What have they done to Brad Pitt on GQ?

Tabloid Fail

Yes, Whispers is about to cast nastursions on our media counterparts, imperfect vessel that we are, but Prince Harry & Meghan Markle announced just days ago that young Prince Archie Windsor can expect a sister or brother in the near future. But the Aussie tabloid magazine No Idea New Idea announced on the very same day that the loving California based couple had split. Well what would we know?. Perhaps it's true. I'm sure all shall be revealed this Monday in their next editon. Perhaps they know better than this scribe. Afterall we've been out of the loop for a while with endless lockdowns. It was only just late last year that New Idea announced that Prince Harry had been deported from the USA ( as seen in this cover pic with the Brad /Jen tale). Perhaps the current one is a clone? Is this a QAnon conspiracy revelation? Of course the same glitzy show biz mag also announced that hunky actor Brad Pitt was back living with Jennifer Aniston just as he arrived in Venice with gorgeous model Nicole Poturalski. Who knows..it could all be true.!

Jason Sullivan's Star Shines

Sullivan & Huvane

News.com has picked up on the Shuttle's exclusive report that Tom Cruise's inadvertent trespasser Aussie model Jason Sullivan had received a flood of offers including phone calls from 2 top Hollywood agents.
How do we know these things ?.

Well in this case because one of the agents who contacted Sullivan is also acting for the Shuttle in a proposed film project. It helps to have contacts especially in Hollywood. That same agent informed us yesterday that contrary to reports Sullivan was staying in Julia Robert's house, he was actually living a house owned by Kevin Huvane who just happens to be Cruise's agent.
Huvane is one of Hollywood's most powerful agents and looks after the likes of Uma Thurmann, Brad Pitt, Keanue Reeves , Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep. We reckon Jason's in good hands.
It's all in who you know. Always has been!

Brush With Fame

 

 The Shuttle was forced to decline an invite to meet Doug Pitt last night, the brother of movie star Bard Pitt. Doug was the guest of Virgin Mobile launching a new campaign with a 'gala' red carpet event.

We reckoned an invite to check out the opening of the Brooklyn Hotel's new Oyster Bar just couldn't be passed. I think we made the right choice. Product launches can be tame and once we reach the level of "associated " fame it all becomes a tad tiring.

Besides, we had already encountered Mr Pitt earlier that day in Double Bay. Movie stars in the know flock to the dentistry surgery of Dr David Carr and it seems. their siblings do as well. Our spy disguised as a helium tank says Doug arrived by gleaming limo to have a new crown fitted after Doug chipped his front tooth.
 Doug follows in the footsteps of numerous celebrities that make their way to Dr Carr when in town. Just a few of those who owe their wondrous gleaming Hollywood smiles to the celebrity dentist include Nicole Kidman, Madonna and Tom Cruise.

Brangelina, Wills & Kate: No Idea

The fierce rivalry between Australia's top selling tabloid magazines- New Idea and Woman's Day has stepped up a notch with WD blindsiding NI with their scoop on the royal honeymoon snaps that have been on offer around the world for over a year and have now caused so much confected anguish in the UK media. British newspapers in the midst of the Leveson Inquiry had all turned down the pics.

Poor old New Idea (some wags in the industry unkindly refer to it as No Idea) really had no hint of what their rival was about to publish.
Both keep in touch of each other's up-coming stories by monitoring agency photo sales and thereby have a pretty good idea of what each other will publish in the next issue : come Monday morning the similarities between each is almost mirror -like.


 Now the tattle amongst the industry is that the knives are out at Pacific Publications, publishers of New Idea and a full on industry war is about to be declared. Pacific had turned down purchase of the beach wandering royal snaps on the understanding that rivals had done likewise.

Particularly as New Idea was forced to run a fairly tragic tale titled "SECRET WEDDING PHOTOS..you were never meant to see".. a concocted tale with"intimate"snaps of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt that "proved " the couple had been up to hanky panky before their affair became public knowledge.

Alas, the pics have all been published before and are just a set of publicity stills from their 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith and have lain on photo desks around the world for the last 6 years. Better luck next time folks.

Aussies Shine At Cannes Film Festival

Brad Pitt with Australian director Scott McNairy & actor Ben Mendelsohn at the Killing Me Softly premiere

Mia Wasikowska at VF

Jean-David Blanc & Melissa George

Li BingBing & Wendi Murdoch at the Vanity Fair party

Naomi Watts at VF

l

Party With The Stars

which is the real Alf?

