Justin Timberlake's stalker—surprisingly, not Brittney Spears—one Ms. Karen McNeil, was busted on Timberlake's property last week. When asked to leave, she wouldn't. So Timberlake danced out a restraining order on this psycho, who'd also tried to follow Axl Rose. Which is sad for Justin Timberlake's publicist. So is the fact that, instead of just loving Justin, she's apparently being possessed by witches. Witches? Witches!

In the nonsensical ramblings, Karen states that she has been targeted by "Babylon witches" who seek to cast their "evil" on her.

Babylon witches? WTF? Has Robert Moses State Park really gotten that bad?

But Timberlake isn't the only one. Ryan Seacrest has a creepy leprechaun who thinks he's been made in Seacrest's image, or something. No, but seriously, this guy's scary, and he has a knife, and now Seacrest has a restraining order against him:

Lawyers for Seacrest got the order from a Los Angeles judge on Friday after Chidi Benjamin Uzomah Jr. was detained at the E! Entertainment Television headquarters the same day. Records show the 25-year-old man is already on probation for a previous incident involving Seacrest. Last month, Uzomah pleaded guilty to three misdemeanours, including carrying a switchblade knife as well as assault and battery. That was after he attacked one of Seacrest's bodyguards outside an event.

Who else? Miley Cyrus has had a ghoulish, pervy, 53 year-old stalker. Who just went free today. This was the guy who thought he was getting secret messages from Miley through the television a la Videodrome. Whereas we all hear "this music sucks, listen to something else," this creep hears, well, someone telling him to do creepy things. Which makes him crazy.

So what's there to understand about these people? Why do they think famous people give a shit about them, you know, besides the fact that they're mentally ill? What causes it? If the Stalker button on the top of this page is blatantly evident voyeurism, among other things, what goes beyond it? I'm sure it's still being studied, somewhere. In the mean time, Bret Easton Ellis plans on showing us the answer. Who else? Ellis is adapting a book for TV about Young Hollywood as seen through the eyes of a stalker. Wonder if he did his research on subjects close to him. Then again, considering his definition of "scary," he might be trying to teach us something. The stalked are scarier than the stalker, maybe?

Nah. Despite the fact that Hollywood's full of scary people, the people they spawn and inspire are even scarier.

Celebrities: they're nothing like us.

[Photo via Bauer-Griffin]

• Meet your new action hero overlord: Chris Pine. Already fronting the rebooted Star Trek franchise, Pine has signed on to play the Jack Ryan role previously portrayed by Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin in a new go-around adapting Tom Clancy's series of espionage novels. [Variety]

• For those CBS and Viacom employees who feel each day the burden of the Redstone yoke, you can take heart today; Sumner is now less your owner than he was last week. The octillionaire mogul has been selling off the debt of his holding company, National Amusements. For now, however, NA still retains the controlling interest. [Variety]

• As the world waits for the final outcome of Vivendi/GE/Comcast talks over the fate of NBC Universal, Nikki Finke reports that Comcast wants the deal "done and announced in November." So there. [DHD]

• Curse be damned! ABC has won the competition to be the next network to fail with a sitcom by a former Friends star, locking up rights to the Matthew Perry project. [THR]

• The Wrap reports that Alex Young, Co-President of Production at 20th Century Fox is being moved out of the job and into a producing deal. Young was a Tom Rothman protege who has been in the job since 2007. [The Wrap]

• Always on the lookout for a feel good project, director Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis have picked up the rights to "The Golden Suicides," Nancy Jo Sales' Vanity Fair article about the deaths of downtown artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. [Variety]

• The creator of the Gilmore Girls is coming to HBO. Exec-Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has signed a deal to develop a dramedy for the cable network. She described the project as the "story of love, hate, family — and finding the perfect opening line," [THR]

• This is what it's come to in the strange, contorted career of Bill Murray; taking Joe Pesci's leftovers. For those who thought Murray's Zombieland cameo was just a little strange— that he was too big, or had been too big a star for the joke about Woody Harrelson being obsessed with him to completely click — you are right. In an interview with Hitfix, Murray revealed the walk on had been intended for Joe Pesci — with whom the joke would have made a lot more sense — but that Murray took the part after Pesci passed. [Hitfix]

