Twin premiere

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Premiere of twins imminent, lucrative

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER guendee@phillynews.com

A SPOKESWOMAN for People magazine announced yesterday that the world will soon be able to get its first look at Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's twin newborn girls, born in France on July 12.

The amount that People paid for the pictures has not been confirmed by the magazine or the couple, but French newspaper Nice-Matin reported it as being $11 million, more than twice the amount paid for the first pictures of big sister Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. The paper also reported that the money would be donated to charity.

And speaking of charity . . .

Charity group calls Bono a poser

Thepoint.com is a neat Web site set up to allow grass-roots organizations to raise money easily over the Internet. Its campaigns include one to force the return and resolution of the HBO show "Deadwood," one to return Brett Favre to the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers, and one to keep Brett Favre firmly in retirement.

But the campaign that's been getting the most press lately wants your money for the noble cause of . . . making U2 singer Bono stop raising money for AIDS charities?

The group claims that the star's RED campaign has been "one huge advertisement for GAP, American Express, and for Bono himself," and has spent millions more on advertising than it did on actual charity work.

More pointedly, the site says that Bono's efforts are leading the public in a dangerous direction when it comes to charitable donations. Bono's efforts, the site claims, are counterproductive, encouraging consumers to buy RED iPods and Gap T-shirts as a high-profile and self-congratulatory substitute for just, uh, giving the money straight to charity.

The group says it will donate all the money it raises to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria if the singer will retire from public life.

As of last night, the group had raised $796.

Inanity now!

* Lindsay Lohan fires back

L.A. Police Chief William Bratton, who, discussing the reasons why paparazzi were less of a nuisance than they had been, inadvertently outed Lohan.

"Since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody anymore, thank God, and evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue," the police chief said.

Lohan, in a video on TMZ.com, angrily said that the police "shouldn't get involved in everyone else's business when it comes to their personal life. It's inappropriate."

* Richard Griffiths and "Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe will reprise their roles in Peter Shaffer's "Equus" when it opens on Broadway in September. London critics applauded Radcliffe's performance, but the play was mostly talked about for Radcliffe's extended nude scene.

* The busted-up hand that Shia LaBeouf got in his recent car accident will be written into the script of "Transformers 2," says director Michael Bay.

* Stephen Colbert, who noted on his show a while back that biologist Jason Bond had named a spider Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi after the singer, demanded, "Where's my spider?" Bond named a species of trapdoor spider Aptostichus stephencolberti (pronounced Steven Cole-berry). *

Behind the Bell

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER
guendee@phillynews.com

Dustin Diamond, famous for playing the character Screech Powers on 13-odd years of "Saved by the Bell" and its spinoffs (and notorious on a smaller scale for his sex tape, which was released in 2006 and was reportedly so disgusting that even battle-hardened veterans of Internet pornography were grossed out) is making another bid for renewed cultural relevance with a tell-all book, titled "Behind the Bell," about his days on on the show.

SatTatt admits that she is highly, in fact, rabidly curious (as, she suspects, will be every last non-Amish American between the ages of 20 and 29) about the details of the hinted-at "sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying," apparently happening on-set while the show filmed. She hopes that Diamond and ghostwriter Alan Goldsher know their audience and skim over "Saved by the Bell: The New Class."

SatTatt would like to think that an appalling sex tape plus a ghostwritten memoir would not equal career resurgence, but it looks like it's worked for Diamond, as 2009 will see him doing some non-SbtB-related acting in a film version of Hamlet . . .

Oh, wait a second, that's "Hamlet A.D.D.", a movie out to answer the eternal question, "What if 'Hamlet' was reimagined as a sci-fi buddy comedy with a time-traveling, attention-deficient protagonist who just can't get around to avenging his father's death . . . and what if it were shot entirely on green screen?"

Diamond has a cameo in the first scene as Bernardo, a watchman who sees the ghost of Hamlet's father. Bernardo the watchman, in Shakespeare's version, has 19 lines.

Jolie commandos!

All is not well in the town of Brignoles.

If you've been following celebrity news, the place is instantly recognizable as the town in the French countryside where the Jolie-Pitt family has settled into their mansion after the birth of twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline earlier this month. The small town was chosen for its peacfulness and seclusion, but the stars seem to have brought their trouble with them.

