We are definitely not in the Bush White House anymore, people. According to the Washington Post's Reliable Source blog, sitting at the President's table for his first state dinner were "David Geffen, the Hollywood titan" and "Jeremy Lingvall, Geffen's Boyfriend."

Geffen and Lingvall have been linked as early as September 2008, when EW reported the two attended an Obama fund-raiser. (That night Obama presumably revealed to them that his pledge to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell was bullshit.) But who is this 26 year-old Jeremy Lingvall, boyfriend to 66-year-old David "Richest Man in Hollywood" Geffen? And what the hell could he and Obama possibly have talked about over their heaping plates of arugula? (We can only assume that Barack and Jeremy are pretty tight, since the sole other complete couple at the table were Nancy and Paul Pelosi. John Kerry was there—flying solo.)

We will use the time-honored journalistic practice of looking at Jeremy Lingvall's old Friendster account to attempt to answer these questions.

UPDATED with sexy pixxx from Jeremy's Facebook page. (All young billionaire-dating dudes: Lock your Facebook accounts.)

Jeremy is a 26 year-old surfer dude who graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. So maybe they talked about that?

The happy couple arrived to the ball in a carriage that transformed into a huge luxury yacht at midnight.

"Hello, President Obama! Do you remember me? You thought I was my boyfriend's son that one time. Pass the salt?"

"I like Arianna a lot, but she keeps dropping all these hints about how much she wished she was invited to this dinner. I mean, it's just a stupid dinner, right? No, no, no: I'm having a great time! Uh... pass the salt?" (Huffington and Geffen are old jetting buddies.)

"Hey Barack: Do you like to ROCK!?"

"Yeah, China was pretty chill. Weren't you just there or something?"

"This one I got from kiteboarding, and this one is from jumping off the eighth largest yacht in the world."

Is it enough to just say that out of all the words Jeremy could have used to describe himself on his Friendster profile he used these ones?

It is reassuring to know that if Obama choked on one of his green curry prawns during dinner there would be a sexy lifeguard on hand to perform rescue breathing on him until he swooned back to life.

Honestly? We were feeling bad about making fun of this kid until we saw this picture.

OK, it was all fun and games until this delightful pose. Now it's just <3 <3 <3 all the way to Obama's 2012 re-inauguration ball. See you there, Jeremy!

Sitting at the head of the political table in a one-party town is no mean feat, and for the men of Dreamworks, their lock on that much-contested position now looks to set to run into its third decade. Throughout the Clinton era, the President saw in Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen his veritable Hollywood soulmates in the international union of self-adoring baby boomers. The Dreamworks SKG company was in fact founded during a visit to White House, modeled in the heady sense of specialness that dominated those days.

After the diaspora for Hollywood Democrats of the Bush years, there was a mad scramble to see who would emerge as the new President's showbiz BFF, the 2008 campaign setting off a frenzy of industry fundraisers and check-writing. But when the dust cleared and when, just today, the ultimate announcement came, sitting at the head table once again was a certain trio of former partners, initialed SKG.

A couple others made the cut. Of course super-agent Ari Emanuel, having a certain White House Chief of Staff for a brother, got the nod. Also making the list, Sony Chief Michael Lynton, whom has been a heavyweight Democratic fundraiser with, as Nikki Finke outlines, ties to Obama since his first Senate run through his Chicago-raised wife.

Why however, did Obama give three of his five Hollywood seats to the retreads of the Clinton days? Why would he not use the dinner to elevate some brighter, younger activists?

Well, first there is always money. And they gives a lot of it. Katzenberg has written personal checks totally over $800,000 in the past decade while Geffen has shelled out over half a million out of his own pocket to various party coffers, not counting what they've raised from others (Interestingly, as is often the case with Hollywood fundraising the talent rarely feels the need to put much cash on the table, thinking they are doing more than enough by lending their name or showing their face. Steven Spielberg, in contrast to his partners, appears to have donated only around $100,000 from his deep as the Mariana Trench pockets.)

Geffen, of course, was a very vocal early, not just supporter of Obama's but detractor of Hilary's, publicly chastising his ex-friend in Maureen Dowd's column.

But most important perhaps, the former Dreamworks partners, perhaps more than any other showmen in the corporate age of Hollywood, look the part of elder statesmen. They have managed to consistently cultivate their public persona's — led by Spielberg's America's Director shtick — to keep themselves, through all the heavy turmoil of their career and company, looking like the grand old wise men of Hollywood; the boomers graduated into what passes in Hollywood for seriousness.

And even more than Hollywood, politics, above all, respects those who look the part. And so Hollywood's next generation of young upstarts will just have to cool their heels for a cycle or two more.

