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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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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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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!

Maria Shriver Sends Apt Memorial Day Tweet

Roger Friedman
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1

Maria Shriver is sure making lemonade out of lemons this Memorial Day. Considering what she’s been through in the last few months, Shriver is proving to be resilient. She sent out this very apt Tweet this afternoon: “We don’t know what is going on inside of most people. On this #MemorialDay, when so many are grieving in obscurity or silence, let’s keep that in mind. Be kind so many people are grieving.”

Is Shriver talking about herself? Though she’s offering hope to lots of other people, there is no doubt a personal message there too. Her “be kind” is a nice way of saying to the press and everyone in the world gossiping about her terrible situation with Arnold Schwarzegger to back off. We don’t know everything–just what’s come spilling out in the tabloids. Shriver no doubt has a longer more detailed story. And she is grieving for a lost 25 year marriage, a friendship, and the trust she thought she had–despite numerous public warnings that Arnold’s behavior with women was quite bad.

Box Office: “Hangover” Soars, “Pirate” Slows, Woody Crows

Roger Friedman
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0

The record breaking Memorial Day weekend box office brings some surprises. “The Hangover Part II” is a gigantic hit, bigger than its predecessor with a $118 million take from Thursday through Sunday. Add in Monday, tomorrow, and the comedy lands at around $138 million. That does mean we’ll see a part III, and maybe even IV and V. You can bet “The Hangover” will be a franchise that never ends.

At the same time, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Distant Shores,” is not so popular in the US. With just $152 million domestically, “Pirates” has had to depend on foreign sales to make it a blockbuster. Abroad, this “Pirates” made an astounding amount of money–nearly $500 million.  But here, the Johnny Depp-Penelope Cruz adventure is lagging waaaaay behind its predecessor from 2007.  Disney probably doesn’t care, as those international figures are booming. So what the heck? And the movie promotes Disney World and Disneyland and Euro Disney, so it’s all good.

And then there’s Woody Allen. “Midnight in Paris” is turning into Woody’s biggest hit ever. The time travel comedy, perhaps the first film of the year to be a possible Best Picture nominee, is captivating audiences. “Midnight” has made over $2.8 million in the U.S. on only 58 screens. Sony Pictures Classics is taking its release slowly, which is wise. But at this rate, “Midnight” –when it goes into wide release– will eclipse Woody’s biggest hit, “Vicki Cristina Barcelona,” which did an impressive $23 million.

A couple more box office observations: Morgan Spurlock’s “POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” has not worked out at the box office. It’s such a refreshing and funny doc, but I guess the hook didn’t catch on. In six weeks it’s made only $566,000. And “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson didn’t do much to help “Water for Elephants.” Even though the dramedy will probably make a little money in the end, Pattinson’s teen idol status didn’t draw anyone in.  The “Twilight” doesn’t seem to extend beyond itself for its popular stars, as “The Runaways” didn’t bring out Kristen Stewart’s supposed legion of fans.

Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster “Beaver” Struggles to Make A Million Dollars

Roger Friedman
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3

It’s possible that at this point “The Beaver” won’t make a million bucks domestically. So far it’s taken in less than $700,000. The number of theatres that the Mel Gibson-Jodie Foster calamity is playing in has been reduced now for Memorial Day weekend. On the bright side, according to boxofficemojo.com. “The Beaver” has been a hit in Italy, with $450,000 in ticket sales. I don’t know what this says about the Italians, who I thought were smarter than that. Maybe it’s been a slow spring. Anyway. “The Beaver” cost at least $21 million, not counting prints, publicity, ads, and travel. Not since Kevin Costner’s “The Postman” has money been flushed down the toilet in such an egregious way. From the terrible title (I mean, really, “The Beaver”? Couldn’t they have called it “I’m Your Puppet”? That was a good song) to the whole business of trying to prop up Gibson by exploiting his own personal melodramas, this was a disaster. I guess the producers who put up the money– Jeff Skoll’s Participant Media and a fund out of Abi Dhabi–won’t miss $25 million or so.

Gil Scott-Heron, Legendary Musician and Poet, Dead at 62

Roger Friedman
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1

Gil Scott-Heron is dead at 62, probably of something connected to drugs. It’s very sad. He passed away yesterday in New York after reportedly not feeling well following his return from Europe. Scott-Heron had struggled with drugs, and spent time in prison and rehab according to reports. But he was so much more than that. Before rap and hip hop, Scott-Heron invented a new genre of soul with his spoken word “songs.” He probably invented rap. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” was his seminal work, but he went on to create a vibrant library of songs all through the 1970s. I remember seeing him in the summer of 1977 at Pall’s Mall in Boston, a basement jazz club on Boylston Street. He was the shit. Gil Scott-Heron released four independent albums from 1970 to 1974 including his first, and seminal, “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox,” in 1970. But starting in 1975, he put out nine albums in a row with — guess who?– Clive Davis, at the same time Clive was releasing Patti Smith’s work on Arista. RIP, Gil Scott Heron. The video for “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is in the video player below.

Blondie and Debbie Harry: New Single, Video, Album after 8 Years

Roger Friedman
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Blondie and Debbie Harry: New Single, Video, Album after 8 Years

Blondie is back! Their first new single and video, “Mother,” is below in the video player. Their new album, “Panic of Girls,” hits stores in the UK on June 1st and is available through amazon.co.uk. It seems like the US release is set for July, although this is unclear. There are just three original members of Blondie–Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and Clem Burke. But their sound remains fresh as ever. And “Mother” sounds like a winner. Can’t wait to hear the album, whenever it comes out and on whatever label. Viva Blondie! It’s kinda cool to know that 30-plus years later, Blondie, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, and Chrissie Hynde are all still working and putting out great music.

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