I know what you're thinking: that Tom Hanks probably had his publicist or a Nobel Prize winner pen today's literate ode in The New York Times to his makeup artist of 19 years Dan Striepeke on the eve of his retirement. Probably 99% of the time you'd be right about actors who byline something in a newspaper, but this time you're wrong. I'm told by NYT sources that Hanks did indeed write it himself. In addition to being a great actor, great family man, and great guy, he's also a really good writer, according to people close to him. Now you have my permission to hate Hanks because he's so much better than all of us. And also for the fact that his new movie, the Da Vinci Code, is tracking huge, according to the numbers which Sony Pictures just received. (Like, duh.) Meanwhile, I'm told Hanks' agency CAA congratulated the studio on the great tracking early this AM, prompting Sony to ponder, How the hell did CAA know it the same time as we knew it. No doubt, that will be the subject of a sequel.   

Vanity Fair informed me this morning, in response to my questions on another matter, that last week the magazine's contributing editor John Connolly "heard from the U.S. Attorney’s office who told him that they were obligated to inform him that Anthony Pellicano had threatened his safety." Connolly has written several articles about the Pellicano scandal for the magazine, including this one for the upcoming June issue, Inside Hollywood's Big Wiretap Scandal, and just contracted to do a book for Atria, an imprint at Simon & Schuster.

By my count, this is the third alleged Pellicano-connected threat against a journalist, the second against a Vanity Fair writer, and the first against a New York-based reporter.

I'm told that Connolly is taking this alleged threat "very seriously." In response to my query, the U.S. Attorney's Office said "we do not comment on private communications that come from or come into the office."

In 2005, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office charged Pellicano, already in prison on federal weapons and explosives counts, with conspiracy to threaten then LA Times contract writer Anita Busch. The man he allegedly hired to do the dirty work, Alexander Proctor, already had been charged with one count of making criminal threats against Busch in a case filed in 2003. (Still unclear is who hired Pellicano.) At the time, Busch was working on a story about actor Steven Seagal’s alleged ties to the mob. On June 10, 2002, police were called to investigate the contents of a mystery package left on Busch's auto along with a note that said "STOP" and a shatter mark on her windshield. The Los Angeles street where she lived was evacuated so the bomb squad could investigate the package contents: it contained a dead fish and a rose but no explosive device.

There have been no charges stemming from the incident two months later involving VF's Ned Zeman, who at the time was also writing an article about Seagal. He was reportedly threatened at gunpoint while driving outside his LA home. According to his editor, another car pulled up alongside Zeman's, someone shined a light into his car window, and a man in the other car pointed a gun at Zeman and said ''Bang,'' and ''Stop what you're doing,'' then drove off. Zeman reported the incident to the police.

Previous:  Sneak Peek at New VF Pellicano Article: Juicy Stories About Grey, Ovitz, Fields, UPDATED: "Studio President" Unnamed by VF/Pellicano Is Ron Meyer, UPDATED: Pub Confirms Pellicano Bio Book, Forthcoming Vanity Fair Pellicano Exposé?

Also, here's my LA Weekly column from June 23, 2005:  Requiem for Anita Busch

I've just learned the name of the "studio president" not identified by Vanity Fair who contributed money to an effort to raise $$$ for Pellicano's kids when Pellicano was arrested in November 2002 -- even after word of the P.I.'s wiretapping got out. He is Universal Studios President/COO Ron Meyer.

Also, I'm told the "producer" not identified by VF who also contributed is Madonna's one-time manager Freddie DeMann.

VF reports that attorney Bert Fields spearheaded the fund-raising. But I've learned Meyer was that president of a major studio who told VF he gave testimony before the grand jury and recalled that Fields told him, “Anthony has no money, and he’s not going to be able to take care of his kids. A group of us should pitch in and do something for him.” It also was Meyer who tells Vanity Fair that he and Pellicano subsequently spoke, “[and] he gave me a list of people to call.” VF reports that the list numbered 20 to 30 people, and was a Who’s Who of Hollywood power players, including Michael Ovitz and Jerry Bruckheimer. Several of them promised to contribute, but as word of the wiretapping probe spread, the magazine reports that all but the studio prez -- whom I'm identifying as Meyer -- and a producer -- whom I'm identifying as DeMann --dropped out. If you're keeping a scorecard, you'll remember that Meyer also visited Pellicano in prison.

