Hollywood Beltway

Michael Jackson’s infamous nanny has flown to London to try and stop the sale of her TV interview.

Grace Rwaramba, sources say, is begging international pay-for-play TV packager Daphne Barak from selling the interview they did two days before Jackson died.

Barak is famous for landing big “scoops” by allowing her subjects to participate in the lucrative TV sales of her interviews. On May 29, Rwaramba announced that she was starting a charity to help — vaguely — people in need around the world. Presumably, whatever money she made from the interview would help launch World Accountability for Humanity, with offices in the center of high-priced Beverly Hills.

Rwaramba was fired by Jackson a few weeks before he died. She did several interviews with Barak, all showing her bitterness about the situation. In the process, she sold out her employer of 15 years. If Jackson had lived to see the interviews, he would have been devastated by this last act of disloyalty.

Pieces of the interviews are up on Barak’s website.

But now Rwaramba has had a change of heart. Since Jackson’s death she’s worked her way into his parents’ home in Encino, and re-enlisted herself as the nanny. She’s disavowed the Barak interviews, and, insiders say, convinced Katherine Jackson she was somehow used by Barak.

The reality, however, is that Barak now has international buyers for the full interview, and the whole thing will be shown on TV soon. Barak has never had trouble selling to American TV — her pieces have turned up on all three major networks and Fox — so the chances are we’ll be seeing it soon.

For Rwaramba, the truth of her complicity in Michael Jackson’s downfall should come as a shock to the Jackson family. As I reported here yesterday, plenty of witnesses saw that during the 2005 child molestation trial she had a cot at the foot of Michael’s bed in Neverland. There was also IV equipment in the room. Jackson appeared in court nearly every day to be out of it or stoned, certainly subdued. He was often late for court and twice went to the hospital instead of showing up.

By the way, on Barak’s website she’s placed an email message she received from Rwaramba after they completed their talks.

“Daphne, I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I will say it again, Thank you from my heart. Am so humbled and greatful [sic] for the opportunity to get a way and breathe nd clear my mind. I count this as a blessing thank you. for allowing God to use you to bless me. This is an answer to my prays. I pray that god will show me a way to make you understand my gratetude.”

Trailer for Joel and Ethan Coen’s ‘A Serious Man’

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Adam Arkin. Scheduled release: October 2, 2009.

Dirty Dancing Cinemash - Channing Tatum, Charlyne Yi (via amberislazy)

Michael Jackson’s family still wants his money and changes in his will. They won’t respect the former King of Pop’s decisions to keep them all out of the role of executor.

This week, Katherine Jackson has filed to be made “Guardian of the Estate,” a role she was not assigned in the will and probably won’t get.

The estate’s executors say they’ve tried to be open with Mrs. Jackson about various elements of the estate. One of these is the contract Michael signed with AEG Live. Originally, the Jackson family claimed that Michael didn’t know what he was signing, that he didn’t know he was supposed to perform 50 concerts. The suggestion was that AEG had somehow duped him.

Alas: according to the executors, they’ve agreed to show Mrs. Jackson the contract as long as the terms remain confidential. This is per AEG, which doesn’t need its terms available for perusing by rivals like Live Nation.

The Jacksons apparently want the whole thing kicked open, perhaps hopeful that something in there will give them a shot at a civil case against AEG. They will be disappointed. Michael knew the terms of the AEG contract from Day 1, as they say. And 50 shows spaced over seven or eight months is minor compared to most rock tours — especially since they were all in the same place.

Consider this: the Rolling Stones, all between 15 and 20 years older than Michael Jackson, are on the road most of the year. They may be performing somewhere now and we don’t know it! Last year, Tina Turner, also a generation older, did a world tour in which she danced and sang like she was 20.

While the minute details of Dr. Conrad Murray’s movements are being combed over, there are other people in Michael Jackson’s life who probably should be examined for their roles in his death.

Sources tell me that during Michael’s 2005 child molestation trial, his nanny and aide-de-camp, Grace Rwaramba, kept an IV drip at his bedside. Rwaramba slept in a cot at the foot of his bed.

It’s unclear what was in the IV, but considering what’s come out since Michael’s death, it’s not too much of a jump to think that Rwaramba was giving him Propofol. The singer started using the powerful anesthesia at least in the early 90s, administered by a variety of people.

What makes this 2005 scenario remarkable is that several of Michael’s brothers, including Jermaine, Tito, and Randy, all saw the IV drip and the cot. They discussed it at length, but no one did anything about it.

