Brittany Murphy saves Ed Burns' directing career!

Edward Burns wrote, directed and stars in a new movie that opens on Friday. The Groomsmen is the latest in his eleven-year run of high-quality, low budget, character-driven art films for the Average Joe. It’s got, among others, John Leguizamo (who voices Sid in the Ice Age movies), Jay Mohr and the guy who plays Shaggy in the Scooby Doo movies.

So who’d believe it took the casting of crazy Brittany Murphy to get the picture greenlit?

That’s what Burns, a respected director and bonafide acting star, tells the Apple folks in an interview promoting their Final Cut Pro editing system:

“It was so impossible to get it made.

"We ended up making the film for $3 million, about half of the original budget. And I don’t know, quite honestly, if it would have happened without Brittany Murphy. I believe their thinking was, ‘Okay, put Brittany in a wedding dress on the box of the DVD and we’ll break even.’

“A lot of the specialized film companies, whether it’s Fox Searchlight or Lion’s Gate, are having so much success with teen comedies and slasher movies that they no longer make the indie films they were set up to support, finance, and distribute. Now those companies say, ‘You go raise the money, make the movie, and then maybe we’ll overspend to buy it, but we don’t want to be involved in the risk side of that business.’”

Burns eventually got the film financed by a new company called Bauer Martinez Entertainment. At least he didn’t have to rewrite his script for filming in England, like Woody Allen, the Jewish Edward Burns, had to do to get Match Point made.

Burns’ interview promoted Apple’s Final Cut pro movie editing software, used to edit The Groomsmen, which you cinephiles will be glad to know is said to be influenced by Barry Levinsen's "Diner" and Fellini’s “I Vitelloni.”

Murphy, who was most recently in the headlines denying she was on drugs or had sex with a waiter at a Hollywood party, can be heard warbling on the new Paul Oakenfold single, "Faster Kill Pussycat."

All of which, of course, brings us back to Tabloid Baby.

It was fourteen years ago that tabloid television warlords Burt Kearns and Rafael Abramovitz were walking through Manhattan, deep in discussion about the future of A Current Affair when they ran into Edward Burns in Washington Square Park. He was shooting a pocket-budget movie that his dad, our pal Edward J. Burns, had helped finance and produce. The director of photography was a cameraman from A Current Affair. The movie was edited at night in an edit room at the A Current Affair offices.

The movie was The Brothers McMullen. It went on to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Originally shot for about $25,000, it took in more than ten million dollars domestic and launched Burns into a stellar Hollywood career (while he stayed true to his New York City roots and vision).

Kearns would also find Hollywood success, writing and producing the smash Burt Reynolds comedy, Cloud 9, with Brett Hudson and Academy Award winner Albert S. Ruddy (also edited on Final Cut Pro) and, among other projects with Hudson, producing the forthcoming feature by up-and-coming filmmaker Afrika Jones. He can also be seen providing commentary on the DVD of the Edward Burns-Robert DeNiro film, 15 Minutes.

For the complete story of the Washington Square run-in, see Tabloid Baby, Chapter 25, "Buttafuoco Sweats."

Click here to see-- and buy-- Edward J. Burns' unique artwork. And we found some more saucy photos of Brittany Murphy here.

The coolest Hard Rock Cafe in North America

We’ve been on a few road trips these past few weeks, completing production on a monumental, world-class documentary film that will debut in the Fall.

And this being summer, we’ve visited a few ballparks.




Thanks to the legendary Al Fitzmorris, we were in the catbird seat for a warm evening outing by the inglorious Kansas City Royals, who let a healthy lead slip away to defeat to the Detroit Tigers.



Later, we stopped in at the lyric little bandbox of Fenway, took a photo of the Ted Williams statue on which his head is still firmly attached to his body, got some good seats and went inside. We sat behind home plate, where everything seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg, and of course could not cheer because we were born in the Bronx.

A week later, we had to step across the United States border, north to Toronto, for the baseball surprise of the summer.


It was a late plate at the nearest Hard Rock Café, which we did not know is a part of Skydome Stadium, home to the Toronto Blue Jays. We stepped into the restaurant to see a long wall of windows looking out onto the interior of the Skydome-- baseball field, where the Blue Joys were also trouncing the poor Senators, er Nationals.


The Hard Rock Toronto Skydome Cafe is a skybox to the retractable-roofed Skydome Stadium. The hostess said we were the first customers who looked genuinely gobsmacked when we walked into the room.

A Thursday night at a Hard Rock in Toronto. We watched the final four innings of a major league baseball game. In a country outside the United States, to boot.

