An earlier version of this article incorrectly included entrepreneur Stephen Bing as a participant to testify before a grand jury.

Someone's lawyers called a certain major newspaper! Bing is always quick to 'correct' unflattering stories about him in the press.

So let it be known: scuzzy rich real estate heir, developer, and major Democratic party fundraiser Steve Bing will not testify to the grand jury about how he hired criminal wiretapping private eye Anthony Pellicano for some sort of matter related to his messy paternity case with Elizabeth Hurley while Pellicano was secretly actually working for billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who was paying Pellicano to figure out that Kerkorian's ex-wife's daughter was actually fathered by Bing. For the record!

And guess who is crazy: action film director John McTiernan. He's just directed The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, an inaction film of sorts about how his indictment in the Pellicano case was politically motivated.

See, McTiernan had Pellicano wiretap a producer he was fighting over money with and then the FBI called him about it, and McTiernan was all "nope I didn't do that," and, well, that is not legal, to make false statements to the FBI. McTiernan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in proson. But then McTiernan got mad that he was the only rich Hollywood prick facing actual jail time over this mess, so he fired his lawyers and withdrew his plea and made this documentary, apparently. He's due to be reindicted.

Anyway. McTiernan has never really thought he should get any jail time for his crime, and he's made it clear from day one that because he is a rich and successful director who is also, at heart, a Good Person, he should not be punished for lying about having everyone wiretapped. How dare they prosecute a man who's always portrayed the FBI in a positive light?

She also scolded Mr. McTiernan for saying in an e-mail message to his previous lawyer that he was "offended" at the idea he could be prosecuted because he had "refused to make movies in which F.B.I. agents are the bad guys," and for complaining that his legal woes could get in the way of his making a "patriotic movie."

McTiernan apparently doesn't remember how when the FBI shows up in Die Hard they are all working from the old terrorist playbook, and Gruber is playing them for saps, and only McClane and lowly LAPD desk jockey Reginald ValJohnson are interested in actually stopping those sons of bitches. Remember? Agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation? God, that movie rules. Anyway. The FBI are not "bad guys" in that movie but they are getting in the way of McClane doing his job, dammit, which is why, 20 years later, director John McTiernan had to lie to them.

Sadly this new movie does not look as awesome as Die Hard, or Die Hard With a Vengeance, which is just as awesome. This new movie looks as bad as Rollerball, frankly.

According to The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, the entire Pellicano case was all about digging up dirt for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign video, because that makes sense. Why else but to derail Hillary would anyone go after noted Great American Ron Burkle?

The film notes that the prosecution allowed federal officials to compel two of Mrs. Clinton's biggest contributors - the entrepreneurs Ron Burkle and Stephen Bing - to testify before a grand jury. Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Now it is actually certainly true that politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of prominent Democrats were one of the many dirty deeds of the Bush administration, but they were more likely to go after people like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman than to target a scummy Hollywood private eye and the assholes who hired him.

We think McTiernan should cut a deal with the prosecutors: they will not re-indict him if he stops making weird conspiracy documentaries and signs on instead to Die Hard 5.

Pellicano, 64, was convicted last May of 78 counts of wiretapping, wire fraud, racketeering and conspiracy that ensnared eventual trial witnesses Chris Rock, Michael Ovitz, Brad Grey, Bert Fields and former LA Times journalist Anita Busch, the latter of whose searing testimony earlier this year was recalled in one final scold today before sentencing. The term was decidedly longer than the five-year, 10-month sentence originally recommended by the Probation Department; Pellicano and two of his co-defendants will also be responsible for paying $2 million in fines and restitution. That should keep his wife and daughters busy for a while; good luck to them, and good riddance to the Pelican.

• Pellicano sentenced to 15 years [Variety]

• Pellicano gets 15 years in wiretapping case [LAT]

Titled The Pellicano Girls, the show would revolve around Pellicano matriarch Kat and the couple's three daughters—Alana, 21; Tori, 18; and Josi, 17. A good portion of the action is devoted to Kat's daily struggles trying to maintain the lifestyle they've enjoyed as a result of her husband's successful business dealings as Hollywood's #1 goldigging-whore-silencer to the stars. But were that all, for the three comely girls (we'll assume they're comely—they don't make reality shows about three sisters unless there's at least one Kim in the bunch) are also hot on the trail of their father's open cases:

But the backbone of "The Pellicano Girls" will be their attempts to run a private investigation company with Anthony in jail. The producers call it a mix between "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and "Charlie's Angels" — with Anthony Pellicano in the Charlie role, Kat Pellicano a modern-day Bosley and the daughters as the Angels.

