Now that The Smoking Gun has revealed that much of the latest ascendant to the Oprah Book Club throne, the supposedly 100% true crime and addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces, was either embellished and/or completely fabricated by its author James Frey (for the reading averse, Gawker sums it up nicely), we are left stunned, disillusioned, not to mention completely in the dark with respect to the only thing we actually care about: What's the deal with the movie?! From TSG's report:

A reader writes in to call out a fading actress for playing the "Don't you know who I am?" card too far east for comfort:

Finally accepting that her personal brand can realize far greater value in the nightlife space than in the acting realm, Tara Reid has started exploring entrepreneurial activities exploiting that fact, transforming herself into a mobile nightclub. As she wanders up and down Hollywood Boulevard each night, offering to encircle patrons with her own velvet rope and down shots of tequila with them at surprisingly affordable prices, Tara Reid's VIP Room Fuckin' Club!* can service the entire scene without confining herself to one fleetingly hot location at a time, thus increasing her visibility and insulating the business from the fickleness of the trend-worshipping masses.

No sooner had we been thinking to ourselves, "The children of Ethiopia have it so easy. Isn't there some way to humiliate them on a large scale?" comes word of Ethiopian Idols, a pirated version of the popular American Idol singing contest that has against all odds (ex.: no one in Ethiopia owns a TV) taken the impoverished nation by storm, proving that a good schadenfreude showcase can find an audience just about anywhere.

The Insider's Marc Malkin is reporting that two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank and infamous acceptance speech overlookee/househusband Chad Lowe are splitting. The early party line, however, is that they're going to try and work things out:

Just days after Arnold Schwarzenegger's State of the State address (for those who missed it: California is doing great and it's all because of him!), the Governor had a motorcycle accident with his 12-year-old son in the sidecar:

· NBC president Kevin Reilly rearranges some deck chairs on his primetime Titanic, with exec VP of development Ghen Maynard and senior VP of comedy Cheryl Dolins being de-Peacocked. Reilly, it seems, is not quite ready to fire himself. Give it time. [Variety]
· Fox gives a cast-contingent order to latest ——-ing With the Stars reality idea, Simon Cowell's Duets, wherein a "star" performs a song with a professional singer in front of a panel of judges. Pending results for the network's Skating With Celebrities, an ice-skating component may be added to maximize cynicism. [THR]
· Warner Bros. rescues the Maurice Sendak-approved Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are from Universal's turnaround. Huzzah! (Really.) [Variety]
· You can stop holding your breath now. The WB has netted its Aquaman! [THR]
· Paramount is still working on deal to sell the DreamWorks library to help defray the cost of their holiday impulse studio buy, is in talks to get George Sorosto pony up about a billion or so dollars for the rights. [Variety]

Today's LAT explores the possibility that Brokeback Mountain's critical reception and early success in limited theatrical release may recast the movie's now-iconic gay cowboys as gay messiahs sent to resurrect various similarly themed (read: gay) projects from development hell. While it's definitely nice to imagine Ennis and Jack galloping onto a movie lot and setting up a production ranch where they can nurture such endeavors, some insiders tell the Times that the studios don't see enough dollar signs to totally flip over for Brokeback Mania:

Always on the lookout for new, cutting-edge vehicles from which she can cuss out unsuspecting passers by and peel away, noted vehicular rageaholic and Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria made an appearance at the Detroit auto show yesterday, providing a delightful bit of life imitating art (her DH character Gabrielle resorts to being a car model in one episode) while simultaneously allowing her to lend her high-profile star power to the worthy cause of earning herself an appearance fee.

With the War of the Worlds publicity tour's instant transformation into the Tom, Katie, and L. Ron Roadshow, we quickly forgot that eerily precocious master thespian Dakota Fanning was even in the film. This morning, however, Page Six cites a W magazine interview in which former E! red carpet attack dog Kathy Griffin reveals that WoTW director Steven Spielberg threatened Griffin with inclusion on his official, career-devouring shit list if she refused to apologize for a joke she made on the Golden Globes carpet about the A-list moppet going to rehab. Griffin, realizing that she was in far greater danger of losing the opportunity to dust Spielberg's antiques than one to star in his movies, laughed off the strong-arm tactic:

Rub the sleep from the corners of your bleary eyes, take a swig of palate-scorching coffee, and glance at the Monday morning box office numbers:

· It's only a matter of time before the Ken Burns doc: Viacom and CBS Corp. officially split. Viacom gets the sweet end of the deal, literally, while the CBS kids get the shaft. Big time!
· Lindsay Lohan checks herself into a hospital for an "asthma attack," the very same day a Vanity Fair interview announces to the world that her days of, um, recreational asthma attack inducement are long over. Meanwhile, her friend brings her a giant care package of drug store decoys (mouthwash, playing cards) and their accompanying embarrassing checkout item (pregnancy test).
· See, it wasn't that the Oscars didn't want an edgy comedian to host. They just wanted a white one.
· Steven Seagal is looking for a new assistant. Here's a guide for what to expect at the interview. Good luck!
· Merry Creepiness! Tom Cruise visits Katie's folks for the holidays.
· Don't Cha wish you had made other plans for New Year's Eve?
· There's going to be an Ocean's 13, and you know what that means: Turn the incestuous-rich-and-famous-movie-star-friends-circle-jerk-o-meter up a notch!
· Christian Slater and friends have an obnoxious laugh-off at the one Woody Allen movie in decades where that's inappropriate behavior.
· Gwyneth Paltrow plans on using a birthing pool to deliver her next child, though no confirmation on rumors she plans to name it Watermelon.
· Gene Shalit lets his Ennis lust get the best of him.
· Jerry Bruckheimer's Hollywood supremacy is just a little less supreme after a lousy year at the box office.

