Entertainment Industry

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that seeks to rein in foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies and TV shows, a move that drew widespread support from a broad coalition of entertainment industry groups. Called the Protect IP Act, the proposed law is strongly backed by Hollywood's chief lobbying group, the Motion Picture Assn. of America, as well as the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Assn. of Theatre Owners and other industry and labor organizations.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a major new Hollywood office tower after years of delay and controversy centering on dueling land appraisals, a hefty public subsidy for the developer and the future of a popular burger stand on the site. With council President Eric Garcetti championing the plan, the council last week approved the 1601 N. Vine Office Project, at Vine Street and Selma Avenue, just south of the iconic intersection of Hollywood and Vine. Supporters view the project ?

A West Los Angeles office complex popular with entertainment industry tenants has been purchased by Santa Monica investors for $58 million. Ocean West Capital Partners bought Tribeca West, a 151,029-square-foot office property at 12233 Olympic Blvd., near Bundy Drive, from Broadreach Capital Partners. Tenants in the 2.65-acre campus made up of five three-story buildings include Columbia Pictures, Vin Di Bona Productions and Walt Disney Co., according to real estate data provider CoStar Group.

The woes of the $22-billion U.S. live event business can be boiled down to one statistic: 20% to 40% of seats for many concerts and sports games go unsold. A remedy to fill some of those seats may be reverse scalping: A market in which fans can bid below the ticket's face value, a sort of Priceline for live events. That, at any rate, is the idea behind ScoreBig, an online ticketing service based in Hollywood that has about 500,000 tickets for sale on any given day ? enough to fill 10 Yankee Stadiums.

Los Angeles-based City National Bank, known for its Hollywood ties, has become a fixture on Broadway as well, providing financial services to about one-third of the shows on the Great White Way. The City National Corp. unit said Tuesday that it had opened a branch on New York's Times Square to serve Broadway businesspeople and other clients of the bank who live or do business in New York. It is City National's second New York branch. The bank, whose private banking business caters to wealthy clients, opened an office on Park Avenue in 2002.

She was a young actress with designs on mega-stardom. But to realize her dreams, Jang Ja-yeon was resigned to take her place in the seamy realm of the South Korean sexual casting couch. In the end, the disgrace proved too much. In the seven-page note she wrote before her March 2009 suicide, the 27-year-old TV sitcom regular described how her manager forced her to have sex with industry VIPs such as directors, media executives and CEOs, many of whom she cited by name. Jang's death stunned this nation transfixed by celebrity and all its trappings.

The gig : John Hyde is vice chairman of Image Entertainment, a Chatsworth-based home entertainment company with a library of more than 3,200 titles ? including the prestigious Criterion Collection, independently produced movies and stand-up comedy ? that it distributes on DVD and digital platforms. Together with Chief Executive Ted Green, Hyde recruited a private equity firm to acquire Image, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, in January and put them in charge. In a very tough market for DVD sales, they have restructured the company and are seeking to grow it through acquisitions.

ARTHUR BERNARD LEWIS Writer, editor and producer on 'Dallas' Arthur Bernard Lewis, 84, a veteran TV writer who wrote 69 episodes of "Dallas" and also served as executive story editor and supervising producer for the long-running CBS prime-time soap opera, died of complications from pneumonia Oct. 30 at Sherman Oaks Hospital, his family announced. Lewis worked on "Dallas" as a writer and executive story editor beginning in 1978, its first season. He was a supervising producer for 113 episodes, starting in 1981.

It was not your usual scene from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians. " In a crimson gown by Georges Hobeika, Kim Kardashian was touring the new Renzo Piano-designed Resnick Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After posing on the red carpet, she tweeted, "I'm at the most magnificent masquerade ball at the LACMA Museum!" to some 5 million followers. Welcome to gala season in the art world, the time when L.A.'s leading museums roll out red carpets and stage black-tie parties to raise money ?

Hollywood's premier talent agency has brought in an outside investor to help finance future growth, the latest evidence of the harsh economics of the entertainment industry. TPG Group, a firm best known for its investments in Burger King, Neiman Marcus and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, said Friday it had bought a 35% stake in Creative Artists Agency, becoming the single largest owner of the firm that represents some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, George Clooney, Will Smith, Julia Roberts and Oprah Winfrey.