Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Is Rihanna off to Rihab?

Also in Tattle: A Playmate gets caught at the border, Miss Utah USA gets a second chance and James Franco wants your money.

MIGHT AS well face it, she's addicted to love.

According to Jezebel.com, RiRi is heading to Rihab.

Tattle doesn't believe we have ever sourced Jezebel previously, so this item should be read with a certain amount of skepticism, but the website says that Rihanna is taking a break from touring to check into the 2,000-acre Recovery Ranch in Nunnelly, Tenn., to participate in the love- and sex-addiction program at the Ranch's Center for Relationship and Sexual Recovery.

An unnamed source said Rihanna decided to get help because she just can't get over Chris Brown.

(Who leaked this story? Chris Brown?)

According to the Ranch website, the program "helps clients confront and eliminate secretive, destructive patterns of sexual and romantic behavior, while simultaneously addressing any past trauma or emotional-stability concerns, both of which lie at the heart of most intimacy disorders."

* Former Playboy Playmate Colleen Shannon, the mag's 50th-anniversary centerfold back in 2004, has admitted to helping her Canadian boyfriend after he illegally entered the United States in northern New York last summer.

Syracuse's Post-Standard newspaper reported that Colleen pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to a felony charge and faces a sentence ranging from no jail time to 10 months.

Federal agents say Colleen, who calls herself the world's sexiest DJ, and her boyfriend were arrested after he illegally crossed the border and met her in Fort Covington. Officials say the boyfriend has a criminal record in Canada and knew his record would bar entry into the U.S. He's in jail now and faces deportation.

* In other news featuring attractive women, Miss Utah USA Marissa Powell took another stab at the pageant question that brought her Internet punch-line infamy.

Powell appeared yesterday morning on the "Today" show to talk about her blank-eyed gaffe during Sunday's Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas.

She told Matt Lauer that she was confused by the three-part question, which mentioned that more women are becoming primary breadwinners but are earning less than men. It then asked what that said about society.

Powell's answer included several long pauses and the phrase "create education better" as co-host Giuliana Rancic looked on in shocked horror.

With Lauer, however, Powell used her second chance at the question to take the tough stance that unequal pay "is not OK." Emboldened, she added: "It needs to be equal pay for equal work. It's hard enough already to earn a living, and it shouldn't be harder just because you're a woman."

Funding Franco

Following crowd-funding campaigns from "Veronica Mars" and Zach Braff, James Franco is trying to raise $500,000 to bankroll a trilogy of movies.

That's right, a trilogy.

Franco on Monday night started a campaign on Indiegogo, a crowd-funding alternative to Kickstarter that allows people to keep the money they raise even if the project doesn't come to fruition. Franco isn't trying to direct the films; he's raising money so that a collection of young filmmakers can adapt his 2011 short-story collection, "Palo Alto."

"Because of who I am, people often believe that it is easy to find investors and distributors for my films," wrote Franco. "Unfortunately, things aren't that easy. More times than not, I have put in my own money to produce my films and my student's films. However, this time it's different. We need more funding, I will still fund part of it but I need your help, filming three feature films back-to-back requires more funding than I can give."

Franco pledges to donate any profits from the films to Art of Elysium, a nonprofit that encourages entertainers to visit seriously ill children. Levels of contribution range from $10 for copies of the screenplays to $10,000, which gets dinner with Franco and an executive-producer credit.

This new type of investing is wacky. The recipient of the money gets to keep it even if he doesn't do the project, and if he makes a mint off the project, no money flows back to the investors.

TATTBITS

* Ferrari-driving Justin Bieber ran into a photographer in Hollywood, but police say there was no crime and the injuries aren't life-threatening.

A police spokesman said Bieber's car collided with the person at 11:45 p.m. Monday on Sunset Boulevard.

* Violent pop-star drama isn't a U.S.-only thing.

Romanian prosecutors said yesterday they are investigating a claim by pop singer Alexandra Stan that she was beaten up by her manager-boyfriend Marcel Prodan, after a dispute over money, prompting a rare debate about domestic violence in this conservative Eastern European nation.

That needs to be debated?

Hey, if Miss Utah USA can come out for equal pay for women, Tattle thinks Romania can come out against domestic violence.

- Daily News wire services contributed to this report.