Hollywood, it seems, has finally run out of troubled celebrities. Why else would E! desperately turn to the public for its tales of loss, drug abuse, brief recovery, more drug abuse, brief career resurgence, sex addiction, and last-ditch, invasive plastic surgery for its misguided Are You an E! True Hollywood Story? contest? We know that E! recently underwent a violent regime change, but there are already too many cable channels turning civilian nobodies into programming. Get back to basics, Ted, and keep E! tossing those Hollywood salads. We'll happily see you in two months when you proudly launch 100 Greatest Celebrity Pubic Topiaries.

More breaking news out of Fox, whose "revolutionary" year-round schedule provides disinterested audiences fresh episodes of mediocre scripted shows (and the only TV dirt) in the dog days of summer. We hear the network is giving the Shannen Doherty-Brooke Burns blood feud some extra time to result in debilitating injury and has picked up North Shore for the "back nine" episode order. We'll tune in when the kids from The O.C. drop in for crossover cameos, Chino starts a fights with a gang of surfers, and they all tumble into the ocean, ruining a nearby beach party.

· Sofia Coppola, America's Favorite Daddy's Girl, is set to write and direct Marie-Antoinette for Columbia Pictures, and she's keeping the project in the family. Cousin Jason Schwartzman will star as Louis XVI, and Kirsten Dunst, a curiously unrelated breaker of dreamy-eyed hearts, will play the title role. THR calls it a "stylized account of the enigmatic royal," which we translate as a "comedy without pie fucking," but that (happily) doesn't preclude a cake from losing its maidenhead on-screen. [THR]
· One Cruise film out, another in. MI:3, scheduled for Summer 2005, will be further delayed. Instead, the actor will head straight into Spielberg's War of the Worlds adaptation, and continue with the busy work of restoring slavery through his estimable heterosexual carnal powers. [THR]
· Interscope Records has made a deal with Sarah Silverman to turn her off-broadway show Jesus is Magic (which Defamer loved) into a feature film. Liam Lynch, of Sifl and Olly will direct. If you're tired of that joke she does about blowing a Mexican, maybe you should sit this one out. [THR]
· Fox to develop teen-music series You Are Here from Sex and the City writer Jenny Bicks. Leave it to Fox to try and cash in on all of that lucrative The Heights nostalgia. [Variety,sub. req'd.]

George Clooney fan forum Clooneyfiles has scans from Swedish gossip rag Nu! supposedly showing Clooney doing his very best Vincent Gallo impression (with on-again/off-again girlfriend Lisa Snowden) in the woods at his villa in Lake Como. It's pretty much impossible to tell if the the oral recipient is Clooney, if there's actually anything fun going on in the pictures, or if some clever stalkerazzi hired some blow-doubles, but the matter certainly merits further attention.

The Smoking Gun has a copy of a pre-trial deposition in which notoriously cheap Clippers owner Donald Sterling brags about paying for sex with the woman he's suing, rocketing the Clips to the top of the LA-area sex-scandal standings. Just in case we'd be disposed to write off his affair as one of those "mutually beneficial arrangements" where a wrinkly millionaire spoils a pretty young thing with gifts, Sterling makes it all very clear: "It was purely sex for money, money for sex, sex for money, money for sex," and the "money for sex" was "all over my building, in my bathroom, upstairs, in the corner, in the elevator." We think it was legendary sports philosopher Yogi Berra who said, "If you can't land Kobe Bryant in his free agent year, fuck a hooker." Way to go, Mr. Sterling.

Maybe it's time to finally attach some sort of electronic box that shocks Andy Dick into unconsciousness once he tries to cross the California state line. Page Six reports that Dick, apparently fueled by despair over the death of "best friend" Rick James (but probably fueled by a face-full of coke and a blood alcohol level of 2.1), went on a bitch-slapping, Joey Fatone-taunting, Seth Green-kissing bender yesterday at NY club Suede. What other debauchery did Dick let loose? Rolling around on the men's room floor? Check. Trying to mooch blow from bystanders? Yeah, we got that. Punching a friend in the face for no good reason? You know it. It's clearly time to get him back to LA, where Andy can resume his more run-of-the-mill, home-team antics, like cornering guys in the bathroom of the Standard Downtown and licking them or cherry-picking contestants from The Assistant for sex.

Concert organizers in Ireland discovered that Madonna's backstage demands include enough blessed Kabbalah Water to give her entire entourage a consecrated, immortality-granting enema. She has to have 25 cases of the hocus-pocus Evian to step on stage, and (predictably) spends her down time trying to convert those who only know one or two boring names for God. At least Madonna also demands vodka at her shows, which we imagine miraculously repairs liver damage when mixed with the magic water and a twist of cult-approved lime.

—Reps for Jim Caviezel and Brendan Fraser helpfully throw their clients' names into the mix in an article about the difficulty of casting the next Superman. We think they'd better pick Jesus, since he's already familiar with the cool superpowers and helps control access to the afterlife.
—Late-night talk shows as marketing vehicles: "So many great things happen after the show goes off the air," host Jimmy Kimmel said. "Thanks to Sony, everyone can now hear what was once exclusive to our studio audience. This is especially great for viewers who love the music but dislike me." AND Conan goes informercial to hawk his DVDs.
—Desperate E! invites Oscar winners to man Joan Rivers' recently abdicated red carpet throne, Oscar winners incontinent with laughter.
—Brown Bunny blowjob ads invade the East Village, but on an almost quaint scale.

