Item World: Local news and views

Dead man talking Before a stirring montage of his songs from the Sean Penn-directed Oscar-nominated film "Into the Wild," Eddie Vedder made a special shout-out Saturday at the sold-out Orpheum to the movie's producer, who was watching from the fourth row even though his family's team was taking on the Brewers a couple blocks away. "Sean was the guy most responsible for getting me to do the music in the movie," Vedder said, "and Sean would say the one guy most responsible for getting the movie made was Bill Pohlad." Shortly after that, one loud bozo in the crowd started shouting something incoherent at the stage, the only moment in which the crowd was anything but completely reverential to the Pearl Jam frontman. Vedder cut the dude off with a terse, "I'm taking back control of the show, so [expletive] off." After the rest of the crowd cheered, the singer added with a smirk, "Ironically enough, I learned to do that from Sean Penn."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Diablo directs Diablo Cody is about to make her directing debut. Mandate Pictures has announced that the Oscar-winning "Juno" scribe and former City Pages columnist will film her own original screenplay, a comedy titled "Lamb of God," which "follows a young conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash, decides to go to Las Vegas to live the life of a sinner, and on her journey finds her way back to her faith." The disappointment of Cody's sophomore film, "Jennifer's Body," her rewrite of "Burlesque" and the recent cancellation of her TV show "The United States of Tara" clearly haven't dulled her appetite for a challenge. In a blog post, she said Jason Reitman -- director of two Cody scripts, "Juno" and "Young Adult," which debuts later this year -- "predicted that the night shoots in Vegas will induce neon-sick delirium." If "plane crash/heretic/sinner/Vegas" sounds a few yuks short of comedy gold, Cody reassuringly blogged that "Lamb of God" isn't "the cynicism-fest implied by the log line. It's a nice Christmas story."

COLIN COVERT

Great Kushner's ghost Playwright Christopher Hampton will bring a new work, "Appomattox," to the Guthrie as part of a three-stage celebration in 2012 -- similar to what the theater did with Tony Kushner in 2009. However, director Joe Dowling certainly hopes Hampton's project will differ from Kushner's in one important respect. Asked earlier this week how he felt about deadlines, Hampton quoted a colleague: "I love to hear them whoooosh by!" Dowling now can afford to smile at the joke, recalling how Kushner showed up for the first day of rehearsal for "The Intelligent Homosexual" in spring 2009 with four pages of outline. Kushner was still writing monologues on the day of the first preview. Dowling patted his head as he and Hampton chatted the other day. "That's what caused all the gray hair on this side," he said.

GRAYDON ROYCE

Don't press 'shutdown' If you follow Minnesota Historical Society Press director Pamela McClanahan on social media, you might have seen her chipper "Frugal State Worker" postings, which she has been writing daily since Friday's government shutdown. She, along with the other employees of the press, are out of work until the state can agree on a budget. The publishing house is in good shape for weathering a shortish shutdown, McClanahan says; "We crammed about a summer's worth of work in June." July is usually a quiet month, but there is still plenty of work that's not getting done --responding to requests for review copies or exam copies, setting up events for the fall books, or editing, designing and printing books. The fall lineup should be OK if the shutdown doesn't last drag on into August. Still, it's hard to silence a good writer --or publisher. You can take away the printing press, but Facebook never sleeps.

LAURIE HERTZEL

Rossini in the Roy? En route to Britney Spears at the X on Wednesday, we passed by Roy Wilkins Auditorium whose doors for the A Perfect Circle concert warned: "Tonight's show is similar in nature to an opera or film. Any disturbances in the audience will compromise the quality of the performance." With all due respect for the theatrical art-rock of A Perfect Circle, I.W. thinks mentioning opera and the Roy in the same sentence makes about as much sense as talking about Britney's live singing.

JON BREAM

Lemon sour I.W. caught the Twins-Rays game the other night -- sitting in the Legends Club section of Target Field. These are $60 seats so don't cry for us, Argentina. But for that price, one would think you could find the rather pedestrian but delicious treat, Lemon Chill, within the Legends Club. No sir. I.W. spent the entire fourth inning walking past the mojitos, margaritas, name-brand booze, high-buck desserts, boutique ice cream (you can get a buffet meal, for Mauer's sake!), but the quest for a simple Lemon Chill left us out in the cold. We glumly headed back out to watch the game, convinced that our high-buck tickets were subsidizing all this fancy shmancy frou frou, when all we wanted was that modest frozen confection. Harrumph.

GRAYDON ROYCE