It was even better than the beer.


(Big game, Small World: Tabloid Baby pal Gene Simmons at the entrance to the Hard Rock Toronto Skydome Cafe, on the cover of Spin magazine-- an early writing home for Tabloid Baby's author--touting an article written by Tabloid Baby pal RJ Smith.)

An open letter to hate radio's John & Ken

A Tabloid Baby reader sent along the following comment.

We thought we'd share it:


Since John and Ken seem to be pretty big fans of this site... maybe they can tell us when they are going to go after the big bad employers of illegal immigrants the same way they go after everybody who is smaller than John and Ken.

When are they going to agressively put out the names of people who hire illegal immigrants and do radio shows in front of their places of business and hound them into submission twenty four seven -the same way they do to every polician who happens to disagree with the gospel of John and Ken?

With all of their losing sleep over illegal immigrants-- when are they going to grow some balls and really hammer the big businessmen who invite illegal immigrants here to work?

When are John and Ken going to do their show in the front yards of people in the Palisades who hire illegal immigrants every day to do their gardening, babysit their kids and wash their dishes?

Never.

The answer is never. Because John and Ken are not about hate radio-- they are about cowardly radio.

They will not take on big money, or embarrass the wealthy people in the Palisades who are bigger than John and Ken because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Besides, they are having too much success demonizing poor people who's only fault is they won't go back to Mexico every night after cleaning up all our shit.

At least in South Africa the help had enough decency to get back to Soweto by nightfall. Right, John and Ken?


Congratulations to Tabloid Baby for taking note where everyone else in this town has failed miserably.

(More here.)

Is 'Extra' involved in McDermott cover-up?

Is a Hollywood-themed tabloid TV show helping cover up clues to the faked death of Patrick McDermott?

Extra, the syndicated celebutainment series, generated publicity last month when it reported its “exclusive” discovery of evidence in the disappearance of Olivia Newton-John’s alleged boyfriend, who’s believed to have faked his death on a fishing boat a year ago.

But now it's revealed that the show did not turn over a visor believed to be McDermott's to authorities as promised-- but sent it back, untested, to the people who really found it!

Extra jumped on the McDermott bandwagon in June, three months after Tabloid Baby reported that he'd been spotted in and around the town of Todos Santos in Mexico’s remote Baja peninsula-- and more than a week after an Australian print journalist picked up the story.

On June 16th, the show trumpeted the news that it had sent “famed" Hollywood private eye John Nazarian, "armed" with something called “Extra’s PI cam” to Todos Santos. The show claimed that Nazarian had “discovered” a sun-visor cap said to belong to Patrick McDermott. “Extra has contacted the U.S. Coast Guard and Olivia and McDermott's family to seek their help with DNA tests that could finally determine if Olivia's missing man is still alive.”

Within days, Tabloid Baby learned that the visor had actually been found through the exhaustive legwork of a local news reporter. Kathy Aviles, investigative reporter for the El Mirador magazine and website in Todos Santos, had been circulating McDermott’s picture around the area. She received the hat, which is believed to have been worn by McDermott, from restaurateur Marina Mejia Carranza and her son Eduardo, of Marina's Cafe on the road from La Paz to Cabo San Lucas.

We reported on June 25th that Aviles had reached out to the Australian reporter, and Extra for help in getting the evidence tested. Instead, she claimed, Extra stole credit for her scoop, making it appear as if Nazarian the P.I. had actually done detective work and found the hat himself.

And now, incredibly, it appears that Extra did not send out the hat for testing after all—but sent it via FedEx back to the Baja!

What the show did with this crucial evidence in the meantime remains a mystery.

Aviles reports on the El Mirador website: "July 4th and 5th: Marina and her son, Eduardo requested that Extra return the suspected hat of Patrick McDermott… after a phone call from Extra requesting permission to turn the hat over to the authorities. As they had already given that permission and Extra had already reported that the hat had been handed over to the Coast Guard, they became suspicious.

"The hat was shipped via FedEx on the 23rd. We do not have FedEx service… It took up until the 4th of July for it to be picked up.

"I picked it up for them and immediately called the Coast Guard to let them know that the hat would be sent right out.

"FINALLY the hat is on its way to the people who can have the proper testing done on it. We sincerely hope that the DNA that was on the hat has not been destroyed during this past month of it being passed around….

"Now we wait and see…"

It has long been evident that Newton-John and portions of the Hollywood establishment want this story to disappear.

This latest twist, amid a sudden silence from news organizations allegedly investigating McDermott’s disappearance, leads to some very disturbing questions:

Why did Extra send a private eye and not a segment producer or reporter to Todos Santos-- if they were merely picking up evidence that was already discovered by an intrepid local reporter?