The profile details Ellis' move to L.A. and comes in the middle of his writing the "sequel" to his first book, Less Than Zero (which made him a literary superstar at the age of 20), which is tentatively titled Imperial Bedrooms. The article - which isn't avalible online - paints Ellis as kind of sad and living a very existential, somewhat disconnected life. Also, he thinks The Hills is genius. The full quote, transcribed from print:

He is, however-and on this subject, he is highly animated-a huge fan of MTV's scripted reality series of the young and the monied in L.A., THE HILLS. "I think THE HILLS is the greatest show I have ever seen in my life," he says, sincerely. "It is a modern masterpiece. I think that ADAM DeVILLO is a mad genius. He creates it and controls it perfectly." Mr. ELLIS is very specific about the way he watches THE HILLS. "I'm holding off on Season 4 right now. I started watching a bit of it, but I'm waiting until the DVD comes out because I want to see it all so beautifully mastered. Even if you download the show there is that irritating MTV logo in the corner. It doesn't work for me that way. It has to be on a big screen with the sound right up. It blows me away...I'm sorry, but whoever invented HEIDI MONTAG and SPENCER PRATT are just...nothing matches it. I've never see L.A. look more beautiful in a work of art. There are no movies that are as beautiful as that."

This is why I'm never moving to L.A. Just like The City is why you should never move to New York.

He was also, interestingly enough, called out on a social networking site on a date going out ("BRET ELLIS is not a fan of social-networking sites. He has been "caught out" by someone on a dating site, though understandable doesn't care to flesh out that story. He won't try it again.").

Thing is, this makes an interesting point that I've never really considered before. The Hills is the tame, boring drug-less version of Less Than Zero (note to Hills producers: show them doing blow, and I'll watch). A bunch of severely disaffected brats, fucking around with their parents' money, creating an awe-inspiring charade of lives inextricably tied to the celebrity culture of Hollywood. This raises the question: was Less Than Zero the predecessor to The Hills? Do we blame Ellis for Speidi? Is Paul Telegdy off the hook today?

Meanwhile, Fantastic Man, which could be a test-tube baby between Esquire and McSweeny's, is kind of a fascinating product. It's a giant, pretty magazine with nice pages and a strange sense of humor. It costs $11. And it has Bret Easton Ellis on the cover, drinking a Diet Coke. This should tell you what kind of magazine it is: at once both kind of genius and a complete waste of one's time. I love it.

For example, in one issue, there is:

- A 1,000 word essay from the Editor-In-Chief of Interview on waking up with a hangover in Paris.

- A 1,000 word treatise on the greatness that is toast.

- A designation of the word "Super" as their word of the season. This is written on their masthead.

- A selection of single meals art-world people have had recently (one of them: pervy photog Terry Richardson's meal of a vegetarian burrito from Pinche Taqueria in New York. "For dessert, he had a pack of sour Skittles, also very 'yum yum.'").

- And a cover story featuring Bret Easton Ellis with nothing to promote. Did we mention he was drinking a Diet Coke?

You see, we've picked up on a trend amongst "the intelligentsia" of an almost kid-on-Christmas-morning eagerness to run to the theater to see this film just so they can trash it on their blogs and Twitter accounts and in doing so feel superior to the doltish masses who actually derived some sense of pleasure from it. Of course, we have no actual data to back this up, there's just a palpable snobbishness wafting through the air right now that our finely-tuned cultural antennae has picked up on.

Some members of the aforementioned "intelligentsia" who we actually like and hold in high regard have written about the film without really making much mention of the film itself, choosing to focus instead on the "ugly and thoughtless" clothes worn by the other moviegoers at a screening in a notably unhip Manhattan neighborhood instead.

