Hollywood

A young and witty speechwriter for an eloquent but exhausted president escapes a struggling White House and stodgy capital city for Hollywood, where he beats the odds to find fame and fortune writing comedy for more bankable stars. So might read the script treatment about the aspirations of Jon Lovett, an Obama speechwriter and the reigning champion of official Washington's stand-up comedy circuit. In mid-September, Lovett, 29, plans to leave the administration to write for television out west.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Paynter won the $63,866 feature at Betfair Hollywood Park by 4½ lengths Friday in his return to racing after a nearly 11-month layoff because of serious health issues. Ridden by Rafael Bejarano, who had five winners on the card, Paynter ran seven furlongs on Cushion Track in 1:21.86 and paid $2.80, $2.20 and $2.10 as the 2-5 favorite. It was his 4-year-old debut for Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. Paynter had been sidelined with laminitis and colitis since winning...

STARDUST By Joseph Kanon Atria. 516 pp. $27.99 WP BOOKSTORE In "Stardust," Joseph Kanon does a noir take on a noir time and place: Hollywood in the late '40s. There's an image-within-an-image effect here that evokes the hall-of-mirrors shootout in " The Lady From Shanghai . " The threat of TV, of anti-communist witch hunts and of legislation that will divorce the studios from their coffer-filling theaters have Tinseltown on edge. So frightened, treacherous people make films about frightened, treacherous people.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Golden Itiz won the $59,552 feature by 1¾ lengths at Betfair Hollywood Park on Thursday to snap a nine-race skid. Ridden by Hall of Famer Mike Smith, Golden Itiz ran 1 1/8 miles on Cushion Track in 1:50.77 and paid $12.60, $6.60 and $3.60. The 6-year-old hadn't won since July 10, 2011 at the same track. Saint Loup returned $5.40 and $3.60 in his first start in the U.S. on a synthetic surface. Rousing Sermon was another head back in third and paid $2.40 as the 17-10 favorite.

Could it be that the conservative culture warriors who portray Hollywood as a cesspool of moral bankruptcy have been right all along? Not really. But in the case of Roman Polanski, the puritan scolds definitely have a point. Even the French government has backed off its defense of the fugitive director. Polanski, who has dual French-Polish citizenship, fled the United States in 1978 before he could be sentenced on a charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles. He spent the past three decades mostly in France, and officials in Paris reacted...

The only way the film industry can survive, according to entertainment lobbyists, is for Congress to pass a series of escalating, alphabet soup laws. I'm referring to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 and the recent attempts by the entertainment industry to push sister anti-piracy bills — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the Senate and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the House — into law. These pieces of legislation assume guilt on the part of content consumers while simultaneously erasing...

Milton Ebbins, a well-connected show business manager who was a liaison between Hollywood and the Kennedy White House, died March 4 of a heart ailment at the Motion Picture & Television Fund retirement community in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 96. Mr. Ebbins was a well-liked Hollywood insider who directed the careers of actors, musicians and comedians. For more than 30 years, he was the personal manager of actor Peter Lawford. Through Lawford, who was married to Patricia Kennedy, a sister of John F....

We're live at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood for EconCeleb , w here nearly 200 people are spending a beautiful afternoon indoors talking about the economics of celebrity content. We're not streaming live?we will be posting the videos as quickly as possible?but we do have chat via Meebo if you have any questions you want to send our way. The schedule is here.

Think of "The Fall" as a film snob's "Indiana Jones. " A rapturous valentine to cinema's roots, this visually dazzling evocation of matinee heroes and mythmaking fancy by turns plays with Hollywood's most cherished conventions and worships art for art's sake. It's a weird and often wonderful journey over the rainbow, featuring the screen's most captivating Dorothy since Judy Garland. In this case, the character's name is Alexandria, played in an enthralling debut by the young Romanian actress Catinca Untaru.

Kirk Cameron was once one of Hollywood's babies, the spunky, handsome teenager who starred in the 1980s hit "Growing Pains," and whose picture was taped inside many a schoolgirl's locker. But now, Hollywood scolds and even mocks Cameron who, at 41, is a vocal evangelical Christian, and, in the view of many of his fellow celebrities, kind of a jerk. Cameron's more recent acting and directing projects almost always carry a deeply Christian message, and he knows he is now the darling of only a certain segment of America.

