The Wrap is reporting that the studio already has nixed the scene where LaToya eats sushi off a naked Latino gardener and Bruno fiddles with her PDA. Supposedly this kind of extremely last-minute (the film comes out on July 10th) edit will cost Universal millions.

Kim Masters writes about the "controversy" in a more speculative tone, wondering if the edit is even necessary.

"It so transgresses the question of taste-you cut it, I think," says a former studio president not associated with the film. "You certainly have a conversation about it. You examine it very carefully."

A veteran marketing executive disagrees. "It wasn't like they shot it and [Michael Jackson] was 85 years old and they expected him to die," she says. "It's just another one on the list of controversial issues surrounding Brüno." But if the Jackson family asks that the sequence be deleted, she adds, that will create a problem.

The point about the expectation of death is a good one. To avoid the matter entirely, to blot it out like it never happened, seems a bit scaredy-cat. The intentions are what ultimately matter, and while Sacha Baron Cohen's intentions are never altruistic, he certainly never intended to make a morbid death joke.

But, yeah, if the family asks nicely? We say cut the damn thing. There's always the Special Edition "Wacko Jacko" DVD, after all.

This story is all over the internet tonight, but seriously, hasn't suicide been pretty much ruled out by the release of the death scene photos, not to mention the leaks to the media by investigators indicating that there was some serious kink going on in Carradine's hotel room? Regardless, here's what Baden told the Daily News:

After doing the autopsy, reviewing all the findings and the information we have so far, I had sufficient information to rule out suicide. In order to arrive at a proper manner of death, we have to combine the autopsy findings with evidence from the scene and laboratory findings, which could take a few weeks. The family is getting all that through the State Department, the FBI and the Thai authorities. That would include the entire file, whatever is seen by police, everything at the scene and everything from the crime lab and toxicology tests.

Whatever, we're sticking by our belief that fake death-jerk staging ninjas are behind this, and Baden said nothing today that rules that out.

UPDATE: Cityfile's Remy Stern emailed to inform us that Michael Baden has a bit of a checkered past. He was fired from his position as the city's chief medical examiner by then Mayor Ed Koch for mishandling evidence and for "his inability to work smoothly inside the criminal-justice system." He now appears regularly as a forensic "expert" on Fox News. We don't think that this renders his findings insignificant, but it is sort of interesting.

Famed New York Forensics Expert: David Carradine Death Was Not Suicide [Daily News]

Carradine's ex-wife told Radaronline (naturally) that tying himself up was nothing new for the "kinky" Carradine:

Jensen told Radar that she'd often discover her husband nearly naked and bound at the wrists in their bedroom, or in front of the family fireplace.

But she also said that he did not tie himself up for autoerotic masturbation—just to "relax."

Of course, it's not so surprising that he didn't autoerotically masturbate in front of his wife, so her knowledge is probably limited. But just because a coroner rules that he died that way doesn't necessarily rule out the presence of someone else in the room with him—perhaps "secret societies of martial artists" out to do harm to the sensei. So the mystery of Carradine's death endures.

Altogether probably not the way he would have chosen to go out.

Carradine, 72, was found naked in a closet in an upscale Bangkok hotel on Thursday with cords around his neck and his genitals. The police are checking DNA found on the cords, but say they found no signs of a struggle, suggesting that Carradine might have either tied himself up or submitted voluntarily to his incapacitation.

Thai police seem to be insinuating that it was one of those choke-yourself-and-masturbate things where then the person slips or whatever and dies (although they're not sure if he was alone or not). Carradine's friends are universally of the opinion that he wouldn't kill himself. A full autopsy is scheduled to come out on Saturday.

Celebrities, please take this to heart: just masturbate in a normal fashion. You all love autoerotic asphyxiation until it kills you. And haven't we already learned the consequences of tying a cord around your genitals?

Update: And, as it turns out, Carradine's ex-wife once accused him of participating in "deviant sexual behavior which was potentially deadly" and of having an "incestuous relationship with a very close family member." Terrific. [TSG]

The constantly changing versions of the events surrounding Jett's death have gripped the public's imagination because it is so congruent with the story of his father's life. John Travolta would have us believe that he is normal; that he is not a member of a crazy cult; and that he is straight. At least two of those things are false.

