The real news of today's Page Six item was not that Mercer got wasted, crashed the stage at the Plaza Hotel, and tried to sing "New York, New York" before being forcibly removed. No, it was that Martha Stewart, Betsey Johnson, Isaac Mizrahi, Courtney Love, and Woody Allen were all in the same room at the same time for the same purpose. Apparently their love of music unites the domestic diva, two fashion designers, the professional mess, and the director who has been making the same film since the '70s.

This is how a conversation between them would probably go:

Martha: Betsey, would you like to be on my show and do some cooking? Do you have your own cupcake recipe?

Betsey: No, I don't bake cupcakes, but once Andy put LSD in cupcakes and passed them around the Factory. It was delish!

Isaac: Oh, lady, I could never eat a cupcake! Carbs haven't been fashionable since before I started selling clothes at Target.

Courtney (ignoring everyone, but updates her Facebook status to say): martha stewart is talkking about cupcakes. i fucking hate fucking cupcakes!!!! how retarded is that bitch?!?!?!?! she must have been molested...

Woody: Hi, everybody. I don't really feel comfortable with any of you. I mean, Martha's been in jail, Betsey is doing drugs, Isaac might make a pass at me, and well, it's Courtney Love. I think I need to leave.

Martha: Wait, Woody. Do you love lite jazz?

Woody: Why, yes, Martha, I...I...I...kinda do.

Betsey: Me too, it reminds me of the Velvet Underground and my underwear.

Isaac: Jazz is my favorite too, can we all be besties?

Courtney (she looks up from her Blackberry for a minute, looks everyone square in the eye, lights a cigarette, and starts typing again, but then stops to say): No.

• Now a porn star might have banged Tiger Woods, too. Holly Sampson (née Nicolette Foster, Andrea Michaels, and Andrea Zoe) star of such film as OMG Stop Tickling Me and Flying Solo 2 is "not denying that she bedded Tiger." Apparently she was in a Wonder Years episode once, too. [NYDN] [IMDB]
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• In other Woods news, a mystery lady says through her layer that Tiger's marriage to Elin Nordegren was a sham, while an anonymous source tells someone else that Elin loves him more than ever and wants him in sex addict treatment. [TMZ] [ShowBizSpy]
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• Yu Tsai is very talented photographer who makes Lindsay Lohan look young and relatively vibrant in her Muse photo spread depicting a Kate Moss/Johnny Depp-inspired three-way. Some photos were sexy [fig.1] and some where just weird [fig.2] but she looks her age-ish, and pretty. When her nip slips, "it just happened in the moment. She was playing the role of Kate Moss." Please. Like we haven't seen Lindsay's Lohans before. [P6]
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• Michael Jackson had really creepy art. MJ coffee table book Michael Jackson Opus: The Ultimate Celebration gave the Post a sneak peek at an image of a nude, alabaster-skinned Jacko romping with winged cherubs, one of whom is black. [fig.3] Apparently it was "tongue-in-cheek," which probably refers to the god-like portrayal, but could also refer to the "raping little boys" thing, depending how wicked his sense of humor was. [NYP]
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• Susan Boyle will perform for the Obamas at the White House, at Michelle's 46th birthday, according to British paper The Daily Express, which is not terribly believable, because what "senior White House aide" leaks exclusively to the Express? Also, Michelle is too great a humanitarian to allow the ongoing torment of sad Susan Boyle to occur in her own home. [Express]
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• Lady Gaga has more than 20 wigs, which is actually fewer than I would have guessed. She's only been at this for a year or so, though so there's still time. [ShowBizSpy]
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• Eva Green wishes her lesbian sex scene in Cracks would have been dirtier. "The love scene is soft—I wanted to go even further," she said. In the movie, Eva plays a boarding school headmistress who goes Humbert Humbert on a student. [ShowBizSpy]
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• Oh, gross. (But can we say we're surprised?) "Two stars of the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here have been charged with animal cruelty after allegedly killing and cooking a rat to eat." The most interesting part of this article is how the Associated Press characterizes Get Me Out's celebrities as "C-list." Is the assumption that the show bumped them up a notch from D? Is someone keeping track of the C-pluses and B-minuses too? [AP]
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• Tinsley Mortimer's dad, George Mercer, was a drunk mess at the Plaza the other night, when he grabbed the microphone away from a jazz singer and tried to make it a karaoke sing-a-long. The "horrified crowd" included Martha Stewart, Betsy Johnson, Isaac Mizrahi, Courtney Love, and Woody Allen, which is funny, because I always thought if Martha Stewart and Courtney Love were in the same room, the world would combust. [P6]
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Figures 1., 2.

Figure 3.

