Did New York Post section editors really shout out this kind of stuff back in the heyday day?: “Where’s my nun-rape? Who’s got the subway slasher? I need the red meat. More red meat.”

The late Nora Ephron should know, as she was once a Post reporter. And, no matter what the subject matter for a film, TV project or, in this case, Broadway play, it’s hard to go wrong when you wrangle Tom Hanks for the lead. From today’s front-page Calendar review by LA Times theater critic Charles McNulty:

[Real-life, late Post columnist Mike] McAlary isn’t a completely likable fellow, but some of the best plays ever written (Oedipus Rex and King Lear, for starters) are dominated by figures that fill us with an uncomfortable ambivalence. And in any case, Hanks’ everyman charm renders the problem null and void. Not liking Hanks deserves a category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. He doesn’t sand down McAlary’s rough edges and we’re still more or less favorably disposed to the character.

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Only a very few select actors can claim to belong to the Hollywood breed that is at once genuinely nice, well-adjusted with family, boffo at the theatrical box office, killer on the small screen and self-deprecating throughout. Tom Hanks once ruled this roost and now, well, the perch arguably belongs to Matt Damon.

Hot on the heels of Damon’s time-capsule-worthy hijacking of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the actor today shows how to turn a charity-pitch into something unique and notable. From the unlikely starting point of a “toilet strike,” watch this message on behalf of water.org via Stan Lee’s World of Heroes YouTube channel:

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The buzz is growing for The TomKat Project, a bare-bones stage show running through April 24 at the Playground Theater in Chicago. Scientology watcher Tony Ortega let his readers know about it this morning and Tribune theater critic Nina Metz has just given the production a “Genius” rave:

It matters very little that Brianna Baker bears no meaningful resemblance to either Oprah Winfrey or Cruise attorney Bert Fields; she inhabits both with real skill and technique. This might be the best Winfrey impression I’ve seen, one that doesn’t overplay its hand but perfectly embodies her vocal tics and regal self-regard.

The Brandon Ogborn script sources media coverage of Cruise and Holmes from 1998 through 2012 to skewer celebrity journalism as much as it does Scientology. Ortega’s tipster, Synthia Fagen, says that Ogborn has told her there may be some interest from Comedy Central. [Editor's note: Please see reader comments below.]

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In the summer of 2010, LA freelance video editor Matthew Freund put together a mash-up of the many different film and TV scenes shot at downtown LA’s Quality Cafe. The piece got some nice pick-up at Gawker, Huffington Post and elsewhere, educating a legion of readers about just how ubiquitous this shooting location had become.

A cracked.com contributor decided it was time for a refresher this past Friday and judging by the millions of page views registered for “6 Places You’ll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie,” it was a good call. The West 7th Street establishment once doubled as both a diner and shooting location, but in recent years it has been used exclusively for filming. It ranks sixth on the Cracked countdown of all-purpose filming locales, followed by Vasquez Rocks and more.

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Rock star, punk poet and bestselling author Patti Smith played a private show Wednesday night as part of KCRW’s Berkeley Street Sessions, and FishbowlLA was lucky enough to score an invite. We rocked out with a crowd of approximately 175 public radio supporters including Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Ellen Page, Tim Robbins, Amy Madigan and Jason Bentley‘s mom. We sat next to Bookworm‘s Michael Silverblatt, who was getting his groove on, and watched Ed Harris bark like a dog during Smith’s performance of “Banga.” Magical.

Halfway through the show the music stopped and Smith was joined onstage by KCRW DJ Anne Litt for an interview that touched on a number of topics, including music, motherhood and Smith’s award-winning book, Just Kids. When Litt mentioned how much she’d been enjoying the audiobook version, narrated by Smith, the author revealed that publishers had so disliked her South Jersey accent that they told her to re-record parts of the book speaking “normally.” Thankfully, Smith declined, and her drawl remains on the audio version.

The event was recorded for Morning Becomes Eclectic and will air on November 14. The full recording of the event will become available in the station’s archives that same day.

