President Obama playfully fucks with reporter from the Times of India at a press conference held yesterday.

Robert Wilonsky has a story on his blog that may have something to do with the Wolverine leak. That’s the rumor, at least. There was an FBI raid at a “huge internet hub” in Dallas this morning. The owner released a statement saying it has something to do with a customer of theirs, and that the FBI needed access to their information.

Last night I caught the brilliant first episode of new Rescue Me season at the Radio City Music Hall, and also a comedy set from star-creator Denis Leary, which was somewhat funny in the usual Leary way — contentious, caustic, seething, middle-aged and very urban Irish blue-collar and very fuck-you frustrated. So what else is new? That’s his handle.

50th and Sixth Avenue following last night’s Rescue Me screening and comedy performances — Thursday, 4.2.09, 9:35 pm

Radio City Music Hall grand foyer — Thursday, 4.2.09, 7:25 pm

The problem with the screening was that the RCMH is cavernous as hell and the sound echoes all over the place so you had to cup your ears to hear it right. But you couldn’t hear it anyway because the show was a benefit for the Leary Firerighters Foundation, which meant that the place was filled with borough types who laughed so loudly (image two thousand water buffaloes yaw-hawing en masse) that they obscured at least half the dialogue.

Funny as he can be, Leary is regarded as a heavyweight actor-dramatist these days because of Rescue Me, which he co-created (with Peter Tolan), produces, co-writes and stars in. It’s always been a superb show that mixes comedy and pathos in a way that feels perfectly synched and fine tuned. This is the fifth season. I was surprised by the continued spark and pizazz, given the tendency for ensemble comedy series to lose a little mojo after two or three seasons.

This season is noteworthy (apart from the punchy-dramedy value) for a revival of the 9/11 current, which of course is what inspired Rescue Me in the first place. It kicks in when a French journalist (Karina Lombard) interviews the firehouse gang for a piece on the 10th anniversary of the disaster. This material wasn’t in the episode shown last night, but knowing this is in the wings makes me all the more interested in watching. (I’m trying to scrounge extra screeners as we speak.) The series kicks off next Tuesday on FX at 10 pm.

The standout performance, for me, was Michael J. Fox‘s as a twitchy, wheelchair-bound guy who’s apparently dicking Janet (Andrea Roth), the ex-wife of Leary’s Tommy Gavin. It’s touching to see Fox, who’s been grappling with Parkinson’s for years, give his performance hell despite the obvious fact that the disease is getting in the way.

Nick DiPaolo also did a comedy set (following Leary’s opener). And as funny and confident as he is, I didn’t care at all for the blue-collar-bar vein in some of his material, particularly as it reflected upon Barack Obama. DiPaolo was playing to a borough crowd, and if a certain kind of joke works with a certain type of crowd, you use it — I get that. But he was basically stoking racist attitudes, and this turned me off. I wound up giving him the finger as I left.

“People of the left think Obama is a messiah,” DiPaolo said. “I know what that’s about because on Election Night I was looking at the TV screen and going ‘Jesus H. Christ, Jesus H. Christ.'” And this got a huge laugh. Fucking animals and their bullshit borough perspectives. Sitting in the audience (I was in row SS, seat 305) felt like I was surrounded by the cast of Goodfellas without the icepicks.

Everyone in Strasbourg speaks English? I realize that the under-45 French are generally bilingual, particularly those in service industries, retail, tourism, etc. But not the 50-plusses and certainly not the proles. It goes without saying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy would never deliver an all-French speech to a crowd in this country, even in Manhattan, even at the Alliance Francaise.

Last night EW‘s Christina Spines posted a conversation with Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Tom Rothman about the Wolverine piracy: “The version that went out is unfinished,” Rothman said. “It’s about 10 minutes shorter, it doesn’t have key scenes, it wasn’t [fully] edited, and none of the effects shots were in any remotely final form. It’s a complete misrepresentation of the film and is deeply unfair to the people who have worked on it for years.”

Rothman added that Fox and the FBI “are zeroing in on the culprits” and that “he feels confident that they’ll be able to name the perpetrators soon,” Spines reports.

“We, like everybody, thought our system was secure,” Rothman said. “Just like I’m sure there are lots of banks that get robbed that thought their vault was safe. We thought the post-production pipeline was secure at every juncture. But obviously, it’s self-evident that it wasn’t. I have a high level of confidence we’ll find out where the lapse in security was and we’ll bring the perpetrators to justice.

