Hollywood Reporter is doing some solid work today, catching up with Eileen Bowman, an actress who, in 1989, played Snow White opposite pre-sex scandal Rob Lowe in one of the most disastrous Oscars musical numbers of all time. It was an especially interesting read for me, since I’m too young to remember the number in question (older I get, the more I enjoy saying that). But I’m including the longest video of it I could find. My God, it’s so painful. It goes without saying, but there was a lot of cocaine going around in the late eighties.

The campy live number, arranged and conducted by Marvin Hamlisch, was as over-the-top as the man who masterminded it, Grease producer Allan Carr, a bombastic Hollywood oddball famed for wearing caftans and hosting debauched parties at his disco-equipped house in Benedict Canyon. (That residence, Hilhaven Lodge, is the current home of Brett Ratner, leading some to joke that the place is cursed, at least where producing the Oscars is concerned.)

The bit featured background actors dressed as stars with black leggings and Merv Griffin singing about coconuts, for 15 minutes, even longer and more painful than an SNL cold open these days. Just how bad was it?

Carr was uniformly shunned at industry canteen Morton’s the following day. Disney, which then had no stake in ABC, was furious over the unauthorized use of its copyrighted version of Snow White and filed a lawsuit against the Academy. And 17 Hollywood heavyweights — among them Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews and Billy Wilder — signed an open letter deriding the telecast as “an embarrassment to both the Academy and the entire motion picture industry.”

This is at an event for an organization that invited Billy Crystal back to host last year. You can imagine how bad a bit would have to be to inspire an open letter.

[Bowman, during the audition process] Our first stop was Allan Carr’s house. I remember his swimming pool had pink water in it. He had a 30-foot Oscar outside his door and auditioned us in a robe. The other girl and I looked at each other thinking, “What is happening?”

My dress was bought for $23,000 by someone involved with the production who was buried in it. It was a man. I’m leaving it at that.

[The next day after the Oscars] My phone never stopped ringing. It was awful. All I can say is what Rob Lowe said, “Never trust a man in a caftan.” [THR]

Anyway, it’s a great read, and I’d definitely urge you to check it out. I’d like to think Brett Ratner has since had Allan Carr’s pink disco pool filled with nacho cheese. Disco pool —> Crisco pool.

"Eh, oh, I got ya poison apple right heah!"

Hollywood’s pulling a Dante’s Peak/Volcano with us in early 2012 when it releases two Snow White movies within a few months of each other. Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman stars Charlize Theron as an evil queen who’s deathly jealous of Kristen Stewart’s beauty, which does tend to stretch the bounds of credulity. Meanwhile, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror seems to be much less concerned with sword fighting and magic, and much more concerned with lavish costumes and foppish dandies. Julia Roberts plays the queen, jealous of ingenue Lily Collins, who, in addition to being Phil Collins daughter, has gnarliest eyebrows in all the land (she comes from a magical place called Armenia), and likes to rock out to Bollywood dance numbers. Soft rock royalty or not, mean old Julia isn’t about to be upstaged, so when Armie Hammer, the WASPiest prince in all of New Haven shows up, uh… some other stuff happens. Like with dwarves and junk. Exciting!

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Snow White Fever has hit Hollywood, with two (possibly three) Snow White movies set to hit next year. One, Snow White and the Huntsman, stars Kristin Stewart as Snow White, has battle sequences, and will be one of the dumbest movies ever made, if the 15 pages of the script I made it through are any indication. Meanwhile, a batch of photos from the version Tarsem Singh directed just hit the web, and say what you will about Tarsem Singh’s movies (I actually really liked The Fall), his visuals are always “off the hook,” as the kids like to say.

However… it’s possible he may have overstylized this time. Snow White looks like she raided Björk’s closet, and on the next page you can see the new seven dwarves, Napoleon, Frenchy, Cowboy, Beardguy, Spaniard, Caveman, and the Asian. They look like a bit like Cirque Du Soleil’s take on the Village People.

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Perhaps no story encapsulates as many of the current trends in studio filmmaking as well today’s news that Phil Collins’ daughter Lily will play Snow White opposite Julia Roberts and Armie Hammer in Tarsem Singh’s Snow White movie (not to be confused, of course, with Kristen Stewart’s Snow White movie, or Channing Tatum’s Peter Pan movie).  The decision caps off a season in which the new coolest things are children of celebrities and gritty reboots of fairy tales.  It was a move you could practically see coming in the air tonight.

Lily Collins, the daughter of singer Phil Collins whose breakout role came as the daughter of Sandra Bullock’s character in The Blind Side, has been tapped to play the coveted role of Snow White in Relativity Media’s modern retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the company said tonight. She joins Armie Hammer as Prince Andrew Alcott and Julia Roberts as the evil queen in the Tarsem Singh-directed feature, which has begun preproduction ahead of a planned May shoot. The film already has a release date: June 29, 2012. That’s before a competing Snow White project — Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which stars Kristen Stewart in the title role alongside Charlize Theron. [Deadline]

This should be good.  Lily Collins is a girl that’s been on my mind all the time, and Relativity is one of my favorite su-su-studios.  I hope to see this one more night, provided no jacket is required. Yep, Phil Collins jokes.  That’s what I’m bringing to the table here.

(“Hey, bro, is your refrigerator running?  Yeah, well.  It’s been running through my mind all night.”)

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was lame and sh*tty and still made a billion dollars, so why not another fairy tale adaptation?  A lot of blow and bad decisions, yadda yadda yadda, Brett Ratner is producing an “edgy” take on Snow White.

Relativity Media has made a preemptive acquisition of The Brothers Grimm: Snow White, an edgy 3D re-imagining of the German folk tale written by Melisa Wallack.
The Brothers Grimm: Snow White will be produced by Bernie Goldmann, Ryan Kavanaugh and Brett Ratner, with Tucker Tooley exec producing.

What a coincidence, “Tucker Tooley” was Brett Ratner’s nickname in Hebrew school.  Hey, Rat Man, do that impression of a hilariously cliché, Hollywood dipsh*t you do.

“This is not your grandfather’s Snow White,” Ratner said.

Beautiful, brother.  You are so talented.

“Melisa went back to the 500 year old folk tale and put in some of the things that were missing from Walt Disney’s film. His dwarves were miners, and here they are robbers. There is also a dragon that was in the original folk tale. Walt made one of the great movies of all time, but ours is edgy and there is more comedy. The original, made for its time, was soft compared to what we’re going to do.”  [Deadline]

YOUR SNOW WHITE WAS SOFT, GRANDPA!  MEET THE NEW DWARVES, JUNKIE, SKULL TAT, AND NOT A FAG!  You want comedy?  Knock knock, who’s there? DRAGONS, F*GGOT!

Keep in mind, at this point Brett Ratner is only co-producing.  And in Hollywood, the actual job duties of a producer vary widely.  Though in this case, I think it’s pretty safe to assume they mostly involve “expressing asinine opinions with your mouth full.”