Yesterday, the town's police department was still trying to sort out the details of a brawl between the couple's security force and two paparazzi so desperate for those first multimillion-dollar shots of the twins that they made a five-hour trek through the forest (while carrying all their equipment) to get a good angle on the Jolie-Pitt garden. When security guards discovered the intruders, a dustup occured, and now both sides are filing legal complaints accusing the other of battery and causing injury.

The paparazzi argue that the forest belongs to everyone, which is slightly surprising; SatTatt didn't know you could legally invoke Disney's "Pocahontas" in French courts.

The family's security team argues that not only were the photographers obviously trespassing on the couple's 1,235-acre property, but that their claims that nature belongs to us all were undercut by the fact that they had actually come in camouflage with provisions to camp out.

Meanwhile, the couple's neighbors are reportedly less than pleased about the circus that follows the Jolie-Pitt family. According to E! Online, many citizens are sick of their taxes going to protect the privacy of American celebrities. A group of citizens also has voiced their objections to the older children enrolling in the town's elementary school, saying that the paparazzi would ruin the school for the rest of the town's children.

Hopefully for the family, the furor will die down after the first pictures are released; the family has reportedly already made a deal with an American magazine. Which one and the amount of money paid for access are unreleased, but people in the business have estimated that they'll sell for between $10 and $20 million. *

Just like us!

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Madonna and Guy Ritchie divorcing - JUST LIKE US!

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

guendee@phillynews.com

It appears that the accumulated rumors are true - Madonna and Guy Ritchie are getting divorced. And, in one of those rare flashes of humanity that gossip columnists always treasure like diamonds, it doesn't look as if it's going to be one of those nasty, bitter, weave-snatching Hollywood divorces that seem to be all the rage these days (see Mills/McCartney, Basinger/Baldwin, Richards/Sheen, SatTatt could go on).

The Daily Mirror, which broke the news yesterday, tells a pretty sad story of a couple who drifted apart. The British tabloid quoted a anonymous friend of the couple, who said, "They were both very calm. Madonna told Guy: 'I'm sorry, I want a divorce'. And he agreed. It was quite painless but very sad."

It reminds SatTatt a bit of that "Celebrities: THEY'RE JUST LIKE US!" feature that runs in US Weekly. It features pictures of celebrities caught without their glamour on; getting Chinese takeout braless, picking up their chihuahua's poop in a plastic baggie, buying tampons at the grocery. It's like that, but with the enthusiastic captions written by Richard Yates.

SatTatt can just see it. "Celebrities: THEY'RE JUST LIKE US! They sometimes drift apart over time and stay together for the kids, but it gets to be too much and they finally get divorced after several years of emotionally damaging each other then end up alone, staring at the wall and thinking of the lost promises of their youth!"

But wait. "Just Like Us!" despite the lack of a prenup, which could entitle Ritchie to half of Madonna's $590 million? Whether to stay dignified or lose the chance at hundreds of millions of dollars is hardly a choice that is often foisted on Us.

Plus, the rumors that kicked off the whole shebang were when Madonna allegedly hired Fiona "Steel Magnolia" Shackleton. Shackleton, who represented Paul McCartney in his divorce this year and who notably got a cup of ice water dumped on her head in the courtroom by an enraged Heather Mills, is regarded as the best in the business for keeping your ex's money-grubbing paws off your fortune; Shackleton got the last laugh by holding Mills to about $50 million of McCartney's estimated $1.6 billion net worth.

Well, either Madonna and Ritchie are both decent human beings or they have the best PR person in the world. SatTatt hopes that the whole business remains as classy as it has been to date, and that nobody with a cancer-stricken parent is told to "go cry to your bald mother, you f---ing loser." (That gem courtesy Richards/Sheen.)

But consider the source. The couple hasn't confirmed any of the rumors, and there has been a recent spate of anonymously-sourced tabloid exclusives that have proved embarrassingly untrue.

SatTatt's here to tell you straight: Angelina Jolie, tired of the constant harassment from paparazzi and gossip columnists, is on a vigilante campaign to punish and discredit the tabloids by calling in tasty fake tips which can then be proved blatantly false, beginning with the well-publicized non-birth of her twins last month.

At least, that's what SatTatt's extremely credible anonymous source told her. Just now. *

how to wreck your celebrity journalism career

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Fake source or just bad reporting?

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

guendee@phillynews.com

THE PREMATURE JOLIE-PITT twins story just got so much weirder.