Amanda Keller(s)

That's what the invitation said-'party with the stars at the opening of Madame Tussauds" in Darling Harbour. It was a fairly understated affair. The stars?- Layne Beachley, Amanda Keller, Dawn Fraser and a couple of Home & Away stars.

the Shuttle finds Madame Tussauds a little on the creepy side. We went to the one in London 25 years and haven't been back although we know someone in television who goes regularly to check up on celebrities heights, Tussauds being the only place one can really get the correct measurements!.

old &wrinkly works best

What do slebs think when they see a real life version of themselves?. It's probably a great example of the ego today's sleb must have in order to succeed-clocking a life size version of themselves and not being frightened to death in the process. One thing we have noticed is that older and wrinkly people come up best in wax as opposed to the young and botoxed, as our pics show.

Delta with scary Delta

Madame Tussaud herself



Below-our favourite-Rolf Harris

The Shuttle  went to a do once where they had a Tussauds 'Michael Hutchence on display and having known the singer when he was alive it was startlingly lifelike. His father Kel burst into tears upon seeing it.

plastic Brangelina

Julia Gillard

Madame Tussauds is now open at Darling Harbour next door to the Aquarium so you can do the sharks and celebrities in one go.

NB: the real  Ray Meagher.is on the right!

Missing AA Gill

baboon

Gill

The writer AA Gill is in town for the Sydney Writer's Week which concludes today. Infamous for once blasting a baboon to death to 'see how it felt' the grovelling to the scribe around town was embarrassing. The Shuttle missed his interview on Thursday (one of the few events that wasn't sold out) and we lost count of the number of restaurant workers phoning us to impart the news that "AA Gill is here eating "

Even at the launch party at Porteno for the second season of Foxtel's 'Spirited' a waiter collared the Shuttle and solemnly informed us that Gill was downstairs if we wished "to pop down and get a snap  ". We passed.

We did manage to hear him on radio being interviewed by local foodie God and long time Shuttle pal Tony Bilson along with American ex-chef Anthony Bourdain . When Bilson commented that large food corporations were colluding to force manufacturers to list ingredients and that he believed it was a conspiracy to drive small providers out of business Gill launched into a diatribe about the importance of those tiny lists on the side of products. Ten minutes later when Bilson defended vegetarians Gill railed against foodies who included endless claims about the ingredients their nosh was complied of.

Emma Forrest

Later when a female audience member asked a question and Gill interrupted, she scolded him with "oh shut-up Anthony, you're no better than some yapping kid at the back of the bus ". The applause was deafening.

We did make it to the small cocktail party given by the advertising agency BWM for American /English writer Emma Forrest. Emma has just published an autobiography Your Voice In My Head.

Forrest was diagnosed as a manic depressive (bi-polar!) at 14 and began self harming, slashing her legs and arms.

She became fascinated and obsessed by sex whilst being repulsed by it and remained virginal until she finally flung herself into a series of destructive relationships. Emma wouldn't confirm or deny that the 'famous actor who broke her heart' was the long rumored Colin Farrell-she simply told us that she 'knows and likes his work'.
Emma now writes movie scripts and lives between New York and Beverley Hills. 
"I couldn't handle the grey skies of London anymore "said Emma when the Shuttle commented on her breezy outlook for someone who had gotten off an 18 hour flight at 11am that morning.

"I love LA, no matter who bad it is the sun always shines. This morning I bounded off the plane when I saw the brilliant sunshine".

She told us of the interview she once did with Brad Pitt who told her obsessively of how he and Angelina Jolie wanted to have a 'surrogate' baby. The following day Pitt phoned and left a voicemail message asking her to phone him urgently. 2 more messages followed over the same number of days. She never called him back. She thought he may ask her to have his baby !

Murdoch : "you're fired!'

Your Voice in My Head  is to be made into a film. I asked Emma who she would like to play her in the film
"Cate Blanchet" she responded." but when I told the producers they said 'oh no'. It doesn't matter that Blanchet has won Oscars. They don't know her in Middle America. They only know 2 actresses- Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts"

Honourable mentions at writer's week : * Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson in discussion with Frank Moorhouse celebrating the return of the comic mode in fiction. Brilliant.
 *Elisabeth Wynhausen and Bruce Guthrie telling Mike Carlton about the shock and the fury of getting fired by Rupert Murdoch. Very funny.

An adorable bear

A little thing sent in one of those viral emails that do the rounds. Often they are pretty corny but sometimes not.

It's called The Bear Film by French filmmaker  Jean-Jacques Annaud and it is too wonderful for words. He made The Name of The Rose and Seven Years in Tibet with Brad Pitt. And the superb Enemy At The Gates about the Battle of Stalingrad. But this little film is a beauty. But how did he do it-get those animals to act?. (watch it in full screen)

exclusive-Brad Pitt for Aussie lion tale..

