Joan Rivers might have some fashion sense, but she doesn't know how to compliment (or supplement) her own writers.
Fashion Police / E!
That, at least, is what writers on her E! show Fashion Police are claiming today. The Writers Guild of America, West announced that the scribes have filed a complaint ...
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Roger Ebert, the nation's highest-profile movie critic, is dead at age 70, his longtime employer, the Chicago Sun-Times, announced this afternoon.
@ebertchicago
He died today in his hometown of Chicago following a much-publicized battle with cancer, the paper reported:
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Los Angeles could be losing an institution, "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."
Fallon and Mariah via NBC
So says the New York Times, which reports today that work is already underway at NBC's Manhattan studio complex and headquarters, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Jimmy Fallon of "Late Night" and "Saturday Night Live" is waiting in the wings to take over.
According to the paper ...
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The battle between the Motion Picture & Television Fund and the health care workers who look after some of its resident-care retirees is getting dirty.
MPTF / Facebook
As the workers prepared to strike Monday they unleashed potentially embarrassing salary figures for some MPTF executives while also announcing that the National Labor Relations Board is looking into the labor impasse:
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First Michael Moore came out swinging on Twitter. Clueless customs officials at LAX had detained an Academy Award-nominated Palestinian filmmaker, he claimed. They "couldn't understand how a Palestinian could be an Oscar nominee." Even producing an "Oscar invite" wasn't good enough. The filmmaker, Emad Burnat, had to call Moore. And Moore had to call lawyers.
courtesy of KELSEY WHIPPLE Michael Moore, rallying the troops in Denver
Finally, Moore tweeted, "After 1.5 hrs, they decided to release him & his family & told him he could stay in L.A. for the week & go to the Oscars. Welcome to America." Such drama!
But now we know the truth: Burnat was detained for all of 23 minutes. As anyone who's ever traveled internationally can tell you, that's hardly cause for concern.
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It was an Academy Awards in which a movie about a Latino CIA operative who designed the ingenious rescue of six American diplomats from revolutionary Iran in 1979 won "best picture."
Lupe Ontiveros
But that Latino, Tony Mendez, was played by a white guy, Ben Affleck. Can't Hollywood throw brown folks a bone?
Apparently not. Some in the Latino community are mad that one actress was absent from last night's show:
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Military veterans put their lives on the line for this country, and what do we give them? A couple hollow holidays? A discount? The occasional salute?
West Hollywood medical marijuana dispensary Zen Healing has us all beat on that front:
The pot shop announced this week that it's giving vets a true "gift of appreciation:"
Updated at the bottom with a body recovered. First posted at 12:22 p.m.
HMS Bounty in stormy seas / Facebook
A Hollywood treasure known for its roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Treasure Island and Mutiny on the Bounty has sunk off the coast of North Carolina, a victim of hurricane Sandy.
Two crew members were missing after everyone on-board abandoned the HMS Bounty last night, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Brandyn Hill told the Weekly:
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Read L.A. Weekly's investigative stories: "California's Parent Trigger" and "Parent Trigger's Second Try."
Ted Soqui Parent Trigger organizers and parents
You may have seen a trailer for the new film Won't Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter. The movie's subject matter revolves around education reform and a thing called the Parent Trigger, a California law that allows parents to take over a failing school. From what a reliable insider told us, an award-winning L.A. Weekly story, "California's Parent Trigger," provided some of the inspiration for the film.
That 2010 article, which won the "Best News Feature" award from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2011, describes how parents in Compton and the education reform group Parent Revolution joined forces and pulled the nation's first Parent Trigger.
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A man known for years around the Internet and the entertainment industry to be a con artist posing as a talent agent type --Â alleged victims have attested online that he often claims affiliation with rap superstars like Snoop Dogg, E-40 and Diddy --Â is now on the radar of the San Bernardino Police Department, as well. 
L.A. County Sheriff Warning: Do not give this man a blow job in exchange for a bit part.
The department announced this morning that 45-year-old Anthony Augustus Jefferson (also known as "DJ Tone") is wanted for "sexual battery by false pretenses, false impersonation, indecent exposure, and theft" of aspiring actresses and models from age 20 to 53...
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Congratulations, corporate Hollywood! You finally got the hang of 21st-century guerilla marketing.
@gootecks via Twitter
Over the past few days, foot soldiers for CBS Films have apparently been hanging up ads for its latest film Seven Psychopaths all over L.A., in the form of lost-dog flyers -- making them so inherently awesome that we either don't think they're ads or don't really care, then laying low while the Twittersphere does the legwork.
And some in-character Woody Harrelson can't hurt:
More »The Muslim outrage that led to the fatal attack on the California-native U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, might very well have begun right here in Hollywood.
The filmmaker who calls himself Sam Bacile might have made the source of some Muslims' ire, Innocence of Muslims (video after the jump), in the Los Angeles area, according to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper. The Atlantic indicates Bacile might be a pseudonym and that 15 people, mostly "evangelicals," could be associated with the movie (more below).
That Guardian says that (warning, disturbing photo of Stevens after the jump) ..
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K-Town, the controversial reality show that proves Asians can be guidos too, has been renewed for a second season, a rep told the Weekly.
K-Town / Facebook
The series didn't make it to cable, as originally intended, but its renewal appears to be a vote of confidence in its appeal and in YouTube as a television delivery system with its own gravity.
The show was launched by Tyrese Gibson and reality titan Ben Silverman, among others:
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Update, 1 p.m.: Gerber's suicide was just confirmed in a post on his Facebook profile. Headline and story have been changed to reflect this fact.
Facebook Brian Gerber went missing on Monday afternoon.
Another well-loved member of the L.A. film industry -- documentary producer and digital-tech pioneer Brian Gerber -- took his life this week by driving his car off the Angeles Crest Highway. (Famed director Tony Scott jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge just last week.)
According to Battalion Chief Ron Larriva of the L.A. County Fire Department, the LAPD and Sheriff's Department began searching Angeles Crest Highway for Gerber early this morning, after being informed by his family that he was distraught and thinking of running his car off a cliff in the area.
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Yesterday was a record-insane news day, even for Hollywood:
Robert Page-Roberts via Facebook The suspect at a gun show.
After the LAPD received reports of shots fired on Sunset Boulevard around 3:30 p.m., officers ran in circles for a spell before stumbling into the loaded apartment of 42-year-old Robert Page, where they say they found a sawed-off shotgun and a stick of dynamite, among other weapons (such as, um, paintball gear). So the bomb squad was called in -- only to discover that the dynamite was a fake and that Page was some kind of X-treme Hollywood prop master.
Oh, and then a KTLA newscopter crash-landed in a nearby parking lot.
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See also: "Occupy L.A. Comedy Show with Josh Androsky: This is What Democracy Yuks Like"
CBS Josh Androsky, skateboard rabbi.
The only thing funnier than an L.A. comedian on shrooms has to be an L.A. bank executive on bath salts -- and, unfortunately, we don't have video of the latter.
So we'll have to settle for this retarded-hilarious clip from an early May episode of The Price Is Right, which makes a lot more sense now that we know contestant "Joshua" was actually local comic god Josh Androsky, and was actually on shrooms.
Androsky's cousin Jordan proudly posted the clip to Reddit yesterday...
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Thank god for nostalgic Hollywood fanboys in the Upper Midwest! As the Associated Press revealed last Wednesday, if it weren't for Minnesota artist and memorabilia hoarder Bill Mack, the original "Hollywoodland" sign, erected in 1923 and replaced in 1978, might have ended up a pile of scrap metal in a junkyard somewhere.
Our long-lost "H" is coming home.
Mack tells LA Weekly that he purchased the 45-foot by 33-foot sign from a mysterious collector...
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In the answer-seeking aftermath of the Dark Knight massacre, many have fingered Hollywood as a prime suspect: Was alleged shooter James Holmes so numbed by blood and gunfire in the movies that he became capable of blasting a theater full of innocents?
Suffocator of Sins via Facebook
In a creepy interview this morning with CBS Los Angeles, Diggity Dave -- a former "accessories master" for MTV's Pimp My Ride who dabbles in alt-metal and campy horror films -- says he believes his yet-to-be-released film The Suffocator of Sins may have inspired Holmes' death rampage.
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A candlelight vigil for victims of the massacre at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado will be held tonight at Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
Grauman's Chinese Theater
The event happens at 8:30 p.m., organizers state.
At 9 p.m. lights on the theater's facade and at its forecourt will go dark to honor the 12 who died and 59 who were injured in the Friday shooting attack at the opening of the Batman film.
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Update: The powder reportedly fell from a fan letter to Glee creator Ryan Murphy. Details at the bottom.
Zazzle.com White powder in paradise.
Someone at 5555 West Melrose Avenue (the address for Paramount Studios) called 911 today after discovering a "white powder like substance" in an envelope.
So the L.A. City Fire Department dispatched its hazmat team to the studios for a "chemical investigation" of this "unknown type of suspicious substance," cordoning off the affected area and otherwise stirring up all the lights-and-sirens drama that comes with a hazmat call.
But after only 10 minutes of investigating...
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