COOL SHOW-BIZ NEWS FROM AROUND THE WEB...

Carlin on The Tonight Show, 1972

From the New York Times --

Dying Is Hard. Comedy Is Harder. By Jerry Seinfeld.

THE honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

I called him to compliment him on his most recent special on HBO. Seventy years old and he cranks out another hour of great new stuff. He was in a hotel room in Las Vegas getting ready for his show. He was a monster.

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

But his brilliance fathered dozens of great comedians. I personally never cared about “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or “FM & AM.” To me, everything he did just had this gleaming wonderful precision and originality.

I became obsessed with him in the ’60s. As a kid it seemed like the whole world was funny because of George Carlin. His performing voice, even laced with profanity, always sounded as if he were trying to amuse a child. It was like the naughtiest, most fun grown-up you ever met was reading you a bedtime story.

I know George didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

Jerry Seinfeld is a writer and a comedian. 

From comedian/actor Richard Belzer:

Still reverberating from the stunning loss of the beloved Tim Russert along comes Mr. Death to twist the knife of unanticipated loss and drown us once again in grief. George Carlin is in the rarefied pantheon of the few, too few, truly great stand-up comedians. Along with Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor, George Carlin embodied the Swiftian, Twainish culturally astute rapier wit and wisdom that every era needs. The love of language the horror, ecstasy and sublime ridiculousness of human behavior along with the sensibility to synthesize psychology and sociology into the unique poetry of joke-telling is the very recipe for comic greatness. And now immortality... Good night sweet Prince.

From the New York Times -

The Station That Dared to Defend Carlin’s ‘7 Words’ Looks Back. By Glenn Collins

As the encomiums for George Carlin have rolled in from stand-up legends, celebrities and scholars, his death at 71 has also been noted at a diminutive, iconic and iconoclastic radio station in Manhattan, WBAI-FM.

Its broadcast of the comedian’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” became a landmark moment in the history of free speech. In a 1978 milestone in the station’s contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.

“It’s a bad time here for us because George Carlin was part of the family,” said Anthony Riddle, the station’s general manager. “I think all the producers are dealing with it in their own way,” Mr. Riddle said, some doing commentary and others running archival material, including a bleeped-out version of the “Seven Words” routine.

The 1978 ruling, often termed “the Carlin case,” was actually called Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, and turned on a 12-minute Carlin monologue called “Filthy Words” that appeared on a 1973 album, “Occupation: Foole.”

After the Carlin album monologue was broadcast on WBAI in 1973 during “Lunch Pail,” an afternoon show, a listener objected that his young son had heard the words on a car radio. The corporate parent of WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation, received a letter of reprimand from the commission, which the company challenged in court.

The Supreme Court said that the broadcast was indecent, though not obscene, and gave the commission the right to determine the definition of indecency and to prohibit such material from being broadcast during hours when children were likely to be listening.

Despite this legal Dunkirk, “the fact that his seven dirty words having emanated from here is kind of a source of pride,” said Jose R. Santiago, the station’s news director.

The court decision “was about more than just radio,” Mr. Riddle added, “it was about the right to be human beings in the United States.”

“It was a gutsy thing for a radio station to do, taking that stand,” he said.

Though the station was not fined, Pacifica paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, said Larry Josephson, the WBAI station manager from 1974 to 1976.

Now, broadcasting the seven words “would cost us $360,000 per incident - so those seven words would cost us $2.5 million,” about equal to the station’s annual budget, Mr. Riddle said. “Now we’d be severely limited in taking a chance on protecting people’s free-speech rights.”

Recently Mr. Josephson had to abide by the consequences of the very commission decision he was involved in, as the independent producer of WBAI’s annual “Bloomsday” celebration on June 16, which honored James Joyce and his novel “Ulysses.”

Though the broadcast began at 7 p.m., the protagonist Molly Bloom’s famous lengthy monologue of erotic musings - which contains several forbidden words - had to be read after 10 p.m. during the “safe harbor” period when the F.C.C. allows the broadcast of what it terms “indecent” material.

The station that for generations has spoken truth to power is incongruously situated on the 10th floor of 120 Wall Street, and smack in the middle of the FM dial, at 99.5. Now in its 48th year, WBAI was both an expression, and ringleader, of the counterculture during its peak in the mid-1960s through the Vietnam War.