Brad Pitt * Christian * Johnny Depp

With one half of the Christian the Lion,  duo Anthony 'Ace' Bourke  in Los Angeles for discussions with a Hollywood studio over the planned film of the saga of their former Kings Road pet lion Christian, purchased at Harrods and kept as a pet in a Kings Road antique shop, a reliable source from the Christian camp tells tSS that Brad Pitt has expressed an interest in playing Bourke in the film.

Ace Bourke

Before Subo swept the world in the youtube video of her Britain's Got Talent performance, the grainy film of ex-partners John Rendall and Ace Bourke's re-union with Christian on animal conservationist George Adamson's African reserve  became a world-wide sensation. Bourke and Rendall were suddenly thrust into the limelight , quickly re-wrote the book they had published 35 years earlier and found themselves in demand for talk shows from the USA to Germany and all stops in between.

John Rendall ?

The Christian bandwagon continues to roll on under the expert guidance of Lauren Miller, daughter of the recently retired agent and entrepreneur Harry M.Miller who published his autobiography late last year and revealed intimate dinner conversations he had had with Prince Charles.

Cuddly toys and merchandising are underway along with advertising tie-ins with the McDonald's hamburger chain and so on.

But who to play Rendall who was once a gossip writer on Hello! magazine and was married to the PR agent Liz Brewer ?. The choice is obvious and one Rendall would surely approve of-Johnny Depp !

And will the scene appear in the film that was often told by the 'Queen of London's cafe society' Lady Edith Foxwell whose country house Sherston backed onto the 1970s commune Bourke and Rendall lived on with assorted folk like a young Helen Mirren and Princess Margaret's beau Roddy Llewellyn ?. Llewellyn and the Princess used the commune for their secret assignations.

Edith fondly recalled how  early one morning she discovered a group from the commune bathing naked in her swimming  pool and  fetching a shotgun, fired off a deafening blast through the window above their heads

"They were making a terrible racket and God only knows what they got up to in my pool" said Lady Edith. . Edith liked the late Dai Llewellyn but had no time for his younger brother Roddy who she described as a "dull young gardener and not a very good one at that".  As she recalled their howls of terror as they scampered off through the fields she said " I always wondered if one of the white bottoms vanishing into the mist was royal"

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To Nino's restaurant for a media lunch for Queer Eye For the Straight Guy Carson Kressley who has become something of a popular star downunder. Kressly is in town for the giant  Westfield chain of shopping malls and his Be Styled Tour where, fresh from Oprah Winfrey's show where he was teaching overdressed American ladies how to 'dress down', he will inform young Australian gels how to correctly 'accessorize'. This appears to involve advising them to wear stiletto heels as our pic at the launch shows. Not bad work for the rumoured $200K he is being paid.

At the lunch and overheard from a publicist in a discussion on merchandising deals and the impending arrival of round the world yachtswoman, 16 year old Jessica Watson who is expected to arrive at the Sydney Opera House in a fortnight after completing her voyage without once touching land.: "after she rounded the Horn (of Africa) the Penguin book deal kicked in-when she crossed the equator the TV network deal was sealed..if she arrives safely, amongst her greeters will be a bevy of Fox Studio executives with the movie deal contract."

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 Sitting unnoticed  at the back of the stage at Jamie Cullum's performance last night at the Basement  was a low key Sophie Dahl. The pair arrived together via the back entrance and quickly split once inside the club. Sophie sat entranced by Cullum-unfortunately critics weren't so kind about his vocals. tSS thought he was wonderful.

Congrats, but who are you?

The New York Post discovers Dr Geoffey Edelsten & Brynne Gordon on their big wedding day except for one thing-they have no idea who they are.

Talk about fame by association. The Murdoch rag has run a piece about Seinfeld's Jason Alexander and Nanny star Fran Drescher who jetted in to attend the nuptials of the wacky pair but revealed the 2 stars hadn't actually met the bridal couple. Drescher and Alexander co-hosted the "glittering"wedding on Saturday at Melbourne's Crown Casino. They weren't alone as local radio and TV stars turned up clutching invites not knowing the bride and groom either.

The NYP also brings us the riveting news that the buxom Brynne hails from Brad Pitt's hometown of Shawnee in Oklahoma but ponders on how much Drescher & Alexander were being paid. We can illuminate here-$40K each plus first class travel and a suite at the Crown. Not bad for a lazy weekend Down Under.

And don't be surprised if the good Doc brings us news in the coming weeks of a fabulous investment he has and we can get in on the ground floor if we're lucky. He's that kinda guy.