Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

Ogling Douglas’ wife, who looked trampily deep into bipolar meds & high-end anti-aging crêmes , Jerzy thought: Now that is a hot fuck. He wondered if Douglas got his C by being wayback viral throatstroked by papilloma. . . seems like a person would have to go down on a boatload of broads to get the HPV in the gullet (well, do the math), if the actor scarfed half as much pussy as dimpled dad Kirk — King Leer , Kirk the lyin’ King — then he just might have qualified.

Gagosian twice cast an aware eye Jerzy’s way, which the speedballing ratsorizzo razzo took as his cue to exit. On the way out, he came within 5 ft of the entourage, both ships passing gas in the night.

“We want to show Antwone how to spend money,” said Douglas. “Cause I think he’s too close with a buck. Don’t you, Cat? Don’t you think Antwone’s too close with a buck? He’s not flashy enough. Fishburne & I are gunna take him under our wing & teach him how to be flashy . He’s gunna learn how to play with the big boys . We’re gunna show him how to spend, how to spend money & influence people.

“Cause it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that bling — right, Antwone?”

‘Treasure’ hunt ends

432PM PDT by Debi Rheng-Vatos

Douglas set for comedy

“The Treasure of Sierra Leone” locked its final principal lead in Antwone Fisher’s helming debut. Megastar Michael Douglas joins Will Smith, Sandra Bullock, Laurence Fishburne and Hailee Steinfeld in what Fisher calls his “black comedy.” Michael Tolkin penned, from an idea by Frederik “Biggie” Brainard III. Ishmael Beah consults. Ooh Baby Baby It’s A Wild World Films’ Brando Brainard produces. International sales are being handled by MGM/Paramount/Lion’s Gate. The story, taking place in 1995, centers on a con man who needs to raise money for his daughter’s heart surgery. He teaches an African American runaway how to impersonate a ‘lost boy’/child soldier from the Ivory Coast — they hit the lecture circuit and make a bundle. Things begin to go terribly wrong when an Oprah-like character enters the picture and insists on flying the boy back to his Ivory Coast home in order to reunite with friends. (The producers would not comment on the rumor that Oprah Winfrey has privately expressed interest in a “cameo” role, as herself.) Tolkin wrote Robert Altman’s The Player; his last novel was

The Return of the Player

Fisher’s recent credits are

Let’s Go To Work!

, a doc about the black entrepreneur Leon T. Garr, and the bestseller,

A Boy Should Know How to Tie a Tie: and Other Lessons for Succeeding in Life

(Simon & Schuster). Brainard recently produced the megahit

Turndown Service

, has just formed a television division, Just Upon A Smile TV.

Contact Debi Rheng-Vatos at debi.rheng-vatos@thehollywoodreporter.com

Call Me Ishmael*

*AKA Konyshots!

Rikki

couldn’t fucking believe what he found online — Antwone Fisher was directing a movie starring, of all people, Larry Fishburne. (Too bad it didn’t say anything about porndaughter co- ing.) It got weirder: there was a role for a black his age. www.castingcallLA.comsaid Antwone already saw 100s of boys but hadn’t yet found “the one.” “We’ll know it when he walks through the door,” said Fish (not Fishburne; “Fish” was Antwone’s nickname) in an interview with www.shootingstarz.com.

WTF. Shit was crazy .

The timing was crazy cosmic too, but Rikki was stymied about how to proceed. He talked to ReeRee (somewhat reluctantly hipping her to his general plan; not too many people had ever known about his closely-concealed somewhat embarrassing ((to him)) ambitions to act, maybe just Dawn & Engineer Jim) and Ree tripped on it & loved him for it, because it was so unexpected, & a way of being proactive re them getting a house together, getting a life, getting on with their lives to come. Reeyonna then spoke to her bro who then spoke to his parttime g.f. Tom-Tom, who was truly hip to gaming the Hollywood system. The Treasure of Sierra Leone had a Facebook page & casting link where you could upload your reel from tmblr or wherever. Tom-Tom even found verboten chunks of the script in the shady thickets of the webswamp ( www.scriptileaks.com).

She ran down the synopsis for him: Treasure was about a failed character actor (Fishburne) whose estranged teenage daughter gets a virus that severely damages her heart. In order to raise the 300K required for meds & a transplant, Fishburne becomes a grifter. He hooks up with an old guy (Michael Douglas) recently fired from his job of 35 years — a daytime soap — whose livelihood now pretty much exclusively consists of seducing widows. Douglas never really has the heart to royally fleece the old ladies, settling instead for room, board & pocket $$$ in exchange for platonic companionship. Enter Fishburne, who wants to change all that muy pronto . The duo stage a bingo scam & are nearly out-hustled by a brilliant 15-year-old, an agro Afro-American runaway from some foster home hellhole. Impressed by his mad skills , they take the kid under their wing.

That night, Fishburne watches Oprah interview a former child soldier from Freetown. He’s riveted by the charismatic young boy’s articulate saga of being abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and brainwashed to be a killer. Inspired, he calls his friend Douglas & proposes they set out on a scam tour of America — with the runaway impersonating a reformed child soldier, Fishburne playing his impoverished, dignified African father, & Douglas trodding the boards as the founder of the NGO responsible for the boy’s rehab & redemption. At first Douglas is skeptical, but when Fishburne bares his soul & says that his daughter will die without the surgery, Douglas needs no further coaxing.

So they set out & the kid’s a natural. Born for the part. As a warm-up, he practices on the widows, who practically hand over their pocketbooks. Fishburne & Douglas begin booking lectures in small auditoriums & concert halls, and pretty soon they’ve got a cash cow phenom on their hands. They’re making local appearances, doing call-in radio shows, county fairs, all that. The fake warrior becomes a burgeoning rockstar on the indomitable-human-spirit circuit, the darling of liberal socialites’ soirées, everybody hungering to hear the lurid horrors of manchild in the unpromised land. The biggest problem becomes how to keep the whole floating crapgame below the radar — Fishburne & Douglas want attention, just not the wrong kind. Because the minute someone starts trying to verify details, the jig, as they say, is up.

Tom-Tom read Rikki an online press release from a few weeks back. It said that Ishmael Beah, the famous grownup child soldier whom the script’s impostor was based upon, signed on as a consultant on the film. The name rang a bell. Weirdly enough, Rikki recalled that some months ago, Beah visited John Crowe Ransom to give a talk about his memoir, A Long Way Gone . The dude didn’t seem too much older than himself. During a special assembly, Beah shared his story of the atrocities he was forced to commit as a young boy. He remembered Beah talking about how the rebels hooked him & his homies on some kind of speed mixed with gunpowder.

Killin & cokin’! Fuckin bitchin…