• Carla Bruni has agreed to appear in a Woody Allen film, which will mark the singer and French first lady's first acting role. During an interview on a French TV show she said that she doesn't know what role she'll play, but she said yes anyway. "I'd like to - you know - when I'm a grandmother, to have done a Woody Allen film. I cannot in my life miss an opportunity like this." So, how does she think she'll do in front of the camera? "I'm not at all an actress. Maybe I'll be absolutely terrible," she says. We're no huge fans of Woody Allen, but we think that this idea is the opposite of terrible—unless she ends up playing Woody's love interest. That would the terrible. [UKPA]
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• Nadya Suleman is the tabloid gift that keeps on giving. While promoting "documentary" OctoMom: Me & My Fourteen Kids (I love how calling a reality show a documentary somehow dignifies it?) she explains that she open to having more children ("If I get married one day...") and that, after realizing she was pregnant with octuplets, she refused to selectively reduce the embryos, "Because which one should I have murdered? Noah? Isaiah? You know, Jonah?" Apparently the kids know that not-murder isn't actually that great, because there's a clip of one of the kids nailing her in the face with a screwdriver. Forget Nadya—the documentary I want to see is what happens when these kids grow up and attempt to make their way in the world with the curse of Suleman hanging over their heads. They should really consider changing their names. [HuffPo]
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• What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve? Well a bunch of singers are making significant bank. Rihanna is raking in $500K for a performance in Abu Dhabi. The gig is a make good for a May concert date that she had to cancel thanks to Chris Brown's fists. Alicia Keys is only have the woman Rihanna is, or at least her salary is. She will only make $250K for a concert here in New York. Also in town will be Green Day performing live on NBC. Nicole Ritchie and Joel Madden will be hosting a party in Vegas, and so will Christina Aguilera. It's good to know where all the losers will be on December 31. If you want to find they gays, they'll be in Miami, where Lady Gaga is rumored to ring in the new year in some ridiculous get up. [P6]
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• Now that Rosie O'Donnell's breakup from her partner is public, she says that she is not enjoying the single life. No wonder, because her escort to her annual charity gala Rosie's Broadway Extravaganza was her 15-year son, Parker. It's like the opposite of taking your mom to the prom. [People]
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• One little comment comparing your boss to Hitler, and your invite to the company Christmas party gets lost in the mail! Megan Fox was conspicuously absent at Michael Bay's Transformers reunion. On a related note, I still think she should've gone with the Hitler SNL monologue. (Hitler, outraged: Why did you compare me to Michael Bay?) Not like she's going to win these guys back, anyway. [P6]
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• Paris Hilton and her boyfriend Doug Reinhardt are moving out of their Hollywood home because they neighbors complained about their partying ways. Where are they going? No one knows. Please say it's New York. Pretty please! [TMZ]
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• Everyone hates Usher's new girlfriend. His mom and his record label both want her gone. As for the rest of us, we could care less what Usher does and with whom. [Gatecrasher]
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• Courtney Love went to Scores and didn't even take a spin on the stripper pole. You can never go home again. [P6]
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• Zac Efron is so cute. Even though he's a star, he still gets impressed by celebs like Zac Posen and Amber Rose. And they're not even famous. He would probably wet himself if Tom Cruise walked into the room. He also said he loved kissing Claire Danes for his new movie because she's "a very pretty lady." So are you, Zac. So are you. [Gatecrasher]
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• Looks like the Pussycat Dolls are done for good. Thank Christ! [P6]
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• There's no new column from gossip dowager Cindy Adams. Is she dead? Someone better stop by her apartment and check on her.

[Gawker night editor Azaria Jagger wrote the funnier parts of this round up]

• Stephanie Pratt was busted for a DUI. I woke up late again. Are you surprised on either account? [TMZ]
  
  
• Roman Polanski got removed from Swiss jail for an unknown medical condition (it's probably "I Wanna Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge-itis"). I know this is where I'm supposed to be like I HOPE THEY PUT A SCALPEL UP HIS ASS but (A) honestly I'll save that for the mob rule and (B) they'd probably use a tiny corkscrew instead. Get it? [NYDN]
  
  
• Two books are being written about Mickey Rourke, and both of them detail how he's completely obsessed with the mafia and being a mafia groupie. Apparently, he was hanging out with John Gotti in 1996 when Gotti was arrested, but, uh, wait. There are two separate books being written about Mickey Rourke? The fact that two separate publishers gave the go-ahead for two separate books about Rourke is kind of incredible. Someone should write a book about that. [NYP]
  
  
• OH MY GODDDDD Rush and Molloy, the Boris and Natasha-esque gossip team who front the New York Daily News' Sunday gossip page, have yet again set their moose and squirrel sights on the most boring possible scoop: Michael Jackson's shady doctor of death, Conrad Murray, is looking for a book deal. (A) No shit and (B) who cares? More about the "tragic" ending of The Hills, plz. [NYDN]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan can't tell the difference between a cake shaped like a giant perfume bottle and a giant perfume bottle. I would try to explain how we came to this breaking news, but the anecdote's so patently ridiculous I can actually feel the weight of my cranium lighten having just toasted a few brain cells by reading it. To think, I could've used those on glue. [Page Six]
  
  
• Again, Daily News, really, you guys are lacking in the gossip department on the weekends. Ben Widdicombe, where you at, son? I'm only here two days a week. [Oh, that's right, he quit like, last April or something, but I wouldn't know that because who gives a shit about the NYDN gossip pages any more when Boris and Natasha are your big show?] Anyway: "Michael Jackson's children thrive in more normal childhood after life with King of Pop dad." You're joking, right? This is a headline? They could live in the New Museum and they'd have a more normal life than they did with Dad. Jesus.[NYDN]
  
