You have to give it up for Albert Brooks (in full costume and make up, below)

Even if the old man isn’t exactly on People magazine’s Sexiest People Breathing Unassisted by Ventilators hot list, he still knows how to whip up some press on the cheap.

Today, Reuters bought into the marketing plan of his new movie with gusto: Basically, Brooks claims its title, “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” so terrified the execs at Sony, who suppossedly feared reprisals from al-Zarqawi, or as they say in the rental car business – “or similar” that they passed on his new docu.

One can almost hear the heavy sigh of Columbia Pictures flack Steve Elzer as he read the canned studio quote to Reuters’ Arthur Spiegelman:

“To those looking for truth in this manufactured controversy, here it is: We made our decision to pass on Brooks’ movie the same way we did to accept ‘Fahrenheit 9/ll’ — on the merits, with neither fear nor favor.”

Helpfully, for those looking for actual al-Qaeda tantalization, the government has been kind enough to put online an actual al Qaeda manual , available for download from the Dept. of Justice website. Even in it’s redacted form, it’s truly fascinating.

Then again, downloading this at work might be even more dangerous than prank calling the IRS commissioner. You’re on your own here.

Below, we’ve obtained a shot of Brooks (center left) and an assistant (center right, not identified) meeting with Sony’s president of production, Matt Tolmach (backbround, smiling) last month. Tolmach passed on the picture.

“Looking for Comedy In the Muslim World” will now be distributed by Warner Independent Pictures, in January after its president Mark Gill (below, second from left) conferred with some friends and decided it was just the kind of documentary he liked.

Wired reports that around 30 models/journalists/muses from the extremely popular porn lifestyle site brand SuicideGirls.com– based not only in LA but across the street from Joel Stein’s house– have left the company, on bad terms.

A group of angry ex-models is bashing the SuicideGirls alt-porn empire, saying its embrace of the tattoo and nipple-ring set hides a world of exploitation and male domination.

The women are spreading their allegations through the blogosphere, raising the hackles of the SuicideGirls company, which has until now enjoyed a reputation as porn even feminists can love. It offers burlesque tours, clothes and DVDs in addition to a sprawling online library of naked punk and goth women.

“The recent accusations are a little upsetting,” said “Missy,” the co-founder of SuicideGirls. “We think they’re all pretty much unfounded.”

It’s refreshing to hear an embattled media company call the charges against it “pretty much unfounded.” So much more nuanced than old favorites like “categorically untrue” or “outrageous.”

Anyway, I’ve read some of these blog posts (such as the one here) to try to figure out what the issues are, but it all seems a little inside-baseball to us here at FishbowlLA HQ, where nobody ever gets tattoos or takes off their clothes. If anyone can explain it, please email.

(link via LAist)

Hollywood/print magazine synergy alert: American Media’s Stallone-centric Sly magazine will be returning to another bout on the newsstand despite its three-issue test run ending in a TKO. Reports WWD:

After crunching the numbers from the test, [AMI] has elected to publish a fourth issue, to be dated December/January. The magazine’s ad hoc editorial team of freelancers and Men’s Fitness staffers, which had been placed on hiatus, has resumed work on the title. “It’s nice to have an alternative magazine that comes from someone’s voice, someone’s perspective,” said editor in chief Neal Boulton.

Given Boulton’s involvement, I assume that Sly is being put together in AMI’s New York office. But if anyone sees Sly in Woodland Hills, please let me know.

Yes, a billion dollars. That’s how much the Tribune Co. owes in back taxes from its acquisition of Times Mirror, according to a Tax Court decision yesterday. Editor & Publisher has a thumbnail backstory sketch:

The closely watched tax case revolved around a 1998 transaction between the old Times Mirror Co., which Tribune acquired in 2000, and the Dutch publisher Reed-Elsevier. The deal, in which the Matthew Bender legal textbook publishing company went from Times Mirror to Reed-Elsevier, was designed to be a tax-free event.

Times Mirror ended up with $1.38 billion when the deal was completed. It argued in Tax Court that the transaction was a “corporate restructuring.” Times Mirror, then led by Chairman and CEO Mark Willes, later structured a similar deal to dispose of a health publishing subsidiary.

