I don't care about Morton's Oscar nomination--Matt Damon wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick (Photo: STV)

Pardon my late start, but Harvey Weinstein's Most Outrageous Gossippy Blast Ever landed me in the hospital yesterday with a broken jaw. Of course, this has happened before-- although in the past, it usually involved money or some garish corporate "synergy." This time, however, The Scoop's Jeanette Walls shows Harvey cutting right to the sensitive indie bone as only he can. And I will be on painkillers for weeks:

Matt Damon and Heath Ledger were furious about the casting of Lena Headey in The Brothers Grimm, but a producer stuck with her because he felt that the actress Damon and Ledger wanted wasn’t sexy enough.

Damon, Ledger, director Terry Gilliam and many other people connected with the film were passionately vying for talented and quirky actress Samantha Morton to get the role, according to a behind-the-scenes account of the flick that’s been published in the U.K., but Harvey Weinstein, co-head of Miramax which was a producer on the film, put the kibosh on her.

“Samantha Morton! You must be kidding me!” Weinstein said, director Gilliam told Bob McCabe, author of the book Dreams and Nightmares, which has just been published in the U.K. “You think Matt or Heath would want to [bleep] that?”

That is not even the entire item, and I still do not know where or how to start trying to rationalize it. I mean, what is better: Walls referring to Harvey simply as "a producer" on first reference, or closing your eyes and imagining Harvey on the phone in Tribeca, leaning back in his throne and winking at his manicurist as he calls Samantha Morton unfuckable? Or not even Samantha Morton, but just.... "that."

Or maybe the best part is that there is actually a "behind-the-scenes" book about a film nobody liked or even really saw. Either way, it is nice to see that Harvey ultimately found "that" useful enough to approve for a role in The Libertine, even as I am sure he will get around to blaming the film's imminent failure on Morton soon enough. Poor thing.

This is going to be something of a short day for me, as someone had the audacity to schedule not one, but two film events from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. Conspiracy? Possibly--but not nearly the scandal Times critic Dave Kehr's blog is shaping up to be.

Or so says Movie City Indie's Ray Pride, whose relentless efforts on the nom de Kehr beat reveal a strong case for full-blown parody:

The earnest young satirist who compiles the cruelly sclerotic “davekehr.com” parody blog continues his/her dual project, mocking the style of the New York freelancer ("self"-described as a former writer "of fourth string reviews" for the New York Times who "eventually backed away from fourth string reviewing, mainly because the movies—a flood of fifth-rate American independent films—were so appalling and the Times freelance review rates were so dispiritingly low"). ...

Kehr’s double argues that [Brokeback Mountain] is in no way a Western, before proceeding then in a tepid King Kong notice to misspell “Yosemite” (perhaps as a way to avoid seeming anti-Yosemitic). “[Peter] Jackson doesn’t even show these hurled bodies hitting the ground, allowing the viewer to assume that they bounce back to life like so many Yosimite [sic] Sam’s [sic] in a Warner Brothers cartoon.”

Bullshit or not, Kehr's blog has blossomed into a gilded salon for discriminating critics, filmmakers and filmgoers alike: The Sun's Nathan Lee weighs in on Brokeback Mountain ("Three cheers for middle-brow man-on-man masochistic romanticism, says I,"); The Sacramento Bee's Joe Baltake mourns the death of Wendi Jo Sperber; and, in what is probably Exhibit A in the "davekehr.com must be a joke" prosecution, Alexander Payne dropped in at Thanksgiving with a virtual postcard:

Dear Dave, I’m remembering being at Torino with you a year ago, and I lament not being able to attend this year. I’m glad for these reports, and I send you warm regards. Alexander Payne

So, um, yeah. From red-shirt Times critic to "anti-Yosemitic" chum of an Oscar-winner. Who says dreams do not come true in the blogosphere?

RELATED: NYT Film Writer's Blog Gets Close Read From Midwest (Nov. 8, 2005)

If I spent what Heath Ledger probably spends on clothing, I would wear the same thing all the time, too (Photos: Open All Night)

The kids over at Open All Night have had a busy couple of days handling a few exotic red-carpet goings-on I missed for one reason or another. First of all, The Reeler had one of its long-unanswered questions resolved: What the hell ever happened to those Glamour Magazine-produced short films that yielded Gwyneth Paltrow's directing debut and a number of other putative stabs at Hollywood's penis-possessing hegemony? Were they ever finished? Would they ever screen as a group?

