These days, special features and behind-the-scenes featurettes are an expected part of the movie experience. I know I'm not the only one who has held off on buying bare-bones discs, even if I loved the movie (like, oh, Kill Bill). The hows, the whys, and the real people behind the film are now a part of the experience, and maybe this is why a behind-the-scenes film of Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits is going on the auction block.

Jam! Showbiz reports that On Set with The Misfits -- two color reels of silent footage weighing in at 47 minutes -- will be auctioned off with bids starting between $10,000 and $20,000. It's being listed through Julien's Auctions, appropriately at Planet Hollywood in Vegas. It seems that Stanley Floyd Kilarr (an amateur photographer) shot the scenes during the making of Misfits -- which was the last completed film for both Monroe and Clark Gable. (Clark had his fourth heart attack soon after and died on November 16, 1960.) "The video shows the actors preparing for scenes, chatting with crew members and others on the set, and relaxing between takes."

The best thing about this is that while most of us don't have the cash handy to try and nab it for ourselves, we might still see it. The winning bidder owns the rights and can license it for public media like DVDs and documentaries.

Continuing our pre-coverage of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, above you will find the trailer for a documentary called Waiting for Hockney. I love docs about eccentric people, and this one definitely seems to be going in that direction: Basically, Waiting for Hockney follows a guy named Billy Pappas who graduates art school and decides that his mission in life is to reinvent realism. Thus, he spends the next eight years (yes, EIGHT YEARS) on a single drawing of Marilyn Monroe. It's his intentions to show a microscopic level of detail he hopes will reveal something deeper than photography. Literally, he hopes to create a new art form.

From the synopsis: "Aided, one might even say enabled, by an eccentric cast of characters including a clergyman, a professor and an architect calling himself "Dr. Lifestyle," Billy finally completes the portrait and then begins a quest to show it to renowned contemporary artist David Hockney, the one person he thinks can validate everything for which Billy has been striving." Waiting for Hockney was directed by Julie Checkoway and it will premiere later this month at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

She's done the DUI thing. She's done the rehab thing. Now, Lindsay Lohan is mounting her comeback by posing completely nude -- as Marilyn Monroe -- in New York Magazine. The photos are meant to re-create Monroe's famous 1962 shoot, shot by Bert Stern, called The Last Sitting. Says NY Mag: "But the pictures are also remarkable for the raw truths they seem to reveal. In them, we see an actress whose comedic talents were overshadowed by her sex appeal, a woman who is cannily aware of her pinup status, yet is also beginning to show her 36 years. In many shots, she is obviously drunk. This was an unhappy time for Monroe."

On why she wanted to pose for the fairly scandalous (and provocative) photos, Lohan said, "I didn't have to put much thought into it. I mean, Bert Stern? Doing a Marilyn Monroe shoot? When is that ever going to come up." There are 10 photos in the batch -- most of which feature Lohan semi-nude, or nude from the waist up, draping herself in some sort of fabric. You can check out the entire gallery over here -- though keep in mind (for those at work or in front of kids), she is definitely nekked in a few of the photos. What do you think about this one? Do you see Monroe in Lohan?

To see images from Stern's original 1962 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe, head over here.

Lots of pictures were taken of Marilyn Monroe -- it's one of the reasons she's still so well-known today. One of her foremost photographers was a man named Milton Greene, who took thousands of shots of Monroe, including the famous ballerina image. Now, years later, his son Josh is looking to sell his fathers images, and has run into a big, solid, Arnold Schwarzenegger wall. The Guardian reports that Greene is currently awaiting yet another ruling to see whether he'll be allowed to sell his dad's Monroe photos.

See, Arnie passed a "dead celebrities bill" recently, which "decrees that famous people, even those who died years ago, are entitled to pass on image rights to whomever they choose." Oh, so they mean a famous person can come back as a ghost and tell us who gets the rights? Sure, that makes sense. Why this hurts Greene -- Monroe handed most of her estate to her late acting coach, Lee Strasberg.

In the realms of law, this all seems sort of fishy, and it certainly throws a wrench into celeb photography. On the other hand, The Guardian does mention what sort of things the images have been sold for in the past -- when federal judges had ruled that he could -- products including sex oil and underwear. In the realms of taste, it's a bit questionable. He's not selling the image as a poster, in a book collection, or something Monroe-themed. Instead, sex oil. But this is a good lesson: watch out who takes your picture. One day, after you're dead, your grandkids might find your face on sexual paraphernalia.

