Author: rb809rb

Longevity guru Dr. Peter Attia is stepping aside as a contributor to CBS News, after correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and the researcher and health media personality came to light in the release of the Epstein Files from the Department of Justice.

CBS News staff were informed of the decision Monday in a note from the network’s booking department, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Attia told CBS that he would be resigning effective immediately.

Attia was one of a number of high-profile contributors that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss brought on as part of her planned overhaul of the network news division, seeking to bring more voices into CBS’ linear and digital coverage.

Shortly after that announcement, however, the embarrassing exchanges were released by the DOJ, many of which contained crude banter. CBS subsequently pulled a rerun of a 60 Minutes segment that featured Attia.

That said, Attia had been expected to remain a contributor to the network, with Weiss being a critic of so-called “cancel culture.” Of course, the Epstein emails damaged his reputation even if he personally did not engage in or know about any criminal activity, as Attia wrote in a note he sent to his team and his patients.

“I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me,” Attia added. “I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it.”

Attia’s name appears some 1,700 times in the 3 million Epstein documents released on Jan. 30. The bulk of the emails between Attia and Epstein are from the mid-2010s — after Epstein was convicted (in 2008) on a Florida charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under 18, but before a 2018 Miami Herald exposé on a host of allegations against Epstein and his second arrest in 2019.

The health and longevity researcher and author is one of many people with connections to Hollywood and the media business who were found to have known Epstein.

Once the domain of film students and YouTubers, crowdfunding an independent movie has now reached the upper echelons of Silicon Valley and American politics.

Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign, is attached as an executive producer on a feature film project that is being billed as a COVID-set satirical comedy. The project, titled The Rash, will center on a character, a public-health professor, inspired by Jay Bhattacharya, the current National Institutes of Health Director under RFK Jr., who was an outspoken critic of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown and later vaccination efforts.

Leading the apparent financing efforts is The Brownstone Institute, the Texas-based nonprofit founded by libertarian thinker Jeffrey Tucker, which was itself founded in response to the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent policy decisions. For its part, Brownstone notes that it is “well-positioned to be a fiscal sponsor of this effort” because the project “exists squarely within the purview of our mission.”

The announcement on Brownstone’s website says the story will take place during a health problem “that captures the public mind with contagious fear and loathing.” It continues: “This rash – real, imagined, or created – is viewed as a financial opportunity by dominant institutions on the cultural landscape. Among them is a pharmaceutical company with an off-the-shelf product called Zenvidia that seems to address the rash by making people forget all about it (with major side effects). Hilarity ensues as a Stanford public-health professor speaks out against the mania.”

Walter Kirn — the novelist behind the book Up in the Air, which later became the George Clooney-starring movie — is writing the screenplay. Kirn, himself a COVID policy skeptic, has already spent hours with Bhattacharya for research. Shanahan, who became a reported billionaire following her divorce from Google’s Sergey Brin, will exec produce with her partner Jacob Strumwasser.

There is a pitch deck and sizzle reel available via Brownstone’s announcement for interested investors. Wag the Dog, Thank You for Smoking and Dr. Strangelove are all listed as references for the project.

According to the pitch deck, The Rash has a prospective budget of nearly $6 million.

Jeffrey Epstein’s private island was filled with over-the-top amenities. A helipad for quick escapes. Its own dock for visiting yachts. Guest villas and swimming pools and an exclusive stretch of beach — not to mention that creepy dentist chair that nobody’s been able to explain. But it turns out there was one luxury indulgence he was never able to acquire: his own Imax theater.

According to emails that Rambling has unearthed from the Epstein files, the late billionaire sex criminal was drawing up plans to install a jumbo-screen theater on his Caribbean property. “We are pleased to provide this proposal for the following work, best described as 6 seat IMAX Theater for the Little Saint James residence in the US Virgin Islands,” reads one 2014 email from a New York-based company called House Systems, which goes on to describe “dual-projection 4K 3D technology,” “immersive surround sound” and “luxury automated seating.” The price tag: a cool $2.25 million.

Epstein didn’t close the deal, but he clearly couldn’t get the idea out of his head. Four years later, in 2018, he corresponded with a different Imax representative, this one offering a similar setup (including a “3 year VIP customer support line” with “24/7 365 service support”) for $2.3 million.

“IMAX is going to do a few drawings for us (got them included for free in proposal) that we can pass on to architects/contractors if we do design build,” the rep promised. Not long after, an email arrived with blueprints for the theater — schematics that included a 600-inch screen and two rows of three oversized seats. But less than a year later, Epstein was arrested. The theater was never built. 