  
• Penn Badgley has ten secrets the Daily News has "uncovered." He didn't graduate high school, he likes tequila, he forgets the words to the National Anthem, America's Best Dance Crew is his guilty pleasure, and he hates L.A. No, I'm serious, there're five more where that came from, and I'm not clicking over to read them. Thank you, New York Daily News, for basically describing most of America, including me. Unless the next five are "he enjoys huffing paint, molesting animals who're just a few inches too big for the petting zoo, can shove an entire Slinky up his ass, will beat me in backgammon, and plays the vacuum a la Jon Fishman," I could really care less. [NYDN]
  
  
• This is awesome: Shia LaDouche didn't show up for the New York, I Love You premiere and it's being blamed on mean old cokeface Oliver Stone not letting him out to go to the premiere while shooting Wall Street 2. They then note that Scarlett Johansson didn't go, either, because her segment was cut out of the film. Whoops! But you know who those suckers missed? the Post goes on to ask. No guys, please, tell us. Let's make them jealous: "They missed Cloris Leachman, director Mira Nair (who's helming the upcoming "Amelia"), Rocco DiSpirito, Peter Facinelli and porn star Savanna Samson." BAHHHHHAHAHA [Page Six]
  
  
• Woody Allen is now shamelessly casting the world's hottest women and doesn't give a fuuuhhhck what you think about it. Not only is he putting them in movies, but he got Penelope an Oscar, suckers, and he did it in Spain by putting her in a suggested threesome with ScarJo and Javy Bardy. Beat that. Now he wants to make a movie starring Andriana Lima in Rio. Okay, the last few we understand, but just because Adriana Lima's been on an episode of How I Met Your Mother and one of Ugly Betty does not mean you should put her at the front of your new movie, Woody (and yes, truly: Woody). To balance out her skill you're going to have to cast F. Murray Abraham as her love interest, or something. Which I'd pay $10 to see. [Page Six]
  
  
• This Page Six item begins: "Now that "The Hills" is coming to a tragic end, its stars are busy promoting themselves to find new gigs." What the shit? A "tragic end"? Is this like the end of Dead at 21 where they all just fizzle out or get killed by the shadow (Reptilian, obvi) government? What the hell have I been missing on that show? Seriously. [Page Six]
  
  
• Bloomberg is Turning Japanese! BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM, BAM BAM BAM, BAM! EEEEE! [Page Six]
  
  
• New Yorkers, this one's for you: Vincent Kartheiser and one of the other guys from Mad Men—I don't know who it was, I don't watch that show, because nothing ever happens on it—were seen eating at DBGB, which just scored (a low) two stars from the new New York Times dining critic Sam Sifton, who we need to kidnap in the middle of the night with Adam Platt and Jay "Six Shooter" Cheshes and Ryan Sutton and get him really shitfaced at the Cherry Tavern and make him eat everything off the value menu at McDonalds at the end of the night. Hazing! It happens! The dude's too soft, let's toughen that pussy up! Anyway, the only other important thing you need to know about this item is that Vincent Kartheiser was in the massively underrated Larry Clark movie, Another Day In Paradise, which also starred James Woods saying "fuck" or some kind of variant of it every three seconds and Melanie Griffith being punched in the face by James Woods (this is the most epic moment in the film). I kid you not. Watch it, now. [Page Six]
  
  
• A little girl helped Pamela Anderson carry around the train of her dress at a party because she had asked Anderson if she could, and a bunch of downer assholes like me are being all like, ohhhh, what a biiiiitch, I can't believe she's promoting child labor, Godddddd. But that's a dumb joke and honestly it's really cute that Anderson would let a kid do this. See! We're not all bad! The funny thing is that Tommy Lee's now going to try to get someone to hold up his three foot dong for him whenever he pisses and hopefully it won't be a kid. Seriously, though, you can get some great intern candidates for that kind of thing coming out of the ACC schools. [Page Six]

And oh, what the hell? Good morning, everyone! This day's going to be wonderful. Please sing along:

[Photo via Bauer-Griffin]

Will someone please tell Gus Van Sant that he is not an angsty gay teen anymore? While we're not asking him to make G.I. Joe 2, he couldn't do something a little bit more than Restless, the story of a young, moody boy who goes to strangers' funerals to cope with his parents' deaths. He meets a young girl in a graveyard who only has six months to live. The film's budget is set at $15 million, $2.5 million of which is reserved for the eyeliner and Manic Panic.

Don't get us wrong, we loved Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Good Will Hunting. He even managed to change his formula up by introducing an sad teen (Joaquin Phoenix, before the beard) to an a deluded, ambitious older lady (Nicole Kidman, before the Botox) in To Die For.

But who out there suffered through Elephant, Paranoid Park, Gerry and Last Days? Yeah, we didn't think so. Probably because his experiments on getting depressed teens to improvise for the camera became staid and tedious. We were hoping that Milk, with its message of political empowerment and a movement coming into its own, would be the start of the dear director's second act. Guess we were wrong.

