This is a good thing for Starz!, which is trying to turn itself into the new HBO with lots of highbrow original content, and Albrecht, who has flailed every since being ousted by Time Warner share holders almost three years ago.

Albrecht was asked to step down from his post as head of HBO in 2007 after reports surfaced that he beat his girlfriend in front of a casino. He started at HBO in 1985 and had a hand in bringing us The Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Wire, and every other show you love that was not TV, it was HBO. At the time, he said the incident stemmed from a relapse of his alcohlism. The girlfriend in question didn't press charges and later married him.

She forgave him, and so has the industry! After leaving HBO, Albrecht headed IMG Global Media and started Foresee Entertainment, a production company that sold a fashion-based drama to Starz! They must have liked it so much, they they brought Albrecht on board to run the whole show. We can't wait until he's up on stage accepting Emmys for the channel in 2014. We promise not to make any jokes about him choking the golden lady. OK, maybe not.

[Image via Getty]

The novelist created the HBO series Bored to Death, starring Jonathan Schwartzman, but had nowhere to watch it the Sunday before last because he didn't own a TV. Insert your own "precious Brooklyn author eschews television" joke here if you like, but Ames insisted on Twitter he's "just very bad at shopping" and, in any case, had frantic fun watching his own show on other people's televisions for two weeks. Or at least that's how things seemed from his tweets.

And then HBO, where because they got tired, worried or charmed by Ames' Twitter begging, finally just bought him a set. Which, frankly is almost too perfect; we wouldn't put it past the network to set up the whole escapade as a publicity stunt targeted at the show's hipster target audience.

It's some comfort, then, that Ames has used Twitter as a cashless flea market before, offering free foreign editions of his books at a Carroll Gardens bar. That experiment didn't seem to go as well: One of us happened to drop by that night and Ames was there, but not one had yet come looking for his very pretty books. Apparently there are some giveaways even Twitter can't facilitate. Sorry, book lovers.

(Pic by mtkr on Flickr)

This YouTube video came via a tipster who writes, "Hi; I'm not sure how this works, but I got this footage from the set of Entourage the other day. Matt Damon was directing a PSA starring Adrian Grenier and he flips out on Adrian in front of everyone! [It] even shows Jeremy Piven as he tries to keep the peace - but Matt totally loses his cool and goes off."

We, on the other hand, are pretty sure how this works: Have a Hollywood star do a cameo playing himself on your Hollywood-focused TV show so he can promote his charity, incorporate an ego-driven blow-up on the set of a PSA into the plot, make a fun, shaky little video of said blow-up, put it on YouTube, and send it to gullible blogs claiming that it depicts a real on-set blow-up, which blogs will write about it and drive traffic to it in advance of the show's season finale featuring the Hollywood star.

What the hell, we'll bite. It's Friday. Also, go give money to OneXOne.org, because it looks like a fine little shop. But whatever you do, please stop watching Entourage.

The Late Shift, a 1996 HBO movie based on a book by the New York Times' Bill Carter, chronicled the infamous struggle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson as the host of the Tonight Show after his retirement. Higgins, in an interview with Starpulse's Mike Ryan, said that he knew at the time he was offered the role that the film would be controversial and that he risked facing a backlash within the notoriously petty industry for taking the role, but at the time he was a struggling actor who desperately needed $300 to fix his broken-down car.

They had a hard time casting it for that reason. And he was very powerful — and is. He didn't like the project from the beginning and didn't make it easy for me — or for anyone doing that project. It was (pauses) it was hard. I took it because I needed to fix the steering column on my Subaru is why I took it. I needed $300 or I wouldn't have a steering wheel. So, I ended up making more than $300 but in the end it's one of those jobs you just can't... I could not turn it down. I may be able to turn it down now, but I couldn't at the time. It would just be completely crazy and irresponsible.

You know, it was scary. I was scared of it. No question. Actually, doing the job itself was a tricky acting challenge but I had had harder acting challenges onstage. That part wasn't so bad, it was the appendant hoopla which was difficult for me to navigate and I didn't do it that well because I was so inexperienced. There was a lot of press, there was a lot of interviews and comparing me. And [Letterman] was saying things about me on his television program. It was difficult. I didn't know what I was doing.

I had a lot of help from HBO's publicity department who was holding my hand through it because I suddenly was in a rather glaring spotlight. Mostly not because of the project, which was good, but it wouldn't have gotten all that press. It was mostly because of the nature of the project. An inside, big Hollywood story where people were actually getting represented on the screen. People who are alive and well.