This may be because, as I wrote in June 2005, Jermaine had had a romantic relationship with the nanny. Michael never knew it.

But as I also wrote at the time, Jackson had spent the better part of the five-month trial appearing in court as if he were stoned or sedated. His morning arrivals were always full of drama including one when he showed up in pajamas.

Now my sources conclude that Grace was putting Michael out and then waking him up in the morning. The story as I wrote it then was called “Is Jacko Cut Off From Family by Nanny?”

What’s striking about this is that several times during Jackson’s stay in Bahrain, Rwaramba was said to have returned to the U.S. alone. Insiders said at the time she was picking up Jackson’s prescription medications. No one knew what those were at the time.

Today, Rwaramba has, according to sources, installed herself at the Jackson home in Encino and is preying on Katherine Jackson as a kind of Rasputin. “She’s chewing Katherine’s ear off about the real Michael who only she knew,” says a source. “If only Katherine knew what Grace really did to Michael, she’d throw her out.”

Has Katherine Heigl made a terrible mistake?

The hot star — a sort of  Jennifer Aniston in training — finished the weekend with $30 million in the till for her comedy, “The Ugly Truth.”

The Robert Luketic comedy is on track for a nice $60 million-plus finish and a good afterlife on DVD and cable.

So what’s Heigl doing staying on “Grey’s Anatomy”? All year she kind of promised that her character Izzie was a goner. She had some kind of brain tumor and a romance with a dead guy who was just a hallucination.

But then Heigl and “Grey’s” announced she was coming back. That Izzie isn’t was, but an Is.

Isn’t this the point when George Clooney got off “ER”? Wouldn’t Ellen Pompeo like a chance to be the star of her own show?

Maybe after some disappointments like “27 Dresses” Heigl got nervous about crossing over to film and decided to retreat. She may have thought “Knocked Up” was a fluke. But after “Ugly Truth’s” first weekend, it sure looks like she’s got some kind of career in big screen romantic comedies — and maybe even more.

On the other hand, maybe she knows something we don’t: her next film won’t come out until June 2010. It’s called “Five Killers” and even though it’s a Luketic film, her co-stars are Ashton Kutcher and Tom Selleck.

One-sheet for New York, I Love You (via IMP Awards)

Previously: NYILY trailer

Zach Galifinakis' Visioneers is now available for rental or immediate screening on Netflix.: Check his site for info on screenings near you or how to put on your very own Visioneers screening. 

There is nothing more to say.

This is a shock: all these years, we thought only Michael Jackson’s father, Joseph, hit his kids. He’s talked about “beating” them as a method of discipline many times.

But now the Family Court in Los Angeles, considering who gets custody of Michael’s three children, may be interested in reading Katherine Jackson’s 1990 autobiography, “My Family, the Jacksons.” What Katherine wrote with Richard Wiseman should be of some interest not only to the court, but to Debbie Rowe, mother of the two eldest children, as well.

“Nowadays when you spank a child a bit too much, the public calls it child abuse. However, I favor corporal punishment—even for a fifteen year old. God knows that when I misbehaved as a teenager, my mother didn’t hesitate to take me to the woodshed.”

This would be alarming enough considering that all three children—Prince, Paris, and Blanket—are all under the age  of fifteen. But Katherine also writes, on page 40 of the paperback edition:

“I believe that children should be made to fear misbehaving, to think, If I do this, or don’t do this, I’m going to have to answer to my mother or father. (Italics from the original.)

Katherine concedes that she rarely spanked her children. “Usually they were good around me, and, since I have a mild temper anyway, it took blatant misbehavior to get me angry.”

However—and this may be vitally important to the Family Court—she continued:

“Joe, by contrast, was excitable. Occasionally I felt that he hit the kids too hard, or too long. In those circumstances I would ask him to ease up.”

Katherine recalls different instances of how Joe Jackson would terrorize his children. He actually made them drink Castor oil, and often put on Halloween masks and broke into their rooms through the window. “Each time the kids ran thought Joe was a burglar, and ran screaming into the living room.”

Joe Jackson’s actions against his kids isn’t pleasant, but it’s also not surprising. What is shocking, however, is Katherine Jackson’s attitude. “One thing I can’t stand, ” she wrote, “is a sassy child.”

For Paris, who’s 11 and clearly speaks her mind, Prince, who’s 12, and just hitting puberty, and Blanket, 7, and just realizing he’s an orphan, these certainly could be ominous words.