Last night, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and charmingly low-key Before Midnight director and co-writer Richard Linklater were back where it all began 18 years ago: the stage of the DGA Theatre on Sunset Blvd. The LA premiere of the third installment of the trio’s epic indie romance series was preceded by a crowded food-and-vodka reception in the lobby.

When Before Sunrise arrived in 1995, cell phones were just becoming affordable and popular. Today of course, the smart devices are ubiquitous; in the DGA lobby, where patrons snapped Delpy and Hawke on the indoor red carpet; and later on the DGA big screen. In Before Midnight, critical cell phone calls and text messages anchor each of the movie’s conversational three acts.

Because most of today’s film critics still (foolishly) believe that reviews must focus on a movie’s plot points, it will be virtually impossible for any such critique to avoid spoilers. Our best advice to Before series fans is to not read any of the write-ups before seeing the newest chapter, which opens Friday in LA, New York and select other cities.

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The Gracie Awards were held last night in Los Angeles, celebrating “outstanding programming for, by and about women.”

We caught up with a few media personalities on the red carpet, getting some career advice from the pros. Shaun Robinson took the Outstanding Host award last night for her work on Access Hollywood, but she shared some general advice about breaking out in the business:

“Today there are so many different media outlets for people to get started. When I was coming up in the business, you had like four stations that you could send your resume tapes to. Now there’s so many outlets, you can start own show and then send those links out to different executive producers and let them see your work. It’s a new day today, it’s about creating your own show. You can have your own show, like that. It wasn’t like that when I was first coming up in the business.”

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One of the same fingers, no doubt, that anchor the crisp, concise lede of this week’s print edition story by Hollywood Reporter executive editor, features Stephen Galloway. Here is just a sampling of the things the Girls Gone Wild impresario insists are not his fault:

Francis has been jailed in Florida and Nevada; successfully sued for defamation by Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn, whom he now owes $20 million; indicted for tax evasion and filming underage girls; blamed for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of a company connected to Girls Gone Wild (which he says he no longer owns); and banned from entering GGW’s Santa Monica offices by bankruptcy trustee R. Todd Neilson, who filed suit to keep Francis off the premises.

Add to all this Los Angeles Times reporter Claire Hoffman‘s claim in a 2006 article that he pinned her to a car and twisted her arm so hard tears flooded her eyes – and that’s an awful lot of mischief. But none of it, says Francis, is his fault.

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Before Pretty Little Liars was an award-winning hit on ABC with its own spin-off,  it was the brainchild of YA writer Sara Shepard. The prolific scribe managed to publish over 20 books in eight years and get two of her series optioned as TV shows. In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do?, Shepard tells how her series ended up on the screen and what she thinks of the TV incarnations of Pretty Little Liars and Lying Game. 

“Pretty Little Liars I’m really satisfied with. Pretty Little Liars more sticks to what the books are,” she said. “[The TV writers] take their own liberties, and sometimes their ideas are just great. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh, why didn’t I think of that?” So that’s always really fun. But, I mean, it’s just pretty amazing to see it on TV at all. Even if it wouldn’t have lasted a season, it still would have been this pretty incredible thing.”

For more, read So What Do You Do, Sara Shepard, Author of Pretty Little Liars?

The media ice has turned out to be particularly slippery this week.

On Twitter last night during Game 4 of the Kings-Sharks series, Kevin & Bean co-host Kevin Ryder posted a very unfortunate guest tweet @LAKings for which he later apologized. Brad Pitt meanwhile in the pages of the upcoming June/July issue of Esquire is doing himself no favors by once again giving the voracious celebrity news blogosphere misdirect-coverage ammo about his marriage to Jennifer Aniston.

Finally, today on ESPN Radio’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Golf Channel reporter Steve Sands called in from London to recount how shocked he and everyone else in the room was Tuesday when Sergio Garcia answered the reporter’s question with an offensive joke about Tiger Woods. Garcia has since apologized, twice.

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Do you have the New York Times Best Seller list memorized? Do you have a passion for books and want to get into the publishing business?

