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NBC’s Silverman: Big Plans for Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Emma Thompson

Roger Friedman
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10740 NBCs Silverman: Big Plans for Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Emma ThompsonDon’t believe everything you hear today about NBC’s Ben Silverman. Silverman is safe at his job at NBC, my sources say, despite the agitations of those who don’t like him.

Silverman, whom I saw this week at the premiere of NBC’s “The Philanthropist,” has not been shunted aside. He was deeply involved with “The Philanthropist,” which scored mostly positive reviews and wound up winning its timeslot last night on NBC (though it fell from its lead-in).

Last night, he went to Washington, D.C., to a screening of it with the Creative Coalition. The series is international and about philanthropy. By the way, “America’s Got Talent,” on NBC, which preceded “The Philanthropist” also won its timeslot.

Silverman is back in New York for a couple days to talk to Tina Fey, sources tell me. He needs two more episodes of “30 Rock” next season. In exchange, Silverman is going to build a promotion for Fey and fellow NBC star Steve Carell for their comedy “Date Night,” coming later this fall. Hey, what if Michael and the gang from Dunder Mifflin get tickets to see Liz Lemon’s show? Hmmm…

I’m told that Silverman heads next to the U.K. — not to take a job with ITV as some suggested but to sign Emma Thompson up to write a series for NBC. A great actress, Thompson has also proven her writing chops with “Sense and Sensibility” and the Nanny McPhee movies. Maybe Silverman can talk her into starring in a series here.

Meanwhile, I did get to ask Silverman at the “Philanthropist” screening what was up for Amy Poehler in her “Parks and Recreation” series. He assured me that with the series returning this fall, the show would be “opened up” more to reflect Poehler’s comic gifts and move it away from being a spinoff from “The Office.”

Michael Jackson Rushed to Hospital

Roger Friedman
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Update: Michael Jackson dies at 50

Pop star Michael Jackson has had a heart attack — and sources say he’s been rushed to UCLA hospital. Sources also say EMS workers gave him CPR.

Sources say Jackson’s mother is on her way to UCLA Medical Center, and his brothers have been called.

More to come …

Michael Jackson Dies at 50

Roger Friedman
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UPDATE: Sources close to Michael Jackson have confirmed his death. Sources tell me that Jackson, 50, was alone for some time in his home before paramedics arrived. The singer was taken to UCLA Medical Center where, according to a source at the hospital, Jackson was at some point in the early afternoon Thursday taken off life support.

michael jackson Michael Jackson Dies at 50The Jackson family, including his children, had gathered at the singer’s side.

Sources also tell me that Debbie Rowe, the mother of Jackson’s eldest children, Michael and Paris, is “inconsolable” and “very concerned about her children.”

For Jackson’s legions of fans around the world, as well as his family, his death is a tragic blow. In recent weeks as he prepared for a startling 50 shows in London, Jackson was often seen coming and going from doctors’ offices. Now there will likely be questions about his treatments and his history of drug taking.

For Jackson’s three children — Prince Michael, Paris, and Blanket — there are concerns about who will be their guardians. Rowe is the birth mother of the first two. Blanket, as I reported a few years ago, was the product of Jackson picking a surrogate from a catalog.

Confusion will reign over Jackson’s finances. Jackson was up to his ears in debt — almost $400 million.

Despite all the controversy surrounding the pop icon, his legacy will probably now be as resonant as those of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe.

More to come …

Brian Oxman is NOT Michael Jackson’s Lawyer

Roger Friedman
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Michael Jackson hasn’t been dead three hours and Brian Oxman is on TV everywhere’being identified as the attorney for the singer or ‘his family.

He is not.

Michael Jackson’s attorney, officially, is Joel Katz, the respected music lawyer from Greenberg Traurig of Atlanta.

Please, news organizations: Brian Oxman was fired by Thomas Mesereau from Michael’s trial in 2005. I was there. He has no knowledge of Michael’s life for the last several years. Oxman sued Jackson looking for legal fees, and lost.

Jackson’s attorney just prior to Katz was Peter Lopez. Some of his business has been handled in New York by Londell McMillan. Jackson’s manager, recently re-signed, is Frank Di Leo, who has been in Los Angeles with him the last several weeks.

More to come.

Michael Jackson Rehearsed at Staples Center The Night Before His Death

Roger Friedman
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Last night Michael Jackson had the “best show ever”’a rehearsal at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Sources tell me he was thrilled about the show and very excited about his upcoming London shows.

