Was Harvey Weinstein so furious with Page Six’s report about Sharon Stone’s amfAR antics that he bum rushed every other gossip in the industry asking for a counter attack?
That’s what we’ve been hearing since the Post’s item ran on Saturday, which chronicled Stone, who hosted the event, which raised $10 million, crawling into Diddy’s lap to discuss his crack budget and spending hours on “self-indulgent commentary.”
Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company helped underwrite the event, scored at least one coup: Fox 411’s Roger Friedman battled back against Page Six, as we discussed earlier today, defending Stone’s hosting abilities. Nevermind that Friedman and Weinstein are friends, and part of the gossip’s Cannes column was spent talking about the film Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which Weinstein’s company will be distributing abroad.
Bless any celebrity that takes on the unenviable task of entertaining the wealthy and powerful at a charity event in an effort to raise money for a good cause. That’s what Sharon Stone did at the annual Cannes event for amfAR, the AIDS research organization whose capitalization nobody can quite get right, hosting the four-event auction that nabbed a cool $10 million, with an assist from Madonna.
But Stone’s method of scrounging up cash didn’t win everyone over.
A scathing Page Six report last week had a spy recounting her jokes about Diddy’s budget for crack and all the sob stories she told about herself. “Her whole speech was about her,” said P6’s source. “What she has done, how her crusade had affected her . . . all with the backdrop of dying kids on the screen behind her. Then, it was [bleep] this, [bleep] that throughout the whole auction. It was vulgar beyond belief … At one point she actually said one of the items from the auction could be hung from ‘your [beep] ring.’”
That didn’t sit well with Fox 411 gossip Roger Friedman. Which is why he’s on the attack today against Page Six’s report.
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Madonna helped amfAR raise $10 million (up $3m from last year) last night at its annual Cinema Against AIDS AmFar dinner in Cannes by auctioning off her diamond encrusted Karl Lagerfeld custom-designed handbag (including her lip gloss, lip balm, magnifying mirror, hair clips and lozenges, and, uh, used blotting paper), snagging about $1.5m, and a private two-song performance before one of her concerts, which grabbed about $600k. [Fox 411] More impressive, however, was that Madonna got Guy Ritchie to attend with her.