Afternoon Briefing:
What happens to Carrie? Next week we'll all find out whether Carrie ends up with Big, Aleksandr or herself. What does ur-feminist Erica Jong think should happen? "I'd make Carrie the editor-in-chief of her newspaper; Samantha would have a baby with her dishy younger man; Charlotte would move to the Lower East Side; and Miranda would finally marry Steve, but they would invite Magda, the housekeeper, for a ménage a trois!" (Celebrity Cafe)
Bless those Brits: Having just wrapped shooting on the second Bridget Jones movie in England the zaftig Renée Zellweger noted, "Here people clear the sets by saying 'Excuse me, I'm sorry to be a bother but would you mind dreadfully if you stepped to one side please?' Over there [the U.S.] they swear at you." (3am Girls)
Justin loves Cameron! Mr. Timberlake pulled out all the stops this Valentine's Day and showered Ms. Diaz with diamonds -- to the tune of more than $100,000. And they came in a little blue box -- always the right choice. (IMDB)
Casting news: Tina Turner has signed on to an Ismail-Merchant film in which she'll play an Indian goddess. One of the star's turns in the film will be to sing and dance on the back of a tiger. After what she's been through, that should be a piece of cake. (AFP)
-- Karen Croft
- - - - - - - - - - - -
What led Mel Gibson to make "The Passion of the Christ"? His own passion ... for alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, even coffee, he says.
"Everyone's got something," Gibson told Diane Sawyer in an interview shown on "Primetime" last night. "I would get addicted to anything, anything at all. OK? Doesn't matter what it is ... drugs, booze, anything. You name it -- coffee, cigarettes, anything. All right? I'm just one of these guys who is like that. That's my flaw."
During the rather odd interview -- in which Gibson gestured wildly and shifted back and forth in his chair, a haze of perspiration twinkling nervously on his upper lip -- the actor said Jesus had saved him from the perils of life at "the height of spiritual bankruptcy" about 13 years back. And when Gibson -- having pulled out his "proboscis" and sucked up all the sin that attended celebrity and money -- found himself contemplating suicide, his faith pulled him back from the brink.
"I just didn't want to go on," Gibson said of the moment he found himself standing by a window, thinking of jumping. "I was looking down thinking, 'Man, this is just easier this way ... You have to be mad, you have to be insane, to despair in that way. But that is the height of spiritual bankruptcy. There's nothing left."
But instead of taking the leap, "I think I just hit my knees," the actor said. "I just said, 'Help.' You know? And then, I began to meditate on it, and that's in the Gospel. I read all those again."
Money Quote:
Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," on his next role, a considerably less punishing one, in the golf flick "Bobby Jones, Stroke of Genius": "I went from playing the Messiah to playing the messiah of golf." (Golf magazine via N.Y. Daily News)
Morning Briefing:
Oscar handicappers take note: The British Academy of Film and Television Arts handed out the BAFTA awards in London on Sunday. And? "The Return of the King" got best film, but LOTR director Peter Jackson lost to "Master and Commander" director Peter Weir for best director. "Lost in Translation" stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson snagged the awards for best actor and best actress. (N.Y. Times)
Hustle this: Larry Flynt says he's poised to publish a book claiming that, back in the early '70s, President Bush paid for an ex-girlfriend's abortion: "I've talked to the woman's friends. I've tracked down the doctor who did the abortion, I tracked down the Bush people who arranged for the abortion. I got the story nailed," Flynt told the New York Daily News. "This story has got to come out. There's a lot of hypocrisy in the White House about this whole abortion issue." (N.Y. Daily News)
-- Amy Reiter
Bookmark the Fix here. To send a hot tip to the Fix, click here.
Shares