Will Ron Howard
change the color of evil?

Will Ron Howard and “The Da Vinci Code” vilify the pigmentally-challenged?

In the monumentally best-selling novel, the evil monk Silas is an albino, and now that Ron Howard is turning the book into a movie, groups representing people with the pigmentation disorder are pleading with the Academy Award-winning director not to make the monk an albino. The National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation has been writing Howard and his company, Imagine Films, with their pleas since February 2004, but say that so far he hasn’t responded.

“Ron Howard and Imagine can make a big difference for people with albinism  . . . if they adjust the Silas character to not be an evil albino,” according NOAH president Mike McGowan, who adds that movie-makers’ penchant for continually depicting albinos and bad guys “does real harm to real people.”

“To keep that character with albinism perpetrates a stereotype that is pretty tired,” Dermatologist to the stars Vail Reese tells the Scoop. “It’s something you would expect from a B-movie, but not something I would expect from an Academy Award-winning director like Ron Howard.”

Howard’s rep didn’t return calls for comment.

Not so crazy after all

Julien Behal / Getty Images

Here’s one small reason that the budget for “Alexander” was so high: Val Kilmer kept flubbing his lines so that he could spend more time shooting scenes with mega-babe Angelina Jolie. The Oliver Stone flick, which is estimated to have cost more than $150 million to make, has been a critical and box office flop.

“My role consisted mostly of sharing a bed with Angelina Jolie and throwing her around in it, which is about as much fun as it is possible for a man to have,” Kilmer said, reports Sky News. “Don’t tell her or Oliver Stone this, but when we were doing the really sexy bits, I kept messing up my lines on purpose. I would get right to the end of the scene and then mess up the last bit so we would have to do it again. I spent four months doing that all day and someone paid me millions of dollars for the pleasure.”

Notes from all over

Dmitry Lovetsky / AP

Sir Paul McCartney has written the forward to a new book by Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: “Making Kind Choices,” which comes out this week. “I was sitting with [his late wife] Linda eating a dinner of roast lamb and watching the sheep that lived in the field outside our window,” the ex-Beatle writes. “Seeing the lambs running up and down the field with such joy made us question the wisdom of eating such beautiful creatures.” . . .  Engaged mogul Donald Trump has these romantic thoughts about why men should get married. “A recent study found that wedded bliss keeps you healthy. . . . Now, I have to admit that marriage does have some stresses. There are usually some disagreements over money or how you’re going to discipline the children or if you’re even going to have children at all. But it’s really minor stuff, relatively minor compared to being lonely, being hungry, not feeling good or not having anybody to take care of you.” . . . Fat Joe says that marijuana isn’t his drug. “I tried it one time and it was just terrible. I got all paranoid. It wasn’t fun. So I don’t smoke pot,” the rapper tells the February issue of Stuff magazine. Instead, sneakers are his addiction. “My latest thing is just any Jordans or any Air Force 1’s.  I try to get the rarest things from overseas, or maybe the throwbacks, the old collectors’ items.  I actually got scouts around the country. But my house looks disastrous because of all the sneakers.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop Monday through Thursday at MSNBC.com.

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