NO WORD ON IF HE'LL BE SCOLDED FOR USING NAUGHTY WORDS: Nathan Fillion's Twitter indicates that to promote both the second season of Castle and Heat Wave, the tie-in book written by "Richard Castle," he will be doing at least some book signings and tour, possibly in character as Castle. Gotta say, that's a pretty ingenious tie-in for ABC.

BON APPETIT! Judging from comments in the prior thread, there's some desire for a spoiler thread to discuss Julie and Julia, which I saw last night. I'm not sure we really need one, since there ain't much of a plot in the film, and the parallelism of the two women doesn't really work. However, I think reviews on this one show an age gap. Yes, the praise for Streep's performance is all well-deserved (as is the praise for the Streep/Tucci pairing, which is amazing), but I think there's an age gap evident in reactions to the Julie side of the film. Yes, Julie as a character is more than a little self-absorbed and narcissistic, but Amy Adams' inherent likability overcomes that. I also think those of us on the south side of about 35 see a lot more of ourselves in her, especially those of us who live day to day in the world of blogs and blogging.

WHAT MADE SAMMY RUN: Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run?, which Defamer calls the "only classic movie business story never to be adapted to the screen," died Wednesday. As is probably fitting, we missed it while we were buried under a tide of 80s movie nostalgia and I fixated on how much underbutt you could show at 8:00.

Let's be clear about something: What Makes Sammy Run is my second-favorite book about Hollywood, and the first (The Grove Book of Hollywood) is cheating because it's an anthology. I've read a bit about the controversy over whether Sammy Glick was the product of anti-semitism or just a garden-variety monster, but to me that fight misses the point. I loved Sammy Glick. He had a view of who he wanted to be and the world he wanted to inhabit, and he made it happen. If he wasn't that great a guy, so what? He was both more realistic and less troubling than the controversy made him seem, a close approximation of virtually every titan of industry who built, rather than inherited, his role. It is a literary injustice that "Sammy Glick" is an epithet and "[Roy] Hobbsian" a compliment.

As for why the movie could never get made, I think it gets made all the time. There are more-or-less faithful Sammy Glick reproductions all over the place. Ari Gold on Entourage is the most obvious, but you could find more than a little Sammy Glick in guys as different as Tony Montana and both Don Draper and Pete Campbell, for example. So What Makes Sammy Run doesn't really need to be made -- and let's all take a deep breath and thank our lucky stars that it never got made by Ben Stiller, who I believe once optioned it. No movie means that Sammy remains a perfect novel unsullied in our memories by an imperfect adaptation.

ETA: I guess I'm supposed to mention that he was a communist, then a HUAC testifying informant, and that he wrote On the Waterfront.

COME MY LOVE, I'LL TELL YOU A TALE: Up there with the films of John Hughes as a shared cultural memory from the 80s has to be The Princess Bride, which got a total of one Oscar nomination, for the original song "Storybook Love," where it was nominated against "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from Mannequin, "Shakedown" from Beverly Hills Cop II, and winner "I've Had The Time Of My Life" from Dirty Dancing. The song's composer and singer, Willy DeVille, apparently died last night of pancreatic cancer.

IF HE PUKES, YOU DIE: For some reason I do not entirely understand, some guy is hard at work building his very own Bill Paxton Pinball game.

NOW YOU KNOW WHAT'S AVAILABLE, AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE: It seems like there's something for everyone at the movies this weekend--mindless action in the form of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, horror/mystery in A Perfect Getaway, and summer chick flick Julie & Julia (which, based on reviews, seems likely to get Meryl Streep yet another Oscar nod) all in wide release, and some interesting indies--Paper Heart, the pseudo documentary starring Michael Cera and ex-girlfriend Charlene Yi about finding love in the modern world, Cold Souls, in which Paul Giamatti does the Being John Malkovich thing as "Paul Giamatti," an actor who sells his soul, and the widening of Asperger's Syndrome romance Adam. After a few weeks of studios opting out of releasing much (apparently out of fear of Harry Potter's strength), a pretty impressive slate of stuff. What's getting your entertainment dollar this weekend?

AND WHERE WAS L'IL C DURING A CHORUS LINE?: I won't spoil the SYTYCD results out here, but did want to reiterate both that Addiction was the best dance of the season and that Mia Michaels is by far the show's best and most consistently inspired choreographer.

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