Gossip Should Have No Friends

[September 10th, 2008]

VAN SANT-OURAGE: Although WW couldn’t confirm this with the man himself, we’ve heard from a couple of reliable sources Portland’s own Gus Van Sant will make a cameo appearance sometime during Season Five of HBO’s hit bromantic comedy series Entourage, which started airing new episodes last Sunday. Whether or not he actually appears on the show, we can’t keep ourselves from saying, “Hug it out, Gus.”

WENDY CITY: Giving her first interview since the death of ex-fiance Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams told The New York Times on Sunday that shooting Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy in North Portland helped her recuperate from her breakup with the late Dark Knight star. “I didn’t stand out in that community,” she said. “It was this perfect safe haven.” Wendy and Lucy premieres later this month at the New York Film Festival.

QUIET RIOT: Speaking of small roles with tabloid-fodder movie stars, Jennifer Aniston’s latest film, Management, which was filmed in and around the Portland area last fall, had its world premiere last Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival. Aniston told AP Entertainment she loved “everything” about the film: “It’s a nice, quiet role.” Uh...what’s up with all this “quiet” and “safe” stuff?

BOO BASH: “ There’s a stereotype we’re an old hippie station, but there’s always new people getting involved at KBOO, ” says Toni Tabora-Roberts, outreach coordinator for the longtime community-radio station. She also organized the financially struggling station’s 40th-anniversary party last weekend. While it didn’t attract the throng of thousands that once jammed into Union Station for the annually infamous “Boo Balls” of the 1980s, between 300 and 500 loyal listeners joined staffers and volunteers for a Friday night block party that closed down Southeast 8th Avenue between Ankeny and Ash streets.

GO WEST: Moving yourself across the country is one thing, but moving an entire company and a rock band is another. Vidoop, a software and Web identity company from Tulsa, Okla., arrived in Portland last Sunday, Sept. 7, with 42 people, four RVs and five U-Hauls after a five-day caravan. And they documented the whole thing on their Oregon Trail video game themed blog (blog.vidoop.com/oregontrail). “We decided it would be the best way to keep everybody from calling every 15 minutes asking us how we were doing,” says Sam Alexander, a Vidoop Web programmer. Emigrant, Alexander’s rock band, tagged along with the company. Vidoop hired Australian tour guides to lead them as they attempted to reenact the popular kids’ educational video game. The tour guides apparently knew what they were doing, as nobody on the trip died of dysentery.