Larry King nepotism alert: A new king on the TV throne

I find many things in the modern world scary, from Sarah Palin to Taylor Swift to Michael Bay. I actually had a fever-induced nightmare the other night in which I'd gone to the premiere of "Avatar" and instead found myself surrounded by screaming 7-year-olds at a screening of "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel." But here's something really frightening: Larry King's son is going to have his own talk show.

Yikes! As first reported by TMZ, Chance King, the cherubic 10-year-old son of the much-married CNN host, has landed his own TV gig hosting an upcoming sports show on Fox Sports Net. Called "Kid Pitch," the show will feature kids Chance's age yakking about baseball, along with interviews with major league players. Presumably, Chance will be asking Manny Ramirez the same kind of tough, probing questions his dad asks all of the world leaders and third-rate celebrities that show up plugging their new projects on "Larry King Live."

The good news is that Chance, as you can see from the TMZ photo, is a lot cuter than his dad. The bad news? If the show is a hit, I suspect it will only be a matter of time before Chance follows in his dad's footsteps and starts blurbing Hollywood movies. He might even watch them all the way through without taking phone calls in the middle of the screening, as his dad is famous for doing. If we start seeing Chance's name atop movie ads (" 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel' is more hysterically funny
than my fifth-grade science teacher!" -- Chance King), we'll know that in the King clan, good movie blurbs run thicker than blood.

Photo: Larry King. Credit: Associated Press

The Art of the Swine Flu: The strange aesthetic of being sick as a dog

I've been sick with the swine flu for the past few days, hence the sparse number of postings on the blog. At least I assume it's the swine flu, since I got a regular flu shot and I still came down with something (fever, headache, cough, congestion and a generally awful achiness) that hit like a ton of bricks. But I'm not looking for sympathy, not that you'd ever dream of getting any sympathy from the cranky blogosphere.

My point is this. When you're really down-for-the-count sick, your brain begins to operate differently, I've come to believe. We all feel sluggish and dull when we're sick. But I think that when we're sick, our brain chemistry actually changes, making things that we would otherwise happily avoid -- like saltines and chicken soup, or pajamas decorated with purple elephants, for example -- feel strangely reassuring. I think this also applies to art and entertainment. When I am sick, I put on a thick pair of socks, an old pair of sweats, hop in bed and watch old westerns. (It's someone else in the family who wears the pajamas with purple elephants.)

Watching old westerns is not something I would ever do when I am well -- I'm always looking for the next, new cool thing. But when sick, I am looking for cinematic comfort food. And what comforts me the most is the sight of John Wayne (in pretty much any John Ford western, starting with "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "The Searchers," though "Fort Apache" is close behind), Jimmy Stewart (in his great string of westerns directed by Anthony Mann, the best being "Bend of the River" and "The Man From Laramie") or Paul Newman (especially in "Hud," "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" and, of course, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"). They are men on epic journeys and heroic quests, solving problems, back when most problems could be solved on horseback. 

I suspect I am not alone in this pursuit of warmth and reassurance. Everyone in my family has gone through the flu bug in the past 10 days, and I've noticed that each one of us reached for similar succor. For years, when my wife would get sick, all she would want to watch was the 1995 BBC production of "Pride and Prejudice," most important, the one with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. But now she tucks up and watches old episodes of "The Gilmore Girls," which I suspect offers her the same cozy contentment as westerns do for me. My 11-year-son is happiest watching old DVD highlight packages of the World Series. Even though he knows who's going to win, he still likes reliving the drama of the games.

I suspect that when we are sick, we simply crave familiarity, the comfort of old stories being retold, even though we know how they begin and how they are going to end. When cavemen had the flu, they probably asked whoever was hovering nearby, "Tell me the story again about the time we killed that big mastodon with a few tiny little arrowheads." Since the flu has been going around in a big way, if you've been sick, I'd love to hear what you wanted to watch when you were laid up. If nothing else, I'm curious if there's a common thread here -- or if my family is just a bunch of oddballs. Please share your thoughts.

