Philip Seymour Hoffman has joined "The Hunger Games" sequel "Catching Fire" as head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee. Jena Malone (Gersh, Hirsch Wallerstein) is in talks to play snide tribute Johanna Mason.
The David Katz who allegedly told the National Enquirer that he and Philip Seymour Hoffman were gay lovers, presumably fooling the publication into thinking it had talked to playwright David Bar Katz, a friend of Hoffman’s who found the late actor’s dead body, says he was drunk the day he talked to the tabloid and can’t remember what he told them.
“As the day went on, I had a bunch of beers in me,” the New Jersey-based Katz told the New York Post, which tracked down the person who talked to the Enquirer. “I don’t remember what I said … but the thing about the gay lover? No, not while I was sober anyway. I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
PHOTOS: Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Career in Pictures
Bar Katz settled the $50 million lawsuit that he filed against the Enquirer for its report claiming he and Hoffman were gay lovers, that he had seen Hoffman freebase cocaine the night before his death and that he’d seen Hoffman use heroin. Bar Katz got a full-page apology ad in Wednesday’s New York Times and plans to use the settlement funds to launch a foundation for aspiring playwrights in Hoffman’s name.
But Bar Katz’s lawyer, Judd Burstein, vowed to sue the David Katz who spoke to the Enquirer, telling The Times, “My goal is to have him living out of a cardboard box.”
Burstein lashed out at the fake Katz in The Post as well.
“People go to jail for drunk driving,” Bar Katz’s lawyer said. “He is going to lose everything for talking drunk.”
The Jersey-based Katz also apparently led a Post reporter to believe that he was the playwright the day Hoffman died.
On Wednesday, Katz denied telling anyone he was David Bar Katz, but he evidently bragged about making it into The Post‘s Cindy Adams column on his Facebook page. Katz also claimed he was bombarded with calls from reporters looking for Bar Katz the day Hoffman was found dead.
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