The Z List: This Week's Biggest Losers
Our latest edition of zeitgeist-less Zoners turns out to be an all-male revue. But unlike the gyrations of the Chippendale's gang, the shakes and shimmies of this bunch merit far less than a crumpled up wad of dollar bills. More like a couple of unvarnished wooden nickels.
Val Kilmer: The headline in the UK tabloid read "Val Kilmer Goes from Batman to Fatman." The accompanying photo of the 45-year-old actor, taken on a L.A. area beach, looked like a still from the never-made action movie, Top Gut. And the online reader comments included such observations as, "Great, now I look like a movie star" (John, Spain). But where Kilmer really stumbled was in having his PR reps take on this bit of folly with a straight face, telling the New York Post's Page Six, "Anybody can take an unflattering photo of a human being. It's a mean-spirited thing to do." Double boo hoo! So great as the snarky Gay Perry in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Kilmer should have rolled with it and suggested instead that it was all part of his method preparation for playing a paparazzi photographer.Richard Hatch: Two weeks into his 51-month stay at a minimum-security prison in Morgantown, West Virginia, the former Survivor winner complained in a phone interview with local newspaper The Dominion Post that he was unethically prosecuted and was having a hard time adjusting to incarceration. Sort of like the pot-bellied new inmate calling the mess hall kettle black. Boo hoo! Look, when you foolishly try to outwit, outlast and outplay the IRS – after unethically winning $1 million in front of a TV audience that likely included a majority of the agency's auditors – you're not going to elicit a lot of sympathy. Save it for the first chapter of that new book you said you're writing.
Jack Nicholson: Two years after purchasing the late Marlon Brando's $6.5 million Mulholland Drive home, which sits on the same palatial piece of compound property as his own, the actor has indicated he wants to tear it down. In its place, apparently, will be erected a huge flowerbed of frangipanis, the favorite flower of Buddhists. It's not so much that Nicholson appears to be going back on his word of keeping the abode in place for Brando's children. It's that he cited as his reason for doing so the prohibitive cost of renovating the dilapidated pad. When you've got more money than God, or at least all of the actors who've portrayed him - combined, you need to come up with a better excuse than that. Like say maybe making way for a Lakers practice court. 
Stuart Townsend: When your girlfriend has won an Oscar, looks like Charlize Theron and once found time to co-star with you in a lesser romantic war drama (2004's Head in the Clouds), there should be no complaints. Even if she indicates she plans to be late for your funeral. According to belated reports that surfaced this week, Townsend was a major dunderhead prior to a recent Radiohead concert, taking offense that his South African goddess would dare to show up 45 minutes late for dinner at The Hungry Cat. Memo to Townsend: this puts you a whisker away from making her late, forever, and leading you to then become the embittered embodiment of your most recent cancelled TV series, The Night Stalker.
Todd Haynes: Imagine if, rather than Joaquin Phoenix, Johnny Cash had been played by seven different actors not really trying to look or sound like the Man in Black. That's the wacky conceit of writer-director Haynes' new Bob Dylan flick I'm Not There, currently shooting in Montreal. This week, new Joker Heath Ledger was announced as the latest male thesp who will be blowing in the runaway wind as the legendary folk singer. Haynes has apparently (we think) stopped short of including in his munificent seven co-star and frequent collaborator Julianne Moore, but c'mon. Not making a straight biopic about Dylan's incredible life is kind of like hiring Kevin Nealon to play Willie Nelson.