***

Also in Rambling Reporter:

Sheriff Chris Nanos doesn’t just run the police department investigating Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance — he’s the brains behind A&E’s reality cop show ‘Desert Law.’ And a thorn in the side of right-wing media.

Why despite being a Sundance hit, Courtney Love is reshooting her documentary.

This story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

There’s a moment in Courtney Love’s new documentary, Antiheroine, when she declares that “no one gets to tell my story but me.” Apparently, though, that story remains very much a work in progress.

The doc — a candid stroll through her tumultuous life, from marriage to Kurt Cobain and their shared heroin addictions to tabloid infamy, sobriety and the mounting of what she describes as a final album — premiered at Sundance to rave reviews. “An overdue reaffirmation of Love’s place in rock history,” gushed THR’s David Rooney. 

Love herself, however, was a surprise no-show at the Eccles. A rep said at the time she “couldn’t make it.”

Within hours of the screening, though, Love surfaced in Los Angeles, checking in to the Chateau Marmont and wiping her Instagram before refilling it with a flurry of posts: a haircut with Sally Hershberger, dinner at Vespertine, a screening of Wuthering Heights at the TCL Chinese Theatre. Notably absent from her feed? Any promotion of the film that had just debuted in Park City.

So, what exactly is going on? A source reveals to Rambling that Love has been telling friends she’s unhappy with the movie and wants to recut it with new material, which is supposedly why she left her home in London and returned to L.A. But her manager — Crush founder Jonathan Daniel — disputes that framing. “The cut that went to Sundance was never intended as final,” he insists. “It’s actually the first edit of the film. We were surprised and flattered that they wanted to screen it, so we approved it being shown even though it was not finished.” 

All of which leaves Antiheroine in the unusual position of being both a Sundance hit and, apparently, a rough cut. “Courtney will always be unfiltered and may speak out of turn,” Daniel says, “but I can assure you she’s dedicated to finishing the doc and then promoting it when it’s out.” 

***

Also in Rambling Reporter:

Sheriff Chris Nanos doesn’t just run the police department investigating Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance — he’s the brains behind A&E’s reality cop show ‘Desert Law.’ And a thorn in the side of right-wing media.

A look at the one luxury indulgence Jeffrey Epstein was never able to acquire: his own Imax theater.

This story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

If the briefings in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case sometimes feel like reality TV, that’s because — in a way — they sort of are.

The man fielding questions at all those press conferences, Sheriff Chris Nanos, doesn’t just run the local police department that’s been investigating the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother — he’s the off-camera production partner for Desert Law, the A&E docuseries that follows Nanos’ deputies as they patrol more than 9,000 square miles of arid Arizona terrain. “Immersed in the pressure and danger of policing the desert night,” the show’s promo copy describes it, “the series captures a world where the spirit of the Old West still lingers and the fight for order never ends.”

Nanos himself doesn’t appear in the show — his choice, according to sources close to the series. But that could change next year — although those same sources say the possibility of the kidnapping becoming part of the plotline for season two has not yet been discussed. Still, over these past few weeks, since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, Nanos hasn’t exactly been shy when it comes to news cameras. 

After initially holding joint press conferences with the FBI, he has recently shifted to a series of more personal, one-on-one interviews — a strategy that has occasionally led to awkward exchanges, particularly while conversing with conservative outlets.

“Let’s just say he did not put out the welcome mat,” Newsmax’s John Huddy tweeted after his Feb. 18 sit-down with Nanos, during which the sheriff, a Democrat, brushed off what he sees as politically motivated criticism. “This isn’t an election campaign — that’s three years down the road.” Nanos’ Feb. 17 appearance with NewsNation’s Brian Entin wasn’t any friendlier. On his YouTube recap, Entin described the pre-interview moment when Nanos set the tone: “You have questions for me,” Nanos told him, “and I have questions for you.”

Of course, the stakes remain deadly serious: An 84-year-old woman is still missing. But when a sheriff whose department headlines a reality show finds himself sparring with reporters on MAGA platforms, it definitely feels like an unscripted star may have just been born.

***

Also in Rambling Reporter:

Why despite being a Sundance hit, Courtney Love is reshooting her documentary.

A look at the one luxury indulgence Jeffrey Epstein was never able to acquire: his own Imax theater.

This story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.