• Meet your new action hero overlord: Chris Pine. Already fronting the rebooted Star Trek franchise, Pine has signed on to play the Jack Ryan role previously portrayed by Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin in a new go-around adapting Tom Clancy's series of espionage novels. [Variety]

• For those CBS and Viacom employees who feel each day the burden of the Redstone yoke, you can take heart today; Sumner is now less your owner than he was last week. The octillionaire mogul has been selling off the debt of his holding company, National Amusements. For now, however, NA still retains the controlling interest. [Variety]

• As the world waits for the final outcome of Vivendi/GE/Comcast talks over the fate of NBC Universal, Nikki Finke reports that Comcast wants the deal "done and announced in November." So there. [DHD]

• Curse be damned! ABC has won the competition to be the next network to fail with a sitcom by a former Friends star, locking up rights to the Matthew Perry project. [THR]

• The Wrap reports that Alex Young, Co-President of Production at 20th Century Fox is being moved out of the job and into a producing deal. Young was a Tom Rothman protege who has been in the job since 2007. [The Wrap]

• Always on the lookout for a feel good project, director Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis have picked up the rights to "The Golden Suicides," Nancy Jo Sales' Vanity Fair article about the deaths of downtown artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. [Variety]

• The creator of the Gilmore Girls is coming to HBO. Exec-Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has signed a deal to develop a dramedy for the cable network. She described the project as the "story of love, hate, family — and finding the perfect opening line," [THR]

• This is what it's come to in the strange, contorted career of Bill Murray; taking Joe Pesci's leftovers. For those who thought Murray's Zombieland cameo was just a little strange— that he was too big, or had been too big a star for the joke about Woody Harrelson being obsessed with him to completely click — you are right. In an interview with Hitfix, Murray revealed the walk on had been intended for Joe Pesci — with whom the joke would have made a lot more sense — but that Murray took the part after Pesci passed. [Hitfix]

Bids are coming in high on Sumner Redstone's movie theater chain, which is good because he needs the money [Variety]. More than 60 actors cast in this year's pilots are foreigners. This will be on Lou Dobbs tonight [THR]. Taye Diggs will play a vampire in Dead of Night [THR].

According to Page Six, the North Beverly Park Homeowners Association (including Jackson and Magic Johnson, among others) is outraged that the South Beverly Park HOA (representing Washington, Stallone, Eddie Murphy and even Sumner Redstone) has denied it members use of an entry gate on Mulholland Drive — "forcing the south dwellers' nannies, workmen and relatives to drive seven miles around to the south gate."

Naturally, this effrontery cannot stand; the dueling associations are presently squaring off in court, with the exasperated judge urging reconciliation while the North group's lawyer complained that the smaller, Oscar-challenged HOA to the south should pay for the right to use the gate. Meanwhile, we hear Sharon Waxman is set to report that Denzel's side rejected their neighbors' offer via secret ballot in a high-powered, super-classified dinner at Redstone's joint. Nikki Finke naturally will protest those findings, confirming instead that Sam Jackson's nanny was, in fact, spotted entering the community on Mulholland.

Such drama! Please let us know if your own Beverly Park detours persist; we're determined to mediate a speedy resolution any way we can.

• Civil War in H'Wood [NYP]

Any divorce settlement would come out of Sumner Redstone’s own pocket, and not his family's Boston-based business, National Amusements Inc., said two people close to the firm. National Amusements is caught in a credit squeeze and Redstone's daughter, Shari Redstone, who runs the company, is trying to restructure its nearly $1.6-billion debt load, including an $800-million bank loan that is due in mid-December.

Another source tells us that Martha Stewart and Mark Burnett, the reality show maven who works with her, "had a giant blowout, over money." Along with the timing of this Sumner Redstone rumor, it paints a grim picture. Let's hope this doesn't get so bad that it filters down to the non-rich.

