popculturediedin2009:

The first-ever sighting of Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes, with reactions, courtesy of Oh No They Didn’t! c. April 2005.

Never forget that one of Hollywood’s greatest horror stories began on LiveJournal.

popculturediedin2009:

Hilary Duff parties at Time Supper Club in Montreal, September 2007

popculturediedin2009:

Kim Kardashian defends Joe Francis while he faces charges of tax evasion, sexual battery and child pornography, August 2007

popculturediedin2009:

Joan Collins reacts to Charlotte Rae insulting her on The Insider, January 2007

According to New York Magazine, I’m partially responsible for coining the phrase “nepo baby.”

I can assure you that’s one-hundred percent not true (I could swear it was all over Twitter before that!), but free press is free press. Who am I to argue?

popculturediedin2009:

Lil Kim talks to paparazzi, January 2008

To update an old adage: those who can’t do, teach talk about it on TV.

I’m not really surprised. I thought FOX would snatch her up first, but I’m guessing NBC had an in given Savannah Gummy Guthrie’s husband worked as a consultant for Johnny’s legal team. And this fits in with NBC’s pattern of generally being terrible - see: Trump, Weinstein, Lauer et al. The much-ballyhooed “post-#MeToo” era doesn’t seem to be much different from what it was before. Go figure.

Anyway, I think this was the inevitable next step for Camille, since if the trial showed anything, she’s not that bright. Compared to Ben Chew, who was fine, Camille came off as a shrill Legally Blonde wannabe who watched too many an episode of Law & Order and delivered each question with the cadence of Elle Woods trying to catch Chutney in a shower slip-up, even when it resulted in embarrassment. But good ol’ misogyny and victim-blaming won out in the end, so she was able to keep her reputation and TikTok deification intact. Plus, people tend to put a lot of unnecessary stock in celebrity lawyers. It’s that whole “the best money can buy” fantasy, which is totally bogus. The late prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who put away Manson, tackled this brilliantly in his book about the O.J. case, Outrage, in the ‘90s. I took pictures of the relevant pages. If there were a PCD2009 book club, that would be at the top of the syllabus. A total must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of law, media, and celebrity.

In it, Bugliosi pointed out that O.J.’s acclaimed “Dream Team” was largely incompetent with an unimpressive track record going into the trial: Johnnie Cochran was mainly a civil lawyer whose last big case at the time was Michael Jackson’s child molestation drama, which he resolved with a $20 million dollar settlement from Michael to the little boy, and let’s face it, it doesn’t take expert legal maneuvering to tell someone to hand over a wad of cash; Robert Shapiro had never handled a murder trial before, bar the Christian Brando case, which ended with his client pleading guilty; F. Lee Bailey’s last big client was Patty Hearst, and he lost; and Alan Dershowitz wasn’t even a defense lawyer - he was only there to build an appeals case. Yet at the time, the media fell over themselves to praise these guys by noting their boldfaced clientele, not caring for the specifics of any of the cases or even if they won or lost them. Just by being associated with celebrities, they were decreed to be the best of the best.

The same applies here. By virtue of her being hired by a beloved movie star, Camille was assumed to be the “best” despite having no significant track record before taking the case. And because of this assumption, people elevated her performance in the courtroom to a stroke of brilliance, treating every line of questioning, no matter how inane (remember when she tried to ask Amber about her song choice for a Flipagram video?), like it was a masterclass in cross-examination. And chances are if you expect greatness, you’ll eventually convince yourself of it. We tend to see what we want to.

The converse is true, too. Because of Amber’s loss, a lot of people, including her supporters, point fingers at her lawyers and say they didn’t do a good enough job. I disagree. Even though the evidence was on her side, there was no winning with a jury who, by their own admission, thought she and Johnny ’abused each other’ but still decided against her; who said that if Amber kept her mouth shut, maybe Johnny would’ve helped her with her career, disregarding Johnny’s own text messages that were shown in court where he conspired to get Amber fired from Aquaman, ages before her op-ed was even published. You can’t win against stupid.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: why hasn’t anyone staged an intervention about Paris’ veneers? Her mouth looks like a bunch of chiclets.

