Given Argo‘s big weekend wins at the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild celebrations, the lack of a Best Director Oscar nomination for Ben Affleck looms even larger.

Still, it could be tricky for show host Seth MacFarlane to slam the director’s branch of the Academy. Those voters will be scattered throughout the Dolby Theatre audience and it would also be unfair to have a camera trained on Affleck and-or Argo producer George Clooney as MacFarlane ridicules their peers for picking a German and a New Orleans indie filmmaker instead. But the foul-mouthed teddy bear also voiced by MacFarlane? That’s a different story.

As recently tipped on an episode of Anderson, Mark Wahlberg and his fellow (furry) king of the R-rated domestic comedy box office rolls will be making an appearance on the telecast. Under that guise, MacFarlane can and probably will let loose on the business of the Best Director category snubs and more.

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Today’s LA Times op ed by Diane O’Meara, the woman whose photo was used to prop up the sordid Manti T’eo social media hustle, will likely lead many readers to consider anew for whom among their Facebook friends the “R” might be silent.

The LA media consultant comes across as rather calm in the first few paragraphs of this piece, despite the clear violation of her image and personal rights. Then, as she has with AP and Anderson Cooper 360, O’Meara acknowledges the crucial extra mistake she made of sending the Te’o faker an additional non-Facebook picture (shown). She also outlines her social media recovery plan:

In the last week, I’ve shut down all my social media accounts. But I realize that’s not a long-term solution. I use social media to connect with a network of friends and family, and with business associates… Giving this up is unrealistic…

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For those of us  who have had the thrilling pleasure of reading Unbroken, author Laura Hillenbrand‘s epic follow-up to Seabiscuit, there is an unending appetite for more info about the book’s remarkable real-life protagonist Louis Zamperini. Today, that desire can be satiated thanks to Daily Breeze reporter Donna Littlejohn.

Torrance native Zamperini, who lives in the Hollywood Hills, celebrated his 96th birthday last weekend and on Tuesday was honored with the dedication of a hometown sign for an airport bearing his name. At the corner of PCH and a street also named after the World War II survivor and one-time Olympian.

The notion of making a movie about Zamperini’s incredible life story has been kicking around Hollywood for more than a half-century, with Tony Curtis initially envisioned for an adaptation of Zamperini’s 1956 autobiography and more recently Nicolas Cage. Now, thanks to Hillenbrand’s pedigree and barn-burning narrative, there’s a new and most unlikely star attached:

Angelina Jolie, who could not be reached for an interview, beat out several others vying for director rights and is said to be passionate about the project.

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The biggest Hollywood film scoop of this young year was posted Thursday at 1:33 p.m PT on TheWrap. While a number of Lucas Shaw‘s peers were immediate and effusive with Twitter praise, large chunks of the pick-up coverage about J.J. Abrams being tapped to direct the next-generation installment of Star Wars failed to credit TheWrap and this hard-working media reporter.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world in the trenches of THR, Variety, TheWrap and Deadline, with each being guilty at various times of co-opting film scoops by “confirming,” referencing same-subsequent “documents obtained”, slapping on a questionable EXCLUSIVE and so on. But a scoop of the magnitude of Shaw’s should have been exempt from the usual ticky-tack catch-up tricks.

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For today’s edition of “Fans vs. Fritzy” mock headlines, Dan Patrick and the Danettes zeroed in on the titanic Laker woes. With entries such as “Howard the Hell Did This Happen?…” and “Kiss My Nash…”, the fans via Paul “Pauly” Pabst “toasted” executive producer Todd “Fritzy” Fritz.

Then again, it’s not really a fair fight. Kind of like when the Lakers square off against the Thunder, Grizzlies or any other median-age-advantaged Western Conference rivals.

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A whopping 90 percent of Whole Life Times is freelance-written, and editors are very welcoming to pitches. “We love getting queries, because often writers bring us stories about things we would have completely missed,” said editor-in-chief Abigail Lewis.

And there’s even better news for newbie writers. “We work with a mix of seasoned pros and newer writers and also particularly value emerging writers who respond to rewrite requests, take note of our edits and bring those elements to bear in subsequent stories,” she said.

Got a great story idea?

Read How To Pitch: Whole Life Times. [Mediabistro AvantGuild subscription required]

For several years, it’s been the greatest running gag on late night talk TV: Jimmy Kimmel ending a show with the disclaimer, “Apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time.” Last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the double-punchline to that bit was finally delivered by Damon. In spades.

With a duct-taped Jimmy in the background, Damon at one point during his commando-host appearance gleefully revealed that Kimmel is a bitter, jealous soul who has auditioned for every one of the actor’s film roles:

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The honeymoon is over. After various bouts of Twitter love between Variety and Deadline employees in the wake of a PMC deal that brought the two publications closer together, Nikki Finke has let it be known there is trouble ahead for the paywall-ditching trade.

Assuming her information is accurate, the surprise is not that Jay Penske is planning editorial firings in March. Given Variety‘s staff size, senior salary tiers and the general post-acquisition M.O., this was pretty much a given. What’s more unusual is that PMC employee Finke is blowing the whistle on her parent company’s plans, with an end-parenthesis note that reads: ‘No matter what my corporate boss wants, Deadline reports the news.’ From Finke’s brief, pointed item:

“There is complete editorial disorganization from the top down,” a source complained. “No one knows if Variety is supposed to be a breaking news organization, an analytical publication, or some as yet undetermined hybrid. Tim Gray keeps pontificating to editorial that things are going to change and Variety will go in a new direction. But nobody knows what that means. They’re totally demoralized.”

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Since July of 2012, Mark Porubcansky has been acting as the unofficial head of the LA Times foreign desk. Today, the paper made it official.

The bump to foreign editor caps a fourteen-year span with the paper that has seen Porubcansky work as an assistant foreign editor, foreign projects editor and deputy foreign editor. From the LA Times memo announcement by editor Davan Maharaj and managing editor Marc Duvoisin:

He came to us in 1998 from the Associated Press, where he served in the Moscow, Vienna and Hong Kong bureaus. He covered the dramatic days of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union and reported on the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. His passport bears stamps from Albania, Afghanistan and Mongolia. Among the most satisfying moments of his years abroad was finding his grandfather’s home village in Slovakia, using a map sent by a reader who had seen his byline.

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In the spring of 2008, former CAA kingpin Michael Ovitz answered an odd-sounding question in an LA courtroom. It was during the trial of now incarcerated former PI Anthony Pellicano and went like this with defense attorney Chad Hummel, who was representing an LAPD sergeant:

Hummel: Did you ever hire Mr. Pellicano to put a fish on Anita Busch’s car?
Ovitz: Absolutely not.

Five years later, despite that denial, Busch and Ovitz are still legally entangled in a civil lawsuit. Per a THR Esq. update by Eriq Gardner, Ovitz is asking for “sanctions against Busch, summary judgment in the lawsuit on the basis that her claims are time-barred and the right to learn through discovery what else Busch was working on at the time in question.”

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