It’s early in the New Year, but the rotating quartet of performers set to play the part of the Southern judge who heard a Deep Throat obscenity case is going to be a hard, cheeky combo to beat. Per Studio City Patch local editor Mike Szymanski‘s write-up of preparations for the play The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, opening at the Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood January 24:

Porn star Ron Jeremy said, “This is a way to bring a whole new audience to discover the importance of Deep Throat.” He, writer Bruce Vilanch, actor Christopher Knight (The Brady Bunch) and porn legend Bill Margold will take turns playing the conservative Southern judge that heard the case trying to prosecute Deep Throat and trying to define obscenity.

This west coast version of the Off-Broadway play is being shepherded by Studio City resident David Bertolino. Among the many other recognizable names taking part is Georgina Spelvin, the one-time star of a movie (The Devil in Miss Jones) that was double billed with Deep Throat. She has told Bertolino this will be her final public appearance.

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As per usual, Entertainment Weekly senior writer Anthony Breznican has the exclusive scoop on who will be participating in filmmaker Jason Reitman’s next “Live Read” event at LACMA. For a script indelibly stamped by Reitman’s dad Ivan.

Standing in on Thursday for the Ghostbusters trio of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis will be, respectively, Seth Rogen, Jack Black and Rainn Wilson. The only problem is that a lot of Murray’s best lines as Dr. Peter Venkman were not on the page, so Reitman had to combine the original script with a transcript of the finished film. Per Breznican’s report:

“While almost all of the dialogue in the original screenplay is echoed on screen, the Venkman character is completely improvised,” Reitman tells EW. “It’s as if Bill Murray was given a mumblecore-style essay about each scene and then permitted to say whatever he wanted as long as he got the point across.”

“He slimed me” is in the script, but not the follow-up line: “I feel so funky.”

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There’s rarely a dull moment when John Waters is in the middle of it all.

Last night during the Tarrytown, New York performance of the filmmaker’s annual Christmas show tour,  an audience member tried to present him with a taxidermy mouse. Tonight, the venue is the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, followed by LA’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Thursday.

Ahead of tonight’s Solana Beach appearance, Waters chatted with U-T- San Diego North County arts reporter Pam Kagen. At one point, he went off on – surprise – a weird tangent:

“Everyone should come to the show, even if you can’t stand Christmas on religious grounds, financial grounds, communist grounds, sexual grounds…”

Wait a minute … sexual grounds?

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And if the Nokia Theatre didn’t have a union-imposed 11:30 p.m. curfew, Cohen would probably have stretched Monday’s three-hours-plus (with 20-minute intermission) set even longer last night. Not bad for a 78-year-old.

Cohen’s Old Ideas tour is in support of his 12th studio album, released earlier this year. Via Facebook, Nokia concertgoer Maureen Heisner Boyd summed it up beautifully:

He sings “my hair is grey, I ache in the places I used to play” – no better definition of aging! And the way you feel, on your feet with the whole audience singing out “Hallelujah” – that’s religion. And when he sings “Democracy is Coming to the USA,” you can almost believe him. I hope so, Leonard, I hope so!

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KCRW’s annual Masquerade Halloween party rocked the Legendary Park Plaza Hotel for the fourth year in a row over the weekend. Your humble Fishie was in attendance and is still recovering. Sadly, he was driving, so he can’t even say he got drunk and hung over. Nay, he’s simply old and out of shape and can’t dance until 2 a.m. anymore without a week of pizza and bed rest to recuperate.

Although Mexican Institute of Sound and Z-Trip both put on great shows, the highlight of the night was undoubtedly seeing John Lydon, better known as the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, singing along to Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In the Heart.” Cross that one off the bucket list.

We have to admit, we were a bit disappointed that Masquerade goers didn’t seem to get our brilliant Gordron Gartrelle costume. Although the two people who did thought it was hi-larious. Props to the lovely and talented Jennifer Calica for making the shirt from scratch.

All in all the event raised nearly $70,000 for KCRW’s coffers–topping last year’s effort. A smashing success.

More photos after the jump:

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Thirty-two years later, the classic 1980 comedy Airplane! still follows actor Robert Hays wherever he goes. And surely, he must be fine with that.

The movie was front and center in a recent Hays profile piece in The Desert Sun and again last night when the actor was introduced at EEK! at the Greek by event maestro Arthur B. Rubinstein. Hays was there, post-Intermission, to read Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” to original, musical accompaniment.