Observers have said that in its heyday, its on-air personalities, like Mr. Josephson, Steve Post and Bob Fass, extended the popularity of FM radio and explored the possibilities of the medium.

But its turmoil-filled subsequent history has featured a fiesta of staff clashes, board eruptions, station coups and protests. Amid accusations of every imaginable form of -ism, on-air personalities and producers have been summarily banned; on-air resignations have not been unknown.

These days WBAI, whose slogan is “Your Peace and Justice Community Radio Station,” has a paid staff of 25 and 200 independent volunteer producers, Mr. Riddle said, adding that WBAI has more than 200,000 listeners. He declined to say how many subscribers there are, but the number is believed to be fewer than 20,000; the minimum subscription rate is $25 a year.

Mr. Riddle, who joined the station in February, said that “it’s always difficult to run a democracy,” adding that “a lot of people believe in the kind of radio we provide,” since the station does not accept advertising, underwriting or grants.

If in many ways the station has changed, the legality of broadcasting the “Seven Words” has not.

“Now, 35 years later, we can’t take a chance of playing it,” Mr. Riddle said. “Discussion of the words is not acceptable, unless you cut the heart out of it.”

**********

The Trailer for Richard Fleischer's The Boston Strangler (1968)

Brian De Palma to helm 'Stranglers' Adapted from Susan Kelly's nonfiction book. By Jay A. Fernandez.

Brian De Palma has long had a thing for the notorious.

The "Scarface" director has signed on to helm "The Boston Stranglers" for producer Gale Anne Hurd's Valhalla Motion Pictures. The film is adapted by Alan Rosen ("Head of the Class") from Susan Kelly's nonfiction book "The Boston Stranglers: The Public Conviction of Albert DeSalvo and the True Story of Eleven Shocking Murders."

The thriller will detail the early-'60s Beantown killings and their controversial resolution. Hurd will produce, and Kevin Kelly Brown will exec produce.

De Palma similarly plumbed real-life-derived atrocities in "Casualties of War," "Redacted" and "The Black Dahlia." The Strangler case continues to stir debate. Many question whether Albert DeSalvo -- a publicity hound who confessed to the murders and was later stabbed to death while incarcerated on unrelated charges -- was the actual killer.

The murders were the basis of a 1968 movie that starred Tony Curtis as DeSalvo and Henry Fonda as the detective pursuing him. That version was based on an earlier book by Gerold Frank. Several TV and DVD movies have been derived from the events.

Valhalla and Hurd produced "The Incredible Hulk" for Marvel and Universal, which will release the film June 13. De Palma has been the writer and/or director of "The Untouchables," "Carlito's Way" and "Dressed to Kill," but his recent films have underperformed. His last hit was "Mission: Impossible" in 1996.

**************** 

From showbizdata.com-

3-D Films Jumping At Box Office

Movie theaters showing films in 3-D are likely to see ticket sales jump an average of 65 percent over similar theaters showing the same movie in 2-d, according to a study by Nielsen PreView, unveiled at an exhibitors' conference in Amsterdam today (Monday).

The study compared theaters with a strong track record in attracting audiences for action/adventure movies. This "like-to-like comparison," Nielsen said, demonstrated that "consumers when given a choice, will choose 3-D." Moreover, the study found that when theatres simultaneously exhibit two movies in 3-D their ticket sales double, "indicating that one 3-D screen per theater may not be enough to satisfy consumer demand." It also discovered that 48 percent of consumers are generally unaware that a movie may be playing in both 3-D and 2-d at separate theaters in their area.

****************

Jason Bateman Dries Out

Juno star Jason Bateman has gone teetotal after his wife persuaded him to give up alcohol. The 39-year-old star hasn't had a drink in four years and puts his newfound clean living down to a desire to grow up and leave his adolescence behind.

Bateman also credits his wife with helping him give up booze - because she never liked him drinking. He says,

"I've spent all my fun chips and now I've parked my drinking boots in the closet. I haven't had a drink in four years. There wasn't any real specific bottom to it. I was just ready to graduate from adolescence and try my hand at being an adult.

"And, quite honestly, the woman I was in love with was not really that tolerant of it, so I turned it off."

**************

'New Classics' for a Select Few

(From Hollywood Hitlist's Gregory Ellwood)-

Many writers like to rip on Entertainment Weekly out of jealousy. It's a plum gig that has a semblance of hipness left to it and is one of the few remaining outlets where arrogance is rewarded upon walking through the door. However, because I have no desire to ever work for the rag, I have no problem ripping their inane list of 100 new "classic" movies from the past quarter century (didn't TNT already beat them to this?). Here's a quick take on their top 25.