It was a great opportunity and it was really daunting and scary. It was like, "Should I do this? This could end it all. This could start and end the whole thing." Thankfully, it didn't.

Higgins also said that Letterman has refused to speak to him in the years that have passed since, though he was booked to appear on Letterman's show, only to get bumped without explanation.

There was a famous incident where he invited me to the show and I got bumped off the show. Everyone sort of tried to figure out what happened there ... it's odd though, it's an interesting job. It's really interesting to industry people. To still be talking about a job I was in 12 years ago is very unusual.

Back in February, Letterman invited the mother of the late comedian Bill Hicks onto his show so he could apologize publicly for a slight he perpetrated upon Hicks back in 1993. Maybe one day Letterman can invite John Michael Higgins to join him on the air to talk about The Late Shift and put all of the animosity to rest. We think it's be a tremendously nice gesture, not to mention something that would make for very compelling television, don't you think?

John Michael Higgins Talks [Mike Ryan/Starpulse]

Video clip probably NSFW, BTW!

It's so hard to tell about the general quality of the show, glamored as we were by director Alexander Payne's reliably gentle/tough hand and the nimble work of Jane Adams, as Thomas Jane's pimp, who is one of Hollywood's most criminally underused actors. She gave a fine, nuanced, weird performance last night—spanning from sexual ecstasy to untethered artist sadness to hard-minded pragmatist with natural ease. And Payne's details—his close-ups, his visual aesthetic that's both warm and chilly—provided such a lovely backdrop for this kind of pleasingly lived-in acting.

But Thomas Jane? Hm. He's always been such a conundrum. He was maybe going to break out and be big after The Sweetest Thing and The Punisher and then it just fizzled into nowhere. And he's got that curious face, that bashed-up maybe-handsome, maybe-too-unfocused set of features that can be manly and attractive one minute, and then sort of sad and grizzled the next. It works mostly to his favor, we think, in the role of Ray Drecker, a washed-up high school coach who, in his youth, had a string of opportunities that never panned out (hey... sounds familiar!). Anne Heche ably plays his angry, moved-on wife in a part that could either stay shrill or round out to something unlikable, sure, but undeniably compelling in its true-to-life humanity (see: Nikki Grant on Big Love).

So we like it OK. But we're definitely not in love. We're trying to remember the last time a TV pilot grabbed us and demanded further viewing. Didn't happen for True Blood or, hell, even Big Love. What about over on Showtime? We're sorta liking Nurse Jackie, but it's really only for the same reason as Hung: a wonderful performance by a lead actress amid a sea of other, murkier things. In the case of Nurse Jackie: What the hell were they thinking casting that guy as Jackie's husband? He's like twenty years younger and belongs in some indie about softly strumming guitars in a sparsely-furnished New York apartment, not playing the borough-dwelling owner of a local dive bar. Also, Anna Deavere Smith is sort of embarrassing herself with jokey-joke cameos as a stern hospital administrator. And while Eve Best is a terrific actress, we're not sure that her hyperbolic character—bitchy blase rich Englishwoman doctor with a boatload of Blahniks but no love for children—belongs alongside Falco's more dependably "real" Jackie.

Both of these shows have promise, and we'll stick with them, but we're disappointed that we're not more excited. Not everything can be The Sopranos or Mad Men where we're hooked like suckers from the very beginning, but watching a show out of duty or some pretentious high-minded ideal that this is Good Television starts to feel like work after a while.

Halperin, who inflicted The Note on the world before moving to Time, sold an option HBO Films to turn into a movie his forthcoming 2008 campaign book Game Change, even though that book is effectively an extended correction on his last book.

The studio, which does projects for both the eponymous premium cable channel and the big screen, has already hired a writer (Charles Leavitt) to do the screen adaptation.

Halperin will serve as a consultant to the movie, alongside John Heilemann, the New York magazine political writer he's been blessed to have as a co-author on the book. HBO will need all the help it can get: Like the book, the film Game Change will attempt to track three campaigns and five politicians

Usually a movie like this would take you behind the scenes of a campaign, but there's only so deep you can go when you're hopping between Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and John McCain. (Sad Joe Biden will apparently be reduced to a bit part.) Maybe HBO is thinking miniseries.

In any case, it will be fun to watch the casting decisions unfold, and to relive the 2008 campaign through the eyes of a man who thought John McCain was on fire the week he said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Maybe we'll find out he was right after all.