And as a kicker: watch this video of the International Barbershop Chorus Champions. I first saw it when I was perfectly healthy -- and found it only mildly diverting. But I watched it again when I was sick and had a totally different reaction, finding it weirdly and wonderfully hypnotic. I think when you're sick, your brain is in a very different gear. But see for yourself:

Photo: John Wayne. Credit: Warner Bros.

The latest 'Twilight' mystery: Why vampires aren't Jews

With "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" due out Friday, the media have been pretty much frothing at the mouth. Everyone's trying to cash in on every crumb of fascination with the mega-hit franchise based on Stephenie Meyer's phenonemally successful series of novels about a high school girl who falls for a hunky young vampire. Judging from the tsunami of stories, you'd have to say that every utterance from "Twilight" stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson has been recorded for posterity, no matter how dopey or forgettable.

But one "Twilight"-themed story did grab my attention, since it offered up an intriguing meditation, from a religious authority no less, on an angle that I can't imagine ever having been seriously pursued until "Twlight" hit the bigtime: Five Reasons Vampires Aren't Jews. The article, half serious religious analysis, half tongue-in-cheek humor, was penned for the Jewish Journal by L.A.'s Sinai Temple senior rabbi David Wolpe. It opens with what we journalists refer to as a killer lead: "Their day begins at night, they show a certain aversion to the sign of the cross and they dress in black. Of course, I'm talking about Jews."

Wolper explains that some historical sources hint at the existence of Jewish vampires -- apparently there are a number of obscure medieval tales in Jewish literature that chronicle the exploits of Estrie, a bloodsucking demon who can assume different forms. But Wolpe argues that there are many persuasive reasons why vampires can't be Jewish. Here's a few brief excerpts from his essay:

1) Proselytizing: Vampires are made by each other, using what Wolpe calls "fangs over persuasion." But he says that "Jews have for most of their history been content to accept those who convert, but not seek them." Wolpe offers a wry circumcision quip: "When men, in particular, converted to Judaism, if often did involve a small amount of blood, but not from the neck."

2) Blood: Vampires, of course, live on blood. But, Wolpe writes, "Jews abhor eating blood ... and generations of salted meat are our culinary legacy. Jews overcook and oversalt. It is what we do. My mother, God bless her, thought meat undone if it could not double as a club for batting practice. Moistness was the enemy."

3) Nightlife: Vampires avoid daylight, preferring to live in darkness and shadows. Wolpe says that Jews love light. " 'Let there be light' is God's initial declaration in the creation of the world. We light candles on Shabbat, for Havdahlah, on Chanukah. Jews rise for the Shacharit prayer, greeting the shining new day. A Jewish vampire would never be awake to make the minyan."

4) Immortality: Vampires live forever, or as Wolpe puts it: "They don't die. Or at least, not before the end of the movie. Then someone drives a stake into the heart, and they expire amid swelling music." But he explains that "Judaism believes in death. Yes, it believes in immortal life. But death comes first. ... We shovel earth on the grave to remind ourselves of the finality of death."

5) Imaginary Creatures: Vampires are not real. As Wolpe writes: "They have a long and startling history springing from the depths of the human imagination, drawing from our fears and from real-world creatures (bats, mostly), but they live in books and movies as powerful projections of our minds." Jews, on the other hand, know real monsters. As Wolpe puts it: "We have known the kind of monsters that turn day into night and have a thirst for blood that puts Nosferatu to shame. ... These days, the world's demons have a different but terrifying aspect. Once you have encountered true monsters, the imaginary ones seem not quite so vivid or frightening."

While we're on the subject, I was puzzling over which Jewish actors would make the best movie vampires. If anyone has any clever ideas, I'd like to hear them. But I definitely have my own choice: Jeff Goldblum.

Photo: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in "The Twilight Saga: New Moon". Credit: Summit Entertainment

Apocalypse now: 'Collapse' and the end of the world as we know it

America has a bad case of the doomsday jitters. You don't have to be a Glenn Beck follower to know that whenever things go wrong in this country, you can always find all the anger, bitterness and fear-mongering bubbling up and over into our popular culture. As Shakespeare's witches exulted in "Macbeth," when things go wrong, it's time to stir the pot: "double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble."

