and Stax is now a focal point for the community. It’s quite an achievement.

This morning Sam and his wife Joyce were invited over for a private tour. The museum replicates the facade of Stax and the Satellite Record shop in the front. Inside, there are dozens exhibits detailing the history of soul music. They’ve also reproduced the original studio where Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, the Staples Singers and so many other Stax acts recorded their landmark hits. When we walked into the big room, a whole gang of us, Sam immediately gravitated to the spot where he sang with Dave Prater. He pointed to a spot just behind him.

“You had to be careful and not back up while you were singing.” he said. “There was a curtain here”– he motioned to the spot. “If you backed up you heard a lot of bottles fall and clink together. Those were Otis’s whiskey bottles. We knew he’d been in here the night before!”

What we also got was something very special: a show put on by the music students at Stax. They performed a medley of Stax hits, from “Soul Man” to “Knock on Wood” and a few others. These were fourteen to eighteen year olds. They were just outstanding, and a concrete example of the possibilities of renewal and growth where once everything seemed lost and abandoned.

Meantime, all anyone seems to do in this town is eat or talk about eating. It is still the barbecue capital of the south. After all the ribs and bread puddings I hope I will fit into my tuxedo on Emmy night!

At this point, Simon Cowell may be a little worried. Wednesday night’s “X Factor” was slaughtered in the ratings. First “Survivor” returned at 8pm on CBS for its first hour. “Survivor” had 9.73 million total viewers vs. 6.62 million for “X Factor.”

Then during its final half hour from 9pm to 9:30m, “X Factor” by “America’s Got Talent.” The Howard Stern hosted competition had 11.19 million total viewers. Yikes.

Is anyone paying attention to “X Factor”? Not really. Even the “Big Brother” season finale beat it later, at 9:30pm, with slightly more eyes.

Hugh Jackman’s new film, “Prisoners,” is not ‘les miserables’ in the truest sense, but incredibly intense. In fact, there are a few times during this film about two little girls who are abducted from their suburban neighborhood when you do kind of flinch. Jackman and Terrence Howard, fathers of the missing children, exact some torture on the man they think took their kids (Paul Dano). At one point quite a few snakes slither across the screen.They are not the comedian snakes from “Snakes on a Plane,” either.

“Denis [Villeneuve, the director] actually had to cut a couple of scenes from the final version, Hugh told me at lunch yesterday at the Monkey Bar for the movie’s cast. “They were just too intense.”

Jackman, Howard and co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano and Maria Bello were all on hand for one of those rare great intimate New York lunches to meet the stars and chat about the film. Michael Shannon, one of Jake’s pals, came, as did Gyllenhaal’s writer-director mother Noami Foner. Some New York actor stalwarts like Bob Dishy and Dana Ivey made the scene as well. Director Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton,” “Bourne Legacy”) was also Gyllenhaal’s guest. He’s producing “Nightcrawler,” written by his brother Dan Gilroy, and also starring Jake.’

I was lucky to sit across from musician and actor Ruben Blades. “Everyone thinks I died,” Blades said jokingly. “I was away for five years in Panama, helping with the arts and culture infrastructure. I actually read on the internet I was dead. But I’m back, and I’m making a couple of new albums.”

Blades also has a small role in “The Counselor” with Michael Fassbender, due next month. Over lunch he and Maria Bello had a long serious talk about micro-financing–how he does it in Panama, and she in Haiti. At the other end of the table, Shannon and Gyllenhaal were talking about Syria. And you thought Hollywood types were shallow!

The life of Tupac Shakur is coming to the big screen. His mother has cut a deal with Morgan Creek, at last. The press release follows. Remember I said this: Michael B. Jordan. Just remember.

Press release:

Los Angeles, CA (September 19, 2013) – Morgan Creek Productions and Emmett Furla Films are in final negotiations to partner on the TUPAC biopic, it was announced today by Morgan Creek and EFF.

TUPAC will be produced by James G. Robinson, David Robinson & LT Hutton along with Randall Emmett and George Furla.  The film will be executive produced by Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur.  Production is scheduled to begin next year in Atlanta.

TUPAC centers on the life of the charismatic yet controversial artist.  Rapper, poet, actor and political activist, TUPAC shot to fame with 2Pacalypse Now, lauded for its seminal underground vibe and still an inspiration for major artists today.  Tupac’s politically charged lyrics, inspired by his parents’ activism as Black Panthers in the 60s & early 70s, condemned governmental intrusion in black communities.  Tupac’s increased participation in the East Coast-West Coast Rap rivalry became well documented and avidly followed by his fans. On September 7, 1996 he was gunned down on a street corner in Las Vegas, where he died 6 days later.  His murder was never solved.