FEATURED POST
Because that's what friends are for
With a cinematic catalog that includes such highbrow fare as the Katherine Heigl think piece "Killers" and "What Happens in Vegas," the Cameron Diaz meditation on the transience of love, Ashton Kutcher recognizes celluloid quality.
"I know exactly what films I’ve done that [bleeping] suck donkey," he tells the March issue of Esquire. "And I know the ones that are good, that people like."
Anyone want to chime in here on what those latter ones might be? Anyone? Mr. Donkey?
Continues Kutcher, "And I know it not because of the box office, because the box office is not going to tell you the truth. I know it because I have friends that don't hold back. They don’t depend on me for money or employment. They're just friends. Friends tell the truth."
His philosophy, which has presumably served him well on the set of 30-minute sitcom "Two and a Half Men": "My big thing is, Fail fast. If you're going to [bleep] up, get it over with."
According to actor-cum-entrepreneur, who is out promoting his starring role in "jOBS," knowing when to move on is a "tricky thing to figure out, which is when you ask yourself, Am I at the precipice of success or walking down the wrong road? Because the greatest obstacle always comes right before the breakthrough. And you're always trying to determine which is which. Is this the greatest obstacle? Is it the breakthrough itself? Or is it time to go the other way? That's when you have to surround yourself with brutally honest people who will be like, 'Dude, you suck at this. Stop.' I have, like, two or three really strong data nodes that I know will tell me: 'I don't get it.'"
When the interviewer calls him out on referring to his pals as "data nodes," he shrugs. "It's input. They're people. People. People that are giving you information you can trust as accurate, generous, careful," Kutcher explains. "They're not just going to flippantly tell you, 'Eh, that doesn't work,' or they're not just going to tell you 'Yes!' just because that's what you want to hear. To me, that's a valuable piece of data. That's a valuable data chip."
Says the star, "I know who these people are in my life. Partners, friends, coworkers. You have a movie and you show it to them, and if it sucks you want them to be like, 'Dude, that kind of blows.'"
Clearly, none of those data nodes-slash-chips sat him down after the release of "Valentine's Day" to urge him not to make the follow-up, "New Year's Eve." Then again, Kutcher gets to make out with Mila Kunis on a daily basis, so the last laugh? It's his.
Woman spends 30 years with the Rolling Stones and lives to tell about it, more linkage
More news . . .
Video: Fast? Furious? Nah, more like safe and sensible: Ludacris still drives a 10-year-old car
Triple-dog dare you to watch Celine Dion bust a move
If 'Star Trek's new Sulu is good by George Takei, he's good by us too
Jerry Lewis doesn't think women can do comedy; most women feel the same about Lewis
Big-hearted Carrie Underwood helps make tornado-struck Oklahoma a little more OK
Because 'side boob' wasn't enough, behold 'side butt'
Tabloids are having a field day with Katie Holmes romance rumors
Think it'll get ugly? Howard Stern to guest on Katie Couric's talk show
Thank you for being a friend, indeed ...
Remember last week, when the world wondered who would possibly spend nearly $2 million on a nude painting of Bea Arthur? The mystery may be solved. On Friday afternoon, comedian Jeff Ross tweeted a photo of himself holding John Currin's 1991 masterpiece, along with the message, "Biggest surprise of my life. Thank you @jimmykimmel - the most generous guy in the world!" Responded Kimmel, who apparently ponied up the $1.9 million for the fabricated topless portrait of the late "Golden Girls" star: "Bea is watching over all of us, but especially you."
Ross' connection to Arthur? He credits her with making his career. Seems that a 1999 roast for Jerry Stiller, the funnyman let loose a risqué zinger at Bea's expense. She was in the audience and fixed him with a look that would melt steel. We can't repeat the joke here (suffice to say it involved the actress being endowed with a male anatomical part), but here's what the exchange looked like:
"I felt like she put me on the map because everywhere I went, people were quoting this joke to me," he said in 2009. "I'm hearing it all the time, it's quoted in newspapers at the end of the year, it was part of all these roundups of the greatest lines of the year, and I'm realizing that I'm sort of getting a boost from this ridiculous joke that's not even that funny."
A couple years later, he decided to check out Bea's one-woman show because he was "just so curious about her take" on the joke. Let's have him tell it ...
