In the middle of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, American handed over $35.3 million worthof its unemployment payments to Vaughn, Favreau and the gang. And honestly, its not for us we grieve; its for the children, who the reckless audiences of this weekend have thus doomed to approximately 27 more Vaughn films featuring him being hectored by a dismally joyless spouse who forces him to go somewhere uptight and boring, disrupting his playtime with even more hapless sidekick who is being driven close to suicide by his even more dismally joyless spouse. The children of tomorrow, when they reach PG-13 eligibility, will look back on the decisions America made today and curse our spirits, willing us to wander the earth unburied and unmourned for all eternity.

In their write-ups, the box office pundits are all but dying to avert their eyes from the Vaureau nightmare and talk about the far more trendworthy story of Paranormal Activity's viral driven success. Playing in college towns on a mere 160 screens (compared to Couples Retreat's 3000), the low-budget horror film raked in 7.1 million dollars, a number that Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray says,

broke the minor record for highest-grossing weekend ever for a movie playing at less than 200 theaters, exceeding Platoon's $3.7 million at 174 sites (which would be on par adjusted for ticket-price inflation).

There's nothing the showbiz press likes better than a marketing phenomenon. It's been a decade since Blair Witch came along and turned the dominant paradigm on its head and changed showbiz forever, kinda. I mean, it was huge, right?...And three years since Snakes on a Plane reset..since Snakes on a Plane....Well, anyway.

Also astounding on the weekend chart is the number of recently mega-hyped films that seem miles away from catching fire. Bruce Willis' big-budget Surrogates is fading away in the 30 million range, likely a fraction of the total cost. Miles of ink and solid word of mouth don't seem to be able to propel Whip It over the ten million line, Fame is sputtering away at 20. And the latest Michael Moore is losing steam at 9 million; swell for a doc but less than a tenth his Fahrenheit heights.

There is a 3 minute sex scene set to Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' during the climax of Warner Bro's The Watchmen. Warner Bros. has just announced that they've reach their own climax: the 1 Billion dollar mark in domestic grosses this year. Movies like 17 Again, Friday the 13th, Gran Torino, The Hangover, He's Just Not That Into You and Watchmen and uh, some wizard movie have added to the cash orgy. [ Variety ]

NBC Universal lost 41% in profits last quarter. Execs claim the brutal economic downturn has slashed advertising. Three months ago, in the previous round of earnings, some execs said they thought the ad market had hit bottom. Industrytes point to the a certain lanky, ginger-haired late night host for their reduction in eyeballs and therefore ad revenue. The worst may not be over, yet guys! [ Variety ]

Trucks that do things! Humans that love them! Aliens who fear them! Coming up next in your dreary Hollywood adaptation: Voltron. [THR]

Twilight news that doesn't involve the dreamy undead! Billion-Dollar-Having Warner Bros. and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way are moving ahead on a Twilight Zone movie, hiring Rand Ravich to pen a script based on the iconic Twilight Zone TV series. [ Variety ]

Silky-voiced actor Morgan Freeman is "in talks" alongside shiny-headed Bruce Willis to star in Summit Entertainment's espionage thriller "Red," based on the WildStorm/DC Comic. [Variety]

Alert your fellow book club members! Tell your spiritually starved mother! Alert your knitting circle! Casting for the movie adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love is almost complete. So far we have Julia Roberts, Viola Davis, and Richard Jenkins. [ THR ]

Convinced that Deal or No Deal can't get any better? Well think again. Not only will the show still have models and suitcases full of imaginary money, but now it will be filmed... in Waterford, Connecticut! Yes, because of tax incentives the show has switched production locations (from Culver City, CA), along with Jerry Springer, Maury, and something called the Steve Wilkos Show (which will all film in the same studio complex in beautiful downtown Stamford.) I can't wait until they start shooting Gossip Girl in Bridgeport! [Variety]

