I didn’t mention this in the earlier riff [02/14/2006, 1:48 PM] about John Scheinfeld‘s Who is Harry Nilsson? doc, but I was reminded of it this morning. Not only did Nilsson not write “Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me”, but he also didn’t write “Without You”. A BBC site says the song was actually the work of British band Badfinger, specifically Pete Ham and Tom Evans. A desperate plea to a departing lover, ‘Without You’ is lent added poignancy by the knowledge that its writers eventually committed suicide, ground down by dodgy business dealings and the pressures of the music biz. Nilsson’s version appeared on his 1971 album Nilsson Schmilson, and was a huge hit around the world although Ham and Evans hardly saw a penny of the proceeds.”

“Entertainment Weekly hates me. They’ve hated me since they’ve been a magazine. Fuck ’em…and you can go and tell them that,” Bruce Willis said last Sunday (yeah, I know…three days ago is old news) during a press conference for 16 Blocks (Warner Bros., 3.3). Willis was asked why EW hates him. “Because I’m a threat to them. Why does anybody hate anybody? Because they have some beef. Who cares? They can all blow me.” I once wrote a News & Notes piece for EW about Willis and various troubles that happened during the shooting of Striking Distance (1993). My sources were impeccable and their info was basically that Willis was the primary cause of the difficulties, but the piece was given a final rewrite in New York that added an an extra-snide tone. Anyway, Willis found me in the phone book and called to complain. The guy was hurt…there was anguish in his voice. I couldn’t hint who my sources were and I couldn’t talk about the rewrite (which I thought was a bit harsh), and it was a difficult conversation. This episode — 12 and 1/2 years ago — was the first indication I had that Willis had very little love for EW and was not the kind to just sit there and take it.

Being a celebrity-relationship reporter is a repellent way to make a living. I never touched it when I worked at People in the mid to late ’90s, but there was something faintly odorous wafting out of the offices back then (and this was years before the celeb-chasing magazines turned uniformly icky and vapid in the Bonnie Fuller mode). Nonetheless the willingness of Life & Style to stick its neck out over the “Imminent Death of TomKat” story has a certain head-turning quality. My immediate response was “Already?” If this story is even half-true (and I’m not saying or presuming that it is), somebody in this relationship is in a highly frustrated, unstable, erratic state of mind. There’s what everybody presumes or believes to be true (the highly questionable raison d’etre of TomKat, the horrid implications of those Scientology minders tagging along behind Katie Holmes when she goes anywhere, etc.), and then there’s the what’s-the-hurry? factor. If you have a partnership that you’ve invested yourself in (for whatever reason, and whatever the likelihood that normal run-of-the-mill hetero coupling is part of the deal) and a baby is on the way, you need to calm down, start planning, dig in and take life seriously. You don’t quit the thing eight or nine months later…unless you’re insane. The Life & Style story was heatedly denied by reps for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and its veracity was even challenged by Gawker. The mag quotes “insiders” saying the couple’s relationship has come to an end but that Tom and Katie “plan to keep up the charade of a romance until after their baby’s birth this spring.” Another source says Tom and Katie “both agreed that the marriage wouldn’t work and they wanted to end it before they learned to hate each other.” Furthermore, a representative for Life & Style magazine has said, “We stand 100 percent behind our story.” Good God.

Munich peaked when it was nominated for Best Picture. That was it — it’ll never get any better than that. And as a would-be Oscar winner it’s been finished and out of the game for so long that I’ve forgotten the last time I gave it even a snowballs’s chance in hell. I’m sorry, but this David Carr/”Bagger” story reads to me like a big reach…

Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott, and heroin smuggled inside the caskets of deceased U.S. servicemen = the all-new American Gangster. The Antoine Fuqua version of this film with Washington and Benicio del Toro was shuttered by Universal production chief Stacey Snider when the budget (over $100 million) appeared to be spiralling out of control. I don’t like the title (it sounds sucky and dopey…any movie title using the word “American” sounds tedious and unimaginative), but I want to see it, of course.

Cheers to Paramount Classics chief John Lesher for acquiring Davis Guggenheim‘s An Inconvenient Truth, which was a big audience hit at Sundance ’06. The doc is basically Al Gore‘s longstanding lecture-and-slide-show about global-warming caughtby cameras. The 5.26 release will coincide with the release of Rodale Books’ printed version, also called “An Inconvenient Truth.” In a 1.26 Sundance posting I said that An Inconvenient Truth “has given me hope and that everyone should see it. It’s strike-a-match time, and this film is a ray of light. I’m starting to think that Gore’s entire political career, which culiminated with his run for the White House in 2000, has been about getting people to see and fully consider this slide-show lecture movie about global warming. It’s Gore’s crowning achievement…the summation of his life…the reason he was put on this earth to become a politican and a stirrer-upper and influencer of public opinion. Because if people see Truth in sufficient numbers, Gore will have done more to save this planet from ruination than anyone in his realm has ever managed.”

