BACKLASH: You’d think JC Chasez was Howard Stern, with all the flak he’s taking for his debut solo album, “Schizophrenict.”
In February, he got booted from performing at football’s Pro Bowl in the wake of Janet and Justin’s Super Bowl stunt. Now the publisher of Schizophrenia Digest is upset at the singer for his CD’s cover, to say nothing of the title.
The cover features pretty boy Chasez tied up in a straitjacket. Schizophrenia sufferer Bill MacPhee tells msnbc.com’s The Scoop, “This sort of thing can lead to further stigmatization and stereotyping of schizophrenia sufferers.”
Chasez backed off immediately. In a statement issued through his rep, he told the New York Daily News, “I apologize to anyone I may have offended with the title and cover of my album. I took artistic license.”
CHILD’S PLAY: Jerry Seinfeld guards his privacy, but sometimes the funnyman can’t keep his personal life a total secret.
That was the case this weekend, when Seinfeld had to cancel a show in Spartanburg, S.C., to be with his 1-year-old son, Julian Kal Seinfeld. Julian had a fall and was hospitalized overnight Saturday.
No worries, though. Jerry’s rep says Julian is “at home and is doing very well.”
MEET STARSKY: Forget Hutch. Ben Stiller wanted to be more like Starsky.
“I loved ‘Starsky & Hutch’ and was very inspired, growing up, by [Paul Michael] Glaser,” Stiller said of the actor who played Dave Starsky on the series. “I thought he was so cool.”
So when Stiller agreed to bring “Starsky & Hutch” to the big screen, he knew which TV cop he wanted to play. As for Hutch, he had only one guy in mind: his “Zoolander” co-star Owen Wilson.
And the script? Well, that part didn’t have to be so inspired.
Stiller told the San Francisco Chronicle: “The idea was: We can’t reinvent this, so why not play it straight and let the irony of 30 years later be what it is?”
COITUS INTERRUPTED: Bad news for “Sex and the City” fans: Just when it looked like a movie was in the works, producer Michael Patrick King tossed in a monkey wrench.
King, who wrapped up the series Feb. 22, told an audience at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., that they’d waste their time waiting for a big-screen “Sex.”
“Nothing we did in the series was altered to save something for the movie,” King said. “This is exactly the way we wanted to end the series. We’re proud of what we did.”
Original reports indicated that King was working on a script. Apparently not.
LAST DANCE: Get the platinum watch ready for P. Diddy: He’s retiring.
Diddy says his upcoming album, “PD5,” will be his last, mtv.com reports.
“I don’t want nobody to just go crazy or nothing,” he said. “It’s not going to be as dramatic or traumatic as Jay-Z retiring.”
Diddy’s hard at work preparing for his Broadway debut in “A Raisin in the Sun.”
“I was saying the other day I would rather run another marathon,” Diddy said. “I never imagined how hard it would be and how hard it’s been,” he said. “I have so much respect for people in the theater. You can’t do 10 or 15 takes. It’s all live. It’s like life in motion.”
Uh, Diddy, life is in … oh, never mind.
STUMPING FOR A STOMPING: “The Lord of the Rings” is finished (until “The Hobbit,” anyway), but Elijah Wood doesn’t want to leave director Peter Jackson just yet.
Young Frodo wants to work on Jackson’s next project, the remake of “King Kong,” and he’s not being picky about a role.
“I just said I wanted to come down and visit and hopefully be allowed to be stomped on by a foot,” Wood tells Sci-Fi Wire.
Depp cover
Johnny Depp has always wanted to do his own thing.
In fact, Depp said in the latest Time magazine that he was so desperate to get out of playing ’80s heartthrob detective Tom Hanson on Fox’s “21 Jump Street” that he purposely wore odd clothes and spoke gibberish on the set.
“It was a weird thing not to be in control of your own image,” he said. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, when I’m free of this, I’m going to do only the things that I want to do. I’m going to go down whatever road I decide.’ “
That he did, picking his own scripts and playing a host of offbeat characters, most recently in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”
“All the amazing people that I’ve worked with–Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman have told me consistently: Don’t compromise. Do your work, and if what you’re giving is not what they want, you have to be prepared to walk away.”
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Compiled by RedEye news services and edited by Leo Ebersole (lebersole@tribune.com) and Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com)
