The novelist created the HBO series Bored to Death, starring Jonathan Schwartzman, but had nowhere to watch it the Sunday before last because he didn't own a TV. Insert your own "precious Brooklyn author eschews television" joke here if you like, but Ames insisted on Twitter he's "just very bad at shopping" and, in any case, had frantic fun watching his own show on other people's televisions for two weeks. Or at least that's how things seemed from his tweets.

And then HBO, where because they got tired, worried or charmed by Ames' Twitter begging, finally just bought him a set. Which, frankly is almost too perfect; we wouldn't put it past the network to set up the whole escapade as a publicity stunt targeted at the show's hipster target audience.

It's some comfort, then, that Ames has used Twitter as a cashless flea market before, offering free foreign editions of his books at a Carroll Gardens bar. That experiment didn't seem to go as well: One of us happened to drop by that night and Ames was there, but not one had yet come looking for his very pretty books. Apparently there are some giveaways even Twitter can't facilitate. Sorry, book lovers.

(Pic by mtkr on Flickr)

The premise of the show, if you've thus far been able to avoid it, is the misadventures of Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, who becomes so bored with his life that he decides to become an amateur detective. Ames seems like Schwartzman's Rushmore character all grown up, still trying on vocations that he has seemingly no prior formal education for.

New York as a milieu plays a major role, primarily Brooklyn, setting the stage for cliches of the macrobiotic vegetarian masseuse, calling Brooklyn the new Manhattan (wasn't that 5 years ago?), eating suckling pig at a artisanal greenpoint eatery that takes it's food very seriously.

Ted Danson is inexplicably in the picture, playing the editor of a magazine and the grizzled man about town. If you're having a tough time picturing the aged Danson as a Mr. Big type, you're not alone. He plays well as a comic foil for Schwartzman but not so much as a sophisticate.

It makes for good light Sunday viewing, but HBO has been in a major rut when it comes to new original comedies since Sex and the City went off the air. Curb is having one of the best seasons to date, but that's dipping in the old well. If Bored To Death is their best shot at taking over when Curb has expired, they're aiming pretty low.

This YouTube video came via a tipster who writes, "Hi; I'm not sure how this works, but I got this footage from the set of Entourage the other day. Matt Damon was directing a PSA starring Adrian Grenier and he flips out on Adrian in front of everyone! [It] even shows Jeremy Piven as he tries to keep the peace - but Matt totally loses his cool and goes off."

We, on the other hand, are pretty sure how this works: Have a Hollywood star do a cameo playing himself on your Hollywood-focused TV show so he can promote his charity, incorporate an ego-driven blow-up on the set of a PSA into the plot, make a fun, shaky little video of said blow-up, put it on YouTube, and send it to gullible blogs claiming that it depicts a real on-set blow-up, which blogs will write about it and drive traffic to it in advance of the show's season finale featuring the Hollywood star.

What the hell, we'll bite. It's Friday. Also, go give money to OneXOne.org, because it looks like a fine little shop. But whatever you do, please stop watching Entourage.

The Late Shift, a 1996 HBO movie based on a book by the New York Times' Bill Carter, chronicled the infamous struggle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson as the host of the Tonight Show after his retirement. Higgins, in an interview with Starpulse's Mike Ryan, said that he knew at the time he was offered the role that the film would be controversial and that he risked facing a backlash within the notoriously petty industry for taking the role, but at the time he was a struggling actor who desperately needed $300 to fix his broken-down car.

They had a hard time casting it for that reason. And he was very powerful — and is. He didn't like the project from the beginning and didn't make it easy for me — or for anyone doing that project. It was (pauses) it was hard. I took it because I needed to fix the steering column on my Subaru is why I took it. I needed $300 or I wouldn't have a steering wheel. So, I ended up making more than $300 but in the end it's one of those jobs you just can't... I could not turn it down. I may be able to turn it down now, but I couldn't at the time. It would just be completely crazy and irresponsible.