With Wall Street fat cats still cashing in while the rest of the country still suffers from double-digit unemployment, with partisan bickering at an all-time high and a war in Afghanistan threatening to suck up another 40,000 more troops, the country is in a sour mood, full of nasty, dark suspicions about the future. It's as good an explanation as any for why Beck is the hottest guy on TV right now, trumpeting his fears of one-world government, assailing corrupt politicians and worrying that Barack Obama, with "his deep-seated hatred for white people," could be angling to subvert our constitutional government.

Peril is around every corner -- even Beck's Fox News colleague, Shepard Smith, jokingly dubbed Beck's studio "the fear chamber." It's telling that Hollywood also has a batch of scary, post-apocalyptic films coming our way, filled with even more doomsday imagery. Roland Emmerich's "2012" takes off this weekend, promising a vivid, special-effects-filled look at the Earth's possible demise. There are more bad vibes in the air. John Hillcoat's brooding adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" opens later this month, offering a bleak view of a father and son attempting to survive in an ash-covered America where nothing grows. Denzel Washington returns, "Road Warrior" style, in January, starring in "The Book of Eli," another stark, days-end vision of the future. Pessimists can also rush out in January to see "Legion," a Dennis Quaid-starring horror thriller about how God, having lost faith in humanity, sends a legion of angels to wipe out the human race.

But what is surely the strangest film about our doomsday fantasies arrives this Friday. Called "Collapse," it features a spellbindingly weird one-man monologue by Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD officer and investigative journalist who believes that we are about to run out of oil, an event sure to plunge the world into a state of collapse since Ruppert is convinced that our entire world economy is built on an unsustainable addiction to petrol. If you ever thought it was impossible to top Beck's over-the-top fantasies, listen to Ruppert, who says that "what I see now is the end of a paradigm that is as cataclysmic as the asteroid event that killed almost all the life on Earth, and certainly the dinosaurs."

The film is directed by Chris Smith, who has made a number of documentaries about oddball characters pursuing impossible dreams -- his 1999 film "American Movie" chronicled the story of a hapless slacker trying to make a $3,000 homemade horror film. But what makes "Collapse" so sneakily compelling is that we have no inkling of what Smith thinks of his subject. Filmed with one camera over the course of two days in the basement of an abandoned meatpacking plant in downtown L.A., "Collapse" is a hermetically sealed package, open to whatever interpretation we might bring to it. It allows us the same freedom we have in watching Beck's show -- we can take it as gospel, be appalled by its wild, undocumented claims or simply watch bemused, appreciating Ruppert's gifts as a performer.

"I think there is something quintessentially American about Michael," says Smith, who financed the film himself, using the money he's made as a successful commercial director. "He comes out of the culture of the moment, in the same way that we foster all these high-flying entrepreneurs and self-help gurus. When you look at his upbringing, to have gone from being a police officer to someone who questions authority, it fits into a storyline that could only happen in this country."

"Collapse" opens Friday in theaters in New York and L.A. while also debuting this weekend on the Film Buff video-on-demand channel. Smith admits that he has "very conflicted feelings" about Ruppert. "A lot of what he says is incredibly thought-provoking, with lots of historical support, but there are things that you'd probably get a lot of criticism for believing," he says. "So I wanted to give the audience the experience of living inside his world for 85 minutes. Even if you can't prove all of his ideas, his passion and belief is definitely concrete."

I got hooked on "Collapse" for much the same reason that millions of viewers have fallen for Beck. Every time I'd start to think that Ruppert was a deluded crackpot, he'd reel me back in, grabbing me by the throat with a burst of seemingly persuasive analysis. He poses his oil-collapse scenario in simple, hard-to-refute logic. "Saudi Arabia has 25% of the oil reserves on the planet," he explains in a soothing, almost hypnotic voice. "Why, if Saudi Arabia has all these untapped reserves on shore, are they moving heavily into offshore drilling? If it's 5, 10 or 15 times more expensive to drill offshore than land, doesn't that tell you that Saudi Arabia knows that they've no more oil to find?"

