Chelsea Handler Offends Serbia; Palin Movie Gets Diversity

Ray Gustini
Chelsea Handler Offends Serbia; Palin Movie Gets Diversity

Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: The new Sarah Palin documentary finds a strange screening room bedfellow, Chelsea Handler may have to apologize for her Serbia jokes and Ricky Gervais sells another project to HBO.

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  • Chelsea Handler is in hot water after she "ruthlessly attacked" Serbia for three minutes after she showed a clip of Amy Winehouse's ill-fated Belgrade performance on her E! show Chelsea Lately earlier this week. The comments have already spawned Facebook page with more than 15,000 likes calling for a boycott of Handler unless she apologizes. Looks like they might be getting one. According to page founder Filip Filipi, he is "in talks" with producers about an official apology and insists it will be coming "today or tomorrow." [The Hollywood Reporter]

  • Two very different crowds rubbed elbows Wednesday at Manhattan screening room Magno, with screenings of the Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated and a "new gay romance" called Weekend taking place "directly across the hall" from each other. "It was quite a dichotemy," said one attendee. Undefeated director Stephen Bannon said his film had "a cross section of supporters...including members of a group called Jews For Jesus." Bannon described the crowd for Weekend as "indie-scene, cutting-edge avant garde [types]...the downtown indie crowd." A Weekend audience member who peaked into the other theater says Bannon was "guarding the door to the Palin screening like a watchdog" and "pacing the hallway like a stalking lion. [Page Six]

  • HBO is back in the Ricky Gervais business, picking up his new comedy Life's Too Short. Steve Carell and Johnny Depp are rumored to be set for cameos in the show, a faux documentary that "follows Harry Potter‘s Warwick Davis as a heightened version of himself on a journey back into the spotlight." Filming begins later this year. [TV Line]

  • Fishbowl DC's Betsy Rothstein asked readers yesterday for an update on D.C. gadfly Ana Marie Cox, who has been noticeably silent on Twitter of late, and was told by "a source who cares for Ana" that the politics writer was "coping and dealing with personal and family issues." Rothstein graciously did not delve into specifics, other than adding that there is "no word on when she will return to Washington, other than the month of July, which she stated in her automatic email. Our source did not seem hopeful about this time frame." [Fishbowl DC]

  • French designer Azzedine Alaia didn't have much good to say about Chanel creative director Karl Langerfeld and Vogue editor Anna Wintour in a new, translated interview with Virgine magazine. On Langerfeld: "I don't like his fashion, his spirit, his attitude. It's too much caricature. Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life." As for Anna Wintour, Alai likes her business sense, not the authenticity of her style. "She runs the business very well, but not the fashion part. When I see how she is dressed, I don't believe in her tastes one second . . . Anyway, who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one." Reps from Chanel and Vogue had no comment. It's worth noting Alaia and Wintour have a history. In 2009, they fought after the Tunnisian-born designer "felt snubbed by [Wintour] at the Costume Institute's "The Model as Muse" exhibition [and] pulled dresses that his model muses Stephanie Seymour, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista were scheduled to wear to Wintour's Met Ball." [Page Six]