25. "Shrek" Sure, it's fun for the whole family, but it's not better than "The Incredibles" or "Finding Nemo."

24. "A Room With A View" This isn't even the best Merchant/Ivory production during that period (that would be "The Remains of the Day"). And it's ahead of other fine recent dramas such as "The Piano," "Secrets & Lies" or "The Talented Mr. Ripley"? Seriously?

23. "Memento" This movie may have started "Batman Begins" director Christopher Nolan's career, but can you remember the last time it came up in conversation? It was hot for about two years, but its gimmick of replaying almost the entire movie backward was really just that, a gimmick. You could argue "The Blair Witch Project" was more influential.

22. "Rushmore" What -- no one wanted to rate "Napoleon Dynamite" this high?

21. "Schindler's List" Can't really argue with this one.

20. "The Lion King" Certainly the finest hand-drawn Disney movie of the past 30 years. Many would say it should be rated even higher.

19. "Casino Royale" A great reboot for the Bond franchise, but good enough for the top 20? Please. It's still a half hour too long, and even math majors have problems following those poker scenes.

18. "Do the Right Thing" This extremely powerful film hasn't lost any of its luster, but it should be in the top 10.

17. "Jerry Maguire" Ugh. This romantic comedy hasn't aged well. Crowe's pitch-perfect drama, "Almost Famous," would be a more appropriate selection here.

16. "Boogie Nights" OK, I get it, but that third act is weak.

15. "Edward Scissorhands" This isn't Tim Burton's best (that would be "Ed Wood"), but it may be his most moving.

14. "Crumb" I'm not sure why this doc is in the top 100, let alone ahead of "Hoop Dreams" at No. 26.

13. "Goodfellas" Can't argue with one of director Martin Scorsese's best.

12. "The Matrix" Even Wachowski haters will defend the influence of this sci-fi thriller on the genre. It should be at least in the top 5.

11. "This Is Spinal Tap" It's funny, but is it funnier than "Waiting for Guffman"? I think not.

10. "Moulin Rouge" (Cough, cough, cough, cough.)

9. "Die Hard" This is placed a little too high, but it was a huge influence on action films for the next decade. You could make a case for "Speed" here (never mind "Speed 2: Cruise Control").

8. "The Silence of the Lambs" Can't really knock this selection, because the film still holds up after all these years.

7. "Hannah and Her Sisters" It's good, but if Woody Allen had to make the list, "Bullets Over Broadway" would be a a much better selection. However, it wouldn't make my top 20.

6. "Saving Private Ryan" This film is great for its initial invasion scenes, but the rest of it does not hold up (blasphemy, I know).

5 "Toy Story" I've never loved it as much as everyone else, but historically it proved that computer-generated animation could work in a feature-length film.

4. "Blue Velvet" Way. Too. High. Period.

3. "Titanic" Its flaws are more visible over time, but it's still a beast of a movie. And, damn, that song still gets me every time.

2. "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy This series should definitely make the top 20, but it shouldn't be No. 2. Like "Titanic," the flaws are more visible with time.

1. "Pulp Fiction" Not sure I can argue with this one. It influenced both the indie film movement and TV crime dramas, but then it became its own cliché. It still works today, but is it really the best new "classic" of the past 25 years? Seriously? At least there's some solace in the fact that "American Beauty," perhaps one of the most overrated Oscar winners of all time, didn't make it. Here are a few that should have made the top 25: "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (No. 49), "The Shawshank Redemption" (not in the top 100 -- I'm not a fan but it's beloved by most), "The Sixth Sense" (No. 39), "Brokeback Mountain" (No. 31), "Fargo" (No. 34) and "There's Something About Mary" (No. 57).

**************

Matthew McConaughey in surfers-vs.-paparazzi brawl in Malibu

It could get ugly again Saturday in Malibu following last weekend's attack on a photographer by surfers who claimed they were "defending" Matthew McConaughey's privacy. The actor was surfing at Paradise Cove when a group of paparazzi arrived on the beach and started snapping away. The surfers told the "paproids" to leave and got physical when they didn't, allegedly breaking one lensman's nose and throwing his camera into the sea.