“The picture is not the kind of movie people get the whole experience of by watching on their computer. But other than The Hulk, I don’t think a movie with this kind of anticipation has been stolen. And it’s also a big deal because of how early it is.”

Rothman told Spines that both he and Wolverine star Hugh Jackman have vowed to stop at nothing to get the movie out to as many fans as possible.

“Hugh was heartbroken and hurt when he found out. He’s lived with this thing for 10 years. But he’s also a man and knows that life isn’t fair, and is more determined than ever. Hugh and I exchanged e-mails [and said that] basically we’re not going to let the bastards win. But we didn’t use the word ‘bastards.’ That’s a slightly sanitized version.”

A friend who caught yesterday’s Showest screening of Woody Allen‘s Whatever Works (Sony Classics, 6.19) says “it’s very funny and yet lighter even than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the sum result being that it feels less significant but also works better as a crowd-pleaser.

“Larry David, of course, is a perfect Woody Allen stand-in with classic Allen attributes, [such as] speaking directly to the camera. Evan Rachel Wood really stretches in the role of Melodie, a naive and slightly stupid Southerner who never emerges as [any kind of] stereotype. And Patricia Clarkson, as Melodie’s mother, is excellent.”

The screening happened in Las Vegas, the home base of Showest for decades.

The Manhattan-based story is basically about a May-December relationship between David and Wood, and, according to one synopsis I’ve read, an attempt by the disapproving Clarkson to break it up. I’m not sure if Ed Begley, Jr. plays Wood’s dad, but I suspect as much. My friend didn’t think to mention costars Henry Cavill, Michael McKean or Kristen Johnson …whatever.

“It’s probably too light for the same Oscar consideration that Vicky Cristina got,” she says, “but the typical Allenesque wit and flavor mixed with the general New York-iness are wonderful to spend time with. It got a great reaction from the Showest crowd, too.”

Earlier today Focus Features announced that shooting has begun on Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, a Los Angeles-based relationship costarring Ben Stiller and a Joe Swanberg mumblecore hyphenate (actress-screenwriter-director) named Greta Gerwig. Gerwig is the second Swanberg blonde to penetrate mainstream Hollywood ranks following Alexander The Last‘s Jess Weixler. Are there others?

The wrinkle is that the Focus release refers to “an untitled film” instead of Greenberg, which most likely means (a) there’s some kind of title-rights issue going on or (b) somebody at Focus is afraid that Greenberg sounds too ethnic and has persuaded the top creatives (Baumbach, producer Scott Rudin , Baumbach’s wife-collaborator-costar Jennifer Jason Leigh) to give the title another think-through. Well…what else could it be?

If it’s an ethnic concern (and I say “if”) I can half-see the point. You don’t want to go too Jewish or too black or too ethnic-anything when it comes to a movie title that’s looking to rope in the mall crowd.

Would My Big Fat Greek Wedding have been as big a hit if it had been called The Coarse Wedding of Toula Portokalos? Instead of going with Bananas director-star Woody Allen could have called his 1971 comedy Mellish, after the film’s lead character Fielding Mellish — but would it have sold as many tickets? And the 1969 film adaptation of Phillip Roth‘s Goodbye Columbus could have been called Klugman after Richard Benjamin‘s lead character — but c’mon, which is the better title?

Baumbach has authored the original screenplay from a story created by Leigh and himself. It’s basically about a guy named Roger Greenberg (Stiller) housesitting at his brother’s home in Los Angeles, and striking up a relationship with his brother’s assistant Florence (Gerwig), who’s an aspiring singer. Leigh will costar along with Rhys Ifans, Mark Duplass (another mumblecore guy whose last mumblecore film was Humpday), Brie Larson (United States of Tara), and Juno Temple (Atonement).

Tony Clark, chairman and co-founder of the Australian-based visual effects house RSP, has posted a statement on the company’s website explaining how it would have been impossible for his company to have been in any way complicit in the leaking of the Wolverine workprint.

“From the reports we’ve had, the stolen material is a work-in-progress version of the film with many incomplete sections. As we worked on individual sequences within the film, neither RSP or its staff members have ever been in possession of a full-length version, so it would have been impossible for the movie to have been leaked from here.

“It’s common practice for work in progress between us and the production to carry vendor watermarks and for these works-in-progress to be integrated into various edits of the film for screenings which would explain why our name appears.”