You know, it was scary. I was scared of it. No question. Actually, doing the job itself was a tricky acting challenge but I had had harder acting challenges onstage. That part wasn't so bad, it was the appendant hoopla which was difficult for me to navigate and I didn't do it that well because I was so inexperienced. There was a lot of press, there was a lot of interviews and comparing me. And [Letterman] was saying things about me on his television program. It was difficult. I didn't know what I was doing.

I had a lot of help from HBO's publicity department who was holding my hand through it because I suddenly was in a rather glaring spotlight. Mostly not because of the project, which was good, but it wouldn't have gotten all that press. It was mostly because of the nature of the project. An inside, big Hollywood story where people were actually getting represented on the screen. People who are alive and well.

It was a great opportunity and it was really daunting and scary. It was like, "Should I do this? This could end it all. This could start and end the whole thing." Thankfully, it didn't.

Higgins also said that Letterman has refused to speak to him in the years that have passed since, though he was booked to appear on Letterman's show, only to get bumped without explanation.

There was a famous incident where he invited me to the show and I got bumped off the show. Everyone sort of tried to figure out what happened there ... it's odd though, it's an interesting job. It's really interesting to industry people. To still be talking about a job I was in 12 years ago is very unusual.

Back in February, Letterman invited the mother of the late comedian Bill Hicks onto his show so he could apologize publicly for a slight he perpetrated upon Hicks back in 1993. Maybe one day Letterman can invite John Michael Higgins to join him on the air to talk about The Late Shift and put all of the animosity to rest. We think it's be a tremendously nice gesture, not to mention something that would make for very compelling television, don't you think?

John Michael Higgins Talks [Mike Ryan/Starpulse]

In a sort of open letter essay to the publishers of the Times and Post published by the Columbia Journalism Review, Simon pleaded for the newspapers to blatantly defy federal anti-trust laws and just blame it all on him when the FBI shows up on their doorsteps.

You must act. Together. On a specific date in the near future-let's say September 1 for the sheer immediacy of it-both news organizations must inform readers that their Web sites will be free to subscribers only, and that while subscription fees can be a fraction of the price of having wood pulp flung on doorsteps, it is nonetheless a requirement for acquiring the contents of the news organizations that spend millions to properly acquire, edit, and present that work.

No half-measures, either. No TimesSelect program that charges for a handful of items and offers the rest for free, no limited availability of certain teaser articles, no bartering with aggregators for a few more crumbs of revenue through microbilling or pennies-on-the-dollar fees. Either you believe that what The New York Times and The Washington Post bring to the table every day has value, or you don't.

You must both also individually inform the wire-service consortiums that unless they limit membership to publications, online or off, that provide content only through paid subscriptions, you intend to withdraw immediately from those consortiums. Then, for good measure, you might each make a voluntary donation-let's say $10 million-to a newspaper trade group to establish a legal fund to pursue violations of copyright, either by online aggregators or large-scale blogs, much in the way other industries based on intellectual property have fought to preserve their products.

And when the Justice Department lawyers arrive, briefcases in hand, to ask why America's two national newspapers did these things in concert-resulting in a sea change within newspapering as one regional newspaper after another followed suit in pursuit of fresh, lifesaving revenue-you can answer directly: We never talked. Not a word. We read some rant in the Columbia Journalism Review that made the paywall argument. Blame the messenger.

Yeah, we're sure that'll fly really well with the feds.

And of course, Simon couldn't resist taking another of his patented shots at the internet on his way out of the door.

In the newspaper industry, however, the fledgling efforts of new media to replicate the scope, competence, and consistency of a healthy daily paper have so far yielded little in the way of genuine competition. A blog here, a citizen journalist there, a news Web site getting under way in places where the newspaper is diminished-some of it is quite good, but none of it so far begins to achieve consistently what a vibrant newspaper, staffed with competent, paid beat reporters and editors, once offered. New-media entities are not yet able to truly cover-day after day-the society, culture, and politics of cities, states, and nations. And until new models emerge that are capable of paying reporters and editors to do such work-in effect becoming online newspapers with all the gravitas this implies-they are not going to get us anywhere close to professional journalism's potential.

