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Jon Stewart Roasts NBC’s Brian Williams, Skewers Anthony Weiner

Roger Friedman
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There’s nothing better than Jon Stewart away from “Comedy Central,” doing standup. To get the crowd of media types at last night’s dinner for the Museum of the Moving Image in the mood, Stewart referred to the ornately draped and chandeliered rooftop ballroom at the St. Regis Hotel as being “inside Marie Antoinette’s vagina.” Then he went on the attack against Congressman Anthony Weiner. “He has to investigate if the picture is him,” Stewart said of Weiner’s now infamous crotch Twitter picture. “I don’t know if he thinks his penis robbed the Bellagio. I don’t know.” He added, shaking his head in disbelief: “There are few things I’m certain about. That The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie, that OJ killed those two people, and what my [penis] looks like.”

Stewart was hilarious. about Weiner, but then he went after NBC News anchor Brian Williams, one of the night’s two honorees. “You’re so funny…A lot of people don’t know this, he started out in news. Obviously, he’s transitioned very nicely… you killed Bin Laden…no, I’m kidding. Brian does amazing work. He’d be the first one to say he does…The Nightly News, they just go through the obituaries to see how many viewers they have left.”

Williams, who brought his wife and daughter, Allison (soon to be seen in HBO’s “Girls”), didn’t mind hitting back at Stewart. Thinking the comic had left the room, Williams free-styled his own bits about Stewart’s lack of height. He joked they often went for rides with Stewart sitting on his lap to reach the pedals of his car. Stewart was actually not gone, but just outside of earshot in the vestibule, making a call. He likely heard much of Williams’s good natured rant. The NBC anchor said Stewart was “lovely but parasitic. Remember, there’s no him without us.”

Stewart also had fun with Donald Trump‘s pizza date with Sarah Palin. “Donald Trump took Sarah Palin to La Famiglia, a chain pizza restaurant on 50th and Broadway. Why don’t you take a sh– in Fiorella LaGuardia’s hat and feed it to the crying ghost of Joe DiMaggio? You sonofabitch,” Stewart added.

All of this took place, by the way, in front of an austere crowd that included museum leader Herb Schlosser, Steve Burke, the new head of NBC, Steve Capus, NBC News chief, Discover Network chief David Zaslav (who’s Oprah’s new boss), “Saturday Night Live” star Kristen Wiig and newer cast member Vanessa Bayer, Showtime chief Matt Blank, and the evening’s other honoree, the very impressive and good natured Kenneth Lowe, head of Scripps Interactive, the man responsible for HGTV and the Food Network. ESPN Chairman Emeritus Herb Granath was there, too, with his wife, former soap actress Ann Flood (she played Nancy Karr on “The Edge of Night” for eons and looks terrific.) Universal Pictures chief Ron Meyer stopped by earlier, but missed all this frivolity because he was due at an event honoring Revlon chief Ronald Perelman across town.

PS Great evening put on by Gary Springer and Ellen Delsener.

“Spider Man” on Broadway: New Version a Lot Like Old, Just Rearranged

Roger Friedman
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“Spider Man: Turn off the Dark” finally opens–yes, opens– on June 14th after a wild winter and spring of previews, the sidelining of creator Julie Taymor, and a three week shutdown to retool the show’s story. Now, as the $70 million-plus musical– infamous for its performers getting hurt –prepares to reveal itself, it turns out that the new “Spider Man” is a lot like the old one, just polished up to make better sense.

I ran into producer Michael Cohl having dinner last night at the very hot as a pistol (and loud!) Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village, where he was taking a few minutes off.  Cohl told me the show is being “locked” in a couple of days, meaning all the changes will be final. And guess what? Julie Taymor’s going to get a surprise. There’s just as much of her work in the show as there was to start with, only it’s been rearranged. Taymor’s amazing set piece of Arachne, the Spider-woman, weaving her web in mid air now opens the show. Arachne, who was Taymor’s creation and vision, now serves as a guiding light for Spidey/Peter Parker as the show progresses. Gone, of course, is the “geek chorus” of four graffiti spraying teenagers who tried to explain the show. The way Cohl and company have worked, no explanations are needed.

Bono and The Edge have added just one song, Cohl says, called “A Freak Like Me.”  And, just as I suggested in this space several times over the last few months, there are now snippets of U2 hits woven into the show. “Spider Man,” which is playing at 94% capacity in its third week back, and should do even better once it’s opened and families are flocking in for summer vacation.