Geffen will apparently release an album of our beloved Nazi Pope singing and reciting prayer to the Virgin Mary. And then Geffen will convince the Pope to join The Eagles, the end.

[Photo: Getty]

The paper already took out a $250 million subprime loan from Carlos Slim. The best they can hope for there is not to allow him to leverage it to sneak in and take over the whole company. It was reported earlier that Hollywood megamogul David Geffen was trying to buy a 20% chunk of NYT stock from a hedge fund, but today one or both sides are pooh-poohing it as one mere phone call—a flight of Geffen fancy, if you will, not a real bid.

So the outside saviors are both...predatory at best, nonexistent at worst. What about saving itself, with a plan to not be cannibalized unto death by the internet? They're going about it, albeit quaintly! Today John Koblin has more details on the Times' theoretical plan to rake in more money, somehow. There are two possibilities!

1. A "'meter system,' in which the reader can roam freely on the Web site until hitting a predetermined limit of word-count or pageviews, after which a meter will start running and the reader is charged for movement on the site thereafter." Tick tick tick!

2. A "membership" system in which you donate money to the NYT and get a t-shirt or a key chain or extra content or a private relaxing "massage" from Jon Landman and Janet Robinson, whatever, they haven't worked it all out yet.

The sunny backdrop to all this is that if the company doesn't come up with some miraculous way to pay down its debt, fast, the Sulzbergers will likely have to give up their family control of the paper. So uh, they're still open to better ideas!

[NYP, NYO, WSJ]

Fortune reports that Geffen considered buying a 19 percent stake held by Harbinger Capital, a hedge fund. (Google also took a look but passed) Geffen — or anyone, really — would be a better owner than the Sulzbergers, the kleptocratic parasites who inherited their controlling stake. (The Sulzbergers like to style themselves as guardians of the Times's vaunted journalistic values, but the current generation seems far more interested in their dwindling dividends.)

If not Geffen, then who? Probably Carlos Slim Helù, the sketchy Mexican telecom mogul who's been accumulating a stake in Times Co. shares and debt. The debt, in particular, positions him to take over the Times if its finances take a tumble. We must stop this outrage! The Times is too great a national treasure for it to land in heterosexual hands.

We know everyone was totally distracted by Barack Obama and his magical election, but guys, even we out here in New York knew you faced a well-funded, well-organized, media-savvy campaign of lies and misinformation, and the pro-gay marriage response was abysmal.

Now—now!—Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says it's a shame gay marriage was banned, oh boo hoo. He didn't lift a finger to campaign against Prop 8 before! Now David Geffen is quoted in The Daily Beast babbling about the lack of outreach to black voters. Where was his money, before? [Update: Geffen gave $200k, out of his billions.] Did he get his rich liberal friends to contribute as much as the Mormon Church did? Did they use the money to build a grassroots movement as well-organized as the pro-Prop 8 guys did? Check out the list of Hollywood's non-donors as of September 10—many of them did eventually donate, but see how they didn't feel the need to until the last second?

Blaming the blacks is ridiculous and unhelpful and stupid. There aren't enough black people in California to have make the ultimate difference, even with bigger turnout, unless you consider these black voters a subset of religious voters, a giant group everyone should've known they'd have to contend with months ago. Black people certainly posed less of an electoral threat than Catholics did in the California polls.

It seems like everyone just assumed Prop 8 would fail, magically, even when the polls tightened significantly. And now—now!—the protests are ramping up. Now—now!—Keith Olbermann delivers his heartfelt Special Comment. Hey, let's all boycott Sundance! That'll show the Mormons! They won't meddle in our affairs ever again!

Of course the anger and resentment is already hardening. But yes, outreach and education and organization and money (and maybe some genuine help from Barack Obama, who was against Prop 8, though you'd never know it) might've won the battle.

Garnering support for gay rights in Arizona, in Arkansas, even in Florida, are difficult challenges that will still probably take years of work, but to get a gay marriage ban passed in California smacks of enlightened rich liberals not trying hard enough.

We already found two donations from David Geffen amounting to $200,000, and, confirming reports, another $100k each from a "self-employed" Brad Pitt and Ellen DeGeneres. And what of donations in support of the measure? We managed to ferret out an "unemployed" Mel Gibson living in Cameron Park who gave $250 to the Yes side. Alas, this was probably not the star but a gay-hater of lesser means bearing the same name, as Cameron Park is a community about 25 miles outside Sacramento. Then again, you never know where the Malibu land baron might have a little pied-a-terre. We'll just assume it is the Apocalypto director until we hear otherwise.

