Suddenly the Universe is a very cold and empty place.

• Apparently we are not a nation of people waiting for Amanda Woodward to return to Melrose Place. Heather Locklear's trip back to the series did little to ease its struggles, lifting its gruesome ratings by a mere 15 percent to a 0.8 rating in the 18 - 45 demo. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Meanwhile, just as the world was sending its mocking obituaries to the printers, guess who's having a good week? Jay Leno is up five percent this week, "matching its highest ratings in six weeks." [Hollywood Reporter]

• With two and a half months to go, the Super Bowl's ad space is almost sold out. CBS reports a 90 percent sell-out rate thus far, meaning only six slots are still available. Like everything else these days, Super Bowl ad sales are being viewed as a barometer of the nation's economic health. [Ad Age]

• A Writers Guild report of diversity among its ranks finds "little if any improvement" for the prospects of women and minority writers. Variety writes that the report "found that women scribes remain stuck at 28% of TV employment and 18% in features while the minority share has been frozen at 6% since 1999." [Variety]

• Jennifer Hudson will play Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of the ex-South African President Nelson Mandela in Winnie, a biopic to be directed by Darrell J. Roodt, maker of Cry the Beloved Country. [Variety]

• Roger Ebert may be off the airwaves, but his influence lives on, remarkably, as the online buzz king. A survey by Nielsen of which critics dominate the internet reveals that Ebert remains a goliath online, crushing all the competition combined. [thehotblog]

• Making 2012's grosses look like the change fallen under the cushions of your sofa, the video game Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 reported sales of more than $550 million in the first week of its release. The LA Times puts production costs on the game in the $40 - $50 million range (a fraction of 2012 or Avatar), putting its total budget including marketing somewhere around $200 million. Who's in the wrong business now, movie people? [LA Times]

• Lovely Bones director Peter Jackson told a reporter that, despite his PG-13 rating he had upped the violence in his upcoming film after early test screening audiences "were simply not satisfied" with the depiction of a character's death. [Hitfix]

• Nikki Finke reports that investor Carl Icahn has been snatching up MGM bonds like "A bat out of hell." [Deadline]

• The LA Times reports further on Disney's heroic decision to pull the plug on McG's attempt to America's memories of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with his remake. The paper writes that execs saw the project, scripted by novelist Michael Chabon as "too dark" and that they will take another stab at it somewhere down the line. [LA Times]

A magazine called KUSH LA gives a glimpse of what it takes to bring in print subscribers these days: "In the August edition of KUSH, readers will find a coupon offering the first 100 coupon holders a free 8th of marijuana to 'new patients.'" It won't be long until magazines are giving out free hits of heroin. Sustainable business model, at least.


Ha, this email went out to all employees at Incisive Media this morning. Morale!

Subject: Employee Appreciation Week - We Want To Know
We Want To Know

As a part of Employee Appreciation Week We Want to Know...

"What is your favorite thing about working for Incisive Media?"

Please e-mail your response no later then 3:00 PM today — only one
entry per employee please. All submissions will be entered into a
drawing to win a $25.00 gift card from a list of retailers (including
Barnes & Noble, The Gap, Banana Republic, Home Depot, Olive Garden, and
Bath & Body Works).

We look forward to hearing your responses. If you have any questions,
please let us know.

For $25 maybe they'll make something up.


Jason Horowitz, the chief political reporter at the New York Observer, is leaving to join the Style section of the Washington Post. Job or at least maybe some freelancing opportunities temporarily available at the NYO, maybe!


Roger Ebert has been clean and sober for 30 years today. He tells his entire A.A. story on his blog. Wowza. Thirty years is a long time.

The Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert's professional home since O'Reilly was a bold fresh piece of Marist College undergrad, dropped O'Reilly's syndicated column, because who on Earth has the time or desire to read Bill's ghostwriter's regular musings on current events? So Bill put the Sun-Times in his illustrious Hall of Shame, right next to The New Yorker and The Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus (neither of those are jokes).

Ebert explains that the paper only picked up the column when it was owned by right-wing criminal Conrad Black, and that they dropped it to save a little money, because Conrad Black bankrupted them. Also, naturally, fewer readers have complained about the change than have complained about the paper dropping Nancy. Then the kicker:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

Hah. A dick joke!