I just choose what I think is interesting or fun. No rhyme or reason. At the start of every month I’ll comb through a few gossip site archives and save a bunch of stories, then mark up a calendar with particular anniversaries. With each thread I lead with a standout story (this week’s was Beyonce’s inauguration lip-sync drama), then follow up with random stories that I thought were worth digging up - not necessarily things that were "big" at the time. Some people are confused by those threads, I’m not sure why. I think it’s pretty straightforward.

I’m not really surprised. The brand of snark that made Gawker unique in its day has pretty much been absorbed by anyone with a Twitter now, and why go to a website to read what’s already been broken down into a dozen Twitter threads? I liked a couple of the writers at Gawker 2.0, but most of the stuff there was just that - summaries of stuff I’d already seen on Twitter. Plus, it seemed to be too much “Defamer” and not enough Gawker. Where’s the media industry gossip that made the original site fun? Where’s Judith Regan (or whoever her successor of today may be)?

The layout of the new site was pretty heinous, too. Maybe my tastes are outdated, but I really miss the simple site layouts of the olden days, when you just clicked and went to another page. Everything has an infinite scroll now, and most sites don’t even have a working tagging system anymore. It’s a nightmare to navigate, especially for the archival stuff I do for this blog and my Twitter. When Gawker relaunched, the new layout screwed up the old tagging system and left a lot of dead links to stories I’d previously saved. I can still find some of them by doing a Google search or using the Wayback Machine, but Google isn’t as reliable as it used to be, and even with specific keywords it’s harder to find stuff now.

I just hope that when the site goes down again, the server still stays up like it did when the site first shut down years ago. Too many old gossip sites and forums have been wiped from the Internet, and a trove of stories, pictures, and videos have gone with them. Every week I discover another site that I’ve used for my digging has disappeared, and there’s no way of accessing most of that stuff again.

Nah, I’m burnt out with celebrity confessionals. It seems like every other week there’s a new tell-all or “documentary.” The last memoir I bought was Hayley Mills’ a year or two ago. Good for Pam, though. I liked her blog back in the day.

popculturediedin2009:

Mischa Barton and Brandon Davis at Coachella, May 2004

I could probably make some moral argument against that account, but I can’t say I care, honestly. I lapped up much nastier gossip back in the days of the tabloids and blogs. Really, I think my main gripe with the person running DeuxMoi is that they’re not very good at it. Good gossip has some wit and levity to it - even Perez was capable of a funny turn of phrase every now and then. But whoever’s running the DeuxMoi page has the cadence, written and otherwise, of a teenager. So imagine my surprise when it turned out the account’s mystery proprietor is supposedly a woman in her thirties.

I guess it’s a matter of taste, too. I don’t have an interest in most of the people that make up the account’s submissions, which seem to be juvenile and mainly fan-driven (a lot of teen fans posing as industry insiders and misspelling words like "producer"). Which isn’t new, to be fair. I remember toward the end of his reign at E!, Ted Casablanca cooked up a lot of suspect blind items that seemed to be wish fulfillment for fans. The quack that runs Crazy Days and Nights (whom DM promotes a lot) built his blog on the same thing, trawling fan forums and comment sections to spin stories that would appeal to particular fanbases and keep them coming back for more. With social media, the boundary between “stan” and scribe is nonexistent now, so this kind of pandering is incessant and the types of celebrities that dominate the coverage on a page like DM seem to appeal mostly to kids with endless free time and an Internet connection.