Just when you think you've seen it all -- and just when you were sick of all these damn lists -- comes Film Threat's four-parter on the fifty best breasts (aka boobs, aka ta-tas) in movie history. Now they don't seem to target specific films and characters within those films; this is more of a fifty best breasts in Hollywood history, as the list centers more on the actresses -- the women -- than the roles they've taken on. My favorite part of this list has to do with the fact that they included YouTube clips featuring all of the actresses in their best, well, attire (my personal favorite has to be the clip for Chesty Morgan). Some of the clips are from films, others are these weird stalker-ish montages -- nevertheless, it's all worth a look.

By now you're probably wondering who made their list. Well, noticeably absent is Angelina Jolie (who I would've thrown on there, if only for that ultra-sexy Tomb Raider outfit). Earlier ladies include Mae West, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, Elizabeth Taylor, Jayne Mansfield and the lovely Sophia Loren. We also have a little of Raquel Welch, Tura Santana and Pam Grier. Some more recent ladies include Jennifer Connelly (and yes, they include video of the scene with her riding the horse in Career Opportunities), Monica Bellucci, Jennifer Tilly, Scarlett Johansson and Rosario Dawson (video from her Clerks II dance -- gotta love it!). And of course, how could they leave off those busty animated characters; Jessica Rabbit rounds out the list of fifty.

I should also note that this list was created to help raise awareness for the American Cancer Society, considering it's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So it's all for fun and a good cause; hopefully no one will be offended. That said, I've included the Chesty Morgan video after the jump because, quite frankly, it's all kinds of awesome. Do you agree with their list, or are there breasts women they left out? (Um, I'd like to be first in asking where Salma Hayek, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Carla Gugino, Eva Mendes and -- heck -- Lindsay Lohan are, just to name a few ...)

[via Hollywood Elsewhere]

This weekend marks the 45th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. Did she really commit suicide? Was her death an accident? Could she have been murdered? These questions have been asked for decades, but now a new documentary seems to have the answer: Robert Kennedy did it. Well, maybe not, but the then U.S. Attorney General was in fact at Marilyn's house the night she died.

The doc, tentatively titled Death on Helena Dr., features an interview with an FBI agent who was also there that night, though outside in a surveillance van, and he claims to have witnessed RFK and other men enter Marilyn's home, where they all screamed and yelled in the guest cottage. Apparently she may have been murdered in the cottage and then moved to the bedroom where she was discovered. I guess we'll have to watch the film, produced by Marilyn memorabilia collector Keya Morgan, to find out more.

I've been a longtime enthusiast of conspiracy theories, but I never could get interested in the Marilyn death stuff. I guess I just didn't care enough, and I didn't believe the motivation to murder a huge movie star was there. Plus, I always figured, and still figure, that even if Bobby Kennedy was around that night, she could have just overdosed after he left. It makes more sense for her to have taken her own life after getting whatever news she received (possibly John F. Kennedy's decision to break off their affair), rather than for her to have been killed because of whatever information she knew (about any number of other conspiracy theories).

Death on Helena Dr. seems to be anchored on the FBI agent's interview, but it will also include other testimonials from former L.A. Police Chief Darryl Gates, Jack Clemmons, who was the first cop "officially" to arrive at the murder scene the morning of August 5, Abe Landau, who was Marilyn's neighbor and a Beverly Hills detective named Lynn Franklin. Morgan claims his film will also offer new information on the assassination of Robert Kennedy, too. A release date for the documentary was not given.

Though Nicole Kidman and Marilyn Monroe have a few things in common (they're both blonde, they're both beautiful and they both act), I've never actually thought of one while speaking about the other. However, that will most likely change as 20th Century Fox has tapped Kidman to produce and potentially star in a remake of the 1953 Monroe classic How to Marry a Millionaire. I guess you can call the original a classic, as it helped launch Monroe to movie stardom; then again, I feel Kidman is a far superior actress ... so it's not like I'm going all "How dare they touch a Marilyn Monroe film!"

In the original, three beautiful women hole up in a New York penthouse suite with one goal in mind: to find three millionaires to marry. (I almost hate to say it, but if Anna Nicole was still alive, she would've been perfect for this.) Though a couple of the girls find their knight in shining armor, problems arise when they each fall in love with a guy who isn't a millionaire. So, what do you ladies do -- choose money or love? The Hollywood Reporter tells is that, while the plot for this remake is being kept under wraps, Fox does plan to overhaul the original story. Me thinks they'll probably cut it down to one female lead instead of three and -- I dunno -- maybe she'll own a website like SugarDaddy.com. Sacha Gervasi, who penned The Terminal for Steven Spielberg, will write the screenplay. When it comes to money or love, there are a number of different avenues to explore -- what do you think they'll do with it. And, is Kidman the right actress to play a role that originated with Marilyn Monroe?