One more thing: Cohl told me that once the show is settled in, the plan is not to go to Las Vegas first, as many had thought. We’ll have to see which city is picked as their first stop.

Godfather Director Coppola: Part of Next Movie is Spoken in Rhyme

Roger Friedman
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1

Part of the next movie coming from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola–who made “The Godfather” films and “Apocalypse Now”–will be in rhyme. So says veteran actor Bruce Dern, who was honored on Wednesday night at the opening of the Gold Coast Film Festival on the north shore of Long Island. Dern, an Oscar nominee for “Coming Home” (1978) and well known for his work in “The King of Marvin Gardens,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “Smile,” among others, stars in Coppola’s “Twixt Now and Sunrise.”

The film also stars ex spouses Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley, Ben Chaplin and Elle Fanning. Dern and I spoke as he made his way out to the Gold Coast ceremony on Long Island, where he picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award. He says the Coppola film, which is done, was shot in the Napa Valley. It’s a gothic thriller that concerns Edgar Allen Poe. Dern is the sheriff in a spooky town with a murder mystery. Kilmer is a second tier mystery writer who comes to town and investigates its past. There’s a clock steeple in the town with different time on each of its four sides. Dern told me: “Francis says it’s got more of him in it than any of his films.”

Dern’s next outing will be “Hart’s Location” with real life actress daughter Laura Dern, and her mother–Bruce’s ex–the great Diane Ladd. Last fall the trio was the first family, Dern notes, to receive their Hollywood Walk of Fame stars all together. Joe Dante, Dern says, will direct “Hart’s.” It’s a project that’s been in the works for about five years, but now it seems like it may take off.

 

Dern is still waiting to hear about “The Big Valley.” The big screen adaptation of the 60s TV show was all set to go until financing fell apart. Dern has a long history with “The Big Valley,” having played several roles on the old show as a guest star.

Dern, born in 1936, has quite a colorful family past, too. Eleanor Roosevelt baby sat him, and the famed poet, playwright and three time Pulitzer Prize winner Archibald MacLeish was his great uncle. Dern’s grandfather, George Dern, was the first non Mormon governor of Utah and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Secretary of War. Pretty cool!

www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org

Michael Jackson Documentary from Old Pal David Gest Gets Screened

Roger Friedman
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Remember David Gest, Michael Jackson’s bff and Liza Minnelli‘s one time husband, he of the Shirley Temple shrine in his home and the waxed eyebrows? Well, he’s back. Gest has made a documentary about Jackson called “The Real Michael Jackson.” He screened it recently in Los Angeles for a select group that included Smokey Robinson, Angie Dickinson, and Katherine Jackson and her son, Tito. The source I spoke to says the documentary is pretty good mainly because it includes lots of rare footage of Michael and the Jacksons. How Gest got the rights to the footage, I don’t know. He does have plans to release the doc in the UK. Here’s the copy from the invite he sent out, I’ve reprinted it with typos:

PLEASE JOIN ME FOR A PRIVATE SCREENING OF MY FIRST FILM ‘THE REAL MICHAEL JACKSON’ ON THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011  PM AT 8:00 PM AT THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK THEATRE ON THE UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LOT. YOUR NAME WILL BE LEFT AT THE GATE AND THEIR WILL BE PARKING. I HAVE ENCLOSED DIRECTIONS AND IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ON THE PARKING OR DIRECTIONS CALL MS. xxxxxxx AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS ON (818) 777-xxxx

I AM VERY PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK HAS ALREADY PURCHASED THE WORLD DVD RIGHTS AND MR MARK REYNOLDS OF BBC WORLWIDE MEDIA CENTRE (THE TOP DISTRIBUTOR IN THE WORLD) HAVE SIGNED FOR EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS. THIS IS A MOST UNIQUE FILM AND ACCORDING TO LEGENDARY PRODUCER LAMONT DOZIER: ”THE REAL MICHAEL JACKSON’ IS MORE THAN JUST A DOCUMENTARY, IT IS AN EPIC TELEVISION FILM AND QUITE POSSIBLY THE MOST REMARKABLE DOCUMENTARY I HAVE EVER SEEN!’