An American book made into a French movie will now become an American movie. Tell No One, based on Harlan Coben's best-selling mystery novel, was an international hit last year, so now America wants in on the action. [Variety]

Dusty old codger Bruce Willis will work until he can't stand up anymore. He's in talks to star in three new action movies, despite recently turning the unthinkably ancient age of 54. One's about a detective doggedly chasing a moiderer, another's about a grizzled retired Special Ops dude, and the third is about an FBI agent going undercover into the mob (though he's probably not going to do this one). So good for him. He's tapped into that same alchemy that Harrison Ford did about ten or fifteen years ago. [THR]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rainn Wilson, maestros of quirk in their own ways, have joined Natalie Portman in the quirky sounding Hesher, about a wayward dude (Gordon-Levitt) who befriends a 13-year-old kid who's in love with a supermarket checkout girl (Portman), and who's dad (Wilson) is going through some tough times. How much you wanna bet the score involves a glockenspiel? [THR]

Hope, um, you didn't get too attached. ABC Family's Roommates series will not be picked up for a second season. Better luck next time, Tamera Mowry. In related news, Jackée Harry has been informed by her kid that her show, Jackée, Live!, will not be being performed in the living anymore. It's just too totally embarrassing for everyone. [THR]

Movie folk continue to mine the oeuvre of sci-fi meditator Philip K. Dick. The latest movie project "loosely based" on one of his stories will be The Adjustment Bureau, which Matt Damon will star in for Universal. He's got a sweetass 20% first-dollar-gross backend. Not sure what kind of coin Dick's estate is getting at this point, but I'm sure some studio will soon pay handsomely for that box of old grocery lists that's just sitting there up in the attic. [Variety]

Bruce Willis got sued for dropping out of directing and starring in Three Stories About Joan, so now he's doing what any sensible person would do, countersuing. He wants $8.7 million because the producers were apparently sneaky about not exactly having full financing for the picture. [Variety]

Pennywhistle-voiced actor Mark Wahlberg will star in Prisoners, a story about a Boston man who turns crazed vigilante when his daughter and her friend are kidnapped. It's a good thing this movie wasn't just made. [Variety]

As his garage-built time machine just doesn't seem to work, a desperate Andrew McCarthy has found another way to return to the 80's. He'll be playing Brittany Snow's father on the spin-off of Gossip Girl that's set in Los Angeles' glitz rock n' roll days. No word yet on how he plans to sneak Judd Nelson onto the set every day. [THR]

Sex and the City dystopian visionary Darren Star is returning to HBO, with a first-look deal for a new series and an agreement to help shows from other writers along. His new skein will likely be called Doin' It in an Urban Area, about four friends who drink and cry all the time. [THR]

Oh good. A Marmaduke movie. But what does this mean for Steven Soderbergh's Howard Huge? [THR]

Take Bruce Willis for example (whose "conservative credentials often are exaggerated," according to the author), Ian McKellen ("Tom Hanks' co-star in The Da Vinci Code," we're reminded) and Jodie Foster, who is, of course, a lesbian and thus thoroughly godless by default. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are outed as agnostics, meanwhile, and the feature ends with the obligatory bone-throw in the direction of God-fearing GOP actor emeritus Jon Voight.

Like you, we wondered what the real Newsmax angle might be here — if maybe they really are turning a new celeb leaf, or if this was Plan B after "Hollywood's 10 Jewishest Jews" simply proved too unwieldy a subject to whittle down on deadline. But after a second, closer, read, we think we get it: Straight-up bitterness. And not of the post-election variety either, but something far more ingrained: "You'd think hollywood stars would drop to their knees every day to give thanks for their fame, fortune, and beauty," the author notes. Maybe so, but his kind are technically responsible for The Love Guru, so let's just call it even for now, OK?

