Celebrities versus their neighbors is always a fun topic. Time to add another dispute to our Hall of Fame. Celebrities versus their neighbors is always a fun topic. Time to add another dispute to our Hall of Fame.
Let’s call Kilmer’s fracas No. 10 on our list of favorite disputes involving celebrities and their neighbors. Val Kilmer is having trouble getting the zoning permit to turn his 6,000-acre New Mexico ranch into an upscale bed-and-breakfast. Here are a few examples of neighborly disputes involving celebrities:
- Rihanna’s neighbor claimed the pop singer had chauffeured vehicles on her property for hours at a time and that security cameras at Rihanna’s home pointed onto her property.
- Paulie Shore’s slovenly ways caused a property-damaging landslide, according to a lawsuit filed by neighbor Wes Craven.
- Similarly, Sylvester Stallone was sued by his neighbor, Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, for rainwater from Sly’s garden that caused flood damage to his home.
- Foxy Brown was arrested for allegedly smacking her neighbor with a Blackberry.
- Vincent D’Onofrio was sued by a dog therapist neighbor who claims the actor had a big problem with her “Canine Aquatics” home business and videotaped her for four years.
- Sean Connery’s neighbor sued the actor three times over poor renovations that resulted in foul smells wafting into his apartment.
Let's delve into the biographies of several individuals, ranging from actors and comedians to community members, highlighting their backgrounds, careers, and personal lives.
Darrell W. Pitkin (1936-2024)
Darrell W. Pitkin (87) passed away peacefully on the morning of February 12, 2024 at the Bear River Valley Hospital from circumstance incident with age, being just a couple weeks short of his eighty-eighth birthday. Darrell was born February 28, 1936, to parents Willard Cecil Pitkin and Clara Evelyn Brown. He was raised in Cache Valley with his brothers Lyle, Leonard, Richard and Jay. Educated in the Logan School District, Darrell graduated from Logan High School in 1954 where he participated on the Logan High basketball and baseball teams.
Darrell served two years in the United States Army. He had a 39-year career as a material planner at Thiokol Corporation, where he had many friends, retiring in September 1996. He married Mary Ann Price, and they had five children, Julie, Lorrie, Kathy, Roger, and Curtis. They later divorced. He then married Erlyn Forsberg, and she brought three children to this marriage: Marcy Jo, Darrin, and Chad.
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Darrell liked to bowl and was an avid golfer, even recording a hole-in-one at the Skyway golf course in Tremonton, Utah. He diligently hung Christmas lights every year for Erlyn and abruptly stopped after her passing. He enjoyed traveling to high school rodeos with the Bear River High School Rodeo Club, camping, elk hunting, four wheeling, woodworking, watching sports, following the USU Aggies, reading, watching rodeos on TV, and spending time with family and going to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s events.
Darrell is survived by one brother, Jay (Julia) Pitkin, his children Julie (Bruce) Hancey, Lorrie (Jim) ValDez, Kathy Briggs, Roger Pitkin, Curtis Pitkin, Marcy (Brent) Rupp, and Darrin (Jenifer) Scoffield. His posterity consists of 29 grandkids, 65 great-grandkids, and 8 great-great grandkids.
Darrell was preceded in death by his parents, brothers Lyle, Leonard and Richard, wife Erlyn, stepson Chad Scoffield and daughter-in-law Patricia (Roger) Pitkin.
Funeral services were held Monday, February 19, 2024, at the Belmont Church. Interment was at the Riverside Cemetery.
David Michael Koechner
David Michael Koechner (born August 24, 1962) is an American actor and comedian. Koechner first became involved in performing when he began studying improvisational comedy in Chicago at ImprovOlympic, before joining the Second City Northwest. Koechner relocated to New York City in 1995, doing sketch comedy as a cast member on Saturday Night Live (1995-1996) and as a sketch regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in the mid-1990s.
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While filming the country mockumentary film Dill Scallion in 1998, Koechner befriended actor/comedian Dave 'Gruber' Allen, and eventually began performing as the comedy duo, The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show, a live musical comedy act. The act became a hit at Hollywood clubs such as Largo, and Allen and Koechner were invited to open for Tenacious D. After his breakout role as Champ Kind in the 2004 comedy Anchorman, Koechner began appearing frequently with larger supporting roles in many high-profile comedic films including Talladega Nights, Thank You for Smoking, Waiting..., Semi-Pro, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, and Extract.
