Heche started out seeming candid and kooky in a sort of charming way. She said her ex-husband Coleman Laffoon wants her to "watch him run around in his little white shorts, playing soccer." The highlight of the above clip comes at about minute 1:00, when Heche starts talking over Dave, making awesome witch-fingers, and explaining that her ex "wants to still hang out with me [...] because I'm so fantastic." She seems a little wacked out, but hearing her unrestrainedly bash Laffoon is a lot more fun than watching some publicist-polished actress cross her legs and simper. Things get a little weird, though, as she repeatedly makes insinuations about the state of Dave's marriage. But not as weird as this:

Sorry Homer, your mom thinks you suck at soccer. Of course, since she thinks soccer practice is called "rehearsal," she may not know a lot about it. More importantly, though, Heche seems to have taken leave of her senses a little bit (on her marriage: "It's ovah ... red Rovah!"). Given her public battle with mental illness, this is kind of unsettling to watch. Even if she isn't having some kind of episode here (and to be fair, it must be annoying to have bunch of strangers speculating about your mental health every time you go off on your ex), it seems pretty unnecessary for her to mention her child while she's insulting his father on national TV. And if I were Dave's wife, I'd be a little pissed about all of Heche's eye-rolling about marriage.

Her ex definitely isn't happy. He fired back to Us about her allegations that he's a "lazy ass":

After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television.

He also wrote on Facebook,

I wish Anne Heche could see that public bullying isn't good for the soul or positive for her child. It's mean.

We kind of agree — but it's still hard to look away.

Anne Heche's Ex "Disturbed" by Her Letterman Appearance [Us Weekly]

Page Six reports that Barton's publicist can't even get his gonzo client on the cover of any of the tabloid magazines. What, did OK! have the first pictures of Paz Vega's baby instead?

"As sad as Mischa's recent problems are, what seems to be upsetting her representatives even more is that no one really cares," said the editor

Is that because after the head-shaving, chopper-chasing, ambulance-cramming awesomeness of Britney going bonkers, everything pales in comparison? These are just a handful of the covers that were coming out on a weekly basis in 2007 during Britney's spectacular fall from grace. Just a year later, Heather Locklear barely got any when she started acting nuts.

Running concurrently with Britney during the summer of tabloid gold, Lindsay Lohan was arrested for DUI more than once and was in and out of rehab. She even managed to score the cover of the New York Post and the Daily News on the same day!

Or is it, sadly, that neither of these women are famous enough for their mental condition to warrant our concern? It's probably a combination of that and the lack of a really sensational story, like Anne Heche wandering into people's houses in her underwear babbling about spaceships (remember that?!). See, Mischa, you just didn't go crazy enough.

Regardless of the reason, it looks like Barton is going to have to get on the cover of a tabloid the old fashioned way. You know, by being a good actress, getting knocked up, or having her husband leave her and their eight children to chase floozies around Southhampton with Michael Lohan.

· NBC has picked up a reality series starring Tony Robbins which they plan to pair with The Biggest Loser for an inspirational programming block they're calling "So You Lost the Manboobs—Now What? Tuesdays." [Variety]
· Lionsgate posted loses of $93.4 million, vs. a profit of $7.3 million one year earlier. Turkeys The Spirit, Punisher: War Zone and Transporter 3 were blamed, as well as double-digit drops in home video sales. Mad Men and Crash's lifted the TV division's profits 82%. Such is the power of the Hamm...and racist cars. [Variety]
· Actor/writer Chris Moynihan (For Your Consideration, Psych) got a greenlight for his pilot 100 Questions for Charlotte Payne, about a (everybody now!) "young woman navigating dating life in Gotham." We have three: 1. Is he perhaps just not that into you? 2. Are you a werewolf? 3. Do you know Charlotte Simmons? [Variety]
· Aaron Eckhart and Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins have joined Johnny Depp in Rum Diary, based on Hunter S. Thompson's novel about a "washed-up, hard-drinking journalist (Depp) in 1950s Puerto Rico." Cult-favorite director Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising) directs—his first feature since 1992's Jennifer Eight. This is the kind of movie we could really imagine our ex-hippie alcoholic pothead 8th grade math teacher getting into. God we hope he's still alive. [THR]

Nikon pitchman Kutcher plays Nikki, who is basically the worst sort of Hollywood douchebag imaginable: the Les Deux-bag. Outfitted in skinny suspenders and a leering grin, he's a gigolo/user, wooing women simply so he can have a place to stay (and a beautiful pad ton seduce his next conquest when the current flame goes out of town). Early on, he uses his charms to install himself in Anne Heche's palatial Beachwood Canyon home, but eventually he falls for a Fred 62 waitress (!) (also, played by newcomer Margarita Levieva) who's his wily match.