There’s an interesting snap judgment in a current Kim Masters/Daily Beast article about studios having shifted into deep rollback mode these days on star salaries. The studios are using the worldwide financial meltdown as an excuse to get tough, but the decisive underlying factor is, as Masters writes, that “the model is collapsing.”

Meaning, I gather, that while a very select few superstars like Will Smith can still be counted upon to open a film (unless it’s a morose stinker like Seven Pounds) and the right star in the right film (say, Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man) is a definite box-office accelerant, fewer and fewer actors rank in this regard. It almost seems, in fact, as if the very concept of a movie star may be on the wane. Digital media has levelled the playing field, and the mystique of movie stars has dissipated.

How many of the hot celebrity names of the ’90s and the early part of this century still matter in a box-office sense? Tom Cruise may not be done, but the suits see him as damaged goods; Harrison Ford has been over for a while now. Is Tom Hanks still a bona fide star? In any event, says Masters, the value of respected second-tier stars seems to be sinking like a stone.

“After years of impotent promises to choke off rich deals with talent, the studios are finally making it happen,” she reports. “They’re hammering on star salaries and perks like private jets, too. ‘They’ve wanted to go in this direction for a long time and the global financial crisis has given them the lever to do it,’ says one veteran talent representative. ‘

“Why would anybody pay Julia Roberts $20 million to do Duplicity?” a producer tells Masters. “That won’t happen again.” Indeed, this source says Sony Pictures is ponying up $15 million for Roberts to do Eat, Pray, Love and probably already regrets having committed to pay that much.

“These changes may cheer up ordinary citizens who can’t understand why a star ever got millions to be in a movie in the first place,” she writes, “but the fact that the studios are finally laying down the law also illustrates the strains hey are under as they try to crank out expensive popular entertainment when the model is collapsing.

“Stars in the middle range — famous names but something well short of, say, Will Smith — are facing the toughest battles,” she reports.

“The studios are going out to actors who have been $10 million players and saying, ‘Here’s $5 million. Here’s two and a half,'” she hears from a top agent. “It’s like there are no rules.” If an actor balks at the deal, the studios say they will move to another choice immediately. “They’re not fucking around,” says the talent representative. “They know exactly who that next person is. Sometimes they’ll tell you.”

“On certain movies, they feel like whoever they put in a part is fine. Once they lock down Robert Downey, Jr., on Iron Man 2, everything else is fine. I don’t think they give a shit if it’s Mickey Rourke or Scarlett Johansson.”

I like an idea from Cinemablend‘s Katey Rich about how 20th Century Fox could counteract the possibly negative box-office impact of the Wolverine bootleg, to wit: attach a teaser for James Cameron‘s Avatar on all Wolverine prints, and make certain it doesn’t appear online for at least two weeks after its 5.1.09 opening.

“The word has been that we won’t see a trailer, or even a single scene, from the movie until later this summer when Comic Con gets going,” Rich comments. “But if Fox can somehow pull together a trailer for Avatar and play it before Wolverine, they can recover from the enormous blow of the Wolverine piracy.

“No movie coming out within the next year is shrouded in more secrecy than Avatar , and it’s hard to imagine any other trailer audiences would pay $12 to see. It would be a scramble for them to pull something together that quickly, but if they’re going to salvage this mess, they’ve got to start thinking creatively. If Avatar lives up to the hype, it will be by far the biggest movie Fox has this year. It’s already time for them to start cashing in on it.”

A reasonably well-connected guy with a friend on the 20th Century Fox who’s said to have regular contact with Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Tom Rothman (and who was questioned yesterday by an investigator regarding the Wolverine piracy) has been told that “within the last few days” — i.e., prior to the Wolverine work print appearing online — “Rupert Murdoch received a package at his New York office that contained a DVD copy of the leaked Wolverine.”

The Fox guy allegedly said that “most people involved are considering the delivery a big ‘eff you’ to Murdoch and Fox.”

I tried checking this with two off-the-lot sources who might have heard something, and with Murdoch’s office and Newscorp. corporate spokesperson. Everyone claimed they hadn’t heard the story and/or had no reason to believe it’s true. The story sounds too much like an urban legend. To me, at least. It’s too colorful and dramatic, like a scene out of a screenplay about the Wolverine work-print thievery, and a little bit like the opening of Zodiac.