1.) Janice Dickinson
The Insider has a new format sort of based on The View's "Hot Topics," in which the "news" correspondents and a celebrity guest debate bullshit tabloid stuff. The show describes it as "entertainment news with opposing views." Janice Dickinson was the guest on Wednesday, and they really need to just give her the job permanently, because she has finally found her perfect calling.

On Jon Gosselin:

On Whitney Houston:

On confusing saying the word "jackass" and acting like one:

2.) Bobby Brown's body is "pure"

What does Janice think of him?

3.) New Judge Judy episodes!
It's been a cruel summer without some new JJ. Thankfully the new season has returned to dispense the most practical advice in the world.

4.) "Get off your period, dude."
On The Real World: Cancun reunion show, Emilee almost got all L7.

5.) Police work stinks for women

6.) Why did Kim look like Dracula's girlfriend?

Oh, and of course, this.

7.) "Get ready for the fashion show!"

8.) They're just not that into you.
On True Life: I'm Polyamorous, three gay men were in one relationship with each other, but one of them is totally the outcast.

The outcast's solution was to add one more guy into the mix, to a balance. Once he found a suitable candidate, he brought him home to meet his boyfriends, and it all worked out for the best.

9.) How not to raise children.

10.) Paula Abdul

She needs a pageant mom for some stability.

1.) Adderall!

2.) The Stanky Leg

3.) Lil' Monkey

4.) Big Brother's Impeccable Montage Editing

5.) NYC Prep Schadenfreude

6.) Fox News' "Liberal" Views On Pole Dancing
(It doesn't count as "pole dancing" if you're using the pole for balance. Fair and balanced.)

7.) Good News for Gays
They have your kind in Wasilla, and Levi doesn't mind 'em.

8.) Gay Bitch

9.) La Toya: "There's Not Enough Aid For AIDS."
She is manic!

10.) A Hooker/Pimp Relationship Gone Awry?

The book went to press within 48 hours after the King of Pop's death, and rocketed to number one on the New York Times bestseller list last week. Hastily thrown together, Unmasked is rife with typos and questionable "anonymous sources." Shoddy, shady, and sleazy, I think I read it almost as quickly as author Ian Halperin typed it up.

Halperin claims that he started the project a while back because he was out to prove, once and for all, that Michael Jackson was a pedophile, but in his research, discovered that he was not. (The resulting work is pretty biased, but some evidence presented makes for some decent-albeit comparatively crude-rebuttals to Maureen Orth's thorough and persuasive reporting on Michael Jackson for Vanity Fair.)

Much has been made of Jackson's infamous sleepovers with young boys at his Neverland Ranch, and Mark Ronson, along with his friend Sean Lennon, participated in some of them. One anecdote of Ronson's - which he originally told on a British TV show - appears in the book:

We used to watch the porn channel because we were like, ten, and, 'Oh my God, tits!' So Michael was in bed. And me and Sean said, 'Michael, do you want to see something cool?' We turned the dial to the porn channel and there were strippers shaking their tits around. We were like, 'Michael, Michael, how cool is this?' We turned around and he was cringing, saying, 'Ooh, stop it, stop it, ooh, it's so silly.' We were like, 'Michael, you have to look, maybe you're not seeing it right, it's naked girls!' He was not down with the program whatsoever! I think he had really strong feminist views on porn.

He's cute. Anyway, while the story doesn't prove that Michael always behaved appropriately around his young guests, it does kind of point to something that I always thought: He was probably gay. Halperin thinks so, too. In fact, in his book, Halperin actually claims that Michael hit on him at a pizza parlor (more on that in sec).

Halperin claimed to have spoken to two of Michael's "gay lovers." (Redundant term!) One was a "Hollywood waiter, the other an aspiring actor." He claims to have seen photos "corroborating" the relationships. The best bit comes from "Lawrence," the actor:

He was very shy, but when he started to have sex, he was insatiable. He was a bottom, but he was so thin, I worried that I would break him. The very first time he blew me, he said, 'The King of Pop's going to lick your lollipop.' I still laugh thinking about that.

Me too.