• Follow the money: Track contributors [LAT]

Having soured on the Clintons after raising huge sums of money for Bill and sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom—twice—Geffen found himself enamored of Obama from the first time he saw him on TV, giving a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. "I thought he was a remarkable guy," Geffen told me today. "After I heard him give that speech, I called him up and said, 'You're going to run for president and I'm going to support you.' " Geffen says Obama laughed and said he was very flattered, but that he wasn't running.

Cut to two years later. "He called me one day and said with a laugh, ' David, I guess you're right. I am running for president and I'd like your support.' And of course, I said, 'You have it.' "

Geffen then leaned back in his Carbon Beach chaise lounge, asking his second assistant's second assistant to bring over the master to-do list. "Cross out 'Make Obama run for president,'" he instructed, as the assistant's felt-tip marker hovered past "Flowers for Seann," "Bollywood!" and "Smear toothpaste on all the doorknobs at Paramount."

• Geffen on Obama: 'He'll be an inspiring president' [LAT]

Such modesty! To a point, anyway: If and/or when his Reliance Big Entertainment honeymoon ever tapers off, Spielberg and DreamWorks president Stacey Snider really won't have the Geffen touch to help woo another international conglomerate into bed. But by then Spielberg, 62, will probably be ready to scale back anyway, and survival will be less about braintrust than brand (and the library it manages to develop with its new distribution partners at Universal). He shouldn't even be there now, if one of his more illuminating disclosures today is to be believed:

In describing Mr. Geffen’s role at DreamWorks, Mr. Spielberg likened it to a family relationship. “Jeffrey and I were like the kids,” he said, while Mr. Geffen built the house and saw that the bills were paid. [...]

By his own recollection, Mr. Spielberg was initially reluctant to join in creating the original DreamWorks studio, which was conceived by Mr. Katzenberg shortly after he was fired as chairman of the Walt Disney Company’s studio operation in 1994. But Mr. Katzenberg begged for a meeting, and asked to bring a friend. The friend was Mr. Geffen, who not only did all the talking, but insisted to Mr. Spielberg: “I am representing your best interests.”

That assurance was to become the theme of Mr. Geffen’s dealings with Mr. Spielberg, who describes Mr. Geffen’s efforts for him over the years as a kind of “altruism.”

Aww! That shouldn't imply Spielberg was in a hurry to race out the door at Paramount, though, where Geffen reportedly had a short stay in mind even before he clashed with Brad Grey in 2006 over credit for Dreamgirls; "I do not like change," the director told the NY Times. And even if we have Tom Freston's firing and other, seemingly circumstantial evidence to vouch for that philosophy, everyone knows the bottom line: The sex just isn't the same off the Paramount lot. Wait and see — he'll be back.

• David Geffen Makes a Sudden Exit [NYT]

• Michael Phelps is dating Barbara Walters' assistant "Marina," with whom he went to college. Wait, that's a fake name right?? Is someone playing a trick on poor old Cindy Adams? [Cindy Adams]
• What pairs well with xenophobia and shouting? Jay McInerney knows! At Benoit, "McInerney and his wife, Anne Hearst, had to calm down political commentator Robert Zimmerman, who'd just had a fierce on-air tangle with Lou Dobbs. Jay prescribed Zimmerman a bottle of 1991 Côte-Rôtie La Turque Domaine Guigal." Frog-loving traitors, all of them. [R&M, second-to-last item]
• Good Morning America defeated Today to score a live Britney Spears performance, leaving NBC suits "fuming," according to the NBC News-haters at the Post. Meanwhile, the singer is sane and cognizant enough to be terrified she's bungled one court case so badly she may go to jail. Her handlers take this as a positive sign!
• Alec Baldwin loved (second item) Sarah Palin's behavior off camera at Saturday Night Live, but Chevy Chase was less charitable about what she did on-camera: "She cannot improvise herself out of a paper bag."
• Elizabeth Taylor, 76, likes to be wheeled into a West Hollywood gay bar, where she drinks tequila shots and Apple martinis. They call them the golden years for a reason, people. [P6]
• Sean Penn is Venezuela, just hanging out, committing some light treason. [P6]
• Tom Cruise is a huge Tina Turner fan. In a very straight way, of course. [P6]
• Breaking: David Geffen still hates the Clintons. "They are vindictive, and people were afraid of being excluded." [R&M, third item]
• Sting's wife said she totally called the Madonna-Guy Ritchie divorce. She also allowed it to happen, by introducing the couple. So, uh, nice work, detective. Gwyneth Paltrow, meanwhile, is behaving like a real well-publicized celebrity friend.
• No one, and I mean no one, pisses in Shannon Doherty's bathroom unless her name is freaking Shannon Doherty. And don't ever forget it! [Daily Star]

The timekeeper cites three news sources in as many weeks that have noted that the $500 million Reliance/DreamWorks deal is "a week" away from closing. The Wall Street Journal was a little more vague when breaking the story last June, reporting only that the parties were "close" to a deal. A fun theory floated at the time suggested outgoing 'Works partner David Geffen fed the story to the Journal to entice a bid from Rupert Murdoch himself, whose 20th Century Fox is on the short (if unlikely) list of potential DreamWorks distributors:

"This is what [Geffen] does really well," a studio veteran said after details of DreamWorks' new deal fanned across the film industry like a Malibu fire. On close inspection, the source explained, those details are not only weeks away from being worked into a contract, but out there in a way to stir up interest from interlopers. Even the scoop by which the deal-in-progress became public — page one, above the fold, in The Wall Street Journal — appeared orchestrated.

