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Construction Worker Arrested for Alleged Shelly Murder

I'm horrified at how quickly I assumed that Adrienne Shelly's death was a case of a depressed actress's suicide. (She starred in Hal Hartley's Trust and Unbelievable Truth.) A construction worker has confessed to bashing her and staging her suicide by shower rod. How awful.

Digging Deeper into Marie Antoinette

Forget Camille Paglia. This piece about Marie Antoinette in The New Yorker by Judith Thurman really rocks. Thurman digs into all the recent books; and she saw Sofia Coppola's movie. I have to say that reading this story made me question why Coppola avoided dealing with the dramatic events surrounding Marie Antoinette's decapitation by guillotine. I admire much in Coppola's movie, but it's one thin slice of all the material that is out there.

Update:Here's a rather shallow take on photogenic fashionista Coppola from the NYT's Lynn Hirschberg. Gosh. I enjoyed this layout as much as anyone but I'm feeling protective toward Coppola as an Oscar-nominated writer-director who needs to be taken seriously more for her craft than her celebrity. I guess this helps to sell the movie.

The LAT Wants to Shun Mel Gibson

They used to call the LA Times the Velvet Coffin. The idea was that it's such a cushy place to work, so slow-moving and glacial, that you crawled in there to become the most mediocre version of your best self. My sense is that in recent months the paper has been more responsive, more local. The staff is stepping up to the first competition the LAT has had in years, since the demise of the late great Herald Examiner: the internet. But still, the paper has an undeniable habit of weighing in on certain stories way way late: one example is this editorial, which I caught over at Hollywood Elsewhere. (I obviously don't pay serious heed to the LAT editorial page.) What took them so long?

Mel Gibson Gets Probation

Mel Gibson got probation today and had to pay a $1300 fine for his D.U.I. charge, reports the NYT:

Mel Gibson pleaded guilty here today to one misdemeanor charge of drunken driving and was sentenced to probation with a requirement that he spend the next year in an alcoholism rehabilitation program.

Mr. Gibson was also fined about $1,300 as part of a sentence that stemmed from his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving last July 28. The incident erupted into a scandal when a police report showed that the actor and filmmaker was belligerent and had made anti-Jewish remarks when detained. He later issued a pair of apologies for his remarks and behavior.

Mr. Gibson did not appear at the midmorning hearing in the Los Angeles Superior Court branch here, but was represented by his lawyer, Blair Berke.

So far Gibson has been checking in with an outpatient alcohol program, presumably Alcoholics Anonymous, according to his reps. He has not chosen to stay inside a facility for any length of time.

Copyright and Fair Use

The LA Weekly's Paul Cullum wades through the thicket of copyright law in this must-read article about the inevitable clash that is coming as filmmakers fight for the right to make affordable documentaries.

These parallel dogmas — free speech and intellectual-property rights — through corporate intervention and governmental abdication, are now on a collision course, and may in fact collide next month with the theatrical release of Kirby Dick’s incendiary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. A jihad against the Motion Picture Association of America, movie studios and the corporations that own them, Dick’s documentary plans to get around the prohibitive costs of copyright licensing by employing a “fair use” defense — a safeguard built into the Constitution but largely untested in the courts. Like the last time a foreign body slammed into the earth’s surface, disrupting gravitational orthodoxy, watch for sea changes, atmospheric gloom and toppling dinosaurs.

[Photo from This Film is Not Yet Rated, directors Atom Egoyan left, and Kirby Dick]

Make Mel's Day

Humorist Joel Stein runs with the ball in this Time column. This will give you his general drift:

Most times, when someone spouts off about how awful the Jews are, I blow it off as ignorance. If the guy just got to know us, he would totally dig us. We're funny and warm and smart and totally self-effacing. We send Ben Stiller to Iran for a few weeks, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be opening up Noah's bagel shops in all the strip malls in Tehran. The only problem is that with just 0.02% of the world's population, we can't do nearly as many personal appearances as we'd like. That's why we took over the media.