The attack was, of course, recorded. A cyber-rumble has erupted on the Web site of the X17 photo agency, where video of the attack was posted. More than 1,000 angry back-and-forth comments between the lensmen and the surfers have been logged, including one urging paparazzi to "rendezvous next Saturday in the same spot. 50 paps are going to meet u there. Good luck and enjoy the high waves." A surfer responds, "Bring it on, paps. It will be the end for you on the beach. Saturday is on."

The comments are right out of "West Side Story," if the Jets and Sharks instant-messaged racist, classist taunts before a fight. The surfers are mostly white Malibu residents, while many of the paparazzi are immigrants; some speculate that some of the paps are former gang members. But their inside perspective on celebrity culture is priceless: "I'm a pap," writes one. "I've made $94K a year and I'm only four months into it ... because stupid white trash people like your fat mother buy the magazines. We hunt the very people you worship for no reason." X17 owner Brandy Navarre told us: "We certainly never condone a fight between our photographers and any other party. They have a right to do their job; they were not provoking anyone. A rowdy group of men ... proceeded to injure some photographers and destroy more than $15,000 in photographic equipment. There is no justification for what they did."

Malibu Sheriff's Deputy I. Lua said he wasn't aware of the online threats between the two groups to fight this weekend. "We haven't heard that. We don't go on those [Web sites]."

McConaughey might want to spare himself the brutality - of the comments. "McConaughey cannot surf to save his life," wrote one.

Surfer dudes stomp McConaughey-snapping paps

(from Mark Caro's Pop Machine)

I’m just catching up with the footage that TMZ.com posted of two violent confrontations between paparazzi and groups of surfers on a Malibu beach over the weekend. The snappers were there to stalk—I mean, to take photos of Matthew McConaughey surfing and sunbathing. The surfers wanted to take back their beach. The confrontation, according to TMZ, led to one photographer getting his nose busted and another getting thrown onto the rocks, his camera smashed.

Lawlessness and violence, of course, are BAD, but I wonder whether Hollywood Elsewhere columnist Jeffrey Wells is voicing the majority opinion when he writes: “[A]ny beating up of paparazzi by anyone is a good thing as long as no one gets killed or crippled. Black eyes are good, bruises are good, broken cameras are good, missing teeth are good...all of it. “Paparazzi are pigs in the gutter -- the scumbucket jackals of worldwide celebrity culture. The lowest of the low, covered in their own slime. They deserve every bad thing that happens to them except death or disfigurement or being turned into paraplegics.”

From the L. A. Times - 

Paparazzi caught in Malibu's surf and turf war. By Martha Groves and Harriet Ryan.

The summer surf is up in Malibu, and that means competing cultures are colliding with more zest than usual: surfers who jealously guard their favorite beaches, locals who want Malibu to remain a West Coast Mayberry and younger celebrities who love to hate their attendant paparazzi.

Case in point: Over the weekend, obscenities, fists and video equipment went flying in two incidents involving paparazzi, celebrities and surfers, capturing the attention of Internet junkies around the world. The paparazzi -- also fixtures in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and West Hollywood -- say they are just doing their job and insist that some younger celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey, whose surf outing first drew the crush of paparazzi to Malibu on Saturday, welcome the attention. But many Malibu locals resent seeing hordes of photographers, who frequently sell their shots and videos to websites such as tmz.com and X17online.com, stake out their favorite haunts. They say the aggressive shooters pose a safety hazard and are spoiling the sophisticated ambience that has drawn residents and millions of visitors to Malibu.

Can Malibu -- which routinely endures wildfires, mudslides and cellphone dead zones -- survive the age of TMZ and X17? Malibu Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich is working with Kenneth W. Starr, former White House independent counsel and dean of Pepperdine Law School, to research the possibility of crafting a law to regulate paparazzi. "The city of Malibu will do all it legally can to protect and preserve the natural beauty and tranquillity of our town," she said in a statement Monday.

Brian Pietro, owner of Malibu General Store in the Trancas area of west Malibu, echoed the opinions of a number of other residents in describing the ubiquitous paparazzi basically as unnecessary evils. Thanks to the nation's insatiable appetite for celebrity nuggets, however mundane, the paparazzi invasion "has exploded" in the last few years, he said. "The general sentiment around here is that any time a paparazzo gets his camera smashed or gets popped in the face or gets dunked in the water, we're all for it," Pietro said.