It's been exactly one week since the not-so-shocking death of Anna Nicole Smith, and as the perspective baby-daddies fight to lay claim on a fortune that may never materialize, various media outlets are competing to tag the final footnote on a film career that never really happened. Jim Keough is one of several movie pundits to scoff at the media's insistence on setting Smith's story against that of her stated icon, Marilyn Monroe. "The comparison is unfair to Monroe," Keough writes. "Anna Nicole Smith will be remembered for her outsized proportions, her tabloid-friendly personal life and her erratic behavior, which included dozens of slurry interviews, but unlike Marilyn, she's light years from being iconic." It would seem that the bulk of Hollywood agrees; the L.A. Times reports that Smith's final film, a schlocky-sounding sci-fi flick called Illegal Aliens, co-financed by the wannabe-actress herself and co-written by Smith's late son Daniel, has been unable to find a theatrical distributor and will go straight-to-DVD this spring.

That's a far cry from the fate of Monroe's final film. Though Marilyn was fired from George Cukor's remake of My Favorite Wife, after her death 38 minutes of footage from that aborted project were cobbled together for inclusion in countless tributes and documentaries. The clip reel itself, completely divorced from Cukor's original intentions, was eventually released on DVD as part of a Marilyn Monroe box set. Cultural critic Camille Paglia agrees that the comparison to Monroe is off the mark, but insists that Smith had what it takes to become a genuine movie star -- if only Hollywood had let her. Comparing the late Trimspa spokeswoman to Jayne Mansfield, Margaux Hemingway and Anita Ekberg, Paglia laments the loss of a studio system that would have made room for Smith's "sexual charisma and comedic charm." "The real problem was that the broad, Technicolor comedic films in which Smith might have thrived are no longer made -- except in Bollywood," Paglia writes in a long column at Salon. "Smith had genuine talent but no place to put it."

I think we can all agree that we're a little more preoccupied with celebrities than we should be. It's scary when I know way more about about people I've never met than my neighbors -- without batting an eye I could name Brad Pitt's girlfriends in chronological order, it's sick. Don't worry; I'm not about to hop on a soapbox about the evils of celebrity culture. Most "stargazing" is relatively harmless, although if you were Steven Spielberg or Jodie Foster, you probably wouldn't agree.

One of the most benign past-times of Hollywood lovers is collecting memorabilia. So while you and I might indulge in the occasional In Touch magazine or collector's edition DVD, for others collecting is a serious and expensive business. 20th Century Fox's charity auction in New York consisted of letters and contracts from some of the biggest names in Hollywood history. Included in the auction were a signed letter by Marilyn Monroe (sold for $7,000) and contracts from Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and John Steinbeck. Steinbeck's contract for handing over the rights to The Grapes of Wrath was the big-ticket item of the day, netting $24,000. Proceeds from the auction; totaling $267,280, went to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, providing financial assistance to struggling actors and directors. The charity might be a worthy cause, but I can't imagine forking over almost $25,000 for paperwork. What memorabilia, if any, would you be willing to take out a small loan for?

I remember back when Marilyn Manson was gaining in popularity, there was a rumor going around that claimed he was in fact the same dude who played Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano) on The Wonder Years. And then that rumor turned into another one that had Josh Saviano playing drums for Manson, instead. Of course it wasn't true, and having met Saviano a couple times, I can honestly tell you the guy is not Manson, nor his drummer, but is currently a married attorney living in New York City. Oh, but it was one helluva fun rumor while it existed.

Nerve.com has assembled the 40 greatest celebrity rumors of all time, and some of them go way back (Clara Bow slept with an entire football team?), while others are more current (does baby Suri actually exist?). By now, you're probably wondering which rumor Nerve chose to stick in the number one spot. Well, let's just say it's the one that involves Richard Gere and his pet gerbil. Yuck. Marilyn Monroe pops up a couple times, as does Hitler (wait, he's a celebrity?) and his one testicle. Oh, and there's also the one about Jamie Lee Curtis having both male and female parts. I swear I'm not making this stuff up -- my imagination does not stretch that far. The one celebrity rumor that's not on there -- and I have no idea how it didn't make their list -- was, perhaps, one of the biggest rumors of all time ... is Elvis still alive? Or even the one that claimed Andy Kaufman was still alive and playing his greatest practical joke on all of us. However, they do include Elvis and Kaufman in the "Jim Morrison is alive" rumor, so I imagine they wanted to stick all the "death rumors" in one spot. But still? Elvis? C'mon, Nerve!

Check out the list, then come back here and let us know your favorite celebrity rumors of all time.