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Show Me the Funny
For the recent MTV Movie Awards, pop culture aficionados were delighted to see the resurrection of Les Grossman, the feral, vulgar movie producer from the Ben Stiller film Tropic Thunder, as the...
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Year 1 A.M. (After Michael)
Do you remember where you were when you heard that Michael Jackson died? That's a retro question nowadays-the kind of thing that is earnestly said about John Lennon or Elvis Presley. For this...
View ArticleHollywood’s Cheapskate Secret
Last week on a soundstage on the Disney lot in Burbank, the feds held a press conference to announce that they had taken down some Web sites that were providing illegal free and paid downloads of TV...
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Despicable Mel, Scene Three
Audiences everywhere are ranting about Despicable Mel: the unraveling of an actor whose career as an entertainer seems like it ought to be kaput. In the past two weeks, the Aussie-born Mel Gibson has...
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The Artful Codger
It was just another Sunday in Beverly Hills for Hugh Hefner. His latest girlfriend, Crystal Harris, and other playmates lounged by the pool at the Playboy Mansion, while Hefner played Backgammon...
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Rob Lowe, Business Mogul
Anyone who has seen Rob Lowe aping Robert Wagner in The Spy Who Shagged Me, or playing the music exec Benjamin Kane in Wayne's World, knows two things: The guy can do funny and the guy can do...
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Mr. Hollywood and Barnes & Noble
As business capitals go, Los Angeles is an oddity. There are few corporate headquarters here-after Disney, can you name one?-which makes a financier like Ron Burkle a quintessential L.A. power figure:...
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The Porn Identity
Avatar is returning to movie theaters next week in the hopes of reversing a disturbing trend in Hollywood: 3-D is fading at the multiplex. After some big hits like Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3,...
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Crash the Party, Break the Law
A few years ago, I was at a kicking Grammy Awards party in a Los Angeles mansion hosted by music company EMI, which was then in the midst of a ditched merger dance with Warner Music. As a journalist...
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Curious George Clooney
For the past several years, media business models have been under siege. Music and newspapers get a lot of the attention, but what about the business model of the classic American movie star? Like...
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Hollyworld: DreamWorks’ Un-Hollywood Ending
Last year, Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks invited a group of banks and investors to hear the studio’s pitch for money. The meeting, which was held in a movie theater inside his Amblin Entertainment...
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Hollyworld: High-Low Split for Media Pay
Lately, media pay has become something of an extreme sport. Last we checked, this was an industry in the midst of a recession and a scary transition. And yet Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently ranked the...
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Hollyworld: Waiting for Weinstein
It’s kind of a cliché, bolstered by stereotypes of everyone driving around in Range Rovers and sitting in cafes and surfing and getting spa treatments. But the idea that it takes forever to get...
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Hollyworld: Hollywood Scandals, the Sequels
Last week, we complained that it was getting a bit boring out here waiting for long-brewing deals to come to fruition in Hollywood. Never mind: It’s scandal season in Tinseltown! In the past week we’ve...
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Hollyworld: Box Office Bust
Last weekend at the box office, there was something for everyone-at least everyone who supposedly goes to movies anymore (read: teens and kids). There was Killers, starring celeb magazine faves...
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