Photo by Larry Hirshowitz

Although it’s admittedly way early to start sizing up next year’s Oscar prospects, one thing seems pretty certain. The artistic journey that Tom Hanks is about to embark on will lead him straight to the Dolby Theatre in February of 2014.

Shooting started today (without Hanks) on location in LA for Saving Mr. Banks, the story of how it took 20 years for Walt Disney to land the film rights to P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins. Essaying the first-ever portrayal of Walt in a dramatic film is the two-time Oscar winner, opposite Emma Thompson as the cagey author. From today’s announcement:

When Travers travels from London to Hollywood in 1961 to finally discuss Disney’s desire to bring her beloved character to the screen (a quest he began in the 1940s as a promise to his two daughters), Disney meets a prim, uncompromising sexagenarian not only suspect of the impresario’s concept for the film, but a woman struggling with her own past. During her stay in California, Travers’ reflects back on her childhood in 1906 Australia, a trying time for her family which not only molded her aspirations to write, but one that also inspired the characters in her 1934 book.

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Chalk up another TOLDJA! for Nikki Finke, from a beat she still pretty much owns (who, what, when, where and how each year’s Oscar broadcast is taking shape).

In this case, on the red carpet heels of an August 2 LA Times report that Jimmy Fallon and Lorne Michaels were in talks to handle 2013 broadcast chores, Finke quickly harpooned that notion, explaining that these efforts had begun and ended with exiting AMPAS president Tom Sherak. This past Wednesday, Fallon confirmed his non-participation during a Today Show interview from London and last night, Kim Masters added a Hollywood Reporter item that seemingly reconfirms Michaels will not be involved with any iteration of Sunday Night Live.

In the wake of all this, the question remains not so much who the Oscars should approach for the producing and hosting gigs, but rather who might actually say yes. Word is the list of those who regularly turn down AMPAS is long and illustrious. In her updated Sherak item, Finke for example noted that perfect A-list candidate Tom Hanks continues to pass.

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The guaranteed-to-be-wonderful essay by Tom Hanks about working with the late Nora Ephron has arrived, courtesy of TIME magazine. It’s as bouncy as their various movie collaborations.

The two-time Oscar winner suggests that what made Ephron such a good director was her “journalist’s curiosity.” For example, here are a few things he remembers from the shoot for 1993′s Sleepless in Seattle:

Notice as Rosie O’Donnell and Meg Ryan talk about the guy with the shop that sells only soup, but it’s so good, people line up for it. That was Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi years before Seinfeld discovered him. Nora’s sharp eye helped her in more prosaic ways as well. While shooting in Seattle, the crew found this great new place for coffee called Starbucks. As we bought lattes, Nora bought stock in the company.

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Cary O’Neal, who goes by the YouTube and Facebook handle of “Mr. Malibu,” now admits he was wrong.

Contrary to his previous video reports “Pepperdine Recklessly Dumps Sewage on Malibu Beach” and “Luxury Beach Homes of Adam Sandler, Tom Hanks, David Duchovny and Pink Under Siege,” Pepperdine University was not the source of contaminated storm water runoff into Marie Canyon. The school filed an April 11 libel suit against O’Neal, which – according to the Malibu Surfside News – it has now agreed to drop in exchange for a public retraction. The paper reprinted the apology, received via email from O’Neal:

Please consider this letter a retraction of my statements. I acknowledge that these statements were inaccurate. Pepperdine does not operate the Malibu Mesa Water Reclamation Facility and does not discharge sewage or sewage effluent into Marie Canyon or any other location. Instead, Malibu Mesa is operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

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Perhaps the single biggest takeaway from the 2012 TV Summit is that Yahoo is trying REALLY hard to drum up Hollywood awareness of its new video content production strategy. The website sponsored the event and the Yahoo logo was front and center everywhere.

“We’ve got eight out of 10 people online touching Yahoo.com.” said Yahoo’s VP of  originals & video programming Erin McPherson in a new-media panel discussion.  “We call ourselves the ‘fifth network.’ That’s aspriational. But we’re TV on steroids. We’re creating a TV consumer experience but adding social and mobile.”

They’re also creating some nice swag. I was given not one, but two shiny blue Yahoo pens from a booth inside the  Summit. Very nice.

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