"She sang beautiful songs that she had sung on Broadway, barefoot with a piano player. It was very elegant, very tasteful and very moving. She was an incredible performer and I got to see a different side of her, which was really fun. And afterwards I waited on line, a long line of fans, hundreds perhaps waiting to get a moment with her. They were getting pictures and autographs. They wanted to meet her.
I purposely went to the very, very end of the line and I wanted to be last, and I just said as politely as I could I said, 'You know, Miss Arthur, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at Jerry’s roast.' Before I even got the last word out -- 'roast' -- she just stuck a finger right in my face and said, 'You nailed me, you pr---!'
And we both laughed and she gave me a hug. It was really cool knowing what a fun broad she was."
And it's pretty cool being friends with Jimmy Kimmel, too.'We've all seen the picture ...'
Well, it turns out that while Elisabeth Moss is a mite pluckier than her "Mad Men" character, she's just as good under pressure.
Moss proved her mettle on Thursday night's "Watch What Happens Live" -- one of the her favorite shows -- when, after a few easy call-in questions, Andy Cohen featured her in his "Plead the Fifth" segment.
Though she initially looked flummoxed, once the questioning began, the girl did not sweat for a nanosecond -- not when she was asked why Jeremy Piven really bailed on "Speed the Plough" ("[for being] highly unprofessional ... I saw him like a month later at the Golden Globes when he was supposed to be really sick") and certainly not when she was asked if it's true what everyone says about the "size of Jon Hamm's ham."
"Well, I mean we've all seen the picture ... so I suppose [it's that large]," she reasoned, detached as a nurse in the urology ward -- and graciously acting like it was only that one picture.
Ahem:
The woman is downright unflummoxable. Straight Madison Avenue gold, my friends.The advertising jingle writes itself ...
We firmly believe that suffering can be lessened if the burden is shared, so here goes: Hanson has debuted a beer, and it's named after their 1997 hit "MMMBop," which will now be stuck in your head indefinitely (as it is ours). People reports that MmmHops was created by the three Hanson brothers with the help of a brewery in their home state of Oklahoma. Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson introduced the IPA on Monday night at the "Hangover III" afterparty in Los Angeles ("MMMBop" features prominently in the opening scene of the flick). Ed Helms gamely tried the brew during the bash, and even posed for a picture with Taylor (below). The beer will be available this month.
And come on, we gotta ...
She's not really a morning person ...
When ordinary folks are shoveling down Cheerios and trying to get the kids to school on time, Mariah Carey is just crawling into bed. So it's no wonder the pop queen appeared a little punchy during her Summer Concert Series appearance Friday morning on "Good Morning America."
"I wake up at this hour. I don't mean I wake up, I mean I go to sleep," Mariah explained to host Lara Spencer. "It's kinda the same thing for me."
Moments later, she revealed that the back of her curve-hugging, pink-sequined Versace dress "just popped. I love you, Donatella, but it popped, darling."
As Mariah's minions worked behind her to repair the damage, Carey kept up the banter with Spencer, and her mixture of dreaminess and goofiness was sort of charming.
"I just wanted to change the ensemble, you know," said Mrs. Nick Cannon. "What should we call this, the Central Park Saga? It seems like a YouTube moment, possibly a Spotify moment."
She then cradled her amble cleavage and joked, "I'll just hold them up the whole time."
Meanwhile, as singer Miguel joined her onstage for their hashtag-ariffic song "#Beautiful," Mariah spouted, "Oh, s---!" then told the crowd, "You didn't hear that. I said 'shoot.'"
She also had an issue with her microphone while belting out "Always Be My Baby," but kept up the charm offensive by telling the audience, "Thank you for waking up with me this morning. Sort of."
And not because it puts pressure on her to come up with better sex scenes ...
Are the many, many sex scenes on "Girls" just not graphic and frequent enough for you? Then we have good news. Hustler has made a porno version of the HBO series, a plan that has creator and star Lena Dunham on edge.
"I wish I had a better attitude about the 'Girls' porn parody," she tweeted on Thursday. "I really can never predict what will trouble me and it's simply exhausting."
