Scott Rudin has won the so-called "EGOT," a distinction we would like more if it had a better name.

Gloria Steinem is pleased that Sarah Jessica Parker will play her in the Linda Lovelace movie, as she's a big Sex and the City fan.

The Times's website ran two pieces on television in Putin's Russia, both by former Russia correspondent Alessandra Stanley.

Steven Spielberg came to the Saturday Night Live after-party for some reason--perhaps he's a big Zooey Deschanel fan?

“It is a true privilege for all of us at Jujamcyn to bring such a fiercely provocative and wildly funny work to Broadway audiences. Clybourne Park is on. We’ll see you there!”

Scott Rudin (Getty Images)

The New York Times reports that film and theatrical Scott Rudin (currently nominated for an Oscar) has left the upcoming Broadway production of Clybourne Park because the play's author left Mr. Rudin's own TV project. The tangled webs we weave! Bruce Norris, who won a Pulitzer for writing Clybourne, acts as well, and had been in negotiations for a role in Mr. Rudin's TV-series adaptation of The Corrections before choosing Pulitzers over Emmys. The Times indicates that Mr. Rudin's withdrawal of support casts the spotlight upon producer and theater owner Jordan Roth--who is wealthy but may also be risk-averse when it comes to shouldering more of the financial burden.

Eugenides.

Scott Rudin has bought the film rights to Jeffrey Eugenides' bestselling novel The Marriage Plot, reports Deadline Hollywood. That's right: not HBO! So who will play which part? James Franco as Leonard Bankhead, right? And Jeffrey Eugenides' vest as Mitchell.

Harbach.

Chad Harbach, n+1 editor, novelist and now "consulting producer" has been snapped up in HBO's general raid on everyone in New York City who has written a book. Variety reports that Scott Rudin will executive produce Mr. Harbach's novel, The Art of Fielding, for HBO. The novel about a college baseball team in Wisconsin comes out in September.

Blogger Sarah Weinman has a list of HBO-optioned books up that is littered with New York-based writers: Lipsyte, Egan, Shteyngart and surely there are more. We hope they all follow in the footsteps of George R.R. Martin and sell millions of books.

Canada-bound director Madonna. (Getty Images)

September's Toronto Film Festival--not the most glamorous or eagerly awaited among the film festival circuit, but the one whose placement in the calendar tends to position Oscar front-runners, has announced some of this year's lineup. Films to play in Toronto include Glenn Close's woman-in-drag drama Albert Nobbs, Luc Besson's Aung San Suu Kyi drama The Lady, and the Michael Lewis adaptation (produced by last year's Oscar also-ran Scott Rudin!) Moneyball. George Clooney, the biennial Oscar contender, will be represented as director (The Ides of March) and actor (The Descendants).

Crossing the highbrow/lowbrow rubicon, Madonna's second effort as a director, W.E., will be there as well, in order to capitalize on Wallis Simpson fever (the last big film to feature Wallis Simpson, The King's Speech, screened at Toronto before winning the Best Picture Oscar.)

The full list of announced Toronto films is here.

ddaddario@observer.com

Though he was traveling in the fancy part of the warhorse 767, Mr. Rudin kept it casual in a nearly knee-length gray golf shirt—one might call it a power tunic—and mom-style baggy jeans, both of which accentuated his generous girth and uneven beard. The Transom also noticed that the producer had “priority access,” and was able to board way before a nice young lady on crutches.

Mr. Rudin, whose latest project is Margaret, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan and starring Anna Paquin, was accompanied by an attractive, Sam Talbot–esque young man in a white V-neck T-shirt and with a head of messy dark curls. Post-flight, the young man waited patiently by the baggage claim with another guy, but Mr. Rudin had disappeared.

Heather Locklear "walked drunkenly through a California supermarket" before her arrest for driving under the influence. Also, the person who reported her to 911 is a former US Weekly staffer--clearly, she has retained her scandal spotting instincts. [R&M]

Howard Stern had a dull bachelor party at Nobu, possibly because he has finally gotten tired of strippers. Also, he's old. [P6]

Sharon Stone, who just lost physical custody of son Roan, once suggested Botox as a solution to the boy's foot odor problem. Ex-husband Phil Bronstein thought plain old wearing socks with shoes and deodorant would do the trick. (He was right.) [US Weekly]

The famous pink paint is peeling off of Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi in the West Village. [Curbed]

Greenpoint hangout Studio B will reopen tonight after a run-in with the Buildings Department. [Brooklyn Vegan]

Supporting evidence: "Of his many tomes, only a few have made it to the big screen to date."

Few here means five. Those five are, in order of release:

• The 1969 adaptation of his "breakout novel"—actually just a long short story—Goodbye, Columbus, which we learn here was "well-reviewed."
• 1972's Portnoy's Complaint, which was "panned by critics."
• 2003's The Human Stain, which cost $30 million to make but earned only $25 million at the box office.
• 2008's Elegy, based on The Dying Animal, which earned $1.7 million in its first 25 days of release.
• The forthcoming American Pastoral, currently in production.

Which is to say, Portfolio thinks Indignation will be a failure based on the fact that one Roth adaptation, released more than 30 years ago, was poorly reviewed and another lost money.

The explanation for this trend? First, that Roth's novels are full of "unsympathetic" characters—sound familiar?—and are written in an "off-putting" "postmodern" style, and thus are really hard to make good movies out of.

Q.E.D., except that even if that observation were anything like true, it would be unequivocally irrelevant to Indignation, which is one of Roth's most traditional, straightforward novels ever, both in terms of narrative structure and the substance of the plot. Really, it's the story of a Jewish boy from Newark who goes to college and gets sad because of girl stuff.

OK, so maybe that is a little too out there for Hollywood. Maybe if Apatow got on board?

In the New York Times' Michiko Kakutani's March 8 review of Lush Life, she wrote that "it is a novel that gives us a wide, 3-D Imax portrait of a small corner of New York City (the Lower East Side of a few years ago, at that hinge point in time, when young hipsters were beginning to push out the immigrants and the working poor), a novel that captures Manhattan’s magnetic appeal to dreamers and drifters, and its ability to crush the weak and unlucky and turn their dreams into disappointment and rage."

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