A Ribbon of Dreams will follow two employees of early film mogul D.W. Griffth, one is a buttoned-up nerdy type, the other his cowboy producing partner. They'll encounter a host of the Old Hollywood legendaries—John Ford, John Wayne, Bette Davis.

Chase, who expertly crafted a television Guernica/Pieta/whatever-other-opus of an America in millennial decline with Sopranos, has a rough and raucous past from which to draw for his new period piece. Many of the early pioneers of Hollywood fled the East Coast as a means to avoid the patent fees any aspiring filmmaker had to pay to that greedy baron of power and light, Thomas Edison. They forged a rogue playground of early-times movie makers that was akin to the real Wild West (except, you know, probs a lot gayer). Chase ought to do well treading a seemingly glamorous, exciting world that has large chunks of grit breaking through the veneer. It'll be like the whole thing is set at Vesuvio's or in Carmela's kitchen, except it'll be filled with cigar-chomping movie types wearing suspenders.

Incidentally, the title comes from an Orson Welles quote, who called film "a ribbon of dreams."

File this under Things We're Excited For.

For the sake of full disclosure, we love The Foot Fist Way, the previous Danny McBride-Ben Best-Jody Hill creation presented by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, so we're predisposed to enjoying the McBride-Best-Hill brand of semi-sociopathic comedy. But if Fred Simmons in a mullet is what you are hoping for with Eastbound & Down, you'll be half-surprised.

We meet protagonist Kenny Powers (McBride) through an extended montage detailing his brief rise and long fall from grace — from pudgy baseball pitching star with a greasy, curly mullet to a reluctant substitute teacher with a greasy, curly mullet. While the snippets are offensively humorous (especially the flurry of magazine covers — High Times, American Woodworker (!)), it was a good idea to get all the hardcore baseball stuff out of the way early, because this show is not about sports. It's a new take on the hubris-leaking "hero returns to his smalltown" story (e.g. October Road), though we still haven't seen the town after the first half-hour.

In "Chapter 1" (the episode's actual title), we are shown the three spheres of any teacher's life — school, home and the local bar. Kenny behaves like an a-hole on his first day at Jefferson Davis High School, especially when hitting on his old flame April (Katy Mixon), who (of course) is engaged to the likable, smoothie-blender-in-his-office, aspiring triathlete Principal Terrence Cutler (Andrew Daly). At home (his brother's house), Kenny orders hookers ("And can I wear the Scream mask, the mask from Scream, when I do you from behind?") and yells at his nephew for playing with his jet ski. It's at the bar where we see Kenny finally let his hair down (further) while doing blow with high school buddy Clegg (Ben Best, Chuck "The Truck" Wallace from Foot Fist Way). There's another montage of Kenny and Clegg sniffing thick lines and jawing about plot elements and random topics like Widespread Panic.

But this is not the "Sweet Eli Whitney's nose!" school of comedy. The McKay-Ferrell improvisational ethic of working over a potential punchline until it yields something sublime and/or referential to specific animals ("Chip, I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!") did not rear its strangely beautiful head in the first episode, though it's doubtful that Will Ferrell won't riff on something when he appears in the second episode as a used car dealer.

Instead of creating a world where any character can make any reference at any time, the characters have been shaded towards the middle. HBO's Eastbound & Down Web site sets Principal Cutler up as a "tool" unworthy of April, but on-screen he is affable and neither mean nor insecure and seems totally worthy of April's affections. Kenny's brother Dustin (John Hawkes) is neither too henpecked or overly excited for his crass brother to be living in his crib. The same goes for Dustin's wife Cassie (Jennifer Irwin) who bristles - but does not break - when Kenny makes fun of her toddler. Keep in mind that there are young children at the table:

CASSIE: Her name is Rose, named after Miss Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic.
KENNY: Y'all named your daughter after fucking Titanic?
DUSTIN: It's Cassie's favorite movie.
KENNY: Oh wow. You better be shitting me. What's his name? Fucking Shrek?

No matter who is in his presence - his brother's kids, reporters, the school principal, his gym class - Kenny's still dropping f- and s-bombs. We tend to find stuff like this funny, but a lot of people will think that the swearing is the joke and dismiss some of the humor in E&D. Unfortunately, the writers left that door open from the first line of the show ("When my ass was 19 years old..."), but it's a simplistic criticism that is only apt when applied to bad stand-up comics. Otherwise, the use of inappropriate language by a character in an ensemble setting is an expression of his inability to follow the rules of society. Or it's because swearing is funny. Either way, we laughed.