Paparazzi have all but driven actor Pierce Brosnan and his wife, Keely Shaye Smith, out of Malibu, Pietro said. Last October, the erstwhile James Bond was briefly under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for allegedly hitting a paparazzo in the ribs outside a trendy Malibu eatery. "Everywhere he goes, there's someone in his face," Pietro said. "He's a pussycat until you cross him, and then he's an Irishman." Customer Dona Bigelow, a 40-year resident of west Malibu, said, "Celebrities are just regular people. The reason they like Malibu is that's how we feel about them. We don't welcome the paparazzi."

Many celebrities shop at Hows grocery store, which shares the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Trancas Canyon Road with Malibu General Store. Pietro said he has an arrangement with his friend "Pamela Sue," a.k.a. Pamela Anderson. If he spies her leaving the market, he runs and stations himself with his back to any cameras so that she can unload her groceries in peace. A few weeks ago, Julia Roberts could not leave the market's parking lot because of the paparazzi swarming around her car. Pietro said a young male emerged from a crowd of onlookers and nudged the most aggressive photographer away, spoiling his shot. Many bystanders broke into applause.

That response speaks to the paradox of beachgoers shouting out insults to paparazzi even as they sit reading People magazine. Even loyal celebrity junkies seem to revile the messengers who bring them their daily doses. The weekend excitement started when celebrity photographers staking out McConaughey's rented Point Dume home spotted him heading for the water with a yellow surfboard. The shooters followed in hot pursuit and spread the word to colleagues by text message and cellphone calls. As the actor paddled out at the Little Dume break, a dozen paparazzi were training long lenses on him from behind a rock at the edge of the beach, seeking the elusive "body" shot of the actor, who is often pictured bare-chested in celebrity magazines. Videos posted on two celebrity websites showed a group of surfers approaching the photographers and ordering them to leave. When the paparazzi refused, things turned ugly.

Photographers said they were punched and kicked and their equipment stolen or thrown into the water. A video shows two men chasing a paparazzo, tussling with him and throwing him into the surf, apparently wrecking his camera. Alan Nierob, McConaughey's publicist, said the actor did nothing to encourage other surfers to attack the paparazzi. "He wasn't aware that anything was going on . . . because he was in the water surfing," said Nierob, who added that the incidents would not dissuade the actor from visiting the beach.

The next day, photographers say, they returned to Malibu after getting a tip that McConaughey, Colin Farrell and Minnie Driver were sunning themselves in Paradise Cove, a beach about a 20-minute walk from Little Dume beach. A second fracas broke out, according to county authorities. Paparazzi said a group of men threw a bottle and a rock, kicked sand at them and broke more equipment. One agency reported $15,000 in stolen or damaged camera equipment. Photographer Karl Larsen said Monday that some shooters had been wary of entering Paradise Cove because of reports from colleagues about threats from locals and surfers. "We talked with each other and said that if they come over here and tell us to leave, we're not just going to say 'OK' and get to the back of the bus," he said. "We said, 'No, this is a public beach, and we have civil rights.' "

Freelance photographer Alexander DeMacedo said he stepped in to try to defuse the situation but that threats soon led to profane gestures and punches. "It was a gang of rich white kids trying to push people off the beach," Larsen said. "They were being territorial, trying to protect some celebrity they want to be friends with. But Matthew knows us." Larsen, who snapped the photo of Paris Hilton crying on her way back to jail, sold footage of the Malibu incident to TMZ for what his photo agency described as "four figures." Photographers who camp outside the home of McConaughey and his pregnant girlfriend, Camila Alves, say they have a remarkably amicable relationship with the couple. Said Brandy Navarre, co-owner of the photo agency X17: "Matthew McConaughey has always been really nice to us."

************

Not really Bollywood (South India...), and not Schwarzenegger or Stallone (Kamla Hassan...), but wow...

From Showbiz Spy-

Schwarzenegger + Stallone To Make Bollywood Debut. By Wenn.

Actor-turned-California governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER is to make his big-screen comeback alongside SYLVESTER STALLONE - in their first Bollywood movie. The two action stars will make the transition from Hollywood to Bollywood with a role in Incredible Love. The film, about an Indian stuntman who finds fame in Hollywood to the detriment of his love life, will also feature Bollywood regulars Ashkay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor. The movie, the first Indian project to be filmed at Hollywood's Universal Studios, will have the biggest budget in Bollywood history at $22 million (GBP11 million).

Now, this is more like it...