Sighted: The Elusive Shrieking Starlet

Asked what was the most physically challenging part of making the show, Incredibly Fabulous Cameron Diaz said a car ride in Bhutan, because "there's only one road there . . . and it's just a turning road that had these big trucks that would come barreling around a corner at you that were carrying huge logs on their way to India, and we'd have to swerve off to the side of the road, and that kind of got old after three hours."

At which point an MTV suit jumped in to remind her that during shooting she had taken a "header" on a dune while sandboarding.

"Actually, yeah, that's the kind of pain you forget, like childbirth," Incredibly Fabulous Cameron Diaz responded. "That wasn't so good, that was an abrupt stop to a pretty good ride." Apparently while coming down a dune she caught some bad sand and "it just took my board down into it and I went face first, like scorpioned over. It was pretty crazy," she said.

Then Incredibly Fabulous Cameron Diaz let out a scream.

"There's bugs!"

"Sorry -- there's a lot of bugs," she explained. "They latch on to your legs; they are about this big, cicadas. I hate bugs, but yeah, I took a face dive into the sand. It was awesome."

Finally, one critic, getting back to that whole "message" thing, asked her to define "the message."

"The message is that we only have one planet and we are all related," she said.

"We, human beings, need the planet. There is no other Earth."

HBO announced this week that it will share three upcoming original flicks with PBS. PBS is not paying anything for the broadcast rights to the films, which will air about a month after their debut on the pay cable network; nor will PBS air the programs exactly as they are seen on HBO.

PBS has to censor two of the films to protect its affiliates from the post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast fury of the Federal Communications Commission, PBS President and CEO Pat Mitchell told critics.

"Dirty War," which tells the story of a "dirty," or radioactive, bomb attack on London, is scheduled to premiere Jan. 24 on HBO. When it airs on PBS on Feb. 23, a brief shot of a woman who has stripped to be washed after the bomb goes off will be cut, as will the use of the four-letter word that is Vice President Cheney's expletive of choice. Also out is an explicit sexual phrase that one terrorist uses on a female interrogator, PBS senior programming exec Jacoba Atlas told The TV Column.

When PBS airs HBO's "Sometimes in April," about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, PBS will again exorcise the word Cheney used on the Senate floor, according to Atlas. At this point there are no plans to censor anything in HBO's "Yesterday," about a young African mother dealing with AIDS.

Mitchell told critics that the censoring was being done in order to protect PBS stations from the FCC, which is having a chilling effect on programmers because it will not issue guidelines to broadcasters about its new indecency rules. These days, for instance, the FCC is busy considering whether to slap NBC with an indecency fine over its broadcast of the Summer Olympics in Athens after receiving nine messages complaining that Cheney's word had been heard during a live volleyball competition and that naked statues and frolicking, clothed lovers were depicted during the opening ceremonies.

Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly was among those who participated in NBC's concert fundraiser for tsunami victims Saturday night, shown live on the network's East Coast affiliates and NBC-owned cable networks including USA. O'Reilly's participation was something of a surprise given that he had cynically suggested on his cable show that celebrities participating in the telethon should check to make sure that donations actually made it to tsunami victims.

Actor George Clooney, one of the organizers of the benefit, challenged O'Reilly to knock off the rant and participate in the fundraiser.

When people are in trouble, "they turn to friends who become their lifeline," O'Reilly said on the benefit. "Who are their friends -- you are." Ben Affleck, Annette Bening, Quincy Jones, Tom Selleck, Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, Goldie Hawn and Tim Robbins were among those who also spoke during the two-hour concert special, which originated from New York and Los Angeles, and were also seen on camera answering phones as viewers called in their pledges; O'Reilly was not seen answering phones.

Madonna was the first to perform in the benefit, which looked very similar to the concert special that aired on 30 networks shortly after the 9/11 attacks and raised about $130 million. The Material Girl sang John Lennon's "Imagine," also covered by Neil Young in 2001. The lineup included Norah Jones, Josh Groban and Elton John, the latter performing from London, as did Eric Clapton and Roger Waters. Singer John Mayer inexplicably mumbled "oh [poop]" during his performance, which was not caught by NBC despite the live program's five-second delay, though there was a brief muting of the audio about a second after Mayer's unfortunate comment.

NBC told the Associated Press that the gaffe would be removed from the benefit's West Coast broadcast.

Wonder if the FCC will have the nerve to slap NBC stations with an indecency fine for a telecast designed to help children orphaned by the tsunami.