The creatively titled "This Ain't Girls XXX" is reportedly due out in a few months, and the plot centers, as you'd expect, on an X-rated version of Dunham's small-screen alter ego, Hannah.
We'll let porn industry site Xbiz (via Vulture) explain: "In the XXX parody, Hannah (Alex Chance) decides to forsake men and boyfriend Adam (Richie Calhoun) to experiment with lesbianism. After a few satisfying jaunts she returns to Adam -- and mankind. Adam accepts her back into the fold, but, true to the original show, adds a dominant and quirky dimension to the scene."
Calhoun says he tried to make his Adam portrayal "as weird as possible. I tried to say really weird things and do really weird positions." That must have been a challenge, given how weird non-porn Adam already is.
Regrets, the 'Girls Gone Wild' has a few, but not nearly enough ...
Joe Francis has issued a mea culpa for saying that the Los Angeles jury that convicted him earlier this month on charges of false imprisonment and assault is "retarded" and "should be shot … by a firing squad."
The "Girls Gone Wild" founder made the statements on camera to The Hollywood Reporter one day after the so-called "stupid, stupid idiots" found him guilty of three counts of false imprisonment, one count of dissuading a witness from reporting and one count of assault causing great bodily injury, all stemming from a January 2011 incident in which he allegedly imprisoned three young women at his Bel-Air home (and purportedly pummeled one of them).
"Just to convict people 'cause you're jealous of them is retarded," ranted Francis (watch below). "And you're a retarded jury, and you should be shot dead. You should. If they had the death penalty for juries, you should be shot. Dead. By a firing squad."
See, according to Francis, "the problem with the jury system is that anyone who's not smart enough to come with an excuse to get out of jury duty doesn't get out. Only the stupidest of the stupidest people end up on juries, you know? I've never met a smart person who's done jury duty."
Anything else there, Joe? "I want that jury to know that each and every one of you are mentally [bleeping] retarded and you should be euthanized because, as Darwin said, you have naturally selected yourself," he bloviated. "You are the weakest members of the herd."
After presumably getting a stern talking-to from his legal team, he issued the apology.
"I deeply regret the remarks attributed to me in the interview with The Hollywood Reporter," Francis, 40, said in a statement (and by "attributed," he means, "Looked into the camera and stated without hesitation"). "They were hurtful and do not reflect my true feelings. While I disagree with the jury's verdict as I am completely innocent of the charges and intend to appeal, I was afforded a fair trial, and if I lose at the appellate level, I will reluctantly but fully accept the jury's verdict."
And despite claiming that his remarks were "manipulated by the media," he insists, "I am truly, truly sorry. I hope everyone will understand I was not being serious, and that I fully and deeply apologize for my remarks."
That's a big hope for him to have.
"All that was publicized were my most intemperate remarks that were borne out of frustration but with no intent to cause anyone harm. I am not, nor have I ever been, a violent person," asserts Francis, who was once accused of brutally twisting the arm of a female Los Angeles Times reporter while pinning her against a car. During an interview. "My comments are appalling, but anyone who has ever been wrongfully convicted of a crime that they did NOT commit would be as frustrated as I am."
Francis, whose legal troubles are legion, is facing a maximum of five years in jail at his sentencing on July 9, although he told THR that, "at the most, I could get 90 days of anger management."
By the by, one the jurors who convicted Francis responded to his "retarded" claims to Gawker. Here's an excerpt:
"We just chose to rely on the evidence presented and (mostly) on the testimony of three women who described the night as one of the worst in their lives. All three are in their 20s and they had very emotional testimonies. The 911 calls from that night, the several of them, would be harrowing for a lot of people to hear -– not necessarily the jurors or people in the courtroom, but people in general. Those were very emotionally charged calls that were not coming from a place of, 'I'm just trying to get one over on a celebrity so I can file a civil suit.'
I'm sorry Joe Francis didn't like our decision, but I genuinely hope he takes this as a lesson that his actions do carry actual consequences -- for him, for us, and most of all for the woman he assaulted. He could have caused a concussion, and they checked for one at the hospital. I don't expend much energy thinking about Joe Francis either way, although I do believe he's guilty of the crimes we convicted him of and I could live without the whole lined up and shot thing. Honestly, Joe, I wish you the best. Now please stop talking about me."