The gist of Spread is that Nikki isn't as wise as he thinks he is—especially when he's finally struck by love. Unfortunately, neither is the movie. Filled with Kutcher's froggy, meaningless narration ("You're three times as likely to get laid if there's a bed in the room"—no shit, Sherlock), it's a real drag, livened up only occasionally by scenes in which Kutcher and Heche athletically reenact the Kama Sutra. Nikki is supposed to be a mystery who needy women project onto, but the movie squanders our interest by explaining every tic, line, and pickup in voiceover. There's a reason why Warren Beatty said hardly anything in Shampoo—his very placidity made him an irresistible enigma.

We suppose director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) intended Spread to be sort of love letter to Los Angeles (or perhaps a truncated, late-night text), but its location shooting and glamorous tracking shots can't make up for its lack of verisimilitude. No native would ever call Fred 62 "a coffee shop," and there's no reason the young, peripatetic Levieva would have a landline phone and answering machine except so that Kutcher could overhear an important call. There's only one moment the film gets right, and it rings truer than any of the seduction and blossoming love on-screen. After their first hookup, Kutcher nudges Levieva at the crack of dawn. "I gotta move your car," he says. "It's street cleaning."

"I am continuing to look for work, but I have no offers pending and the impending strike by the Screen Actors Guild reduces my prospects for work even further," Heche, 38, writes in court papers. [...]

In a court declaration, Heche indicated her financial straits were dire and that she can no longer afford to pay the $14,798 in monthly support, along with private school tuition for her 6-year-old son Homer, the mortgage on her house in Canada where Men In Trees filmed, rent on her Los Angeles home and car expenses.

She further testifies that she has been unemployed except for "one very short-term contract for a movie role," for which she was paid $65,000, or "approximately the amount I received for one episode of Men In Trees," and that her business manager recently informed her that she has "a total of $34,840.93 in all of my accounts as of May 13, 2008." All this was compelling enough evidence for the judge to grant Heche a pass on her next month's installment. Next, Heche's lawyers may actually take the unusual strategy of arguing the financial-insanity defense, pointing as evidence to the actress's utterly insane decision to invest in the Canadian real estate market while employed on an iffy-fated series at best, as the U.S. dollar swirled 'round the shitter. It's unlikely to sway the courts, but still, all hope is not lost: With the overturning by the California Supreme Court of the gay marriage ban just minutes ago, sexuality free-agent Heche can get reacquainted with her Sapphic side, and make an honest woman out of the newly single and extremely financially stable Jodie Foster!

• Anne Heche: I Can't Afford Child Support [People]
• Anne Heche Crazy Broke [TMZ]

In documents filed in L.A. Superior Court, Laffoon accuses Heche of taking a number of items - including the master bed and yoga-room rugs - from the L.A. home they share. (Under the terms of a judge's temporary order, they alternate use of the house while Heche is in Los Angeles.) [...]

Laffoon also alleges that when he returned to the home July 1 and found the furniture missing, he also "discovered that [Heche] had gone into my closet and ripped the buttons off of 19 of my shirts and removed some of my pants."

Heche denies any wrongdoing, insisting the items either never existed or were hers to begin with, and convincingly feigned complete ignorance when presented with a copy of the Xeroxed flyer still stapled to many telephone poles around the neighborhood, reading, "DIVORCE BLOWOUT YARD SALE AT CASA HECHE! YOGA-ROOM RUGS, POKER TABLE, MY USELESS EX-HUSBAND'S PANTS, BAG O' BUTTONS. EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!"