In 2001, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a legal opinion contending the deals were taxable sales. A hearing in Tax Court was held last December in Los Angeles.

The Tribune Co. is, of course, appealing.

What does a billion dollars mean for a company like the Tribune Co.? Well, LAT revenue last year was $1.07 billion (and people think the paper is worth somewhere north of $3 billion). So it’s as if a whole year of its biggest newspaper’s revenue was washed away. (Well, not exactly, because a lot of the liability will be covered by bonds the company issued over the summer in anticipation of an unfavorable court decision. But still, it’s a lot of money.)

In his semi-regular New York Observer column, screenwriter/journalist/inventor of the line “real men don’t eat quiche” (seriously) Bruce Feirstein grouses about the Los Angeles Times. You know the drill: out of touch with the community, panders to the East Coast media establishment, Michael Kinsley, etc.

Every morning at 5:30 a.m., I’m awakened by the thwack of newspapers being delivered to the block where I’m living in L.A. It’s in a neighborhood called Hancock Park-roughly the equivalent of Bronxville, or Carnegie Hill in Manhattan-where the residents are mainly doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers, with a smattering of show-business trash. Yet of the 20 homes on this block, while four get The New York Times, only three receive the L.A. paper. That’s right: In an upscale, Democrat-voting neighborhood, where every home should get the local paper, the vast majority of them don’t.

Feirstein does give kudos to Dan Neil and Steve Lopez and claims that “with each passing day, the paper actually seems to be getting better under the new editor, Dean Baquet.” Anyway, none of these is even newsworthy, and maybe I should stop reporting on the LAT criticism mini-industry until someone comes up with something new to say. Anyway, I love the image of Bruce Feirstein snooping around his neighbors’ stoops at dawn to figure out who gets which papers.

Fishbowl has learned that the new Harrison Ford Civil War thriller “Manhunt” is going with a southern American as it’s director. Very southern American, he’s Ecuadorian: Sebastian Cordero, who last directed “Cronicas” with John Leguizamo starring is in final negotiations to get his big break directing Ford as the Civil War hero Col. Everton Conger, who lead the search for President Lincoln‘s assassin.

(Okay, it’s an Amish/”Witness” still. But still close enough to the 19th century for what you’re paying to read this.)

“Manhunt” is produced by Lawrence Bender, the “Pulp Fiction” producer who more recently went way south of the border to produce the fascinating-but-largely-ignored “Innocent Voices” – last year’s Luis Mandoki-directed film about a young Salvadoran boy forced to decide between joining up with Sandinista rebels or the army.

Bender, pictured above, has seen his stature in Hollywood shrink as the heady success of “Pulp Fiction” subsided. In fact, now only 24 inches tall, he is pictured above summoning the will to order a drink from a booth at Montmartre.

We digress. Anyway, making us a little nervous, screenwriter Mike Rich (“Radio,” “The Rookie,” and Disney’s forthcoming Mark Wahlberg gridiron movie, “Invincible”) is writing the “Manhunt” screenplay. We can already fearfully imagine the athletic anachronisms:

Col. Conger: Listen to me, Corporal! We’re on the one-yard line of finding this Wilkes-Booth sonofabitch. Don’t tell me there’s a flag on the play! Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist but football is only two things – blocking and tackling.

Corporal Jenkins; Um, yeah. I mean ‘Yes, sir.’ But what about the treeline, sir? There’s no cover!

Col. Conger: Soldier, sometimes, at fourth and one, you have to ask yourself, “Are we kickin’, or stickin’?” And we’re stickin’!

Nevertheless, the picture is expected to start shooting this winter, financed by Walden Media, which has a distribution deal with Twentieth Century Fox.

It only took a week for the newly elected president of the Writers Guild of America West, Patric Verrone, to fire his executive director John McLean.

Frankly, I am surprised they didn’t shoot him out of a cannon on Day One, like that other John McClane, you know – from “Die Hard 2: Die Harder”?

Nonetheless, the union’s board convened its first meeting since Verrone’s slate swept last week’s elections, and on Tuesday announced that they’d replaced McLean on an interim basis with organizing director David Young.