I don’t know if anyone remembers, but there used to be this juicy Tumblr back in 2012 called "Fashion Industry Confessions.“ Like DM, it was based on reader submissions, but they at least had an air of credibility. I don’t know the first thing about the fashion world, but that didn’t really matter; the gossip people sent in had a certain connoisseurship of the business (certain photographers, agencies, editors, etc.) that made it fun to read and as if someone was leaning and whispering in your ear. No one at DM, let alone DM herself, seems to really know what they’re talking about, so every other submission seems to follow a pattern: [TV streaming actor fad of the week] is really hot right now and getting casted [sic] in a really big project!!!

You know what I mean? I don’t know if I have any longtime followers, but back in the early years of this blog I used to do similar posts compiling celebrity stories and encounters people sent in (I called them "dirt” posts). And I’m sure, like DM, a large chunk of it was bullshit, but I at least tried to filter out anything too fan-y. 

I know this all probably sounds like sour grapes, but I’m not jealous. Honest! I’m just a dick. You guys know that well enough. And I’m curious to see how long DM lasts before she/it tapers out. Perez’s big undoing was his "selling out" - when he became too close to the stars he was writing about, his readers turned on him. I don’t follow DM, so I only absorb its content in bits and pieces, but from what I’ve seen the owner has fallen into a similar trap. Too much sponsored content and PR-friendly fluff, and a pretty clear goal, like Perez, to make herself into a brand and celebrity. I wish her luck.

I didn’t. I haven’t followed an awards season since 2012 - 13. After that year the show became too focused on pandering to social media, which really cheapened the whole thing. I think the Ellen DeGeneres selfie was the year after that, no? Case in point.

I watched some of last year’s since I read there was going to be a Godfather reunion and I wanted to see Diane Keaton or James Caan (or even Talia Shire), but no dice. I turned it off before The Slap, but I was taken aback by how cheap everything looked. From a production standpoint, it looked about on par with the MTV Movie Awards. Maybe it’s the always unflattering digital sheen of today’s cameras, which tend to flatten everything into looking like a daytime soap, but not a speck of glamour was in sight.

I only watched a few of this year’s nominees. The Whale was an abomination. I was pulling for Colin Farrell since he does consistently great work and seems to be one of few contemporary actors who has the rough wit and charm of an Old Hollywood star, like a Richard Burton or Peter O'Toole. My favorite movie of the year was Blonde: I loved it and I thought Ana De Armas, who I’d never paid attention to before, was incredible. It felt like a sequel to The Day of the Locust and a perfect foil to the superficial and patronizing “Free Britney”-esq content we’ve been fed the last few years that proffer sanitized interpretations of female tabloid figures - but that’s a tangent for another day. I imagine Lindsay Lohan is kicking herself, though, since if anyone was meant to play a terrorized, nude, threesome-loving Marilyn Monroe, it’s her. In fact, the movie reminded me a lot of her graphic Linda Lovelace biopic that never came to fruition (not to be confused with the bland Amanda Seyfried one from around the same time).

They seem miserable and well-matched.

On this day in 2003, Martha Inc. starring Cybill Shepherd as Martha Stewart premiered on NBC.

Based on Christopher Byron’s unauthorized tome of the same name, the primetime drama chronicled the beleaguered domestic goddess’ rise and fall as she faced a criminal investigation over shady stock trades. Shepherd was cast on the suggestion of network star Matt Lauer, who also suggested fellow '70s babe Candice Bergen for the part. Shepherd, who’d once met Stewart at a TV programmers’ conference (“I remember thinking at the time, ‘Boy, I’d love to play her.’”), personally lobbied for the role. “I wanted the role so badly because it was the part of a lifetime,” she told Newsweek. “This woman is one of the most fascinating, contradictory characters and powerful people that have been in front of the public in a very long time.”