• Hollywood's
  Top 10 Atheists [Newsmax]

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Famed offspring Rumer Willis was spotted in ultra luxurious Bev Hills over the weekend sporting new crimson colored locks. When asked why she made the decision to embrace her inner big red, Willis explained it was for a string of upcoming Halloween parties. Wilis said, “This season, I’m going to go as two different people —Joan from Mad Men and Pam from The Office— and I didn’t want to wear a wig. So, I just dyed my hair and now I’ll alternate between the outfits from party to party.” Willis felt that she would go with the Pam costume when attending spooky shindigs associated with her family and the more vivacious Joan Holloway costume at other events. Willis added, “I assume that if I was dressed like Joan at my dad’s party, a lot of his friends would hit on me and I’m not sure if I’m fully comfortable with that just yet.” Also before jetting away, Willis practiced her Facebook & MySpace profile photo in the rearview mirror.

[Photo Credit: X17]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

After the jump: Ben Affleck loses his job, Billy Crystal reclaims his own, and the world contemplates another Star Wars movie.

· Ben Affleck is in talks to star as a downsized corporate hack in Company Men, which we're told calls for a second male lead as well. Matt Damon casting bets are currently paying 2:3. [THR]
· After a six-year hiatus, Billy Crystal will return to the big screen opposite Dwayne Johnson in Tooth Fairy. [Variety]
· On the heels of Capote the Hutt, would George Lucas dare to adapt the new Star Wars video game as an animated feature? On second thought, please don't answer that. [Hero Complex]
· CBS and ABC were up, Heroes was down on the fall TV season's opening night. [Variety]
· Sony is keeping the plot for its newly optioned feature White Dad "under wraps." Meanwhile, the aggressively quick thinkers at Lifetime are angling for a Latino Babysitter MOW sequel as we speak. [THR]

While Mr. Kutcher said he fared well, he proved, at least in an interview with a reporter, that he was capable of being stumped. Asked, for purposes of fact checking, to spell the name of Ms. Moore’s youngest daughter with Bruce Willis, Mr. Kutcher confessed he was suddenly drawing a blank.

For the record, it is T-a-l-l-u-l-a-h.

Silly reporter: Kutcher is a former teen male model! Asking such a creature to spell is like asking him to do math or stop poisoning his friends with Hepatitis A. It can't be done, and it shouldn't; let the pretty man scrawl his birthday cards to "Demmy," "Roomer," and "Broos" in peace!

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Know Dad’s Turf Builder, You’ll Win $250,000 [NY Times]

[T]wo days before the Oct. 29 surgery, the celebrity's people sent Trubenbach an email saying they had one condition: The actor would only write the check if Trubenbach agreed to turn over the boy's passport to his foundation.

Dumbfounded, Trubenbach asked why, but got no answer. She wouldn't do it. The celebrity pulled his offer. The surgery was going to be cancelled, Trubenbach tearfully told Brenda Hampton, a friend of hers who is also the producer of TV shows Seventh Heaven and The Secret Life of an American Teenager. On Sunday, with less than 24 hours left before the scheduled surgery, Hampton called American Express to get approval for a $180,000 purchase on her card.

Almost a year later, the kid is fixed up, and we're wondering who's got both the juice to make a deal like this and the balls to pull the plug on the eve of his surgery. Everybody in Hollywood gives, but only a few select charitable souls have their own foundations: The Bruce Willis Foundation has some history with Africa, as does (obviously) the Jolie/Pitt Foundation. Dwayne Johnson's Rock Foundation mission is "to make every child smile," but seems to mostly focus on Americans. Ideas, anyone?

• Zimbabwe village outcast embraced by O.C. school kids [OC Register]

RUMER Willis used to hate her name. The daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis tells this Sunday's Page Six Magazine that when she was 12, she realized she "got screwed."

My sisters, Scout and Talullah, had cute nicknames," she says. "When I was 12 and had crushes on guys, I'd put my first name with their last name, but it never sounded right. Rumer Depp? Nope. In school, kids would sing, 'Rumer, Rumer with a big hairy tumor.' " She also says she was shocked to be named one of People's 100 Most Beautiful People this year: "After being compared to Jay Leno for so long, you don't think of yourself in that way."