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

1. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood, by Tom King

The Gist: A gay Polish-Ukrainian Jew from Borough Park moves to Hollywood and enters the mail room at the William Morris Agency. After forging a letter suggesting he had a college degree when in fact he did not, Geffen rises through the ranks to become an agent, then leaves WMA and founds Asylum Records and produces albums by Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Asylum is sold to Warner Communications, and Geffen becomes Vice Chairman of Warner film studios. He then retires and un-retires after a minor but erroneous health scare, founds Geffen Records, courts John Lennon and Yoko Ono (see below), produces Cats, Risky Business (see below), co-founds Dreamworks SKG, produces Saving Private Ryan, backs Bill Clinton, gives lots of money to AIDS research, falls out with Bill Clinton over one of the sleazeballs he didn't pardon, and now backs Barack Obama. Along the way Geffen throws many temper tantrums and raises his voice to the point where even Steven Spielberg asks him politely to lower it. He also shows a remarkable ability for betraying the confidences of good friends and business associates in order to charm potential clients he’s just met. The night Lennon was shot, Geffen was in bed with a male prostitute and loves to boast about it.

The Pull-Quote: “’What about my music?’ [Yoko Ono] asked. ‘Well, I’ve never heard any of your records.’ ‘Really,’ Ono said. ‘That doesn’t sound like a very good reason for me to make a deal with you.’ ‘I’m a big fan of John’s, and I have a great deal of respect for the two of you, and we do a very good job. We’re a good record company.’ ‘What do you mean you’re a good record company?’ Ono fired back. ‘You haven’t put out a record yet!’”

The Takeaway: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Be enlightened and progressive on your own time, but cunning and ruthless on corporate time. Respect for others’ privacy won't make you rich and powerful. Endear yourself to those you want to impress by gossiping about people you know behind their backs. It'll smack of such poor judgment that would-be clients will assume you're either crazy or brilliant, and guess what? You are.

2. Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power, by Judy Bachrach

The Gist: Gifted writer Tina Brown makes her fellow students feel small at Oxford, dates a host of famous men (including Auberon Waugh, who washes frantically after sex, Martin Amis, whom she adores, and Dudley Moore, whom she does not), deflects charges of arrivisme, and becomes editor of UK tabloid Tatler at age 25. She meets Harold Evans, then married and famously editing the The Times of London and The Sunday Times, which names her Most Promising Female Journalist. Brown and Evans marry in 1981, then move to New York three years later, whereupon Brown revives the moribund Vanity Fair by turning it into the must-read glossy on celebrity doings and the leisure class. She hires true crime reporter Dominick Dunne, photographer Helmut Newton and inaugurates a new wave of magazine journalism, operating under the assumption that "intellectuals should be read and not seen." Meanwhile, Tina and Harry are now East Coast socialites whose fiercely guarded life together aspires to shape headlines, not become them. (Their best friend is British libel law.) Brown takes over The New Yorker in 1992 and remakes that antiquated smart sheet, too, acquiring Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Lane and David Remnick, who later replaces her as editor-in-chief. On a manuscript submitted by Yiddish Nobel laureate, Brown writes, "Beef it up, Singer," which more or less encapsulates her style of feared-but-respected-or-hated tenure. She founds Talk magazine in 1999, which folds after just two years, an over-sensationalized failure from which this unauthorized biography derives all of its rise-and-fall schadenfraude. (Bachrach is a contributing editor at the new VF, edited by Brown’s archnemesis Graydon Carter.)

The Pull-Quote: "We live in a time when infamy sells.... There is no honor, no reticence, no loyalty." Spoken by Maureen Dowd on Brown's New Yorker reign, and quoted by author to make a clichéd point.

The Takeaway: Develop a nose for future A-listers. Sleep with as many as you can all the while adopting an “amused” air about them. Overpaying the talent means you can bully them into submission, so don't be cowed by easily tossed around phrases like "national institution" or "greatest living writer." Fuck 'em if they can't take a kill-fee. Oh, and marry old men.

3. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young

The Gist: Son of highbrow sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term "meritocracy," Toby Young devotes his life to testing how much strain that already weakened concept can take. He writes for the British Times, gets fired from the British Times. He founds celebrated Modern Review, which traffics in "low culture for highbrows," then shuts it down, much to the dismay of everyone else involved. Young moves to New York in the early 90's, gets hired by Graydon Carter as a contributing editor (read: sinecurist) at Vanity Fair, then proceeds overlong tenure as a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Graydon Carter’s shoe (this is G.C.’s description of him, not ours). Young cracks dud jokes to celebrities, refers to doormen who won't let him into parties he'd end up hating anyway as "clipboard Nazis," does blow while on assignment, asks Nathan Lane if he's gay, gets fired from Vanity Fair. Now back in London (this isn't in the book), Young edits The Spectator, a conservative weekly, and boasts of his "negative charisma," probably as a way to boost paperback sales. HTLFAAP, much like Young himself, has been up and down the wicket of sadomasochistic success. A film adaptation is said to be in post-production, starring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst.