You know, in different circumstances, they might've been friends. A filmed adaptation of O'Reilly's classic novel Those Who Trespass may have even delighted the man who authored the camp classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (Well, ok, Bill's obvious inability to write a slightly realistic—let alone erotic—sex scene is what makes his novel camp, so maybe they would not get along, as Ebert has a sense of irony.) But no, it was not to be.

A sad day for teen literary types: TEEN magazine and its website have been shuttered by Hearst. Seventeen will continue to publish. Kids aged 13-16 will have to read it aspirationally instead; Kids aged 18-19 will have to read it and regress. [WWD]


Phenomenally unpopular Chicago sports columnist Jay Mariotti, who ankled the Sun-Times recently in order to find some job on the internet, for some reason, defends himself for treating his newspaper like a jerk: "It's my life, not theirs. I wrote 5,000 columns for them in 17 years. I wrote on holidays, spent massive amounts of time away from home. Roger Ebert, whom I've met once, can kiss my ass. No one gave more blood to that place than I did, and if I decide it's going to die an imminent death, it's my call." Roger Ebert is a jawless, voiceless cancer victim. CLASSY. [RealClearSports.com]

The NYT goes in depth about The Printed Blog, the new startup that will print blog posts up into newspaper form and sell ads on them. It's still a dumb idea.

NBC is hiring a "global marketing firm" to "reposition" its brand. Smart. Those types of firms are always led by real talent that does great work at reasonable prices. [Variety]


"Nearly a dozen Star Tribune employees who took the company's buyout money learned last night that their five-figure checks will bounce if cashed." That is how media executives end up with boxes of poop. [MinnPost]

Ben Stein, the Nixon speechwriter who was kind of funny, once, in a kind of funny movie, and was then in a series of successful contact lens solution ads, released a movie about how no one takes Creationism seriously. Ben Stein, who is an intelligent, educated person, does not actually believe in "intelligent design" but it's a useful little tool for furthering the "Christian conservatives persecuted by the liberal establishment" myth.

Anyway. This movie, Expelled, was not taken seriously by really anyone, least of all Roger Ebert, who responded to demands that he review it by posting a nutty column about all the crazy things creationists believe.

That, apparently, did not appease either those demanding Ebert take the film seriously or those demanding Ebert eviscerate the film amusingly, so yesterday he posted a million-word takedown of Ben Stein and pseudo-science and evangelical Christianity and everything, basically.

And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it "From Darwin to Hitler." He finds a Creationist who informs him, "Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism." He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment.

Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one "result" of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. "As a Jew," he says, "I wanted to see for myself." We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. "It's difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place," he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

Yeesh. Not since Deuce Bigalow has Ebert been so critical.

(Then, just just for kicks, Ebert answers a letter from a reader regarding our post on the "Worst Review Ever" by publicly naming the letter-writer as the former U.S. editor for FHMOnline, i.e. the person who is pissed off at being unemployed while reviews like that one get some idiot paid. Hah.)

Overheard at a press screening. Well-known but little respected TV critic whose son is also a well-known but little respected TV critic, trash-talking highly respected older critic who was replaced by his son.

He called the older replaced critic a "pathetic old putz," and suggested he should be thankful he still has his print column. As well, he suggested that the older critic's original show wouldn't work anymore because nobody wants to watch "two geeky guys." He glowed about how successful his son was at 27, appearing on at least six different networks. And that he didn't understand all of the anger directed at his son because it's only film criticism and that's nothing serious (even though that's what he does as well).

Arrgh. We did have it pegged as a Jeffrey Lyons/Ben Lyons/Roger Ebert love-in — until that part about "six different networks." The Facebook group I Have a Photo With Keira Knightley!!! is not considered an actual network, is it? Any other 27-year-olds with bad-critic fathers we've overlooked?

I keep forgetting about the Phantom of the Opera. Yes, what is it like to resemble him, since I am what is now described as having Facial Differences? To begin with, I must make this clear: Many people have problems much worse than mine, and at a much younger age, and sometimes joined with other disabilities. I may seem tragic to you, but I seem fortunate to myself. Don't lose any sleep over me.