Detroit lost to a better, new product; newspapers, to the vague suggestion of one.

In other words, the internet may look like a Toyota, but it's really a Hyundai. Or something.

Now, I agree with Simon that some sort of payment model for newspaper content needs to be developed, but as my colleague Ryan Tate pointed out so well back in May, Simon, who hasn't worked as a journalist since the mid-90s and is clearly staggeringly ignorant about many aspects of the internet, is, simply, a "dead-wrong dinosaur" in his assertions about the inability of the web to cover "the society, culture, and politics of cities, states, and nations." There are numerous websites doing incredible work covering society, culture and politics on a national level, and in his post, Ryan cited a few examples of individual citizens using blogs to shine light on issues in their local communities, something that continues to happen more and more all over the place. Hell, a group of plugged-in Alaskan citizens just about drove Sarah Palin to the brink of insanity with their pesky meddling, and as inexpensive, high-speed access to the internet continues to proliferate and the cost of the computer equipment necessary to create online content continues to drop, this sort of thing will become more and more commonplace.

As a collective source of news the internet is certainly not yet on par with newspapers that have been around for decades, but personally I've become much more comfortable getting my news from passionate individual observers than I am with getting my news from an institution forced to play politics with other institutions in order to maintain its oh-so-sacred "access" over the passage of time. If anyone should understand this feeling and sympathize with it, you'd think it'd be David Simon. After all, The Wire was a show about the corruption of American institutions, one of which was a newspaper! And frankly, let's be brutally honest here, the stuff taught in journalism schools isn't exactly, well, rocket science. Is it helpful and advantageous to have such an education if one chooses to embark on a career in media? Yes. But is it an absolute prerequisite? No. Because the lack of a journalism school education is nothing that can't be overcome with sheer determination and simple common sense. Period.

Look, I don't want newspapers to die. I love newspapers. They've been an integral part of my daily life since I was a kid. Ideally, in a perfect world, some happy medium can be reached, some middle ground can be found where newspapers and internet news sources are both able to survive and thrive. But in the course of the natural progression of things, sometimes things just die. Yes, it's sad, but it's just the way it is. Accept it.

The irony in all of this is that The Wire, the television show David Simon created/produced/wrote, owes a lot of its success to, wait for it—the internet! The Wire was, and continues to be, the darling of internet people. Web buzz played a huge part in the show's staying on the air for five seasons, not to mention how it's helped the show remain a part of the national conversation since going off the air. Hell, I personally rented and eventually bought the complete series on DVD earlier this year entirely because of the giant internet circlejerk over the damn thing. So, yeah, this is all so very, well, ironic.

Finally, I like David Simon a lot and he's someone that I and many others look up to, but really, it's time for him to just shut the fuck up.

Build the Wall [CJR]

Video clip probably NSFW, BTW!

It's so hard to tell about the general quality of the show, glamored as we were by director Alexander Payne's reliably gentle/tough hand and the nimble work of Jane Adams, as Thomas Jane's pimp, who is one of Hollywood's most criminally underused actors. She gave a fine, nuanced, weird performance last night—spanning from sexual ecstasy to untethered artist sadness to hard-minded pragmatist with natural ease. And Payne's details—his close-ups, his visual aesthetic that's both warm and chilly—provided such a lovely backdrop for this kind of pleasingly lived-in acting.

But Thomas Jane? Hm. He's always been such a conundrum. He was maybe going to break out and be big after The Sweetest Thing and The Punisher and then it just fizzled into nowhere. And he's got that curious face, that bashed-up maybe-handsome, maybe-too-unfocused set of features that can be manly and attractive one minute, and then sort of sad and grizzled the next. It works mostly to his favor, we think, in the role of Ray Drecker, a washed-up high school coach who, in his youth, had a string of opportunities that never panned out (hey... sounds familiar!). Anne Heche ably plays his angry, moved-on wife in a part that could either stay shrill or round out to something unlikable, sure, but undeniably compelling in its true-to-life humanity (see: Nikki Grant on Big Love).