The Pull-Quote: “Cool Britannia was a cry of independence, a howl of protest against the all-enveloping cultural hegemony of the United States, yet, paradoxically, it didn’t really mean anything—it hadn’t really happened—until it was noticed by the American media. That explained the schizophrenic attitude of people like Damien Hirst, Keith Allen and Alex James: they wanted to assert their indifference to the attentions of glossy, New York magazines, and yet they wanted to be photographed striking this insouciant pose in Vanity Fair. Like rebellious schoolchildren, their protest wouldn’t have counted unless it was registered by the authorities. Unfortunately, in this scenario I was cast as the toothless substitute teacher.”

The Takeaway: The memoir is a good object lesson in what not to do if you want to hang onto a job or a masthead listing, or cast the impression that deep down you really had high expectations for the world of glamour-besotted New York media. Also, it pays to be obnoxious in a way that only you find ironic.

4. Spy: The Funny Years, by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

The Gist: In 1986, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen found the future of piss-taking journalism in the form of Spy magazine. Épater le bourgeoisie never had it so good, or so the editors – now all dressed up and fixtures of the very culture they once lampooned – are the first ones to remind you. Spy pioneers satire as a clever agglomeration of facts, and specializes in the infographic, the listicle (just like this one!) and the blurb cloud. It attempts to decipher just who, exactly, is on the New Yorker’s indecipherable masthead. It follows Anthony Haden-Guest into the dank reaches of his own nightlife. It refines hatred of Donald Trump into an art form. Features include the Liz Smith Tote Board, Separated at Birth, and Logrolling in Our Time, without which everything from The Onion to Conan O’Brien’s pre-interview fooling would be unimaginable. The self-conscious prose style is a cocktail of H.L. Mencken, A.J. Liebling and Wolcott Gibbs, and its been swigged by every glossy editor in search of a readership ever since. Once G.C. leaves, it all goes to shit. Like Studio 54, the new owners can’t make it work, ergo the justified hubris of the book’s title.

The Pull-Quote: “How easy is it to steal the sour cream?” – in a chart surveying the various Manhattan cafeteria chains.

The Gist: You need only ask yourself if you read Radar to determine whether there’s any pedagogic value to be mined from Spy.

5. Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

The Gist: Nameless 24 year-old fact-checker for elite New York glossy (a thinly veiled New Yorker) moonlights as an aspiring novelist, or wants us to believe he moonlights as that while he’s busy Hoovering coke by the suitcaseful and partying through the vertiginous 80’s club scene with a yuppie twat called Tad Allagash. Tad calls the narrator, who writes annoyingly in the second person, “Coach.” His mother has recently passed away, so we’re shin-kicked into wondering if a life of artifice and glitz is simply an emollient for real pain. Behind the hatred there lies a plundering desire for love. Or something.

The Pull-Quote: “Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you clean up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

The Takeaway: Once Tina Brown takes over Coach’s magazine, he’s fired. Sort your soul out before you move to the metropolis of infinite distractions, otherwise you, too, will wind up a shiftless anonymity with withdrawal symptoms. (Your apartment can still be a mess, however.)

6. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

The Gist: Recent Brown graduate Andrea Sacks wants to write for the New Yorker (sigh) and blankets the media world with her resume hoping to get a dues-paying job somewhere that will eventually allow her to become Larissa MacFarquhar. Whoops. She gets hired by fashion bible Runway’s bitch supreme Miranda Priestly (Anna Wintour, not even thinly veiled) as her junior personal assistant. Next thing Andrea knows, she’s chasing down lattes at Starbucks and sirloins at Smith and Wollensky instead of learning about ledes and nut grafs. Not what she had in mind but she loves the clothes and even develops a knack for being a second-string slave to a subhuman narcissist. Unlike in the film, Andrea doesn’t quit – she gets fired for saying “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.” Ballsy, sure, but she does get to keep some of the Dolce and even snags an interview for a real writing position at another magazine in the same building. (N.B. Author Weisberger was Wintour’s personal assistant, so this novel is a bildungsroman, which is a word Andrea learned at Brown but seldom got to use after graduation.)