Let's count the inconsistencies, which extend back long before Jett's tragic passing:

• Jett's parents, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, adherents of Scientology, have long maintained that Jett suffered from Kawasaki disease, an immune disorder which causes inflammation of blood vessels. But Kawasaki disease is not linked to seizures, according to medical experts.
• When they weren't blaming Kawasaki disease, they publicly maintained Jett's health was fine, even though many in Hollywood believed Jett suffered from autism. And suddenly, after his death, we learn that Jett wasn't fine; rather, he was constantly supervised by two nannies and a baby monitor.
• Autism would explain Jett's disturbingly affectless appearance in public; about a third of people with autism also suffer seizures. Travolta and Preston are followers of Scientology, which believes conditions like autism are all in the victim's head — that they are "degraded beings" requiring "purification." Preston has said in the past that Jett underwent a Scientology purification, which reportedly involves high doses of niacin.
• Police in the Bahamas said Jett, who was found unconscious late on New Year's Day in his parents' condo and died at a hospital shortly afterward, had struck his head, and reported blood on the scene. The nanny who found him, Jeff Kathrein, a Scientologist wedding photographer hired by Jett's parents, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, was once spotted in an intimate kiss with Jett's father. Police said Jett was alone for hours, after last being seen the evening of January 1; a family lawyer maintained that Kathrein, who slept eight feet away from Jett, found him almost right away.
• A funeral director hired by the family said there was no sign of a bruise and that Jett's body "looked great." The cause of death on Jett's death certificate was listed simply as a seizure.
• Two chartered planes and a police hearse, ostensibly carrying Jett's remains, waited on the tarmac Monday, as Bahamian police blocked access. It was a ruse: Jett's body was being cremated at the time, and the family planned to fly his ashes back to Florida on Tuesday.

Jett, in reality, had a rounder face. But so what? The need to airbrush away Jett's chin is the perfect metaphor for the pathetic misdirections and deceptions the Travoltas have engaged in. What they're covering up is not worth covering up. This is not some grand crusade for the truth — which in the end is the simple and tragic tale of a teen boy dying too young. The lies, big and small, that Travolta tells aren't for Jett. They're for him to maintain his fake public image. He asks us, out of politeness or gullibility, to swallow it whole.

Yes, everyone wants to let the family grieve. Let them grieve — but Jett Travolta is the only one who should lie in peace.

First, and perhaps most notably, Kitt lent her delicious purr to its most inevitable use when she took over the role of Catwoman on Batman in the 1960s. Here's a clip of the actress at full seductive powers; as Batman confides to Robin, "She may be evil, but she is attractive."

As her Catwoman stint proved, when Kitt was bad, she was never better. Thus, her song finding heavy rotation in Defamer HQ today is not "Santa Baby" but the wickedly entertaining "I Want to Be Evil." Rest in peace, Eartha; today, we'll scratch and hiss in your honor.

• 'Santa Baby' Singer Eartha Kitt Dies [People]

I still use this little survival mechanism to get through the scary scenes in movies. It's amazing how covering your ears, rather than your eyes, makes it all much more bearable. Plus, I wouldn't want to miss the best parts: the spatter of gore when the infected lady explodes; the crunch of the monster's gigantic mouth through the annoying dude's neck; the boiling pool of bloodslime where the ladies stab each other with rock-climbing equipment while a monster looks on; the giant alien orgy where some poor sucker gets dissolved and eaten.

So I have trained myself to watch horror movies, using little tools like fingers-in-the-ears and watching so many flicks in the genre that I know what will happen before the director does. And I'm willing to admit that I pay a little price in my electricity bills every month. That's right: I can't sleep without leaving the hall light on. I've got too many excellent eviscerations packed into my imagination to ever sleep soundly again.

Why do I do it? Why do we all do it? Here are five reasons — they may not be good reasons, but I guarantee that they are true.

To Survive
As I have already pointed out with my little story about Invasion of the Body Snatchers, part of the fun of every horror flick is getting through it alive. I am a firm believer that the right way to watch horror is not to distance yourself from it, but to plunge in and let yourself be completely credulous and scared. Sure the monster in Neil Marshall's amazing spelunking horror flick The Descent was a little cheesy, but watching those women get deeper and deeper into the dark tunnels, more and more lost, squeezing through the claustrophobic, dirty spaces and into madness — if you let yourself feel the horror of the situation, you'll be thrummingly high on relief when the flick ends.