Isn't it time to make some more movies about grown ups? Even Woody Allen went from making movies about young neurotic New Yorkers sleeping with girls way out of their league to making movies about old neurotic New Yorkers sleeping with girls way out of their league. The rest of us are miserable too, Gus. Where's our movie?

[Ed. note: I've been enjoying T.A.N.'s stuff so much on Saturday afternoons that I decided to move him up to a primetime slot on Fridays where he'll post a couple things each week.]

Everyone should have a go-to quote to come off like a learned smarty-pants. Mine is from Nietzsche who said, "the only proof of strength is excess of strength". I love it because in our current link-don't-tell culture it speaks to how proof of brilliance needs to be hyperlinkably obvious. For Woody, Eddie, and Michael this was never an issue. No one ever calls into question their obvious excess of talent. But yet, reading the news and reviews from the past week or so, and it seems being a genius doesn't seem to hold the same water it used to. At the least, critics and journalists appear to be challenging the statute of limitations on genius privileges like never before:

Eddie Murphy: This post was seeded by Brooks Barnes in the NY Times (who also was involved with NYT coverage of MJ) wondering how/why Eddie Murphy still had so much Hollywood clout, despite being the butt of more jokes than he makes these days. In the sidebar they list his top 5 box office grosses, totaling up to $780 million. If you throw in Coming to America and a couple of his middling performers like, say, Boomerang and Harlem Nights, you're approaching a billion dollars in box office bank before you even get to ten movies. Murphy is the #2 man all time at the box office, right behind Tom Hanks and ahead of names like Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise. So, what's the question again? Asking Hollywood why they keep going to Eddie Murphy is like asking why the Yankees keep putting ARod in the cleanup spot (despite inconsistent production).

Make no mistake, it's not all bankability with Eddie (worth noting: the above tallies don't even include Shrek 1, 2, 3 paper; talk about "still spending money from '88"); the man is a true and living legend. You could probably make a decent argument that SNL is a franchise as much due to Murphy as Lorne Michaels. His approach to race-humor set the template for every non-Cosby comic alive today. He's a pillar of comedy, cinema, and racism. And, you know, he could even dabble with music a little bit.

But what has genius brought Eddie? Every review nowadays shits on him for wearing fat-suits. His old comedy specials are increasingly noted less for comedy and more for their rampant misogyny and homophobia (which he has apologized for). And the "Relationships" section of his Wiki entry is chubby from controversy; including phrases like "DNA testing" and "transvestite prostitute". That's enough drama to make a man want to make a movie in a fat-suit just to get away from it all. Or at least have some homicidal hot-flashes.


Woody Allen: For Woody, I can probably say even less. Or anything. Talk about prolific excess: Plays, books, movies, no one of today's generation remembers his career as a stand up, but yeah, that too. His brand of literary humor has influenced legions. He's responsible for the Jewish nebbish male ethnic archetype. The man is a pillar of comedy, cinema, and racism. And, you know, he could even dabble with the music a little bit!

And what has genius brought Woody? Here he's probably thinking he's the man because a script he wrote in the 70s still has enough legs to be made into a movie some thirty years later. It doesn't work and all of a sudden some critics might use it to erase his whole oeuvre from the Hard Drive of Cultural Import. Of course, he too has been married multiple times. And the "Relationships" section of his Wikipedia entry reads like some sordid psycho-sexual Freudian dream sequence gone awry and remixed by Danger Mouse and David Lynch. Don't geniuses just get the hot chick and live happily ever after?

In Woody's case you at least have the premise for it all being worth it to shoot Penelope Cruz and ScarJo lustily making out with Javier Bardem. But at his age all of that likely falls under the rubric of "indigestion". And can't you see Woody breaking the 4th wall and asking what a comic legend of his stature has to do to just be left alone to his work.

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


Michael Jackson: God bless his soul. This was originally conceived as strictly an Eddie and Woody comedy pairing, but much of the narrative is the same: Indisputable genius: check! A robust "Relationships" wikipedia section: check! A pillar of comedy, video, and racist implications: check! (re. comedy: Jackson jokes are now a genre unto themselves, no?). And, it turns out, he could dabble with the music a little bit.

Last but not least, a growing throng of critics stomping on his fading-but-timeless legacy was the man in Michael's mirror before his unfortunate cardiac arrest yesterday. But doesn't the genius required to sell a love-ballad-to-a-rat as a hit single last forever?

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


Nick Denton in an AdAge interview recently spoke of Gawker's audience having a significant percentage of content producers; in many ways it's like a comic working a room with a lot of other comedians in it. So maybe this is the best place to ask: if a legacy of genius only matters but so much, what's the point? Do we aspire to emulate the artist-genius anymore? Does a hot Twitter-feed qualify as such in the 0-9?