Let this be a cautionary tale to all you expecting celebrity parents. We realize children can be cruel, but really now: "Rumer, Rumer with a big hairy tumor?" And as if that weren't enough, Willis had to withstand comparisons to Jay Leno, the late night talk show equivalent of a benign, hirsute growth. Talullah didn't know how easy she had it, with a name almost impossible to rhyme with anything suitably humiliating. ("Talullah, Talullah, with all that Die Hard 2 Moolah!")

• BLAME MY NAME [Page Six]

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Cybill Shepherd pleasantly greeted the snappers outside of LAX on Tuesday afternoon. The Moonlighting star told them that they sure knew how to make a girl feel welcomed as she pulled up to airport. The snappers followed Shepherd all the way to the ticket counter, but much to Shepherd's dismay, the lens men stopped once Shepherd hit the escalator. Shepherd asked if they wanted to get some frames of her taking her shoes off and you know, acting like a regular person. They collectively shrugged their shoulders and said that they've got enough photos of people without their shoes on.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Happened? screened at Sundance and Cannes, where the movie was met by a mixed reaction spanning everything from mild bemusement to complete indifference—ultimately necessitating a release by Magnolia Pictures, backer Mark Cuban's distribution arm. And what kinds of backroom wheeler-dealing goodies await us? LAT's The Big Picture describes one scene that recreates "the time Alec Baldwin, about to star in the David Mamet-written The Edge, reported to work with a Moses-style beard, prompting a production crisis." The scene is above, with Bruce Willis playing himself but channeling the tantrum-throwing Baldwin, using the banner of artistic integrity to justify his right to retain his bearish facial outcropping. We like to picture Baldwin reacting to the scene with an equally choleric meta-rant, which Willis would ably recreate in the film's unlikely sequel, and so on and so forth, until our brains dribble out of our nostrils.

• Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture [LAT]

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Die Hard star Bruce Willis attempted to spend a nice and relaxing holiday weekend with his daughters Scout LaRue and Tallulah Belle, but things turned south when Willis explained that he wasn't able to score the kids and their friend backstage passes for an upcoming Jonas Brothers concert. The daughters wondered why he wasn't able to get tickets for the show, then quickly asked if he tried hard enough to find tickets. Willis explained that he had all two of his assistants and two of his agent's assistants spend hours searching on the internet and placing phone calls, but their efforts failed to yield any results. Scout and Tallulah looked at each other and said, "Ashton could've gotten us tickets, Dad." Willis mumbled under his breath, then pretended to get a message on his Blackberry and explained that the throng of assistants had found of a block of tickets for a Jonas Brothers concert in Orange County. The Willis sisters said, "Eww, Orange County? I guess, but can we take a helicopter there?"

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

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Celebrity offspring Rumer Willis attempted to cause a scene on the mean streets on Winnipeg, Canada. Willis coughed and hacked her way through cigarette after cigarette, hoping that one of her near by handlers/assistants would inform her parents about her new and disgusting habit. After getting dizzy and nearly passing out, Willis gave up on smoking as an attention grabber. Then she briefly considered taking embarrassing and scandalous photos of herself and posting them onto the internet, but Willis then realized that it still wouldn't get her parents attention.

[Photo Credit: Flynet]

Yes, thankfully, the athletically impressive thighs of Lake were more fully on display than those of Diaz, though the actress, making her first red carpet appearance since the passing of her father Emilio. Cameron wore one of her trademark skin-tight dresses, one that gave Gwyneth a run for her money in the clavicle flash arena. But more importantly, why so blue Ashton? And where is Mrs. Kutcher? Haven't you accompanied her and her brood to each and every single one of her flop premieres over the last few years? And she couldn't be bothered to support you at what may turn out to be a quasi-successful rom-com? Maybe ever since Bruce Willis got that manly penis piercing, Kutcher's just feeling a little impish?