David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, Pineapple Express) directed this episode with little flair but with an eye for letting the jokes be as subtle as possible. Very few directors working in comedy today would let an opportunity for a close-up shot of bare breasts pass them by, but Green leaves them in a medium-long frame. The script, written by Best, Hill and McBride, veers from straight-up mean to meta ("Instantly I regret saying that. That was a horrible thing to say.") and gives us a redemptive (albeit narcissistic) moment a little too soon in the series, but then, they don't have much time to get everything established before their first season run ends.

This was the first episode of a six episode season, and with only a heaping handful of episodes to endear itself to the "It's not TV, it's HBO" crowd there may not be enough time for it to have the buzz and event status of Curb Your Enthusiasm or even Showtime's United States of Tara. But we doubt anyone really cares about that — or needs it. For one, HBO owns part of FunnyorDie.com and is firmly staked in the McKay-Ferrell business. More importantly, however, the Gary Sanchez brand (the production company co-founded by McKay and Ferrell and run by Chris Henchy, also a partner in FunnyorDie) is still young and trying to establish itself as a distinct entity from Judd Apatow's empire, despite Apatow's involvement in many McKay-Ferrell projects. If Apatow's bread-and-butter is the slacking man-child schlub with the heart of gold, then it's becoming clear that Gary Sanchez is hoping their distinctly unsympathetic slacking man-child schlub pays the same dividends.

[Photo: HBO/ Fred Norris]

• Eastbound & Down [HBO]

This will be the first time the former SNL co-stars and new recruit James appear together in one movie, offering the public a safe and convenient cineplex quarantining program. [Variety]
· Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin are the first to be cast in Woody Allen's next ensemble film, set to shoot in London this summer. We hope Josh plays Woody's nebbish alter ego. [Variety]
· An "abysmal third quarter" sent Lionsgate's stock tumbling to a six-year low. "The primary contributor to this quarter's loss, as well as the shortfall for the year, is the significant underperformance of our feature film business," said Jon Feltheimer during a conference call with analysts. Asked by one analyst what might be the fiscal outcome of producing better movies, Feltheimer paused for a long moment, then told him he'd get back to him. [Variety]
· Wilmer Valderrama is developing a comedy for Nickelodeon called Earth to Pablo, a sort of Latin-American ALF about "a normal family that ends up with a teenage space alien instead of the South American exchange student they had expected." [THR]
· More HBO pilot castings: Aleksa Palladino, Paul Sparks, Shea Whigham and Anthony Laciura join the cast of Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire. Rob Brown will star in another pilot, Treme (now is that Treme as in crème, or Treme as in cream?), about "a post-Katrina-themed drama that chronicles the rebuilding of New Orleans through the eyes of local musicians." [THR]

· HBO ordered a half-hour drama pilot with Ellen Barkin attached to star, about a woman who divorces her high-power, high-profile husband (OK, now the Barkin thing is starting to make sense) who then develops a platonic with his 24-year-old son. Meanwhile Oscar-nominated Revolutionary Road star Michael Shannon has been cast as the lead in Martin Scorsese's HBO pilot about the founding of Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire. [Variety, THR]
· Surviving Suburbia, a Bob Saget sitcom that was orphaned after The CW dropped its Media Rights Capital-produced programming, has found a second chance, with ABC potentially interested. The only potential loser in this situation? Laughter. [Variety]
· ScreenwriterWatch: Slumdog Millionaire writer Simon Beaufoy will write Spyglass's Leap Year, starring Amy Adams as "an uptight woman who travels to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on February 29," and all sorts of mayhem ensues. And A Mighty Heart writer Joe Orloff will script Ian Fleming bio Fleming, produced by Leo DiCaprio's company at Warner Bros. [THR, THR]

· HBO has gone on a buying spree, picking up two more comedies—How to Make It in America, and Bored to Death, a hipster-noir starring Jason Schwartzman—hot on the heels of their Hung order. Cocaine Cowboys, meanwhile, from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, got a greenlight. There's a joke about coke-dick in there somewhere, but we were raised better than that. [THR]
· Are you going into Cheno-withdrawal anticipating the final Pushed Daisy? She's already lined up her next TV gig: co-starring in David E. Kelley's new NBC drama, Legally Mad. She plays Skippy Pylon, "a brilliant but not entirely well attorney who is relentlessly cheerful with flashes of psychosis and often is mistaken for a teenager." We've always thought Gloria Allred: The Early Years would make a great drama, and now we're justified.
· The Newlywed Game has been resurrected by GSN, offering a "modern take" on the whoopie-making-quiz classic. Don't worry, gay-marrieds. We have a feeling there's a place for you at this table, too. [THR]
· Allen Shapiro has plunked down $255 million for the TV Guide Network, which has "The Lisa Rinna Show" and "ponzi scheme" written all over it. [Variety]
· Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow has dropped out as The Green Hornet's director "over creative differences," but will still play Kato. [Variety]

