Today's NYT retreads much of the LAT's Friday profile of Million Dollar Baby scribe and screenwriting flavor-of-the-moment Paul Haggis: his incredible rise from The Facts of Life ghetto to the Oscar nomination penthouse, the sage words from his thirtysomething mentor, the inspiration for his new movie, Crash. The NYT did, however, nod to Haggis' involvement with the Church of Scientology, but that's just a single sentence that goes nowhere (a white van full of L. Ron's footsoldiers must've been idling menacingly nearby). Far more fascinating is the startling revelation that Haggis is ambidextrous, at least in regards to photographs that feature the scribe pensively cradling his chin and piercing us with those baby blues.

The rumor placing Lindsay Lohan and Bruce Willis in a "mixed-age" grope at a screening of Hostage has already passed through the publicist denial phase, but does it seem like Willis is trying to rationalize something?

Disney Chairman George Mitchell was quick to defend the company's board against accusations that the search for Michael Eisner's successor wasn't thorough enough, and merely a rubber stamp of the half-assed variety for president/Anointed One Bob Iger:

Please, Mr, Iger, you don't have to kill anyone else*, at least for a little while; the Disney board's finally chosen you to succeed Michael Eisner as Head Mouse in Charge at the Magic Kingdom/Media Concern. That's right, you'll be replacing the same Michael Eisner who was quoted in DisneyWar offering the following votes of confidence for your candidacy: "Bob can’t run this company,” "[he] lacks the stature" and could "never succeed me." Also, our personal favorite: "If I had to choose, it would not be Bob." We hope that Eisner made it up to you with a gift basket full of pricey cheeses and handcrafted vodkas. Or, you know, by handing you the job now so that you can continue his legacy.

This is Hollywood, so even though this site's not even a year old, it needed some things tightened up: a lift here, a little injection there, and you hardly notice that we're starting to get more work. If you think our rack's gone up a cup size, well, our publicist said we blossomed overnight, OK?

Your box office numbers from the weekend when children ruled the world:

Assistants with debilitating hangovers make shitty tipsters (trust us, we've learned that one that hard way), so we're just going to have to imagine the celeb-infested orgy that took place at Prey last night.

Friday
· More quality concerts than you shake a clichéd stick at: Futureheads at the Henry Fonda, Pretty Girls Make Graves and Dios Malos at the El Rey, and that super-secret Coldplay situation at the Troubadour.
· Former Jackassers and current Wild Boyz Steve-O and Chris Pontius are throwing a premiere party at El Centro tonight. There is only a 50-50 chance that you'll be taunted into stapling your scrotum to something or into wrestling an alligator.
Saturday
· Continuing the shaking of that stick in regards to the following shows: The Blood Arm, the Adored, and the Tints play Little Pedro's, with DJ sets by Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag) and Senior (Junior Senior); Kasbian and The Music at the Henry Fonda; 2/3 of the Unicorns reunite as Th' Corn Gangg, and play their first show ever at the Echo; KCRW Sounds Eclectic Evening with Coldplay, Café Tacuba, Nellie McKay & The Like plus surprise special guests at the Universal Amphitheater.
Sunday
· You'd think there was nothing to do but see shows this weekend, wouldn't you? Ian Brown (The Stone Roses) plays the House of Blues, Slint and Pinback are at the Avalon, and the precocious Nellie McKay sticks around to do the Roxy.
· Why don't you just camp out at the Henry Fonda all weekend? If VH1 hasn't beaten every ounce of nostalgia out of you, you can check out the Second Annual Totally 80s Convention. It's as if you can never escape your childhood!

A reader catches recently-split, unbearably adorable couple Chris Klein and Katie Holmes reenacting a scene from the Aniston-Pitt mindfucking handbook:

It's a big weekend for people with children, or for fans of older actors who allegedly like to grope the barely legal. These groups probably have quite a bit of overlap.

Pause with us, won't you, while we thank this week's sponsors, who help make possible the kind of disturbing side-by-side graphics illustrating a starlet's daddy issues that are our stock and trade. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and reach the kind of consumer who will tirelessly recommend your product or service to his or her highly influential, affluent circle of friends, please see this page.