A DRINKS & HORS D’OEUVRES RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW THE SCREENING AT A LOCATION NEAR THE STUDIO (LOCATION TO BE ANNOUNCED). PLEASE JOIN ME FOR THE SCREENING & RECEPTION BY RSVP TO MY E-MAIL. I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ON THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011 AT 8:00 PM AT THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK THEATRE AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. THE FILM IS 90 MINUTES.

BEST REGARDS,

DAVID GEST

Lady Gaga Sells One Million CDs, But Not Really

Roger Friedman
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1

Lady Gaga‘s “Born this Way” sold 1.1 million copies last week. But not really. Around 440,000 of those were generated from amazon.com’s 99 cent sale over two days. “Born this Way” really sold more like 600,000 copies without amazon’s help. That’s still pretty sensational in these times, but predictions are the album will tumble this week. Expect a big drop when Monday’s charts are counted. Just to give you an idea of what’s going on, “Born this Way” has already been toppled on ITunes by new releases from Eddie Vedder and from Death Cab for Cutie. “Born this Way” is now the number 3 album. Gaga’s single, “The Edge of Glory,” is number 3 on the singles charts, too, where Adele still rules the roost. On amazon, the “Born this Way” album is still number 1. It’s selling for $6.99 with its digital booklet. Since this is what we paid for LPs in the stone age, Lady Gaga is going to have some interesting bottom line accounting issues. Considering that she says she almost went bankrupt from her last tour, I hope someone is figuring out how she’s going to make money. (We’re not feeling bad for her yet.)

Regis Philbin: Could He Be Talked Into Staying?

Roger Friedman
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By the time Regis Philbin says goodbye to ABC Daytime and Disney this coming November, the network will look like an abandoned parking lot. No Oprah, no Susan Lucci. Two months later, Erika Slezak and “One Life to Live” will be gone as well. Except for “The View,” ABC will be a blank during daylight hours. And of course “General Hospital,” which is closer to the guillotine than Marie Antoinette on a good day. Looming large: how to replace Regis after all these years?

Philbin patented what has become his show’s hallmark: the talk chat. Regis’s first person accounts, unscripted, of his life are organic. He’s cast himself as a Little Guy fighting to keep up, and it works. Whoever ABC and Disney bring in, they’ll be known. And they won’t have Regis’s charm. Now I’m told that Regis could be persuaded to change his mind, maybe, if ABC and Disney will do right by him. This isn’t just money. It’s about his schedule.

Philbin already has 12 weeks of vacation a year, and works most weeks only four days. Could he do a three day week? I think the audience doesn’t care. They’ll take what they can get. Is it money? If ABC and Disney would show Reege a little love, they could have it all: the real star of “Live with Regis and Kelly” three days a week, and younger hosts as fill ins.

Would he really do it? My sources say Regis’s wife, Joy, who will guest host on June 13th (and we love it when she does), is happy to see Regis give up the morning grind. Regis has told friends that he doesn’t mind doing the show. “It’s just getting up and going there,” he says of his daily trip across Broadway. After all, he’s turning 80 in August.

At today’s Le Cirque lunch for the Claudia Cohen Cancer Research Foundation, Regis, Joy, executive producer Michael Gelman and his wife Laurie Hibberd all showed up to honor Cohen, their late friend and show contributor. The lunch was given by Claudia and Revlon chief Ronald Perelman‘s stunning college-attending daughter, Samantha, and Perelman himself. Among the other guests were Calvin Klein, looking spiffy in a suit and tie, and a phalanx of New York’s top doctors including honoree Dr. Anil K. Sood who received a $50,000 prize for his work in gynecological cancer.

Michael Jackson Lawyer Brian Oxman Recommended For Suspension by State Bar

Roger Friedman
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8

For the the third time in his career, Brian Oxman is getting suspended from practicing law. Oxman, a constant presence on TV who identifies himself as the “Jackson family lawyer,” isn’t the only one in trouble this time. So is his wife, Maureen Jaroscak, who is also a lawyer in California. In a decision filed by the State Bar of California on March 3, 2011, the agency has recommended that Oxman be suspended for two years, with a third year of suspension stayed based on Oxman proving that he’s mended his ways.

