Boxer and author Oscar De La Hoya attends his 'American Son' book signing in New York City. (photo: Shawn Ehlers/WireImage.com)

Stahl Tactics

Forget Ray Bans and a baseball cap, celebrities who don't want to be recognized should try a wheelchair. Nick Stahl ('Carnivale') was surprised at just how invisible he became when he wheeled himself around New York City in preparation for his role as a disabled reporter in the new film 'Quid Pro Quo.' In addition to learning that the sidewalks of NYC are far from flat, the actor noted: "There were two kind of main reactions. One was just avoidance — not making eye contact ... The other was people who were overly helpful." (photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com)

[National Ledger]

Ambassador of Rock

Steve Van Zandt served as Soprano consigliere Sylvio Dante, and with his old family gone the way of the onion ring, the guitarist-turned actor has taken on a new counseling role: Teaching America the true meaning of Rock. On 'Little Steven's Underground Garage Show,' the E Street Band star sifts through the music of the '50s and '60s to remind listeners of rock'n'roll's golden age. "It's a strange, strange time we're living in right now," he says, "where we've lowered our standards, in general, and we've gotten used to living with mediocrity. And it bothers me. Maybe you gotta be as old as I am to remember it, but growing up in the '60s, standards were set very, very high. If I do nothing else, I want to remind people what greatness sounds like." (photo: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

[PittsburghLive.com]

Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel attend the 'The Happening' premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. (photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com)

A People Person

"The names have not been changed, to protect the innocent" could be the tag line for HBO's new miniseries 'Generation Kill.' Creators David Simon and Ed Burns adapted the book by Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright about his time embedded with the First Recon Battalion headed into Iraq at the outset of the war. At a recent screenwriter's conference in Nashville Simon and Burns previewed the first two episodes to an enthusiastic response — and a couple of the character's real-life counterparts mingled with the crowd. The guerilla Aintitcoolnews spy "Memflix" reports: "The character that I think people are really going to respond to is Cpl. Ray Person, played by James Ransone ("Inside Man"). ... If a writer just came up with this character and had the balls to name him 'Person,' you'd think the writer was brilliant. But the fact that this guy exists is the kind of thing that just makes you sit back and enjoy the absolute absurdity of life." (photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage.com)

[Aintitcool.com]

Walls of Sounds

Looks like 'Big Love' just wasn't big enough for David Byrne. After writing the score for the show's second outing, the Talking Heads frontman has decided to spend the off-season converting the Battery Maritime Building in New York into a giant musical instrument. Inside the industrial space, a tangle of wires and hoses snakes through the building, leading back to a pipe organ. Every key on the apparatus sparks a different sound/noise somewhere in the building, and Byrne has invited the public to try out their own riffs. "It's nice that they can come in and play the thing," he told the Village Voice. "It's not a piece of music that you download or you buy, something like that. It's something that you actually have to sit and do. You can see how it works. It's not like a piece of software where the actual workings of it, unless you're a real techie, are completely hidden to you. It's pretty easy to see which ones are blowing air." (photo: Jemal Countess/WireImage.com)

[Village Voice]

Mike Myers and Justin Timberlake at the 6th annual TV Land Awards. (photo: Maury Phillips/WireImage.com)

A Face for Radio

"One of the biggest challenges I had with ['In Treatment'] is that I was required to play an entire role that is about reacting. It was a very difficult high-wire act for me to do. It was all uncharted territory, and, in a way, very much like televised radio," explains Gabriel Byrne of his role as Dr. Paul Weston. And when it was his turn to talk, the good doctor didn't necessarily have all the answers. As Byrne notes: "We have this idea in society that whoever is the healer is perfect and not subject to the same vagaries of human emotion that we all are. But what we find in these sessions is that the healer is also imperfect, frail and human." (photo: Joe Fox/WireImage.com)

[Variety.com]

Reverse Psychology

It takes some cojones to give your new show the title 'Bored to Death,' but what else could you expect from author Jonathan Ames? The show will focus on a writer in Brooklyn who deals with his tough breakup by living his life as a character from a Raymond Chandler novel. Besides putting the pilot together for HBO, the screenwriter/actor/amateur-boxer is also working on 'The Alcoholic' — a graphic novel for D.C. Comics. (photo: Eugene Gologursky/WireImage.com)

[Variety.com]

Blair Underwood and Robin Williams take on a pirate at 'A Time for Heroes Celebrity Carnival' sponsored by Disney benefiting the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in Los Angeles (photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage.com)

Dear Abby

It's useful for actors to have an active imagination, but Abigail Breslin, who stars in the upcoming ''Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,' admits sometimes hers works overtime. "I'm a hypochondriac," Breslin told Los Angeles magazine. "I'm not allowed to watch medical TV shows. [Once], I was worried that I was going to step on glass, so I wore shoes even in my bed . . . I thought I had bird flu, so for a long time I wouldn't go near any birds." (photo: Ben Rose/WireImage.com)

[NYPost.com]

Anger Management

When Josh Charles signed on to play one half of a couple whose marriage is in trouble on 'In Treatment,' director Rodrigo Garcia only let him and other cast members watch the first episode of the Israeli show the series was based on. The logic was that when playing characters undergoing psychotherapy, the less they knew where they were headed, the better. As a result, Charles got to be surprised by his character Jake's unraveling: "The fact that this character is an angry rageaholic, that's a given. What was exciting was what was underneath all that rage." (photo: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

[Variety.com]

Award recipients Mia Wasikowska and Abbie Cornish arrive at the Australians in Film 2008 Breakthrough Awards held in Beverly Hills. (photo: Michael Tran/FilmMagic.com)

The Naked Truth

After playing a necrophiliac ('Kissed'), a lap dancer-turned-escort ('The Center of the World'), and the tormented widow Alma Garret ('Deadwood'), Molly Parker was ready to lighten up. And she's doing just that in the new CBS series 'Swingtown,' where she plays a suburban housewife who married young and is just opening up to the sexual possibilities of the 70s counterculture. Though Parker loved her time on 'Deadwood,' she admits that she's pleased this series has to be suitable for network primetime. "If it was on HBO, I would have had to be naked all the time, and I wouldn't have done that." (photo: Jordan Strauss/WireImage.com)

[The Globe and Mail]

Audience Participation

Most filmmakers go out of their way to solicit an audience of like-minded folks. But Marina Zenovich, director of 'Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,' wants just the opposite, as she explained to HBO.com: "I think the best viewer for this film is someone who can't stand Roman Polanski and is disgusted by what happened. But if they allow themselves to watch the film, they usually come away from it feeling differently. If not about the crime, then at least about the aftermath." Polanski haters can tune in Monday June 9th at 9PM to see if she's right. (photo: Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic.com)

[HBO.com]