Familial Fracas!

What's up with raging Ryan O'Neal and his crazy clash with son Griffin? Tatum tells...sorta! And why's Lindsay Lohan out hitting clubs, coffee shops and every other place in Hell-Ay when she's supposedly sobering up in rehab? Someone's got some 'splainin' to do...

It was at a party a couple of years ago. Margaret Cho’s pad in here in Hell-Ay. Lots o' sex-ay, leather-lovin’ badasses everywhere. Cho was busy getting spanked (ever so politely, as company was present in the boudoir) by her too-accommodating b-f. Booze, grub, frolicking everywhere. A woman in dark threads and slightly furrowed brow approached me.

“Are you Ted Casablanca?” she asked, rather seriously. 

“Yes,” I answered, thinking the woman looked rather familiar, but not quite placing her.

“I’m Tatum O'Neal,” she said evenly. “And I saw the True Hollywood Story you did on my family.”

I then prepared myself for the worst. Quite honestly, I thought I was about to be hit for the first time in my career (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s thugs did, indeed, shove me up against a heat lamp at a party once when they didn’t like my questions to the Schmuckanator, but that was just getting pushed, very hard).

After all, even though I’d never heard of Tatum throwing punches herself (hadn’t had a chance to ask John McEnroe about it), I had, after all, just blabbed all over E!’s airwaves about what an incredibly effed-up, combative looney-toon fam that Ryan O'Neal clan was.

“I just wanted to tell you what a great job you did,” Tatum gushed. “You got it down. It was really how it happened.” 

“Thank you,” was all I could think to say, because, in actuality, I had just verbally brutalized her family for being so brutal to each other, including all the fist-throwing, drug-taking, headline-conniving and backstabbing, par excellence. Glad to have helped!

So, now, Ryan’s accused of shooting at his son Griffin this past weekend in Malibu. Par for the course, babycakes. I mean, this is a family-unit (what a joke!) that fights its battles in public—look at how publicly Ryan and ex honey Farrah Fawcett dealt with not only their own battles, cancers and affairs, but with their son’s drug counseling, as well—via the press. (Better than any movie anybody in that family’s been in for ages, fer sure).

It’s what they do best.

So, you don’t think Ryan wanted just a little bit more hideously dysfunctional PR-ese, which he’s highly addicted to, among other things, thrown his way?  Count on it.

At the Directors Guild Awards last weekend, Jennifer Hudson was positively gushing over her Dreamgirls helmer, Bill Condon, whom she was rooting for, big time. “I don’t think I’d have been able to get through had Bill not been the way he is. I’m in the movie with all these all-stars, and I would have been most intimidated by him...He’s the best.”

Nice that Ms. Hudson thinks so, but evidently the Academy did not—as they passed B.C. over, 'course. I asked Jen-hon if it rained on her parade at all that he wasn’t nominated, too. “Yeah, it's bittersweet," she fessed, "because he worked so hard, and he really put his heart into it, but I'm a product of him, so I feel like it's our celebration all together."

That’s the spirit, sister! Little Miss Sunshine director Jonathan Dayton expressed similar sentiments. “Bill Condon is a really great guy, and Dreamgirls is a worthy picture,” he said of the left-out sitch. “Who knows how five pictures get chosen? Because there are so many great films that deserve to be in that final five.”  Like yours, for ince, which did happen to make the cut? 

And as for poor Mr. Condon, he lost at the DGAs to oft-nominated-
but-never-winning (until now) Martin Scorsese. Bet Marty could tell him a thing or 10 about being snubbed.

Despite her highly publicized trip to rehab, it seems Lindsay Lohan hasn’t learned her lesson. She’d already been raising eyebrows with her frequent absences from Wonderland to get coffee, go shopping at Dior and attend 12-step meetings, so as to try to maintain some semblance of sober living, or whatever. (I mean, I have absolutely no idea what this woman is thinking or if she’s even thinking at all.)

When she dropped out of the future project A Woman of No Importance (featuring the too-fab Annette Bening) to reportedly focus on getting better, I thought she might finally be getting serious about getting healthy. But just days later, L.L. proves everyone wrong by hitting Les Deux and Area. Honestly, Linds, do you really think it’s in your best interest to hit boozy bars and clubs when you’re trying to stay sober?

And then there’s the TMZ reports that Mike Tyson, also currently getting treatment at Wonderland, is popular with fellow patients and has received no special treatment whatsoever, unlike L2.  

When you’re making Mike Tyson look good, you know it’s bad, Linds.  

What she needs is a serious, tough love type o’ program. We’re talking intensive, inpatient, ongoing treatment with lockdown and no cell phones or java jaunts. Until then, her recent rehab stint seems suspiciously like a poorly executed PR campaign. 

Oh, and girlfriend, what’s with continually allowing camera crews to film your fellow meeting-goers at these anonymous gatherings you attend? Feel like breaking the anonymity of all your sober brethren just because you need some good ink? 

Why not strike a deal with these media folk and get them to cover some damn nude-painting gallery opening you attend later on? Ask the paps to let up on ruining it for everybody else—famous and not—trying to get their anonymous crap together, huh? Think about it.