Previous: VF: H'wood Raised $$$ for Pellicano Kids

My latest  column is headlined Screwing The TV Viewers: The CW network is the bastard child of The WB and UPN. To tease you, here's some of my scoop: How Les Moonves kidnapped The CW, won a negotiating advantage over Warner Bros. and seized sole custody of the netlet for business decisions and programming. Also, see this update: EXCLUSIVE: Moonves Manhandles "Reba"

"Sure, all those press releases back in January claimed CBS and Warner Bros. were supposed to be equal partners parenting the new bastard child of The WB and UPN networks. That’s how The CW got its lame name — 'C' for CBS, which owns UPN, 'W' for Warner Bros. What no one dared mention was how right from the beginning Moonves out-maneuvered Barry Meyer, the chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment, and Bruce Rosenblum, the president of the Warner Bros. Television Group. The Warners duo had been warned over and over to build in every safety clause they could think of to prevent the 50-50 partnership from becoming the 'Les Network' instead of the 'Can’t Win Network,' as wags now refer to it. Instead, they rolled over. 'The deal should have been pretty straightforward. After all, no money changed hands. But Moonves was more aggressive. On tiebreaker issues, Barry and Bruce were folding every negotiation to Les,' a Warners insider tells me. The result, the source explains further, is that 'we were willing to trade a more valuable asset much more easily than we generally do at Time Warner given that we were bringing better stations, more successful programs and way higher revenue to the table.'

Now Moonves has used his negotiated advantage to de facto seize sole custody of The CW. I’m told 'everything, every business decision, every programming decision' has to go by Les. Moonves and Nancy Tellem, the president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group, are together programming the 13 prime-time hours — yes, that’s all CW is giving you for its September launch. 'Even Bruce acknowledges at this point that Les and Nancy run the show. This is basically a CBS takeover,' sources tell me. 'Everything on UPN will have first shot at coming back.'"

More from my column: Orgasmic Over Les? CW Screws Underserved TV Audiences

Photo: from left to right, CBS Corp.'s Les Moonves, Warner Bros. Entertainment's Barry Meyer and Tribune Co.'s Dennis FitzSimons announce The CW deal.

My latest  column is headlined Screwing The TV Viewers: The CW network is the bastard child of The WB and UPN. Here's what I say about CW programming:  

"It’s important to note that the vast majority of moviegoers can’t discern any difference in product after Universal Studios was sold to NBC, MGM/UA gobbled up by Sony, and Pixar bought out by Disney. But viewers of The CW won’t get to see UPN’s two separate nights of African-American-oriented programming (because that’s been halved) or The WB’s many family-friendly prime-time shows (because they’ve been axed). So two underserved network audiences who embraced the netlet duo will soon be served even less. That’s horrendous since it comes at a time when black, Latino, Asian and other minority faces are as rare on network TV as smart sitcoms.

Also dispiriting is the way that The CW cherry-picked the two netlets’ affiliates in major and minor TV markets around the country. That leaves those orphaned WB and UPN stations to subsist on syndicated shows, which are programming’s nutritional equivalent of pork rinds. When I pointed out how much worse the network landscape will be for viewers because of the above, one of the executives involved in the deal demonstrated that special sang-froid network suits reserve for any discussion about the airwaves being a vehicle for the public interest instead of just a wheelbarrow for corporate profits. 'As a business move, it was the smartest [for] our company to make,' he told me. That’s because execs at CBS and Time Warner greedily expect The CW to be profitable in its first year."

My latest  column is headlined Screwing The TV Viewers: The CW network is the bastard child of The WB and UPN. Here's what I say about TV execs:  

"Everyone loves Les. Fortune just sucked up to him. The New York Times Magazine recently smooched his ass. And Bill Carter’s new book, Desperate Networks, should be sharing royalties with the CBS president/CEO because it’s told entirely from his sexed-up point of view. Indeed, few media groups are more doting and docile when it comes to The Powers That Be than television critics and reporters (except for, perhaps, the White House press corps). The reason their reportorial foreplay with Moonves has reached orgasmic proportions right now is that the other network men in their lives are so obviously impotent. NBC hustler Jeff Zucker keeps blaming his own prime-time fuck-ups on his entertainment eunuch Kevin Reilly. Disney pimp Bob Iger can’t escape his biggest mistake: losing his hard-on for Susan Lyne, the ABC Entertainment programmer responsible for Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, and replacing her with Stephen McPherson, who hated Lost. The Fox guys deserve only sloppy seconds in terms of coverage — which leaves the TV press lusting after Les instead of mooning Moonves under headlines that tell the naked, and awful, truth about him. Here’s mine: 'Moonves Kidnaps Netlet and Harms Underserved Network Audiences.'”

My previous column on Moonves from February 5, 2004: Les Should Be No More

So everyone and their mother wants to do a profile on the Pellicano prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel A. Saunders. But I'm told he won't even cooperate with the legal paper Daily Journal, and they profile judges, for chrissakes. I've also learned he doesn't even have an official bio ready. And I can't find an online photo of him to feature here. It's really astounding how this guy who has got Hollywood by the balls right now has avoided any personal publicity. (That rarely happens in this town.) Speaking of the Daily Journal, which unfortunately requires major moolah to subscribe to even online, staff writer John Hanusz has a not-very-surprising but seriously earnest story that the Justice Department and the FBI are pissed about those leaked memos quoted in two New York Times stories. Those memos were about interviews given the FBI by L.A. grocery (and soon to be newspaper?) billionaire Ron Burkle, Paramount Pictures boss Brad Grey, and Hollywood bad boy Michael Ovitz. Saunders notified the U.S. District Court judge in the Pellicano case, Dale S. Fischer, that her order to keep the memos confidential was violated -- get this!-- a week after those same memos were turned over to defense attorneys. Pellicano's lawyer Steven Gruel strenuously denies he was the leaker. Well, we already know from Washington D.C. news of late that the DOJ doesn't tolerate leaks to the press these days (as long as it's not the White House doing the leaking, eh?) Oh yeah, subpoenas are definitely in the futures of NYT's Pellicano probers David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner. I'm baking cakes with saws hidden inside for them.

