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Griffin Vs. Clark: Dicks A-Plenty On New Year's Eve

Seth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:30:16 EST

We hope your NYE was as joyous, wasted, and overstuffed as ours was, and your First Hangover of 2009—which felt like a tiny monkey putting up drywall inside our skull—has abated.

We did make sure to tune in for a few minutes of CNN's unlikely Times Square correspondent team, with Anderson Cooper once again playing glass-closeted Dean Martin to Kathy Griffin's fag-hag Jerry Lewis. They seemed to be having a gay old time in the sub-zero temperatures—in the few minutes we caught leading up to the ball-drop, Kathy was pledging to pull Anderson's pants down at the stroke of midnight, and her scandalized partner was giggling with delight. Yup, it all seemed under control.

Apparently we missed the money-shot, however, which involved Griffin shouting back to an off-camera heckler, "You know, I don't go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!" as the show cut to commercial. Will this remark hasten the end of the Cooper & Griffin comedy era? Probably, but we hope not. In fact, they'd be smart to dump the atrociously unfunny D.L. Hughley Breaks the News, and give these two the slot—maybe promoted ad nauseam with the tagline, "The Best Heckler-Shaming Team on Television."

For contrast, we flipped channels between that and ABC to watch Dick Clark's final Rockin' Eve address. Getting old sucks. Happy 2009, Dick. You're a legend, and as far as we're concerned you should be able to ring in the New Year as long as you want to, even if you're just a brain suspended in a ball jar with an LED crawl underneath relaying your wishes that we have "the rockingest 2047 ever!"

Dick Clark Back For One More Depressing New Year's Eve

Seth — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:35:45 EST

With seemingly so little to be thankful for this upcoming Turkey Devouring Day, at least we have the happy news that Dick Clark will be rejoining the 2008 New Year's Rockin' Eve festivities, where he'll again be accompanied by a virtually strikeproof Ryan Seacrest. There, at the precise stroke of midnight (perhaps an unfortunate choice of wording given the circumstances), Seacrest will finally deliver the noisemaker-blowing go-ahead to his delighted mentor, resulting in the faintest kazoo-squeak signal for "Auld Lang Syne" to begin.

Dick and Ryan Reunite for a 'Rockin'' New Year's Eve [ETOnline]

Post-Megastardom Tom Cruise Keeping Busy

Mark — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:20:31 EDT

· Remember that Tom Cruise guy? Black Book's Carice Van Houten will be starring opposite him in Valkyrie, Cruise's big Hitler-hunting comeback picture. [THR]
· A big day in Cruise news: Daniel Snyder, who famously hooked up Cruise with some rent money and a theme-park greeter job when the actor was down on his luck after his dumping by Paramount, has bought Dick Clark Productions, producers of the Golden Globes. Ownership of Dick Clark himself was not transferred in the deal. [Variety]
· Jack Black and director Todd Phillips are partnering for the Warner Bros. comedy Man-Witch, whose entire concept is encapsulated in those incredibly efficient hyphenated words. Also mistakenly purchased before the magic-related project were the rights to Manwich, the story of a average schlub's love of Sloppy Joe-style sandwiches, when the Warner Bros. development executive yelped "We're buying it if Jack Black is in it!" before allowing the writers to complete their pitch. [Variety]
· NBC scores with their Dateline interview of Princes William and Harry, but our new favorite summer show, Kittens Vs. Cougars: The Battle To Bone Mark Philippoussis, premiered unimpressively for the network. [THR]
· Disney signs Wild Hogs auteur Walt Becker to a first-look deal, where he will direct and produce a variety of John Travolta-starring comedy projects. [Variety]

Miracle Photoshop Cures Dick Clark In Time For New Year's

Seth — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 11:14:55 EST

An ABC publicity photo promoting their annual depressing-party-in-a-box, New Year's Rockin' Eve, is causing controversy for having Photoshopped in a smiling, fully upright, pre-stroke Dick Clark next to co-hosts Hilary Duff and Ryan Seacrest:

[T]he image of the 76-year-old Clark was taken before his December 2004 stroke and superimposed onto a recently taken picture of Duff and Seacrest.

The "Photoshopping" spurred rumors that the ageless celebrity hasn't recovered from the stroke and may be unable to properly perform his annual year-end duties on Saturday night, New Year's Eve.

A spokesman for Clark and ABC bosses denied those rumors yesterday. [...]

"There's no secret," [longtime Clark publicist Paul Shefrin] said. "This sort of thing is done all the time in publicity photos. It's just that Dick didn't sit for a new photo shoot, so they used an older photo.

"Look, when you're shown a picture of King Kong, there really is no King Kong but that doesn't stop people from running a photo of him with Naomi Watts."

With that, Shefrin breaks the publicist's golden rule of never saying too much. Had he quit while he was ahead, we very well may have bought his scheduling conflict story. But he just had to throw in the Kong thing, and suddenly, it dawned on us: Your children, and your children's children, will grow up with Dick Clark. It may take the world's top genetic scientists and animatronic engineers working together, around the clock, with nothing more than a salvaged ear in a bell jar, but make no mistake, Clark will be with us forever, counting back from ten to infinite.

'DOCTORED' DICK [NY Post]

Trade Round-Up: Regis Philbin Tries To Finish Off Vulnerable Dick Clark

Mark — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:45:36 EST

· Sensing a chance to finally behead momentarily weakened New Year's Eve immortal Dick Clark, Fox recruits Regis Philbin to host a competing ball-dropping special to ring in 2006. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance, Dump The Sharks Edition: Gary Oldman flees CAA to cozy up with ICM. [THR]
· Disney crosses the international box office billion-dollar mark, making them the third studio (along with Fox and Warner Bros.) to do so this year. Please join us in celebrating the further enrichment of faceless multimedia conglomerates! Huzzah! [Variety]
· Penguins still red-hot, tragicomic bear-wranglers not so much: The Academy shortlists a record 15 documentaries for nomination, including March of the Penguins, but not Grizzly Man. [Variety]
· Because nothing says gravitas like the words "From the star of The Waterboy and the creative force behind The Mind of the Married Man," we can't imagine anyone else collaborating on a 9/11 drama but Adam Sandler and Mike Binder. [Variety]