The Hollywood Reporter's list of its 10 best stories of the week: WHAT AMAZON'S VIACOM COUP MEANS FOR NETFLIX Analysts see a viable streaming option from Jeff Bezos, whose company snapped up thousands of episodes of "SpongeBob Squarepants," ‘'Dora the Explorer," ‘'Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom 2. " http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spongebob-dora-jersey-shore-what-565835?AP HOW TO GET FIRED: NIGEL LITHGOE'S ‘AMERICAN IDOL' GOODBYE ANALYZED Workplace politics specialist Ben Dattner on the nuances in the...

In John Kelly's June 9 Metro column, " Thanks to the magic of Hollywood, there's a little bit of Washington in Cleveland ," Leslie Green of the District's Office of Motion Picture and TV Development emphasized security concerns as a reason why network television and features do not film here more than they do. Security is not the issue holding Hollywood back. It's money. The District lacks the competitive tax incentives for film and television production that Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Louisiana,...

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Unusual Hottie won the $90,370 Redondo Beach Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths at Betfair Hollywood Park on Sunday, giving jockey Joe Talamo his leading seventh stakes victory at the spring-summer meet. The 4-year-old filly ran a mile on the turf in 1:34.59 and paid $8.80, $4.40 and $3 as the 3-1 favorite. Customer Base returned $6.80 and $5.40, while Sugarinthemorning was another neck back in third and paid $5 to show. Unusual Hottie has seven wins in 14 career starts and earnings of...

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Tale of a Champion beat favored All Squared Away by a length to win the $200,250 Charles Whittingham Memorial Handicap at Betfair Hollywood Park on Saturday for the biggest victory of his career. Ridden by Joe Talamo, Tale of a Champion ran 1¼ miles on the turf in 2:01.27 and paid $22.40, $7.20 and $5 at 10-1 odds. He had been no better than fifth in five previous stakes races. "I think we've misplaced this horse before and he hasn't had the...

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Wednesday won the $54,000 feature at Betfair Hollywood Park by 1¾ lengths Thursday. Ridden by Rafael Bejarano, Wednesday ran 6½ furlongs in 1:17.84 in her Cushion Track debut and paid $5.40, $2.80 and $2.10 as the 17-10 favorite. Gifting returned $3.60 and $2.20, while Corlett Drive was another head back in third and paid $2.80 to show. Wednesday has two wins in seven career starts and earnings of $109,940. She's been worse than third just once. Copyright 2013...

NEW YORK — Google says in a new study all the online searching and trailer-watching moviegoers do ahead of a film's release can have significant predictive powers at the box office. The search company on Thursday published a "Quantifying Movie Magic" study that surveyed 99 of the top-grossing films of last year. Google says that four weeks before a film is released, search volume for its trailer can predict its opening box office with 94 percent accuracy when factoring in...

If you know "A Fish Called Wanda," you know Maria Aitken. The English actress played the wife of John Cleese's character in that 1988 movie; now, perhaps fittingly, she's at the Shakespeare Theatre Company directing an "As You Like It" that routes the Bard through Hollywood. Of late, her own career has veered sharply toward the theater. A longtime fixture of the London stage, she arrives in Washington as director of the international hit " The 39 Steps . " That spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller is going strong on London's West...

Washington, New York and Hollywood held their annual schmoozefest Saturday night, and the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (#nerdprom on Twitter) showed new evidence of being completely overrun by red-carpet-posing actors, singers, sports superstars, models and other outsiders who couldn't possibly name the ranking Democrat of the House Ways and Means Committee, much less its chairman. Actor Michael Douglas, who has played a U.S. president and spent time...

NEW YORK — The day after the Tony Award nominations were announced, Annaleigh Ashford stood smiling in a Times Square hotel's event space, cheered by the sight of all her fellow honorees gathered together. Wandering nearby were Stephanie J. Block and Patina Miller, Laura Osnes and Danny Burstein, Condola Rashad and Will Chase. Off in the distance were Victoria Clark, Amy Morton, Kristine Nielsen, Tracy Letts and Valisia LeKae. Ashford, dressed in a velvet romper and enjoying her first Tony nod...