Even if Fox scrapped the Alien Vs. Predator premiere because the movie was still being fluffed in post-production, the fact that editors are still hacking away at it two days before its release still makes it sound like the movie is poised to shit the box office bed. A reader tips us to some of the behind-the-scenes turmoil, and it sounds like Fox might be fitting the Predator for one of those latex cat-suits.

MSN Entertainment scores the first publicist denial of the alleged Cameron Diaz/Justin Timberlake engagement that we've seen, quoting Diaz's rep as saying the rumor "is not true." Paparazzi shutterbugs and tabloid reporters of the world, it's time to start renting your helicopters and getting sized for your undercover cater-waiter outfits, because you're going to a wedding. It's not even worth considering the possibility that the flack is telling the truth, unless the "is not true" quote was preceded by some sort of semantic puzzle that rendered the denial technically not a falsehood. But if a Hollywood publicist were capable of such intellectual gamesmanship, he or she would probably apply those skills to a higher-order vocation where deception is necessary, like being an agent or a DMV clerk.

We know that those of you working for "lit" agents probably haven't indulged in anything more literary than writing coverage of an inept script adapted from a horrible novel. Now's your chance to indulge your sophisticated side: At 7 p.m., Book Soup is hosting hardboiled Reservoir Dogs/Kill Bill actor Michael Madsen as he reads from his first book of poetry, 46 Down: A Book of Dreams and Other Ramblings. Sure, you should be wary of actors reading their poetry, especially ones of the B-list variety who refer to their work as "ramblings," but you'll probably be a little more open to the experience if you stop for a happy hour cocktail on the way to the reading.

Welcome to Defamer Answers, where we utilize the amazing interactive features of the internet to respond to your questions about life in Hollywood. Today, we answer this seemingly rhetorical offering from a reader confused by Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst's insistence on appearing together at area restaurants and supermarkets, despite a public break-up:

Some of you have written in to inform us that Defamer has recently been littered with advertisements hawking the very object of our most fiery, recent scorn, Ugg boots. (Yes, we've seen them.) The day that Google's ad-bot understands the context of our frequent mentions of the furry fashion-don'ts will likely be the same day that robots write this website, while a completely different set of robots handles various "other needs" of ours as we drunkenly recline on a lounge chair in the backyard. Ah, the whispered promises of technology!

Things aren't looking good for Alien Vs. Predator. Fox canceled the premiere it had scheduled last night at Grauman's Chinese, and now even the creepy "entrepreneurs" who hang out in front of the theater probably wouldn't be caught dead in a cheap Alien costume, trying to make Romanian tourists fork over five bucks for a Polaroid. The Movie Blog elaborates on the two reasons why the premiere would be scrapped:

Blogger The Corsair transcribes a Jamie Foxx interview from this week's People promoting Collateral, where Foxx, with his leading-man star rising, manages to get in a plug for Tom Cruise's heterosexuality. Cruise's lust for women is so potent it could bring back slavery (the female-only kind, naturally) if the actor chose to abuse his Messianic, super-straight-guy powers:

· Maniacally suave Viacom co-president Les Moonves merges Paramount and CBS Broadcast International units. The new, streamlined entity will immediately begin work on a satellite-mounted laser beam that will melt every breast implant in California if the industry doesn't succumb to Moonves' demands. [THR]
· Disney earnings jump 21% last quarter. We fear that Michael Eisner died three months ago and his body is decomposing somewhere in Burbank, among his army of life-size Mickey dolls. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

Tara Reid recently signed a television deal with Fox, and most likely they'll develop a sitcom for her. But reality is Fox's bread and butter. Why not have half a dozen cameras follow Reid around as she pinballs from Cosmopolitan to dirty martini, then make her perform "physical challenges" befitting a young actress on the loose in Hollywood, like signing autographs. doing body-shots, and discreetly vomiting in the bathroom of the Spider Club? That sounds much more interesting than another season of Paris and Nicole skanking around with hayseeds. Let's keep the skanking right here in LA.

How does a director get fired after just a week of shooting from a project that bears his name? The Defamer correspondent on Quick Hooks for First-Time Directors reports some chatter about Ted Griffin's booting from the Untitled Ted Griffin Project (the sort-of-but-not-really-now-our-head-hurts sequel to The Graduate):

Numerous sources say that Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz are the latest celebrity matrimonial fodder, having finalized plans for a "very quiet" wedding. The last time we saw Justin, he was threatening to sue a tabloid for reporting that he was cheating on Cameron, the Best Paid Actress in Hollywood, with a C-list British tart. And the last time we saw Cameron, she was starring in a topless video, rattling chains with early-career, lite S&M fury, and...calling her lawyers to make sure the masterpiece stays buried. It's really kind of wonderful that they've found each other.

—Supermodel/help-abuse aficionado Naomi Campbell strikes again, but this time she claims it's the maid's fault she got bitchslapped.
—An article on pro-anorexic websites and the companies that sell them fashion accessories. The red bracelet is going to be huge; pretty soon, you won't know if that skinny girl in your acting class is down with Madonna or Mary-Kate. [via Boing Boing]
—Schedule of Rick James Memorial Activities: Viewing Wednesday at Forest Lawn, with funeral to follow on Thursday.
—"Unless you were a teenager in the 1980s, you might struggle to place the name Christian Slater." Thus begins a vaguely depressing profile of Slater in The Guardian. Have these people never heard of Kuffs or the one where he gets the baboon heart? [via Tagline]
—Anna Nicole Smith "luxurious" style-pusher Bobby Trendy is getting his own reality show. God, save us all from personalized throw pillows.