Paltrow a Hollywood Pariah After Weight-Gain Roller Coaster of Shallow Hal

idden away in the dark corners of her ranch-style Hollywood home, where thick oaken blinds strain the noontime sunlight to a dull trickle, former A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow stares out over the rim of a vodka-and-tonic.

"I don't know what's going on," sighs Paltrow in barely a whisper. "It's like I've got the clap or something. Nobody calls, the doorbell doesn't ring... I haven't heard from my agent in weeks."

Such is the fate of a once in-demand star who dared to play the fat girl.

"Honestly, I'm surprised nobody has tried to hollow out her chest to hole up for the winter. My God. I mean, what was she thinking?" gossiped Hollywood producer Mart Wixle.

Paltrow's star seemed to be unstoppably on the rise until her fatal miscue of accepting a role in the Farrelly brothers' recent Shallow Hal, in which Paltrow plays a morbidly obese North Carolina woman. During the film's production, rumors began to surface about Paltrow's out-of-control weight fluctuations, with various sources placing her anywhere between 110 and 350 pounds on any given day.

"It was insane," stated former co-star Ben Affleck. "One day I'd see her and she'd be the same old Gwyneth, and then the next she looked like she ate a boyscout troup. It was kind of creepy. You think she got into Metabolife or something?"

"Do you think it's that rumor that I'm really a dude?" asked Paltrow during a recent interview. "That went around for a while after I did Shakespeare in Love but I thought it had died down. You never can be too sure with the internet, though. My sister seems to think it's about Shallow Hal but that doesn't make any sense. Everybody knows that was just a fat suit, right?"

"Yeah, we've all heard the fat suit line," quipped Wixle. "That one's older than Bob Hope. Eleanor Roosevelt tried to pull that once, and it was old even back then. A Hydrox cookie suit is more like it, heh."

Few are showing sympathy for Paltrow, who many claim should have taken a hint from the overwhelming public disgust shown when actress Renee Zellweger ballooned up to a corpulent 120 lbs for her role in the limey farce Bridget Jones' Diary. Starlet Julia Roberts also took a public-relations tumble when she was shown eating an entire cracker in the summer comedy America's Sweethearts.

"I mean, get with the program," continued Wixle. "Nobody goes to the movies to see fat people. Walmart's closer and they don't charge admission. People don't want to be confronted with the tubby realities of everyday life when they go to the theater. Did you see Renee in Bridget Jones? Good God, I thought she was going to reach through the screen and eat my popcorn. Somebody get me a lipo tube and a bone saw, we'd better take out some ribs. She must have force-fed herself three meals a day to bulk up like that. Talk about sick."

Paltrow's upcoming film deals appear to be in limbo as no one in Hollywood seems to be willing to share a phone line with her, thanks to rumors around town that fat might be contagious. Her fax machine is still ringing off the hook, however all recent offers have been from talk shows and companies selling miracle weight-loss herbs. Additionally, Paltrow reports that her gardener recently discovered a nest of tabloid photographers living in the azaleas in her front yard. Spraying commences on Wednesday.

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Say hello to the biggest new name in pornography. Seriously, my name is BRUCE CHEEKS and I make them spell it all in caps, so it's about twice as big as most porn credits.

I stumbled onto the whole thing. That's how most people get into porn, I hear. I was in the sauna one day, which is my favorite way to start a story, and I happened to drop my towel, six or seven times. I got quite a big response, but the security guard said I could stay there if I wanted to. One guy came up to me after I was dressed and complimented me on my "curious physique." He asked me if anybody had ever told me I have an amazingly deep ass crack. Which I already knew. You can check page 105 in Guinness if you don't believe me.

As luck would have it, this guy makes amateur porn films. Very amateur, according to some reviews in Hustler he showed me. But he told me he could really put an ass crack like mine to use. I was about to punch him, but then he said I would be doing it with a woman in the scene. And if that worked out, maybe two women. I was like, are you kidding me? I would do that job for free. Then he told me I would have to because he would really have to pay the two ladies I would be with extra. "Combat pay," he called it.

Cut to a few days later, and the shortest scene ever in a porn movie, and I was a full-fledged porn star. Paul, the director/Pizza Boy #3, screened it for his friends and they were amazed. One of them, D-Boy, said I had an ass crack that could swallow the world. It was the first time I've ever been acknowledged for anything in my life, so I was pretty happy. Even though they screwed up my credit at the end and called my character "She-Male." Like He-Man, but not the same. I blame my excellent breasts.