The casting process was a long one. Remembered Shepherd, “I thought I’d never get the part, because the minute my manager calls NBC they say, 'Oh, we don’t even have a script and it’s mostly about her as a young woman.’ And I thought, 'Oh well, that’s a big fat lie. That just means I’m never going to get the part.’ But it took on a life of its own. People kept calling me and saying, 'People are saying you’re doing it.’ And it was written about in columns. And they did some kind of survey on the Internet asking people who they wanted most, and it was me. Then I did the cover of More magazine. And in that, I said I thought I was the best person in the world to play the part. The director, Jason Ensler, saw that and knew my work and he believed it as well. And he fought for me to play the part. The last time somebody had to really do that was Peter [Bogdanovich]. Burt Schneider, the producer, did not want me. He didn’t think I had the experience to do it. Finally, he gave in and said, 'OK, you can put her in the movie, just make sure there’s plenty of nudity.’”

Of her casting as Stewart, Shepherd also fended off any comparisons to herself, saying at the time, “I’m not like Martha, but that’s what everyone thinks - that I’m this raging, belittling person to work with, which I’m not.” (No comment.) “I have great compassion for Martha,” Shepherd also told Newsday ahead of the telefim’s premiere, “and had rage problems on Moonlighting myself, but went through 10 years of therapy to deal with that. There’s a loneliness at the top [and] you always pay for everything you get. I could really identify with her." To prep for the role, which Shepherd likened to both Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, the actress resumed her trademark fits of rage, "I said, 'Look, I’m going to scream at you a little bit because I’m trying out what it feels like to be Martha Stewart.” Shepherd later reprised her turn as Stewart for a 2005 sequel, Martha Behind Bars, covering Stewart’s trial and stint in a West Virginia penitentiary. The follow-up, which depicted Stewart sneaking baking supplies as prison contraband, was picked up by rival network CBS, as by then NBC had signed a deal with Stewart to take the reigns of a spin-off of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, along with a reboot of Stewart’s daytime show.

Stewart, who was indicted on criminal charges just weeks after Martha Inc. aired, was none too pleased with Shepherd’s portrayal, missing no chance to slam the actress in the years since, sharing in her animosity with Shepherd’s former co-star and punching bag, Christine Baranski, and the actress’ ex-lover Charles Grodin in 2009 (hearing of Grodin’s extramarital affair with Shepherd, Stewart teased, “That was a mistake!”). In 2018, the divas came to a head at Bruce Willis’ Comedy Central Roast, seemingly making good-natured fun of their longtime rift, though avoiding each other backstage. Before the encounter, Stewart purportedly remarked during a public appearance that she 'hated’ Shepherd. “I’m just waiting for my thank you note from her,” the actress told Andy Cohen later that year. “I’m not gonna hold my breath."  

Today, Shepherd remembers her turn as Stewart as a career high. "That had to be one of my happiest experiences of my career,” the star remarked in a 2013 interview, a praise she’d once reserved for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Pondering a future to her Stewart character, Shepherd also revealed in 2005, “Absolutely. I could do ’Martha the Musical.’ I’m thinking about that.” And a showdown with Stewart isn’t out of the cards, either. “Remember those claymation Celebrity Deathmatch fights?” Shepherd joked to TV Guide in 2008. “It would have been funny to see Martha and me in one, right?” In 2020, Shepherd, who also portrayed disgraced domestic guru Paula Deen on Law & Order, was briefly attached to play an “icy, enigmatic founder and CEO of a popular home shopping network” in the Showtime series I Love That For You.

Sound familiar?

You can watch Martha Inc. in its entirety here, and the sequel here.

popculturediedin2009:

U.S. Attorney James Comey speaks to the press after the indictment of Martha Stewart, June 2003

Hey guys. Long time no dish.

I know I haven’t been active in a while, but I’ve been wanting to give this blog a makeover. I have a few things in mind and am looking a web developer (preferably with experience coding for Tumblr) and some digital artists to help make it happen.