So we like it OK. But we're definitely not in love. We're trying to remember the last time a TV pilot grabbed us and demanded further viewing. Didn't happen for True Blood or, hell, even Big Love. What about over on Showtime? We're sorta liking Nurse Jackie, but it's really only for the same reason as Hung: a wonderful performance by a lead actress amid a sea of other, murkier things. In the case of Nurse Jackie: What the hell were they thinking casting that guy as Jackie's husband? He's like twenty years younger and belongs in some indie about softly strumming guitars in a sparsely-furnished New York apartment, not playing the borough-dwelling owner of a local dive bar. Also, Anna Deavere Smith is sort of embarrassing herself with jokey-joke cameos as a stern hospital administrator. And while Eve Best is a terrific actress, we're not sure that her hyperbolic character—bitchy blase rich Englishwoman doctor with a boatload of Blahniks but no love for children—belongs alongside Falco's more dependably "real" Jackie.

Both of these shows have promise, and we'll stick with them, but we're disappointed that we're not more excited. Not everything can be The Sopranos or Mad Men where we're hooked like suckers from the very beginning, but watching a show out of duty or some pretentious high-minded ideal that this is Good Television starts to feel like work after a while.

Well, start with the title, a nice play on words ("A Comedy to Inspire Premise Envy"), slip in some subtle phallic imagery in the lede, but be sure everyone knows that it's not supposed to be phallic imagery. Okay, it's supposed to be phallic imagery. You got us there!

A husband and wife are in the kitchen of their Los Angeles home one day, talking. Not arguing; just talking. The wife is chopping a carrot; just - chopping a carrot.

Next, use the most sexless, scientific term on the first instance of writing the piece, to show good behavior. Naturally, that would be "penis." Describing the main character of the show:

The carrot-chopping wife, Colette Burson, then says: And what if he had nothing going for him except that he had a really big penis?

Now, finally, just bust it out (heh). You've been holding it in for so long, and you don't want to make a mess! Get it out of the way, slowly. There we go. Just say it: we are the Times! We don't like to think about weiners, much less bad words for weiners, much less write about weiners! We must keep this in our control! And by control we mean pants! AGH! TOO MUCH WEINER!

Actually, Ms. Burson used another term that cannot be published here. In fact, such effort is being made here to write this story without violating propriety - or without slipping in a few sophomoric double entendres - that the words being muttered at this very moment make Ms. Burson's original term seem almost Psalm-like.

Wait. That's it? We're just supposed to imagine the words? There are a few more references in there. For example, small guys, the New York Times rises to the occasion for you!

The writers have turned a penis into a plot device. What's more, judging by the first four episodes, they advance the theory - fact? myth? - that bigger is better, risking the alienation of a sought-after segment of television viewers: men who are average in every way.

Also, more "short thingers are okay, too!" action near the kicker:

Mr. Lombardo, HBO's programming chief, said he never doubted the power of the writing. He just felt that the title at least warranted a chat about whether it was appropriate. When that chat finally took place, everyone agreed: Stick with "Hung." The conversation, he added, was surprisingly short.

And that's - predicktably - all we get. An old, wood(en) instudition like the Times just can't nail a good tail about penis like we can(s). They should've left this story in our big, thick, capable hands. It would've gone something like this:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Also, "wang." Heh.

A Comedy to Inspire Premise Envy [NY Times]

Pic by Susan Gardner

The "world famous Moonlite BunnyRanch" announced in a press release today that they've offered the beloved hero of the Illinois taxpayers an "apprenticeship" at their legal house of ill repute.

This apprenticeship could be featured throughout the upcoming season of HBO's CatHouse. Rod's willpower would be challenged daily by the ladies as they bribe him to acquire finer rooms or better working hours and days off. In lieu of Rod's work throughout the apprenticeship Dennis Hof will pay him a handsome amount of money.