Our own DreamWorks digging unearthed little new news, and our Magic 8-Ball isn't much help either, with the inquiry, "Will Steven Spielberg be a free man?" first turning up the response, "Ask again later," followed by, "Outlook good." Whatever — if it's good enough for the Journal, then it's good enough for us.

• Why Is This DreamWorks-Reliance Deal Taking So Long? [The Business Sheet]

• Christian Bale is set to get a "caution" about his alleged assault on his Mom and sister in London, but only if he admits guilt first. Comedian Russell Brand: "In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved. Christian Bale, I believe whilst in a restaurant, rolled his eyes at the lighting. That is an offense punishable by five years in prison in the United Kingdom."
• Bill and Hillary Clinton said they aren't going to David "Obama" Geffen's stupid party at the Democratic convention, and Geffen said they weren't invited anyway, mumbling something about what the fatties would do to his catering bill. [P6]
• In between macking sessions with boyfriend Justin Bartha, Ashley Olsen consumed two Bloody Mary's and "a little bit" of spaghetti. In other words, a balanced diet. [P6]
• Someone is domain squatting AshleyDupre.com. But that's not the Spitzer hooker's real name, and she's probably not about to try to explain to some court how she established ownership over the pseudonym, so... Point to the domain squatter! [R&M]
• I had never heard that Lindsay Lohan's 14-year-old sister Ali got breast implants until Lindsay blogged a heated denial. [People]
• Jennifer Aniston's rebound rebound rebound man is said to be Matt Felker, a model. Meanwhile, John Mayer and Pete Wentz are hanging out more.
• Paris Hilton denied that she's dumped Benji Madden for the CEO of MySpace. [The Awful Truth]
• Because America will never tire of brutal torture on the part of insane, gung-ho law enforcement authorities, drunk driver and enemy of military training Keifer Sutherland would like to make a movie based on 24. [OK!]
• Tori Spelling says she'd still like to be in the 90210 spinoff, and implies she only dropped out because of the timing of her kid. [OK!]

"Why doesn't David Geffen provide a proper amount of backing for an online newspaper out of LA and why doesn't he hire the staff of the LA Times en masse and let them keep putting it out under a different name? That way Geffen would have the pleasure of owning LA's paper of record, the staff might have the opportunity of doing their jobs without worrying if their names are going to come out of the hat at the next round of cutbacks, forests of precious trees would be saved and no one would get their hands or light suits stained with ink while reading about current affairs."

That's kind of a great idea! And then why doesn't David Geffen buy some closed steel mills and textile factories in Ohio and pay all the workers to keep making all that steel and those textiles too? Then he can give everyone welfare. Oh wait, did we say capitalism? We meant handouts! WHAT HAPPENED TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

1. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, by Tom King

The Gist: A gay Polish-Ukrainian Jew from Borough Park moves to Hollywood and enters the mail room at the William Morris Agency. After forging a letter suggesting he had a college degree when in fact he did not, Geffen rises through the ranks to become an agent, then leaves WMA and founds Asylum Records and produces albums by Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Asylum is sold to Warner Communications, and Geffen becomes Vice Chairman of Warner film studios. He then retires and un-retires after a minor but erroneous health scare, founds Geffen Records, courts John Lennon and Yoko Ono (see below), produces Cats, Risky Business (see below), co-founds Dreamworks SKG, produces Saving Private Ryan, backs Bill Clinton, gives lots of money to AIDS research, falls out with Bill Clinton over one of the sleazeballs he didn't pardon, and now backs Barack Obama. Along the way Geffen throws many temper tantrums and raises his voice to the point where even Steven Spielberg asks him politely to lower it. He also shows a remarkable ability for betraying the confidences of good friends and business associates in order to charm potential clients he’s just met. The night Lennon was shot, Geffen was in bed with a male prostitute and loves to boast about it.

The Pull-Quote: “’What about my music?’ [Yoko Ono] asked. ‘Well, I’ve never heard any of your records.’ ‘Really,’ Ono said. ‘That doesn’t sound like a very good reason for me to make a deal with you.’ ‘I’m a big fan of John’s, and I have a great deal of respect for the two of you, and we do a very good job. We’re a good record company.’ ‘What do you mean you’re a good record company?’ Ono fired back. ‘You haven’t put out a record yet!’”