He may say otherwise, but no doubt Verrone took great pleasure in using The Donald‘s now ubiquitious “You’re fired!” against John McLean, the number one opponent to organizing reality TV’s writers. Writers, it should be pointed out, who are so annoyed about their treatment by the networks, they’ve actually taken to the streets of New York.

Verrone’s election and McLean’s firing amounts to a radicalizing of two of the three major creative unions in Hollywood: Verrone says he he wants to move the union from a 3% organizing budget, to a 30% budget, according to Daily Variety.

And across town, Alan Rosenberg, the newly installed president of the Screen Actors Guild is so militant, he’s pledged to bite the head off of a live kitten if he doesn’t get the film and TV studios to give up more DVD residuals.

(Apparently, fresh feline goes down easier with a side of spaghetti.)

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An observant reader noticed this ad on craigslist:

+1 Hottie Needed For Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — 10/5 @ Troubadour

Reply to: anon-99600818@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-09-23, 7:58PM PDT

I’m on assignment for a national indie music magazine (no, not Pitchfork) to review the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show at the Troubadour on 10/5. All of my friends already landed their own tickets, so I thought I could use my +1 to meet someone new.

You: Eastsider, knows the band already, appears semi-regularly on Cobrasnake.com, okay with being ignored while I take notes for the review.

Me: pretty much what you’d expect.

Reply by Oct. 1st. Pics are, of course, a must. No fatties.

* this is in or around Los Angeles
* no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

I love that “pretty much what you’d expect” line, because one pretty much expects rock critics to look like Rick Moranis after a bad haircut. Anyway, it’s too bad it’s not ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests, because if it were I’d tell him to take out an ad on mediabistro.com.

By the way, I have a plus-one for the November 1st Evening With Dean Baquet at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. Any eastside hotties interested? Pics are, of course, a must. And I’m exactly what you’d expect.

I just hung up with a top agent at CAA, and all he or anyone with a black BMW and dinner reservation at Koi can talk about is the new Kurt Andersen piece in New York magazine.

It’s all about the endorphin-rich days of NBC TV netork capo Jeff Zucker, and how Zucker is deftly trying to remove the little laser-red dot on his forehead (emanating brightly from Jeffrey Immelt’s Parker Hale Model 85 sniper rifle) – and perhaps (talent agents I spoke with muse) – guide it instead onto the chalk-striped suit-back of NBC chairman Bob Wright.

One of the basic precepts of GE under Jack Welsh, Andersen points out, is to “try to make the problem disappear by giving it to someone else to solve.” Zucker appears to have absorbed that lesson by letting Kevin Reilly make the end of “Friends” and “Frasier” that his problem – one compounded by “Today” becoming toast, “Martha Stewart” showing up DOA, and “The Apprentice” fast fading.

Last year, NBC’s prime-time audience shrank by 11 percent, sending it from No. 1 to No. 4 in the season ratings, a more extreme reversal of fortune than had ever befallen any network—at the same time that (not coincidentally) Today’s lead over Good Morning America shriveled. The punch line to the annus horribilis came in May, when NBC’s “upfront” revenues—from the advance sales of ads for the season starting now—plummeted: The company had budgeted a drop of several hundred million dollars, but the loss turned out to be twice that.

Yowza! Guess on second thought, Zucker shouldn’t have passed on “Desperate Housewives,” eh?

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On the heels of botched responses to Katrina and Rita, startling disaster-unpreparedness news from New York: Howard Stern will leave Infinity Broadcasting for Sirius this January. And Variety‘s Michael Learmonth reports that after contacting celebs such as Jon Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg and Geraldo Rivera as potential replacements for Howard Stern, Infinty CEO Joel Hollander said yesterday that he won’t replace the King of All Media with a single host.

OK… Talk about “burying the lead” here: Four years after September 11th, this country is so woefully underequipped when it comes to radio comedy that after Jon Stweart turns down a job, we’re going to Whoopi and – right after her – goddamned Geraldo Rivera? That’s OUR PLAN?

I can understand going to Jon Stewart. Funny guy, appealing mix of deadpan and interogative delivery. Fine. But from Stewart, to Whoopi to goddamned Geraldo? I mean, on the radio, you can’t even see his mustache. And fully half his comedic, post-post-modern appeal is tied up in that 70s, porn ‘stache (as oppossed to a porn stash: k:) he sports.

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