His first leading film role, as Coach Lambeau Fields in sports comedy, The Comebacks opened on October 19, 2007. More recently, Koechner reprised his role of Champ Kind for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, co-starred in the horror-comedy Krampus, and received praise from critics for his dark turn in the 2014 black comedy Cheap Thrills. He co-starred in the sitcoms Bless This Mess and Superior Donuts and recurred on Another Period and on the reboot of Twin Peaks.
Koechner was born on August 24, 1962, in Tipton, Missouri, to Margaret Ann (née Downey) and Cecil Stephen Koechner. He has two brothers, Mark and Joe, and three sisters, Mary-Rose, Cecilia, Joan. His father ran a business that manufactured turkey coops. He was raised Catholic, and is of German, English, and Irish descent.
Koechner studied Political Science at Benedictine College and the University of Missouri, before he eventually decided to pursue a career in improvisational comedy and moved to Chicago. In 1995, Koechner landed a year-long stint on Saturday Night Live, joining the show with Second City friends Nancy Walls and Adam McKay.
Some of Koechner's recurring skits included Bill Brasky, the British Fops (playing Fagan, opposite Mark McKinney), Gary Macdonald (the fictional younger brother of Weekend Update anchor/SNL castmember Norm Macdonald, based on "Jokey", a character he originated at Second City), Will Ferrell's "Get Off the Shed" sketches (playing his neighbor, Tom Taylor), and Gerald "T-Bones" Tibbons.
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After his one-season on SNL, Koechner joined the 1996-97 sketch cast of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Koechner later said that his firing was due to NBC executives like Don Ohlmeyer, and not so much series creator Lorne Michaels, who wanted to keep Koechner on. Koechner joined the act as Gerald "T-Bones" Tibbons, a character he had been playing on comedy stages for a few years, including a recurring character bit on SNL.
In 2004, Koechner landed his largest film role up to that point, as sports reporter Champ Kind in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. As part of the Anchorman ensemble, Koechner shared two MTV Movie Award nominations for Best On-Screen Team and Best Musical Performance. In 2006, he made his voice acting debut in Barnyard as "Dag". That same year, he had a supporting role as a gun lobbyist in the critically acclaimed satire, Thank You for Smoking. After co-starring in Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, fellow Second City alum Steve Carell personally recommended Koechner for a recurring role on NBC's The Office, playing Todd Packer. Koechner's role is the American version of Chris Finch from the original. Packer is an obnoxious, alcoholic best friend of Carell's character. Koechner guest-starred, both in person and voice, on fifteen episodes of the series.
In 2007, Koechner was seen in his first leading role in The Comebacks (which opened on October 19), the first comedy to be released under Fox Searchlight's Fox Atomic division. He played a college football coach with the worst record in the history of the sport who vows to turn things around with his new team of ragtag recruits. On January 17, 2007, Comedy Central premiered The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show, a sketch comedy series starring Koechner (as T-Bones) and longtime performing partner Dave "Gruber" Allen (as The Naked Trucker).
In 2015, Koechner began co-starring as Commodore Bellacourt in the Comedy Central series Another Period. In a contrast to his largely comedy-based acting career, Koechner starred in the 2016 drama Priceless, a film about human trafficking. Koechner lives in Los Angeles and is separated from his wife Leigh. On December 31, 2021, Koechner was arrested on New Year's Eve for a suspected DUI and hit and run in Simi Valley, California.
Aaron Edward Eckhart
Aaron Edward Eckhart (born March 12, 1968) is an American actor. Born in Cupertino, California, Eckhart moved to the United Kingdom at an early age. He began his acting career by performing in school plays, before moving to Australia for his high school senior year. As an undergraduate at BYU, Eckhart met director and writer Neil LaBute, who cast Eckhart in several of LaBute's original plays.
Eckhart gained wide recognition as George in Erin Brockovich (2000), and, in 2006, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Nick Naylor in Thank You for Smoking. In 1985, Eckhart moved to Australia and settled in Sydney, where he attended American International School of Sydney for his high school senior year; he further developed his acting skills in productions like Waiting for Godot, where he admits that he gave a "terrible" performance.
