When Roth said the sequel would pick up two minutes after the original, just as Gump has dropped his son (Haley Joel Osment) off at the bus stop, one audience member asked how Roth planned to address Osment's leap in age. "Actually, I kill him off in the first ten pages," Roth blithely replied after a conspiratorial vow of secrecy. Cold! That school bus didn't look like a 1995 Saturn...

• 9/11 Killed the Forrest Gump Sequel [Slashfilm]

Osment, at 20, is a boy no more, and the kind of roles that interest him now are the sort that would aid in the transition between cute little boy actor and serious young adult actor. So one of the next things he wants to be is a Hitler Youth — in a film called “Truth & Treason.”

“It’s a true story,” Osment explained. “Some teenage members of the Hitler Youth in 1941 were listening to secret BBC broadcasts on the radio. They were picking up the BBC in Hamburg, and they were hearing all these things about the war that obviously the Nazi propaganda machine wasn’t relating to the public, and they ultimately rebelled and started a pamphlet campaign against Hitler.”

Osment’s character, Helmuth Hübener, thought he could change things “not with guns but words,” and his slogans included “Hitler is a murderer” and “Hitler is the guilty one.” He was the youngest resistance fighter to be sentenced to death by Nazi Germany’s so-called “People’s Court,” the Volksgerichtshof — even though he was only 17, he was tried as an adult and executed by guillotine.

We smell a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award Nomination! Congratulations on your artistic risk-taking, Haley; turning 20 is always a tricky age for a child star, but we're glad to see you've followed in the goose-stepped footprints of your predecessor, Neil Patrick Harris. We salute you!

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Haley Joel Osment Joins Hitler Youth For ‘Truth & Treason’ [MTV]

KEVIN SPACEY shocked revellers at a wild party in Croatia when he pulled a male pal’s trousers down and groped his buttocks.

The American Beauty star was snapped on holiday in Hvar getting to grips with the bare butt as his friend lay across his lap.

An onlooker said: “Kevin looked like he was a having a brilliant time.

“Most of his friends were laughing, but I couldn’t see the face of the man whose butt it was.”

A mystery! Could it have been the shirtless Ryan Gosling lookalike Spacey's recently been sighted with in Sarajevo? A penitent Bryan Singer, apologizing for the impending, possibly Spacey-less Superman reboot? Or, somehow, was it Spacey spanking himself, and the clues were there all along? Though logistically unlikely, we wouldn't put anything past the former Keyser Söze. After all, as Benicio Del Toro's Fenster would say, "Mmmfmfmsmmahhh."

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

• A Bum Deal for Kevin Spacey [The Sun]

He's taking a leave of absence from New York University, where he's double-majoring in fine arts and Middle Eastern studies.

"I initially considered trying to do my academic classes during the day and the play at night, but it's probably not a good idea to mix those things at the same time," he told The Post. "It's my first time out, so I'm sure I'll be putting in a lot more hours in the theater than I would on a film set."

Not only that, young Osment, but you potentially just joined charter member Stephen Dorff in the Jeremy Piven Adversary Club, named in honor of the actor making his own Broadway bow this fall in the Mamet revival Speed the Plow. But no worries! Just remember the convenient Piven-bathroom-fight mnemonic, "Back of the line, I'm doing fine. Cut to the john, it's on," and you'll make influential new friends in no time.

• OSMENT: I SEE B'WAY AUDIENCES [NYP]

These kid pimps (usually mothers) push their tiny tots into the limelight, despite the tragedies that have befallen so many who came before them. This list of the "Top 25 Child Stars" is more a gallery of sadness than the tribute to talent we all wish it was. Sure, you've got your few who managed not to lose their marbles (Christian Bale, Elijah Wood), but they are few and far between. Out of 25 kid actors, two were married EIGHT times each, four became addicted to coke in their teens (though technically Drew Barrymore was only 12 when she started snorting what she may have actually thought was nose candy), four were married or pregnant by 20, and the rest are just a grab bag of crazy. Heroin addicts and a manic depressive make the list, as does one who was well on her way to normalcy ... until her stalker shot the President.

Not making the list of great child stars? Robert Blake, the Little Rascal who shot his wife. Carl Switzer, the Little Rascal who got shot by his bookie. The whole cast of Diff'rent Strokes.... And, more importantly, all the child actors who never became stars, but lived through all the same traumatic experiences as their more successful counterparts. But don't bother telling this to a mom with dollar signs in her eyes, as Danny Bonaduce tried to recently when he took a busload of bad parents down the Sunset Strip and heartfully told them the painful stories of many young stars. Right after pointing out the spot where River Phoenix OD'd and died as his teenage brother Joaquin watched, Bonaduce says, "Show hands if you still want stardom for your kid, and you think you can handle it for sure." And they all do, without a single moment of hesitation.