The Pull-Quote: “Fuck you, Miranda. Fuck you.”

The Takeaway: How many bright young girls have come to New York hoping to fill these Cinderella slippers, only to discover that not only is Wintour not hiring, but she’s honed her filter for confessional opportunists more interested in publishing advances than making sure her Apple Fritter is extra flaky. If you want to be a bona fide reporter, save yourself the aggro and dashed hopes and apply for an internship at the New York Sun your junior year. Also, while it’s true that some ball-breaking editors respond well to self-assertiveness, telling your boss “Fuck you” isn’t the wisest career decision.

7. Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, by John Gregory Dunne

The Gist: The story of Dunne and wife Joan Didion's attempt to transform the life of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch, who died in a car wreck after more or less proving on air in 1983, during a broadcast of NBC News Digest, that she was a drug addict. Instead of a sadder version of Network, the screenplay transforms into the Disneyfied Up Close and Personal, which makes absolutely no mention of Savitch and which even Robert Redford doesn't remember filming.

The Pull-Quote: “The purpose of such a meet-and-greet is to allow the executive to size up the supplicant. [Disney studio chairman Jeffrey] Katzenberg had not read Golden Girl, but he was aware of the less savory details of Jessica Savitch’s life. He liked the ugly-duckling idea; it was the kind of narrative he wanted, and he was also responsive to the television background against which it would be played. He did have reservations, and here I quote Joan’s notes of that first meeting: ‘Wants to know what is going to happen in this picture that will make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something and good about themselves.’”

The Takeaway: Dunne is witty and disarming, especially when he quotes Jack Warner's definition of screenwriters: "schmucks with Underwoods." Interestingly, the "monster" in question is not the industry or any particular studio executive, but rather the money that governs all, including Dunne.

8. You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, by Julia Phillips

The Gist: Scandal-sponge Jewish producer reveals the vast corruption, drugs and sexual indiscretions that motor the movie industry. Phillips gets fired by Steven Spielberg on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, accuses Goldie Hawn of body odor, and, on the night she becomes the first woman to win a "Best Picture" Oscar for The Sting, downs three valiums, one upper, one and a half drinks, two joints and a dash of cocaine. The book is a sprayfire indictment of practically everyone Phillips ever met in Hollywood, and it got her banned from Morton's.

The Pull-Quote: "They were really a rogues' gallery of nerds. Marty [Scorsese] was tiny and asthmatic, Steven [Spielberg] had the soft, flabby look of a typical Twinkies kid, and Brian [De Palma] never took his safari jacket off."

The Takeaway: Sour grapes ferment the best, although it's not as if anyone still believes in some West Coast Arcadia where dazzling moving pictures are made. Still, you'll hardly do better for the brutally honest story of a show biz prodigy that had to burn everything before she flamed out.

9. Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media, by Michael Wolff

The Gist: Following up on Burn-Rate (1998), which was about Wolff’s bust foray into the world of online startups, this is the nasty-minded sequel by the former New York media writer who wants badly to be the next Murdoch but can’t and decides to just insult everybody he ever envied instead—especially Fox News President Roger Ailes. Most of the stuff in here consists of Wolff's recycled columns, but it's all in one place and no true mogul ever wasted his time searching through web archives. Harvey Weinstein is obese and grotesque. The media business is "collapsing” like communism. Some of Wolff's axioms should be true even if they aren’t: “The larger and higher-profile the company, the bigger the nutcase who runs it.”

The Pull-Quote: “This was the meta thing. Meta gave both irony and gravitas to what we did. The delicious incongruity between our superficiality and our importance. The joie de vivre of self-referentialism. The stupendous, intoxicating power of being able to create the world we lived in."

Bonus Pull-Quote: “So, as I arrived for my speech, I was thinking of my relationship to the absent but always present [Fox News head Roger] Ailes. He was the greatest, but the Antichrist too.”

The Takeaway: Still fun. Like Young’s book, AOTM is a serviceable monument to failure dressed up as critical thinking. Though most of the wisdom you could just as easily cull by lunching at Michael's. Wolff went on to try and match-make the sale of his old haunt New York (he's now at Vanity Fair) to Mort Zuckerman, who in the event lost out to hedge fund wizard Bruce Wasserstein. That means more meanness is forthcoming in what promises to be the Dance to the Music of Time of inferiority complexes.

