James Hirsen
Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Her father was a famous actor and her mom a Vogue model.

She herself became a top young fashion model but eventually turned away from the wealth and glamour to become a bounty hunter.

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Her life inspired a movie, but before the film could be released she was found unconscious in the bathtub of her West Hollywood apartment.

She was brought to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The autopsy never did reveal what had killed her.

Prior to her death, she was arrested in Mississippi in a drug-trafficking incident and was awaiting trial.

The probe into her death continues to this day.

Her name is Domino Harvey, daughter of famed actor Laurence Harvey and his third wife, Vogue model Pauline Stone.

Harvey was a major star in the late 1950s and early 1960s, earning an Oscar nomination for his role in "Room at the Top" (1959) and playing a brainwashed potential assassin in "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962).

The upcoming movie on her life (planned release date August 19) is fittingly called "Domino" and stars Keira Knightley ("Pirates of the Caribbean"; "King Arthur"). Also included in the cast of the film are Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken and Jacqueline Bisset.

Domino reportedly made a cameo appearance.

At a recent Los Angeles memorial service for Domino, Rourke fought back tears as he told attendees that "something in both our characters mirrored each other. We were the same kind of people. I met her to do research for the film role. She was fun, lively, and charismatic. She would ring me up, or I would ring her up, and she would say, ‘Come on, let's raise hell,' and we would go out for a few drinks and talk the night away." 

The movie's writers had genuinely rich material to draw from.

Domino was born in 1970, her father having had an affair with Pauline Stone during his second marriage. After divorcing, Harvey married Pauline just before his own death from stomach cancer in 1973.

Domino's mother went on to marry owner of the American Hard Rock Café chain Peter Morton and moved to Hollywood.  

While growing up, Domino managed to get expelled from four public schools in England. She eventually caught the eye of the elite modeling agency Ford.

After a successful career climb, Domino left the catwalk behind, choosing to work a variety of jobs that included running a nightclub, working as a ranch hand and serving the public as a firefighter; all this before settling on a profession seemingly more suitable to her personality, that of bounty hunter.

As a bounty hunter, she tracked down hardened criminals who had skipped town while awaiting trial.

Reportedly, she was once involved in a shoot-out and helped arrest the leader of a notorious L.A. street gang.

The Left Coast Report believes the LAPD could use a few folks like Domino to throw the L.A. gangs a curve.
 

 'Da Vinci Code' Film's Christianity Problems

Execs at Sony must be elated that they've got the film rights to Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code."

Theoretically, the flick has a better shot at blockbuster status, since it's based on a work that's been on the bestseller list for 117 weeks and sold over 25 million books in 44 different languages.

Inconveniently for Hollywood PR, though, Brown's novel makes the following claims:

• Jesus is not God; he was only a man.
• Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
• Mary Magdalene is a goddess and should be worshipped.
• Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a daughter.
• The Bible was put together by a pagan Roman emperor.
• The Gospels have been altered to support the claims of Christians.
• Mary Magdalene was directed to establish the Church.
• The Catholic Church is aware of all of these things and, in order to keep it secret, has resorted to murder.

Christians have voiced their displeasure with Brown's book. Although the Louvre, home of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, gave permission to director Ron Howard to film there, Westminster Abbey gave Howard a firm rejection, referring to Brown's book as "theologically unsound."

Some high-level voices of the Catholic Church's hierarchy have weighed in, with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, in unequivocal terms telling Roman Catholics not to read the book.

The blatant anti-Christian content hasn't stopped celebs from seeking a part in Howard's film adaptation of the book, which is slated for release in May 2006.

During the publicity tour for "Cinderella Man," Howard revealed that he'd had an enormous amount of interest from big-name actors who wanted to star in the movie. He ultimately picked Tom Hanks for the lead role.

Hollywood has been known to alter the content of a book when bringing it to the big screen, so the question remains: Will Sony and Howard attempt to alleviate the anti-Christian overtones of Brown's book before it hits the theaters?

Actually, the New York Daily News reports that screenwriter Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind"; "Cinderella Man") is busy mitigating some of the anti-Catholic themes. One of the mitigations purportedly involves reducing the role of the Catholic organization Opus Dei.