Why are we so fascinated by doomsday theorists like Ruppert and Beck? Keep reading:

New Muhammad biopic drives the anti-Hollywood crowd nuts

England's the Guardian is reporting that Barrie Osborne, one of the producers of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix," is hoping to mount a biopic of the prophet Muhammad. Osborne says the film, which is being financed by a Qatar-based company, would feature English-speaking Muslim actors, although in keeping with Islamic law, it wouldn't actually depict the prophet on screen (which has got to be bad news for Tony Shalhoub, who'd normally be a shoo-in for the part). Osborne hopes the story of Muhammad would "educate people about the true meaning of Islam."  

It all sounds perfectly respectful to me. But as usual, the news has aroused a storm of derision from conservative bloggers, who always find a way to be offended by any high-minded Hollywood project. Even though the film apparently hasn't been cast and isn't due to begin filming until 2011, Big Hollywood's John Nolte was in high dudgeon this morning, instantly drawing comparisons between the Muhammad project and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which Nolte complains was "turned down by every studio in town. You know, even though 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians."

Nolte conveniently forgets that the prime reason why Hollywood studios kept their distance from "Passion of the Christ" was because the film was viewed by many as offering an anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews, not because anyone had a lack of regard for Christians. Also worth noting: Osborne is a prominent indie producer, meaning he doesn't have the promise of any studio backing for his project. So it's likely -- if the movie is ever made -- that he would have just as hard a time as Gibson in getting any studio backing for the Muhammad film

But according to Nolte, the possibility that an indie producer might make a respectful film about Muhammad is yet another sign of Hollywood's contempt for Christianity. Or as he puts it:

"[It's] another example of the mindset of those who control the most powerful propaganda machine ever created. Think about it: 'The Passion' remains one of the most profitable films ever and yet an industry frequently ridiculed for reproducing ad nauseum [sic] anything resembling a hit will have none of it....Please don't make the mistake of accusing Hollywood of hypocrisy. This is an ideological war and there are no rules in war and anyone wringing their hands over 'not playing fair' are missing the point. When you loath [sic] Christians and want to do everything in your power to marginalize who they are and what they stand for, there's nothing at all hypocritical about pissing on Christ and deferring to Muhammad."

I admire Nolte's passion, but I can't say that he's made much of a case. I mean, just because Hollywood shied away from promoting "Passion of the Christ" doesn't necessarily mean that we're in the midst of an "ideological war" against Christianity. In fact, I'd be happy to get Nolte invited to an advance screening of "The Blind Side," a wonderful new film by John Lee Hancock that Warner Bros. is releasing later this month. It tells the real-life story of a wealthy Memphis woman -- played by Sandra Bullock -- whose family takes in a homeless African American boy, feeds him, clothes him and helps him make it through school. He turns out to be a phenomenally successful football player who's now playing in the NFL.

The family are devoted Christians (and die-hard Republicans too, John), yet they are portrayed with the utmost warmth and respect for their selflessness and commitment to sharing their good fortune with others. If this is another example of Hollywood's ideological war against Christianity, then maybe someone should remind both sides what they are fighting about.

Photo: Barrie Osborne. Credit: John McDermott / For the Los Angeles Times.

Flashback Friday: Was L.A. ever more cool than in the 1960s?

I've been revisiting the swinging '60s in recent days, working on an upcoming post about what Hollywood was like four decades ago when the "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" generation took over the movie business. But the records that came out of L.A.'s mid-'60s music scene were just as groundbreaking as any of the films of the era. Rhino Records recently released "Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-1968," a must-have box set chronicling the heady days when the Sunset Strip was crowded with clubs filled with raucous young bands inventing a brash new kind of rock and roll.

It's a beautifully compiled box set, featuring four CDs' worth of music, some of it from bands familiar to '60s music fans (the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas), some of it from long-forgotten one- or two-hit wonders such as the Deepest Blue, Limey and the Yanks, the Hysterics and -- how's this for a great moniker? -- the W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band. If you want to get a great taste of what all the excitement was about, the American Cinematheque is hosting an all-day tribute Sunday at the Egyptian Theater.

