Should have gone to Spect-haters (sorry)

It can't be often that TMZ reacts to a story in the Financial Times, but it's all over David Mamet's interview with the pink 'un.

Mamet is working on a biopic about Phil Spector, and he told the paper he doesn't think Spector is a killer:

"I don't think [Spector] is guilty. I definitely think there is reasonable doubt ... they should never have sent him away ... If he'd just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him."

I'm not sure that Mamet really understands the way "regular citizens" with shot people in their hallways are treated by police - generally they get less room for doubt than Spector did.

Anyway, TMZ reports that friends of Lana Clarkson, the woman he shot in the face, are unhappy:

Clarkson's friends have banded together -- and have fired off a letter to the director, claiming his comments were "mind-boggling and wrong in so many ways."

According to the letter, obtained by TMZ, the group's main concern is that "the loathsome, lying, gun-abusing convicted murderer of our friend Lana Clarkson will be portrayed with some kind of sympathy."

Lana's friends want to remind Mamet -- whose upcoming film stars Al Pacino and Bette Midler -- that Spector was CONVICTED by a jury of his peers ... and plead, "Please refrain from rewriting history for 'creative license.'"

"Jury of his peers" isn't quite right - they had trouble barking up a dozen hair-addled crazy music geniuses, especially as Arthur Brown was already busy that week.

You can understand Clarkson's friends being upset, but there's a slightly alarming suggestion in their letter than once a jury has handed down its verdict, then you can no longer discuss the facts of the case. There's a lot of people who should never have been in prison who have been sent there by a jury of their peers. If Mamet believes he has a case, he should at least be allowed to explore it.

Trent Reznor: The miniseries

Trent Reznor is - it says here - turning Year Zero into a mini-series:

"We are in [the development phase of] pre-production with HBO and BBC to do a miniseries," Reznor told the Los Angeles Times's Hero Complex blog. "It's exciting. I probably shouldn't say too much about it except that I understand that there's a thousand hurdles before anything shows up in your TV listing. It's been an interesting and very educational process and it cleared the HBO hurdle a few months ago and now we're writing drafts back and forth. So it's very much alive and incubating at the moment."

If this is a success, ELO's Out Of The Blue is thought to be next up.

Phil Collins had a lust for blood

HBO thought Phil Collins should return to acting:

"I get sent a script from HBO. There was a Russian serial killer who killed and cannibalised 50-odd kids."

Clearly, HBO had seen Collins' performance as a Mexican in the Illegal Alien video and concluded that he was the right man to have a crack at playing a Russian.

Collins was up for it, too:

As soon as I got the script, I thought, 'I've got to play this guy!' But my wife wouldn't let me do it.

She was probably right - can you imagine the legal trouble HBO would be in if they let Collins play a multiple killer? The cannibal's reputation would never recover.

At last, the RIAA offers top entertainment

HBO are busily working on a film version of the RIAA's headless-rubber-chicken approach to its industry over the last few years, based on Steve Knopper's book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.

I'm sure there will be jostling amongst the Hollywood Elite to land the plum role of Guy Hands (or 'the man who bought Tower Bridge').

Our friends in the 'hood

HBO are putting together a history of hiphop told through fictional characters long, interweaving lives. Sounds like the sort of idea that might just work, to us; certainly got to work better than rush-filming The Jam Master Jay Story and selling it straight to Channel Five.