The network ordered ten episodes of the show, starring The Punisher star Thomas Jane, but series creators Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson want to underscore the fact that the show isn't only about his pavement-scraping flesh pendulum:

The sexual aspect will be a major source for comedy but not the main focus of the series, said Lipkin and Burson, who are already writing Episode 5.

"It has its sexual moments, but the show is very much about what's happening in the country, how people are trying to survive using what God had given them," Lipkin said.

Alexander Payne has committed to staying on as series EP after having directed the pilot—one of the first purchases of the network's new entertainment president Sue Naegle back in April, who couldn't help noting at the time that there was a great deal of heart beneath this universal story of a working-class man and his colossal he-trunk.

• HBO high on "Hung" [THR]

[Funny or Die]

• Flight of the Conchords [HBO]

From Broadcasting & Cable: "Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and HBO have inked a multiyear deal to develop and produce scripted programming for the pay cable network. Potential projects include series, miniseries, movies and documentaries."

We can't wait for Dr. Oz to bare more than just his upper arms, or for Nate to respond to a homeowner's query, "Isn't that taupe-colored living room kind of boring?" with a terse "Fuck no." [Broadcasting & Cable]

I know some folks just wanna get my back, but honestly - I'm fine. We're talking about a show set in a Hollywood so fictional that Ed Burns is a successful television producer (surprisingly, in the real world, Burns' brother is a writer on "Entourage"). We all know where the jabs are coming from (Vanilla [Entourage EP Rob] Weiss) as well as why they're being made: because Rob's still working out some issues he didn't cover in therapy...

Regardless, "Entourage" is still a guilty pleasure for me (even with the shots taken). And, like I wrote above - it's a fair jab: I've been to Sprinkles many times (just had no clue Weiss was stalking me during those runs)

We're relieved the director is able to take such jabs (the third, according to one message board poster) in stride, admitting that as cheap Entourage shots go, at least Sprinkles is a baked goods purveyor he actually endorses—if you define "endorsement" as holding a Sprinkles Platinum Visa that allows him to cut the line and head straight to the counter to pick up his regular. (An assorted baker's dozen "with a extra side of lemon icing, just-a like da Mister Kevin he likes!").

• The View Askewniverse

Yes, it seems vampires aren't the only supernatural B-movie entities the population of Bon Temps has to mingle with on a regular basis. Sam was kind enough to lay out the shapeshifting rules:

1. He can turn into any animal, but leans towards dogs, because everyone loves a dog.
2. He needs an actual animal to use as the shapeshifting blueprint.
3. He can't do humans—too complex.
4. He can usually control the impulse, except on a full-moon night, at which point he can only turn back into a human once he falls asleep.
5. But that DOESN'T make him a werewolf—got it? But yes, werewolves do exist.
6. There's several thousand other shapeshifters out there, but he hasn't found them, and he doesn't know if it runs in genealogy because he was adopted. (And abandoned.)

That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: Should you feed your shapeshifter gluten-free kibble? What do you do if your shapeshifter doesn't get along well with other shapeshifters at the shapeshifter run? With only two episodes left, we doubt we'll learn everything there is to know about the ductile species. In the meantime, enjoy the above montage of Sam doing what he does best. Good boy! Attaboy, Sam! Whozagooboy? Yes you are!

• True Blood [HBO]

The result is something akin to what might happen if the CAA Death Star were to hover off from its Century City docking bay and touch down gently in the middle of the Burning Man festival. In the clip above, Ari loses the group, and in the process, all control of his perverse, stranglehold-reliant existence. Is it any wonder that as he panics among the boulders, he turns to his own rock—fiercely loyal gaysian henchman Lloyd—for guidance? With a sixth season announced today, we look forward to future episodes in which the lovable foursome pull off their socks and inject some of Roberts's premium brown sugar between their toes in a heroin-fueled attempt at divining whether or not Vinnie should take on the lead in Eight Below 2. [Entourage]