Ha--not only would they screen, but they evidently packed the UA Union Square last Thursday at a B-list winter wonderland. First-time filmmaker Trudie Styler made a brash show of her independence, arriving with husband Sting, paralyzing lobby traffic and all but sticking a pink flag in Lower Manhattan and claiming it for Glamour.

Heath Ledger, on the other hand, was not-so-Glamour-ready last night. According to OAN eagle-eye Bennett Marcus:

(W)e still learned something about the elusive Mr. Ledger. Along with a new baby and a $3 million house in Brooklyn, Heath owns two sport coats, two shirts, one tie, one sweater, and no iron. He wore the same tie and black sweater, but different rumpled shirts, to both his Brokeback Mountain premiere on Tuesday and the Casanova premiere on Sunday.

Goddamnit! Why does Open All Night get all the good scoops? I am busting my ass over here trying to decode Armond White's true essence while right under my nose, Heath Ledger is pulling shit out of the hamper before running off to see Casanova. Next you are probably going to tell me the sweater had blood on the sleeve, and it was tucked inside another sweater, and it symbolizes his love for the owner of the neighborhood laundromat who takes Sundays off. Tragic indeed.

I would be remiss if I did not pass along the happy development in Honorary New Yorker Matt Damon's life, exactly as the trusty World Entertainment News Network reported it.

Oh! Cue the Morse code sound effect--now we hear that Damon and baby mommy Luciana Bozan got "married" today, too. She is three months "along," but has a "7-year-old daughter" by a "previous relationship," according to US Weekly (via Defamer):

A source at New York City Hall confirms to Us that the couple wed this morning inside city hall. "They did it real quick and then started calling all their friends with the good news," says a Damon pal. "It's not a secret. They're telling everyone."

Defamer's Seth Abramovitch has more word from the scene, bless his heart:

(G)uests dined on the finest knishes and pretzels available from a curbside cart; the bouquet was caught by Vito Fossella, a 69-year old sanitation engineer from Staten Island, NY; and the happy couple were showered with good wishes and empty beer cans as they skampered down the City Hall steps and attempted to board an awaiting cab--only to see it claimed by a commodities broker who snapped, "I don't give a shit who you are, I'm late for a midtown lunch," before slamming the door in their faces. They will not soon forget the tender memories of their special day.

Indeed. And from all one of us at Reeler HQ, here's to a successful marriage and a healthy "baby." Congratulations!

Your home for progressive gossip

Try as I might, I sometimes just cannot avoid directing you to the New York Press, where editor Harry Siegel has rush-ordered a big-and-tall straitjacket for Armond White for Christmas and reserved 14 inches every week for a new gossip column called Dope Peddler.

I was just going to ignore it until it went away (the whole fucking paper, that is), but Kaiju Shakedown's Grady Hendrix recently offered up a swift kick to the low-life, heroin-scarred testicles that I just could not help but pass along. Basically, Dope Peddler had this "gossip" to pass along about Bollywood actresses:

BOLLYWOOD VALUES
A rich married investment banker, who is from the subcontinent and specializes in Indian equities, reported to Dope Peddler that he's slept with quite a few B- and C- level Bollywood stars who are at least moderately well-known there - and it wasn't his balding looks that did the trick, so to speak. These actresses are women on the level of, say, Catherine Keener. They aren't big stars, but plenty of people have heard of them.

"The sums involved," he says, "are surprisingly small. In some cases, $2,500 will do it. It's interesting because a lot of them play women in the movies who are religious figures, and they're supposed to be sweet, wholesome, virginal. But believe me, the affairs aren't all that hard to arrange if you know who to talk to." The actresses, he explains, have film roles, fans, and fan clubs. But it's just not considered all that strange for such women to supplement their salaries in the manner of 19th-century courtesans.

Earth-shattering shit, right? Well, not quite as great as Hendrix's suggestions for future racist/sexist items for Dope Peddler's stash:

CHINESE VALUES
A rich, married investment banker told me that many Chinese actors require all their scripts to be written in math because that's something all Chinese people understand...