Some film tie-ins (Mission: Impossible, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) have already been announced, but a half-dozen more rumored attractions trickling out of Paramount HQ have us even more jacked:

—The Sonny Corleone Tollbooth Adventure: Buckle up and grab the phone — it's your sister Connie! Her husband's got the belt again! Swoop down the New Jersey turnpike at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour before plunging almost 300 feet into a hail of ice water and shrieks. On your way out, purchase your photo with optional Marlon Brando Sobbing Picture Frame™: "Look how they massacred my boy!"

—The "Ow Shia's Balls" Jungle Coaster: Settle in for the ride of your crotch's life as you straddle vehicles on two tracks through the Peruvian rainforest, just like the the young hero from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Don't let the spiky jungle cacti thwacking your genitals distract you as you battle an animatronic Soviet swordstress and her Commie henchmen — it's either your balls or America, kid!

—Ash Wednesday Eye-Lift Experience: Go under the knife just like desperate housewife Liz Taylor did in her forgotten 1973 melodrama, and then leave the park with a younger date than you arrived with.

—Ripley's Believe or Not Development Vortex: See how exactly how movies aren't made as cuddly Paramount mascot Jim Carrey guides guests on a winding backlot tour of production meetings, script revisions, salary haggles and other rollicking studio inertia.

—There Will Be Fun! Daniel Plainview Musical Revue: Relive the joy and wonder of There Will Be Blood with sociopathic oil baron Plainview and your entire family. The entire history of California oil drilling gets the stage treatment with numbers including "Bastard in a Basket," "Give Me the Blood, Eli" and the famous show-stopper "(I Drink Your) Milkshake."

—Sumner Redstone: The Ride: Climb 350 feet over Seoul before a wizened finger brushes you into a terrifying freefall back to Earth. (Sorry kids! You must be taller than Tom Cruise to ride.)

Let us know if you've heard about any others!

Despite the severed relationship, Cruise, 45, is in talks with Paramount to star in a fourth Mission: Impossible film. Viacom is Paramount's parent company.

"I consider Tom Cruise a great actor and a good friend," Redstone said. "And if Paramount decides — and they will make the decision — to move ahead with him, I will not object."

Redstone, who was seen dining with Cruise in Beverly Hills in March, was responding to a reporter's question after a speech at a conference in South Korea.

No word on whether or not Cruise and Paula Wagner's stalled United Artists tank might follow behind (especially as Dreamworks scouts new bungalows around town), but seeing as MGM still has a UA deal, M:I4 remains a separate matter. In any case, Redstone won't be leaving that one up to Grey, unless perhaps through some miracle of timing and imagination the principals develop M:I4 as a perfect midsummer companion to Valkyrie. Maybe the latter could be an origin story — Ethan Hunt descended from one-eyed Nazis? Don't think Redstone hasn't pitched it.

• Mogul Redstone: Cruise can star in next 'Mission Impossible' [AP]

The marketplace reaction to the fourth feevee was predictable: Who needs it?

"On its merits," says Rob Stengel, cable consultant and a principal of the Boston-based Continental Consulting Group, "I don't think you'll be able to find any distributors jumping up and down with eagerness to get their hands on another pay TV network."

Cable ops and satellite distributors "are crapping all over the idea in public," says a Viacom spokesman, "but privately, the early discussions are promising."

Oh, really? OK, then! Seeing as we apparently take everything publicists say at face value around here, we also pick up on what they don't say: specifically, as Variety's John Dempsey also notes today, the joint 'Mount/Lionsgate/MGM press release from last weekend bore no mention of a single cable company who had agreed to broadcast the channel. But seeing as that's the biggest public crap they could have taken so far — well, that, and not having jumped when Viacom said so — we figure the next round of battles can only go better for the dinged-up Dauman. We wish him luck!

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Showtme-Viacom Split Feeds Drama [Variety]

In the end, the studios just wanted more for their films' pay-cable rights than Showtime was willing to pay. This much was somewhat old news; Viacom and Paramount haven't quite seen eye-to-eye with CBS boss Les Moonves and Showtime chief Matt Blank for some time. The vertical integration implied by their output deals — Showtime had rights to Paramount releases through the end of 2007 — was less a function of convenience than an increasingly forced pairing, especially as Showtime's original programming (Weeds, Dexter, The Tudors) took off over the last few years. Showtime's output deals with MGM and Lionsgate — booked through the end of this year — were just as fragile in the Redstone and Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman's volatile corporate culture.

