Gawker: defamer, lawyers

Finally, The World Is Spared Another Show About Lawyers

Richard Lawson — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:44:00 EDT

Hipster movies are made, as are ones about the depraved world of small town Texas. Which are sorta hipster in their own right. Bad news for David E. Kelley, which is good news for us.

Uh oh, trendy hipster movie alert. Twee darlings Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Painfully Whimsical Script) and Michelle Williams (Dudes Doin' It, Wyoming Edition) are set to costar as wistful lovers in a movie melancholicly titled Blue Valentine. Imagine the twinkly music and the shaky-cam shots of mournful streets blurring into focus and, perhaps, the voiceover! [Variety]

Ohh dear. Are you sitting down? Can I get you some tea? Here, have one of these cookies. OK, hon, I have some bad news. You know how much you wanted David E. Kelley to have a new show about lawyers on TV? And remember how it looked like his Kristin Chenoweth show, delightfully titled Legally Mad, was going to be that show? Well, love, unfortunately... Oh, this is so hard. Wait, what's that? The idea of another one of Kelley's aggressively quirky horrid lawyer shows on the air makes you want to burn the Earth down? Oh, well. Me too. So, fuck it. It didn't get picked up. Neither did Lauren Graham's sitcom. Yeah. Drink? [Variety]

Still have a hankering for the heady days of Hawaii Five-O and Magnum P.I.? You know, butt-kickin' crime-fightin' in the balmy bliss of America's most beautiful colony. Well, Jerry Bruckheimer has heard your late night whimpering and is coming to your aid. His Honolulu set procedural Cooler Kings has been greenlit by A&E. The show is about a group of Igloo salesmen who decide to solve mysteries on their lunch breaks. Right? [Variety]

Speaking of A&E, Kevin Costner would like to take that wolf up on its offer of a second dance and head back into the West...ern genre. He's in talks with the net to produce, definitely, and act in and direct, maybe, something about the post-Civil War wild wild West. Sort of like that TNT series from a while back except, we'd imagine, with less Skeet Ulrich. [THR]

Simon Baker the Mentalist will soon be dealing with a mental case. He's playing a lawyer out to expose Casey Affleck as the small town sheriff turned horrid murderer that he is in Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. The Winterbottom factor makes me intrigued, though the presence of Jessica Alba as a hooker and Kate Hudson as a schoolteacher girlfriend gives me pause. [THR]

Oh, cute. Dermot Mulroney is directing a movie. He was so good on The Practice. [THR]

Only those of you with elephantine memories...

Mark Graham — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:03:35 EST

Only those of you with elephantine memories will recall the case of Charlene Richards, the nurse that was hired to watch over legendary television superproducer Aaron Spelling during his final, bedridden days. While under the employ of the Spellings, Richards found herself in hot water after she refused to ride the grumpy old man's baloney pony. She was quickly fired for insubordination, but she didn't go quietly. She filed a sexual harrassment lawsuit, during the process of which her team of legal eagles sent a questionnaire out to over 600 actresses (including Heather Locklear and Teri Hatcher) asking if they, too, had been forced to endure the come-ons of the doddering billionaire. Well, as you can assume, the Spelling estate was none too happy about the media attention this received (one headline read "Sex Scandal Rocks Hollywood"), and they consequently filed a countersuit charging Richards' lawyer with defamation. All of this preamble serves to set-up this note: earlier today, the California Appeals Court threw the suit out. And that concludes today's episode of L.A. Law. Now, if you'll excuse us, we must be going. We hear that Arnie Becker is throwing a raging kegger, and we want to get a few words in edgewise with Grace Van Owen before she gets sloppy. [THR, Esq.]

The Screed-O-Matic: Fun With Scary Hollywood Lawyer Letters

Mark — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:54:13 EDT

Unfortunately, new Conde Nast bizporn title Portfoilio's Screed-O-Matic is not, as its name seems to suggest, a fun toy for generating the kind of Scary Hollywood Lawyer missives for which epistolary pit-bull Marty Singer is famous. as we can think of no more amusing way to fritter away an entire afternoon than by self-issuing cease-and-desist notices only marginally less petty than ones we've actually received. (I.e., "Your repeated assertion that my client Sanjaya Malakar is actually some kind of minor hellspawn sent to destroy American Idol is malicious and outrageous. He is, in fact, a major demon." etc etc.) Still, there's some entertainment value in taking the S-O-M's interactive quiz on actual letters authored by Singer, especially when one can discover fun facts about how WWD's $3,445 ostrich-skin Prada bag "peace offering" to an offended Sarah Michelle Gellar was ostensibly returned because of the actress's feelings about animal rights.