The festivities start at noon with a screening of four rarely seen episodes from "The Monkees" TV show, along with an episode of "Happening '69," which has footage of  the Monkees hanging out with Paul Revere & the Raiders. The tribute also has a 4 p.m. showing of a host of '60s promo films including performances by the Turtles, Sonny & Cher and the Mamas and the Papas along with a screening of "Mondo Mod," which features a host of '60s-era bands visiting such Strip hangouts as the Plush Pop and the legendary Pandora's Box. The day concludes at 7:30 p.m. with a screening of "Riot on Sunset Strip" (which features the Standells, the Chocolate Watchband and the Enemys -- with much of the movie having been filmed inside Pandora's Box).

The all-day '60s blast-back has something of a bittersweet air, since Rhino Records recently laid off close to 40 of its staffers, decimating its A&R, marketing and promotion departments, which makes it likely that "Where the Action Is" may be one of the label's last ambitiously curated box-set collections. Among the many casualties at the label was A&R director Andrew Sandoval, who put together the "Where the Action Is" box, which in addition to its amazing assortment of music, offers replicas of vintage concert posters, ticket stubs and matchbook covers as well as absorbing overviews of the nightclubs and boss L.A. radio stations from the period. 

I asked Sandoval why this intense burst of musical creativity happened in L.A. instead of somewhere else. He gives a lion's share of the credit to the Byrds, who debuted in March 1965 at Ciro's, which, with the Byrds as a house band, quickly emerged as one of the hippest clubs on the Strip. (Bob Dylan joined the band for its opening-night encore, cementing the Byrds' status as trendsetters.)

"The Byrds' success there really sparked a club craze in L.A.," says Sandoval. "They looked incredibly cool, but the biggest reason for their influence was that they were the first band in the scene to play original songs with an original style. That really set off the garage band explosion in L.A. If you listen to the other music in the box set, you'll hear the Byrds' style and sound being echoed by a number of other bands."

Sandoval says another big reason for L.A.'s preeminence was the arrival around the same time of Derek Taylor, a shrewd, flamboyant Londoner Liverpudlian who'd been the Beatles' publicist. He set up residency in L.A., where he first launched a music newspaper sponsored by KRLA, the city's top rock station of the time, before moving on to work for the Byrds. Sandoval says L.A. radio was a pivotal promotional tool for the scene. "Each major station published its own charts, so you could break a record and have a big hit in L.A. long before anything moved on to the rest of the country," he says. "It would all happen very fast. The Byrds would record a song at Columbia Studios, drive over to KRLA or KHJ with their acetate and give the station an exclusive long before the record company even pressed or released the song."

After listening to "Where the Action Is" for the last couple of weeks, I can say that the box set totally captures the spirit of a time when nearly anyone with one good guitar riff could cut a single. The box set is crammed with great music, along with wonderful oddities, including a song called "Flower Eyes" that features a very young John Branca -- now a lawyer representing Michael Jackson's estate -- on keyboards; a performance of "November Night" by Peter Fonda (with Hugh Masekela on trumpet), Jackie DeShannon doing "Splendor in the Grass" backed by the Byrds, and a noisy rock rendition of "Last Night I Had a Dream" by Randy Newman recorded long before he became a more cerebral pop satirist.

It may be Rhino's last great collection, so don't hesitate to grab it. You'll be getting a great look at one of the most fascinating chapters in L.A. pop history.

Here's one of the Byrds' first TV appearances, playing "Mr. Tambourine Man" in 1965. Roger McGuinn sings lead vocals and in wide shots you can see David Crosby -- pre-Crosby, Stills & Nash -- playing guitar on the far right.

RELATED

Randy Lewis' review of "Where the Action Is"

Is 'This is It' Michael Jackson's last big hit?

How's this for a shocker? The critics have finally gotten a look at Michael Jackson's "This Is It" and -- shazam! -- they're loving it. My colleague Ann Powers calls the film "a tribute to the power of Jackson's body and voice," while Variety's Andrew Barker says the film does a great job of capturing his rarely seen creative process, exclaiming that "his intense perfectionism is breathtaking to see." 

