Hollywood Privacywatch: Britney Spears Enjoys Some Poolside Chicken Fingers

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by the loyal readers of Defamer. We'd like to remind you that this feature is powered by you, so if you want to see more installments of PrivacyWatch, then all you've got to do is to send us your sightings. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Britney Spears huffing smokes while eating poolside chicken fingers.

In today's installment: Britney Spears, Jeremy Piven, Paris Hilton, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Luke Wilson, David Beckham, Dennis Hopper, Gwen Stefani, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeff Goldblum, Zooey Deschanel, Rainn Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, Judy Greer, Phil Spector, Kevin Federline, Morgan Spurlock, Kristen Chenoweth, Judy Greer, Cloris Leachman, John Slattery, Emma Stone, Bijou Philips, Jane Lynch, Dean Cain, John Corbett, Paul Scheer, and more.

Phil Spector And Defense Team Go Separate Ways After Realizing They Want Different Things

A fittingly anticlimactic coda to the Phil Spector mistrial came today, as the members of his defense team—who by now should have been sitting in adjoining hammocks in a tropical locale, clinking coconut cups over never having to deal with their mushroom-headed client again—have decided to move on from the case entirely:

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler told both sides he wanted the new trial to begin within four months and set another hearing in the case for October 23.

Incarcerated Girls Gone Wild titty-flash magnate Joe Francis isn't afraid to get topical in spreading the word about MeetJoeFrancis.com, the handsomely designed internet presence he launched last week to keep the public up-to-date on his hopes, dreams, and fears while he continues his ongoing battle with a judicial system hell-bent on keeping him off the drunken-coed-clogged beaches of South Florida and Mexico.

CNN.com is reporting that Judge Larry Paul Fidler has just declared a Phil Spector mistrial, the hung jury still split 10-2. (That means there's been three converts since the original 7-5, but we don't yet know if favor of what.) We're not sure what we're supposed to be feeling right now; we're mulling outrage, but then we start picturing that adorable Great Dane and that parade of fun wigs and we just can't seem to muster it—which could very likely be the same thought process going through the minds of those stubborn holdouts.

• Mistrial declared in Phil Spector murder case [cnn.com]

Phil Spector's Innocence Is Your Friend!

As the hung Phil Spector jury, sufficiently confused by the judge's introduction and subsequent retraction of instructions, retires again to the jury room to resume deliberations (this time armed with 12 foam marital-therapy bats), a mini-controversy has erupted:

[A] court official said an investigation was under way into a message that was posted Sunday on the Team Spector Web site on MySpace.com.

Deadlocked Spector Jury Given A Wider Variety Of Verdict-Rendering Options

What we had presumed would take a matter of hours—the handing down of a guilty verdict upon Phil Spector, after an endless parade of witnesses took to the stand to testify about his gun-toting and woman-hating rock n' roll-pioneer ways—is now dragging into its second week, the jury still deadlocked 7-5. To muddle matters further, Judge Larry Paul Fidler has revoked a highly technical instruction that rendered the hung tribunal (and us) thoroughly confused. The defense is now asking him to clarify what it is he meant when he said that Spector didn't need to be holding the gun to be found guilty of murder:

As jurors returned to deliberations in Phil Spector's murder trial Monday, the record producer's defense filed a motion asking the judge to give the panel more guidance to clarify controversial new instructions he issued last week to help break a deadlock.

It's Second-Degree Murder Or Bust For Hung Spector Jury

The Phil Spector jury still sits deadlocked, one faction firmly convinced the pouffy-wigged eccentric shot Barbarian Queen star Lana Clarkson in the mouth, the other feeling Spector was merely the victim of a convoluted self-murder plot for which he'd unwittingly provide a suicide-friendly foyer and firearm. Presiding Judge Larry Paul Fidler, meanwhile, in his ongoing attempts to shake some clear-minded consensus into the divided group, has opted not to offer the option of a reduced sentence of manslaughter:

The judge told lawyers he was considering allowing the panel to consider a lesser charge, but later decided against making involuntary manslaughter an option for the jurors.

Phil Spector Sports 'The Liza'

Phil Spector's Lead Attorney Drops Case To Spend More Time On Showbiz Pursuits And Less Guilty Clients

In yet another discouraging development for accused murderer/avowed bitch-hater Phil Spector, lead defense attorney Bruce Cutler—who so famously got things started with a bang by hammering the phrase "murder on their minds" approximately 17,000 times into the jurors' skulls, then became a rarer and rarer courtroom presence as he attended to his daytime-TV-starring commitments—has officially stepped down from the case as of today. From the AP report:

Phil Spector's often-absent lead lawyer, Bruce Cutler, announced Monday that he is leaving the music producer's murder case because of "a difference of opinion between Mr. Spector and me on strategy."