[Photo credits: Getty Images]

• SMILING CAMERON DIAZ MAKES EMOTIONAL RETURN TO THE RED CARPET IN A MINI-DRESS [Daily Mail]

Which celebrity dad is just as rebellious as his starlet daughter? The troubled parent wears a ring through a piercing on his nether regions.

Hulk Hogan: Low on the list, only because Brooke hasn't quite reached "starlet" or "rebellious" levels of fame yet.
Jamie Spears: Britney has publicly outed her dad as a former drug user, and we can't think of a father/daughter pair who are more "troubled" at the moment, but somehow Jamie doesn't strike us as the manhood-piercing type.
Michael Lohan: He is a wild card, but he's also some kind of born-again missionary. We don't know much about born-agains, but we doubt they frequent piercing parlors too often.

Lionel Richie: Lionel's the kind of guy we could picture spontaneously deciding to stick some jewels in those nether regions of his. But Nicole's no longer causing him any grief, and we can't find any reason why the crooner would be "troubled" at the moment.
Bruce Willis: Most likely suspect. Rumer's rebellious, Bruce is floundering, and he's a bad ass dude. How else to prove to his extended family that Ashton will never, ever be the man he is? A pierced Segel is the obvious answer.

[Photo credits: Getty, Rob's Blog, NYDN]

• JUST ASKING [NY Post]

While Wal-Mart isn't nearly as highbrow as Versace, the fashion brand Demi modeled for in 2005, Moore was actually a hard-working model aching for a big break at 18. Rumer, now 19, is hardly struggling, and Wal-Mart, as Hilary Duff and the Olsen sisters know fully well, bring in major bucks.

And landing the role in From Within may not win Rumer any Oscar nods, but Moore didn't really break out until landing a recurring role on General Hospital at 20. So despite cheesy ad campaigns and teen romp scary movies serving as the first credits on her resume, Rumer may surprise us all and manage to live up to her mother's decades-long star status. Fingers crossed she doesn't take on any implant-requiring lap dance roles for the time being, though. Lindsay Lohan may be the only ticket-buyer.

[Photo credits: Getty, Wireimage, Flisted]

• NOW BIKINI-CLAD RUMER WILLIS RECREATES MOTHER DEMI'S FAMOUS CHARLIE'S ANGELS BEACH SCENE [Daily Mail]
• RUMER WILLIS FOR WAL-MART'S OP BRAND [Just Jared]

Back in 1994 when Bruce Willis was still with Demi and still managed to maintain that sexy tough guy image, he revealed the full monty in Color Of Night. And the industry's most dedicated fan of showing off his package, Ewan McGregor, memorably lounged naked throughout several scenes in Young Adam. And we all remember the time from a chiseled Kevin Bacon subtly proved to the world how lucky Kyra Sedgwick is via steamy shower scene in Wild Things.

Before Ewan McGregor, Harvey Keitel was Hollywood's go-to full-frontal actor, stripping down for both Bad Lieutenant and The Piano. But our all-time favorite appearance by a male actor's schlong has to go to Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights. Yes, it was a hefty prosthetic, and no, we don't learn just how much junk Marky Mark is packing, but the highly anticipated revelation of Dirk Diggler's legendary package was worth waiting two porn-y hours for back in 1997.

[Photo credits: Entertainment Weekly, Celebritycandids.com, nudemalestars.com, Maxim, malecelebrities.biz]

• 'FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL' LETS IT ALL HANG OUT [LAT]

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In a moment of clearly born out of tween rebellion and defiance, Tallulah Belle Willis rushed the paparazzi shouting: "Look at me! Look at me! I have toxic blood and I use leeches to heal myself! Look at me! Look at me! I can't be a normal mom so I have to take a bath in turpentine! Look at me!" Then her mother quickly pulled Tallulah Belle aside, less-than-calmly explaining that young ladies who behave like this way don't get to visit the set of the new High School Musical.

[Photo Credit: Splash News]