Yes, ok, it is a dumb press release promoting one of the HBO shows that only exists to give old dudes without internet skills something to jerk off to but we have not yet mentioned the best part:

The Mancow Muller radio show in Chicago facilitated a conference call with Dennis Hof and Rod Blagojevich's PR Manager, Glenn Selig. The conversation was successful and Glenn Selig is taking this offer very seriously and will present it to Rod Blagojevich very soon.

Isn't that thrillingly plausible? Blago's PR manager is clearly almost as insane as he is. This could happen!

Halperin, who inflicted The Note on the world before moving to Time, sold an option HBO Films to turn into a movie his forthcoming 2008 campaign book Game Change, even though that book is effectively an extended correction on his last book.

The studio, which does projects for both the eponymous premium cable channel and the big screen, has already hired a writer (Charles Leavitt) to do the screen adaptation.

Halperin will serve as a consultant to the movie, alongside John Heilemann, the New York magazine political writer he's been blessed to have as a co-author on the book. HBO will need all the help it can get: Like the book, the film Game Change will attempt to track three campaigns and five politicians

Usually a movie like this would take you behind the scenes of a campaign, but there's only so deep you can go when you're hopping between Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and John McCain. (Sad Joe Biden will apparently be reduced to a bit part.) Maybe HBO is thinking miniseries.

In any case, it will be fun to watch the casting decisions unfold, and to relive the 2008 campaign through the eyes of a man who thought John McCain was on fire the week he said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Maybe we'll find out he was right after all.

A Ribbon of Dreams will follow two employees of early film mogul D.W. Griffth, one is a buttoned-up nerdy type, the other his cowboy producing partner. They'll encounter a host of the Old Hollywood legendaries—John Ford, John Wayne, Bette Davis.

Chase, who expertly crafted a television Guernica/Pieta/whatever-other-opus of an America in millennial decline with Sopranos, has a rough and raucous past from which to draw for his new period piece. Many of the early pioneers of Hollywood fled the East Coast as a means to avoid the patent fees any aspiring filmmaker had to pay to that greedy baron of power and light, Thomas Edison. They forged a rogue playground of early-times movie makers that was akin to the real Wild West (except, you know, probs a lot gayer). Chase ought to do well treading a seemingly glamorous, exciting world that has large chunks of grit breaking through the veneer. It'll be like the whole thing is set at Vesuvio's or in Carmela's kitchen, except it'll be filled with cigar-chomping movie types wearing suspenders.

Incidentally, the title comes from an Orson Welles quote, who called film "a ribbon of dreams."

File this under Things We're Excited For.

Downside: the Washington Post says Pelosi doesn't even try to make this a fair documentary; it's just a string of the dumbest people she could find at Republican rallies, saying the dumbest possible things:

All the conventions of the smirking, winking, belittling political documentary are abided by in this film. An inordinate number of the yahoos wear T-shirts and weird caps...There is a young guy whose T-shirt, meant to deride Obama, declares "Say No to Socilism," and when Alexandra Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, we know he's not going to be able to, that he's going to say something way wrong and stupid — which he does, offering that socialism is "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and — I don't know what the other word is."

Upside: Yes obviously Alexandra Pelosi is totally in the tank, she is from San Francisco and her mom is a Democratic politician and she is a confirmed member of the liberal media. But can you ever get too many clips of Neanderthal Republican racists? I don't think so! Enjoy a few clips starting about 2:00 in this Pelosi interview with Rachel Maddow, liberal lesbian Democrat in-the-tanker:

For the sake of full disclosure, we love The Foot Fist Way, the previous Danny McBride-Ben Best-Jody Hill creation presented by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, so we're predisposed to enjoying the McBride-Best-Hill brand of semi-sociopathic comedy. But if Fred Simmons in a mullet is what you are hoping for with Eastbound & Down, you'll be half-surprised.