Why did Extra fail to hand the hat over to the proper authorities?

Was this simply a ratings grab and publicity stunt?

Is it important to consider that Extra is a Time-Warner show, and Olivia Newton-John’s latest album is distributed internationally by Warner?

On a story like this, if you can’t trust a tabloid TV show whose brass and producers once worked with or were trained by the veteran Tabloid Baby journalists, who can you trust?

Extra insiders, contact us here to let us know what's going on. All sources will be kept confidential.


(Meanwhile, rabid fans of Olivia Newton-John are engaged in a lively, angry and bizarre debate that has nothing to do with this story in the comments section of one of our February posts. See it here.)

John & Ken: "Tabloid Baby's a moron!"

John & Ken, KFI Radio's hate talk tag team, waited til the final minutes of this afternoon's show to attack our report on their beefier half’s reception in the Pacific Palisades July Fourth parade—the small town celebration that turned into a Skokie march, thanks to the forced inclusion of their racist followers, "The Minutemen" Mexican border watchdogs.

Taking time from denying global warming and picking on the powerless, J&K began the bit by stating that “anyone can post on the Internet.” (That would be us-- for credentials, see Tabloid Baby)

Then they clarified matters by saying it was John, not Ken, who was riding in the car marked “John & Ken Radio Show” (the sign on the old-fangled car carrying the man and some children didn't state which one it held). "John" denied knowing his followers the Minutemen were marching toward the rear of the parade, and claimed he was booed by merely one paradegoer.

But they did read our complete July 4th posting on the air! And in the process, the radio clowns once again kept a safe distance from the vigilante hate groups they promote.

We typed as fast as we could while the two dunces tapdanced through their Eddie Haskell “It wasn’t us” routine, so the following quotes are approximate but accurate:

John & Ken were very offended by our description of “John” as “the beefy member “ of the radio team.

“There’s nothing beefy about John. “

“It means large or fat.”

“It’s also seen as sexy.”

They threw in a homophobic reference by playing the tired “I wish I knew how to quit you” audio clip from Brokeback Mountain.

(Beefy? We swear to God, we were talking about his head. Look at the picture.)

Then it got interesting.

John denied he was heckled or razzed along the parade route—except by “one guy who was booing."

“How can he tell from these pictures?”

“First of all, I don’t know who Tabloid Baby is!”

“What he has there is inaccurate!"

“There were lots of cheers. That’s why I do the parade.”

“But it’s the West Side,” said Ken.

“No,” John said. “The Palisades is different… It was just one guy started booing at me and everyone else who saw me, who recognized our show because we had a sign on the car, cheered and waved.”

Then beefy John showed his true chickenhawk feathers by hemming and hawing and denying he knew the Minutemen were going to march (this, despite the show's connections to the group and the heavy local TV news presence at the parade).

“When I got there, somebody told me the Minutemen were at the back of the parade. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.”

One said of Tabloid Baby: “He’s an idiot!”

Said the other (or maybe the same one): “Tabloid Baby is a moron!”

Shame on you, John and Ken, beefy and skinny, Laurel & Hardy, for not standing up for your fans and the hate you preach and inspire.

Then again, you did read our item on the air.

And you got the name right.

And by backing away from your support of the Minutemen, you showed yourselves to be frauds—shock jocks who do hate radio and deny global warming because it's an act to get ratings.

As Nelson Muntz would say: ”Ha ha!”

Vigilantes bring race hate to Palisades parade

Patti Page was grand marshal, Love Boat captain Gavin MacLeod was honorary mayor, and actual Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pressed the flesh and waved to the crowds, but it was The Minutemen vigilante group who turned the Pacific Palisades Fourth of July Parade into a culture clash.



The goofy, ragtag, anti-immigration border "watchdogs" somehow wangled a spot into the usually noncontroversial parade, causing jeers, catcalls and arguments along the route up Sunset Boulevard and into a posh neighborhood-- while several of its skinhead members intimidated neighbors by videotaping those who voiced opposition.



The Minutemen and women, in three-cornered hats, waving American flags and frankly, appearing for the most part to be a clarinet or two short of a marching band, were trailed by masked protesters who banged drums and chanted, “SOS, KKK, racist Minutemen, go away,” and a heavy police detail. They were met by an assortment of cheers and boos from Palisadians, while many had no idea who they were or why they were marching.



