What does it take for a 35-year-old emergency room nurse and mother of four to prove her adoration of Corey Haim is such that she would drop everything to drive nine hours each way to be near his body? And get respect from the press for doing so? Standing outside his funeral, of course. While it seems some vetting was involved of the 200 family and friends allowed inside the funeral service at Steeles Memorial Chapel, since no details of a eulogy emerged, a spokesperson fended off inquiries by stating unequivocally that no celebrities were in attendance at the event — which would be tough to imagine given the apparent challenge of the 38-year-old actor’s mother to pay for the burial. “Corey Feldman didn’t even show up, his best friend,” Jennifer Matton of Philadelphia told the Toronto Star, among the outlets relieved to discover someone to serve them with soundbites. “That’s crap.” (The other Corey posted a letter for the grave on his blog — explaining he stayed away to minimize the media attention — then was snapped getting a memorial tattoo. A cousin of his was there.) Continue Reading

“City of Toronto Covering Corey’s Funeral” read the online story posted by Access Hollywood on Saturday night, picked up Sunday afternoon by People, then quickly followed by a terse non-denial by Kevin Sack of the city’s Strategic Communications office. What could possibly compel those seeking help for funeral costs from the Employment and Social Services department to blab about how destitute they are? Perhaps one too many inquiries from show business media, reaching Corey Haim’s mother Judy at a time when she was trying to figure out what to do — time was ticking away to give her former child star son a proper Jewish burial when it involved flying his body from the Los Angeles coroner’s office back to Toronto. It’s also entirely plausible that Haim, who spent the past decade or so renting a pad at Yonge and Eglinton, telling any stranger who’d listen about how broke he was, and even reportedly applying for retail jobs — before recently returning to Hollywood, not necessarily forever — was a beneficiary of the Ontario Disability Support Program, which entitles him to this benefit with minimal hassle, save for telling the funeral home that social assistance was being received by the deceased. (The assets of surviving family members are not audited in any such situation.) Concurrently, however, Startifacts.com, the tacky-looking memorabilia eBay broker that helped Haim generate a few bucks in the past, publicly pledged to pitch in $20,000. Continue Reading

In the 2001 episode of E! True Hollywood Story where the depth of his substance abuses, dating back to when he left Toronto as a teen to star in movies like Lucas, came to light when his drug-addled incoherence was captured during one infamous interview session. Corey Haim’s father reinforced the reason why he was willing to back his son returning to the movie business that enabled him after his initial teenage success: when your main goal in life is to win an Academy Award, there was no other way he was going to get it. Getting a part in a film capable of being nominated might have helped, of course, but by then the kind of big-screen comedy where his cameo services were in demand was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star — and then the A&E train wreck reality show The Two Coreys, centered on a real-life reunion with similarly troubled Corey Feldman, co-stars of four theatrical releases culminating in a threesome with Nicole Eggert in 1992’s Blown Away, then 1995’s straight-to-video sequel Dream a Little Dream 2. These are the choices that lead, not to winning an Oscar, but selling one’s extracted molar on eBay. But the kid kept on trying, right up until his death today of an accidental overdose. Haim’s attempt to ride a comeback trail actually started over 10 years ago, though: Universal Groove, a Montreal indie film set in the rave scene of 1999, touted as Haim’s first grown-up breakthrough, was left unreleased until 2007 — when it was issued to cash in on The Two Coreys, with the wacky claim that its stolen footage had to be reconstructed from clips found on the internet. So, maybe he just needed a better agent? Continue Reading

Ben Mulroney and his wife are expecting twins! Just what the country needs seven days after the Winter Olympics — a third generation to continue the legacy of Canada’s least popular prime minister, and CTV’s least popular host of etalk. Perhaps paternity leave is what it’s going to take to keep Ben away from the red carpet next year — given how he has been a fixture on the Academy Awards celebrity arrival pre-show since eschewing his Université Laval law school degree to do this. But, thanks to Twitter, viewers masochistically tuning in for this annual experience have a neutral place to vent. Here’s the recap … Continue Reading