Re Pellicano press: NYT reporters may be going to jail, Vanity Fair has a juicy article coming out next week (I got advance copy of it this AM here), the Daily Journal is scoring some scoops, and all the Los Angeles Times can come up with this week using three of its reporters is ... Chris Rock and some model? Spring Street is way behind.

Previous: NYT vs LAT: Scoring the Pellicano Fight

I woke up at 6:30 AM to find an advance copy of the latest Vanity Fair Pellicano article in my email. It's juicy! So I began posting about it right away to give you a sneak peek. By special correspondent Bryan Burrough and contributing editor John Connolly in the June issue of Vanity Fair, it hits newsstands in NY and LA on May 3. Here are the highlights:

VF: Brad Grey Used Pellicano for Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, and the late Chris Farley

VF: Pellicano Almost Became Jew for Bert Fields

VF: Ovitz Was Pellicano's Most VIP Client

VF: Brad Grey Wanted to Replace Sopranos with "Pellicanos" When Gandolfini Walked

VF: H'wood Raised $$$ for Pellicano's Kids

VF: Pellicano's Wiretap War Room: "We Could Do Anything We Wanted To You"

VF: "310" Easiest Wiretap for Pellicano

VF: IRS Debt Almost Shut Down Pellicano

UPDATED: VanityFair.com link, Inside Hollywood's Big Wiretap Scandal

In a series of interviews with Vanity Fair, Tarita Virtue, Pellicano’s former executive vice president, describes in detail what has been called “the secret heart of Pellicano’s business,” a small, locked office that held his elaborate wiretapping set-up that he referred to as the “War Room.” Virtue says that only she, Pellicano, and Kevin Kachikian—a computer programmer who created software to intercept telephone calls—had access to the room, whose only furnishings were five Macintosh computers lined up and a row of filing cabinets. Pellicano and Virtue alone had codes to use the Macs.  
Kachikian’s software, which included a program called “Telesleuth,” could graph a recording’s volume, Virtue says, so Pellicano could go directly to a conversation in which a voice was raised—oftentimes the signal that something emotional was being discussed.
 
Wiretapping gave Pellicano ready access to a trove of personal info, including credit-card numbers and secret passwords. “We had anything we wanted,” says a former employee. “We could do anything we wanted to you.”
 
To cover up his own indiscretions, Pellicano re-doubled his security systems to safeguard the War Room. There were security cameras throughout the office, and internal doors could be opened only with pass codes.
 
According to Vanity Fair, Pellicano’s wiretapping apparatus had been described in detail for the F.B.I. nearly a year before the incident in which he harassed reporter Anita Busch. According to several sources, Sarit Shafrir had been in cahoots with men who used Pellicano, and she had personally heard some of the wiretaps. When the men allegedly threatened her and her family, she was so afraid of Pellicano’s capabilities that she flew to Israel to place a call to the FBI in Los Angeles. She met with an agent in August 2001 at the public library in Beverly Hills and told him everything she knew about Pellicano. According to a person familiar with this situation, the agent scribbled down everything she said, but as she waited for a raid on Pellicano’s offices in the coming months, nothing happened. According to Vanity Fair, skepticism regarding the charges against Pellicano at the FBI was probably influenced by the perception that Pellicano was in some ways “one of their own.’’

Pellicano feared he might lose his business after he received $2 million from Michael Jackson (as well as a Mercedes) for spearheading his defense against that molestation charge in the early 90s. After Pellicano reported only $1 million of the payment to the I.R.S. as a loan, he received a notice from the government. An employee tells Vanity Fair: “I remember one morning when he opened his mail with the letter from the I.R.S., he jumped on his desk and started screaming, ‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship! We’re out of business!’ Women were crying and screaming in the office. Fortunately, Rich DiSabatino was in the office and pulled him aside and calmed him down. I understand it took him a few years to pay off the I.R.S.”

Vanity Fair reports that Pellicano's operation had one drawback: the Macs could receive wiretap recordings only from their own 310 area code. To tap phones in the 323, 213, 626, and 818 area codes, Pellicano had to rent an apartment in each area code where he could stash a Macintosh and a detachable hard drive. When one of these computers was used, Pellicano would switch out the hard drive every few days, bring it to his office, and download the recordings.

A former Brillstein-Grey executive tells Vanity Fair that manager/producer Brad Grey admired Pellicano so much that when James Gandolfini briefly walked off the set of The Sopranos in a salary dispute, Grey -- the producer of the series -- considered replacing the hit HBO drama with a show based on Pellicano’s life.