Go ahead, take the rest of the day off, ’cause It turns out to be a good Friday for showbiz news ‘n’ gossip

NO SEASON LIKE TV PILOT SEASON: It’s true — Freddie Prinze Jr., Victor Garber, Judd Hirsch and Andrea Martin are all in the running for new series this fall. And they’re not alone. Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis

BARKIN: something new?

are exec-producing their new co-starring venture based on the true story of Ralph Lamb, the rodeo cowboy who ended up Sheriff of Las Vegas.
 Carrie-Anne Moss is also in their pilot … John Corbett and Jennifer Beals are top-lining a new drama pilot called Widow Detective … Bill Pullman and Jenna Elfman play the U.S, president and his missus in 1600 Penn, a Modern-Family type pilot set in the White House … Minnie Driver, Andrea Anders and Rachel Dratch are the funny girls featured in the comedy pilot Lady Friends … Dane Cook’s new pilot, Next Caller Please, casts him as a brash alpha male DJ on a satellite radio station … Sarah Silverman’s new pilot is about a woman readjusting to

SILVERMAN: something borrowed?

single life following a decade-long live-in relationship. A little bit autobiographical? You bet. Jeff Goldblum co-stars … Anne Heche is trying the small screen again with Save Me, playing a woman who survives a broken marriage by transforming into another version of herself … and Ellen Barkin heads the cast in The New Normal, about a blended family of a gay couple and the woman who becomes a surrogate for them as they grow their family. Which sorta maybe sounds like something we haven’t seen before.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Young Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close screen-stealer Thomas Horn has been set as the lead in not one but two new features — Space Warriors and Joe’s Mountain …

RHYS: something American

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (Brothers and Sisters) is set to star opposite Keri Russell in the FX pilot The Americans …  Eddie Izzard has signed to star in and produce NBC’s Mockingbird Lane, a re-conceived version of The Munsters … Laz Alonso (Avatar) will play Meagan Good’s former flame and the detective who hires her to investigate a murder in her home town in NBC’s drama pilot Notorious … Oliver Cooper (Project X) has signed on for a lead role in the sequel to Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups … Golden Globe nominee Jaime Pressly is set to play the warden at a women’s federal prison in the NBC drama pilot Bad Girls … comic W. Kamau Bell is set to host a new variety show produced by Chris Rock for FX … Neil Patrick Harris will host the Tony Awards for the third consecutive year on Sunday June 10 and Jimmy Kimmel is set to host this

HYATT: something to cheer about

year’s Emmy Awards telecast on Sunday September 23.

OUR TOWN: Veteran crowd-pleaser Pam Hyatt serenades at the Green Door cabaret tonight in her one-woman concert Pamalot, with Peter Hill on the piano  … sublime warbler Judy Marshak, dynamic duo Deb McGrath & Colin Mochrie and Canuck comedy legends The Frantics are among the sparkles gathering for the Autism Is A Pain In The Aspergers benefit on Wednesday April 18 at Hugh’s Room. For ticket info, click here … The Stampeders bring their greatest hits to us in concert at the

McGRATH: something else

Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Friday April 20 … it must be true that third time’s a charm, because Jeanne Beker & Barry Flatman are once again hosting the annual celebrity-laden PAL fund-raiser Scrabble With The Stars on Monday May 7 at the Arcadian Loft. For ticket info, click here … the Harry Potter spoof Potted Potter closes at the Panasonic this Sunday … and due to unforeseen circumstances concerning the road closure around the Royal Ontario Museum, the date for Toronto Taste has been bumped to Sunday May 27. Which should give us just enough time to diet before the event. For ticket info, click here. (And yes, I know you knew I was going to say that.)

PETERS: something CBC (twice!)