To Take Your Secret Thoughts to Their Most Extreme — and Laugh
When I first saw Stuart Gordon's mad doctor gorefest Re-Animator, it was like a revelation. There were all these gross brain-operation scenes, and headless zombies, and people drooling blood. And that was good, but I'd been over that terrain before. But then came the moment of pure breakout genius. The headless zombie bad guy, whose body carries his head around in a bowling bag, finally kidnaps the lady he's been wanting to hook up with. His body straps the lady to a medical table, and proceeds to jam his severed head between her wiggling legs. He's giving her head! Also, holy crap what the fuck. Director Gordon WENT THERE. I mean, he wasn't afraid to just show you the most fucked up thing he could possibly imagine. How could even your weirdest private thoughts ever seem disturbing once you've laughed at the most fucked-up thing in the universe? Same goes for the moment in Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage where the main character's penis-shaped parasite hides in his jeans and pops out to eat the brains of a girl who is just trying to give him a nice blowjob. Damn. I will never feel weird about any of my random fantasies ever again, because they can't top what Henenlotter actually committed to film.

To Let Everyone in on Your Nightmares
All of us have dark thoughts, but probably some of us more than others. I'm one of the ones with the ultra-super-dark thoughts — and my dreams are even worse. But the whole situation becomes a hell of a lot more bearable, and even fun, when some of those dark thoughts are realized in film. After all, most of our dark thoughts aren't really unique or special. That's why I will always treasure David Cronenberg's mad gynecologist movie Dead Ringers. Those gynecological tools for mutant women, pictured below? Oh yeah, I imagined stuff like that about twenty million times before I saw them in his flick. And now I can force all my friends to think about them with me when we watch the movie together. Same goes for the lady impregnated by aliens in Slither, who grows to the size of a barn before exploding with all those sperm-shaped baby aliens going everywhere. Sick, but I've dreamed that one too. Welcome to my mind. Nice to have company in here!

To Speak the Unspeakable
It may be hard to articulate what's wrong with your city, your sexuality, or your relationship with your boss. That's why horror does it for you, in grisly, unsparing detail. While the movie Akira is usually billed as pure scifi, anybody who has watched the grotesque physical mutation-explosion of the gangster-psychic Tetsuo at the end knows that it's also a terrifying look at the unspoken but well-known psychological consequences of poverty in the city. And anyone who has ever quietly suspected her boss might be controlling the fabric of reality was rewarded by that scene in The Matrix when Neo is kidnapped by Agent Smith, told to be a good little worker, and then tortured and implanted with a tiny robot while his mouth is sewn shut. In a few months, when Frank Henenlotter's latest movie Bad Biology hits theaters, we're about to get a good dose of inexpressible sexual panic in a tale of a guy whose giant cock is both detachable and addicted to drugs — so it's always running away to score some dope. I know the feeling. But I wouldn't have been able to tell you about it without the help of Henenlotter's film.

To Shove a Big Spiny Stick Up Rationality's Ass
The great part about science horror, full of mad doctors doping themselves with Hyde serum and physics experiments gone wrong, is that they are a slap in the face to so-called rationality. How many times have you heard someone describe the "rational thing to do" and known that it was also the worst, scariest thing to do? Sure, it was "rational" to try to get samples of those aliens in the first Alien flick; and it was "rational" to put that futuristic Prozac in the air of that planet in Serenity that created the rapin, cannibalizin' Reavers; and it was rational to genetically engineer dinosaurs for a cool new theme park in Jurassic Park. All those things were done with pure science in mind (and a little profit). My point? Scientific rationality is great and all, but scifi horror is here to remind you suckas that sometimes you need to check with your ethics and all that mushy crap before experimenting on people's brains or messing around with outer-space superweapons that you don't understand. Your science won't save you when the Hulk comes around to beat your sorry ass.

· Film director Ingmar Bergman dies at 89 [MSNBC]
· Tom Snyder of 'Tomorrow Show' Dies at 71 [Forbes.com]
· 'La Cage aux Folles' actor dies [CNN.com]