I guess all that's left is to fatten up our respective "Relationships" sections. The only proof of sex is excess of sex, or somesuch.

image:via

• Anna Wintour's main event-planning-lady - who she's had around for 11 years - is leaving to go spend time with her family. Her resignation probably came with an ambivalent scoff regarding weakness and moral fortitude, and as soon as she closed the door to Wintour's office, Wintour collapsed in heaving sobs. Probably. Maybe. Okay, that shit absolutely did not happen. [P6]
  
  
• Hollywood's Rapid-Fire-Speech Power Couple, West Wing actor Bradley Whitford and wife Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm In The Middle) are getting a divorce; they have three children. Want to tear up? Here's Whitford's famously charming and gracious Emmy acceptance speech in which he lovingly thanks Kaczmarek for her support of his career. It was going to be 17 years in August, and this is the second celebrity divorce announcement of the week (the first was Billy and Katie Lee Joel). [People]
  
  
• Last month's speculation Gisele Bundchen was preggers with Tom Brady's baby is now confirmed. No word on whether the child - like Brady's other baby - has a penis, or if it's right-handed. New England waits with baited breath. Meanwhile, somewhere late last night, the Manning family wardanced around a black cauldron and threw live lobsters into lime and burning sulfur. [NYDN]
  
  
• Gah! The Governator was on a flight when the cockpit filled with smoke and had to make an emergency landing. Everyone's fine and nobody had to "GET OUT OF THE CHOPPAH" because they were in an airplane, obvi. [TMZ]
  
  
• T.R. Knight made some stuff up about how sad he is to be leaving Grey's Anatomy, probably just to keep his agents from performing self-immolation in a Century City back alley. [People]
  
  
• Radio midget Ryan Seacrest was chillin' with Lindsey Lohan Thursday night until the late hours. Hey, whatever, I just work here. [E!]
  
  
• Woody Allen wants to put the moves on Carla Bruni. On behalf of all nerdy, sexless Semites everywhere, I say: Go with God. [NYDN]
  
  
• American producers of Britian's Got Talent are looking for their own Susan Boyle. Imagine that conversation: "Yeah, of course she can sing like Sarah Brightman, but unless she's seven and has a tumor protruding five inches out of her forehead, we're gonna have to pass. Sorry." [NYDN]
  
  
• Men's Health stud-in-chief Dave Zinczenko doesn't give a shit about swine flu. He had some party where they ate a bunch of pig. Meanwhile, the only men buying Men's Health still remain the ones who will never have AWESOME ABS IN NINE SECONDS. [P6]
  
  
• Beyonce totally stood up Manhattan nightclub Mansion - sorry, M2 - on a date. But the best part of the item is that M2's owner - Joey Morrisey - gets referred to by his last name throughout the piece. So it reads like the former lead singer of The Smiths and the former Destiny's Child frontwoman are about to throw down. Which would be awesome. [P6]
  
  
• Gossip Girl mom Kelly Rutherford is worried her ex-husband might run for the border with her kids. Josh Schwartz is somewhere taking script notes. [TMZ]
  
  
• Page Six watched Leighton Meester's sex tape - or, okay, "several different sources" coughNeel Shahcough - and notes that her feet are definitely the stars of the show. This was reported yesterday, but Gawker can't actually verify this until Managing Editor Gabriel Snyder approves an expense on the company card, so until then, turn to Page Six for all your hard-hitting Leighton Meester sex tape play-by-play action, which they will probably have the exclusive on before us. [P6]
  
  
• Heh. The Busey continues to spit game at whatever immortal age he's at. TMZ caught him at the beach talking to a gaggle of girls, though in all likelihood, he was probably lecturing them on the chi of the sand vulture's post hunter-gathering expedition sex rituals. [TMZ]
  
  
• Hugh Laurie could care less what happens to House. "I don't care what happens I only care how it happens. House could become a nun or an arms dealer or a transvestite," the Emmy-winning actor noted. Okay, House becoming a nun or a transvetite? Seriously great ideas, though. Either would get me watching the show again. [Showbiz Spy]

Dov Charney and Co.'s entire strategy for this trial was to say, hey, Woody Allen didn't lose $10 million being associated with our pervy brand, because he was already a perv. Then they posed and postured like they were going to turn the trial into a parade of Woody's Greatest Perv Hits, making it so painful for him that he'd wish he never sued them.

That was a bluff. Everybody knows Woody Allen's shit already. So they paid him half. Fair is fair. But where's your scrappy sense of tabloid sensationalism, Dov? We all knew you'd lose, but now you also lost a shitload of free PR. And who's going to pay Woody for this?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.UPDATE: Full statement from Dov Charney here. Including, heh:

In his deposition, Mr. Allen said that he had never heard of American Apparel or me prior to the billboard. I believe that if Mr. Allen became more familiar with the company, he might appreciate some aspects of American Apparel specifically our commitment to creativity.

But not terribly, either. There were some scathing words, but we've begun to suspect that those have more to do with people's distaste for Allen as a person and an inability to see his films as stand-alone pictures. Mostly though, the film sounds mild and minor, with some requisite Allen ickiness and a few clunky antiquated jokes.

Angry Lou Lemnick of the New York Post finds it creaky and vaguely embarrassing:

Woody has told interviewers he wrote this script years ago for himself and updated it recently.