Following that logic, we anticipate that Pellicano Angel Josi—the Jill Munroe of the bunch—will be the first to enjoy breakout success and move on to a moderately successful movie career. That will require her to be replaced with another Pellicano sister we've never heard mention of until her exciting debut, in which she's instructed by her dad to "go make sure Anita Busch never talks again. I don't care how you do it, Kris Pellicano, just get 'er did."

• Pellicano 'Girls' to get reality show [Variety]

The LA Times's Carla Hall, meanwhile, has courtroom sketches:

Before the verdicts were read, Pellicano seemed at ease, grinning and scanning the room. But when he realized the jury had found him guilty, he crossed his arms, took his glasses off and looked around with a blank expression. A woman on the jury dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

We cried a little, too, for all the potential laid waste in this clusterfuck of justice: The potential for Anita Busch's comeback after Pellicano's dead-fish threat and wiretaps ended her career. The potential for Busch-destroyer Michael Ovitz to get a shovel in the back of the neck after slithering off the witness stand. The potential for the bottomless filth of Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields' testimony, which never came. The potential for "Mr. Pellicano," as he was forced to refer to himself as his own counsel, to just say, "Yeah, fuck it. Put me away; let's all go home." Or the potential for us to give half a shit this was even happening, day after drawn-out day, even under the threat of mistrial.

Pellicano is indeed going home — like "federal prison" home, up to 10 years' worth, we hear. He'd be 74 when he got out, with a few years left to enjoy the fruits of keeping his mouth shut: A couple well-scrubbed dollars trickling in now and then from grateful clients to whom he's anything but the footnote the rest of us will know. At the end of the day — especially today — we struggle to care but somehow wish there was more, as if it was all just about to get good.

Alas, the end is as good as it gets, when we can at last peel away the "alleged" and say yeah, the fucker did it. Finally. And good riddance.

[Photo Credit: LAT]

• Pellicano found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy [LAT]

And then, there were his final comments to the jury—probably the most entertaining final close that I've ever heard. "Mr. Pellicano refuses to insult your intelligence," he said of himself. "Mr. Pellicano told you that the evidence will show what the evidence shows and it clearly does." ...

Finally, he had one last thought for the jury. "Mr. Pellicano had instructed me not to stand up here and try to sway you, and you know that people do what Mr. Pellicano says," he argued, prompting the judge to cover her face with her hand to conceal her laughter. ""So, I'm going to do what Mr. Pellicano says." And with that, he thanked the jury for their service and walked over to his chair with a big smile on his face.

The only thing that could improve this episode is to imagine a sign-language interpreter struggling to keep up with the defendant's court-mandated self-referentiality, stabbing repeatedly at her chest while Pellicano speeds up his third-person hijinks. Alas, the resultant injuries would force yet another criminal trial for the disgraced detective, thus launching an endless cycle of self-defense from which Weiner and the rest of a tired Hollywood would likely never extract themselves. We will not miss Pellicano when he inevitably shuffles upriver, but we can't help but appreciate the glints of dark humor his downfall has brought to our lives. Thanks a million, Pelican. Now get the fuck out of here.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Pellicano Delivers Own (Hysterical) Closing Arguments [HuffPo]

· Tom Wolfe's sex-at-college novel I Am Charlotte Simmons (how's that for distilling 752 pages into one compound modifier?) will be directed by music video vet Liz Friedlander, to be eventually followed by Medusa's Pom Pom, a tell-all exposé detailing what went wrong behind the scenes of the box office dud. [THR]
· Closing arguments in the Pellicano trial begin today. [THR]
· Les Moonves pledged this morning that Showtime "would not miss a beat," despite having lost output deals with Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate to a new, yet-to-be-named premium cable channel, as that decision has effectively "freed up $300 million" to lavish on "more original programming like the one with all the lesbians going at it." [THR]

It's a loooong story, as Weiner writes, but let it suffice to say that the witness is waiting around to be advised of her Fifth Amendment rights, and Arneson's attorney doubts that his client's character can be restored as the trial winds down. We don't (or won't or can't) believe for a second that this is enough for an honest-to-God mistrial, but Weiner's the lawyer among us, so we defer to her — for now, anyway. We'll keep our fingers crossed and our eyes on it.

• Pellicano Trial: A Possible Mistrial? [HuffPo]

Under stern cross-examination by Pellicano, who was wearing green prison drab and white sneakers, Busch became emotional again.