The Screed-O-Matic [Portfolio]

'Apprentice' Entertainment Lawyers Seek Out An Even Darker Master

Mark — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 18:33:23 EST

When Donald Trump decided to try and revive his flagging Apprentice franchise by relocating it to Los Angeles, it guaranteed that he'd have access to local talent pre-degraded by jobs in the entertainment industry, for whom a potential Trump Organization imprisonment in a supply closet on an unfinished golf course would seem an appealing career option. But since employers here might not be so eager to lend their personnel to a weeks-long, televised job interview, contestants like entertainment lawyers Derek Arteta (of New Line) and Kristine Lefebvre (fret not, "The Lawyer in Me" section of her personal site is just a professional bio, not work in some legal-themed pornography) had to sneak off under the cover of "personal time" to do the show. THR, Esq. reports that their "vacationing" co-workers learned of their reality TV activities only after the cast was announced, but were nonetheless supportive of their dreams of Trump-branded subjugation:

"We think it's fantastic," says Judd Funk, New Line's senior executive vp business affairs and Arteta's boss. "Derek's a good lawyer, and this is a great company in the sense that (co-CEOs) Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are both lawyers; they want people to be able to spread their wings and have the chance to do what makes them happy."
Arteta, 34, a Hastings College of the Law grad who already has appeared on a number of game shows, confided his secret only in Funk before leaving for what the rest of New Line thought was South America.

"People suspected he would go on a reality show because he's such a reality show junkie," says Collette Kadrnka, Arteta's friend and co-worker. "But when the cast was announced, everyone was shocked." [...]

Colleagues of Lefebvre, 37, an alum of Florida's Nova Southeastern University who negotiates talent and sports licensing deals and is married to well-known chef Ludovic Lefebvre, also learned of her involvement when promotion for the show began.

"We generally don't question our lawyers when they take personal time off, and we know Kristine would never do anything to put the firm in a negative light," says Jackie Redin Klein, a member of the executive committee of Lord Bissel, which is supporting its associate's quest to join Trump's empire.

Two episodes in, neither contestant has done anything to bring shame on the employers they hope to jilt should Trump offer them the Apprenticeship, but it's a long season; there's still more than enough time for one of them to to let slip under The Donald's withering boardroom interrogation, "You think I couldn't handle working for you? I'm a lawyer in Hollywood, so I deal with bigger, more soulless pricks than you every day."

Industry Attorneys Not Immune to Trump's Allure [THR ESQ]
Kristine Lefebvre [KristineLefebvre.com]
Derek Arteta [DerekArteta.com]

And We'd Like To Thank Our Attorney, Whose Constant Support Has Kept Tom Cruise From Taking Away Our Summer Homes

Mark — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:58:20 EDT

The professional alcoholics at SorryIGotDrunk.com scanned this ad from today's Variety, in which South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say thank you to long-suffering (but apparently good-humored) attorney Kevin Morris on his firm's 10th anniversary by posing in front of the creative aids that have enabled a decade of staggering billable hours. Cute ads in the trades are nice, but in the end, there's really no better way to reward friendship and loyalty than by making someone a shitload of money.

A Vision Into Trey & Matt's Possible Fate Without Entertainment Attorneys [SorryIGotDrunk.com]
Barnes, Morris, Klein, Mark, Yorn, Barnes & Levine 10th Anniversary [Variety]

My Lawyer Is Skip

Mark — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 15:51:21 EDT

The LAT profiles industry uber-lawyer Skip Brittenham, who, it turns out, is more than merely one of the industry's most powerful behind-the-scenes players. ("All roads lead to Skip" declares Sony's Amy Pascal! "If you're going to have just one new Lew Wasserman this year, make it Skip Brittenham!" says Harvey Weinstein of the The Weinstein Company Gazette! etc etc.) He's also a dedicated dad, devoted fisherman, and, it seems, an amateur comedian. Humanizes the Times:

In an industry known for hubris and artifice, Brittenham can be self-deprecating, using humor to disarm adversaries and diffuse tensions.

His Christmas cards, sent out by the hundreds each year, have become legendary. Designed by Brittenham's wife, actress Heather Thomas, they always make the balding, 5-foot-8-inch lawyer the brunt of the joke.

Last year's card showed what happened when Thomas, following the instructions in a book called "How to Have a Happy Marriage," let her husband pick the family's holiday vacation destination. The card opened to reveal the entire Brittenham family, shivering and scowling, huddled around its self-centered patriarch as he happily fished through a hole in the ice.

OK, maybe he's not particularly funny, but we already like him much better than Bert Fields. And nearly every guy in our seventh grade class had his wife's poster on their wall, so he's making up some points right there.

He Reels In the Big Deals [LAT]