Yes, there is a cringeworthy gag about our new president being unable to get a cab in New York, and an even worse one about Viagra. And he tries to show he's with it by briefly throwing in a menage a trois, just like in his last film, the far funnier "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

But few under 50 are going to get his reference to Texas sniper Charles Whitman (he's the Binghamton killer of 1966). Some of the gags are even older, and only occasionally funny.

Two dudes over at Vanity Fair, Frank DiGiacomo and Bruce Handy, have differing opinions. DiGiacomo loved it, saying it's the first Allen movie he's really laughed at in a long time:

For one thing, I go to see his movies hoping to laugh my ass off, and that hasn't happened in a while-at least until I saw Whatever Works.

Whereas Handy just found the May/December romance (between Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood) straight up creepy:

Allen doesn't even bother to make the relationship between David's and Evan Rachel Woods's characters credible. Aside from her being hot, the attraction makes no sense: She's a moron and he's hateful.

Eric Kohn at indieWire also finds the David/Wood pairing frustrating:

Their "marriage" has less credibility than the plot of "Bananas": It's random, abrupt and utterly non-romantic. We never even see them kiss. "I have been patient with your phenomenal ignorance," he tells her, but the cynicism-just like their shared passion-doesn't appear to register.

In the end, though, maybe we're expecting to much from the aged Allen, who has given us so much. Maybe we can just let this be a pretty decent comedy, Jason Guerrasio at Filmmaker Magazine seems to argue:

...Allen's latest work can hardly match his earlier ones shot in his beloved city, so we won't even go there, instead he constructs an entertaining, conventional (for Allen's standards) comedy...

Fair enough. You know. Uh... heh. Whatever works.

Life, the movie director says, is "a tough scuffle," and "a tragic situation." You do what you can. Which, in Allen's case, right now, means promoting his film Whatever Works, starring a fellow neurotic New York Jewish comic, Larry David. And maybe blowing off a little steam about all the hubub about marrying his former step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn.

As long as you’re not hurting anybody … or doing anything that’s causing any mischief or hurting anyone or anything awful, that whatever works to get through your life is fine. All the nonsense about what one should be doing and shouldn’t be doing and what’s quote unquote appropriate according to what I call the appropriate police—it’s nonsense.

Working through these feelings in his film does not (surprise!) seem to have lifted the notorious pessimist's dark outlook on life. "We all still remain in this dreadfully tragic predicament," he told the Observer's Sara Vilkomerson. "And a tragic life."

But don't try to cheer Allen up. He'll assume you're lying. Like those people at his film openings.

I go to the party afterwards and go back into phony social mode where people are exchanging enormous insincerities. They’ve hated the film but they’re saying, ‘Gee, great film. Great film.’

Then again, Allen never re-watches his own movies. Life is much more bleak that way.

Woody wants $10 million because American Apparel ripped off his visage for a billboard. People will think he's a perv, like Dov! American Apparel responds: you're not worth $10 million. You're a perv!

"We believe that Mr. Allen's popularity has decreased significantly, especially in light of the scandals he's been associated with," American Apparel lawyer Stuart Slotnick told The Post...

"The term 'sex scandal' shall mean . . . your relationship with Soon-Yi Previn including the discovery and public reports thereof, the nude pictures you took of Soon-Yi Previn, and your marriage to Soon-Yi Previn," Charney's lawyers wrote.

A huge portion of his adult life is defined as a "sex scandal." Just like Dov! American Apparel is right in noting that there's no way Woody Allen could get $10 million for his endorsement from anyone. He'd endorse, what...Viagra? Glasses? It's not happening. His name has been far less prominent lately even in the ads for his own movies. It's a shame that Dov and Woody, two soul brothers, have to be fighting like this. Can't they just kiss and make out? [NYP]

Nicole Kidman, plastic bee-stung actress of floundering status, has joined Woody Allen's next movie. Also on board are Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas, and Freida Pino. Generally Allen's more star-studded movies turn out to be the worst ones (with the exception of Everyone Says I Love You), so this doesn't bode well. [Variety] Meanwhile the so totally still likable Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are said to be on board a James Mangold-directed movie about a luckless lady love loser who meets a mysterious stranger on a blind date. The movie was originally going to star Eva Mendes and Chris Tucker, so that should speak to its quality. [Variety]

The top 35 ad-based cable networks—Fox News, Food Network, Cartoon Network—are up 7% this year in ratings. Fox, for example, averages a depressing 1.7 million households, up 22% from the same quarter last year. Though other networks like MTV and Lifetime have seen drops, 16% and 12% respectively. Makes sense to us. What with the economy and all, no one has time to pay attention to things like music and women. [Variety]

Hm. Noted conservative 24 producer Joel Surnow (who is responsible for this) is penning a 10-hour miniseries called The Kennedys, which will dig into "the soiled and crooked steps" that the family took to insinuate themselves into the White House. A Canadian distributor plans to shop the idea around Cannes in May. Good luck finding actors! Though, I bet Bruce Willis would look fabulous in a wig and pillbox hat. [Variety]