While at Brigham Young University, Eckhart appeared in the Mormon-themed film Godly Sorrow, and the role marked his professional debut. At this time he met director/writer Neil LaBute, who cast Eckhart in several of LaBute's original plays. After graduating from BYU, Eckhart moved to New York City, acquired an agent, and took various occasional jobs, including bartending, bus driving, and construction work. His first television roles were in commercials.
The following year Eckhart starred in another LaBute feature, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), as Barry, a sexually frustrated husband in a dysfunctional marriage. Eckhart first gained wide exposure in 2000 as George, a ponytailed, goateed biker, in Steven Soderbergh's drama Erin Brockovich. The film was met with good reviews, and was a box office success, earning $256 million worldwide. His performance was well received by critics; Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman wrote that Eckhart "may be playing a bit of an ideal [...] but he makes goodness as palpable as he did yuppie evil in 'In the Company of Men'."
Following the release of Erin Brockovich, Eckhart co-starred with Renée Zellweger in LaBute's Nurse Betty (2000). He next appeared in Sean Penn's mystery feature The Pledge (2001), in which he played a young detective partnered with a veteran detective, played by Jack Nicholson. The movie received generally favorable reviews, but it did not fare particularly well at the box office. The following year, he collaborated with LaBute in a film adaptation of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Possession (2002).
In 2003, Eckhart co-starred with Hilary Swank in The Core, a film about a geophysicist who tries to detonate a nuclear device in order to save the world from destruction. The film was critically and financially unsuccessful. Also in 2003, he appeared in The Missing, in which he played Cate Blanchett's lover, and in the action-thriller Paycheck opposite Ben Affleck. The following year, away from film, Eckhart guest starred in two episodes of NBC's comedy sitcom Frasier, where he played a boyfriend of Charlotte, Dr. Frasier Crane's love interest.
His next film role was in E. Elias Merhige's thriller Suspect Zero, a movie about an FBI agent who tracks down a killer who murders serial killers. Upon release, the movie received broadly negative reviews. Despite the reception, Eckhart's performance was favored by critics; Newsday wrote that Eckhart was a "classically handsome leading man ... but Merhige demands of him complexity and anguish." Suspect Zero was a box office disappointment, earning $11 million worldwide. Also in 2004, Eckhart starred on the London stage, opposite Julia Stiles, in David Mamet's Oleanna at the Garrick Theatre. The drama ran until mid-2004. For this performance, Eckhart received favorable critical reviews.
In 2005, returning to film, Eckhart appeared in Neverwas as a therapist who takes a job at a rundown mental hospital that once treated his father (Nick Nolte). Eckhart's next project was Thank You for Smoking, in which he played Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobbyist whose firm researched the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer.
Also in 2008, Eckhart portrayed the comic book character Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, the sequel to the 2005 film Batman Begins. Nolan's decision to cast Eckhart was based on his portrayal of corrupt characters in the films In the Company of Men, The Black Dahlia, and Thank You For Smoking. The Dark Knight was a big financial and critical success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America. With revenue of $1 billion worldwide, it became the fourth highest-grossing film of all time, and the highest-grossing film of Eckhart's career. Roger Ebert opined that Eckhart did an "especially good job" as his character in the feature, while Premiere magazine also enjoyed his performance, noting that he "makes you believe in his ill-fated ambition ..."
Following the success of The Dark Knight, Eckhart next appeared in Alan Ball's Towelhead (2008), an adaption of the Alicia Erian novel of the same name, in which he played a Gulf War Army reservist who sexually abuses his 13-year-old Arab-American neighbor. He next co-starred with Jennifer Aniston in the romantic drama Love Happens, released in September 2009, as a motivational speaker coming to terms with his own grief. The following year he starred alongside Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole (2010), an adaption of David Lindsay-Abaire's 2005 drama of the same name.
In 2011, Eckhart starred in Jonathan Liebesman's science fiction film Battle: Los Angeles, in which he portrayed a combat veteran Marine platoon sergeant. He appeared alongside Johnny Depp, Richard Jenkins, and Amber Heard in Hunter S.
| Year | Award | Film/Show | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Golden Globe | Thank You for Smoking | Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy | Nominated |
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