· Variety: "Arnold is looking to terminate runaway production." It's safe to stop reading after that first sentence, since they blew their pun load by also using "Governator" in the subtitle. [Variety]
· The WGA showers their award love on the screenplays for Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which will likely go on to get shafted at the Oscars. [THR]
· Susan Sarandon joins Billy Bob Thornton in the cast of New Line's Mr. Woodcock. Again, we urge you to enjoy that title before it disappears into the ether of indecency. [THR]
· Ben Affleck's addition to the cast of Focus Features' Truth, Justice, and the American Way suddenly makes Adrien Brody and Diane Lane's decision to do the movie seem like career Russian Roulette. [Variety]
· Michael Bay signs on to direct the long-developing project Molly's World, a psychological thriller in which everything explodes for no apparent reason. [Variety]

Disney is inching ever closer to finalizing their divorce from Harvey and Bob Weinstein and returning Miramax to the low-budget, indie roots that are now paying dividends at Old 'Max-style specialty studios like Fox Searchlight. Replacing the brothers, however, will be their most trying task:

In the grand tradition of Hugh Grant explaining the circumstances of his infamous blowjob on i>The Tonight Show, last night Chris Rock sat down on Jay Leno's couch to explain his comment that only guys who like to give blowjobs watch the Oscars. Joked Rock,"I did not say that. I said only gay people watch the Tonys." At least he tweaked the gays one more time before he veered dangerously close to Billy Crystal territory:

Even though we can operate nothing more complicated than a blender without detailed instructions, stories about the Secret Service investigating the Paris Hilton hacking had us a little paranoid—last night, we slept with TWO flashlights, spooned with a Louisville Slugger, and carefully tiptoed to the front door in our footy pajamas every time a floorboard creaked. Finally, this morning, the jig was up:

This driver in Silver Lake knew that wrapping his SUV around the nearest tree would be far less painful than having to consider the horrors contained within a single frame of Son of the Mask. A billboard hasn't had this effect on motorists since Vincent Gallo invited those stuck in traffic on the Sunset Strip to ponder suicide underneath a 30-foot image of his cinematic fellatio.

Do you think someone at Fox is trying to figure out how much it would cost to digitally remove her from The Fantastic Four?

With Paris Hilton's phonebook cracked open and sprinkled all over the internet like blow on a compact mirror, Hollywood will be feeling the shockwaves for days. We imagine that nearly everyone in the book has already had their number changed, and some of those abandoned numbers might have already been claimed by "fans." For example, this is what you'll hear if you call the number listed for Lindsay Lohan (we're not reprinting it, so don't ask): "[burp] I'm a whore...[burp]...I'm a whooooore...[burp]...I'm a fucking whore." Subtle! The pranksters at least could've forwarded the number to the NY Underage Drinking Hotline*. Maybe next time...

Before Paris Hilton's Sidekick was hacked, those trying to understand what exactly makes the Prada-clad hamster inside Hilton's head happily jog along its Swarovski-encrusted wheel were faced with an impossible task. But now that the secrets of the Sidekick have been spilled forth into the world, Fate has handed us a celebutante Rosetta Stone that may help us help us crack the code of What Makes Paris Run. When you stumble upon the Rosetta Stone, you don't tackle it all at once, you take it one line of cuneiform at a time. Some notes from this evolving study:

Ye fucking gods. Our first reaction when we sat down at the computer this morning and immediately discovered that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself last night was, "Holy shit." In fact, that was our second and third reaction as well. There's still some "holy shit" going around at Defamer HQ, but that will soon subside as sadness replaces it.

Please meditate on this weekend's box office numbers, the only fitting way to commemorate our former Presidents on their special day,

Ah, Paris, why does such misfortune seem to follow you around like a paparazzi who's been promised an exclusive flash of your cooch? After over a year of trying, Paris Hilton may finally be involved with something that lives up to her night-vision-doggystyling, amateur-porn debut into the annals of useless celebutante publicity-whoring. Someone's hacked her Sidekick, and her celeb-filled address book and some cam-phone pictures are being splashed all over the internets. By the end of the day, nearly anyone who's had the misfortune of handing over their digits to Hilton (including Fred Durst, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan, Stephen King (!), Andy Roddick, Anna Kournikova, Vin Diesel, and the mysterious "Egplant Dike Ass"—the address book has been reproduced here) will almost certainly suffer payback for whatever they've done with her in the bathroom of the Spider Club in the form of incessant prank calls and e-mails. () How many times can one be asked if they've made a sex tape with Paris before they change their number? We're guessing about a dozen.

Friday
· Robert MacNeil, the MacNeil half of "MacNeil/Lehrer" and Amy "Fast Times/Clueless" Heckerling sit down for another installment of those Writers Bloc deathmatches at the Skirball Cultural Center.
· Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine, but you knew that), Bad Acid Trip, and others perform at the Peace and Justice Center in Venice for a Food Not Bombs benefit. Check it out if you need something to do to correct your karma after seeing Hitch.
Saturday
· Trunk show on Melrose! Bring your pepper spray and leave all fear of bodily injury at home.
· Buster Keaton's The General screens at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Nota bene, first-year film students: He was not the one with the funny mustache and the bowler. He was, however, Michael Keaton's grandfather.
· The Avalon's Spider Club hosts a celebrity charity event for AMBA Project Tsunami Relief Fund. It's starfucking...with a social conscience. We can all get behind that.
Sunday
· Ted Leo and the Pharmacists play the El Rey. We'd so be there, but we've got to stay home and meticulously study Desperate Housewives for clues about Bree van de Kamp's sexual preference. Abe Lincoln would've wanted it that way.

There's breaking celebrity lesbian-related gossip-tossing on the Productshop NYC blog, which, refreshingly, doesn't involve one of the Desperate Housewives:

Hitch screenwriter Kevin Bisch wouldn't have been satisfied churning out the next cookie-cutter, Freddie Prinze, Jr. romantic comedy vehicle. With his script, he would settle for no less than raising the level of discourse at his local Starbucks:

Good news! Your local multiplex will remain open during the entire holiday weekend!

A reader reports that Lindsay Lohan's wildly overstuffed racing suit (remember, this was the "pre-exhaustion" Lohan) might not be appropriate for a family flick:

We pause to recognize this week's sponsors, whose piles of internet-directed cash allow us to occasionally upgrade from cheeseburger to Double-Double. If you'd like to hop on the Defamer advertising party-train (woo woo!), see this page.

· The Disney CEO search is so secretive that the candidates might not even know they're being considered for the gig. Candidates will discover they're up for the top Mouse spot only after being struck on the head and regaining consciousness in a secret bunker underneath Space Mountain. And please, never speak of what Michael Eisner's going to do with that flashlight. [Variety]
· The new, talent-friendly, free-spending Paramount obtains the rights to the yet-to-be published novel Love Walked In for Sarah Jessica Parker. [THR]
· Jamie Foxx hasn't even given his obnoxious Oscar acceptance speech, and already studios are elbowing each other for the movie release spots for next year's awards. [Variety]
· Peter Fonda and Donal Logue will join Nicolas Cage in the cast of the Marvel comics movie adaptation of Ghost Rider. Someone obviously tricked Fonda into believing this is a sequel to Easy Rider. [THR]
· In the future, all television pilots will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. We suggest self-immolation before that day arrives. [Variety]

Because it's the Friday before a three-day weekend and we're feeling generous, we thought we'd dust off a feature we haven't done in a long time, the Defamer Blind Item. Item difficulty: 7 out of 10, where 1 is "mind-bendingly difficult" and 10 is "any attempt to figure it out will result in an aneurysm."

From today's LAT: