Monday, June 5, 2006; C03

Bouquets for 'Wedding Crashers'

The 15th annual MTV Movie Awards, known for their lighthearted take on the industry they purport to honor, were held Saturday with nods for best onscreen hero, villain, kiss and fight, as well as more conventional categories.

The ceremony, with its teen-is-king attitude, is an event where stars are celebrated for showing up in jeans and for their liberal use of profanity. Taped at Sony Studios in Los Angeles and hosted this year by Jessica Alba , the awards are determined by fan votes. The ceremony will air Thursday.

"Wedding Crashers" was the big winner with three awards: best movie, best breakthrough performance by Isla Fisher , and best on-screen team for stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson .

Jake Gyllenhaal teamed with "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Heath Ledger for best kiss.

"This is a real honor, not just for me and Heath but for all of you, that you picked this movie and this kiss over all the other ones," Gyllenhaal said.

Alba took home her own Golden Popcorn trophy for a sexy striptease performance in "Sin City."

"Thank you to all the perverts who voted for me," she said. "Thank you to the fans. I do movies for you. Practice safe sex and drive hybrids if you can."

And they say glamour is dead.

Authorities in California are calling the death of Vince Welnick , the Grateful Dead's last keyboard player, a suicide. Welnick, 55, died Friday in Sonoma County. Police say an autopsy will be performed this week. He had been taken from his home in Forestville, Calif., to a hospital, where he died.

The Grateful Dead, which started in 1965 in San Francisco, retired its name and quit touring after lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995.

"The big thing about Vince was that he had that fearlessness to be able to go and just jump into our madness and just operate on it like it was a normal, everyday procedure," Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart recalled over the weekend.

"Sopranos" star Joseph Gannascoli , who played a closeted gay mobster on the HBO series, is being sued by the manufacturer of a popular diet drug.

The maker of Stacker 2 filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming Gannascoli hasn't done enough to promote the product after receiving about $316,000 from the company over the last 2 1/2 years.

"He was very difficult to work with all the time," Robert Occhifinto , president of New Jersey-based NVE Pharmaceuticals, told the Star-Ledger of Newark.

Gannascoli, 47, disputed the company's claim, which came after a few tough episodes for his character, Vito Spatafore. The character has since been beaten to death after his secret homosexual life was discovered.

"I begged them to do things but they wouldn't," he told the newspaper. "They didn't like I was doing the gay thing."

Last month Gannascoli signed with another company to endorse a competing diet pill.

Uri Geller , the Israeli-born psychic famous for bending minds and spoons, came short of fulfilling his dream of turning the first home Elvis Presley owned into a museum dedicated to the paranormal. Geller, who thought he had purchased the Memphis property in an eBay auction last month for $905,100, learned on Friday that the sellers had turned around and sold the 3,000-square-foot house to a foundation set up by Mike Curb , a music producer.

-- Compiled by Catherine Handren from wire reports