Brief recap: Last week, "Entertainment Tonight" reported on its Web site that it had information from an anonymous source "inside the delivery room" who had confirmed that Angelina Jolie had given birth to two healthy girls. The information was broadcast on the "Entertainment Tonight" TV show later that night despite contradictory information coming in from several other celebrity news organizations. As Jolie still appears to be pregnant, ET is left looking pretty silly.

Now the process of what exactly happened is out, and take note, SatTatt readers: Here is a step-by-step primer in how to wreck your career in celebrity journalism.

1. Obtain what you believe is a BlackBerry e-mail address for Jolie's assistant Holly Goline from a friend at CNN.

2. Send a message to that address asking for confirmation of the rumors that Jolie has given birth.

3. Become ecstatic when an affirmative response comes back.

4. After posting the scoop online, disregard the real Goline's repeated insistence that she has never owned a BlackBerry. Stand by your story.

"Entertainment Tonight takes this very seriously and is, of course, concerned that the show may have been victimized by someone allegedly posing as a member of Ms. Jolie's team," a statement from the show said. "We are actively investigating the matter and are reaching out to law enforcement agencies."

The Rock no longer!

The originator of such distinctive wrestling moves such as the People's Elbow, the People's Eyebrow and the Rock Bottom has declared that he is now the Actor Formerly Known as The Rock. Or, uh, just make that Dwayne Johnson.

The star of "The Game Plan" and "Southland Tales" is quietly ditching his famous nickname in the credits of the upcoming "Get Smart!" adaptation. (Extended side note: in "Get Smart!" Johnson makes out with star Steve Carrell. Of the experience, Carrell said: "[Johnson] smells like strawberry shortcake. For me, that's why they call him The Rock. He rocks people's worlds.").

From recent comments, the name shift looks to be a permanent one as Johnson tries to ride his recent successes in family-friendly roles to a PG-rated acting career. And with his previous incarnation known for making references to poon-tang pie and body-slamming people while wearing a small pair of briefs, Johnson decided that it was time for "The Rock" to retire.

"I'm aware of everything that comes with that nickname, and I just think there's a lot more you can do without it," Johnson said to Entertainment Weekly. "But I wanted it to happen naturally, from 'The Rock' to Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson to 'Dwayne Johnson.' "

SatTatt applauds the evolution of a career she has appreciated since her older male cousins forced her to watch the then-WWF show "RAW" in the early '90s. What The Rock was cooking back then was an hour in which SatTatt was not forced to assume the role of Monkey in the Middle.

Nevertheless, with Bob Dole and now The Rock essentially gone, SatTatt feels a little lonely referring to herself in third person all the time.

At least she'll always have Elmo.

Inanity now!

In a further attempt to rebrand herself as a country singer, Jessica Simpson showed up at the CMA Music Festival Block Party in Nashville on Wednesday. This was notable mostly for the fact that she showed up without semi-boyfriend Tony Romo, as Simpson did not perform her new single "Come on Over" . . . Evander Holyfield is trying to quash rumors that he is the latest in a string of celebrities unable to pay their mortgages after a foreclosure notice on his $10 million Atlanta mansion appeared in a local paper Wednesday. "I'm not broke, I'm just not liquid," said Holyfield, whose 109-room house lies on Evander Holyfield Highway. *

hate/love/set on fire

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Hate it or love it or set it on fire

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

guendee@phillynews.com

THE $2.4 MILLION Long Island mansion that has been at the center of a nasty legal fight between rapper 50 Cent and ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins burned to the ground yesterday morning under circumstances that the fire department called "suspicious."

The New Dix fire chief said that the fire burned with an unusual intensity and that after extinguishing the fire he had turned the area over to arson investigators.

Everyone in the house was rescued (including a pet guinea pig) but six people, including Tompkins and her and 50 Cent's 10-year-old son Marquise, were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

After leaving the hospital, Tompkins held a news conference where she very emotionally stated that 50 Cent is dangerously obsessed with her and had recently threatened her life.

"If he can't have me, no one can," Tompkins said. "He said that he was going to have someone come kill me, and see what he does. This is what he did."

50 Cent, who does not live at the house and was in Lousiana filming a movie at the time of the fire, has been trying to evict Tompkins since early April. Tompkins blocked her eviction with a countersuit in Manhattan's Supreme Court, claiming that she had evidence that the house was bought as a gift for her and her son a decade ago and that 50 Cent had promised to put her name on the deed.

