Previously Unknown MJ Novel Materializes

A novel written by the “King of Pop” himself is currently being shopped around to New York publishers, according to a source in the industry.

The illustrated novel depicts a rock star at the height of his success who becomes disillusioned with money and fame and obsesses about death.

According to the source, the book mirrors Michael Jackson’s own rise to superstardom and self-imposed seclusion, reflecting an inner torment and struggle with personal demons.

Working with a collaborator, the source confirmed, Jackson conceptualized the story line, characters and even the illustrations.

The book is expected to sell in the six figures.

(<a href=”http://showbiznews.info”>source</a>)

Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but declined to give further details.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer. He kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting “The Beast,” an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot.

Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making “The Beast” because they would have taken the edge off his performance. The show drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.

When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was “considerably more optimistic” than that. Swayze acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.

“I’d say five years is pretty wishful thinking,” Swayze told ABC’s Barbara Walters in early 2009. “Two years seems likely if you’re going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it.”

C. Thomas Howell, who co-starred with Swayze in “The Outsiders,” “Grandview U.S.A.” and “Red Dawn”, said: “I have always had a special place in my heart for Patrick. While I was fortunate enough to work with him in three films, it was our passion for horses that forged a friendship between us that I treasure to this day. Not only did we lose a fine actor today, I lost my older `Outsiders’ brother.”

Other celebrities used Twitter to express condolences, and “Dirty Dancing” was the top trending topic for a while Monday night, trailed by several other Swayze films.

Ashton Kutcher – whose wife, Demi Moore, co-starred with Swayze in “Ghost” – wrote: “RIP P Swayze.” Kutcher also linked to a YouTube clip of the actor poking fun at himself in a classic “Saturday Night Live” sketch, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent – and frighteningly shirtless – Chris Farley.

And Larry King wrote: “Patrick Swayze was a wonderful actor & a terrific guy. He put his heart in everything. He was an extraordinary fighter in his battle w Cancer.” King added that he’d do a tribute to Swayze on his CNN program Tuesday night.

A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in “Dirty Dancing.” As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.

A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort’s sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life,” stage productions and a sequel, 2004’s “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” in which he made a cameo.

Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad “She’s Like the Wind,” inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick “Road House,” in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990’s “Ghost” that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Moore) – with great frustration and longing – through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.

Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

Why did he want the part so badly? “It made me cry four or five times,” he said of Bruce Joel Rubin’s Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.

“Ghost” provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.” It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn’t have won if it weren’t for Swayze.

“When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick,” Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show “The View.”

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for “Dirty Dancing,” “Ghost” and 1995’s “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.

His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.

“I couldn’t get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho,” he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced “To Wong Foo,” Spielberg didn’t recognize him.

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane.

Other ’80s films included “Red Dawn,” “Grandview U.S.A.” (for which he also provided choreography) and “Youngblood,” once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

In the ’90s, he made such eclectic films as “Point Break” (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western “Tall Tale” (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse. In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite “Donnie Darko,” and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with “Chicago”; 2006 found him in the musical “Guys and Dolls” in London.

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include “Urban Cowboy.”

He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in “Grease.” But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.

Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie “Skatetown, U.S.A.” The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on “man’s greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature’s laws,” he told the AP in 2004.

Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center.

(source)

Kim Kardashian

Leigh Lezark and Amanda Bynes

Bethenny Frankel

Designer Jill Stuart

Nicky Hilton, Rachael Bilson and Leigh Lezark

Shenae Grimes, Nicky Hilton, Rachael Bilson, Leigh Lezark and Amanda Bynes

(source)

Fresh off the VMAs, Nelly Furtado joined local kids in reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the Borough of Manhattan Community College today. Furtado is joining the Read For the Record campaign to help end childhood illiteracy. On Oct 8th, the Today show will air the live reading of the book at Rockerfeller Center.

Pledge to read on October 8th (http://readfortherecord.org)

(source)

Whitney Houston took drugs, including cocaine and marijuana, with ex-husband Bobby Brown, who was emotionally abusive during their marriage and at one point spit on her, the singer said during an interview that aired Monday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“I had so much money and so much access to what I wanted,” Houston told Winfrey. “I didn’t think about the singing part anymore. I was looking for my young womanhood.”

After a long absence from music, Houston is staging a career comeback with a new album “I Look to You” released last month and a two-part appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Houston is one of the best-selling artists of all time, but her career stalled as she grappled with drug problems and a troubled marriage to Brown.

The couple married in 1992 and were divorced in 2007. During their marriage, Brown was arrested on drug and alcohol charges, and Houston twice entered drug rehabilitation programs. She has custody of their teenage daughter.