JAPANESE VALUES
A billionaire, divorced commodities trader told me that pop stars in Japan kill themselves if they can't hit the high notes in their live performances...

SINGAPORE VALUES
A zillionaire, polyamorous panda trainer told me that everyone in Singapore plays violin by the age of five and that children who don't are fed to feral cats...

Come, come, Grady. Scripts "written in math" are Armond's purview. I know the paper only has like four writers, but let's try to avoid confusion where we can.

As we have long known, nobody stands up for New York's cinematic dignity quite as vehemently and knowledgeably as the Post's omniscient Cindy Adams. And on the cusp of King Kong's immense premiere event--with Peter Jackson in town evidently surveying the set-up--Ms. Adams reared back today for a bejeweled-knuckled bitch slap:

The King Kong premiere nearly made a monkey out of New York. Its original $5 million request was to shut down all of Times Square, cut off the traffic, etc., etc, so its giant premiere for this giant animal could be at assorted theaters up and down the street. This for a movie about New York that was shot in New Zealand. And how's that for new chutzpah. Clearly King Kong had gone ape. Its expectations, its budget, its arrogance and maybe its anticipated reviews have all simmered down a bit, and Mr. Kong will swing into our jungle soon. With respect.

Now, now, Cindy. Nothing about King Kong has simmered down at ALL except for maybe Peter Jackson's blood pressure--have you seen how thin that guy is now? If Cindy really wants to be New York's unofficial stage mother, she should swallow her pride and take that guy a steak or something.

That being said, the premiere is indeed drawing near, and you only have a few more days to tell The Reeler which inflatable Kong you want stalking your city. And speaking of respect--you cannot complain if you do not vote, Cindy! Get to it!

The plane! The plane! (Photo: GreenCine Daily)

GreenCine Daily's David Hudson caused a little bit of a stir yesterday afternoon, illuminating an interesting parallel between Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 film Pulse and the trailer for Dimension Films' upcoming remake. Without getting too much into the PR symbiosis at hand (which just sounds like publicists being publicists), Hudson noted that the Dimension trailer appears to lift and alter Kurosawa's original, stunning plane crash scene for its own end.

While there is no question the shots are Kurosawa's, there was some concern that this might be a little more skulduggerous rip-off than American distributor Magnolia Pictures might be comfortable with. Alas, Magnolia chief Eamonn Bowles told The Reeler this morning that Dimension had the go-ahead to use the original sequence in its trailer.

"Is it scandalous? No," Bowles told me. "Is it weird? Yes. You don't usually see the same shot used in a different film, but that was something [Dimension] had come to us about. And we said yes. There isn't anything scandalous about it at all. ... It's flattering that a larger-budget, wide-release American film would end up using the money shot from the modestly budgeted Japanese original."

So there you have it. Now we can go back to collecting wagers for our other controversy, the When Will Craig Brewer Be Paid? office pool. Send your dates posthaste.

Scott Stapp celebrates Dave Grohl's hard four on Spike TV's Casino Cinema

Lloyd Grove today offers the cautionary tale of Scott Stapp, the former Creed lead singer who apprently revolted the other day when he realized that his guest appearance on Spike TV's Casino Cinema was NOT going to take him higher:

According to multiple sources on the set, the 32-year-old Stapp appeared intoxicated when he arrived at the show's upper East Side studio and proceeded to terrorize hosts Beth Ostrosky and Steve Schirripa, the producers and the crew members alike with his boorish and vulgar antics on- and off-camera. ...

Another source says that even with his publicist in tow, Stapp cursed "every other word," called a female executive producer a "b-," constantly flipped the bird, and referred to Ostrosky - better known as Howard Stern's longtime girlfriend - as a "bimbo."

Stapp also couldn't resist taking swipes at his more famous rock colleagues. "I met [U2's] Bono and The Edge, and Bono was an a- to me," he declared, before insulting Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl's manhood as "freaking little."

You do not even want to know what kind of hating he was doing on the Dec. 6 episode's featured movie, Bloodsport. Suffice to say Jean-Claude Van Damme has some manhood problems of his own and his accent was "freaking Belgian." On the other hand, it does my heart good to see a Christian rocker hit a gambling show drunk on his righteous ass. Expect a ghostwritten mea culpa and an album of Christmas songs about a year from now.