Meanwhile, a beefy half of the John & Ken hate radio team (above-- we think it was Ken), who've supported the Minutemen and other right wing extreme groups while doing their best to stir up hatred in their anti-immigrant and racist radio tirades, was also featured in the parade. He demonstrated his radio wimpiness by keeping his distance from the uproar he helped create, riding far ahead of the Minuteman contingent, safely in a car surrounded by children, doing his best (and failing, above) to ignore boos and catcalls along the parade route.

L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (right) at the Pacific Palisades July Fourth parade.

Leonard Cohen: A monk walks into a bar...

There’s a lot of talk and publicity about I’m Your Man, the new hagiographic documentary about songwriter, poet and ladies’ man Leonard Cohen, built around a worshipful concert and idolizing interviews with the likes of Bono from U2.

The doco apparently places much weight on Cohen’s much-publicized decision in the late 90s to give up the pop life, shave his head and become a Buddhist monk in a monastery high up on a place called Mt. Baldy.

It’s a true story, and even got into People magazine at the time.

But there’s a story between the lines…

Around the time Leonard was chanting, we were spending many an afternoon in LA bars and restaurants— there was a new Tabloid Baby at home, so we had to get out while we could. And while celebrating New Year's Eve 1998 with a late lunch at the Sonora Café on La Brea Avenue, we moved to the bar and found ourselves seated next to Leonard Cohen! Leonard, who was supposedly in the monastery (but has a home in the neighborhood), had the shaved head, but in place of a monk’s robe he wore a grey suit, and he was contemplating not his navel, but a mysterious beautiful woman.

Leonard was drinking booze. Then he stepped outside for a cigarette!

We drank alongside the monk, and made a quiet cell phone call to our mate Neal Travis at the New York Post. The story from Neal’s column exists somewhere in the archives.

A few months later, it was another afternoon at the Hamburger Hamlet on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. We again found ourselves at the bar, and again, alongside us, with a new beautiful woman and a fresh drink, the same head and suit and a bowl of French onion soup— was Leonard Cohen, once again drinking—and smoking in the afternoon!

Now that’s our kind of monk!

Enjoy the documentary. But remember, the truth exists between the lines…

10 things you didn't know about Jan Murray

1 Bronx-born Murray Janofsky made his reputation in the Catskills working as a tummeler, Yiddish for "the guy who tries to be funny all day, not just on the stage at night."

2 His first game show was "Songs for Sale," in which aspiring songwriters had their creations performed by professional, but relatively unknown singers, including Rosemary Clooney and Tony Bennett.

3 He created and hosted the popular Fifties TV quiz show, "Treasure Hunt," which was canceled in wake of the scandals that centered on "Twenty One" and "The $64,000 Question."

4 He starred in a short-lived variety show for NBC, "Jan Murray Time," with co-host Tina Louise.

5 He married Pearl Cohen in 1939, but they divorced. He married showgirl Kathleen Mann in 1949. His second wife's nickname was Toni, and his production company, Jantone Productions, was named for the couple.

6 He was fabled for his Passover Seder, where his regular guests over two nights included Sid Caesar, George Burns, Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Gleason.

7 He shifted to movies in the late 1960s and appeared in a variety of roles, including a Nazi war criminal in "A Man Called Dagger."

8 He substituted for Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show.

9 His Jewish faith was central to his life. On high holidays he attended services at not one but three temples. He performed in Israel to raise funds for Hebrew University, and hosted the Chabad Telethon for 18 years.

10 He quit performing at 83, when his worsening asthma threw off his timing.

A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to Our Man Elli in Israel, who's sitting Shiva for the great Jan Murray, who died Sunday in Beverly Hills.

(Hear Bob Dylan perform at the Chabad Telethon--20 years ago!)

Harvey Levin gets a Woody, then exposes himself

Harvey Levin, the former local news legal analyst and street reporter turned flamboyant infotainment show reporter and legal analyst, has bitten the hand that feeds him in his new role running the “interactive” Hollywood website TMZ.com.

TMZ sends kids with video cameras to stand outside hotpots to provoke celebrities to go wild. The site made a stir when billionaire scumheir Brandon Davis went off on a filthy obscene tirade against Lindsay Lohan, while his companion Paris Hilton giggled like a moron. Now it’s seeking headlines, claiming the Woody Harrelson attacked one of its operatives.

But Harvey might regret his latest stunt, trying to milk publicity out of a confrontation with a Hollywood good guy— an adult who stumbled into the silliness. Because TMZ is no renegade Internet independent. It’s a cog in the corporate machine.

And it could be throwing a spanner into the works.