If audience reaction is as positive as the good reviews, the movie -- which Sony is opening today in roughly 3,500 theaters -- could end up outstripping all of the early $35 million to $50 million five-day weekend box office predictions.

So how did Sony do it? I turned to Time magazine for answers, since it offered a story with a headline that was too good to resist: "Marketing 'This Is It': How Sony Created a Global Event." Alas, none of the top execs from Sony's crack marketing team is actually quoted in the story, so when it comes to analyzing Sony's marketing prowess, we have to take the word of various outsiders, including Variety's Stephen Gaydos, Fandango spokesman Harry Medved and Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, who is, on average, quoted about 1,000 times a week in the show-biz press. (Time did talk to "This Is It" director Kenny Ortega, who is clearly a talented filmmaker but hardly a marketing expert.)

Time says Sony cleverly kept the movie away from critics until the last minute, pushed the film as a global phenomenon by orchestrating 33 different premieres, 16 of them synced to begin at the same time, and pumped up early ticket buying by saying the film would have a two-week-only run. It all sounds very innovative, except for the fact that it's all been done before, most of it by Sony in its launch of its "Da Vinci Code" series, which had much the same global opening strategy and was also held back from critics until the last moment.

With all the early chatter about Jackson's frail condition and erratic behavior before his death, I admit to having been a doubter when it came to anyone pulling together a coherent film that captured some of his on-stage glory. But judging from the "This Is It" reviews, it sounds as if the wonderfully strange King of Pop will enjoy one last turn in the spotlight. So my hat's off to Sony's marketing team, which took what could have been a lemon and served us a delightful, cool glass of lemonade.

And their efforts are paying off with fans. My colleague Ben Fritz is reporting that "This Is It" earned a robust $2.2 million from its Tuesday night screenings in the U.S. and Canada and could easily gross more than $15 million by the end of today. With that in mind, here's a little over/under poll that we've put together. Let me know how you think the movie will perform at the box office.

RELATED: ANN POWERS' "THIS IS IT" REVIEW:

Paul Haggis on Scientology: 'Morally reprehensible'

Everybody has his or her own take on Paul Haggis' dramatic letter, announcing his break with Scientology after 35 years of membership in the church. But what especially fascinated me was how much his letter, full of passion and moral outrage, resembled large portions of his film and TV work, especially his scripts for "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Crash," the latter of which won him an Oscar.

If you missed the news, the Church of Scientology was a public sponsor of Proposition 8, which Haggis describes in his letter as "a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California."

Haggis had apparently been campaigning for months to get the church's official spokesman, Tommy Davis, to condemn the Prop 8 sponsorship, saying he couldn't in good conscience be a member of an organization in which gay-bashing was tolerated. But to no avail. It's intriguing to see that once Haggis saw the church in a new light, he found himself alienated from some of its others actions. For me, the letter's most astounding revelation is that Haggis calls out the church for its policy of disconnection, which apparently calls for members to cut their ties with people Scientology has deemed as unfriendly to the church.

Haggis acknowledges that his wife was ordered to disconnect from her parents because of something they supposedly did 25 years earlier when they resigned from the church. His wife followed the church's orders, refusing to speak to her parents, who'd introduced her to Scientology in the first place. As for Haggis, he says that he refused to break off contact, explaining, "I've never been good at following orders, especially when I find them morally reprehensible."

It was at that point in his letter that I realized that Haggis was a dead-on spiritual heir to Dalton Trumbo, the best-known screenwriter of his generation and perhaps the most prominent member of the Hollywood 10, who was blacklisted for his membership in the Communist Party. Like Haggis, Trumbo was the high priest of righteous indignation, firing off blistering letters at a rapid pace to friends and enemies alike. (They are collected in "Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962," a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Hollywood in the era of the blacklist.) In Trumbo's day, the enemy wasn't Scientology but rabid anti-Communist crusaders as well as weaselly Hollywood careerists who refused to stand up to the worst excesses of the Red Scare.

