Only those of you with elephantine memories will recall the case of Charlene Richards, the nurse that was hired to watch over legendary television superproducer
Aaron Spelling during his final, bedridden days. While under the employ of the Spellings, Richards found herself in hot water after she refused to ride the grumpy old man's baloney pony. She was quickly fired for insubordination, but she didn't go quietly. She filed a sexual harrassment lawsuit, during the process of which her team of legal eagles sent a questionnaire out to over 600 actresses (including Heather Locklear and Teri Hatcher) asking if they, too, had been forced to endure the come-ons of the doddering billionaire. Well, as you can assume, the Spelling estate was none too happy about the media attention this received (one headline read "Sex Scandal Rocks Hollywood"), and they consequently filed a countersuit charging Richards' lawyer with defamation. All of this preamble serves to set-up this note: earlier today,
the California Appeals Court threw the suit out. And that concludes today's episode of
L.A. Law. Now, if you'll excuse us, we must be going. We hear that Arnie Becker is throwing a raging kegger, and we want to get a few words in edgewise with Grace Van Owen before she gets sloppy. [
THR, Esq.]
the insurgents have nothing on basinger's lawyers
Before you make the assumption that Baldwin's Iraq solution involves driving a van through the streets of Baghdad and using a megaphone to berate any cowering insurgents for being "rude, thoughtless little pigs" who refuse to return America's calls in a timely fashion, realize that this is not just another Hollywood dilettante popping off about the war: this man has a unique perspective on bloody conflicts that drag on for years, and when he discusses how to fight back against enemies that are "bold, vicious and unflagging in numbers" and who want to put "their boot heel into our neck," he speaks from a place of weary experience.
lawyers
Unfortunately, new Conde Nast
bizporn title Portfoilio's Screed-O-Matic is not, as its name seems to suggest, a fun toy for generating the kind of Scary Hollywood Lawyer missives for which epistolary pit-bull
Marty Singer is famous. as we can think of no more amusing way to fritter away an entire afternoon than by self-issuing cease-and-desist notices only marginally less petty than ones we've actually received. (I.e., "Your repeated assertion that my client Sanjaya Malakar is actually some kind of minor hellspawn sent to destroy
American Idol is malicious and outrageous. He is, in fact, a major demon." etc etc.) Still, there's some entertainment value in taking the S-O-M's interactive quiz on actual letters authored by Singer, especially when one can discover fun facts about how
WWD's $3,445 ostrich-skin Prada bag "peace offering" to an offended Sarah Michelle Gellar was ostensibly returned because of the actress's feelings about animal rights.
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apprentice
When
Donald Trump decided to try and revive his flagging
Apprentice franchise by relocating it to Los Angeles, it guaranteed that he'd have access to local talent pre-degraded by jobs in the entertainment industry, for whom a potential Trump Organization imprisonment in a supply closet on an unfinished golf course would seem an appealing career option. But since employers here might not be so eager to lend their personnel to a weeks-long, televised job interview, contestants like entertainment lawyers
Derek Arteta (of New Line) and
Kristine Lefebvre (fret not,
"The Lawyer in Me" section of her personal site is just a professional bio, not work in some legal-themed pornography) had to sneak off under the cover of "personal time" to do the show.
THR, Esq. reports that their "vacationing" co-workers learned of their reality TV activities only after the cast was announced, but were nonetheless supportive
of their dreams of Trump-branded subjugation:
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south park
The professional alcoholics at
SorryIGotDrunk.com scanned this ad from today's
Variety, in which
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say thank you to long-suffering (but
apparently good-humored) attorney Kevin Morris on his firm's 10th anniversary by posing in front of the creative aids that have enabled a decade of staggering billable hours. Cute ads in the trades are nice, but in the end, there's really no better way to reward friendship and loyalty than by making someone a shitload of money.
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media
The LAT profiles industry uber-lawyer Skip Brittenham, who, it turns out, is more than merely one of the industry's most powerful behind-the-scenes players. ("All roads lead to Skip" declares Sony's Amy Pascal! "If you're going to have just one new Lew Wasserman this year, make it Skip Brittenham!" says Harvey Weinstein of the
The Weinstein Company Gazette! etc etc.) He's also a dedicated dad, devoted fisherman, and, it seems, an amateur comedian. Humanizes the
Times:
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Defamer