SEE/HEAR: Let’s start your long weekend with a smile. Four of ’em, in fact! First, it’s Russell Peters week on CBC, starting Sunday with his Toronto filmfest hockey comedy Breakaway with Rob Lowe (want a sneak peek? Click here!) Then there’s the Alberta Ballet’s dazzling tribute to Elton John, Love Lies Bleeding, on Monday night on CBC. (Click here for a splashy preview.) Also on Monday: Ken Finkleman returns to the newsroom (and The Movie Network) with a brand new predictably outrageous comedy series, aptly named Good God, and allegedly inspired by Quebecor’s struggling  Sun News Network. Samantha Bee and Lolita Davidovich co-star, and the first episode is already viewable on line right here. Then Russell Peters returns to CBC with his own Just For Laughs special Russell Peters: Best Night Ever on Tuesday night (want a sneak peek? Ditto!)  And that’s just for starters. So have fun, rest up, and enjoy!

More laffs for T.O.! Rick Mercer tweets! Don’s new porn gig! 40th anniversary of John & Yoko Bed-In! All this and more!

THE LAUGHS JUST KEEP COMING: Talk about the little engine that could. Montreal producer Gilbert Rozon’s phenomenal Just For Laughs/Juste Pour Rire comedy festival keeps growing, growing, growing. This year the Quebec-based

DEGENERES: just for laffs

mirth-machine will stage its Toronto festival at the same time as its annual summer comedy extravaganza in Montreal. The Toronto Just For Laughs festival opens on July 15 and runs five days. The Montreal Just For Laughs festival opens on July 16 and runs 10 days. Meanwhile, the first collaboration between cable network TBS and Just For Laughs is set for June 17-21 in Chicago and will feature performances from Ellen DeGeneres, George Lopez, Lisa Lampanelli, Russell Peters, Mike Epps, Jimmy Fallon, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Bill Engvall, David Alan Grier, Louis CK, John Pinette, Martin Short and more.

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QUOTABLE QUOTES: “I’ve learned one thing: obstacles are your friends. And after you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve made a lot of friends.”

The speaker?

Actor/director/designer/choreographer/producer and Quebec’s favourite enfant terrible, Robert Lepage, in an intriguing profile by Richard Ouzounian in Saturday’s Toronto Star. Lepage’s new nine-hour theatre-and-music epic, Lip Synch, premieres in T.O. on June 6 at Luminato.

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 NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Small-screen icon Don Johnson has been cast as a porn director in the Adam Sandler-produced film Born to Be a

 

JOHNSON: porn part

 

Star … Lizzy Caplan and Crispin Glover have joined the cast of the feature comedy Hot Tub Time Machine … Alex O’Loughlin is in negotiations to star opposite Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan … Rosemary DeWitt is set to join Chris Cooper, Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones in The Company Men … Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables  now include non-expendables Brittany Murphy, David Zayas, Jason Statham and Mickey Rourke  … and the Glenn Gould Foundation is plotting a spectacular week in October with the renown 250-member Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, to honour the creator of the Venezuelan youth orchestra system (El Sistema,) Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu. Dr. Abreu, this year’s winner of The Glenn Gould Prize, has also been named co-winner of Sweden’s Polar Music Prize along with Peter Gabriel.

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TALKING TO TWEETERS: Canuck TV lion Rick Mercer sez he still can’t figure out current social SuperNetwork twitter. “I’m socially twitarded,” he confessed recently on the site. Methinks he doth protest too much. This is the same guy who twitter-warned us (‘twarned’ us??) in 140 characters or less.  that “if the swine flu becomes a pandemic Canadians may have no choice but to find out who Canada’s Health Minister is.”

Call me crazy, but I’d say he’s got the hang of it.

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GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: Forty years later, Peaceworks Now curator Joan Athey has published a new book, Give Peace A Chance, of never-before seen

 

YOKO & JOHN: 40th anniversary

 

photos of the John Lennon/Yoko Ono Bed-in For Peace which took place May 26 to June 1, 1969 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. At the same time as a limited exhibition of the photos opens in LIverpool, Torontonians can see a full exhibition of the photographs May 26 to June 1 at the Bulger Gallery at Queen St. W.  The public opening is tomorrow from 5-8 pm as part of the current at Contact Festival of Photography. Meanwhile, Jerry Levitan will be the Indigo Eaton Centre tonight at 7 pm to sign copies of his new Collins Harper book, I Met The Walrus, the literary version of his Oscar-nominated doc about infiltrating the infamous Montreal Bed-in.