In this episode of “Score That Job,” career expert, author and mediabistro editor Vicki Salemi sat down with Andrea Weinzimer of Hachette Book Group to get the inside dirt on what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Here a few tips — know the industry and know which authors they publish (hint: rhymes with James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, David Sedaris…). Or just watch the video.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Sources: ESPN Laying Off Hundreds (Deadspin)
ESPN laid off a portion of its staff Tuesday, a network spokesman confirmed to us. How many? ESPN won’t say. A tipster told us earlier that it would be more than 400 staffers. A source at ESPN said that number is a little high, but it appears to be in the hundreds. FishbowlNY An ESPN spokesperson emailed to tell us that they hadn’t cut 400 staffers. When we asked how many were let go, “We’re not getting into particulars but it is fewer than 400″ was all we got back. USA Today / Big Lead Sports According to an ESPN source, the layoffs will come mostly, but “not exclusively,” from tech and sales departments (think regional offices: Denver, Las Vegas, Seattle). ESPN is reviewing its entire studio production department over the next three-to-four weeks, which is about 2,800 employees. It is possible some shows will be cut. These layoffs are part of a Disney-wide process. THR News of layoffs comes less than two weeks after Disney’s media networks segment rose 6 percent to $4.96 billion, with operating income up 8 percent to $1.86 billion. One of the company’s most consistently lucrative properties, ESPN has enjoyed increased affiliate revenue in 2013.

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Congrats to all finalists (so far) for the LA Press Club’s 55th annual SoCal Journalism Awards, to be presented at the Biltmore Hotel Sunday June 23. In perusing the honor rolls, here are some of the categories that most intrigued us:

Journalist of the Year – Print (Over 50,000 Circulation):

The name we were not completely familiar with – alongside those of Gustavo Arellano (OC Weekly), Matthew Belloni (THR), Gene Maddaus (LA Weekly) and Matthew Garrahan (Financial Times) – is U-T San Diego’s Fred Dickey (no relation to TMZ managing editor Josh). Even if this Dickey wins, he will still have a tough road to hoe in that department at home. According to his website bio, microbiologist wife Kathleen has lent her name to nine U.S. patents.

Journalist of the Year – Online

These are dark days for Patch, with a conference call last Friday as reported by Romenesko revealing more rough tactical agenda items. But here in SoCal, the sun is shining on Rancho Santa Margarita local editor Martin Henderson. He is nominated in this category together with Dennis Romero (LA Weekly), Dylan Howard (Celebuzz), Chris Hedges (Truthdig) and Catherine Green (Neon Tommy). This guy has paid his dues, winning his first journalism award in high school and starting at the LA Times all the way back in1990.

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The devil really is in the details. When a stranger entered the LA home of Eddy Salazar in the spring of 2011 – in broad daylight, the writer and star of the upcoming psychological drama The Insomniac was struck by the intruder’s wardrobe.

“The man was wearing a button-down shirt and pants, dressed as if he was coming home from work,” Salazar tells FishbowlLA. “The cops later told me experienced thieves dress like that to blend in with the neighborhood.”

“That’s one of the angles we explore in The Insomniac,” he continues, referring to the resulting film set to premiere at Hollywood’s Chinese Theatres on June 6 as part of the Dances With Films festival. “Anyone can just waltz into your home and dramatically change your life in one quick second. And it’s usually the more inconspicuous individuals.”

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The front page of today’s LA Times business section is going to grate a little at the CAA, WME and ICM coffee table end. Above the fold is a reminder from entertainment reporter Daniel Miller of what UTA has and they don’t… yet.

The spectacular state-of-the-art 165-seat screening room, unveiled last fall at UTA’s new Civic Center Drive headquarters in Beverly Hills, has been put to frequent daily use. Via email, the writer-director of the very first feature shown had this to say to Miller:

“It was fun because the room has perfect sound and picture, the decor is beautiful but not gaudy and it does not have the ghosts of a thousand bad movies,” Judd Apatow said in an email.

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