Die-hard Will Ferrell fans who endured Semi-Pro will recall a set-piece in which Will's farm-league basketball team owner Jackie Moon wrestles a bear as a ploy to fill seats. That bear, a 700-lb grizzly named Rocky, fatally attacked a trainer at an exotic animal training facility in Big Bear yesterday. From the LAT:
For unknown reasons, the bear lunged at 39-year-old Stephan Miller, a trainer at Randy Miller's Predators in Action, about 3 p.m. and bit him in the neck, said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers. [...]
She added that officials from Cal OSHA and the state Department of Fish and Game were investigating, and it was not immediately known what would happen to the bear. [...]
More grim news from the week's obituary pages: Producer Bill Hayward, one of the unheralded principals who got Easy Rider on the road to cult immortality (and about $40 million in box office on a $400,000 budget), reportedly committed suicide March 9 in "a trailer where he lived" in Los Angeles County. A coroner's account reveals the cause of death to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart. Hayward, 66, is the latest of a snakebitten Hollywood family to meet an untimely demise; drug overdoses previously claimed both his mother, actress Maureen Sullavan, and his sister in 1960. [AP]
Sad news from London notes the death of Paul Scofield, the British stage and screen legend who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1966 for his performance as Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. He was 86. Having first earned acclaim for his transcendent theater work in the '50s and '60s, Scofield won a Tony Award for Seasons in 1961 before following up with his film triumph five years later. He appeared in relatively few movies afterward, however, sticking primarily to stage and TV in his native England. (He was rumored to have declined a knighthood as well.) Scofield drew a second Oscar nod in 1994 for his supporting performance in Quiz Show, his next-to-last film role. He had suffered from leukemia in recent years and passed Wednesday at a hospital in Southern England. [AP]
· "Fabian is my music," Marlee Matlin said, just moments after playing grab-ass with her mambo-champion Dancing with the Stars partner. This suggests to us that her gaydar is about as finely tuned as her hearing. [DWTS]
· Set your alarms, everyone: Your first glimpse of J.Lo's twins comes at 7 a.m. sharp! [People]
· Ivan Dixon, aka Hogan's Heroes Kinchloe, dead at 76. [AP]
· Hey—it's that immortal dude from New Amsterdam's junk! (NSFW) [OMG BLOG]
· Bring this coupon Saturday, get $100,000 off your Silver Lake loft—and free sangria. [Curbed LA]
One of the last things Heath Ledger left us with is a video for Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog." An admitted obsession of the actor, Drake was a British folk music prodigy in the '70s who suffered from debilitating depression, eventually O.D.ing on an antidepressant at age 26. Until now, the video managed to avoid getting leaked on the web, and was screened only twice: "Labor Day weekend at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle and a second time in October at 'A Place to Be,' an event honoring Drake held in L.A." Last night, Australian A Current Affair broadcast parts of the video.
Latest by CrankYank: @hack-a-rific: Beautiful sum-up. See you in the parking lot. more »
A belated notice of passing: Ben Chapman, a 6'5" former Marine best known for playing the title character in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, died Thursday of congestive heart failure in a Honolulu hospital. "The Creature suit was a one-piece outfit that zipped down the back with dorsal fins, hands that were gloves, feet that were like boots," he once told the Honolulu Observer, offering an uncannily similar description to the remains Janice Dickinson leaves behind after every skin-shedding. [LAT via WOW Report]
We were so preoccupied looking for Charles Nelson Reilly in the In Memoriam segment (who never materialized, by the by), that we completely missed the fact that Brad Renfro was absent from the montage. Usmagazine.com asked the Academy what happened, and a rep offered, "It was really an editing decision because we can't fit everyone in. There was no specific reason." Ignoring for a moment the fact that they really blew it on this one, this statement suddenly had us wondering what the whole whittling process entails. Is it just a morbid casting session, where they get a stack of headshots and go through them by committee? ("Sure, Roscoe Lee Browne has the look, but his last project bombed! OK, fine, we'll put him in the Maybe pile.") [Usmagazine.com]
Roy Scheider, the square-jawed, broken-nosed guy's guy in whose capable hands Amity Island residents and vacationers entrusted their lives, passed away yesterday in Little Rock at age 75, after a three-year fight with blood cancer. While he will forever be associated with Chief Brody, a man with a good sense for shark-hunting seafaring-vessel sizes, it was his tour-de-force song-and-dance turn in All That Jazz, playing a loose version of director Bob Fosse, that was his most accomplished and most personally favored role. If it weren't for that movie's bleak showstopper finale (above), we might never have even associated something as fleeting as mortality with someone as ruggedly substantial as Scheider. But, hey—if you gotta go, at least give 'em the old razzle dazzle on your way out.
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Latest by Oldboy: All That Jazz is a wonderful film. I particularly love the dance number with Erszebet Foldi to the tune of "Everything Old Is New Again." Also his clever turn in "The Russia House."("Honor is due,Ned!")