"I was scared 24/7 for my life," she said. "I didn't know how I was going to survive financially. I thought (the book) would be the way to do it, but I realized it was not the right way. It was a big mistake. After the threats and everything happened to me, I couldn't focus. Because of the wiretap, my sources fell away. I struggled to be a journalist, but I couldn't continue. I couldn't see a future, I saw everything slipping away. I didn't know what I was going to do."

At this point Busch couldn't speak and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "It was a relentless attack, Mr. Pellicano, as you know."

The judge wasn't having any of that. Nor, alas, will he have any more of Ovitz slithering out of a criminal courtroom; as Allison Hope Weiner noted late Wednesday at The Huffington Post, California's statute of limitations put an end to that hope:

A source close to the case (who didn't want to be identified because they believe that Mr. Ovitz should have been charged) happened to mention that the statute runs out today on any charges in connection with Mr. Ovitz's alleged wiretapping of his enemies (including Ms. Busch). So, the good news for Mr. Ovitz is that unless he committed perjury today during his testimony today, he's in the clear.

However, Busch's civil case against Ovitz still has a future pending the outcome of the Pellicano verdict, and there's always that hovering rumor of CAA's Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane laying waste to their former boss with a civil charge of their own. God's spokespeople, meanwhile, declined comment on the status of Ovitz's pending damnation, suggesting the potential civil verdicts would eventually influence the temperature of his eternity. We can hardly wait.

• Busch, Pellicano face off [Variety]
• Ovitz in the Spotlight and in the Clear... [The Huffington Post]

Talking about how difficult a time he was having selling his company AMG in May, 2002, Mr. Ovitz tried to elicit sympathy from the jury while he talked about using Mr. Pellicano to get "embarrassing information" on his enemies. "Yes, it was an extraordinarily difficult time for the company and for me," he said, looking pained by the memory. "There was all this negative press saying we had client problems and financial problems. There were morale problems as well."

"All I wanted was a graceful exit from the business," explained Mr. Ovitz. And, apparently, in order to get that graceful exit, he needed to stop the articles being written by [Anita] Busch and [Bernard] Weinraub. As to the information Pellicano gave him, Mr. Ovitz expressed gratitude to Mr. Pellicano for providing such good stuff. "It was incredibly helpful to me," he said of the information.

Naturally, HuffPo correspondent and resident A/V geektress Allison Hope Weiner has audio excerpts of Ovitz's pants-pissing chats with Pellicano, while Nikki Finke just published brief testimony transcripts Ovitz fingering Ron Meyer and David Geffen as sources of the ever-threatening Busch/Weinraub articles in The New York Times. Meanwhile, court is in recess until Thursday pending the clean up of acrid old douche around the witness stand.

• Pellicano Trial: Michael Ovitz Testifies About How Much He Appreciated The Information He Got [HuffPo]
• Ovitz Testifies Busch/Weinraub NYT Articles "Wildly Embarrassing" [DHD]

But first things first. Var reporter Diane Garrett only minutes ago broke the scoop that Chris Rock has a problem with cross-examination:

Rock had testified that he sought Pellicano's services at the advice of his attorney when a one-night stand kept insisting that he was father of her child. When [attorney Chad] Hummel referred to Rock's "belief" that he was not the father, the comedian got visibly annoyed.

"That was not a belief of mine," Rock clarified. "It was true."

When Hummel then probed why Rock thought the model's claims were a shakedown, he replied: "Someone who was not pregnant with my child claimed to be pregnant with my child and requested large sums of money."

We all know how that went, but we're especially interested to see what shakes down in Weiner's case. The HuffPo blogger leaked the Chris Rock tapes and recently irritated scary Hollywood lawyer Bert Fields with her reports that he would take the Fifth Amendment in his own testimony; that passed, but after being approached Thursday while retrieving her mobile phone from the courthouse hall, indeed, Weiner got served:

The journo, who has a law degree, said it was the first time she had been served. She previously raised eyebrows for invoking her legal status to gain access to Pellicano in jail while covering the story for the New York Times.

The restraining order did not deter Weiner from continuing to report on the trial, however. Within an hour she was blogging away from a bench outside the courtroom.

A woman after our own hearts, though if we're being honest, we've never passed up the opportunities our own restraining orders have afforded us for a day off. Or at least an early lunch. We presume Arianna would understand; it's not like she's paying anybody or anything.