What's perhaps most perplexing about the gripes we've read and heard about The Hangover coming from members of "the intelligentsia" are their genuine professions of profound shock over how "fratty" and "juvenile" the film struck them. It's almost as if they truly expected that a film titled "The Hangover" might actually be some sort of Fellini-esque neorealist high art film.

Another common trait shared by members of "the intelligentsia" who hated The Hangover is that they invariably loved Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, a film we desperately wanted to like but truly thought was one of the biggest steaming piles of cinematic dung to emerge out of the 21st century.





One last thought about The Hangover—Yes, it's a silly movie, but it's not completely devoid of intelligence, and silly movies seasoned with just a sprinkle of intelligence can often do wonders for the soul. If, that is, you're willing to unclench your anus just over the course of the couple of hours it takes to watch them.

With that said, go see The Hangover and judge for yourself.

Bret Easton Ellis' Tweets via Bret Easton Ellis' Twitter

On the surface, it looked as though the right decisions had been made: get Bret Easton Ellis to adapt his own novel (with co-writer Nicholas Jarecki), cast insanely, and have the youngest and most attractive actors (Heard, Jon Foster, and Austin Nichols) take off their clothes whenever possible. Still, the result is an enervating slog through an overly familiar setting: rich, debauched Los Angeles in the 1980s. Did you know they did coke then? It's true!

Intermittently, director Gregor Jordan captures that trademark Ellis vibe: dreamy surreality punctuated by bursts of tragedy that the numbed, drugged-out characters hardly know how to process. After a startling early car accident, though, the film shifts into low gear—and the removal of the book's vampire storyline means it has even less bite. "What was the point?" everyone asked in the lobby afterwards. Ellis's short stories coalesced into a meditation on mortality and meaning, but there's no theme or drive in the adaptation.

Still, good news for the Mr. Skin fans out there: Senator is releasing the film in April and was merely premiering it at the festival, meaning that screencaps of Amber Heard's performance as The Girl Who Never Puts a Shirt On will live forever, even after this film is long forgotten. Hey, will you look at that? Guess it managed to be a statement on mortality after all!

(Also, film critics: we are totally calling dibs on the headline "Regret to Inform." There, you cannot use it anymore. Thanks!)

Well, even without Robert Downey Jr., we still have a feeling this Ellis flick has a major shot at success, mainly due to the fact that The Informers has one of the most stellar and talented casts we've heard about in some time. The film stars Winona Ryder, Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Rhys Ifans, and bittersweetly, Brad Renfro in his final role. Somehow this mesh of fucked up, problem-ridden stars seems like the ideal group to depict Ellis' vision of a bleak and vapid Los Angeles. The more and more we think about it, the inclusion of the clean-cut and chiseled Routh probably would have just messed up this merry little circle of misery anyway.

• BRET EAST ELLIS ADAPTATION 'THE INFORMERS' LOSES ENTIRE VAMPIRE SUB-PLOT AND BRANDON ROUTH TOO? [SlashFilm]
• EXCLUSIVE: UNDEAD REMOVED FROM 'INFORMERS' [IGN]

HARRY: You're the head of this hugely successful publishing house ... how could you miss little me?

JUDITH:
You're adorable and the older men in this city are cretins.

HARRY:
What about Isaac Hirsch?

JUDITH:
He's dead, Harry.

HARRY:
That's ... heartbreaking.

JUDITH: (FLIRTY)
Are you making fun of me? Don't make fun of me, Harry.

HARRY:
I'm amusing you, Judith. Isn't that what I do? Amuse you?

JUDITH: (STANDING TOO CLOSE)
When am I gonna see you again?

HARRY: (HESITANT)
Soon. I promise. This week.

JUDITH:
How about tomorrow night? You wanna amuse me tomorrow night?

JUDITH touches HARRY'S dick through his pants.

HARRY: (TIGHT, LITTLE VOICE)
Tomorrow night sounds great.

JUDITH smiles, quickly baring her teeth, then turns away.

