Mary-Kate Olsen's people aren't thrilled about the upstarts who slapped her protruding-rib, bobbleheaded likeness on the "Save Mary-Kate" t-shirts we wrote about last month. In an E! story, the Olsen camp raises the spectre of litigation, and even the charity to whom the t-shirt sellers want to give part of the profits may refuse the vomit-tinged blood money. It's all such a mess that even Michael Pagnotta, the twins' rep, is flummoxed: "I'm not sure what Mary-Kate needs saving from." We know how he feels; we can't remember if we're supposed to say she was in rehab for anorexia or for blow. This is a confusing time for us all.

Women's Wear Daily makes the New York Post explain yesterday's Page Six item about the mysterious, same-sex member of Tom Cruise's entourage at the Collateral premiere in Harlem, and wonders if Cruise is now a sitting duck for gossip columnists now that publicist Pat Kingsley is no longer patrolling his borders with a nightstick and a can of mace:

There are apparently at least four ways to fuck a pie: FilmJerk reports that a fourth installment of the American Pie movies is on the "fast track" to a September shoot. Universal seems to be discarding the major characters from the first three movies to tell the story of Stifler's little brother and his horny adventures at band camp, as most of original cast have priced themselves out of the budget for a new Pie movie. [Ed. note—Bet the guy that screwed Stifler's mom is probably available at a reasonable quote, i.e., a ham sandwich and a Cup o' Soup.] Today's meditation: If you copulate with baked goods and the movie goes straight to video, does your failing career make a sound?

When Whitney Houston's not in rehab and Bobby Brown's on parole, they like to take their daughter to movie premieres (pictured here at the Princess Diaries 2 opening at Downtown Disney on Variety's VPage). A tipster gives us a taste of what's in store if the formerly rock-smokin', spouse beatin', hard-lovin' couple ever makes it on air: "Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston's upcoming reality show is a complete car wreck. Over 160 hours of footage have been shot—all of it insane. The Mad TV Brown/Houston skits are not far off the mark, although the fictional version is much more tame that the reality caught on video." We're twitching in anticipation, though that could just be the crackpipe burns sympathetically flaring up.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let Hollywood's famous know that the guy at the next table with his hand down his pants is going to e-mail Defamer once he's done with his business.

· Ted Griffin is bounced from Untitled Ted Griffin Project/The Graduate sort-of sequel and replaced by Rob Reiner, just one week (!) into shooting. Sources say Griffin spent too much time with the cinematographer and not enough time sucking up to the cast. Don't worry, Ted, it will be virtually impossible to get fired faster on your next project, if you're ever given another chance to direct. [THR]
· Acting union intrigue! Did special effects makeup artist John Vulich attempt to sabotage the SAG/AFTRA merger vote last year with false emails that claimed it would hurt jobs? Next scandal: Two actor/waiters at CPK try to influence union votes by restricting each other's access to the key lime pie. [THR]
· Disney and Harvey Weinstein are in discussions over his departure. The impending deal would send Harvey off with his own production company while brother Bob stays behind at Disney to call Michael Eisner twice a day and flush the toilet. [THR]
· Fox makes a final, bold push to melt what's left of America's minds, saturating their September schedule with reality television. The "highlight" is boxing show The Next Great Champ, which NBC-Uni pixie Jeff Zucker famously bitched was stolen from his network. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

Fox spies tell us that Method & Red's writing staff was sent home yesterday. And the only way that sitcom writers can be separated from their room full of Nerf toys, junk food, and scripts with penis doodles on them and returned to their neglected families is cancellation. M&R recently received an extension from 12 to 15 episodes, but now they've been cut off at the knees and are shooting their 12th and final show tonight. Our sources don't know how many of these episodes will eventually air or are destined to become unseen artifacts of hip-hop-stoner history, but it looks like they're headed for the dreaded "Indefinite Hiatus" of TV oblivion.

With the looming Miramax layoffs stubbornly delaying sweet relief for a huge chunk of Harvey Weinstein's staff, the mood at the 'Max is somewhere between "West Bank dynamite vest model" and "Tel Aviv car bomb delivery guy." But a mole says Those About to be Downsized won't ever feel free from Harvey:

Low Culture stumble upon the Friendster profile of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle co-writer Jon Hurwitz and think they may have discovered the inspiration for the stoner flick's mildly-stereotype-deflating Asian characters within Hurwitz's testimonials. The profile is jammed with H&KGTWC plugs: Among Hurwitz's friends are the Friendster (advertorial) versions of Harold and Kumar, as well as the "real Kumar," actor Kal Penn. And don't miss the mention of the film's official website in Hurwitz's interests, or his nod to ecstasy-crazed HKGTWC scene-stealer Neal Patrick Harris in the entry for his favorite TV shows. We like the idea of Friendster as the repository for all viral-flavored movie-marketing detritus—go ahead, stuff it all in there, where we might have seen it a year ago while cruising for semi-anonymous internet sex with a third-degree "friend."