Area hottie boombalottie Ian Somerhalder (Boone from Lorst) has been cast in a CW pilot called Vampire Diaries. He plays a vampire who is fun one minute, evil the next. And nude. Hopefully nude. [Variety] Former hottie boombalottie Orlando Bloom will be featured in the last unproduced screenplay by the late playwright Horton Foote. He'll play a small town North Carolina policeman. Also joining him in the cast is Andrew McCarthy. [THR]

Donald Sutherland will star in The Eastmans for CBS. [THR] Isaiah Washington is lined up to star in that Lou Rawls biopic everyone's been clamoring for. [THR] The comic American Jesus, about a modern-day bout between the Savior and the Antichrist, may be adapted into a film by X-Men director Matthew Vaughn. [THR]

• Alex Rodriguez must be into Madonna again, because he's resumed his hunt for an apartment two blocks away. [P6]
• How does a steakhouse beat the recession? Have artist Julian Schnabel decorate a closet and bill it as the most exclusive private dining space in the city. [P6]
• Woody Allen wasted no time signing Slumdog Millionaire's Freido Pinto to a role in his new movie. Maybe his former "muse" Scarlett Johansson can write a weepy song about it. Or, you know, just cover something by Tom Waits that reasonably approximates her feelings. [Mirror]
• Bernie Madoff's wife totally scammed a deli owner into selling her the Post at half price. [P6]
• Mario Batali denied calling a rowdy South Beach food festival crowd "weasel fuckwads," but more and more people keep confirming the story to the Post. [P6]
• Sharon Stone and Andre Balazs are apparently an item. [Gatecrasher]
• Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson have been photographed sitting together on a park bench in Paris. Experts are still debating the deeper meaning and layered symbolism of this encounter.

NY: Do you have a theory about why the culture keeps getting coarser?

WA: The country has, over the years, moved to the right. And it’s possible that accompanying that move to the right, you also get a lessening of taste. But I don’t know if what I’m saying is true, because I have shown some very good films—Bergman, Fellini—to kids from good schools like Yale. Bright kids. And they were not impressed. You know, it wasn’t as though I picked out some kid from the Midwest who’s a churchgoing barbarian. Those same kids that you see in the movie house doubled over with laughter over fraternity toilet jokes are very often kids from Columbia and Yale. We might also still be feeling the fallout from the sexual revolution, when everybody just ran amok talking dirty and doing things that were forbidden and it became the mark of drama and comedy to be simply outrageous. Not necessarily dramatically interesting or particularly comic, but just outrageous.

I'm not saying I agree—because that would be pretentious—but... sigh.

• Lindsay Lohan called Sarah Palin a "narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe" on Lohan's MySpace page, citing a conference her church on "converting" gays. "She can suck it." [MySpace, Daily News]
• Anna Wintour really, really loved her 30 minutes with LeBron James. Even though it was at a screening. [R&M]
• Vogue's Andre Leon Talley does not appreciate being sprayed with champagne. [P6]
• NBC executive Ben Silverman wisely lets Jeff Zucker win at golf. He's still totally fired. [P6]
• More alleged underage sex victims sued billionaire and Bill Clinton buddy Jeffrey Epstein. [P6]
• Sidney Poitier will steal your wife and then not marry her. And then call her all kinds of un-Sidney-Poitier names! [P6]
• Swimmer Ryan Lochte doesn't have enough gold medals to get laid like Michael Phelps. [P6]
• Spike Lee declared himself done feuding with Clint Eastwood and moved on to Judd Apatow, "whatever that guy is." [Nikki Finke]
• Scarlett Johansson is a total prima donna now that she's Woody Allen's muse. Because that's what's made her a hot commodity. [P6]
• At George "Sulu" Takei's wedding, Chekhov was best man and Uhura was best lady. The husband was Brad Altman, 27 years younger. [ET]
• Amy Winehouse felt she was too ugly to go to her own 25th birthday party, supposedly. [Sun]
• Jennifer Lopez ran a triathlon in 2 hours 23 minutes, compared with 1 hour 30 minutes for Matthew McConaughey. [Us]

I’m no opera buff, but I heard that David Cronenberg was directing an opera version of The Fly and I wanted to go. When I saw that decent tickets were like $250 each, I decided to pretend I was a journalist and get in for free. This worked shockingly well. Not only did I get orchestra seats to The Fly, but also tickets to Il Trittico (a Puccini trilogy directed by William Friedkin and Woody Allen) as well as an invitation to the opening weekend black tie gala. In other words, my ass got hooked up.

I arrived at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Friday night, at least 20 years younger than everyone else and certainly the only one in a rented Men’s Wearhouse tuxedo. The women, bronzed and tucked within an inch of their lives, were draped in gowns that looked like fine Renaissance tapestries. Golf ball-sized bangles hung from their elongated earlobes. The men had self-tying bow ties and wore patent leather loafers without socks—a move only extremely successful people and total douches can pull off. The crowd even smelled rich. No Axe body spray here, this was strictly a Creed gathering, filled with people who made their money long ago. These guys didn’t have to worry about whether the studio would greenlight their next project; they were too busy donating wings to museums. I grabbed some complimentary champagne and drank a flute or five, thinking it would help me blend in a little better.