That should scotch any rumors about Jackson being unable to perform, or depressed or anything else.

Click here for all Michael Jackson posts on Showbiz411.

Chris Brown In Limbo ’til August 5th

Roger Friedman
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Chris Brown’s worst day is behind him. Now he’s in limbo until August 5th.

That’s when Brown returns for official sentencing, although unofficially everyone knows what he’s getting: probation and work.

Until after August 5th, don’t expect Brown to give any interviews or say a word about the case. If he’s smart, he will stay deeply on the down low. His lawyers have certainly recommended that.

As for his career, one insider told me yesterday: “The record company has been very good so far. They’ve liked music they’ve heard from Chris’s new album. He’s a great talent.”

Whatever is decided, however Brown decides to make a public mea culpa, there shouldn’t be any new music from him in 2009. It’s time for a break, and the biggest image makeover in history.

Exclusive: ‘The Road’ with Viggo and Charlize May Surprise

Roger Friedman
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mortensen viggo 300x214 Exclusive: The Road with Viggo and Charlize May Surprise“The Road” is finally here.

The John Hillcoat movie based on the bestseller by Cormac McCarthy is finally being shown, slowly, to a handful of people. Scheduled for last year but then held because special effects weren’t ready, “The Road” will surface in October.

“The Road” comes from the Dimension side of the Weinstein Company, not always my favorite place. It was home earlier this year to the dreadful “Soul Men.” But “The Road” was also made by another group, Mark Cuban’s 2929 Productions. It was acquired by Dimension, but really seems like a regular Weinstein movie.

Hillcoat has done justice to McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner. “The Road” is elegiac and moving, artful and yet suspenseful. No, it’s not a raucous good time. It can be thoughtful and grim. But here’s the interesting thing: Viggo Mortensen’s performance as a father walking through a post-apocalypse America with his young son is just fascinating. It stays with you long after leaving the theater. Mortensen is that good.

There aren’t a lot of other actors in “The Road.” Charlize Theron is very good as Viggo’s wife, in flashbacks. Both Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce make cameo appearances. Eleven-year-old (he’s 13 now) Kodi Smit-McPhee is just right as the couple’s son.

What Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall do is accurately capture McCarthy’s tone and lauguage. This isn’t easy to do. “The Road” is a bleak trip, told in muted blacks, blues, and grays. There are no blue skies after whatever caused the apocalypse (is it nuclear war? we don’t know. Everything left, including the trees, is dying.)

So what Dimension will have to do is establish an audience for “The Road.” It opens wide in October, rather than platform the release. This should work just in getting the curious in all at once. Mortensen will be on a lot of top 10 and awards lists, and that should help, too. Depending on how the year shakes out, he could be a formidable contender.

“The Road” also has a cult quality, which could add to its mystery. The hold up from last year was to finish the effects, and they were well worth it. A whole city is painted out to reflect destruction. The sky is a miserable, darkening entity. But the scenes I liked best were ones where Mortensen takes his son back to the home he grew up in ‘ now abandoned. Hillcoat has made a little piece of art. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Sting Connects Dots on Tonight’s ‘Philanthropist’

Roger Friedman
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When you see British matinee idol James Purefoy swing into action tonight on NBC’s “The Philanthropist,” you will also hear Sting’s “Englishman In New York” playing in one of the scenes.

There’s a good reason: the equally British superstar rocker is responsible for this show coming into being. It was Sting and wife Trudie Styler who introduced Boston philanthropist Bobby Sager to TV producer Charlie Corwin. In the mix was also NBC programming chief Ben Silverman, who the couple have known since he was a tyke.

The result is the Indiana Jones-James Bond version of Sager, although in real life this real philanthropist has a strong Boston accent, a beautiful wife and two great kids. Purefoy’s charming Teddy Rist is a divorced cad with a deceased little boy and an ex wife (George Clooney’s ex, Krista Allen) and a lover (Neve Campbell).

At last night’s premiere at the Paley Center in New York, Sager ‘ who’s a flamboyant character on any occasion ‘ was the sane one during a Q&A session. Others on the panel were director Peter Horton (Gary from ‘thirtysomething’), writer Tom Fontana, his producing partner Barry Levinson, and Purefoy. Sager reminded the gathered crowd ‘ an eclectic mix that included director/artist Julian Schnabel and “Honeymooners” actress Joyce Randolph ”that the show is actually about ‘ hey ‘ philanthropy.