And what a great job the actor did, with a full moon shining above center stage. Beamed out on the Greek Theatre’s stage-flanking giant screens in spooky black and white, Hays put the full force of his dramatic training into Poe’s first-person narrative about a man whose guilt over a murder leads him to upset a carefully conceived plan. Earlier in the evening’s program, actress Anne-Marie Johnson (In The Heat of the Night, That’s So Raven) applied an equally sonorous spin to the Mary Howitt poem “The Spider and the Fly.”

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Deadline’s Mike Fleming was one of the first this morning to the news that after many years of failed attempts, Broadway adaptation rights for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window have finally been secured. The lucky winning bidders are director Jay Russell and producer Charlie Lyons, whose previous film collaborations include Ladder 49 and The Water Horse.

In recent years, there have been various pick-ups on the 1954 classic. Shia Labeouf fronted 2007′s Disturbia, which was later challenged in court by the estate controlling the rights to Rear Window (the plaintiffs lost). Meanwhile, in 2009, Jason Sudeikis and January Jones did a questionable SNL riff featuring a very flatulent Grace Kelly.

Casting is going to be key. The 1998 ABC-TV movie remake for example very cleverly chose Christopher Reeve to play the James Stewart character, opposite Darryl Hanah as his concerned girlfriend.

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Following Saturday night’s preview performance of smash musical The Book of Mormon, which begins a 12-week west coast run at the Pantages tomorrow night, FishbowlLA and a select group of other media folks hung around for an informal press conference with show co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. (Robert Lopez, the third person responsible for the scintillating book, music and lyrics, did not attend.)

The Tony Award winning tandem confirmed not a word has been changed from the Broadway and Denver incarnations. That includes the genital double-down line repeated throughout by a resident of the Ugandan village where Latter-Day Saint newbies Elder Price (Gavin Creel) and Elder Cunningham (Jared Gertner) arrive to spread the Mormon gospel. We don’t want to spoil the fun by mentioning the specifics. However, to FishbowlLA’s opening press conference question about whether other dialogue was considered for this hilarious running gag, Stone confirmed a longstanding previous punchline.

“It’s funny,” he recalled. “That particular song, “American Prophet,” used to be called “The Bible is a Trilogy.” It was kind of a joke about how the third part of a film trilogy is always the best movie, and how the first Matrix was *actually* the best… The African guy stepped forward and said, ‘Can you imagine if The Matrix had ended after the first one?’ And then he sang, “I actually thought the third Matrix was the worst one.”

“We had that in there for the longest time,” Parker continued. “But then we finally thought we can’t do the Bible as a trilogy thing [The Book of Mormon being the additional, third part to the Old and New Testaments], so we changed it to this other song and realized we had lost that great line. We wondered what else the villager could say when he comes forward and we came up with…”

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When it comes to the multimedia extravaganza Project: Lohan, west coast premiering at San Francisco’s The Costume Shop through August 19 after a spring 2011 run in New York City, there’s so much to like.

For starters, the disclaimer in the teaser clips reads: ‘All characters appearing in this work are not fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely on purpose.’ Then there’s the fact that ahead of an interview piece running Thursday on public radio station KALW 97.1 FM, the show’s promoters stress the following:

In a special shout-out to other folks who have had a “difference of opinion” with the law; if you have a DUI conviction and/or have a parole card, bring it with you to the box office and receive $5.00 off the price of your ticket.

Ha ha, perfect. Project: Lohan features a half-dozen cross-dressing actors, 172 costume changes and 60 characters. For the text, Bay Area playwright D’Arcy Drollinger (who also stars as Lilo) used only previously published content from tabloids, magazines, TV shows, Internet sites and court documents.

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It’s not often that the life of a Best Picture Oscar winner rages on with a level of public sniping on par with the final days of Academy Awards season. But such is the case with 2008′s Slumdog Millionaire.

On Tuesday, the New York Post reported that Matthew Warcus had dropped out of talks to direct a forthcoming stage musical adaptation of the film as a show of support for Danny Boyle. Today, Erin Carlson of the Hollywood Reporter checks in with composer A. R. Rahman, who reiterates that there will be no stage permission granted for use of signature song “Jai Ho” unless Boyle is indeed at the helm of the musical:

“As a team, we all took the position that we all work together,” Rahman told THR in a phone interview, adding that Boyle “absolutely” deserves to helm a Slumdog stage show.

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