Emma Watson Insists She's Still a Brown Student; Florida's Delegation Fumes
Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: another baby for Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph, tensions run high in the Florida delegation, and Stephen King still believes in Ron Howard.
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Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson and Bridesmaids star (and former SNL-er) Maya Rudolph welcomed their third child earlier this month, a boy named Jack. He was born July 3. [Los Angeles Times]
Freshmen GOP congressman Allen West isn't pleased with fellow Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. He made his distaste known in an email yesterday after Wasserman Schultz said on the House floor that West supported legislation "that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries." After that, West sent off this email. "You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives," he fumed. "If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up." [Playbook]
Stephen King isn't shocked that Universal passed on turning his ambitious, post-apocalyptic Dark Tower series into a trilogy to be helmed by director Ron Howard. "I'm sorry Universal passed, but not really surprised," King told Entertainment Weekly. "Maybe they feel it would be better to stick with those fast and furious racing boys. I trust Ron Howard to get Roland and his friends before the camera somewhere else. He’s very committed to the project." [Daily Intel]
It's good that King still thinks Howard is committed to The Dark Tower, but the director has wasted little time in moving on to his next project, an adaptation of Jon Krakauer's 2003 book Under The Banner of Heaven, which mixes a history of the Church of Latter-day Saints with a true-crime account of a 1984 murder of a woman and her son by Mormon fundamentalists. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Goga Ashkenazi--a "famous friend of Prince Andrew" from Kazakhstan--threw a wild party at her St. Tropez villa over the weekend," attracting the likes of Grace Jones, Joan Collins, Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, producer Lawrence Bender, and Denise Rich, but the festivities were interrupted when a "young woman, who guests described as a 'party crasher,' jumped onstage and ripped off her top to 'grind' with [Grace Jones]." Security was called and the intruder was taken away, [Page Six]
Harry Potter star Emma Watson is doubling down on her claim that she didn't drop out of Brown because of bullies, speaking to The Virginia-Pilot during a junket for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--Part 2. "I'm still a student at Brown," she explained. "It's just that I’ll spend my third year abroad – at Oxford. Then I’ll return to Brown to complete my last year." She continued, "I have spent more of my life being someone else than I have being myself," she said. "I have never really known what it is to have total freedom. It's not something I lost. It's something I never had." [Vulture]
One suspect is already in custody following a weekend burglary at the Iowa home of Rep. Leonard Boswell, and authorities are now on the hunt for a second man named David Palmer Dewberry. According to Decatur County Sheriff Herbert Muir, Dewberry "used to live in the Lamoni area, and his mother was a friend of Boswell’s wife, Dody." The police "believe that Dewberry, wearing a ski mask and carrying a BB pistol, walked into Boswell’s farmhouse outside Lamoni, threatened Boswell’s daughter Cindy Brown and demanded money," while the already-arrested Cody John Rollins stayed outside and acted as getaway driver. [Roll Call]
