‘Brangelina’ author threatens tabloid fact-checkers with a month of nudity

Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie provides another platform for Montreal-born journo-pugilist Ian Halperin, who lucked out with a Michael Jackson tell-all last summer, six months after predicting the King of Pop had six months to live. So, when he claims that Angelina and Brad are going to split within the next year — they make a public spectacle of going out on a date. Halperin the perfect pitbull for Canadian media who crave the salaciousness, but would rather not risk the libel suits — the day before Jackson died, Halperin announced he’d be pursuing a $500,000 counteraction against Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, who called the writer a “crook” and a “liar” after anecdotes from Cirque’s early history were published in Maclean’s under the headline “Sex, Drugs and Acrobats.” And now Halperin is threatening to sleep nude for an entire month in Times Square should any Brangelina allegations be proven false — an obvious defense tactic, as no one wants to see him get undressed. Its pages get parsed today in USA Today, noting Halperin’s “colourful undercover missions” like using the name “Billy Bob Jackson” to check into the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute that once housed Mrs. Pitt, pretending to still be distraught over the suicide of Kurt Cobain. He also recruited a friend to pose as his amorous sister to attend a support group for incestuous siblings in the spirit of Angelina and her brother. But what about Brad? Generally, he is “portrayed as a passive victim caught in the web of Jolie’s media-manipulating magic and moxie.” Star Jones also shot down Brangelina’s badwill on The Insider, calling him sleazy, but Halperin was quick with a quip: “Look, I don’t want to spar with Star, because I’ll knock her out in a heartbeat.”