Here's the complete list:
25. Kirsten Dunst
24. Lindsay Lohan
23. Sean Astin
22. Keisha Castle-Hughes
21. Natalie Wood
20. Christian Bale
19. Abigail Breslin
18. Elijah Wood
17. Jodie Foster
16. Haylie Mills
15. Freddie Highmore
14. Freddie Bartholomew
13. Anna Paquin
12. Christina Ricci
11. Tatum O'Neal
10. Haley Joel Osment
9. Elizabeth Taylor
8. Patty Duke
7. Jackie Cooper
6. Dakota Fanning
5. Drew Barrymore
4. Mickey Rooney
3. Judy Garland
2. Macaulay Culkin
1. Shirley Temple

• Top 25 Child Stars [Moviefone]

· It was certainly a busy day of celebrity jailhouse photography for The Smoking Gun, who followed up handsy MTV uncle Don Vito with Haley Joel Osment's new headshot. Perhaps most notable is Osment's stated height and weight, which spotlight the growth-stunting consequences of alcohol and marijuana use for a former child actor.
Great art is so much less interesting when the artist forces an interpretation on you.
Adrien Grenier stands accused of wearing a brown shirt to the Emmys.
We're starting to lose track of many publicist-planted gossip items we've recently read mentioning how Lindsay Lohan is "cleaning up her act," so that's probably a signal that Lindsay Sloane Zelnick hasn't left her office since the Morgan Creek Letter Incident.
Seriously, not even one bid on the Defamer toast? We're heartsick.

After a nearly month-long cliffhanger following former child actor/current former child actor cliché Haley Joel Osment's possibly alcohol-assisted destruction of a perfectly good 1995 Saturn, TMZ.com reports that Osment has been charged with four criminal counts of DUI and pot possession, including the the very technical-sounding "enhancement of driving with a .15 or higher," as well as a less jargon-heavy, "Well lookee here, did Mr. "I See Dead People" think we weren't gonna find that big old joint in the glove compartment?" accusation. With this impressive array of charges, Osment sets the bar intimidatingly high for fellow preternaturally polished child performer Dakota Fanning's inevitable flame-out, which will need to include the crashing of a monster truck full of heroin into her agency's lobby while wearing a tattered, ill-fitting Girl Scout uniform to equal her predecessor's feat.

• Haley Joel Osment To Be Charged With DUI/Pot Possession [TMZ.com]
• Previously: Haley Joel Osment Finally Grows Up [Defamer]

I attended the Muse concert at the Greek Theater on Wed 7/19. Minutes after walking into the theater, which was about 20 minutes before the show started at 7:30pm, we noticed a short little guy walking towards us, immediately knowing it was none other than child-actor-all-grown-up Haley Joel Osment. My friend turned to him quickly as he passed by and asked him if he was a fan of Eisley (which we both knew he was). Interested in an obvious question, he turned to us and said that he was in fact a fan. We mentioned how we saw him at the Eisley concert at the House of Blues a month or two ago. So HJO is an Eisley and Muse fan. This all, by the way, happened hours before he was in a late night wreck going home after a supposed night of a drinking. Haley, you are a first class guy and polite enough to talk to random people. Hope this isn't a serious issue for your career.

Of course, all this report really tells us is that Osment appeared sober enough at the Muse show to chat with a fan without flying into an alcohol-fueled rage at being recognized. (We're not trying to suggest anything, we just kind of love the idea of Osment drunkenly kicking some ass for no good reason.) Also, by way of update on his hospitalization, the LAT reports that "Haley Joel Osment wants everyone to know he will be OK." The status of the unfortunate 1995 Saturn is still undisclosed.

• Haley Joel Osment Finally Grows Up [Defamer]

But then we watched the video of the local news report on the accident, and our na vet (not our not-so-little-anymore Haley!) was exposed, as the police are investigating the possibility that alcohol played a role in the late-night incident. We trust that the similarities to Baldwin's high-speed crack-up end there, for we don't know that our fragile psyches could ever recover from the idea that Haley Joel had to be coaxed to the ground by a gun-wielding cop, but also can't help but feel a totally inappropriate sense of pride about Osment finally deciding to raise his profile by appropriating the tabloid-attracting tactics of his less talented peers. We sense this could be the beginning of a huge comeback.

• Haley Joel Osment Hospitalized After Car Accident [CBS2.com]

In "Home of the Giants," he plays a high school journalist who covers the basketball team as it heads toward a state championship.

"It's important to find roles with characters growing up," Osment said. "Gar is one of those characters that moves me along the timeline in my career."

It's finally time to let go of the dead-eyed moppet that we fell in love with in the Sixth Sense and accept that he's going to take some big-people roles. There's no point in living in the past, or wishing that someone would've had the foresight to place the AI-era Osment in a veal pen and prolong that preternatural innocence for another decade or two.

• Haley Joel Osment Loves Latest Role [AP]
• Inside VPage: Cradling Haley [Defamer]

• No child's play for Osment at Italo's Giffoni Fest [Variety]