• Anne Heche, Coley Laffoon Battle Over Furniture [People.com]

TMZ has learned that a judge wasn't crazy about Anne Heche, and awarded estranged hubby Coley Laffoon physical custody of 5-year-old son Homer, with alternate weekend visits for Anne...

The judge also awarded Coley child and spousal support, exact amounts unknown.

The disintegration of the celebrity nuclear family is never easy, and we can't help but feel for little Homer, who'll be reminded every second weekend by his dad how it's time to pay a visit to "that crazy bitc—I mean, your mom, who loves you very much. And if she tries to do something 'fun' with you like cover the cat in chocolate frosting again, I want you to call me right away. Think you can do that for me, little man?" before having his hair tussled and finding himself nudged towards the parting automatic gates.

UPDATE:The story, as it turns out, is completely inaccurate: Heche and Laffoon will equally share custody of their child while she is in L.A., but when she's shooting Men In Trees in Vancouver, she gets custody every other weekend.

• Heche's Hubby Gets Custody [TMZ]

Heche says in court papers that although Laffoon claims to be a stay-at-home dad, he actually leaves their 5-year-old son Homer "with nannies and babysitters while he plays ping-pong, backgammon and poker and views pornography online.

"He holds a poker game at his home every Thursday night and allows Homer to participate," the Men in Trees stars says in a Los Angeles Superior Court filing released Thursday.

She adds that Laffoon bragged to cast members of her show, taped in Vancouver, that he "knew each strip joint in town."

Laffoon is hardly the first emasculated and underemployed Hollywood husband to turn to the temporary, boredom-alleviating comforts of online erotica and table tennis after his far more successful wife hiked up her slacks and headed out every day to earn a living. But in this "damned if he does" scenario, even when a guy tries to spend some quality time with his five-year-old son, propping him in a booster seat and setting him in a cigar-smoke-filled room alongside his best buddies from Club Exotique, it somehow gets twisted into an example of bad parenting. It's almost enough to make you regret marrying the successful, albeit slightly batshit insane, actress you once managed to convince yourself was the love of your work-averse life.

• Anne Heche Divorce Papers: Poker, Porn, Strippers [People]

Coley Laffoon is asking a judge for joint custody of the couple's 5-year-old son Homer, but claims that Anne's "bizarre and delusional behavior" and "poor parenting skills" could be a problem. In the papers, Laffoon claims that Anne once didn't put Homer in a car seat, she often cusses in front of the child, and packed school lunches that Homer "did not like." Laffoon added that his prior experience as a nanny and a summer camp counselor justify giving him joint custody.

Laffoon is also asking for $33,000 a month in spousal support, even though he claims he only made $6,000 a year as a videographer, before the two were married. According to the documents, Heche makes $81,000 an episode for her role in "Men In Trees."

While unhinged meal preparation alone might not be enough to throw one's parenting skills into question—although there's really few things more scarring for a first grader than to open a TMNT lunchbox and find some freshly cleaned roadkill and a Thermos full of cat urine inside—Heche's long history of well-documented mental illness could only serve to bolster Laffoon's case. It's a sad affair from which emerge no winners, and precisely the kind of thing for which an afternoon spent loading up on complimentary crap at an upfronts swag suite provides some temporary, designer-freebie-induced comfort.

• Heche's Ex: Anne Is Delusional! [TMZ]
• Stars load up on gifts during upfronts [Yahoo/AP]

He started gently, asking for a "status report" on how Ms. Heche was "doing."

"It seems like you're totally ... ," he paused, searching for the most respectful word.

"Sane?" Heche suggested.

"Sane," he confirmed, with more than a little relief that Heche herself had said it.

"I'll let myself speak for myself," she said confidently. "Obviously I'm sitting up here with a group of incredible people.

While the wording may seem unusual, rest assured that for Heche, allowing "herself to speak for herself" comes only after having made great strides in the sanity department. As recently as the Seven Days and Seven Nights press junket, for example, the actress would respond to every question by insisting on having "her people" speak for her; then, following a series of bizarre tongue clicks and eye rolls, she'd begin to channel the raspy, smoker's tones of "Linda," the highly protective "publicist" who lived inside her head.

• Anne Heche No Longer Crazy [Critical Eye]