Nikki Finke was first on the scene when news broke on Sunday:

Moonves wanted to drastically cut the price for Paramount pics, arguing that "the pay channel world isn't what it used to be" and the value of movies on pay TV has decreased while the importance of hot new scripted original series have increased. I'm told that, as the bargaining dragged on, the Paramount/Viacom camp, once optimistic that it would all work out, lost patience with Moonves' "hard line" and resented being lowballed. Now it looks like Les over-negotiated because Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate have found refuge thanks to Viacom. This new premium TV channel by Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate is that old Hollywood maxim at work: Don't get mad. Get even.

Well, yeah. One observer told Finke that Moonves is "royally screwed" — for starters, there are no studios left on the market for output deals. A defiant Blank, however, is standing tall this morning in Variety:

"We're not willing to sell our network down the river for product that's not as valuable as it used to be," he said. "We wish them well. ...

"We've been having unbelievable success with our original programming," Blank said. "Can you name one movie Showtime has aired in the last three years? But people sure do know The Tudors and Californication and Dexter and Weeds."

Take that spin for what you will, but we're of a mind with David Poland: Apart from drunken Sunday-afternoon pissing contests, what's really in this for the 'Mount? Showtime keeps the studio's library for a while still, leaving MGM and Lionsgate's libraries (along with upcoming, inconsistent Paramount product ranging from Iron Man to The Love Guru) the primary source of programming. (DreamWorks films are aligned separately with HBO.) As such, reports The New York Times, original programming may be in the cards when the new channel launches in late 2009. But why pay hundreds of millions to enter that fray when HBO and Showtime have spent years establishing the institutional upper hand?

Sometimes there is no explanation for this kind of stuff besides entertaining Emperor Redstone — and us. We could watch Brad Grey cannibalize Les Moonves all day. Nevertheless, somebody out there knows something the rest of us don't; maybe an original program is jumping ship? Moonves lost a poker bet with MGM chief Harry Sloan over the weekend? Your guesses are as good as ours.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Studios team on VOD venture [Variety]

At an industry screening Tuesday night of the forthcoming comedy Tropic Thunder from Paramount Pictures and its unit DreamWorks, Tom Cruise brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools. ...

[T]he performance is likely to draw attention, since Paramount is weighing a plan in which it would build buzz with extensive screenings of Tropic Thunder before its Aug. 15 release, much as 20th Century Fox did in 2006 with Borat... At Tuesday's screening Mr. Stiller told attendees that his new film was still in rough form. "If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them directly on the Internet," he said.

More specifically, please post them directly in our inbox. Presuming Redstone has already seen his nemesis' handiwork, we'd like to know if, say, any morning coffee was spit out, how far, what it was chased with and, of course, whether or not Tropic Thunder is either the surest signal or the certain ruin of a Cruise/Redstone rapprochement. Operators are standing by!

• Tom Cruise, in Bit Role, Nips Studio's Top Gun [NYT]

Delicious as they were, Redstone's takedowns of Cruise during the pair's 2006 bust-up never exceeded the realms of showmanship; the hard feelings that surfaced in the press aren't quite what you'd call insurmountable. Especially under these circumstances, with Paramount facing the loss of its disgruntled moguls (and their properties) at DreamWorks and Cruise (with producing partner Paula Wagner) wedged into an already over-budget, so-far-so-bad production and distribution deal with MGM — which owns about 65 percent of UA but is also hedging with reliable, low-maintenance new hires to create a totally separate production slate. None of this pleases Cruise and Wagner, who are reportedly disappointed enough in MGM's feeble infrastructure to buy MGM out with a percentage of future deals headed back to the studio. If they did it at Paramount, though, with Redstone capping budgets around $60 million, would it even be worth it?

We're just saying, of course. There's no accounting for ego and/or hard feelings, but really, there's not that much water under these guys' bridge. And we all know lunch at the Polo Lounge is never just "lunch." Is it?

• Mission Possible: Redstone, Cruise Re-Establish Ties [WSJ]
• All Forgiven? [NYP]

"He's gone, and he's not going to be missed," one knowledgeable insider tells Radar. Word is, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone—who made headlines in 2006 for canning Tom Cruise after his off-screen antics became a liability—has struck again.