We meet protagonist Kenny Powers (McBride) through an extended montage detailing his brief rise and long fall from grace — from pudgy baseball pitching star with a greasy, curly mullet to a reluctant substitute teacher with a greasy, curly mullet. While the snippets are offensively humorous (especially the flurry of magazine covers — High Times, American Woodworker (!)), it was a good idea to get all the hardcore baseball stuff out of the way early, because this show is not about sports. It's a new take on the hubris-leaking "hero returns to his smalltown" story (e.g. October Road), though we still haven't seen the town after the first half-hour.

In "Chapter 1" (the episode's actual title), we are shown the three spheres of any teacher's life — school, home and the local bar. Kenny behaves like an a-hole on his first day at Jefferson Davis High School, especially when hitting on his old flame April (Katy Mixon), who (of course) is engaged to the likable, smoothie-blender-in-his-office, aspiring triathlete Principal Terrence Cutler (Andrew Daly). At home (his brother's house), Kenny orders hookers ("And can I wear the Scream mask, the mask from Scream, when I do you from behind?") and yells at his nephew for playing with his jet ski. It's at the bar where we see Kenny finally let his hair down (further) while doing blow with high school buddy Clegg (Ben Best, Chuck "The Truck" Wallace from Foot Fist Way). There's another montage of Kenny and Clegg sniffing thick lines and jawing about plot elements and random topics like Widespread Panic.

But this is not the "Sweet Eli Whitney's nose!" school of comedy. The McKay-Ferrell improvisational ethic of working over a potential punchline until it yields something sublime and/or referential to specific animals ("Chip, I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!") did not rear its strangely beautiful head in the first episode, though it's doubtful that Will Ferrell won't riff on something when he appears in the second episode as a used car dealer.

Instead of creating a world where any character can make any reference at any time, the characters have been shaded towards the middle. HBO's Eastbound & Down Web site sets Principal Cutler up as a "tool" unworthy of April, but on-screen he is affable and neither mean nor insecure and seems totally worthy of April's affections. Kenny's brother Dustin (John Hawkes) is neither too henpecked or overly excited for his crass brother to be living in his crib. The same goes for Dustin's wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin) who bristles - but does not break - when Kenny makes fun of her toddler. Keep in mind that there are young children at the table:

CASSIE: Her name is Rose, named after Miss Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic.
KENNY: Y'all named your daughter after fucking Titanic?
DUSTIN: It's Cassie's favorite movie.
KENNY: Oh wow. You better be shitting me. What's his name? Fucking Shrek?

No matter who is in his presence - his brother's kids, reporters, the school principal, his gym class - Kenny's still dropping f- and s-bombs. We tend to find stuff like this funny, but a lot of people will think that the swearing is the joke and dismiss some of the humor in E&D. Unfortunately, the writers left that door open from the first line of the show ("When my ass was 19 years old..."), but it's a simplistic criticism that is only apt when applied to bad stand-up comics. Otherwise, the use of inappropriate language by a character in an ensemble setting is an expression of his inability to follow the rules of society. Or it's because swearing is funny. Either way, we laughed.

David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, Pineapple Express) directed this episode with little flair but with an eye for letting the jokes be as subtle as possible. Very few directors working in comedy today would let an opportunity for a close-up shot of bare breasts pass them by, but Green leaves them in a medium-long frame. The script, written by Best, Hill and McBride, veers from straight-up mean to meta ("Instantly I regret saying that. That was a horrible thing to say.") and gives us a redemptive (albeit narcissistic) moment a little too soon in the series, but then, they don't have much time to get everything established before their first season run ends.

This was the first episode of a six episode season, and with only a heaping handful of episodes to endear itself to the "It's not TV, it's HBO" crowd there may not be enough time for it to have the buzz and event status of Curb Your Enthusiasm or even Showtime's United States of Tara. But we doubt anyone really cares about that — or needs it. For one, HBO owns part of FunnyorDie.com and is firmly staked in the McKay-Ferrell business. More importantly, however, the Gary Sanchez brand (the production company co-founded by McKay and Ferrell and run by Chris Henchy, also a partner in FunnyorDie) is still young and trying to establish itself as a distinct entity from Judd Apatow's empire, despite Apatow's involvement in many McKay-Ferrell projects. If Apatow's bread-and-butter is the slacking man-child schlub with the heart of gold, then it's becoming clear that Gary Sanchez is hoping their distinctly unsympathetic slacking man-child schlub pays the same dividends.