One of Halperin's sources was supposedly someone who worked in Jackson's camp. The source tipped him off that Jackson and his children were going to a Hollywood pizza parlor, so Halperin "got in [his] hairdresser's disguise" and sped over there. Of the encounter Halperin said:

We talked about old Hollywood movies and hairstyles, which I had researched for months before I took on this undercover persona. Michael went on and on about the Hollywood hairstyles of the silver screen during the forties and fifties. 'No one has come along with such class and style since Deborah Kerr, Dorothy Lamour, and Susan Hayward,' he said…At one point during our conversation at the pizza joint, Jackson put his hand over mine. I then wondered if the singer was hitting on me. After staring at me for over a minute in complete silence, he told me my blue eyes reminded him of Frank Sinatra…It was one of the most intense moments I have ever experienced looking into another man's eyes.

This was also good:

I had been trying to persuade [Jackson] to change his look to a platinum blond wig with a streak of ocean-blue down the middle.

But my absolute favorite passage was in regards to Liza Minnelli. After failing to score an interview with Jackson's best friend Elizabeth Taylor, Halperin, again, went undercover as a gay hairdresser, and hung out at a dance rehearsal studio he knew Liza frequented, cornered her, and told her he had been Ava Gardner's hair and makeup artist before she died. That was the clincher, and Liza invited him to hang out with her in the back room of the studio, where she shared a joint with him and some other dancers. Despite the fact that she was stoned, Liza didn't really give up any of the goods on Jackson, but she still sounds like a fun hang:

I told her that Ava was a huge fan of Jackson and used to practice some of his dance moves. At that, she let out a trademark Liza Minnelli laugh. It proved to be infectious…especially after Liza stood up and did an impression of Ava Gardner attempting to moonwalk.

P.S.



P.P.S.

In an Entertainment Weekly profile by Tim Stack, Hilton says of his altercation with will.i.am,

I realize I said the most hurtful word. I don't believe being gay is bad. I'm not homophobic. I couldn't be any gayer and I couldn't be any prouder. I've got rainbow flags shooting out of my eyes.

Stack calls him "surprisingly chastened," but he doesn't really sound all that sorry in The Advocate, where he says, "I thought about calling him the n word, but I thought the f word was even worse." He goes on to say, "I reacted in the worst way possible," but the fact remains that Hilton basically wants, as Richard Lawson says, "to have us congratulate him for not saying the racist thing he was thinking." Or that he thinks gays are more marginalized than blacks? Or that homophobic slurs are worse than racial slurs? Or that the word faggot from the mouth of a gay man is worse than the n-word from the mouth of a non-black person? The mind reels.

It seems pretty likely that Hilton doesn't "believe being gay is bad." And he seems to understand that he shouldn't have said what he said. But what is the moral status of a homophobic slur spoken by a gay person to a straight person, presumed hurtful because said straight person is presumed to be homophobic? And is this homophobia ouroboros similar to the one created by Sacha Baron Cohen, a straight person playing a gay person who is (maybe) supposed to make fun of homophobic stereotypes?

Slate's Dennis Lim basically comes down on the pro-Brüno side. He writes that Hollywood has been offering up "square-jawed," humorless portrayals of gays for so long that it's refreshing and even subversive for Baron Cohen to portray a funny, no-holds-barred "sissy" — and an oversexed one at that. He writes,

Is any viewer really going to think that this hyperbolically crass and ridiculous narcissist-who wears mesh tops and eye-searing lederhosen, refers to his adopted African baby as a "dick magnet," and drops faux-Teutonic vulgarities about his waxed arschenhaller-represents "the mainstream of the gay community," as one troubled Hollywood "gay insider" put it? And are the gays who anxiously anticipate the mocking, hostile reactions of the unenlightened really that blind to Brüno's obvious counteroffensive strategy, which is to make that mocking, hostile idiocy the subject of his film? The beauty-and perhaps even the moral logic-of Baron Cohen's method is that those who're not in on his joke are invariably the butts of the joke.