Scheider was a first-rate actor. Honor more »
On February 8, 2007, a devastated Defamer was glued to CNN, following Dr. Sanjay Gupta and the rest of AnnaDeath 360° team as they offered breathless updates on the not-entirely-shocking (yet still pretty traumatic) loss of Anna Nicole Smith. And yet here we are, a full year later, and Hollywood seems doomed to repeat its trainwreck-glamorizing mistakes. Meanwhile, Smith's legacy carries on via the creepy gentleman-callers who dotted the love polygon that defined much of her life. Larry Birkhead, we well know through a series of soul-deadening The Insider exclusives, has been adjusting to life with his money-pooping paternity jackpot, most recently having plopped the toddler on a patch of grass he assured us was Anna Nicole's resting place, and successfully baby-wrangled his daughter into saying the word "mama" for their cameras.
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Latest by gwendolyn: @scroll_lock: "Candle in the Wind': the freakin' 'White Christmas' of the boomers.
It is never going away... more »
Heath Ledger's family has issued a statement in reaction to the autopsy findings: "While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage." Read the rest by clicking on the link. [CNN.com]
In a shocking development in the Heath Ledger tragedy, the NY Post is reporting that an unidentified con man has been making calls pretending to be Heath's father. Not only did he convince the Manhattan funeral home that held Ledger's body to book him multiple rooms at the Carlysle hotel for him and his "family," he also took advantage of grieving A-list movie stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta. From their report:
By the [day after Ledger's death], a man claiming to be Kim Ledger managed to get Cruise on the phone, a source said.
And so, with two days to let the devastating news sink in, Variety now asks the inevitable question of what's to be done with Heath Ledger's final projects—the wrapped The Dark Knight, and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Morbidly running through the history of productions faced with surprise cast deaths during shooting (apparently CGI has now taken over for stunt doubles and very low lighting as the re-animating technique of choice), the report then addresses the issue of how such misfortune might cast marketing campaigns in an unpleasant new light. As we pointed out on Tuesday, The Dark Knight's focuses squarely and gruesomely on Ledger's chillingly effective performance as The Joker, providing an unwelcome creative predicament for WB's marketing czar:
Latest by pammylz: FYI:
[thedarkknight.warnerbros.com]
After you click on the Batman pic, it will take you to a memorial of Heath Ledger. more »
Some upsetting new evidence has emerged in the Heath Ledger case: Along with the prescription drugs that were found in the apartment, police also recovered "a rolled up $20 bill with narcotic residue on it," and "several drug packets containing an unknown substance." This was all apparently listed in the original police report, and sent to their labs for testing. [wcbstv.com]
Let's just get on with this. A round-up of where we are so far with yesterday's shocking death of Heath Ledger at age 28:
· An autopsy has proven inconclusive, and will take another 10 to 14 days before toxicology and histology reports tell us what caused his death. [CNN]
· Heath had pneumonia. [TMZ]
· Kim Ledger, Heath's father, made a statement to the press, confirming the "untimely and accidental passing of our dearly loved son, brother and doting father of Matilda." [skynews.com.au]
Latest by CrankYank: @BabylonSister: Still hard to speculate. People attempt suicide while knowing of possible "escape routes" - especially if it's really a "cry for help" (better terminology desperately needed). And sometimes those escape routes don't work.
That being said, along with more »
So how's The Dark Knight for goodbyes? Give us anything—Brokeback Mountain's heartache, Candy's cautionary tale of—gulp—heroin addiction, even Casanova (OK, not Casanova)—but not the The Dark Knight. Not that disfigured creep in the trenchcoat. Heath's last words to us can't be a menacingly growled, "It's all...part of the plan." His last note, not "Why so serious?" scrawled across a theatrical one-sheet in fingerpainted blood. Warner Bros. has issued this statement in response to his death:
Latest by BabylonSister: @Evanessence: After a week and a half of pretending to my friends that I'm not absolutely devastated and heartbroken by a break-up, I pray they read your post. I feel better (a little tiny bit) just reading it myself. more »
OK—our hyperventilating has died down to the point where we were able to learn some more details surrounding (can't believe we are typing this) Heath Ledger's death. The NY Times's City Room blog reports:
The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28.
At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said.
"Honey, you won't believe the dream I just had." Sadly, this news is no dream: Suzanne Pleshette, besting even Brenda Vaccaro for the title of TV's Most Beloved Hoarse-Voiced Female, has died after a long battle with lung cancer. Of course, we'll always associate her with Emily Hartley, the better-half of The Bob Newhart Show, but check out how hot she was back in the day! [USA Today, IMDB]
Defamer
More grim news from the week's obituary pages: Producer Bill Hayward, one of the unheralded principals who got Easy Rider on the road to cult immortality (and about $40 million in box office on a $400,000 budget), 