The opera began and I was carried all the way to intermission afloat on a sea of alcohol. So much for the performance. Before I knew it, I was in the lobby with the swells once again. There was a reception for the media but I decided to skip it, preferring to stay with my rich brethren. I noticed that a select few of them were making their way to the left side of the auditorium and I decided to follow. They were filing into the Founder’s Room— an exclusive members only club within the already exclusive club of people who attend the opera on opening night. I snuck in, which was surprisingly easy to do because security doesn’t assume anyone would be so uncouth as to pull a stunt like that. The room was a gorgeous wood-paneled affair and the people here made the people in the lobby seem like paupers. There were even some celebs. Michael Eisner stood alone in the corner thumbing through a program. Martin Short walked by entertaining a group of dowagers who cackled at every word he said. William Petersen talked shop with some ancient executives. Don Johnson (!) strutted around with his amazingly tall ex-model wife. Josh Groban was being Josh Groban. I drank more free champagne to steel myself for the opera’s final act.

Soon enough the show was over and it was time for the opening night gala dinner. Only large donors to the opera were invited to this shindig and I was one of the lucky few members of the media asked to cover it. The courtyard of the Music Center had been converted into a banquet hall. Crystal stemware, silver, and a centerpiece of expensive roses graced every table. I was seated off to the side with the other journalists, but they were professional opera journalists, and therefore far classier than I. We dined on filet mignon and creamed Tuscan black kale catered by Patina. A live orchestra tinkled out standards and I fortified myself with still more champagne. Placido Domingo, living legend and director of the L.A.O. took the mike. In his glamorously Italian-accented yet boring speech, he thanked the opera’s many benefactors and introduced the cast and crew. Then he singled out Woody Allen.

Earlier in the evening Woody made his operatic debut by directing Gianni Schicchi, the only comedic opera in Puccini’s Il Trittico. It was a smashing success and received a standing ovation, but the famous recluse never came out for a curtain call. Many of us wondered if he even bothered to show up at all. I certainly didn’t expect him to be at the gala dinner. But as soon as Placido said his name, Woody stood up and shyly waved to the crowd. He had skipped the tux in favor of his traditional uniform-the famous thick black glasses, khaki pants, frayed Oxford shirt, and a blue blazer—and it made him look more like a living cartoon character than a real human being. It’s rare that anyone gets a chance to be near Woody in the flesh, especially Los Angelinos, and within seconds well-wishers mobbed him. Most memorably, Don Johnson came up to him brimming with confidence. “I’m a big star,” thought Don. “There’s no way Woody wouldn’t be psyched to meet me.” But when he tapped Woody on the shoulder and shook his hand, Woody said hi, and then immediately turned to talk to someone else. Obviously Woody Allen could give a shit about Don Johnson. For the briefest second, a look of embarrassment flashed across Don’s face, but then he bucked up and went back to his model wife, pretending all was right in the world.

After that, the evening pretty much died down. I drank the last of my free champagne and floated off into the night vowing to become super rich so I could hobnob like this every year.

[Photo Credits: FilmMagic]

"This is what I've always loved about New York. Those little moments on the sidewalks, you can watch the buildings and feel the air and look at the people, and sometimes meet somebody you feel like you could talk to."

Which sort of highlights the problem, doesn't it! Like, hey, you can actually look at buildings and talk to strangers, technically, in any place that exists but in New York people have actually bought into the notion that their most mundane experiences and interactions are more special because someone might write a movie about them someday. When really the only decent movies about mundane experiences and quirky romantic interactions these days take place outside of New York (just ask Woody Allen!)**

*"Love in New York" is at best a problematic concept. I have already written about that here and here and here and let's be honest, probably a few thousand other places. My general take on this is that New Yorkers are conned—by their permalancer gigs and their sperm donors and their pretentious/prodigious collections of books written by misanthropic pervs and the commodity fetishism (not to mention the materialism!) and the constant distraction of mere survival when you have so many parties to attend and an overabundance of self-esteem—into thinking that they are actually "independent," and that the last thing they want to be is "codependent" when interdependence is the operating principle of human civilization. Just ask that Domino publisher who had to hire both an egg donor and a surrogate mother to make a baby!

Here is a New York, I Love You vignette: yesterday I hung out with an ex-boyfriend who was very sweetly comforting me about a recent breakup with another boyfriend about whom my favorite story goes:

Ex-boyfriend's Ex-Girlfriend, upon meeting me at a party: Oh my god, that time you wrote about how dating was like being waterboarded was just so true! I forwarded it to all my friends and they all agree that is exactly what dating in New York is like.
Me: How about some Jameson's?

Anyway said ex-boyfriend always used to seem confused that I was dating the more recent ex-boyfriend at all, since more recent ex-boyfriend was obviously not the most considerate dude in the world. "I will be your Yenta!" previous ex-boyfriend said, and proceeded to go through his phone. He scrolled through the whole alphabet with nary a suggestion, until he came to "X", where the more recent ex was listed. "Now I get it!" he said.

**Except for The Wackness because it was about 1. the nineties and 2. the actual love story was about a man and his pot dealer, so it was more realistic.