I am so much a movie lover that I can imagine a certain (very small) pleasure in looking like the Phantom. It is better than looking like the Elephant Man. I would describe my condition as falling about 17% of the way along a graph line between the handsome devil I was at the ripe tender age of 27, and the thing that jumps out of that guy's intestines in "Alien."

So to return to my opening question, what does it feel like to resemble The Phantom of the Opera? Not like much of anything. I rather avoid mirrors. I do not dwell on my appearance. I have bigger fish to fry. Nor do I mope about fearing that my cancer might return. If it does, it does, and that's what she wrote. At Pritikin they have a truism: "If you don't die of anything else, sooner or later you will die of cancer." We all nod thoughtfully.

The rest of the piece is filled with warm anecdotes about his "fat one" appearance vis-a-vis Gene Siskel, wherein Ebert reminisces about a life enhanced by their playful, back-and-forth banter. We certainly don't wish harm on Ebert usurper Ben Lyons, but we can only imagine the comparable essay he'd write someday; instead of recalling a complicated, full life marked of ups, downs, and wonderful movies, would it be utterly populated with starfucky photos of him with Jessica Alba or Heidi from The Hills?

• Siskel & Ebert & the Jugular [Roger Ebert's Journal]

Nearly all of Ebert's rules seem like common sense to our minds — "Provide a sense of the experience," "No freebies," "A trailer is not a movie" (though the "Avoid trailers" rule seems a little dire for even our purist sensibilities) — but one in particular stands out toward the end:

No posing for photos! Never ask a movie star to pose with you for a picture. No movie star ever wants to do this. They may smile, but they're gritting their teeth. [...] Remember, you are a professional. You are not a friend. You diminish yourself by asking for a snapshot. [...]

On the other hand, treasure real photos of you really with a movie star. Photos taken at a real event by a real other person unknown to you who didn't ask anyone if he could take it. My favorite such photo shows Jason Patric and me assisting Peter O'Toole as he makes his way from a reception at the Savannah Film Festival. I have appended this to the left as a sample of a permissible star photo. Such a photo can be distinguished from the other kind because they represent star-f***ing practiced with abstinence.

And we've appended Ebert's photo above. We were worried this counsel might fall under the "No Freebies" rubric, but really, advice of such value can only be given away. Keep it close, young Lyons.

• Roger's little rule book [Chicago Sun-TImes via Spout Blog]

After admitting that he cribbed most of the plot details of the film Tru Loved from its IMDB page, Ebert defended himself by saying: "The handwriting was on the wall. The returns were in. The case was closed. You know I'm right.'' We like that Ebert's willing to take risks, and he does the same in describing rules for critics, including some venomous shots at others in the field. As EW noted, much of the article is directed at the work of his tragically bad replacement on the syndicated At the Movies show, Ben Lyons.

With that said, Ebert's just as good at breaking his rules as Lyons is. When he tells other critics to never review a film they've participated in, he somehow neglects to mention the 800 essays he's written about his only screenwriting credit for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Then there's this piece of useful advice: "But in hard times like these, do not say, "Reason enough to get it!" Of course in his 2006 review of Take the Lead, he says: "That said, Antonio Banderas is reason enough to see the movie."

That's all part of Ebert's charm, and most of his rules, like "Keep track of your praise" and "Provide a sense of the experience" are well taken. And when he is wrong, he's better than most in his field at issuing corrections:

Do not make challenges you are cannot to back up. [sic] For example, never say in your "Hamlet 2" review, "I challenge anyone who goes to see the movie not to sing the words to 'Rock Me, Sexy Jesus' for years to come." When Gene Siskel predicted that "Hakuna Matata" from "The Lion King" would become a national catch-phrase, he later gracefully acknowledged he was wrong, after only a little prodding from me. [Note: A reader informs me that Gene was right. I believe the jury is still out on "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus."]

Hey, the guy's the most prolific reviewer ever, it's bound to happen. Hakuna Matata. (It means no worries for the rest of your days.)

Why do you wish you hadn't published the review? It sent a wrong message. If I had seen the entire film, a review, however negative, would have been appropriate. But in reviewing the first eight minutes, I was guilty of too much affection for my prose. I finished the review and liked it. My editor was awaiting the review. I sent it in. Many writers are loath to see any of their immortal words be, as we quaintly say in the newsbiz, shit-canned. They should be less loath. Laura Emerick flagged it. She was correct.

