Celebrity Gossip / By George Rush and Joanna Rush Molloy
Gunn judged for nothing
Tim Gunn did something when he started out on “Project Runway” that he’d probably never advise his design proteges to do. He worked for nothing. In testimony in New York State Supreme Court recently, movie/TV mogul Harvey Weinstein told the judge that the fashion mentor wasn’t paid anything in the show’s first season.
The second season wasn’t much better for Gunn: He got only $2,500 per episode, according to testimony in the court battle, which pits NBC/Universal against the Weinstein Co., which owns “Project Runway,” over taking Heidi Klum’s popular show from NBC’s Bravo to Lifetime.
Sure, Gunn had a job, as chairman of the fashion design department at Parsons New School of Design. And perhaps he thought he was just moonlighting, not realizing what a juggernaut the show would become.
NBC/Universal president/CEO Jeff Zucker also took the stand in the court session. Zucker, who is supposedly friends with Weinstein and attended his wedding to Marchese designer Georgina Chapman, was questioned under oath about an e-mail he’d sent telling Bravo execs to show marathon reruns of “Project Runway” in the same time slot that Lifetime plans to air the new show’s season in November. He was proud of the plan, explaining, “I’m a competitive guy.”
But Zucker was apparently not happy that when he and Weinstein talked about the fate of the show on Feb. 22, Weinstein neglected to mention that he’d already collected a check for $20 million from Lifetime. And that was just a deposit.
Weinstein also testified that he “disliked Bravo management.” That would surely mean Bravo/Oxygen/ iVillage chief Lauren Zalaznick. More than one source used the H-word in describing the relationship: “They hate each other.”
Spokespeople for both sides wouldn’t comment because the judge hasn’t decided if Weinstein Co. violated a contract in not giving NBC a chance to re-up.
As for Gunn, he made it work. He published a best seller, became chief creative officer at Liz Claiborne Inc. and got his own spinoff, “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style.”
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The editors at Details must be telepathic. Just as Shia LaBeouf rolls over in his Ford F-150 and is arrested, they have an article in which the 22-year-old actor goes deep and explains his problems.
How would you turn out if your parents put you in a clown suit and had you hop around like a monkey as they sold snow cones on the sidewalk? LaBeouf tells writer Peter Rubin that this was his childhood, and by the way, his father Jeffrey, a Vietnam vet, also had problems with heroin.
After being arrested in Chicago last year for getting into a drunken argument in a Walgreens, LaBeouf says he stopped drinking with his father.
But last week, cops charged him with driving under the influence of alcohol in the accident, which injured him and, less severely, his “Transformers” co-star Isabel Lucas.
Still, we have to admire an actor who’s come as far as he has having not been born on third base — and still be reflective about being a celebrity. “There’s this word dichotomy, of having to appear human, yet be a mysterious entity in order to continue doing your craft,” he says. “There’s a form of selling out. You have to become ‘edible’ for people in Texas.”