[Photo: HBO/ Fred Norris]

• Eastbound & Down [HBO]

This will be the first time the former SNL co-stars and new recruit James appear together in one movie, offering the public a safe and convenient cineplex quarantining program. [Variety]
· Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin are the first to be cast in Woody Allen's next ensemble film, set to shoot in London this summer. We hope Josh plays Woody's nebbish alter ego. [Variety]
· An "abysmal third quarter" sent Lionsgate's stock tumbling to a six-year low. "The primary contributor to this quarter's loss, as well as the shortfall for the year, is the significant underperformance of our feature film business," said Jon Feltheimer during a conference call with analysts. Asked by one analyst what might be the fiscal outcome of producing better movies, Feltheimer paused for a long moment, then told him he'd get back to him. [Variety]
· Wilmer Valderrama is developing a comedy for Nickelodeon called Earth to Pablo, a sort of Latin-American ALF about "a normal family that ends up with a teenage space alien instead of the South American exchange student they had expected." [THR]
· More HBO pilot castings: Aleksa Palladino, Paul Sparks, Shea Whigham and Anthony Laciura join the cast of Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire. Rob Brown will star in another pilot, Treme (now is that Treme as in crème, or Treme as in cream?), about "a post-Katrina-themed drama that chronicles the rebuilding of New Orleans through the eyes of local musicians." [THR]

I understand why some people might have been turned off by the show initially. I sort of was too. The characters and the actors were grating—too-perky Ginnifer Goodwin, nerve-jangling Chloe Sevigny, drawling dummy Bill Paxton. Plus the situation—not-as-scary-as-it-could be polygamy in the leafy suburbs of Salt Lake—is so jarringly unfamiliar and unsympathetic (they're so religious!). But if you just power on through the first six or so episodes of the first season, you'll eventually be rewarded with a deep appreciation for all of the strange characters that populate the show (and the actors, too, especially Jeanne Tripplehorn as sad, lost first wife Barb, Mary Kay Place as a crazed fundie, and Grace Zabriskie as a Mormon Violet Weston) and for how their experiences, while couched in strange circumstances, are, in fact, pretty universal. You'll like it, I promise.

And then you'll zip through the HBO series' thrill-ride second season—all about the lurching horrors of a fundamentalist polygamist compound—and then arrive at the third season. Which has thus far been seriously artfully done; meditative and somber (that music!), possessed of the kind of quiet existential angst that was The Sopranos at its best.

And look at the sorta-sexy, mostly-scary plotlines that have yet to be resolved:

• What's to become of Frankie, the towheaded young half-brother of Bill (Paxton), who was kicked off the compound by Bill and Frankie's terrible father? He's totally going to sleep with Heather, right?
• And what about Ben and Margene's attraction to each other? Something is definitely going to happen with that.
• Someone, at some point, will explicitly find out about Alby, right?
• Rhonda: scariest character ever. Hopefully she's not done.

Nothing there is really a spoiler, don't worry. Really you should watch. It's one of the best shows on TV—surprising, stirring, frightening, and has just enough gonzo black humor to be pretty funny, too.

Watch it. You'll love it! Um, big time!