The Takeaway: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Be enlightened and progressive on your own time, but cunning and ruthless on corporate time. Respect for others’ privacy won't make you rich and powerful. Endear yourself to those you want to impress by gossiping about people you know behind their backs. It'll smack of such poor judgment that would-be clients will assume you're either crazy or brilliant, and guess what? You are.

2. Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power, by Judy Bachrach

The Gist: Gifted writer Tina Brown makes her fellow students feel small at Oxford, dates a host of famous men (including Auberon Waugh, who washes frantically after sex, Martin Amis, whom she adores, and Dudley Moore, whom she does not), deflects charges of arrivisme, and becomes editor of UK tabloid Tatler at age 25. She meets Harold Evans, then married and famously editing the The Times of London and The Sunday Times, which names her Most Promising Female Journalist. Brown and Evans marry in 1981, then move to New York three years later, whereupon Brown revives the moribund Vanity Fair by turning it into the must-read glossy on celebrity doings and the leisure class. She hires true crime reporter Dominick Dunne, photographer Helmut Newton and inaugurates a new wave of magazine journalism, operating under the assumption that "intellectuals should be read and not seen." Meanwhile, Tina and Harry are now East Coast socialites whose fiercely guarded life together aspires to shape headlines, not become them. (Their best friend is British libel law.) Brown takes over The New Yorker in 1992 and remakes that antiquated smart sheet, too, acquiring Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Lane and David Remnick, who later replaces her as editor-in-chief. On a manuscript submitted by Yiddish Nobel laureate, Brown writes, "Beef it up, Singer," which more or less encapsulates her style of feared-but-respected-or-hated tenure. She founds Talk magazine in 1999, which folds after just two years, an over-sensationalized failure from which this unauthorized biography derives all of its rise-and-fall schadenfraude. (Bachrach is a contributing editor at the new VF, edited by Brown’s archnemesis Graydon Carter.)

The Pull-Quote: "We live in a time when infamy sells.... There is no honor, no reticence, no loyalty." Spoken by Maureen Dowd on Brown's New Yorker reign, and quoted by author to make a clichéd point.

The Takeaway: Develop a nose for future A-listers. Sleep with as many as you can all the while adopting an “amused” air about them. Overpaying the talent means you can bully them into submission, so don't be cowed by easily tossed around phrases like "national institution" or "greatest living writer." Fuck 'em if they can't take a kill-fee. Oh, and marry old men.

3. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young

The Gist: Son of highbrow sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term "meritocracy," Toby Young devotes his life to testing how much strain that already weakened concept can take. He writes for the British Times, gets fired from the British Times. He founds celebrated Modern Review, which traffics in "low culture for highbrows," then shuts it down, much to the dismay of everyone else involved. Young moves to New York in the early 90's, gets hired by Graydon Carter as a contributing editor (read: sinecurist) at Vanity Fair, then proceeds overlong tenure as a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Graydon Carter’s shoe (this is G.C.’s description of him, not ours). Young cracks dud jokes to celebrities, refers to doormen who won't let him into parties he'd end up hating anyway as "clipboard Nazis," does blow while on assignment, asks Nathan Lane if he's gay, gets fired from Vanity Fair. Now back in London (this isn't in the book), Young edits The Spectator, a conservative weekly, and boasts of his "negative charisma," probably as a way to boost paperback sales. HTLFAAP, much like Young himself, has been up and down the wicket of sadomasochistic success. A film adaptation is said to be in post-production, starring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst.

The Pull-Quote: “Cool Britannia was a cry of independence, a howl of protest against the all-enveloping cultural hegemony of the United States, yet, paradoxically, it didn’t really mean anything—it hadn’t really happened—until it was noticed by the American media. That explained the schizophrenic attitude of people like Damien Hirst, Keith Allen and Alex James: they wanted to assert their indifference to the attentions of glossy, New York magazines, and yet they wanted to be photographed striking this insouciant pose in Vanity Fair. Like rebellious schoolchildren, their protest wouldn’t have counted unless it was registered by the authorities. Unfortunately, in this scenario I was cast as the toothless substitute teacher.”

The Takeaway: The memoir is a good object lesson in what not to do if you want to hang onto a job or a masthead listing, or cast the impression that deep down you really had high expectations for the world of glamour-besotted New York media. Also, it pays to be obnoxious in a way that only you find ironic.

