Quincy Jones: Steve Wynn Did Not Threaten to Kill Joe Francis and Bury Him in the Desert
/Here's something fun for a Friday! This is the opening paragraph of Yahoo's report on the on-going legal feud between Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn and Girls Gone Wild auteur Joe Francis:
"Music mogul Quincy Jones testified Thursday that he never told "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis that casino mogul Steve Wynn had threatened to kill the soft-porn producer and have him buried in the desert."
I think that may be the greatest sentence ever written... Kudos to Yahoo's Anthony McCartney! For the record, I have no desire to become gossip blogger, but sometimes the goings-on in the entertainment industry are so ludicrous that I can't help but report on them. According to this LA Times piece, Francis made the death threat accusation while fighting with Wynn over an alleged $2 million gambling debt owed to Wynn's casino. Francis further accused Wynn of plying him with prostitutes to keep him gambling in the hopes of luring high rollers to the casino. A Nevada judge awarded Wynn $7.5 million in a defamation lawsuit over that claim.
Anyone who has paid attention to Hollywood over the past decade knows that the entertainment industry is on the precipice. Movie ticket sales are down, the networks are hemorrhaging money because of technological advances in time and space shifting (i.e. DVRs, iTunes, iPad, etc.), and there are overreaching attempts by the major media companies to kill websites that display their copyrighted works. But I guess sometimes we all need a distraction from the bad news facing the industry. And who knows, maybe there's a killer movie in here somewhere. I say Zach Braff could play Francis and Laurence Fishburne could play Quincy Jones!
Who would you cast?