Was the review unethical? No. I made it clear I had seen only eight minutes, and that the star rating applied only to those eight minutes. If I had concealed that fact, I should have been fired.

What is the key lesson from all of this? I will never, ever, again review a film I have not seen in its entirety. Never. Ever. Laura was right: That sort of thing is seized upon as a practice, not an exception. Already you can learn here and there on the web that I support Creationism. (See my blog entry, "This is the dawning of the Age of Credulity.") Soon, I am sure, you will be able to read, "Ebert reviews movies after only watching eight minutes of them."

Amusingly, Ebert has since watched the entire film and appended his original article with a new review that is, if anything, even more vicious. For a critic who's handed out four-star reviews like candy in recent years (Lakeview Terrace? really?), it's a bracing change of pace. We're kind of digging this new, unhinged Ebert — now, Rog, when are you finally going to fill in that notable gap in your recent reviews and dig into Beverly Hills Chihuahua? Bet you wish you'd saved your eight-minute card for that one, huh?

• Definitely Read Me Second [Roger Ebert via MCN]

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeff Wells titled his post about the matter "Not Supposed to Say," claiming that "movie critics haven't come within 20 feet of mentioning this [unremarked-on interracial marriage] in their reviews." We're not sure what critics Wells is reading, but a boatload of the ones we've looked at mention exactly that — and they do it in a way that seems to beg for someone to bestow an aura of au courant hipness on their courageously un-PC observations.

Both EW's Owen Gleiberman and New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane take great pains to mention the film's unmentioned racial diversity, though to hear Lane discuss it, it sounds like he'd rather be watching a blunt parable like Crash. "The wedding party is the ultimate guide to Demme’s benign vision: the groom is black, the bride is white, she and her bridesmaids are dressed in saris, [and] nobody so much as mentions race," says Lane. "I don’t know if there were any Republican voters involved in this movie, but, if so, it must have been a lonely time." Ok, yes, some Republicans are racist — but damn, Anthony! Are you really implying that conservatives can never be bred within a cultural melting pot?

Worse is Wells, who virtually calls Demme a fetishist of all things African, rattling off some of the black characters Demme has previously included in his oeuvre before concluding:

So it feels very Demme-ish that the union that's endlessly celebrated in Rachel Getting Married, his latest feature, is between a very alabaster lassie (Rosemarie DeWitt, playing Rachel) and a handsome Afrique-ebony guy (musician Tunde Adebimpe, playing Sidney the groom). It's also a very Demme thing that nobody so much as mentions this.

You can say "well, why would anybody mention it?" and I'd take your point, of course. We all like to see ourselves as color-blind. My point is that in real life someone in the wedding party would at one point or another throw some kind of slider ball — something anecdotal, flip, netural, whatever— into the proceedings. In the same way someone would say "oh, it's raining" if a cloudburst were to happen. My other point is that such a remark (which wouldn't necessarily be coarse or gauche ) is verboten in a Demme film because it doesn't reflect his values or sensibilities.

...If the blunt-spoken alcoholic played by Howard Duff in Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978) had been invited to Rachel and Sidney's wedding, he would have said something or other, trust me. Because he was the kind of wealthy middle- aged guy who didn't give a shit because he was always half in the bag.

Why, though, does it need to be said? One might think that by the time Rachel and Sidney had gotten married, their families would have gotten used to the idea that they were of separate races (in fact, Rachel's divorced father has since remarried a black woman, and screenwriter Jenny Lumet is the product of an interracial marriage herself). Are these critics really unable to set aside their apparent discomfort with the idea unless an on-screen surrogate points out the obvious? What if Rachel's family were Latin (imagine Penelope Cruz donning Anne Hathaway's smudged eyeliner instead) — would their non-white, mixed marriage suddenly become less of an issue for these older, Caucasian film critics?

Guys, there's plenty of actual criticisms to be made about Rachel Getting Married (won't someone address the interminable sequence that is the dish-washing competition?). Why don't you stick to film critique and leave the awkward investigation of racial dynamics where it belongs — at a Sarah Palin rally?