4. Spy: The Funny Years, by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

The Gist: In 1986, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen found the future of piss-taking journalism in the form of Spy magazine. Épater le bourgeoisie never had it so good, or so the editors – now all dressed up and fixtures of the very culture they once lampooned – are the first ones to remind you. Spy pioneers satire as a clever agglomeration of facts, and specializes in the infographic, the listicle (just like this one!) and the blurb cloud. It attempts to decipher just who, exactly, is on the New Yorker’s indecipherable masthead. It follows Anthony Haden-Guest into the dank reaches of his own nightlife. It refines hatred of Donald Trump into an art form. Features include the Liz Smith Tote Board, Separated at Birth, and Logrolling in Our Time, without which everything from The Onion to Conan O’Brien’s pre-interview fooling would be unimaginable. The self-conscious prose style is a cocktail of H.L. Mencken, A.J. Liebling and Wolcott Gibbs, and its been swigged by every glossy editor in search of a readership ever since. Once G.C. leaves, it all goes to shit. Like Studio 54, the new owners can’t make it work, ergo the justified hubris of the book’s title.

The Pull-Quote: “How easy is it to steal the sour cream?” – in a chart surveying the various Manhattan cafeteria chains.

The Gist: You need only ask yourself if you read Radar to determine whether there’s any pedagogic value to be mined from Spy.

5. Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

The Gist: Nameless 24 year-old fact-checker for elite New York glossy (a thinly veiled New Yorker) moonlights as an aspiring novelist, or wants us to believe he moonlights as that while he’s busy Hoovering coke by the suitcaseful and partying through the vertiginous 80’s club scene with a yuppie twat called Tad Allagash. Tad calls the narrator, who writes annoyingly in the second person, “Coach.” His mother has recently passed away, so we’re shin-kicked into wondering if a life of artifice and glitz is simply an emollient for real pain. Behind the hatred there lies a plundering desire for love. Or something.

The Pull-Quote: “Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you clean up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

The Takeaway: Once Tina Brown takes over Coach’s magazine, he’s fired. Sort your soul out before you move to the metropolis of infinite distractions, otherwise you, too, will wind up a shiftless anonymity with withdrawal symptoms. (Your apartment can still be a mess, however.)

6. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

The Gist: Recent Brown graduate Andrea Sacks wants to write for the New Yorker (sigh) and blankets the media world with her resume hoping to get a dues-paying job somewhere that will eventually allow her to become Larissa MacFarquhar. Whoops. She gets hired by fashion bible Runway’s bitch supreme Miranda Priestly (Anna Wintour, not even thinly veiled) as her junior personal assistant. Next thing Andrea knows, she’s chasing down lattes at Starbucks and sirloins at Smith and Wollensky instead of learning about ledes and nut grafs. Not what she had in mind but she loves the clothes and even develops a knack for being a second-string slave to a subhuman narcissist. Unlike in the film, Andrea doesn’t quit – she gets fired for saying “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.” Ballsy, sure, but she does get to keep some of the Dolce and even snags an interview for a real writing position at another magazine in the same building. (N.B. Author Weisberger was Wintour’s personal assistant, so this novel is a bildungsroman, which is a word Andrea learned at Brown but seldom got to use after graduation.)

The Pull-Quote: “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.”

The Takeaway: How many bright young girls have come to New York hoping to fill these Cinderella slippers, only to discover that not only is Wintour not hiring, but she’s honed her filter for confessional opportunists more interested in publishing advances than making sure her Apple Fritter is extra flaky. If you want to be a bona fide reporter, save yourself the aggro and dashed hopes and apply for an internship at the New York Sun your junior year. Also, while it’s true that some ball-breaking editors respond well to self-assertiveness, telling your boss “Fuck you” isn’t the wisest career decision.

7. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, by John Gregory Dunne

The Gist: The story of Dunne and wife Joan Didion's attempt to transform the life of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch, who died in a car wreck after more or less proving on air in 1983, during a broadcast of NBC News Digest, that she was a drug addict. Instead of a sadder version of Network, the screenplay transforms into the Disneyfied Up Close and Personal, which makes absolutely no mention of Savitch and which even Robert Redford doesn't remember filming.

The Pull-Quote: “The purpose of such a meet-and-greet is to allow the executive to size up the supplicant. [Disney studio chairman Jeffrey] Katzenberg had not read Golden Girl, but he was aware of the less savory details of Jessica Savitch’s life. He liked the ugly-duckling idea; it was the kind of narrative he wanted, and he was also responsive to the television background against which it would be played. He did have reservations, and here I quote Joan’s notes of that first meeting: ‘Wants to know what is going to happen in this picture that will make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something and good about themselves.’”

The Takeaway: Dunne is witty and disarming, especially when he quotes Jack Warner's definition of screenwriters: "schmucks with Underwoods." Interestingly, the "monster" in question is not the industry or any particular studio executive, but rather the money that governs all, including Dunne.

8. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, by Julia Phillips

The Gist: Scandal-sponge Jewish producer reveals the vast corruption, drugs and sexual indiscretions that motor the movie industry. Phillips gets fired by Steven Spielberg on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, accuses Goldie Hawn of body odor, and, on the night she becomes the first woman to win a "Best Picture" Oscar for The Sting, downs three valiums, one upper, one and a half drinks, two joints and a dash of cocaine. The book is a sprayfire indictment of practically everyone Phillips ever met in Hollywood, and it got her banned from Morton's.

The Pull-Quote: "They were really a rogues' gallery of nerds. Marty [Scorsese] was tiny and asthmatic, Steven [Spielberg] had the soft, flabby look of a typical Twinkies kid, and Brian [De Palma] never took his safari jacket off."

The Takeaway: Sour grapes ferment the best, although it's not as if anyone still believes in some West Coast Arcadia where dazzling moving pictures are made. Still, you'll hardly do better for the brutally honest story of a show biz prodigy that had to burn everything before she flamed out.

9. Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media, by Michael Wolff

The Gist: Following up on Burn-Rate (1998), which was about Wolff’s bust foray into the world of online startups, this is the nasty-minded sequel by the former New York media writer who wants badly to be the next Murdoch but can’t and decides to just insult everybody he ever envied instead—especially Fox News President Roger Ailes. Most of the stuff in here consists of Wolff's recycled columns, but it's all in one place and no true mogul ever wasted his time searching through web archives. Harvey Weinstein is obese and grotesque. The media business is "collapsing” like communism. Some of Wolff's axioms should be true even if they aren’t: “The larger and higher-profile the company, the bigger the nutcase who runs it.”

The Pull-Quote: “This was the meta thing. Meta gave both irony and gravitas to what we did. The delicious incongruity between our superficiality and our importance. The joie de vivre of self-referentialism. The stupendous, intoxicating power of being able to create the world we lived in."

Bonus Pull-Quote: “So, as I arrived for my speech, I was thinking of my relationship to the absent but always present [Fox News head Roger] Ailes. He was the greatest, but the Antichrist too.”

The Takeaway: Still fun. Like Young’s book, AOTM is a serviceable monument to failure dressed up as critical thinking. Though most of the wisdom you could just as easily cull by lunching at Michael's. Wolff went on to try and match-make the sale of his old haunt New York (he's now at Vanity Fair) to Mort Zuckerman, who in the event lost out to hedge fund wizard Bruce Wasserstein. That means more meanness is forthcoming in what promises to be the Dance to the Music of Time of inferiority complexes.

The rest of the picture is still taking shape, but after the jump we have a few educated guesses as to where things might land — and it looks curiously like Bollywood.

Led by Anil Ambani, by Variety's count the world's sixth richest man (and the husband of a Bollywood actress), Reliance is apparently taking over Hollywood one A-list player at a time. Its film funding arm, Reliance Big Entertainment, made headlines at Cannes last month when it announced development deals with the likes of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks and others, splitting with studios the costs of new productions costing up to $1 billion. Reliance's latest venture is decidedly more ambitious, expanding its vast media footprint to claim what will be roughly half of the new DreamWorks: Six or so films a year through a studio to be determined (probably Spielberg's old stomping grounds at Universal, where he still keeps an office).

The deal also continues Asia's incursion into Hollywood, perhaps epitomized by Sony's $4.8 billion takeover (with Comcast) of MGM in 2005. But India has been even more active in the last year, with TV producer UTV Software buying into Fox's The Happening and Lionsgate entering a development deal with Mumbai-based shingle Eros International. The Reliance/DreamWorks pact is the biggest by far, but as noted by WSJ, the Snider connection gives Reliance stable executive footing for its grand Hollywood experiment.

The paper also adds, however, that DreamWorks would be dealing with an Indian conglom with its own internal drama: Anil Ambani is embroiled in a feud with his older brother Mukesh over a multi-billion dollar acquisition in South Africa. The trouble would only touch DreamWorks if the communications arm were ever sold; the brothers have reportedly been fighting over controlling interest in that case.

Spielberg will obviously cross that bridge when he comes to it, as will he face inevitable concerns about investor influence over his and Snider's slate. To wit, are the Clooney/Hanks/Pitt et. al. projects earmarked for the 'Works? How will Reliance play ball with Universal, Fox or another studio enlisted to distribute DreamWorks' films? Will press inquiries forevermore be rerouted to a call center in Bangalore? So many questions!