So, is the ornery octogenarian billionaire, who also controls CBS, Paramount Pictures, and MTV Networks, trying to prove that he's still the big swinging dick of the entertainment business? Looks that way.

Whether or not this account is an accurate representation of where the Spielberg/Viacom marriage is headed, we're genuinely disturbed by the idea of a dick-measuring contest between the Hollywood deity and his immortal nemesis. Should Spielberg and Redstone ever meet to finally settle the matter of who's packing more influential inches, the confrontation could stretch on for hours, with teams of assistants furiously unspooling yards and yards of their bosses' members, which have been imposingly lengthened by billions of dollars in box-office grosses and hundreds of years toiling in show business, respectively.

UPDATE: Spielberg's flack denies the report thusly: "Radar's radar kind of bounced off an incorrect source."

• Spielberg Out at DreamWorks? [Radar]

· Billy Bob Thornton hopes some of newly minted Hollywood superstar Shia LaBeouf's sizzle rubs off on him, signing on to learn some new tricks from the young master while working on the DreamWorks thriller Eagle Eye. [Variety]
· Not even the strike can slow Jerry Bruckheimer's superproducing abilities. [Variety]

Dauman also is suspect because he holds the world record for getting along with Sumner M. Redstone, the crusty autocrat who built Viacom and looms Zeus-like from his hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills as executive chairman and lead shareholder of Viacom and its sister company, CBS Corp.

Cool or not, Dauman's 25-year relationship with Redstone, 84, is the key to his power at Viacom. It also increases the odds that he will be a force there after Redstone is gone.

Dauman once served as Redstone's personal lawyer and co-executor of his estate. He has been his strategist, secret agent, corporate troubleshooter, fellow board member and, now, top executive. With the circle around Redstone thinning because of ongoing conflict within his family, there may be no one closer to him than Dauman.

"He's very loyal, very hardworking, and suddenly, he's the last man standing," a New York media investor said.

Even as the "last man standing," the next couple of years will be crucial ones in determining Dauman's future in the Viacom empire. Once the matters of the Google lawsuit and Steven Spielberg's possible departure from the corporate family are finally settled, Redstone will decide whether to let his right-hand man drink of the ceremonial, jewel-encrusted chalice filled with his immortality-granting blood and rule with him for eternity, or to merely have his trusty CEO's brain transplanted into the skull of his favorite lap-cat, stroking him appreciatively until the natural end of the pet's life.

• Viacom chief has clout, if not cool [LAT]
• Previously: More Aftershocks From The Two Little Words That Shook Hollywood [Defamer]

But in August the Redstones privately agreed to a cooling-off period until after the Labor Day weekend, when Shari's 25-year-old daughter, Kimberlee, was to be married.

Sumner and his wife, Paula, attended the Sept. 2 ceremony at the Inter-Continental Boston Hotel, where heart-shaped fireworks lit up the Boston Harbor.

One guest said that although there were no fireworks between Sumner and Shari during the lavish event, the pair weren't exactly cozy.

"There was peace, but they basically didn't speak to each other all weekend," said one person, who asked to remain anonymous because the wedding was a private family affair. The person said the elder Redstone laid low, neither toasting the bride and groom nor playing any other ceremonial role.

A person close to Sumner said he and Shari "hugged each other."

Despite his best attempts at maintaining a tenuous familial peace, the immortal patriarch couldn't help but co-opt part of the reception to make a point about the futility of his daughter's efforts to unseat him. Grabbing Shari by the elbow and leading to the wedding cake stand, he whispered in her ear, "Imagine this delicious dessert is my Viacom empire. If you abandon your doomed campaign to overthrow me, you get this generous slice," then paused to cut her off a small sliver of the frosted treat. But he then quickly withdrew the offering, continuing, "But if you persist in this insubordination, I will eat the whole fucking thing, and you will get nothing," a threat that was immediately followed by the wizened executive's disturbing devouring of the entire three-foot-tall cake-tower—plastic bride and groom included—before a roomful of shocked guests.

• Redstone family rift may not be healed [LAT]
• Previously: Battle Between Sumner Redstone And Daughter Fizzling, But Bar Fight With God Could Be Brewing [Defamer]