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QUOTABLE QUOTES: “I do not believe in an afterlife. One does not know. But even though I say I don’t believe in an afterlife, I have made funeral arrangements so that my daughter in Maine doesn’t have to worry. And I decided not to be cremated, so a little part of me must think that my body perhaps goes on. I don’t want to be dust.”

The speaker? Barbara Walters, in a candid moment with her longtime Manhattan chum Liz Smith, in Avenue magazine.

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Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will make Monday June 8 a night to remember

On Monday June 8, the night after Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Tony Awards, Broadway will have a second starry night, for a spectacularly good reason. Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will co-host

REDFORD: Paul pal

a fundraiser Celebration of Paul Newman’s Hole-In-The-Wall Camps with performances by Joshua Bell, Harry Connick, Jr., Art Garfunkel, Yo-Yo Ma, Jerry Seinfeld, Take 6 and James Taylor. Tickets begin at $50 and are available through Center Charge, 212-721-6500 or www.lincolncenter.org. Benefit tickets including an after-party begin at $1,500 and are available for purchase through the Benefit Office, 212-627-0678. The evening will benefit the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps – the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious and life-threatening medical illnesses. The camps were Paul Newman’s dream and this event will celebrate his legacy.

To which we say, Bravo!

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NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Mentalist star Simon Baker is set to co-star with Casey Affleck in the thriller The Killer Inside Me … dynamic

PARKER: prescient

Weeds heroine Mary-Louise Parker is still smarting over her nude bathtub scene from last year’s finale. “I didn’t think I needed to be naked, and I fought with the director about it, and now I’m bitter,” she tells More magazine in its June issue. “I knew it was going to be on the Internet: ‘Mary Louise shows off her big nipples.’ I wish I hadn’t done that. I was goaded into it.” So are we surprised that “Mary Louise shows off her big nipples” is currently among the Most Viewed clips on Google Trends? … and ‘gorgeous’ Kerry Connelly opens a two-night stand tonight at the Jane Mallett Theatre, bringing some of her favourite repertoire by Stephen Sondheim, Georges Bizet, Steven Schwartz and more. For a soupcon of Kerry in action just click here.

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SANDLER: reunion

 

FLICKERS: Chalk up a first leading role in a feature film for Christina Aguilera. She’ll play “an ambitious small-town girl with a big voice who tries to escape a hollow past” in Steven Antin’s Burlesque …  Ray Stevenson has the title role in the forthcoming crime drama The Irishman … Adam Sandler‘s new comedy, The Lake House, is not, repeat, NOT a remake of the Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves melodrama. In this one Sandler plays one of a bunch of guys (Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade) who get together for a reunion at a summer cottage … and Robert De Niro will play parole officer to Edward Norton’s arsonist in John Curran’s Stone.

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BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT: Currently launching Inglourious Basterds in Cannes, Quentin Tarantino is reportedly plotting

AGUILERA: leading lady

 

a new film called Weekend, to be filmed in Serbia (!?!) with Sharon Stone, Jessica Biel, Lucy Liu, Dennis Hopper and Michael Madsen … remember H.A.L., the wondrous computer magically voiced by Douglas Campbell in Stanley Kubrick’s masterwork 2001: A Space Odyssey?  Now Kevin Spacey is following in his voiceprints, playing Sam Rockwell’s robot companion in Moon, a new sci-fi thriller spine-tingler penned by two famous sons – Nathan Parker, son of filmmaker Alan Parker, and Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. Duncan, formerly known as Zowie, also directs … and as we near the 40th anniversary of the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others at the hands of Manson family cult members, Oliver Stone is in talks with Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecuting attorney on the Manson case, to bring his creepy classic  Helter Skelter to the big screen.

Hope not. Four decades later, it’s still too fresh for some of us.