And he calls the climax of the movie, in which Brüno makes out with his opponent during a wrestling match, "a brilliant tactic against homophobia: the gay-panic offense." The idea that an over-the-top joke based on stereotypes — whether racist or homophobic — is actually a joke on people who believe the stereotypes is hardly new. It's the basis of Sarah Silverman's whole career. And while Baron Cohen offers a twist on this by actually eliciting homophobic reactions and inviting viewers to make fun of those, it's hard to accept that a straight comic is totally on the gay community's side in making fun of obnoxious straight people. It's especially hard when a lot of his act revolves around talking funny and walking funny and wearing silly clothes. The idea that viewers aren't going to be laughing at these aspects of the film — or that they will be laughing at simply an exaggerated character rather than an exaggerated gay character — is a bit naive.

A homophobic slur spoken by a gay person — especially with the intent to hurt — is still a slur, and gay stereotypes are still gay stereotypes, even if they're meant to be meta. Ultimately, though, none of these things likely matter much to Perez Hilton or Sasha Baron Cohen. Hilton tells Tim Stack, "I don't care if you like me, I just care if you read my website." And Baron Cohen probably doesn't care if people like him, as long as they see his movie. Ultimately, Brüno isn't about challenging stereotypes are breaking down barriers — it's about getting laughs and selling tickets. And Perez Hilton is all about publicity — the love that loves to speak its name.

On The Offensive [Slate]
Perez Hilton Won't Shut Up [Entertainment Weekly]

Related: Perez Hilton Would Rather Be A Racist Than Bad for The Gays [Gawker]

Is she grappling with the idea itself, who's saying it, or the notion that a black mama somewhere named her boy "Sedrick"? Sedrick, who dialed into the show via Skype, merely blinks as Oprah's preachermen guests declare the giftiness of his gayhood. And then he says he has a "renewed vision." Presumably from the tears distributed over his cornea by the blinking.

Defamer: I see you have a series called Four in Focus dedicated to first-time filmmakers. Is there one to watch? Do you find that younger filmmakers focus on different subject matter than their predecessors?

Kirsten Schaffer: Half Life, by Jennifer Phang, is exceptional (see video clip above). The thing that they have in common—which is interesting and sort of new is that the gay subject matter is definitely a part of a story, but it’s not the central focus of any of these stories.

Do you think that’s something different with the younger generation?

I do. Because this generation has grown up seeing more images of queer people on film and in television, they are free to tell stories they want to tell, and integrate the queerness in different ways. Like, in the 90s and even in the first part of 2000s, we weren’t seeing enough coming out stories, so people were making a lot more coming out stories. They are still being made and they are often good, but at the same time the filmmakers are reaching a little bit deeper into their lives and telling stories that are complicated and involve queer stories in a different way.

How has the quality and number of submissions changed over the years?

The submissions have definitely gone up. When I first started programming in Seattle with a fax machine-before the Internet, I feel like there were maybe 200 submissions. So now it’s tripled, and I think the biggest change is the diversity of things to choose from. It used to be if there was a gay romantic comedy, you had to show it. Now, there are 20 gay romantic comedies, and you can choose from the best. That said, the other thing that’s changed, more so, in the last couple of years, is that there’s fewer and fewer films being made on film and more being made on video and DVD. And the plus side of that is that people who didn’t have access to film are making great movies. The downside of that is, sometimes it feels like the movies are getting made really fast. Sometimes the quality isn’t always the same. The stories are good, they are interesting, but there’s something that’s missing from not being made on film.

Local filmmaker JD Disalvatore has a funny line on her website: "Please, help me, help you not see bad gay movies!!!" Do you think this is a frequent pitfall in some gay films?

I think it’s happening in independent cinema across the board. I don’t think it’s just gay films, I think it’s everything. It really is, it’s great and it’s terrible at the same time. There are some good movies being made, but just because somebody grabs a camera and makes a real good movie, but then, there’s a lot more to wade through because someone is grabbing a camera and making a movie. There’s a intentionality and a skill that’s missing than when you are making a film on film, and you have to spend two, three, five, 10 years raising the money and reworking the script. There’s a difference between making a movie in a month and making a movie in five years.

Which movies do you consider some of the most monumental flicks in gay filmmaking that Outfest has shown?

Hedwig and the Angry Inch—that was the opening night in 2001; Boys Don’t Cry; High Art; Making Love in 1983; Desert Heart in 1985; Paris is Burning; Poison, Todd Haynes’ film from 1991; Go Fish in 1994; Celluloid Closet in 95.

Which flicks in this year’s fest are worthy of the Canon—as they say?

