Jason Lewis and Rosario Dawson at the New York launch event for "Key to the Cure," benefiting EIF's Women's Cancer Research Fund. (photo: Mark Von Holden/WireImage.com)

Woman on the Verge

Esquire loves Emmanuelle

She's young, she's on the brink, and she's approachable — or so the editors of Esquire like to tell themselves. But she's not yet a household name: to wit, did you know that her last name is pronounced "Shrieky"? Esquire reports that she's paid her dues, including 'On the Line' — the film about 'N Sync. But she has no regrets: "Do you know what a trip that was? Imagine going on tour with 'N Sync when they were like the Beatles." But it's her role as E's perfect girlfriend Sloan on 'Entourage' that's really won the editors at Esquire over: " [she's] the standard of normalcy in a world full of affectation, but also a woman who's willing to green-light a ménage à trois with her boyfriend and a female friend." Who could ask for more? (photo: John Sciulli/WireImage.com)

[Esquire]

Whoopi's World

This week comedienne Whoopi Goldberg goes world-wide with two gala events celebrating the humanitarian efforts of women active in changing society for the better.

On Saturday, the co-host of November's Comic Relief® 2006 will receive the World Entertainment Award at the Women's World Awards gala in New York. Goldberg's award is in recognition of her versatility and talent, giving a new perspective to women of the world in the entertainment industry and her active involvement with projects supporting underprivileged children, the homeless, women's rights and AIDS awareness. The awards ceremony is sponsored by The World Awards Association headed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Then on Monday, Goldberg and Katie Couric will emcee the Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO) Second Annual Benefit Gala. WWO provides relief aid to orphaned children worldwide through humanitarian projects that address their development in terms of their physical and social welfare. (photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage.com)

[PR Newswire]

[All Headline News]

Boys to Men

'Entourage' creator's "grown up" project

Turtle, a pin-striped hedge fund manager? Not exactly. But 'Entourage' creator Doug Ellin's next project does ask the question: "What if the 'Entourage' boys grew up?" (What, calling shotgun isn't grown up?) Ellin and his co-producer, Stephen Levinson, are developing a show based on the lives of fortysomething guys on Wall Street. They got the idea when they realized that friends working on 'the street' were pulling down over $40 million a year, making Vince and his boys look like the Little Rascals. Since the show doesn't have a title yet, AOL's TVSquad has asked readers to submit suggestions. So far, submissions include 'The Devil Wears Armani' and 'Limited Maturity.' Call shotgun on your own title. (photo: Vera Anderson/WireImage.com)

[TV Squad]

Brooke Shields and husband Chris Henchy at the Los Angeles Children's Hospital gala honoring Johnny Depp (photo: Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com)

President Williams?

Politics' no joke to Robin Williams

Actor Robin Williams has been on the promotion trail campaigning for his new movie 'Man of the Year.' In the political satire, written and directed by Barry Levinson, Williams portrays a talk show host who runs for president as an independent candidate in an election marred by a computerized voting glitch. Williams puts the point of Levinson's film in a nutshell: "The whole system sucks....what have elections become, except extended infomercials? And debates are just basically dueling sound-bites. What do they offer you? Very little, but they'll have emotional issues that they'll scare you on, like gay marriage and burning flags and terrorism."

While on his press junket, Williams' personal problems — which would make an opposing candidate's mouth water with dreams of negative ads dancing in his head — hasn't stopped reporters from asking if the comic-wonder-of-the-western-world might run for office. "Not for me! Like my character, I believe that I serve a better purpose being able to make fun of everything." Put that in your ballot box. (photo: Jason Merritt/FilmMagic.com)

[CNN.com]

[Toronto Sun]

Death by Whacking

Paulie Walnuts on how he wants to go

He's not saying he's gonna die, or that he wants to. But if, and only if, it had to happen, Tony Sirico feels strongly about how his character Paulie Walnuts' life should end. "Big. It has to make Sonny on the causeway look small," he says in November's FHM magazine. Apparently going gently into that good night isn't an option for Sirico. "You really have to massacre Paulie. He's not dying of cancer, you can be....sure of that." (photo: John Sciulli/WireImage.com)

[FHM via NY Post]

Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller at The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation's 11th Annual "Grand Slam for Children" Fundraiser in Las Vegas. (photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com)

Prime Time

Cynthia Nixon opens on Broadway

Cynthia Nixon is sharing tales of tragic love affairs again, but not to her girlfriends over a Cosmo. This time Nixon's captive audience is a group of impressionable young students in a Scottish private school, in the Broadway production of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' which opened October 9th. Based on the novel by Muriel Spark, 'Prime' was adapted for the stage in 1966 by Jay Presson Allen. Set in the 1930s, it tells the tale of a teacher in an Edinburgh school and her unconventional approach to certain subjects. Nixon has some big sensible shoes to fill, taking on the title role that has previously been inhabited by Vanessa Redgrave, Zoe Caldwell and Maggie Smith. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: "Instead of a magisterial or formidable Jean Brodie, Nixon gives us an essentially girlish one: self-seduced, carried away by her own lurid enthusiasms, self-consciously sexual, and very, very pretty."