Ellis admits that he hasn't talked to Hobbs in a while, but dismisses the notion that they're on the outs. "I am not aware of any rift. We'll probably have dinner sometime next month. I wish I could create a fake feud to get publicity for the book, which I really like." He does admit, though, that the process of helping Hobbs birth the book (to recap: Great Gatsby, but now and with dude-bisexuality, oooh) wasn't all fun and games: "It's not easy to be my 'mentee.' I put him through the wringer."

No hint of wrungoutness is to be found in Hobbs' dedication to Ellis, however. "To Bret Easton Ellis, for reading this more times than anyone should have to read anything, and for teaching me, with extraordinary patience, how to write—or at least how to try. I am and will remain in awe."

Odds of a rift between Ellis and protege: less than zero [R&M]

We're speaking, of course, of the following announcement, which appeared in Publisher's Lunch:

Debut
Joe McGinniss Jr.'s first novel THE DELIVERY MAN, a portrait of today's lost generation, set in Las Vegas and involving a teenage-girl escort ring, with an unlikely love story at its heart, to Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic, for publication as an original trade paperback for Black Cat in winter 2008, by Katharine Cluverius at ICM (world).

(Recommended to the house by Bret Easton Ellis, it completes a circle that began when FATAL VISION author Joe McGinniss recommended to his former editor Entrekin the manuscript that became Ellis's Less Than Zero in 1982.)

Publishers Marketplace
The Journalist and the Murderer [Amazon]
[Image via NYer Cartoon Bank]

The six main characters — including an art gallery owner, lawyer, event planner and a closeted bartender — deal with career and relationship issues. They encounter violent situations and anxieties that are briefly manifested as monsters and other apparitions that may or may not be real.

"American Psycho" Author Plans Showtime Horror [Reuters/Hollywood Reporter]

Bret Easton Ellis was scheduled to come to the cities listed below on tour for the paperback release of Lunar Park. I apologize for the short notice, but he has broken his foot and has been advised not to fly/travel for several weeks. I am cancelling all tour cities with the exception of LA. If you would still like to speak to him - and your interview does not hinge on an author appearance — I am happy to arrange an interview with Bret from his home.

So very Lohan, no? If he slipped on the stairs while carrying a teacup, we're sold. In a similar but completely unconfirmed vein, we also received the following email:

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the upcoming book tour for Bret Easton Ellis' book Lunar Park is cancelled — Ellis has relapsed with his drug use/abuse and is currently in an outpatient center in los angeles.

As always, we're sure that this is total horseshit.

My Friend Aaron Teaches BEE a Useful Hand Trick [CollegeHumor]
Earlier: Shocker and Awe

BEE: Reading [American Psycho] again, at my age now, I was shocked by it. At the time, I thought all that [violence] had to be in there. Reading it recently, I don't know. I had to steel myself at times.

KC: So are you a different person?

BEE: I hope I am, yeah. [...] Pain means something more to you than it did when you were 21 or 22.

[Cut to commercial. When we return, Katie Couric is singing a Hilary Duff song.]

1. Are you as shallow as you appear?
Gawker is dedicated exclusively to frivolity and excess. I do, on occasion, stare into the existential abyss, ponder the nuances and shudders, and produce what some might refer to as "serious thoughts." You will never see these on Gawker.

In truth, I aim to be much more shallow, and am very demanding of myself in this respect. Every morning I look in the mirror and ask myself, "Am I vapid enough?" "How can I learn to make people care less about others, and more about me?" And most importantly, "Can I really bring myself to wear an outfit that just screams 'middle-class tax bracket?'" Sometimes I find myself not really caring which book Nicky Hilton's reading or whether she's remembering to color inside the lines, and I feel momentarily guilty. Happily, a Xanax, a martini, and a couple of lines of moderate-quality coke seem an effective remedy.

As I recently informed my publisher, I plan to learn how to be even more shallow very soon by infiltrating the Conde Nast cafeteria and conducting covert research. From a recent email to a neutral third party: "Conde double-agents have been teaching me the proper technique for effectively grinding a Manolo into the neck of an unwitting editorial assistant so that I can appropriately camouflage myself among the Vogue editors. I have spent the week spitting on poor people and scoffing at public transportation in preparation. In the course of the last month, I have also successfully expensed some $1.4 million to Si Newhouse. (No one seemed to notice. But I guess that's not terribly unusual.)"