Tompkins' attorney said that there had been an "extremely dangerous incident" on Monday in his Manhattan office, but didn't specify what the incident was. The Web site TMZ, however, reported yesterday that earlier this week, after a long day of depositions at the attorney's office, someone in 50 Cent's entourage had "trashed" the office.

SatTatt feels bad about the fire, but looks forward to seeing whether evening newscasters will say "Fifty Cent" or "Fitty Cent."

Nope, no babies yet, really

It appears that Entertainment Tonight jumped the gun yesterday morning when they located the Jolie-Pitt twins outside Angelina Jolie.

Other celebrity gossip sources, those paragons of accuracy, were calling ET's scoop bogus within two hours. SatTatt suggests, as a former fact-checking intern herself, that it might be in ET's best interest to pick a few up. It's not like you have to pay them; just get them pizza every once in a while and tell them there might be an editorial job opening up soon. Really.

The ET item cited an unnamed source close to the actress, who claimed that Jolie had given birth to twin girls named Isla Marcheline and Amelie Jane. People was the first to get a representative for the actress denying that she had given birth, followed closely by E! and US Weekly.

Then, the Web site for ET was down for several hours, with visitors getting only a white screen and "ET Online Technical Difficulties." Probably a more accurate statement would be "BRB: We're firing someone."

Jolie is due in mid-August.

Hot tranny message

"Project Runway" winner Christian Siriano yesterday apologized for a comment he made a Time Out New York panel on gay pride that offended many in the transsexual and transgendered communities.

Even though his catchphrase "hot tranny mess" (which if you believe the reality show's editors and the recent SNL skit make up 80% of the words that come out of the 22-year-old designer's mouth) is familiar to anyone who watched the show and didn't raise too many eyebrows, the transgender community was up in arms after Siriano responded to a question on why gay New Yorkers seem to end up in different niches around the city by saying, "If you think of heterosexuals, they have white-trash women and trailer parks, and we have drag queens and trannies."

Siriano insists that he meant no disrespect, saying that the quote was taken out of context. "Some of my close friends happen to be transgender and I think they are some of the most inspiring people in my life . . . I completely support the fabulousness and amazing fashion inspiration that most transgender people provide."

Siriano's response has since been removed from the Time Out New York Web site.

Inanity now!

Three of Bill Cosby's famously eye-searing sweaters that the actor wore on "The Cosby Show" are being auctioned off on eBay for charity. Bidding starts at $5,000 . . . Mel Brooks is quietly closing Brooksfilms after 30 years of producing his trademark comedies. Although the company hasn't made a movie since 1995 and Brooks has been focusing on Broadway in recent years, it's still sad that the place where "Spaceballs" was made will be gone . . . Jamie-Lynn Spears and babydaddy/fiance Casey Aldridge have purchased a prefab-looking home in Kentwood, La. . . . After a Stockholm conference on Iraq, Condoleezza Rice briefly hung out with members of the band KISS, who were also in Sweden and called her up. SatTatt realizes that the band members were wearing street clothes, but the image of Condi chatting with the band in full KISS regalia is far too great a mental image to let go . . . *

Tramsformer

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Wanna get blown up by Michael Bay?

by EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

guendee@phillynews.com

IT HAS LONG been SatTatt's secret dream to be in a movie with giant computer-animated robots and lots of explosions. She figured she would never realize that dream, as L.A. is a long plane ride away and acting experience is generally necessary.

But no longer! Heery Casting yesterday announced an open call for extras in "Transformers 2," directed by king-of-all-that-explodes Michael Bay, for scenes to be shot in June in Philly and Princeton.

The call, which will be held a week from today at Bullies Bar at the Spectrum (3600 S. Broad), is for both SAG and nonunion actors ages 18-70, although an online ad states that college-age men and women are especially needed. Extras will be paid; no acting experience is necessary.

SAG actors should be there from 10-11 a.m. with their card, nonunion from 11-3 p.m. Everyone should bring a mug shot of him/herself. For more info, check out www.heerycasting. com.

And speaking of special effects . . .

Dispatches from the never-ending child-pornography trial of R. Kelly: Yesterday, a female Kelly fan was arrested after she started yelling "Free R. Kelly!" outside the courtroom. Her bail was set at $50,000.