But see for yourself. Here is Haggis, writing to Davis, in reference to a series of stories in the St. Petersburg Times, that detailed a host of church excesses:

"And when I pictured you assuring me that it is all lies, that this is nothing but an unfounded and vicious attack by a group of disgruntled employees, I am afraid that I saw the same face that looked in the camera and denied the policy of disconnection. I heard the same voice that professed outrage at our support of Proposition 8, who promised to correct it and did nothing. I was left feeling outraged, and frankly, more than a little stupid."

And here is Trumbo, writing to a former movie biz pal, who had turned on Trumbo when the screenwriter was being hounded by right-wing zealots:

"You should not, in your letter to me, assume a whore's virtue at confession by using the word 'affection.' My affection caused me to assert your ability to producers when you were out of favor; yours impelled you to cry out against me in the most fatal hour of my career. Mine persuaded me to spend long hours in discussion of your story problems when you sought to re-establish yourself; yours led you to organizational meetings calculated to deprive me of my rights within the Guild, to destroy my good name and to make it impossible for me to work in my profession. Give me no more such affection. I stagger beneath that already conferred. Give me rather your hatred and let me console myself by the exchange of a weak friend for a strong enemy."

Ah, the lesson here is clear: Beware the wrath of a screenwriter scorned!

RELATED:

Dalton Trumbo: Rare tribute to blacklisted screenwriter

Writers could learn a lesson from 'Trumbo'

Photos: Paul Haggis by Claudio Onorati / EPA; Dalton Trumbo by Mitzi Trumbo.

Hollywood Jewish guys [heart] shiksas: Part 2

I got a lot of heated feedback for my post this week riffing on a provocative story in Tablet magazine detailing how Hollywood's Jewish guys, from famous comedians to studio executives, have since time immemorial -- meaning since the days of burlesque -- preferred casting blond shiksas to dark, sultry Jewish women in leading roles. A host of commenters, led by "Jimbo" and "fman," thought my views on the issue were either offensive or blown out of proportion.

Fair enough. So as further support for my case, I offer this new post from Danielle Berrin's "Hollywood Jew" blog in the Jewish Journal. It's an appreciation of the gifted actress Rachel Weisz, whose new film, "Agora," just had a big opening in Spain. Berrin unearthed a 2001 interview Weisz did about being a Jewish actress in Hollywood that further proves my worst suspicions about Hollywood executives' discrimination against Jewish women. Here's an excerpt from the interview, conducted by Index magazine's Emma Forrest:

Emma: Is it limiting as an actress to be perceived as being too ethnic in any way?

Rachel: Well, I think you and I have always felt the same way--that we're Jewish but we can get away with just being exotic.... Hollywood's run by Jews. I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname. And I said, "Why? Jews run Hollywood." He said, "Exactly." He had a theory that all the executives think acting's a job for shiksas.

Emma: Of all the self-loathing Jews in the world, the most self-loathing are the Hollywood Jews. They don't want to see images of themselves on screen. That's why Lauren Bacall had to hide her identity, and Winona Ryder changed her name from Horowitz.

Rachel: In some way, acting is prostitution, and Hollywood Jews don't want their own women to participate. Also, there's an element of "Portnoy's Complaint." They all fancy Aryan blondes.

PREVIOUSLY: WHY HOLLYWOOD JEWISH GUYS FALL IN LOVE WITH SHIKSAS

Photo of Rachel Weisz in Wong Kar Wai's "My Blueberry Nights" by Macall Polay / The Weinstein Co.

We won't have 'Shrek: The Musical' to kick around much longer

Well, that was fast.

Just this morning we were wondering how much longer Jeffrey Katzenberg was willing to keep shelling out dough to keep "Shrek: The Musical" afloat on Broadway. According to the New York Post, the show has lost more than $1 million since Labor Day, despite heavy discounts and an aggressive ad campaign.

The answer? Less than three months. DreamWorks just announced that the costly musical will have its final Broadway performance on Jan. 3, 2010. It will launch a national tour in Chicago beginning next July.

Previously: Can Jeffrey Katzenberg save 'Shrek: The Musical'?

Photo: The cast from "Shrek: The Musical" at the Tony Awards. Credit: Seth Wenig / Associated Press.