In addition to reporting to the Bar Association four times a year during the three years, Oxman must also “must attend and satisfactorily complete the State Bar’s Ethics School and State Bar’s Client Trust Accounting School and provide satisfactory proof of such completion to the State Bar’s Office of Probation.” Jaroscak has been similarly recommended for punishment. And the couple must take and pass the Multi State Professional Responsibility Examination during their suspensions.

What happened? Oxman’s problems stem from 2004, when he represented a woman named Raquel Axelrod in her divorce from husband John Larson. It’s a complicated tale, but ended with Oxman being ordered by a bankruptcy court to pay Larson–the ex husband of Oxman’s client–a little over $5,000 in sanctions. Oxman simply failed to do so, even though he entered into several settlement agreements. Oxman also never reported the sanction to the Bar Association, and never paid it.

At the same time, Oxman and Jaroscak were involved in an eight year long scheme, according to the Star Bar of California’s filing, to hijack another client’s estate worth more than $500,000. This story, separate from the Axelrod/Larson one, shows Jaroscak completely ignoring rulings from the State Supreme Court and the California Bar as she willfully kept money from brother and sister Gerald and Sarah Quattrrochi after their parents died.

In both cases, the Star Bar decision found that the Oxmans “lacked candor”–which is a nice way of saying they lied about everything.

Interestingly, all of this was going on as Oxman grandstanded in Michael Jackson’s child molestation and conspiracy case, slept in court and snored loudly, and was eventually fired from the case by Jackson chief legal counsel, Thomas Mesereau. Mesereau, busy with keeping Jackson out of jail–which he did–had no idea all this was going on simultaneously.

And that’s not all: the State Bar also found that Oxman and Jaroscak co-mingled their funds with those of their clients, used their Client Trust Account to hide money from their own many creditors, and basically lied about everything else in their professional lives including fees they received for teaching at UC Irvine. Oxman was found guilty of four counts of misconduct, his wife five counts. Why they weren’t barred from ever practicing law again is a mystery considering this is Oxman’s third suspension. The State Bar also accused Jaroscak of “moral turpitude.” (That is very ugly; you rarely hear that expression anymore. It’s severe.)

But the court said in its decision that since Oxman and Jaroscak had admitted to some of their wrong doing and helped with the investigation, they would receive leniency. Oxman should also receive credit, the court said, for donating his time to the Plotkin Bail Bond school in Norwalk, California. I wish the court had done a little homework: back in 2005, when Michael Jackson was on trial, Oxman was in business with Dorry Plotkin regarding Michael Jackson’s bail and loans against his parents’ home in Encino, California. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,156897,00.html. Oxman was busy making money, not donating it, at the time. He and Plotkin are childhood buddies.

Maybe now media bookers will finally understand who Oxman is. Maybe the Jackson family will finally get it, too. Recently, Oxman represented Joseph Jackson in his futile attempts to sue AEG Live and others for Michael’s death. Their lawsuits were thrown out in the end.

James Franco Ramps Up for the Story of Sal Mineo

Roger Friedman
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Did you think it was getting too quiet on the James Franco front? Well, the Oscar nominated, Indie Spirit winning actor is busy prepping his movie, “Sal,” in Los Angeles. The story of actor Sal Mineo will commence shooting on June 10th as a low key and low budget film that will largely feature unknown actors. (Well, they’re known to someone, but not to us.) Franco will be pretty busy all through the month of June in L.A. On the 20th he debuts his film, “The Broken Tower,” which is really his directing debut, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. He stars in it, too, as writer Hart Crane. Franco’s mom, Betsy, is in the movie, too. Meanwhile, on June 7th, a film Franco acted in with Josh Lucas, formerly known as “William Vincent” (the film, not Lucas) is being released on DVD. Now called “Shadows and Lies,” the drama was directed by Franco’s former teacher, Jay Anania, whose sister was the remarkable, late Elizabeth Edwards. Got all that? And then: if Franco finishes “Sal” in time, he’ll head back to Warren Wilson College for a writing class before scooting off to Detroit to shoot “Oz, the Great and Wonderful.” And what are you doing this summer? Huh?

Dina Lohan Celebrates Lindsay’s House Arrest in the Hamptons

Roger Friedman
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2

There’s no use wringing hands and worrying about what you can’t change. So Dina Lohan spent Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons while daughter Lindsay did her house arrest in Los Angeles. Hey–every family is different! Dina was seen at the scene at 75 Main Street in Southampton over the weekend. Also spotted there was Jonah Hill — soon to be to seen in “21 Jump Street” the movie–and Sports Illustrated models Jessica White and Lisalla Montenegro. If you go to Southampton, this restaurant, with its open air cafe, is the place to be seen, trust me. It’s the locus of Prada, shmatta, and yada yada.