Apparently, Sony and Howard are distancing themselves from Brown's conspiracy theory, which claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their child fostered a line of French kings.

The Left Coast Report suspects that Brown really believes a secret sect left clues within famous works of art so that boorish novelists could find them, write about them and sell lots and lots of books.

Tom Cruise-Brooke Shields Feud Gets Political

Do you think that their publicists told them to milk the moment?

That's the way it looks in the bizarre rhetorical feud that's taking place between Brooke Shields and Tom Cruise. It just won't seem to end.
  
Cruise recently criticized Shields for revealing that she had taken prescription drugs to deal with her depression after giving birth.

Shields apparently felt compelled to slam Cruise back and did so via an article in the New York Times.

"I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression," Shields wrote in the Times. "To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general."

Meanwhile the acting governor of New Jersey, Richard J. Codey, evidently felt duty-bound to defend the actress, taking a verbal smack at Cruise.

It seems that Codey didn't care for Cruise's comments any more than Shields did. You see, Codey's wife, Mary Jo, has had to deal with postpartum depression herself.

"Tom Cruise knows as much about postpartum depression as I do about acting, and he should stick to acting and not talk about women who need help," Codey said.

The Left Coast Report observes that, judging by his antics on Oprah, Cruise knows quite a bit about mood swings.
 

Anti-Moore Film Fest Set to Dog Michael Moore's 

Michael Moore has taken a page from Robert Redford's playbook and has set up his own version of the Sundance Film Festival.

He's calling it the Traverse City Film Festival, and the first opening is scheduled for July 2005. Moore lives near the festival town in northern Michigan.

The schlockumentary maker claims that his politics are not a factor in the selection of cinema for the debut event.

Included in the festival lineup are some non-Moore movie classics like  "Jaws," "The Princess Bride," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Casablanca."

Still, Moore has an array of flicks that are guaranteed to please MoveOn movie buffs.

For instance, "The Ax," "Human Resources," and "Time Out" have class envy themes; "Mondovino" focuses on globalization; and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" spotlights the Dems' favorite corporate crooks.

Movies that support Moore's view on the war on terror are also part of the festival fare, including "11 de Septembre" and "Gunner Palace."

And, of course, the Left's quintessential fantasy that contains their historical target du jour and stars Middle East pizza pie journalist Sean Penn, "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," is on the list.

Interestingly, some folks in the area plan on holding another film festival to counter the lefty propaganda that the robust Oscar winner routinely spews.

Jim Hubbard of the American Film Festival and American Film Renaissance tells me that his group is sponsoring the Traverse Bay Freedom Film Fest, which will exhibit films of the pro-America, anti-Moore variety.

Hubbard says that local residents who were seeking to hold a parallel event contacted his group and AFR happily stepped in to sponsor.

The Left Coast Report thinks that when it comes to conservative motivators, Moore is second only to a certain Chappaqua twosome.

Robert Redford Bemoans 'Celebrity Oriented' Press

Thanks to the adoring press, Robert Redford recently got to remind the world that he's not a reporter but played one in a film.

Redford, of course, was in the flick "All the President's Men," which co-starred Dustin Hoffman.

While receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Czech Film Festival, the Sundance CEO remarked: "There are deep similarities going on, but where is the press? Where is the press?"

The actor was chiding the news media for not pursuing a sequel to the investigation of Richard Nixon by launching a probe of President George W. Bush.

"There are strong similarities to what is going on, stonewalling, not telling the truth, getting people under wiretaps," Redford repeated to reporters.

Commenting on the Iraq war, Redford claimed that the U.S. public continues "to be told things that are not true and what worries me is that we have these brave young American guys risking their lives every day."

Watergate is in the headlines once again because "Deep Throat" has revealed himself to be Mark Felt, former No. 2 at the FBI.

So who better to ruminate about investigations than the Sundancer?

Redford went on to ponder the lack of investigative journalism these days. "The media have changed, we see the ethics have changed," he horse-whispered.

And he griped about how "the press is more, I am sorry to say, celebrity oriented."

The Left Coast Report points out that if the press weren't "celebrity oriented," Redford's deep thoughts would be confined to his private commode.