LAist has a handsome photoset capturing the mini media frenzy surrounding today's field trip to Phil Spector's Alhambra mansion. Included is the above portrait of Lily, the neighbor's Great Dane, prominently sporting a TEAM SPECTOR badge on her fishing cap. While the sweet-faced, panting canine makes an adorable and unlikely champion for Spector's innocence, her eyes suggest a different story indeed—that of a terrified animal, whose refusal to surrender a rubber chew toy led the defendant to point a semi-automatic handgun at her skull, threatening to splatter her "doggie brains" across the lawn, "just like all those other bitches who refused to play fetch."

• Phil Spector field trip - in pictures [LAist]

Jurors Spend A Day At The Spector Mansion

Jurors in the Phil Spector trial are soon expected to hear testimony from Devra Robitaille, the fifth witness who'll testify that Spector had held them at gunpoint when they threatened to leave his Alhambra mansion—sort of like the Playboy Mansion, but with fewer big parties, more acts of violence against women, and about an equal amount of obscenely rich, eccentric, and horny old proprietors wandering around. Earlier today, the jurors got a look at the crime scene itself. From the AP report:

Jurors, lawyers and Spector himself arrived at the home, 15 miles northeast of Los Angeles, in several vans shortly before 10:30 a.m. They stopped at the home's parking area before going inside to the foyer where Clarkson's body was found, slumped down in a chair, with a gunshot wound through her mouth.

We're having trouble remembering the punchline to that old joke that goes: "How many women must a crackpot music producer threaten with a loaded firearm before jurors finally discount his highly unlikely story that a failed actress was so depressed, she followed him home to his mansion one night to kill herself?" (We're pretty sure that in every iteration, however, the answer was five or less.)

• Fifth woman to say Spector held gun on her [USAToday/AP]

Michael Bay To Take The Stand In Spector Trial

Today brings potentially bad news for Transformers director Michael Bay, who last week was so memorably dragged into the legal clusterfuck that is the Phil Spector trial by a star witness named after a popular seasonal dessert. Apparently, Bay's previous telephone testimony won't be enough, and he'll soon be forced to take the witness stand to explain how he never blew off Lana Clarkson at a party, sending her into a depressive spiral that caused her to take her own life. Reports Court TV's Spector trial blog:

The prosecution unveils a list of 13 rebuttal witnesses, and one name is a blockbuster. Moviemaker Michael Bay, director of "Transformers," will take the stand and say that Punkin Pie was lying when she testified that he snubbed a teetering-on-the-brink-of-sanity Clarkson at a party a few weeks before her death, prosecutor Jackson says.

Michael Bay Refutes Report Of Suicide-Inducing Clarkson Snubbing

Disturbed by recent Phil Spector trial testimony by "star" defense witness Punkin Pie Laughlin that his alleged snubbing of Lana Clarkson at a party had somehow driven the actress to suicide, Transformers director Michael Bay took time out from the Tokyo leg of his Giant Fucking Robots Are Coming world tour yesterday to clarify the spurious claims about his fauxteurial power over life and death. Reports the LAT:

"It never happened," he said in a telephone interview from Japan. "Wouldn't it be a big moment in one's life if you saw someone at a party, and two days later she was killed? Life's made of memories, and that would be a big memory."

Defense Maintains Lana Clarkson Used Phil Spector For His Great Suicide Connections

The parade of Hollywood characters and crackpots willing to testify as to Lana Clarkson's suicidal state of mind at the time of her shooting death continues with Punkin Laughlin, aka Punkin Pie, a club promoter who considered the Barbarian Queen star her "best friend." Laughlin testified that Clarkson had told her "I don't want to live anymore, I don't want to live in this town, I want to end it," less than a week before her death. Today, the cross-examination accused Laughlin of having changed her tune considerably. From the LAT report:

[Laughlin] finished her third day on the stand in the Spector murder trial. She was the latest in a string of defense witnesses who testified that Clarkson was depressed about financial woes, her lack of career prospects and a recent failed romantic relationship.

Playwright Recalls How Badly Lana Clarkson Wanted To Be A Dead Blonde

Judge Deems Phil Spector Comment About Wanting To Shoot Every Woman In The Head Relevant