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Bebe Neuwirth Angry About Reduced Addams Family Role, Says Satan
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Director Marco Bellocchio on Vincere
Well, that was a letdown, wasn’t it? Since the end of the pilot, we’ve been waiting for the moment when Daniel Graystone discovers that his dead daughter’s avatar is stuck in the Cylon prototype that he’s been trying to replicate in his basement. Last week’s cliffhanger finally delivered the goods. But with the avatar stubbornly staying mum, Daniel spent the bulk of the hour trying various methods of psychological torture to get her to admit she’s in there.
Scratch that! Now The Hollywood Reporter says Marvel has offered the role of Captain America to Chris Evans, who played Johnny Storm in both recent Fantastic Four movies and Lucas Lee in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. To take the part, he'd likely have to pull out of the Anna Farris—starring romantic comedy What's Your Number?, which is also scheduled to shoot this summer. Developing! [Heat Vision/HR]
"According to YouTube, Viacom has gone so far as to send employees to Kinko’s to upload clips to YouTube just to be sure that the IP addresses could not be connected with the company." —From an analysis of the uncovered e-mails in the now nearly three-year legal battle between Viacom and YouTube-Google on the Colbert Report fan site No Fact Zone [No Fact Zone]
According to IESB, Marvel's list of possible candidates to play Captain America now includes just three names: Chris Evans, Channing Tatum, and Sebastian Stan, who plays Gossip Girl's Carter Baizen and is rumored to be the favorite, even though he's Romanian. Chace Crawford is no longer under consideration, but at least he still has Serena. [IESB] Update: THR says the role has been offered to Evans.
For a guy who first burst onto the scene in the sixties, Italian director Marco Bellocchio, now 71, has been on quite a tear in recent years, with socially caustic and gripping films such as Good Morning, Night, My Mother’s Smile and The Wedding Director making waves at home, on the festival circuit, and in American art houses. And now there’s Vincere, his ambitious epic about Mussolini’s Italy, which opens today and which David Edelstein calls “a near-masterpiece … a monument to intoxication: of sexual conquest, of military conquest, and, most of all, of cinema.” It tells the fascinating story of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Benito Mussolini’s mistress and the mother of his child, spurned by Il Duce on his ascent to power, and eventually confined to mental institutions. Bellocchio sat down with us during last fall’s New York Film Festival, as he prepared to present Vincere to American audiences for the first time.
Joy!
Other than it being a great idea for a TV show, we figured David “The Decline of the American Empire” Simon decided to set Treme in New Orleans during the months after Katrina because it was the only way he could out-bleak The Wire (he also stopped in between to make a mini-series about the invasion of Iraq). But we may have been totally wrong! Halfway through Wyatt Mason's Treme piece in The New York Times Magazine is this hard-to-believe bit:
As legendary rock-and-roll manager/impresario Kim Fowley in The Runaways, Michael Shannon delivers a spot-on, entertaining performance that captures the outsize personality who shaped Joan Jett and her bandmate Cherie Currie. For those familiar with the Oscar-nominated actor’s work, the role feels like a departure, though Shannon bristles at the notion that many of his other recent parts have been brooding types. He recently took the time to set us straight, and to discuss what it was like to play a guy who likes to order teenage girls around.
"That's a tricky situation even when you're not acting — telling a teenage girl to do something." 
The Post's Michael Riedel reports today that Bebe Neuwirth is "fuming" that her role as Morticia in Broadway's The Addams Family was reduced during an overhaul to the show prompted by crappy reviews for its Chicago previews. "She doesn't yell or throw tantrums," says one anonymous co-worker. "But she's icy. Cold, icy, knife-in-your-heart." Neuwirth is reportedly asking for more scenes and songs (composer Andrew Lippa has already given her one, which Riedel says she "does with flair"), but another source claims a recent hip-replacement surgery has affected the actress's dancing. Well, as luck would have it, New York's Mike Flaherty spoke with Neuwirth for a piece in Monday's magazine, in which she confirms some of the above, and co-star Nathan Lane helpfully calls Riedel Satan.
"Michael Riedel — or as I like to call him, Rosemary's Baby."
How accurately does The Runaways, the movie about Joan Jett’s first band, portray the sex, drugs, and depravity of the rock-and-roll touring life? It’s pretty spot-on, according to Moby. After Wednesday's premiere, he told us that the antics in the movie are actually tame compared to reality, and gave us one example, based on a scene from the movie that we won’t spoil.
"On a dare he took a poo on an end-of-tour cake that was on my dressing room table ... "
Photo: All images courtesy of Bravo.
