Bill Maher Remembers His Friend Salman Rushdie On ‘Real Time’

Those who accuse Bill Maher of drifting too far from his liberal roots must have been happy with the lineup for Friday’s Real Time on HBO. From film director and author John Waters to Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar to director/actor and extreme liberal activist Rob Reiner, it was clearly a group that leans to the left side of the aisle.

Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno is one of the greatest people, according to Bill Maher. But there’s a certain faction that doesn’t agree, he adds. “I don’t understand this animosity that comes from some people.”

For the first time in months, Bill Maher didn’t use his “New Rules” segment to grind an axe about “woke”-ness or something similar, or talk about something connected to current electoral politics. Instead he made a pretty good argument for why people should stop relying on online shopping: It’s doing massive damage to the environment and contributing to our increasing isolation from one another.Of course, it is “Real Time,” which means during the latest “New Rules” segment, Maher did get some digs in at caricatures of “millennials” and “gen z,” but we’ll leave that for you to watch in the video, which is camping out at the top of the page right now.The segment, called “Shop Making Sense,” Maher began, “since America’s such an incredibly f—ed up place right now, let’s scale back our goal of making it great again and settle for let’s just make the mall great again.

The cartoon character Pogo by Walt Kelly is best remembered for his line, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

“The Twilight Effect With Ashley Greene and Melanie Howe,” the filmmaker discussed how certain celebrities wanted to appear in the film because they were such huge lovers of the vampire romance films.“The craziest one of all those was to hear that Taylor Swift was a huge Twi-hard, and actually Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time,” the “About a Boy” director said.“[Our agent said] ‘Taylor would like to be in this movie — not because of you, but she’s a Twi-hard. She would be someone at the cafeteria or the diner or whatever, but she just wants to be in this movie,'” he recalled being told.But Weitz was afraid the “Shake It Off” crooner’s fame would be too distracting in the film.“The hardest thing for me was to be like, the moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen, for about five minutes, nobody is going to be able to process anything,” he noted.“I kick myself for it too, because I was like, ‘Wow, I could’ve been hanging out with Taylor Swift,'” he said of the “Bad Blood” singer.

Disney is filling the desert that’s left at the fall box office by moving up New Regency/20th Century’s David O. Russell movie Amsterdam to Oct. 7. The pic was previously scheduled to open on Nov. 4.

Padma Lakshmi is sending her well wishes to ex-husband Salman Rushdie after he suffered life-threatening injuries over the weekend.

Dame Joan Collins has sent fans wild after sharing footage of her frolicking in a swimming pool. The 89-year-old posted the video to her 283,000 followers as she showed off her blue swimwear.

Sir Salman Rushdie has forfeited his home, freedom, marriage and peace of mind due to his controversial writings. The 75-year-old Indian-born British author, whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was stabbed on stage in New York state on Friday, with his current condition in hospital unclear.