A few nights ago, one of TMZ’s kids with a camera managed to bait Harrelson as he stepped out of a Hollywood nightspot. The actor asked the kid to get the camera out of his face. The kid mouthed off, and while a second TMZ stalkerazzi recorded a wide shot of the scene, Woody allegedly broke the kid’s camera.

That’s showbiz (and that’s probably why the second cameraman was stationed to record the confrontation). From Sinatra to Sean Penn to Tommy Lee, the subject occasionally bites back.

Harvey the lawyer doesn't get it. He sent the kid to the Hollywood Police Station to file a police report. Then he had the kid go to the Cedars-Sinai emergency room and took nice photos taken of the bruises.

First off: Woody Harrelson? We can see staking out Woody back in the day-- like fifteen years ago-- when he starred in Natural Born Killers, or when it was revealed that his dad the hitman had claimed to be part of the JFK assassination team.

But today? What interest would Harvey Levin have in a 44-year-old man? His site dines on celebutards: kiddie stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton.

The closest connection the site could come up with was Woody’s appearance in the recent movie “A Prairie Home Companion” (which features Lohan).

And that’s the problem for Harvey.

See, TMZ may appear to be a street-level website that allows the people to play celebutainment reporter.

But dig into the site and see it spelled out that “this site is controlled and operated by TMZ.com., a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, 1840 Victory Blvd., Glendale, CA 91201… Please forward any questions regarding other legal matters to legal@wb.com.”

Woody Harrelson’s new movie is distributed by Picturehouse, a specialty film company formed by New Line Cinema and HBO.

Both are divisions of Time Warner.

So a Time Warner company is attacking a Time Warner star, and through the ensuing bad publicity, possibly affecting the bottom line of a Time Warner movie.

Of course, there’s precedent again, going back to the rip-roaring days of Fox’s A Current Affair (and Premier Story producer Jim Sheehan tried to file charges against Princess Diana's driver when he was run over on a NYC street-- see Tabloid Baby, Chapter 31, and view the video here). But back then, the targets were fat and powerful, from Senators to CEOs. Sean Elder hit on it in a Salon.com article about Tabloid Baby author Burt Kearns:

"It was never journalism," Kearns says of what they were doing. "It was what the Australians would call a piss-take on journalism." And it was much safer -- and more just -- to "take the piss" out of public figures like Steven Spielberg, whose divorce from Amy Irving got the "Current Affair" treatment, including clips from "Jaws" that equated interloper Kate Capshaw with Bruce the Shark. This resulted in a phone call from Spielberg to Fox studio head Barry Diller, which Kearns interprets as follows:

"Hello, Steven!"

"Barry, if I live to be 90, I will never do a movie for Fox."

Kearns estimates that cost the company around $500 million.

The uncomfortable conflict of interest followed as the A Current Affair team took over Hard Copy at Paramount. And it didn’t take long for the studio to replace them, and use the show as a bargaining chip to get celebrities to appear on their innocuous “Entertainment Tonight” (even promising George Clooney in writing that they’d keep him off Hard Copy if he’d cooperate with ET (then foolishly breaking the agreement and spilling the beans). The whole genre shifted from newsmaking, trendsetting, comment and satire to the safe, corporate celebsucking PR shizzle of ET, Extra and Access Hollywood.

TMZ is an offshoot of Extra--you know, one of those shows that vowed not to buy stalkerazzi footage.

Harvey, by the way, appears in Chapter 28 of Tabloid Baby, “Where’s The Bag, Mr. Kardashian?”, as a local news reporter who took himself very seriously, trying to play the tabloid game and almost causing a mistrial in the OJ Simpson case in the process.

Their First Time: TV Land celebrates smutty theft

The folks at TV Land have responded to our reports that they ripped off the name of a recent, acclaimed erotic Showtime docudrama series for one of their nostalgia shows.

They added us to their mailing list.

And if there's any doubt they had smutty double entendre in mind when they changed the name of their sitcom nostalgia series, My Big Break, to My First Time, they "rubbed it out" in the way they promoted Thursday's debut:

Henry Winkler's
first time was at
a dinner party.

Katey Sagal's
first time
was at the office...
with cameras running!

It's true, and we've got the video to prove it!

The TV Land flaks have had fun playing up the "racy" name of their new show, with one telling the New York Post's Page Six that that the name-theft was deliberate: "This is virgin territory for us. TV Land thought long and hard about this title."

Talk about a boner! The strategy is bound to backfire soon.

In television, "My First Time" is widely known as a sexually-themed series on Showtime, featuring many of the top adult video stars in the business, in their first legitimate acting roles (as well as doing what they're known for). It's set to arrive on DVD while the TV Land series is still on the air.

Stay tuned.