But there was more going on all weekend in what my pal Billy Norwich used to call the “Cashhamptons.” Newly opened Southampton Social Club was THE hotspot this Memorial Day Weekend with celebrities including TV host Chelsea Handler with hotelier beau Andre Balazs, model Beth Ostrosky (Mrs. Howard) Stern, R&B Singer Estelle, soap star Tika Sumpter, actor Kyle MacLachlan with his wife, publicist/producer Desiree Gruber, “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton, musician Matt White and New York Philanthropist Jean Shafiroff, Chair of this summer’s 53rd Annual Southampton Hospital Summer Party; all seen toasting to the 2011 summer season at the restaurant and lounge…New York Socialite Olivia Palermo and boyfriend, German-born model Johannes Huebl, and Matt Lauer’s beautiful wife, Annette, all went shopping for deluxe cashmere at Christopher Fischer East Hampton– even though it was like 90 degrees outside…Meanwhile: Miami Dolphins and The Related Group owner Stephen M. Ross, with business partner Jorge Perez, Executive Vice President of the New York Giants’ Steve Tisch and TV star/ad exec Donny Deutsch all dined at  T-Bar at Savanna’s.

And there’s more: so called reality stars– “real housewives”–they are everywhere, soaking up publicity, trying to get their names in everywhere. I won’t report it.  All of them, not just the housewives but the proliferation of attention seekers who shouldn’t be on TV–it’s why that asteroid in Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” is coming for us. The Hamptons, believe it or not, used to be better than this! I wish I could say that the Hamptonians of, say, 1975, were all out and about, like Joe Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Jones, who wrote about the horrors of war, not fruity cocktails and dieting.

NY Times Calls Microsoft Billionaire Paul Allen “Overgrown Kid Playing with His Money”

Roger Friedman
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1

Wow. Microsoft’s billionaire cofounder Paul Allen got ripped in the New York Times Book Review over the weekend. Allen recently published a memoir called “Idea Man” in which he took his former partner Bill Gates to task and pretty much promoted himself as a friend of celebrities. He entertains them regularly on his gigantic yachts and his Beverly Hills mansion, where he plays guitar with his hired rock band. The Times Book Review’s freelance review, Gary Rivlin, didn’t much like “Idea Man” and went after Allen mercilessly.

In the review Rivlin writes:  “He’s [Allen is] like Forrest Gump in his own autobiography. There’s [Mick] Jagger chatting about gardens and Bono cajoling Mick to join in on a jam. But who’s that bland-looking bespectacled fellow in the picture? Oh, it’s his boat, his guitars. Allen is never so interesting as when he’s quoting others. He has only just met Paul McCartney but reports Sir Paul as saying, “Everyone wants to talk about John, John, John. You know, I wrote some songs, too.” That might have been a moment for the author to delve into his own psyche (“Bill, Bill, Bill, but I wrote some code, too, you know”). The book is supposedly a “memoir” — the word is right there on the cover — yet the author reveals almost nothing about himself. Peter Gabriel, he tells us, is the kind of person who will offer you a spot of afternoon tea. But after 350 pages, it’s not clear what kind [of person] Allen might be.

That’s not all: Rivlin also accuses Allen of not being very philanthropic, which I guess is true, kind of. Allen did give away $14 million in 2009 from his personal charitable foundation. But compared to Gates, it’s a drop in the bucket. As I noted last week in Cannes, Allen brings his 414 foot yacht to the film festival, invites celebrities and miscellaneous groupies, and is the only big name not raising money for a good cause.

And: I’m pretty sure Allen doesn’t mention in “Idea Man” how in the summer of 2008 he spent millions hiring helicopters and photographers to find a new born litter of wild dogs in Botswana. (By coincidence, this reporter and his friends stumbled on them for free and got the pictures.)

Rivlin writes: “Gates might have played his old high school chum at the birth of Microsoft, but at least he is trying to do good with all those extra billions that ended up in his pocket. Allen, in contrast, is the accidental billionaire who reveals himself to be little more than an overgrown kid playing with his money.”

Ouch!

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