This just in! Swaggering
$3 million man and
new Yoko Ono lawsuit target Ben Stein responds to his latest nemesis
via press release: "So
Yoko Ono is suing over the brief Constitutionally protected use of a song that wants us to 'Imagine no possessions'? Maybe instead of wasting everyone's time trying to silence a documentary she should give the song to the world for free? After all, 'imagine all the people sharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the World can live as one.'" No doubt a fitting rejoinder from a man who once
provided legal counsel to Richard Nixon. Good luck, Ben! [
Movie City Indie]
tell it to the judge
As one might have expected following the
opening-weekend success of his anti-Darwinism documentary
Expelled: No Intelligence Required, everybody in town wants a piece of
Ben Stein. Among them:
Yoko Ono, a
huuuuuge Stein fan from back in his Nixon speechwriting days who nevertheless bristled at the part of the film that featured "Imagine"
without the John Lennon estate's permission:
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Ono accuses the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed of suggesting to viewers that those who guard John Lennon's legacy somehow authorized or sponsored the film.
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right-wing darling
On a Monday when Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Jason Segel's penis
duked it out for biggest story at the weekend
box office, another argument was taking place among indie followers who witnessed a different star performance altogether:
Ben Stein, whose anti-Darwinist screed
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed finished in the week's ninth-place spot with $3.1 million. Its $2,997 per-screen average — no great shakes for most mainstream openers — is nevertheless more than double the $1,401 average of Morgan Spurlock's
Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden? To hear at least
one documentary observer tell it after the jump, love Stein or hate him, this is pretty big:
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Actor/writer/onetime TV quizmaster
Ben Stein laments the imminent shuttering of his favorite L.A. power eatery, where he went to observe the restaurant's A-list patrons, become entangled in feuds with Joan Rivers, and get ignored by a new generation of celebrity trainwrecks: "At its peak, however, Morton's was the ultimate. In 1994, it moved across the street, and it was better than ever, with more space between tables, more light and, best of all, it was open for lunch. In fact, it was at lunch there that I saw and fell hopelessly in love with Britney Spears. (She ignored me.) BUT times change. I have no idea where the beautiful people went, but fewer of them were going to Morton's. (Many big players now have their own chefs.) It still drew a rich crowd, but not the famous crowd it used to have, and the gorgeous girls who used to be at the bar were gone. [
NY Times]
Defamer