As the whole world probably knows by now, the "secret" press and record company showcase for Coldplay's new album at the Troubadour tonight has now become something less than secret, as the venue is announcing on their website that tickets are available to the public starting at 5 pm. If you're planning on being a part of the enormous mob that's certain to descend on the club any minute now, and are lucky enough to score a ticket, don't forget to bring your CDs, 8x10 glossies, and retardedly-named celebrity babies for the band to sign.

· This counts as breaking news, if you care at all about the British film industry: Someone we've never heard of takes over the UK Film Council's Premiere Fund, taking on the responsibility for investing—now wait for it—the equivalent of Tom Cruise's annual motorcycle-and-matching-leather-jacket budget in British films. [Variety]
· Lasse Hallstrom will direct Hoax, the story of the man who perpetrated a media um, hoax, by selling a fake Howard Hughes biography. Richard Gere is in talks to play the huckster. That thing about Hughes urinating into milk bottles, that's still true, right? Right? [Variety]
· Yesterday was FCC Supernanny Michael Powell's last, tearful day. We're sure he'll rebound, but in the meantime, he plans on wandering the streets of DC and fining tourists for naughty language, collecting a nickel per infraction in his swear jar. [THR]
· Sally Field, Heather Graham, Robert Patrick, and Colm Meaney all obtain acting work in shows that will make one episode, then be reviewed by television network executives who will decide based on that single episode if the production of additional episodes is warranted. [THR]
· Variety maintains its dominance in alliterative trade paper headlines, demoralizing the THR with this gem: "Disney Dissidents Dis Disney." Fuck, they're good. [Variety]

The LAT profiles Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis, whose involvement with Clint Eastwood's tone poem to mood lighting and bloody tongues has propelled him to screenwriting It-Boy status. Haggis' rise is your typical Hollywood up-from-humble-beginnings story, in which a hardscrabble go-getter with big dreams somehow beats the odds of making hundreds of thousands of dollars writing for television to eventually earn millions as an Oscar-nominated movie scribe. As is common in these Alger-quality tales, a mentor passes on some words of wisdom, scales fall from eyes, and an epiphany occurs:

Before you start wondering how Michael Jackson snuck a gun into the courtroom in his pajamas (come on, there's hardly room for a gun and the boys choir in there!) and instigated a bloody, Tarantino-style standoff, please, don't fret—Jackson and the jury have the day off while their lawyers argue about lawyer stuff. In the absence of fresh Jacko news, Drudge is hyperventillating about something else entirely.

Finally, the origins of the impulse to act are revealed!

Sometimes we love this town so much we can hardly bear it; if it were a bunny, we'd squeeze it so hard that its adorable little marble eyes would pop out and roll underneath the warren. Even when blinded by a spell of late night horniness, this aspiring actor is still practical enough to think about his career:

Yesterday's report about the alleged "mixed-age grope" between Lindsay Lohan and fading action star/father stand-in Bruce Willis was a lock for a swift publicist denial. From Page Six:

· Cameron Diaz fall down, go boom? She really should wear a helmet when using that sex swing.
· A former development VP is suing Madonna and the film arm of her entertainment empire for sexual harassment. Exactly how many cone bras and cases of Kabbalah water is it going to take to settle this out of court? She should hold out for cash, we're going to guess the bras have some mileage on them.
· The battle over Deep Throat's box office rages on. And on. [reg. req'd.]
· Fun fact: When TV people sit down to answer questions about their show, harping on the fact that no one watches it isn't considered very polite.

Since our well of jokes involving a certain pop-star defendant and the inappropriate application of a name-brand cooking oil has momentarily run dry, we're happy to pass along yet another e-mail that's been circulating through the WGA's membership. This time, a jokester has assembled a top ten list of reasons that WGA West president Dan Petrie signed his colleague's signature on a letter to the judge...[snore] Oh, what were we saying? Right, the list follows. (And we hate to ruin a joke, but Petrie did not, in fact, author the list, but we suspect that many of you aren't going to read to the end.)