· HBO ordered a half-hour drama pilot with Ellen Barkin attached to star, about a woman who divorces her high-power, high-profile husband (OK, now the Barkin thing is starting to make sense) who then develops a platonic with his 24-year-old son. Meanwhile Oscar-nominated Revolutionary Road star Michael Shannon has been cast as the lead in Martin Scorsese's HBO pilot about the founding of Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire. [Variety, THR]
· Surviving Suburbia, a Bob Saget sitcom that was orphaned after The CW dropped its Media Rights Capital-produced programming, has found a second chance, with ABC potentially interested. The only potential loser in this situation? Laughter. [Variety]
· ScreenwriterWatch: Slumdog Millionaire writer Simon Beaufoy will write Spyglass's Leap Year, starring Amy Adams as "an uptight woman who travels to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on February 29," and all sorts of mayhem ensues. And A Mighty Heart writer Joe Orloff will script Ian Fleming bio Fleming, produced by Leo DiCaprio's company at Warner Bros. [THR, THR]

Haggard, former pastor of New Life Church, thought he had put his un-Jesus-like sex behind him. He was declared totally straight in 2007. And, um, again, for some reason, in 2008.

Then he started slipping, telling AP this year his sexuality had some "gray areas." And now it's emerged New Life Church has been paying college expenses, counseling, etc. since 2007 for a young chuch member who had a relationship with Haggard. The church said told the Times he was over 18 at the time:

[Haggard] said there had been “no physical contact” with the young man, though he said he had asked forgiveness for what he described as an “inappropriate relationship.”

Cybersex, then?

The man decided to come forward when he saw an ad for Alexandra Pelosi's new HBO doc "The Trials of Ted Haggard" and decided it looked too pro-Haggard. Pelosi, the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, doesn't have the scandal in her film, out Thursday. (See preview above.) She's only going to add some text at the end:

“My film is not about whether Ted had one indiscretion or 1,000,” the film’s director, Alexandra Pelosi, said in an interview. “Clearly he has issues. This film is about what happened to a man and his family after his fall from grace.”

Pelosi also made "Journeys with George," a documentary about how George W. Bush was a total cut-up and charming frat boy on the 2000 campaign trail. So this won't be the first time the darker aspects of one her subjects has gone right over her head.

Nevins and her husband, Sidney Koch, booked first class Delta seats and were headed to Sundance when Obama was scheduled to speak. But Delta told them they could watch the speech in the air! Then, tragedy:

But shortly after takeoff, many of the television monitors in first class failed, including Ms. Nevins’ monitor, [their attorney] said...

“Sidney had been watching Obama’s speech and a couple times when President Obama was speaking, the airplane pilot made a public address interrupting Obama’s speech,” said Jean Frost, an assistant executive director at the Directors Guild, who was also in first class. “Sidney got very upset at that happening and went to talk to the stewardess.”

Ms. Frost said that Mr. Koch eventually admitted he lost his temper, for which he apologized.

Haha, but the flight crew was like fuck that, and they had Port Authority police officers waiting for the "verbally abusive" Nevins and Koch, and when they arrived they were detained and questioned! Then they were released, but now they might sue Delta & Co. for being so mean and calling the cops.

Next time maybe watch the speech at home if you really want to see it? [The Caucus; pic via]

· HBO has gone on a buying spree, picking up two more comedies—How to Make It in America, and Bored to Death, a hipster-noir starring Jason Schwartzman—hot on the heels of their Hung order. Cocaine Cowboys, meanwhile, from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, got a greenlight. There's a joke about coke-dick in there somewhere, but we were raised better than that. [THR]
· Are you going into Cheno-withdrawal anticipating the final Pushed Daisy? She's already lined up her next TV gig: co-starring in David E. Kelley's new NBC drama, Legally Mad. She plays Skippy Pylon, "a brilliant but not entirely well attorney who is relentlessly cheerful with flashes of psychosis and often is mistaken for a teenager." We've always thought Gloria Allred: The Early Years would make a great drama, and now we're justified.
· The Newlywed Game has been resurrected by GSN, offering a "modern take" on the whoopie-making-quiz classic. Don't worry, gay-marrieds. We have a feeling there's a place for you at this table, too. [THR]
· Allen Shapiro has plunked down $255 million for the TV Guide Network, which has "The Lisa Rinna Show" and "ponzi scheme" written all over it. [Variety]
· Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow has dropped out as The Green Hornet's director "over creative differences," but will still play Kato. [Variety]