After the interruption, the trial continued with its usual air of class. Several friends of the girl, who allegedly was Kelly's partner in the 26-minute sex tape and who appears to be 12 or 13 years old, took the stand to identify her.

During the cross-examination of Simha Johnson, the former best friend of the girl, Kelly's attorney, Sam Adams Jr., proposed that the tape could have been faked with computers.

Adams used the example of the 2006 movie "Little Man," in which some power-addled Hollywood producer decided that it would be funny to digitally graft the head of Marlon Wayans onto the body of a dwarf. The effect, if you have not seen this particular film, is less comedic than uncanny, uncomfortable and unbelievably terrifying.

After asking Johnson if she had seen the movie, Adams asked, "It looked real, didn't it?"

Johnson's eyebrow-cocked reply of "Not really!" cracked the courtroom up.

Congratulations on no convictions!

Nicole Richie will receive a Golden Pacifier award for parenting from Babytalk magazine. Editor-in-chief Lisa Moran cites as an example for young mothers Richie's turnaround from DUIs and partying since her pregnancy.

Because if you have a child and give up blowing coke and driving drunk, that's clearly award-worthy rather than the only acceptable option. Where's SatTatt's mom's medal?

Also receiving a golden pacifier is Ricki Lake for her part in the 2008 documentary "The Business of Being Born." The movie was notable for discussing the issues involved with giving birth at home, but was mostly noted for its extremely graphic birth scenes, including Lake giving birth to her second child in a bathtub.

Although SatTatt is all about motherhood, she feels that mandatory screenings of this movie in middle schools across America would reduce teen pregnancy by way of sheer dread. The depictions of birth are beautiful and miraculous and everything, but what they are most of all is realistic, bloody and enough to make any teenage girl think three or four times before having unprotected sex.

And that definitely deserves a golden pacifier. *

Marilyn Monroe sex tape hoax

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Marilyn Monroe sex tape a hoax

By EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

guendee@phillynews.com

WHAT DO Marilyn Monroe, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have in common? Of course, each woman was a point on the singer/actress continuum, each dyed her hair blond at point or another, and each was famous in her day for having a hot mess of a social life. But in more specific terms, all three have recently had media panting over false rumors that they had starred in sex tapes.

Lohan and Spears rumors are old news. But Monroe was back scandalizing a new generation from beyond the grave after New York collectibles dealer Keya Morgan came forward earlier this week with a wild story involving a 15-minute "French-type" silent reel, the FBI, Marilyn Monroe, a secret $1.5 million sale and the thwarted vengeance of J. Edgar Hoover.

The story as told by Morgan: The film, of a pre-fame Monroe performing oral sex on an unidentified man, was in the possession of the son of a former FBI informant who had worked under Hoover during the Kennedy administration. Hoover obtained the film in the '60s, hoping that the unidentified man in the film was JFK and that it could be used against him. Morgan, who first heard of the film while digging through recently-made-public FBI documents, tracked down the informant's son. The son was in possession of a bootleg copy of the film, which he claims is the only existing copy. Morgan then brokered a $1.5 million sale of the reel to an unidentified New York businessman, who Morgan says purchased it specifically so that it would never see the light of day and ruin Monroe's legacy.

Thus Morgan, having secured Monroe's good name out of the goodness of his heart... went and told the press the details of the French-type film, his part in brokering the deal and his upcoming documentary.

If you've noticed something fishy about this story, you're not the only one. After big news outlets picked up the story, several blogs and Web sites stepped up to poke holes in what they see as a shameless self-promotion move to get press for Morgan's unreleased documentary.

Web sites Defamer, the Smoking Gun and Radar are among several that questioned Morgan's credibility, going so far as to track down and publish the FBI documents that Morgan claimed had led him to the film and to point out some large differences between what the documents say and what Morgan claims they say, including how the dying informant got the reel in the first place. Defamer, which led the pack in scrutinizing the claims, is now being threatened with legal action by Morgan.

So what with Morgan's claims not lining up with the FBI's paperwork and his refusal to disclose any of the names in his story other than his own or to produce proof of the film's existence and Monroe experts far and near calling shenanigans, SatTatt feels pretty safe sticking Marilyn in the Venn diagram overlap of "Women who partied all night long" and "Women who nevertheless are not on film performing sexual acts." May she, Lindsay and Britney party hard in there for a long time. *