Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Dick Clark Top New Year's Wrap Up
Jan 2, 2007, 20:43
LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears suffers from a rare form of narcolepsy. Mel Gibson to play Saddam Hussein in a low-budget indie flick. Dick Clark still talks funny. These are the top stories of the new year. What goes around keeps going around, but who's keeping score?
Gossip blogs and celebrity news sources went into a feeding frenzy recently over reports that Britney Spears, 25, had collapsed about an hour after midnight at PURE nightclub in Caesars Palace this New Year's Eve. The sometime singer, who hosted the club's New Year's party, had to be carried to her room, drooling, by her bodyguards, according to most early reports.
"Britney was like way trashed and couldn't even count backwards from ten," gushed one blogger.
While admitting that Ms. Spears "has always had trouble with numbers," her manager, Larry Rudolph, denied that his client was toasted.
"She was not drunk," Mr. Rudolph told THEM Weekly. "She was simply tired and falling asleep. By about one o'clock, she was just done, so we took her up to her room.
"This isn't something many people are aware of," continued Mr. Rudolph, "but Britney suffers from a rare form of narcolepsy that causes her to fall asleep at night. Most narcolepsy victims fall asleep suddenly during the day for no apparent reason, but Britney will often pass out suddenly at night."
Mr. Rudolph further explained that people with narcolepsy are often stereotyped "as drunks or druggies or worse." That stigma adds to the tragedy of this disease, whose victims "often cannot even remember whether they've put their underwear on or not," said Mr. Rudolph.
Mel Gibson as Saddam Hussein? In a small-budget indie film about life in Iraq as it might have been if "the United States had pursued a course of diplomacy instead of destruction"? You read it here first.
Mr. Gibson will also write, produce, and direct this "made-for-Sundance" film about an Iraqi family that lost a son, three-quarters of their house, their well, three goats, and uninterrupted electric service because of the war. Best known for his violence-filled, larger-than-death epics such as The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto, and Braveheart, Mr. Gibson will focus this time on "the little, intimate details that convey the human tragedy of war just as awesomely as a severed head does."
Once again Mr. Gibson will use nonprofessional actors and English subtitles throughout. Sources tell THEM Weekly that Mr. Gibson's multilevel movie begins with the funeral of its principal, Sadeq Muhammed al-Janabi, the eighteen-year-old son of an Iraqi farmer. Through a series of complex flashbacks and fastforwards, we learn what the life of Muhammed al-Janabi, who was a civilian casualty of the war, and the lives of his elderly parents and handicapped wife would have been like if UN sanctions, weapons inspections, and diplomatic pressure on Saddam Hussein had been allowed to take their course. The movie ends with the second funeral of Sadeq Muhammed al-Janabi, age seventy-three, a prosperous merchant survived by his second wife, four children, and five grandchildren.
In other New Year's news, although Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest deny they are vying to replace New Year's Eve icon Dick Clark, 76, who suffered a stroke two years ago, Mr. Seacrest appears willing to stoop to any lengths to knock Mr. Clark off the New Year's Eve perch, even if that means imitating Mr. Clark's slurred speech.
"There's a dirigible sea of Kwistina Ah, Ah, Goolayer fans fwudink Dimes Gware," observed Mr. Seacrest at one point during the four-hour broadcast on ABC this New Year's Eve.
After ABC's switchboards had lit up with calls protesting Mr. Seacrest's "mockery of a national treasure," his agent issued a statement saying that Mr. Seacrest suffers from autonomic vocal impressionism, an ailment that causes people to imitate unconsciously the speech of those around them.
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