Houston told Winfrey that Brown wasn’t physically abusive but “he slapped me once but he got hit on the head three times by me.”

A phone message left Monday with Brown’s attorney in Atlanta seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Houston said she was attracted to Brown because he took control of their relationship and had “a sweet, gentle tenderness.”

“At home, he was very much the father, he was very much the man,” Houston said. “He was very much in control. I liked that. When he said something, I listened. I was very interested in having someone have that kind of control over me. It was refreshing.”

She described an episode after a birthday party for Brown that left her “horrified. He spit on me, in my face.” She said their daughter, Bobbi Kristina, witnessed the incident, which left Houston “very hurt, very angry.”

Houston also said Brown would smash and break things at their home.

The 46-year-old singer described her drug use, saying it became “heavy” after her 1992 movie “The Bodyguard.” She said she would take marijuana combined with rock cocaine.

“You put your marijuana, you lace it, you roll it up and you smoke it,” Houston explained to Winfrey.

During a 2002 ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, Houston admitted dabbling in drugs but denied using crack, then uttered the now-famous phrase: “Crack is wack.”

“He was my drug,” Houston told Winfrey of Brown. “I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together. We were partners.”

Houston said she stuck with Brown because she took her marriage vows seriously. She said she told her daughter about her drug use and took her with her to an Atlanta drug rehab for mothers and children.

“I didn’t lie to her,” Houston said.

Her mother also tried to intervene, the singer said, and at one point came to Houston’s home with police.

The singer prayed for help, asking God to give her strength, she said.

“I was so weak to him,” Houston said. “I was so weak to the love.”

(source)

Kanye West is getting his Hugh Grant moment on Jay Leno’s new show.

West was set to perform with Rihanna and Jay-Z on Monday night’s debut of “The Jay Leno Show” but wasn’t originally scheduled to chat with the host.

But after West drew boos at the MTV Video Music Awards for ruining Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, NBC said the rapper will talk with Leno. The network announcement came less than an hour before the show’s taping Monday. It airs at 10 p.m. EDT.

Sitting down with Leno gives West the chance to apologize again for ruining Swift’s moment at the MTV Video Music Awards – just as Grant got to make amends in a 1995 visit to Leno’s “Tonight Show” after the actor was arrested with a prostitute.

West, who interrupted Swift as she accepted the best female video award for “You Belong With Me” to argue that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” was more deserving, has apologized twice on his blog.

“I feel like Ben Stiller in `Meet the Parents’ when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave … That was Taylor’s moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry,” West said online.

However the visit pans out for West, Leno looks like a winner. His daily prime-time comedy show already was the most buzzed-about fall debut – and with West, it’s likely to draw even more curious viewers.

(source)

“Well, I was standing on stage because I was really excited because I had just won the award,” she told reporters. “And then I was really excited because Kanye West was on stage. And then I wasn’t so excited anymore after that.”

That’s a nice way of saying she was mortified and devastated.

Swift, 19, said she has no bad feelings toward Kanye. In fact, she used to be a fan.

“I don’t know him, and I’ve never met him, so …” she said. “I don’t want to start anything because I had a great night tonight.”

She also thanked Beyonce (who won video of the year), who invited her back onstage to finish her speech.

“Before the talented artist, the superstar, she’s always been a great person,” Taylor said. “And I just, I thought I couldn’t love Beyonce more, then tonight happened and it was just wonderful.”

(Updated 1:20 p.m.) According to TMZ, Beyonce’s camp went into remedy mode stat.

Almost “immediately” after her subway car performance was over, Beyonce’s dad Mathew Knowles talked to Taylor outside her dressing room

According to Taylor’s rep, Mathew wanted to see how Taylor was doing and figure out a way to make up for it that night.

(source)

Chace Crawford and model Bar Refaeli are reportedly becoming more than just friends.

The “Gossip Girl” star and the Sports Illustrated model were spotted sharing an intimate moment while partying Friday night at New York hotspot 1Oak.

Crawford and Refaeli, both 24, were “dancing on each other, swaying their hips together from side to side” while Jay-Z’s new hit song, “Run This Town,” was playing.

“At one point, Bar reached down and grabbed Chace’s backside. They were very affectionate with each other,” said the snitch. “Bar and Chace have been spending a lot of time together since Bar is town and attending NY Fashion Week events.”

Not a bad move for Crawford, who was most recently caught making out with “Twilight” cutie Ashley Greene in Los Angeles. Refaeli called it quits with Leonardo DiCaprio in June and was most recently linked to multi-millionaire Teddy Sagi.

(source)