The production is directed by The New Group's Scott Elliott (director of the recent 'Hurlyburly' revival). Newsday writes of the play's dark side: "Nixon and Elliott find the psychological strands that connect the teacher's early rebellious idealism to the monster who eventually embraces Mussolini, Franco and even Hitler as heroic men of action. Her mantra, 'Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,' chillingly becomes more threat than promise." The play runs through December 12th. (photo: Stephen Lovekin/WireImage.com)

[The Philadelphia Inquirer]

[Newsday]

Dane Cook for Governor?

Just vote for A:F6

In the wake of his recent opening monologue on 'Saturday Night Live,' Dane Cook created a self-fulfilling YouTube craze. Riffing on the popular video-sharing site, the Tourgasm comic claimed you could type in gibberish like "A:F6" and find a video of some kid wearing a T-shirt with the random combo.

Sure enough, the site was immediately bombarded with homemade videos, all variations on the "A:F6" theme (including an "A:F6 dance"?), each one more embarrassing than the next. Media outlets around the country quickly picked up on the craze. "I've never done something that so instantaneously is just part of the vernacular," the Tourgasm comic told the Associated Press. "It's a very flattering, powerful moment for a performer, because we search for things that will make an impact." Cook added, "After that, I'm thinking of running for governor." (photo: James Devaney/WireImage.com)

For a few peaks at what the statesman-in-training has spawned, check out YouTube:

[YouTube]

[Kansas City Star]

Epps' Drive for Home

It was homecoming weekend for Mike Epps when The Mike Epps Comedy Jam rolled into Indianapolis Saturday night. And not wanting to forget where his road to fame started, the host of Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam says if his life in Hollywood breaks the right way — a big way — "I can come back and really, really help my hometown." He's already had a sit down with one of Naptown's most revered citizens, former Indiana Pacer and movie impresario Reggie Miller, about doing "a nice comedy" set in the Hoosier state. "I want to bring Hollywood to Indiana one time."

In the often meteoric rise and fall of Hollywood stardom, Epps's career has been slowly gathering momentum. "It takes a lot of years and a long time to become a good artist, a good craftsman, to learn your craft. There are no overnight successes in life. As my mother tells me all the time, you haven't lived so long." Yet with the industry buzzing over several of his coming films — 'Talk to Me' with Don Cheadle, 'Resident Evil: Extinction' and 'The Grand,' an improvisational comedy about a bunch of actors involved in a poker tournament — his wish to bring some Tinsel town home may be happening sooner than his mother thinks. (photo: Theo Wargo/WireImage.com)

[Indy Star.com]

Clea DuVall and Summer Phoenix at Some Odd Rubies store opening in Los Angeles. (photo: Paul Redmond/WireImage.com)

Lily Tomlin: She's Laughing With Them

"I wouldn't want to stop doing any of it, but if I did, I'd keep the stage." Lily Tomlin talked to the Salt Lake Tribune of her 40-year career in TV, film and theatre before doing her one-woman show in Utah's state capital this past weekend. Fortunately for her fans, there are no plans to stop the laughter yet, as the 67-year old actress has had what the paper calls a 'renaissance' — with notable roles in 'I Heart Huckabees,' 'The West Wing' and Robert Altman's 'A Prairie Home Companion' (she's pictured here with co-stars Lohan and Streep). And now she's to play the matriarch of a wealthy Texas family in a newly announced HBO series, '12 Miles of Bad Road' — which she promises is no 'Dallas.' "It's not like one of the grande dames with catfight stuff," she said. "It's a comedy about Texas society — and, hopefully, human society."

Of course, comedy with insight has been her forte since her 'Rowen & Martin's Laugh-In' days where she first introduced such enduring characters as the naughty, lollipop sucking 6-year-old Edith Anne, and Ernestine, the nosy, gum-smacking telephone operator who warned President Bush during Saturday's performance, "You have your friends in the phone company, and I have mine."

Later that night, Tomlin was asked during the show's audience Q&A segment, "How can you use comedy to help people learn to respect each other?" The recipient of 6 Emmys®, 2 Tonys and an Oscar® nomination responded, "First of all, stop laughing at them." (photo: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com)

[The Salt Lake Tribune]

[The Salt Lake Tribune: Critic's Review]

Handler's Heyday

Charlotte's 'Harry' gets a series, a wife and a baby on the way...