It would be somewhat absurd to say that God hates Paris Hilton (especially since He's probably seen 1 Night In Paris and knows what she's capable of), but maybe He's trying to send a sign that she's letting herself get overexposed? A plague-like swarm of bees attacked Paris and heroin-kicking sidekick Nicole Richie at the Teen Choice Awards on Sunday. "Their publicists and other stars watched as the two flailed their arms and screamed like little girls" as the bees attacked "Hilton's Farrah Fawcett 'do," according to USA Today. If her flack wouldn't make a move to shoo away the bees, you can bet she won't shield her from the shower of frogs or pull Paris into a rowboat when the LA River runs red with blood at the next awards show.

Anyone who's attained at least a kindergarten-level education is familiar with the rhyming philosophical maxim, "Whoever smelt it, dealt it." Adorable, pocket-sized, Harvard-schooled actress Natalie Portman may be formulating a Hollywood corollary with this anecdote from the set of Garden State: "Whoever tells the gossip rag about the mystery bathtub poo will blame the movie shoot's 50-person crew."

—Despite a shared interest in public, somewhat risqué sex, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst just couldn't work it out. There's no mention of the Mile High Club, so maybe they should give that a whirl before really calling it quits. There's nothing like copulating near a stainless steel toilet to rejuvenate a flailing relationship.
—Low Culture has its eye on a puzzling. emerging connection between actor/director Peter Berg and a certain cinematic typeface.
—Fay Wray, legendary King Kong hostage, dies at 96. Clearly, she was asking for it. (Death. She was very old.)
—Gawker alumna Elizabeth Spiers gets fired from The Apprentice tryouts. Trump wouldn't have know what to do with her.
—Don't sit too close to a frustrated writer in a coffee shop (this does severely limit your seating options in LA, but you were warned), especially if that writer has a camphone and a blog. [via la.comfidential]

It seems that each time we bring up the human rights violation known as "Ugg boots," we're shortly after informed of a new strain of Ugg-related evil. Moments after our earlier Ugg-post went up, a link to the Ugg poncho (as featured in People magazine, as sure a tipoff to infernal origins as a tattoo of Mephistopheles diddling himself) landed in our inbox. Indeed, the online store crows that the likes of Kate Hudson, Uma Thurman, and Hilary Duff have already added them to their personal wardrobes, but this is no reason for you to fork over 250 bucks; the actresses just use them as blood-repelling aprons while they disembowel babies in the basement of Fred Segal.

The Defamer correspondent on Barely Pubescent Real Estate Buys weighs in on our earlier mention of Frankie Muniz's recent adventures in escrow. It should be noted that a) driving while intoxicated is illegal, if occasionally a surprisingly fun diversion from being young and rich enough to buy off the cop with the Breathalyzer, and b) Agent Cody Car Collector is a mere 18 years old and unable to legally purchase alcohol in any of Los Angeles's fine drinking establishments, even the ones that let him in the back door and pretend there's such a thing as a "virgin" bottle of Cristal.

Blogger Sean Bonner advocates stepping up the war against Ugg boots from Quietly Sneering In Derision to Outright Heckling:

We know that August is death for gossip (Exhibit A: we're writing some bastard form of meta-gossip right now), but is Page Six so desperate for filler that they're giving out free plugs to mactresses?

Hollywood's wrists are so tangled up in Kabbalah's red strings and Lance Armstrong's yellow rubber bands that we asked resident statistician Andrew Krucoff and graphics savant Chris Gage to try and make some sense of who's interested in repelling the evil-eye and who's opted for a sartorially savvy anti-cancer stance. The results of their project is after the jump. (Click to enlarge.)

Variety reports that Fox has dusted off 90210 alum Shannen Doherty and signed her to inject some bitch-blood into its moribund North Shore (which some cursory internet research reveals to be a little-watched television show). Doherty is currently on the NS set in Hawaii, and if producers wanted a shake-up, they've got one. Series star Brooke Burns was married to (and has a child by) Nip/Tuck actor Julian McMahon, whom Doherty worked with on Charmed and dated. [Ed.note—Had sex with.] We're already getting reports that she and series star Brooke Burns are trying to claw out each other's uteruses. Fox would certainly get a much-needed ratings bump if they aired the bikini-rending, hair-pulling, eye-gouging catfights instead of the actual, boring, OC-biting show.

· HBO locks up Sex and the City refugee Kristin Davis to a seven-figure development deal. Was she the old, dowdy one, the old, nympho one, or the one who refused to show her tits? We can never keep those sassy gals straight. [THR]
· Ewan McGregor is in negotiations to star in The Island for DreamWorks . The sci-fi film, directed by Michael Bay, depicts McGregor as a "'harvested being' who makes a bid to escape the utopian facility where he is being kept," who is "tormented by a hack director who likes to blow shit up." [THR]
· Fox Broadcasting is in talks to cannibalize exec Chris Carlisle from FX to head its marketing department. His most important duty will be the brainstorming new and exciting Fox News Cafe tie-ins for their television shows. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Disney's Annapolis receives sweetheart deal to shoot in Philadelphia. We just hope that the deal didn't include "special considerations" for Michael Eisner performed by the Phillie Phanatic—we know what a sucker he is for the mascots. [Variety, sub. req'd.]

Recently pube-sprouting superspy Agent Cody Banks is hawking his "Westside" house for $6 million and buying a nearby place for another four mil, according to the LAT Hot Property column. Frankie Muniz is 18 [Ed. note—18? Is he missing a kidney?] and already on his second home (at least).