· Because we know that your weekend wouldn't be complete if you didn't kick it off by contemplating K-Fed handling some poopy Pampers: Britney's Mom: Kevin Changes Diapers.
· Walmart is "heartsick" that its website software seems to be a big, fat racist.
· Quentin Tarantino explains Icelandic women: "I'm in a room full of supermodels who were drunk out of their mind standing on a table, (going) 'Let's get the party started.' I'm like, 'Where have I been all my life.' "In America, the idea is to get the girls drunk enough to go home with you, in Iceland it's to get the girls home with you before they get so drunk that they're passing out in your bathroom or vomiting all over you." Also, they have lovely feet.
· We are shocked—shocked!—and possibly even scandalized—scandalized!—by the possibility that underage MTV stars might be getting shitfaced at respectable, starfucking drinking establishments.
· Not everything Giada makes on the Food Network can be a winner.

Lost star Naveen Andrews was born to an Indian family and raised in South London; at age 16, he ran off with his math teacher, Geraldone Feakins, who bore him a child in 1992; heroin and alcohol addiction in his 20s nearly killed him, only to see the actor sober up, land on a hit American TV series, and live happily ever after with the much older love of his life, girlfriend Barbara Hershey. Andrews appeared to have finally found some stability in his life. Only, not so much:

This is about as good an illustration of the average Hollywood career trajectory as you're likely to stumble across on a Friday afternoon: A mere four years ago, Jay Hernandez was rolling around naked with Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful, daydreaming about what up-and-coming starlet to choose for his next big sex scene. This weekend, he's biting a ball gag in the low-budget splatter flick Hostel, wondering how much more time he has before his agent at CAA calls security if he drops by to chat unannounced.

Friday
· The Strokes play the Troubadour. At this point, if you aren’t banging a member of the band, forget about trying to get in. The good news: That's probably a lot more viable option than you suspect. You might as well go see 400 Blows with Free Moral Agents (which features members of the Mars Volta) at the Echo.
· The American Cinematheque celebrates the first anniversary of the Aero Theatre with a screening of Hell's Angels from 1930. You know, the one that Leonardo DiCaprio made in The Aviator before he started peeing in milk bottles.
Saturday
· Musical choices: Richard Buckner at Spaceland; Zooey Deschanel & Sam Shelton’s If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies at Hotel Café.
· Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Paul F. Tompkins host "F'ed Up and Illegal Videos" at the UCBT, a presentation of visual curiosities that are f'ed up, illegal, or in the best cases, both.
Sunday
· It’s Hitchcockapalooza all weekend long at the Egyptian; Sunday night features Spellbound and the Mel Brooks spoof of that film, High Anxiety.
· The Sunday Comedy show at Room 5 has Marc Maron, Maria Bamford, and Howard Kremer. Times, as they say, will be good.

This morning's post about the rapidly widening gap on the Paramount lot between New Viacom employees and the red-headed stepchildren of CBS Corp. prompted several e-mails from the frontline of the escalating class war. A couple of people noted The Christmas iPod Incident, in which those who landed on the wrong side of the corporate split (CBS) watched as their Paramount/NV officemates played with their shiny new toys while they got this seemed to foreshadow future problems. The divisive fun's not over yet, however, as a lucky NV'er details another slight:

Judging from the flood of responses, the Casablanca-free holiday seems to have really increased your appetite for blind item guessing fun. Let's get on to your answers before any more of Friday afternoon slips by us. But first, recirculate One Chatty, Snorty Blind Vice:

Despite the fact that Daniel "New Bond" Craig's Munich is a Spielberg film playing in about 1,500 theaters and Pierce "Old Bond" Brosnan's The Matador is an entry from Sundance in January just now making its way into 28, ABC News thinks we should all look at this weekend as some kind of Bond-off between the two actors. Brosnan, however, doesn't want to take the bait:

No one knows for certain what went down inside the Bentley before it crashed into a truck that fateful November night outside club Element. For the first time in the lives of its four typically yappy-mouthed, attention whore passengers Paris Hilton, boyfriend Stavros Niarchos, and soon to be fake-engaged lovebirds Kimberly Stewart and Laguna Beach's Talan Torriero in the back seat a widely photographed event starring themselves required no further commentary. But on last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live, that loveable Liberace of self-mutilation, Steve-O, provided a few choice details. From a Live press release: