Julia Roberts: "Manifest Destiny" Saved Me From Modern Hollywhoredom

Moe — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:00:29 EST

Julia Roberts is on the cover of the latest Vanity Fair, in an interview you may have already heard about because she makes the requisite statements about how she wants to take in Britney Spears as a houseguest because she thinks it's such a pity what a cruel cruel world it can be out there and oh, heavens how Hollywood has changed. I read it, for a moment feeling myself transported back to the era that created the actress some moguls are convinced is the only female that can carry a movie, listening to Julia sunnily — and "proficiently!" the mag notes; someone doesn't need Britney's help here — change diapers and say things like ""spiritually speaking, I think that we do have our Manifest Destiny." It was an era, she explains, before celebrity culture turned into such a "grotesque circus sideshow"; before it all happened

too fast. Before, you could build a career over years and many movies. Now it's like you do one good movie and they throw a ton of money at you and a ton of attention at you.

And uhm, how much exactly did Julia toil before she was catapulted into the ton of money/ton of attention ranks with her role as the lead whore in a movie that grossed nearly half-billion dollars? She remembers:

And I'd only just graduated high school in 1985. Isn't that funny? Going back to these girls and how they don't have a chance, that was, what, my fourth movie?

That's right, her fourth.

Also she believes that being thin is "97% genetics" and that her "destiny is joy" and her new house is totally going to be made of all-recycled wood.

She was the first woman to command $20 million a movie but that wasn't a big deal to her; it was more of a big deal to her agent, probably because her agent would need to get her in, like, five and a half movies to make as much as she would in just one, oh well.

And of her skills Closer director Mike Nichols says: "The thing about great actors, and she's a great actor, is that we don't know how they do it."

Which is funny because I never really considered Julia Roberts such a great actor; it always seemed like she was playing herself, which is to say a very attractive woman who is capable of saying things that could lead you to believe she was smart, but that would probably mostly be a suspension of disbelief, because she is probably not really all that smart. Which may explain how she didn't know she was pregnant for four months on the set of her last movie, when she had to disrobe for a bikini scene? Yeah, I don't know how she did that. Where were the bumpwatch patrols?

Meet 'US Weekly''s Ken Baker. He'll Promote His Hot Nanny Instead Of You, Then Send The FBI To Your House

Moe — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:00:12 EDT

The jackass with Paris is Ken Baker, America's worst boss. We always thought there was something a little spooky about how mild and intelligent and reasonable Us Weekly editor in chief Janice Min came across in public, and now we know why: she has a horrible secret and it is not that she had reporters dig through Ben Affleck's trash, used scanners to intercept Britney Spears' bodyguards' communications or planted a reporter full-time at Cedars-Sinai (the hospital with the lock on the celebuspawn market). It's that she hired this guy to oversee all of this investigative journalism, and...Well. How to put... Baker was one of those bosses who thinks it is a good idea to involve the entire office in his speculation as to whether an employee's tits are real, encourages his underlings to sleep with paparazzi, hires the nanny he wants to see "pregnant in pigtails" as a reporter, and then, when suddenly someone catches wind and decides to do a story about it, snots all over your office:

On or about July 2005 BAKER entered JILL ISHKANIAN's office, closed the door and began to cry. During this conversation BAKER used up all of JILL ISHKANIAN's Kleenex to wipe his eyes and runny nose.

But it got SO MUCH MESSIER.

During the raid, twelve F.B.I. agents in flak jackets entered JILL ISHKANIAN's home with their guns drawn and held their guns to JILL ISHKANIAN's head and to the head of JILL ISHKANIAN's boyfriend. 118. JILL ISHKANIAN and her boyfriend were placed into handcuffs, removed from their home and placed into a police vehicle. They were never arrested nor taken to any other location during the more than two hour raid.

Yeah, seriously, it's hard to explain how it came to this, though it basically comes down to: US set up the reporter so it looked like she was stealing celebrity secrets from US, which she probably wasn't, but she sure had some good non-celebrity secrets.

A Very Long Lawsuit [Jossip]

Jezebel: not like us

Julia Roberts: "Manifest Destiny" Saved Me From Modern Hollywhoredom

Meet 'US Weekly''s Ken Baker. He'll Promote His Hot Nanny Instead Of You, Then Send The FBI To Your House