No kidding? While this doesn't sound like the guy who took down Sarah Palin a few weeks ago as the "American Idol candidate," we know from more than 40 years of reviews that he's a nuanced dude entitled to a range of complex opinions. Alternatively, Ebert's tongue may be so far in his cheek it'll leave a bruise, but a bit of digging by Defamer operatives yielded a series of exclusive, unpublished outtakes suggesting he might be keeping it real. After the jump, we pick up where Rog left off.

Q: Why would God create such an absurd creature as a moose?

A: In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to itself.

Q: OK, but what about Ben Lyons?

A: That's not God's fault. Jeffrey Lyons fucked that one up.

Q: Do Creationists believe in the Big Bang?

A: It depends on how you choose to define "the Big Bang." If you mean some variation on Georges Lemaître's hypothesis of a primeval atom from which all matter came forth some 14 billion years ago (a theory later substantiated in part by scientists including Albert Einstein), then no. If you mean the buxom, oversexed environment epitomized by my screenplay for Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, then yes. Holy shit, those bangs were big.

Q: Let's go back a second. You mentioned that man showed up on Earth fully formed. What about scientific proof of Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal man?

A: Again, all surviving species and many others were created fully formed at the same time. Of human species, only Scientologists survived.

Q: So what are you and I?

A: Thetans. You didn't know that? Except for Lou Lumenick; I don't know what the fuck is up with him.

Q: And Creationism asserts that we really walked the Earth with dinosaurs?

A: Only a few people: Charlton Heston, Sumner Redstone, guys like that. Are we done here?

Q: Wait — what happens to us when we die?

A: It's complicated. But there are some tapes over there of me and the old lady ouijaing Gene Siskel a few years ago if you wanna have a look. It's pretty prescient, really: C-A-N-C-E-L A-T T-H-E M-O-V-I-E-S... that kind of thing. Heaven's real, I guess. Anyway, e-mail me any follow ups, will you? Neil LaBute is waiting for me.

• Creationism: Your questions answered [RogerEbert.com]

• Roger Ebert said he can take being thwacked by that Post movie critic who got annoyed with him at a screening, but his wife (pictured) told the Daily News "I'll get a no-neck guy from the West Side to break his knees." [R&M]
• There's a tape of John Lennon fantasizing about sex with his Mom?? No idea. But the Sun wins the prize for most salacious gossip item of the day! [Sun]
• Michael Phelps attempts to eat sushi in Midtown, hysteria ensues. [P6]
• A pedicab driver supposedly shouted at Ashley Dupre that he'd give her a free ride "because we both work the streets." Either that or the Post is in some kind of fight with the former Eliot Spitzer hooker. [P6]
• Heather Graham is supposedly into Dylan McDermott. [P6]
• Fresh off giving birth to twins, Jennifer Lopez was going to run a triathlon and be a judge on Project Runway. Now she has a foot injury and can do neither. You really truly can't have it all. [Us]
• Lindsay Lohan is wearing a sort of engagement ring. [Sun]

A few minutes later, says our source, "[Lumenick] stands up in the darkness and thwacks [Ebert] behind him with a big festival binder. He hit him so hard everybody could hear it. Everyone freaked out and turned around."

..."Apparently, Roger was just trying to tap Lumenick on the shoulder to signal him that he couldn't see the movie," surmises our source. "He was trying to ask him to move over a bit."

Though Lumenick seemed surprised to see whom he had struck, he offered no apology, according to another source.

Perhaps if Lumenick spent less time striking ailing film critics and more time fact-checking, he'd be filing TIFF reports with less inaccuracies (such as this one, which wrongly stated Magnolia was to buy Che — it was IFC — and misses the fact that Warner Independent picked up Slumdog in a negative pickup and sold it to Fox Searchlight). Hey, Lou: Ebert may still be recovering, but we have a feeling he can still do a lot of damage with no more than two strategically-jabbed thumbs.

• Critic goes Post-al on ill Roger Ebert [NY Daily News]

Soon after the lights went down, a source tells us, "a man in the audience started yelling, 'Don't touch me!' People looked around and shrugged. Ten minutes later, the voice yells again, 'I said don't touch me!'"

...But a few minutes later, says our source, "the guy stands up in the darkness and thwacks the guy behind him with a big festival binder. He hit him so hard everybody could hear it. Everyone freaked out and turned around."

...Though Lumenick seemed surprised to see whom he had struck, he offered no apology, according to another source.

Bully!

[Daily News]