It’s not a big deal if Michael Medved and other rightie critics are ready to take advance potshots at Steven Soderbergh‘s Che, a film now being shot about the final frustrating (some would say ignoble) chapter in the life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, when he was trying to launch a guerilla revolution in Bolivia. That’s if the finished film (which will be out later this year) takes what the righties may decide is an overly sympathetic or admiring view of the man, which is obviously a wait-and-see proposition at this stage. For what it’s worth, there is truth to the view that Guevara became a harsh dogmatist in the mid ’60s and bore little resemblance to the gentle humanist in Walter Salles‘ The Motorcycle Diaries. In fact, the more I think about it the less likely it seems that Soderbergh and costar Benicio del Toro can do much to glorify Guevara in this film. But this is neither here nor there. What matters is whether or not Soderbergh is going to shoot the Bolivian portion of Che in Spanish (which of course he has to do, having done the same thing in the Mexican sequences in Traffic). He at least needs to shoot both English- and Spanish- language versions of the film. I know for sure that del Toro and the other actors speaking Spanish-accented English will be laughable. Studio hack Richard Fleischer did this when he directed his uproariously bad Che! (1969) with Omar Sharif and Jack Palance, but Soderbergh cannot. I hope we’re all clear on this…it’s absolutely out of the question.

Another good story about Valley of the Wolves — Iraq, the anti- American action flick that has Turkish audiences cheering as the hero sticks it to the Anglo bad guys. The author is New York Times‘ Istanbul correspondent Segnem Arsu. The most expensive film ever made in Turkey (costing about $10 million), it’s opened so far in Turkey, Austria and Germany, and is breaking box-office records in one or more of these territories. The screenwriter says it wasn’t meant to insult Americans, but it’s a Rambo-like action story involving Turkish gunmen who seek revenge against American soldiers, so c’mon.

I thought I had my opinion locked down about John Scheinfeld‘s Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talking About Him?), which I saw the weekend before last at the Santa Barbara Film Festival…but I’m having another one of those turn-of-the- screw experiences. My first reaction was admiration for the film’s intelligence and craft mixed with a profound irritation with the way Nilsson ruined his talent and life with incessant boozing, and yet I’ve thought and thought about the film since and realized what a sad-profound, deep-dish thing it actually is. There’s a follow-up screening this Saturday (2.18) at S.B.’s Marjorie Luke theatre at 7:30, and Scheinfeld says an industry screening for distributors, media, and friends of Harry will happen in Los Angeles within the next two or three weeks. I’ve arranged to chat with Scheinfeld on Thursday night’s “Elsewere Live” show, so try and listen in. (Or check out the Podcast sound file afterwards.) These three songs are Nilsson for me — one (“Without You”) is achingly sad, and two (“Daybreak”, “You’re Breakin’ My Heart”) are basically jack-off booze songs, but they’re all very tuneful and catchy and created by an obviously talented maestro.

This ran yesterday as I was packing up and leaving Santa Barbara, but since I ran a Chris Penn item when he passed I need to put a cap on it. The primary cause of death was “nonspecific cardiomyopathy [plus] an oversized heart that weighed 700 grams with the effects of multiple medication intake,” according to a coroner’s statement. Promethazine with codeine “featured predominantly in his death,” according to coroner investigator Craig Harvey, who called his passing “an accident.” That’s b.s., of course. Penn committed slow improvised suicide through overeating and too much booze and too many drugs.

“A lot of the Gail Berman complaints listed by the woman who wrote to you (see the ‘Scent of Toast’ story) are bogus. The woman who sent it to you is pissed because all her projects got dropped. This always happens when a new administration comes in although they usually do it more slowly, so the pain is more protracted. I know what it’s like to work on something for years and then have it abandoned — it makes you crazy, the way you feel when a relationship you’ve invested in has come up empty. You’re mad and want to blame someone. I just lost a project at another studio because the exec was fired and this was after two years!!! Berman was told to dump everything by Grey because of the Dreamworks merger as well, so Gail is the bad guy. Yes, she’s brusque…but somehow it shows more because she doesn’t try to be a cute girl or a charming gay man or even a suave suit like most of the guys running these joints. Some studio heads are the most charming people in town — they love everything — so when things don’t move forward they don’t get blamed. Gail is honest and intelligent and talented and it would be a shame to lose her to some schmoozer that jerks people’s chains for the hell of it.” — Literary agent and producer

Whether you’re for editorial free speech in the form of those Danish cartoons that offended so many European Muslims or against it, some kind of editorial bravery medal ought to go to LABAF for shooting and posting this video (largely footage of a 2.11.06 “manif” in Paris). I mean, in view of the cowardice shown by so many news organizations in reporting about this culture- clash story, with none being willing to show the cartoons that offended so many in the first place. Ater watching it a friend wrote in and said “when it comes to this controversy, all I can say is this: Fundamentalist religion is totalitarian in nature. And if the 20th Century taught us anything, it’s that you should never give in to, or try to accommodate, the totalitarian impulse.”