Fall Fashion Week is a time for clothes and loveliness. But it’s also a time for sharp elbows, for chaos and stress, and for women who have a certain insane gleam in their eyes: The kind of gleam that only comes from either not having eaten for the first seventeen years of their lives, or from starring on a Bravo reality-television show. The women of The Real Housewives of New York City have certainly been eating — even the ones who are going to pose naked for Playboy have been scarfing chicken wings and beer — and they’re using all that extra energy to keep stoking the fires of fights that are months old, which nobody can remember who started. Bethenny and Jill almost have it out. Jill manages to dredge up the only nasty thing she can think of to say to Alex that will actually piss her off. And Kelly makes Jill get up on a giant plastic horse, which must be revenge for something.
Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast yesterday at the Levi's/Fader Fort.
The weather may be better in New York City than it is down here in Austin, Texas, this year, but throngs of music-industry folks are still baring pale white limbs to what sun there is, boozing like spring breakers, and seeing lots and lots of rock shows as part of the South by Southwest music festival, which grows in influence every year. It's like a real live embodiment of the blogosphere — except much more fun than that sounds.
Gawker interviewed Heather Cassils, the performance artist who won the role of Lady Gaga's prison girlfriend in the "Telephone" video. She talked about her art, but she also talked about what it was like to kiss Lady Gaga, very candidly: "Kissing lady Gaga was like kissing any beautiful woman you feel a connection with, as soon as I touched her she was just that, very sensitive and responsive." That doesn't sound like an actor describing a stage kiss, at all! Hopefully Cassils will never get a publicist. [Gawker]
Each week on AMC's Breaking Bad, which premieres its third season on Sunday night, Bryan Cranston undergoes a complete and fascinating transformation into Walter White, a chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine manufacturer who's quickly turning into a hardened criminal. Cranston both acted in and directed Sunday night's episode, which is pretty impressive, considering he's in the majority of the scenes. And trust us, it turned out well. We spoke with Cranston yesterday about what it's like to open up a Breaking Bad script, what's going on with Walt's cancer, and where season three will take us.
Either the reports are true and 24 is ending this season (Fox hasn't yet made an official announcement), or it's all a ruse to get someone really famous to play the show's new U.N. secretary general. A casting call for the role sent to talent agencies this week bore the following advisory: "These are the final episodes, so if some of your name people would like to do something on the show, this is the time for them to do it." [Hollywood Insider/EW]
The German magazine NEON has released a statement apologizing for publishing an interview with Beyoncé they discovered after the fact was fabricated by a freelancer named Ingo Mocek. How did they figure it out? Because it is insane. A sample:
Interviewer: Is your life easier since you are multimillionaire?
Beyonce: The fear of the student, have no future, being dependent on her boyfriend, objectively weigh heavier than the fears that torment me. Only music from subjective feeling arises — and subjective fears, many musicians have lost. We feel pain and depression, just like other people. What separates us, is perhaps the price of butter. But all that is essential, I feel like every hard working woman.
Then again, this is way more interesting than anything we’ve heard Beyoncé actually say. Not to be condoning fraud or anything, but if Ingo Mocek happens to have revealing, fake interviews with any other famous people, we’d certainly check them out.
Obviously Fake Beyonce Story Exposed As Total Fake [Sound of the City/VV]
This week on Project Runway, Tim announces that the designers will be working in teams in order to create two looks (day and night) inspired by New York neighborhoods. Fun! We love a good New York–centered challenge, and it’s always amusing to see people like Anthony gawk at the Peking ducks hanging in Chinatown, which are both slightly disturbing and, more important, delicious. Everyone is happy with his or her team except for Mila and Jay, who apparently hate each other (who knew?). Mila calls Jay “that guy I never talk to … and don’t really like.” Harsh, Mila! What did sprightly Jay ever do to you? Emilio and Seth Aaron head up to Harlem, where Emilio informs Seth that “Harlem is about churches, liquor stores, and fried chicken,” which sounds vaguely racist, but Emilio can pull it off. Down in Chinatown, Anthony and Maya find color and those delicious ducks, and Amy and Jonathan totally miss the point of the Upper East Side, which is less about architecture and more about attitude. Over in the East Village, Mila and Jay are attracted to graffiti. Back in the workroom, it’s clear that Amy and Jonathan are heading toward disaster, and Jonathan calls the day “the most horrifying experience of my life.” It’s an exaggeration, we’re sure, but his dress is pretty ugly. The guest judges (in place of Michael Kors … NO!) are Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein and Molly Sims of, um, Molly Sims. On to the runway show!
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Righteous Shots of Joan Jett
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See Julianne Moore on the 30 Rock Set
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This Weekend's Concerts, From Muse to Neon Indian
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The Jonas Brothers Go Looking for Treasure
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Stewart, Fanning at The Runaways
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Nixon, Behar Honored at the GLAAD Awards
Mortimer and Jackman at the City Island Premiere
Morrison and Breslin at The Miracle Worker
