The Simpsons Makes (Up) History. Again
Remember that time in 1999 when The Simpsons predicted — as a hilarious joke, mind you — that Donald Trump would be elected president? Turns out that same episode (number 17, season 11, “Bart to the Future”) contains another prophecy that suddenly seems entirely plausible. Not only does it foretell a future in which Lisa eventually becomes the first female president, but it also dresses her in an eerily similar outfit — purple pantsuit, white pearls — to the one Kamala Harris wore to the 2021 inaugural. “The pantsuit may have been a nod to Hillary Clinton at the time, or we were just going for a power look,” recalls longtime Simpsons scribe Mike Scully. The color purple? “That seemed to have been a random choice. It may have been done by the animators.” Her pearls, of course, are no mystery: “Lisa always wears them,” Scully notes. As Simpsons fans are well aware, the show has a long history of predicting history. A 1993 episode forecast the real-life 2003 Siegfried & Roy tiger attack; another in 1993 imagined a COVID-like virus spreading to Springfield from Japan (the “Osaka Flu”); a 1998 episode foretold the Fox-Disney merger. As for the Trump gag, Scully says the writers were just throwing “crazy names” around the table, trying to figure out “who would be the stupidest person that America could elect. And somebody said Donald Trump.” — ALEX WEPRIN
Michael Jackson Drew These Pictures. Or Maybe He Didn’t
To the list of things that may not have been entirely organic about Michael Jackson, we may now add his doodles. On Aug. 3, Kings Auctions will be selling 78 artworks by the King of Pop — drawings of fruit, etchings of Queen Elizabeth — in Beverly Hills. There’s just one catch: Jackson might not have drawn them. The pictures have been stashed in a hangar at Santa Monica Airport for years, the property of Brett-Livingstone Strong, an Australian artist who had been friends with Jackson in his final years. But a California court recently ordered Strong’s collection sold at auction, even though Jackson’s estate is not convinced of its authenticity. “We went to the hangar,” says estate attorney Jonathan Steinsapir, “and had questions. We asked for evidence. Because it just didn’t ring true.” There is, indeed, evidence that Jackson gave paintings to Strong; Kings has letters from Jackson regarding artworks, though nothing specific to the pictures up for sale. In any case, Kings is hoping to offload the entire portfolio for a cool million dollars. If they can’t find a buyer at that price, they’ll sell the pieces individually, each with a starting bid of $9,999. — NICOLE FELL
NATO’s Disappearing Data: Where’d the Numbers Go?
Entertainment reporters have noticed something mysterious going on at the National Association of Theatre Owners. The organization has revamped its website under Michael O’Leary’s new leadership, and gone is a cornucopia of data that provided instant access to key stats — including annual domestic box office revenue — going back at least two decades. One theory for the disappearance is that theater owners are tired of bad news —moviegoing has not returned to pre-pandemic levels — so NATO decided to spare them the aggravation of making those numbers so easily available. (Journalists and others now must request the data, which NATO readily sends via email.) That hypothesis could explain another curious vanishing; the Motion Picture Association is no longer providing its annual THEME report, a vast compendium of similar data and more. When MPA chief Charles Rivkin was asked at CinemaCon about that, he said it would be released when the MPA figured out how to include streaming data. NATO declined comment. — PAMELA MCCLINTOCK
Is Amber Heard’s Private Eye More Interesting Than She Is?
Typically, Rambling Reporter doesn’t cover self-published books — but, then, there’s nothing typical about this author. Private eye Paul Barresi, who has worked on cases involving Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Murphy, has just released a memoir, Johnny Depp’s Accidental Fixer: How a Hollywood Sleuth Saved a Pirate’s Honor, about his time snooping for Amber Heard during her legal battles with her ex. There’s plenty of gossip in these pages, but the truly juicy parts have less to do with Heard or even Depp (turns out the only dirt Barresi could turn up on the actor was that he was “a great guy”) and more about the private dick doing the detecting. As it happens, Barresi, 75, has an expansive résumé that includes a bit part in a James Ivory movie (opposite Raquel Welch in 1975’s The Wild Party), followed by a decade-long stint as a porn star (he is the only male to have appeared on the cover of Hustler) and an apprenticeship with Anthony Pellicano, which is how he ended up in the PI biz. “The average person might think it’s a long journey from being in adult films to private detective work,” Barresi tells THR, “but it wasn’t a stretch. My niche was putting out sexually based fires. Who better for that than an ex-porn actor?”
This story first appeared in the July 31 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