“It’s all about baby steps,”’ Sager reminded the crowd. “If everybody takes one, that’s how you can make it work.” Through his Sager Family Foundation in Boston, the real Teddy Rist has been busy helping with the rebuilding of Rwanda, for example. He’s there several times a year.

Meantime, “The Philanthropist” is one of the few network dramas that looks great, and shows some real ingenuity. It was really shot in Mozambique and other African locales. The next seven episodes are also on location, and couldn’t be more original. Horton told the audience at the Q&A, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the description. It’s not about hospitals or the police. I said, Are they really going to do this on network TV?”

P.S. In between the screening at the Paley Center and a big celebratory dinner downtown at El Quijote next to the Chelsea Hotel, Sting surprised Central Park music lovers. He walked over to the Bandshell to hear pal Andrea Griminelli, the famed flutist, play several Bach pieces. When Griminelli was finished, Sting whisked him downtown for paella and Sangria. Today, Griminelli is on a plane for Seoul, South Korea to play at a private gig underwritten by Prada, Sting is back in the studio finishing his Christmas release, “If On A Winter…”

Here is Griminelli, from Luciano Pavarotti’s funeral.

John Edwards: Baby Mama Surprised About Book

Roger Friedman
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I am told that Rielle Hunter, the former girlfriend and putative baby mama of ex-Senator John Edwards, was surprised yesterday. She learned, along with the rest of us, that an old friend was selling her out.

The Daily Beast’s Sara Nelson got hold of a book proposal by Andrew Young, the former Edwards campaign worker who claimed he was the father of Hunter’s now 18-month-old daughter, Frances. Of course, no one believed him and in time it was revealed ‘ not by Edwards ‘ that the Senator was the father.

Young says in the proposal what everyone kinda knew: Edwards associate Fred Baron, now deceased, paid Young to say he was the father, to have Hunter live with him and his family, and then go with her to a house in Santa Barbara when the baby was born.

But last October, Baron died, suddenly from cancer. The whole project fell apart. With Baron gone, Edwards disavowed Young. He was, to use a phrase from the current vernacular, “thrown under the bus.” Hunter and baby moved in with a friend. She still awaits a settlement and acknowledgment from Edwards.

Hunter, I’ve been told, was shocked to hear about Young’s proposal. But of course, Young was never a saint. In his history: check forgery and DUI, according to published reports.

The cover-up over Hunter’s baby is amazing, to say the least, for a politician who prided himself on honesty. Since it started, Baron is dead, Young was used and now feels his reputation ‘ such as it was ‘ is in tatters. The little girl has no father. And Edwards allowed his wife, Elizabeth, to publish her book, “Resilience,” which manifested itself in a barrage of embarrassing publicity that no one believed.

Three weeks after publication, “Resilience” was gone from USA Today’s Top 150 Bestselling Books. It got as high as number 19. The book ‘ which should have been called “Denial” ‘ is listed in the 500s on amazon.com.

For the record: this Andrew Young we speak of is not the former mayor of Atlanta or famed politician. When I ran into the real Andrew Young last August at the Democratic convention in Denver, he and his wife were each amused by the idea. “I said, I wondered what you were doing with your free time,” joked Mrs. Young.

Rosie Going Off Broadway This Fall

Roger Friedman
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Getty Photo

Getty Photo

Rosie O’Donnell has plans to be on Broadway and off it very soon.

Recently O’Donnell announced a production of “Babes in Arms” for the Great White Way, but that won’t arrive for some time.

The bigger news is that she will likely be in the opening cast of Nora Ephron’s six woman, Off Broadway production of her comedy, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” when it premieres this fall off Broadway.

“Love Loss” had a trial run last February at the Daryl Roth Theater near Union Square. Joy Behar and Marian Seldes were in that cast. The night I saw it, Marlo Thomas was in the audience.There was talk that Christine Baranski had already asked to be in the opening official cast.

In fact, “Love Loss” should be the new “Vagina Monologues,” with star actresses clamoring to be included in the rotating casts. Imagine all the Ephron movie ladies lined up for chances, from Meg Ryan and Julie Kavner to Meryl Streep and Amy Adams from her about to be released “Julie and Julia.”

Meantime, Rosie’s appearance should bring the show the needed publicity for a big opening. (Hey ‘ how about Rosie and her old “View” mates reunited for a months’ run?) O’Donnell will stay busy until then. She and pal Cyndi Lauper hit the road beginning July 30th for a summer tour. Rosie opens the night with her ferociously funny stand up comedy act ‘ not to be missed.

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