• Spielberg, India Firm Near Deal to Ally With DreamWorks [WSJ]

It depends on what Steven Spielberg and David Geffen want. Most important is autonomy, which they won't get without once again going the independent route: self-funding their own projects and paying out a distribution fee to a studio with the infrastructure to put their product in theaters. If Marvel can do it, God knows DreamWorks can, but Spielberg wants more — like full-blown "studio" more. That's why we kind of like the Universal prospect floated today by Goldstein:

Pros: No studio has the same emotional tug as Spielberg's ancestral home. Studio boss Ron Meyer would love to have DreamWorks back in the fold, while Spielberg and Snider (a former chairman at the studio) have an easy familiarity with Uni's marketing and distribution machinery.

Cons: After the dysfunction of Paramount, would DreamWorks want to be anywhere near the tightly controlled GE corporate culture that drove away Snider in the first place? GE remains the antithesis of DreamWorks' bureaucracy-free model.

Nevertheless, with everybody else overextended (Warner Bros., Sony) or content with their classier, "independent" outlets (Fox with Fox Searchlight; Disney with Miramax), Universal is the only studio that has would have the 'Works on its own terms. What Universal needs is development, and DreamWorks has that in spades. The bureaucracy would pare down pretty fast if (or rather when) DreamWorks is producing six films a year including one from Spielberg — while Snider is clearing the brush on his behalf. Goldstein even suggests that Spielberg might buy Universal, which, at a valuation of up to $25 billion, is ludicrous (even without NBC involved). But if this deal doesn't happen, it won't be for its principals' lack of trying. And hey, if not, then sure: Hellooooo, MGM!

• DreamWorks is ready to bolt from Paramount [LAT]

• Right off the bat, fun little non sequitur! Sumner Redstone shaves nude in his hot tube. What?
• Burrough's piece is based largely on interviews with two advisors, one from the Dreamworks camp and one from Redstone's circle, identified as a dude. It's hard to imagine there's anyone close to the situation who doesn't know who the Redstone source was&mdash nearly a third of the direct quotes come directly from his mouth. Also, we gotta say, given Burrough's avoidance throughout the piece of the whole pronoun thing when referring to the Dreamworks source, we're going to take a guess that it was a lady.
• The Island, that mystifying Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor action flick, cost Geffen his deal to sell to Universal, an arrangement he'd promised Spielberg he'd take care of. The G.E.-owned company took one look at that bomb and cut their offer by $100 million. Yes, Scarlett, you were $100 million kinds of terrible! Spielberg didn't talk to Geffen for weeks afterward.
• Not surprisingly, Spielberg is protected and appeased as Dreamwork's sacred muse by everyone at Dreamworks, including Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. That said, the Dreamworks source says "Let's be clear. Steven needs David. David is richer than Steven." Aww, ain't it grand having partners you can trust?
• When Geffen finally brokered a bargain-basement $600-million deal to sell Dreamworks to Sumner, a decision he now says was "poor," Spielberg refused to move his offices to the Paramount lot like the rest of the company. He's still holed up at the Universal complex, all Ruby Ridge-style.
• "Suits Do Not Publicly Criticize The Talent." An unspoken Hollywood rule, which both Paramount's Rob Moore and Redstone seriously flouted when Moore criticized Clint Eastwood for the lackluster performance of Flags Of Our Fathers and Redstone booted Tom Cruise out Paramount's door, publicly blaming the star's unhinged behavior. Dreamworks execs, especially Spielberg, were not amused, and really lost it when Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said in September that losing Spielberg would be "completely immaterial" to the company.
• Still, the director thought Cruise's bizarre crackheadedness hurt 2005's War of the Worlds. Dakota Fanning can also do no wrong, it seems. "Far worse, though, had been an episode when Spielberg told Cruise the name of a doctor who had prescribed medication to a relative and the doctor's office was subsequently picketed by Scientologists." Subtle, OT-VII, subtle.
• Hollywood publicists are all kinds of terrifying.
• A $1 million donation to the Shoah Foundation will not earn you Steven Spielberg's forgiveness.
• Nikki Finke, dare we mention her name here, is allegedly part of David Geffen's "covert press campaign" to kick Redstone's ass. (Don't hurt us, Nikki!)
• But wait a minute—so is Bryan Burrough maybe! As the VF piece was going to press, filled with lots of chest-thumping Geffen quotes like, "Redstone, he is accustomed to bullying people. And I will not be bullied. There is no fight I will run from," Geffen calls Burrough up to thank him. "Somehow you've so provoked Redstone he has come over to see me and we've cleared up a lot of these issues. This article, you, you did this. A lot of this was bullshit. This was about our personal relationship. And we've cleared up a lot of this. And a lot of this I feel like I owe to you," he tells him.
• 
  No better feeling in the world as a journalist than to know you played your role as press pawn to your subject's satisfaction.

  Showdown at Fort Sumner [Vanity Fair]