Stand Up to Cancer announced this week that their concert last Friday – simulcast on three networks – tipped their donations over the nine-figure mark.
How do you raise $100 million for a foundering cause? Get a group of girlfriends mad. It helps if they’re as connected as Katie Couric, former head of Paramount Sherry Lansing, Academy Awards producer Laura Ziskin, Disney-ABC prez Ann Sweeney and Lisa Paulsen, head of the Entertainment Industry Foundation.
“We just all opened up our Rolodexes,” Paulsen told us.
It started when Ziskin met TV producer Noreen Fraser in a chemotherapy room, where both were getting treated for breast cancer. Ziskin, who’s produced movies from “Pretty Woman” to “Spider-Man,” said, “Enough is enough.”
“It’s frustrating that we’ve lost the war on cancer – 1,500 Americans a day die of it,” Ziskin told us. “We are at a moment when we actually have the tools to master it, but not the resources. That is so unacceptable.
“Katie and I wanted to do something, as did [philanthropist] Ellen Ziffren. We were all doing different projects, but we decided to pull together. We all met and said, ‘Let’s combine our resources. Among us we all know … well, everyone basically.’”
L.A. Reid and Babyface stepped up and wrote an anthem performed at the show. Sheryl Crow and Melissa Etheridge performed, and hugged fellow breast-cancer survivor Christina Applegate in a moving moment onstage.
“We split the atom. We went to the moon,” sums up Ziskin. “Every one of us in America has either had cancer or been close to someone who has, including our presidential candidates. We can tackle this.”
So where will the $100 million go?
The women are going to insist that scientists do what they did – collaborate.
“No more competing for funds or doing research just to write a paper,” Ziskin tells us. “And take what we already know – which is a lot – and develop treatments from that knowledge. And some of the money is going to go to out-of-the-box thinking. We’re just getting started.”
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Katie Couric’s ex is finding a second chance at love with a billion-heiress
According to West Coast spies, TV producer Tom Werner is dating Alexandra von Furstenberg – the Miller sister who was married to Diane von Furstenberg’s son, Alexandre, until he left her for 19-year-old Ali Kay. If the new couple stay together, it could be the wealthy version of “The Brady Bunch,” as they both bring several children to the equation.
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Anchors team up for cancer
Former TODAY co-host and anchor of CBS’ “Evening News” Katie Couric, NBC’s “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, and Charles Gibson, anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” announce a TV special to raise money for cancer.
Could Katie Couric be returning to NBC?
That was the buzz yesterday morning after NBC boss Jeff Zucker was spotted climbing out of his black SUV on a visit to Couric, who left the “Today” show to anchor “CBS Evening News,” at her East Side apartment. But don’t hold your breath. A friend of Couric told Page Six, “Jeff and Katie have been friends for 20 years. He asked her to get a Mother’s Day gift for his wife, Caryn, and picked it up on the way to his daughter’s play.”
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Katie Couric Rocks Out
THE crowd at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza on Saturday night was surprised to see Katie Couric rocking out to opening act Me Talk Pretty with her boyfriend, Brooks Perlin. “This woman seemed to really be happy to be there and nobody seemed to bug her,” said one witness. “I didn’t see any bodyguards or security even. She was like just another chick at a rock show.” Couric, who was seen later talking to the band at the merchandizing booth, didn’t stay for the headliners, the all-girl tribute band Lez Zeppelin.
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Bon Appetit Supper Club and CBS News Anchor Katie Couric Host Dinner For The Feature Film “Kite Runner”
Katie Couric with actor Shaun Toub
Phyllis George
Lou Reed
Fran Drescher
Katie Couric and her sex life is the subject matter of a new book, reports to Star Magazine. Katie Couric is painted as hoochie who slept with married men in order to climb the ladder to the top.
Star Magazine reports this week that, in the unauthorized biography Katie: The Real Story, author Edward Klein talks about a cold calculating woman hidden behind Katie’s perky TV personality.
The book presents a rather scathing portrait of the woman known around the world as “America’s Sweetheart.”
The book insinuates that Couric slept her way to the top, that she’s a shrewd and calculating businesswoman, ambitious to a fault, who routinely put her career ahead of her marriage to the late attorney Jay Monahan. Critics are calling the book a hatchet job, but fans say it does a good job of unmasking Couric for who she really is, reports FOX News.
“Yes, it can be said that Katie tried to sleep her way to the top,” Klein tells Star. “Both men helped her achieve some degree of professional success.”
The alleged affairs were all suspiciously short-lived, says Klein: “Any emotional attachment on Katie’s part did not appear to be particularly strong, since she left both of them and moved on!”
Star Magazine reports that Katie, “After landing her first TV news job at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, Couric dove into a steamy affair with a married, considerably older CNN exec. They were spotted “making out.” Klein writes that the exec saved her from getting fired many times. Katie ditched the CNN honcho when she accepted a job at an NBC affiliate in Miami in the mid-1980’s.
The report also details that once in Miami, Klein claims that Katie quickly lined up another high-profile lover, a 12-years-older, married, dad-of-two who was a media spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Klein was on the Big Story yesterday, here is a partial transcript.
“EDWARD KLEIN, AUTHOR OF “KATIE: THE REAL STORY”: Thanks for having me.
JARRETT: I almost finished it. You portray her, I think it’s fair to say, as domineering, manipulative, calculating, prima donna, and I’ll give an example or two in just a moment. But I kept thinking as I read this that if a man had done what she had done we would be applauding him as strong and clever and driven, perfectionist. So, in a way, are you kind of drawing a sexist double standard?
KLEIN: I hope not. I like writing about women because I think women are more interesting than men, more multi-dimensional. But in Katie’s case, I don’t think it’s because she’s a woman that I described her in the terms that you just did but because from an early age she had this single vision of achieving a goal and everything was secondary to it.
JARRETT: But we applaud men for being like that.
KLEIN: I don’t unapplaud her for this.
JARRETT: All right. Well, it’s not complimentary the way you do it. For example, Chapter 17, opening line on page 139: “Katie had never hesitated to make use of men who could advance her career.” You repeat the line almost verbatim then on page 153. Look, I mean, my point is, don’t men do that and doesn’t everybody do that? It’s called networking, positioning. It’s smart business.
KLEIN: Yeah, well the fact of the matter is that Katie, as a young woman starting off in the business, in fact did sleep with a married guy who was in a position to help her get ahead.
JARRETT: Now there are some who deny that, that he was already divorced at the time.”
Star Magazine has a lot more on the book in this week’s print edition.
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