But Mel Gibson knows us--personally. He's been in Hollywood for more than 20 years, virtually surrounded by Jews. If Mel doesn't like us, maybe it's finally time to stop blaming everyone else for the bigotry and scapegoating and start to look at ourselves. As the saying goes, If people hate you for 1,000 years, you can blame them; if you're persecuted for 2,000 years, maybe you're unlucky; but if they still want to kill you after 3,000 years, you have to ask yourself if you're doing something wrong.

Gibson Fallout Redux

Mel Gibson got off easy on DUI charges. He was never asked to post bail, either. He will not be serving any jail time, in other words.

Coming out way ahead post-Gibson scoop: TMZ.com.

The Anti-Defamation League Accepts Gibson's Latest Apology

The Anti-Defamation League is accepting Mel Gibson's latest apology. Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

This is the apology we had sought and requested. We are glad that Mel Gibson has finally owned up to the fact that he made anti-Semitic remarks, and his apology sounds sincere. We welcome his efforts to repair the damage he has caused, to reach out to the Jewish community, and to seek help. Once he completes his rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, we will be ready and willing to help him with his second rehabilitation to combat this disease of prejudice.

BREAKING NEWS: New Mel Gibson Statement

If Mel Gibson [pictured in his finally released DUI mugshot left] had said this in the first place, things might have gone slightly better for him over the past few days:
Tuesday, August 1, 2006:

"There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of Anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge.

I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.

The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God’s child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.

I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.

This is not about a film. Nor is it about artistic license. This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. It’s about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad."

Disney Backs Gibson

Disney wasn't talking over the weekend, but Slate's Kim Masters got to new production chief Oren Aviv today. Disney will back Gibson and will release Apocalypto, says Aviv. It doesn't sound like they'll be working with Michael Mann again any time soon, though.

Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel doesn't think Hollywood should cut Gibson any slack.

Da Vinci Code Trial Not Over

The Da Vinci Code courtroom drama, it seems, will not die.

NYT Reporter Rebuffed by Pellicano at Jail

NYT reporter Allison Hope Weiner used her State Bar of California card last month to get in to see jailed P.I. Anthony Pellicano. He was told that his lawyer was waiting, according to the LAT, but when Weiner identified herself as a NYT reporter, he refused to talk to her. L.A.'s Metropolitan Detention Center has banned Weiner from visiting the prison.

Media Keeps Focus on Studio Chiefs

One weird thing about covering Hollywood is how out of sync the media often is. The sense I'm getting these days, backed up by today's LAT, is that the prosecutors in the Anthony Pellicano case are chasing down lawyers, not studio heads. But the press keeps throwing the spotlight back on Universal's Ron Meyer and Paramount's Brad Grey, who have both been questioned by the FBI and the grand jury but have declared that they did nothing wrong. Kim Masters' tough Grey profile in LA Magazine, on newstands now, is a breaking story in a monthly magazine, so it reads like old news. But so does Sunday's AP wire story, which compares Meyer and Grey and their links to the Pellicano case, which would likely not have run without the following money quote from Loyola Law School professor and former prosecutor Laurie Levenson: "I think there has been an indication that prosecutors have their sights on Hollywood's higher-ups," she told the AP. "But Pellicano's clients are pretty insulated. Prosecutors have to prove his clients knew there were illegal methods being used." The story ends with what this could mean for Meyer and Grey: "They will have a cloud over their heads," Levenson said. "It's a long-term stain." Not necessarily. Meanwhile, the NYT reports that the case is now reaching farther afield: into the art world.

Some in Hollywood suggest that one reason that Grey put two valuable Paramount Tom Clancy projects (including Without Remorse) into turnaround was that they were controlled by Mike Ovitz, another movie mogul who has been questioned in the Pellicano case. Grey wanted to keep his distance from Ovitz, the theory goes, so he let him shop the two projects to another studio. (Of course Grey may simply not have been in love with two clunky projects beloved by the former regime.) THR ran two stories in Friday's edition about how Paramount under Grey and Gail Berman and Paramount-owned DreamWorks under Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider are shaping up. And then there's Hollywood Wiretap contributor Josh Young's Trojan War Horse theory, which derives from much speculative talk around town. Yes, Spielberg is mourning the loss of his studio dream. But Katzenberg really is running DreamWorks animation. And just because so many people want the super-competent Stacey Snider to take over Paramount doesn't mean it's going to happen.