Even though a few of the guys puked a lot, I think it's the first step toward a huge porn career. It's perfect for me, because I like to have sex and never get the chance to. And I also need money because no one will hire me for anything. It's like I get to have my cake and have sex with it, too.

It's going to take some scheming on my part. I made a copy of my movie—I had to give it a title, since Paul never did that. I called it Fucked My Balls Off. I didn't want to call it the first title I thought of, Me Having Sex With Two Chicks at the Same Time, because I was planning on leaving it on a shelf at Blockbuster, and people wouldn't know "Me" was referring to me. Until they watch it, which they will. I made a case and everything. I put my ass crack right on the case so people will know what the main attraction is. In the video, I don't want to ruin it for you, but manage to fit one lady's whole leg inside. It's something you won't forget.

I think this will open up doors like I've never even imagined. Porn, lie down and surrender now, because you're about to get conquered by the biggest ass in the world.

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Honestly, I don't know why you insist upon blaming this whole thing on me. The restraining order, the profile on the local news, that parody song that was a hit for a while. You act as if this was all my doing. I could perhaps understand some clod from the sticks believing that way, one living far removed from the particulars of our situation, gleaning what tiny shred of insight his brain entertains from television newsmagazines and gossip on the Internet. But not you, you're in a position to know better. One could say you're practically bombarded with the truth on a daily basis. Do I even need to speak the words out loud? You made me love you.

I saw you that morning, six short years ago, beating your kids with that big wooden spoon and I knew in that moment you were the woman for me. We weren't alone in that park, you and I, and frankly I'm more than a little surprised I was the only one to fall in love with you that brisk autumn morn. But never you mind, that's the loss of that morning's other parkgoers and strictly my gain. Because I have to think that the voluminous declarations of my love for you might have made somewhat less of an impact if every Tom, Dick and Harry from here to the North Sea were bombarding your home with telephone calls and paper airplanes inscripted with amorous verse on a daily basis. And as for your protestations, the tender barkings of a heart not ready to be so loved, so completely fulfilled… I have to imagine they'd have meant slightly less to me had those sentiments been mailed out in triplicate or, I shudder to think, via a mass email.

No, that morning was made for you, and I. And Jordan, who had just urinated into a bird feeder and was in that moment tasting the heavenly sting of your tough love. And who could forget Darla, who was giggling angelically with glee at her brother's bittersweet lament? Nor Dulcie or Marzipan, the twins, or little Marcel, your beautiful deaf son. But of course this is not forgetting sweet Rocko, he of the impish grin and robustly shit diapers, him I could never forget. And last but not least, little Balfor, the apple of his mother's beautifully enraged eye, gurgling musically as his mother lit into Jordan with an ass-beating fury that could not be tamed by any nearby joggers or the local constable. Yes, that morning was made for you, and I, and your seven children alone.

After I got to know you, through quizzing your neighbors and tracking down your high school classmates, my love for you grew like a berserk vine rooted in radioactive solution, yearning skyward and flattening any obstacle in its path. I came to understand the quality of your love, its potency and the reason why it could not be hoarded by any one man, hence your seven children and their eight different fathers. I loved you from afar, and at times from really afar with a pair of high-powered binoculars, and all the while my love vine grew and grew.

I loved you from the mountaintop and I loved you from the jail cell, biding my time and cursing the security system your ex-husband had installed at the house. But even that love-defying tuna net of a barrier could not quell my thunderously beating heart, nay.

Sometimes I wondered how you could not see the trueness of my aim nor the volcanic throbbing of my virtue and dedication to you. But when we went on Jenny Jones together and you talked about losing your virginity to your high school gym teacher it all became clear to me. You were not ready.

Even a creature of such angelic beauty, one so able to turn on the world with her smile and open a beer bottle with her teeth, can grow weary of drawing sustenance from a poisoned well and close her petals to the sun's balmy glow. This I understand, my love, and I will wait for the day when your flower again blooms, like one of those paper fortune-telling things the kids used to use where you pick a color and a number and then when you open the flap it says you're a gaylord. For if my crime is the ability to see clearly too far into the distant future, to that island of bliss in a sea of not-yetness where we exist together, then slap on the handcuffs and book me in the jail of your love, my dear.

For in this matter, not even the Gods can order my restraint!

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