• Rock takes stand in Pellicano case [Variety]

• Weiner gets served in Pellicano case [Variety]

Pellicano himself fed speculation that the CAA partners suspected the shamus of bugging their offices last week when Huvane and Lourd testified at his trial. Acting as his own lawyer, Pellicano asked Huvane if he knew a private investigator named Richard Di Sabatino.

The judge said Huvane didn't have to answer the question. But Di Sabatino is known to specialize in "electronic countermeasures" - detecting evesdropping devices - a service he reportedly provided Nicole Kidman during her divorce from Tom Cruise. Di Sabatino declined comment.

Pellicano's spectacular self-destruction — often accompanied by these gleeful grabs at anyone he can take down with him — are of course their own galactic phenomena; as such, a CAA rep dutifully denied reports that Lourd and Huvane are planning a lawsuit against Ovitz. Still, a well-placed source likes the duo's chances for "invasion of privacy and tortuous interference of business opportunity" if/when Pellicano gets sent away, as if they need an anonymous lawyer to excuse their urge to fire a hot, colorful conflagration into Ovitz's living room. The Death Star waits for no verdict.

[Photo Credit: Getty]

• Feud with Ovitz spied [NYDN]

As Timesman David Halbfinger noted from court:

Mr. Pellicano said that "if I wanted to, I could basically authorize him" to have Mr. Russo "murdered on the way back from Las Vegas," Mr. Sender testified. "He would have someone follow him back, drive him off the road and bury his body somewhere in the desert." Mr. Sender said he had declined.

On cross-examination, Mr. Pellicano, acting as his own lawyer and speaking of himself in the third person, seemed more concerned with getting his own words right than with disputing Mr. Sender's account. He does not face any charges related to Mr. Sender's statements.

"Didn't Mr. Pellicano say, 'You've spent all this money, why don't you just whack him?' " Mr. Pellicano asked. "Didn't Mr. Pellicano say, 'If you feel so badly about it, why don't you just have him killed?' "

There were no misquotes or decontextualizations on the recordings of Sender and Pellicano's phone chats obtained by The Huffington Post, which feature Sender giving the PI a budget of $200,000 to "do whatever you feel will make this cocksucker as unhappy as possible. ... I'd like to make the fucking asshole as uncomfortable as possible." Sender ultimately recouped $25,000 after forking more than 10 times that much Fields's way. Russo, meanwhile, died last year after a protracted battle with cancer. So heavy! We never thought we'd say this, but wake us when Garry Shandling comes back.

• Offer of a Murder Surfaces at Wiretap Trial [NYT]
• Pellicano Trial Exclusive: Hear The Recordings Of Adam Sender [Huffington Post]

• Previously: Bert Fields Takes The Fifth! And Other Tales Of Pellicano Intrigue [Defamer]
• EXCLUSIVE! BERT FIELDS WILL TESTIFY (...And Won't Take The Fifth) [deadlinehollywooddaily.com]

· Anita Busch is the reporter whose snooping into the dealings of axe-shredding blackbelt and energy beverage purveyor Steven Segal she claims led to colorful threats on her life, and set Pellicano's house of cards a-tumbling. (Soon to be dramatized in Starz!'s gripping true-crime drama, The Car, The Fish, and The Rose.) In assessing the NY Times's recent Busch profile, Deadline Hollywood Daily insists there's no there there, rattling off a series of "inexplicably"s and missed opportunities that flew clear over our heads. Michael Ovitz's name is evoked, however, and that's never a good thing. (Seagal, meanwhile, vigorously maintains his innocence, and would like his career back now KTHXBAI.) [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
· The recorder becomes the recorded, as once again Pellicano's own audio tapes are used to bury him. Last time, it was when he pledged to his "honey" Chris Rock that he'd "blacken this [rapist-accusing] girl up for you left and right." This time, Pellicano was blasted throughout the courtroom telling attorney Peter Knect that his client, Bilal Baroody, owed Pellicano's client, Universal head Ron Meyer, $300,000, sweetly adding the sentiment, "His life is about to change exponentially unless he pays this money back." (What—no flowers or fish?) [HuffPo]
· Then, Rollerball producer Charles Roven took the stand. Another tape was played: "The jury heard Mr. Pellicano tell director John McTiernan...that he was in the middle of wiretapping Mr. Roven...Mr. Pellicano made a pitch to McTiernan, asking him to come help out and listen to the calls so he could figure out what was important in Mr. Roven's conversations. Mr. McTiernan replied that he was a bit too busy, but suggested sending his then girlfriend..." There's ltos more where that came from over at HuffPo. [HuffPo]