If you’re interested, you can reach out to popculturediedin2009@gmail.com

Maybe I’ll resurrect this blog someday soon. Truth and time tells all.

popculturediedin2009:

Shakira leaves a restaurant in Hollywood, August 2007

The person who runs that blog is your typical female fan of a male celebrity with a blinding hatred for the girlfriend - or in this case, ex-girlfriend - of their idol. It was originally called "Exposing SMG," for "Exposing Selena Marie Gomez," before some years ago when the wack job who runs it amassed enough followers from their anti-Selena diatribes to rebrand as a general gossip blog, awkwardly named "Exposing Scandalous Media Gossip." Doesn't really roll off the tongue.

It's silly to even acknowledge their existence, since it's such an amateur operation, but since you asked... From the few posts I've read over the years, this chick is so dim she makes DeuxMoi sound like Rona Barrett. You'd think it's a teen by her written voice (lots of grammatical gaffes and misspellings), but I remember the blog being around even longer than mine - and I started in 2013. So she has to be, what? Mid-20s? In any case, she's way too old to be doing whatever it is she's doing. But I'll hand it to her, a couple of the posts I've read are hilarious. There was one she did about Justin Bieber's music video for "Yummy" - which she decided was a latent expose of pedophilc elites of the #Pizzagate variety - and it's fucking nuts. Trust me, I'm not overselling, just read it. (But if you want to preserve your sanity, don't venture down to the comments where people are lapping it up.)

As you can guess from her original URL, she started out as a Selena hate blog/Bieber worship altar. She'd write these long, rambling entries accusing Selena of lying about everything from her lupus (she claimed to have spoken directly with Selena's doctor, who revealed to her it was all a lie, because of course) to having her kidney replaced, using nameless screenshots of illiterate text message conversations from her so-called "sources" as proof, and all the while painting Justin as an abused puppy who's still suffering from the PTSD-level trauma of their relationship. So... pretty much the same shit female fans have been doing from time immemorial. See also: Johnny and Amber, Harry and Meghan, that One Direction guy and Olivia Wilde. Or remember way back in the day when Backstreet Boys/Nick Carter fans were convinced he was getting smacked around by Willa Ford? A few angry GeoCities sites still linger. The playbook stays the same, but every generation of horny female fans thinks they're the first to discover it.

Could there be a kernel of truth in there somewhere? No clue. I can't say Selena takes up any space in my mind (although I pray the recent rumors she's playing Linda Ronstadt never materialize beyond the sheer delusion stage). I loved Spring Breakers, and I thought she was about just the only redeemable thing in that horrendous Woody Allen movie (Chalamet could've learned a thing or two from Wallace Shawn in Rifkin's Festival), but I've never had the inclination to seek out gossip about her. I know she and Hailey Whatsherface go back and forth over a guy who if not for his timely debut in the nascent stages of social media would've retreated to Aaron Carter-ville after his first few hits and racked up track marks in lieu of monotonous streaming hits that no one can name, but I can't make myself care. I don't think anyone involved could pass a literacy test, so any words spent on them is a waste. I'm sure Selena has her issues, but she seems no less dead-eyed and vacant than any of the other young celebrities of her ilk. If she needs to pop a few pills to make it to morning, all the power to her. She at least seems more charming than Alec's niece.

Back to the blog. ExposingSMG's since expanded her aim to anyone in that Bieber-Gomez circle (Taylor, Demi, Miley et al.), with the same slippery grasp on the English language and the same dubious "sources," plus other hot button targets that are sure to drive up traffic and appeal to the misogynistic and conspiracy-minded (she was firmly pro-Depp/anti-Heard, busting out her trademark anonymous iPhone screenshots to back her up, and - surprise surprise - she just loathes Meghan Markle). I don't know if her site really gets that much traffic, but there seems to be a lot of comments, which is unsurprising; media literacy is dead and buried and her following, however small, is just a symptom of a wider rot in common sense that can be seen in the popularity of any of those vocal fried TikTok gossip gurus or podcasters who faithfully repeat the words of the charlatan behind Crazy Days and Nights.

Circling back to Selena, I just remembered this song - I really liked it!