2. Admit it: you're just a bunch of social climbers.
We're just a bunch of social climbers.

3. What do you say to those who describe you as "solipsistic assholes"? (Not that this has actually happened.)
We are, in fact, assholes, but I'd say we're no more solipsistic than the type of people who refer to us as "solipsistic assholes."

4. Why are you so down on San Francisco?
Because San Franciscans send us the most interesting hate mail. It's almost like they don't even realize we're joking!

5. What can a bunch of people from Alabama (Elizabeth), Minnesota (Jason) and the UK/Hungary (Nick) know about New York?
I think it's actually easier to write about Manhattan if you're an outsider. The absurdities, in particular, are much more apparent. The darker Manhattan-centric themes—class warfare as recreational sport; pathological status obsession; and the complete, total, and wholly unapologetic embrace of decadence—are much more fascinating to us. [Ed. note—We can spend entire minutes thinking about them.] The ironies of life in Manhattan hit you with all the subtlety of a two-ton sledgehammer to the back of the head. You find yourself inexplicably reveling in them and obsessively writing about them.

If we had a recommended reading list, it would include Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter's Spy Magazine circa 1988, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, possibly a little Bret Easton Ellis, Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and more recently, Tina Brown's New York column. None of these people are from New York either.

But enough with the sincerity. It's making me twitch. Next question?

6. Don't you spellcheck anything?
We have what's called "collective spellcheck." It involves you, the reader, emailing me and saying, "hey, you spelled that wrong." (Editor's a bit of a misnomer. I write everything and edit nothing.)

Publications with "budgets" apparently have "copyeditors" that serve the same purpose. We were forced very early on to choose between the "copyeditor" and the "vacation bungalow in St. Bart's," and, well, you see our dilemma.

7. What's in it for you?
For Gawker in general: Invitations to better parties (to borrow from Brooklyn fashion entrepreneur Ken Courtney) and one day soon, a positive net income figure.

For me: flattering fan mail, entertaining hate mail, a part-time paycheck, an outlet for mischievous impulses, and Conde Nast-wide peals of laughter (or a resounding "fuck you") if I ever send a resume or query letter to Vogue.

Publisher Nick Denton explains his complex motives for starting Gawker: "Ehm...I thought it'd be a fun thing to do."

8. What's the business model?
Mostly ad sales, right now. Gawker's extremely cheap to run, because on the technical side, expenses are nominal, and on the Editorial side, you have me, and...well, me. And I'm not full-time. (If you click on Gawker during business hours and it hasn't updated in an hour or two, it's probably because I'm out hustling for freelance assignments from the two or three publications we don't routinely and compulsively mock.)

We briefly considered acquiring AOL, but how stupid would that be?

9. Hell or San Francisco?
Hell. Obviously.

10. No one wants to hear about Tina Brown/Page Six/Craig's List, you idiots!
Yes, they do. For every email we idiots get that says "No more Tina! No more Page Six!", we're getting much more feedback indicating that people like it. If it were, in fact, true that no one wanted to hear about it, we'd probably take it off the site. (Reader abuse is never intentionally part of the program.)

On some larger existential level, we, too, find it mildly disturbing that people are actually interested in Paris Hilton's reading habits. But apparently they are. This is the culture in which we live...oooh, let's not think about it too much.

11. How come I've never heard of you?
Gawker's only been in existence since Mid-December of 2002. Prior to Gawker, I was working in finance and Nick was a technology entrepreneur. (Truth be told, Nick's still a technology entrepreneur *cough* media investor.)

Thus the wide-eyed enthusiasm for this strange new celebrity/media culture.

I, for example, had no idea who Bonnie Fuller was four months ago. Paris Hilton was but a hotel in France! (I'm still a bit confused, but it's only partially because I don't know what I'm doing.)

If it makes you feel any better, we've probably never heard of you either.