Schlubby hubby Harry Goldenblatt is back on the screen — actor Evan Handler has made the transition from playing a divorce attorney to a comedy writer, costarring with Matthew Perry on NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." A real-life cancer survivor, Handler is now married to Italian biochemist Elisa Atti, and the two are expecting their first child. He and his wife fell in love the same year as Harry and Charlotte. "That was a fantasy year," Handler tells the New York Post. As for his breakout role in 'Sex and the City,' in which he played a character described as "boorish and unattractive," the actor had mixed feelings when he was first cast. "I was like, "Should I be happy they're thinking of me? Or upset?" The New York-native also talks about his childhood fondness for the Mets. "When I was nine, it was the Mets. Cleon Jones catching the final out of the 1969 World Series. I remember it vividly." (photo: Michael Bezjian/WireImage.com)

[NY Post]

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Comic Relief returns after 8 years

They're back. Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg are reuniting for a new Comic Relief in November. "To have the three iconic images related to Comic Relief come out onstage again for such a worthy cause means so much," comic Bob Zmuda, who founded Comic Relief, told the Daily News.

This time the comics are coming together to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Says Zmuda: "In parts of the city, it's as if Katrina happened yesterday. People in other parts of the country think things are OK now. They're not. The suicide rate has tripled in New Orleans." The November 18 concert will take place in Las Vegas and will be broadcast on HBO, TBS and AOL. (photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com)

[Daily News]<

Sarah Jessica Parker at the opening of 'A Chorus Line' on Broadway. (photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com)

Nun Sense

Chloë and Sandra Oh don habits to fight AIDS in new film

How much do national customs play a role in spreading the AIDS virus? It's a question confronted by a provocative new film, '3 Needles,' opening at the Mill Valley Film Festival later this week. 'Big Love' 's Chloë Sevigny plays a young nun in South Africa who finds her vocation and ideals altered by the desperate plight of AIDS orphans. Her fellow nuns (played by Olympia Dukakis and Sandra Oh) are preoccupied with saving as many souls as possible, until they realize their help is needed more in the here and now. A continent away in rural China, a young woman (Lucy Liu) who runs a bloodmobile watches helplessly as tainted blood infects an entire village. And in Canada, a porn star (Shawn Ashmore) betrays his cast until his devout mother (Stockard Channing) finds an unusual path to salvation. The film will be released internationally on December 1st, World AIDS Day. (photo: Stephen Lovekin/WireImage.com)

[Bay Area Reporter]

[Mill Valley Film Festival]

OutKast Goes Folk?

"People love hearing songs they know, even if done a little differently" says Tempe musician Mat Weddle of his acoustic rendition of OutKast's Hip-Hop dance sensation 'Hey Ya.' "It was just a fun song to do" and he and his band Obadiah Parker would play it at coffee house and art gallery gigs. "I figured we could stuff it in at the end of a set, just to break things up a little."

Well, it turns out the song was a crowd pleaser. And now he's become an internet sensation, thanks to friend Brian Shaler. Shaler got hold of a video recording of his buddy performing 'Hey Ya' at an open-mike night at Tempe's The Extreme Bean, spliced it with Oukast's video and posted it on YouTube. Three months later, there have been over 425,000 viewings — including Andre Benjamin who told the WGN Morning Show the Weddle cover "was pretty good."

"It's just crazy," says the bowled-over Weddle, "We never expected it to go national. We just thought it was a fun song." (photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com)

[AP via KVOA Tucson]

[YouTube.com]

Mystery Scribe

Dennis Lehane on why he doesn't write for TV

It turns out crime does pay. Or at least crime writing does for a select group of crime writer novelists who make up the writing staff of 'The Wire' including Dennis Lehane (author of 'Mystic River'), George Pelcanos and Richard Price. Lehane was interviewed recently by the St. Petersburg Times about writing for television — something he and his agents have told the networks he doesn't do. " 'The Wire' is the most anti-TV show out there," said Lehane. "When you write a novel, you're the architect, you're the general contractor, you do everything....When you work in TV, you're the house painter — and man, is that a load off if you share the aesthetic vision of the creator. It's like, 'You want this room colored orange? You got it. Gimme the paint.' "

Those in Massachusetts can get a sense of what Lehane the architect and GC does on Saturday October 14th when he joins other mystery writers (including Susan Orlean, Joyce Maynard and Andre Dubus III) reading from their latest books at The Pinehills in Plymouth. Afterwards, the authors will discuss their muses and other secrets of their success. (photo: Gary Gershoff/WireImage.com)

[St. Petersburg Times]

[Marshfield Mariner]