There’s a film called Wild Combination about musician Arthur Russell which I think is exceptional. I think a Jihad for Love because it’s the first of its kind is a really important movie. I really like this film The World Unseen, a lesbian film set in South Africa in 50s. It’s really lovely and beautiful.

Half Life—that is set suburban northern California, it’s about a family and a single mom and her two teenage children; trying to figure life out in the suburbs. It’s not as dark as Todd Solondz’s movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse. It’s a little bit dark, sometimes funny and mostly dramatic suburban tale, which is my favorite kind of movie. A little like American Beauty, Safety of Objects. What this has that’s different is the 12, or 13 year-old boy lives in a fantasy world, and when he goes into that fantasy world, she uses animation. The teenage girl—the 19 year-old-—her best friend is gay and there’s a whole subplot that focuses on their relationship and his relationship to his Christian parents.

Hamlet 2. Andrew Fleming’s new movie, he did Threesome. This is a really fun film with Amy Poehler, Catherine Keener, Elizabeth Shue. It’s about a high school drama teacher who is quite unsuccessful and decides that instead of doing the kind of plays he’s been doing, he’s going to write his own. So he writes Hamlet 2. There’s one of the students is gay and he writes Hamlet 2 as a musical, so it’s pretty campy.

We’re also showing a film called 11 Minutes which is about Jay McCarroll, the first winner of Project Runway. I think that’s going to be a fun screening because he’s going to be there. That’s on July 16th.

What sort of movies are you ultimately looking for?

We’re looking for films that are of interest to the lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, community. It’s kind of broad. Sometimes that’s a film that’s a gay film from start to finish, or sometimes that’s a film that’s really campy, because it’s of interest to the gay community. Like this year, we’re doing South Park as a sing-a-long, because we think that’s campy and fun and the gays want to see that. Sometimes we’ll show some feminist movie that’s not that lesbian but it’s really about women and feminist culture and that’s of interest to lesbian audience. This year we’re showing a film that’s mostly about environmental issues, it’s a mockumentary, but it has a gay-appearing character as the lead, but it’s not about their gay identity at all. It’s totally about environmental issues. But they seem gay to me and I liked it, so we’re showing it. The movie is called Sizzle. It has an awesome photo of a guy and a polar bear in a slightly compromising position.

For more info: check the schedule here.

Also: FREE TIX. First two people to respond to each email get entree to the Eleven Minutes screening Wed. 7/16 at 8 p.m., and The South Park Sing-a-long on Thur. 7/17 at 8 p.m. Both are at the Ford. Send emails to southpark AT outfest DOT org and 11min AT outfest DOT org and it might just be your lucky day.

I did feel the need to tweak (New Line co-founder Michael Lynne's) nose once, when he seemed to be trying to diddle the cast of LOTR out of their well-earned share of the profits. It was at a party in Berlin after the opening of The Return of the King. I said "That's for all the trouble you've been causing!" I don't know who was more surprised: Michael, that I had taken his nose in my finger and thumb and twisted it gently, or me for having dared do it! At least one of us enjoyed it.

And, in desperately needed response to "rumors" that Viggo Mortensen and his other male castmates were fraternizing during production, only to beard it up in public:

This gossip is all news to me. Elijah [Wood], Dominic [Monaghan] and Orlando [Bloom] introduced me to their girlfriends during shooting. I didn't ever meet Viggo's partner although his son visited a a few times. It would seem that none of my friends can be accused of hypocrisy. Probably the fevered imagination of slashers is to blame.

McKellen's acknowledgment of such whispers is itself a brave step forward in smashing the Hollywood closet — a classy, conscientious refusal to allow even the basest of speculation to go ignored lest the valuable, "not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that" opportunity that follows gets away. Those incoming phone calls from Mortensen, Bloom and Co. are surely best wishes for a successful — and long — return to Middle-Earth.

• The Lord of the Rings [McKellen.com]

When Robin Williams is a guest on any program, hilarity is sure to ensue! Okay, that statement hasn't been true since some point in the late seventies when the entire country was suffering through an epic Quaalude binge. But his recent appearance with Anderson Cooper at least provides Anderson with a few chuckles. We're not sure what's so funny, but maybe Anderson knows something that we don't.