Jennifer Lopez: Music, Acting Careers in Jeopardy

Jennifer Lopez | Anna Nicole Smith | Lorne Michael

Jennifer Lopez: Music, Acting Careers in Jeopardy

The massive attempts to save Jennifer Lopez's singing career — and even her acting pursuits — aren't going too well.

This week, Lopez's first Spanish album, "Como Ama Una Mujer," sold a very measly 49,452 copies, according to hitsdailydouble.com. The album finished at No. 10 for the week, behind a repackaging of Elton John's greatest hits.

Granted, the record business is in a hopeless downward spiral. But Lopez's first Spanish language album was a calculated move to win back the audience she lost as her pop albums became increasingly more and more about herself and her celebrity.

On top of that, she started her film career by playing the murdered and much martyred Selena.

The failure of "Como" is alarming for many reasons, not the least of which is that Lopez's already questionable recording career is now in severe jeopardy.

She was never a great singer in the first place, depending on backup vocalists like Ashanti to carry her through thin times. And Lopez's last English album, "Get Right," was a sales disaster.

But her movie career is also in need of resuscitation, if possible. Lopez is currently sitting on two unreleased duds: "Bordertown," co-starring Antonio Banderas and directed by Gregory Nava, and "El Cantante," which co-stars husband Marc Anthony as Hector Lavoe.

Picturehouse is holding that one for Aug. 1, but the reviews have been mixed. And no one seems to know why the movie has a Spanish title since it's all in English, a source tells me. If it's to capitalize on the album, maybe some rethinking is needed in the marketing department.

As for "Bordertown," it's yet to find a distributor. Early reviews were not enthusiastic.

Lopez seems to have drifted since her marriage to Anthony two years ago. More recently I reported in this column that the couple had seriously embraced Scientology and a friendship with Tom Cruise in order to get some buzz going. It doesn't look like it's helped.

Anna Nicole Smith's Doctor in the Hot Seat

This column was the first to tell you several weeks ago about Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, Anna Nicole Smith's best friend and personal psychiatrist.

We told you first that she had been fired from her job with a medical group because she farmed out the work instead of doing it herself.

Then we showed you a memo she faxed to another doctor in Los Angeles from the Bahamas that asked for a menu of potentially fatal drugs for Anna Nicole a week after the birth of Smith's baby girl and the death of her son.

We told you "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider" paid her for interviews as part of a complex deal cooked up by Howard K. Stern. And then, on one of those shows, Eroshevich showed off another drug memo for Anna Nicole and bragged that she had administered all the drugs to the late Playboy Playmate herself.

Late yesterday, the Associated Press finally caught on and reported that all 11 drugs found in Smith's hotel room came from prescriptions written by Eroshevich. No kidding.

So we called the California Medical Board and talked to the press rep, Candis Cohen. We asked her whether Eroshevich was being investigated.

"We can't comment on ongoing investigations," Cohen said. "You can count on the fact that we know what we're doing here." Wink, wink.

A member of the board of directors of the California Medical Board told me that he knew Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, the doctor who refused to fill Eroshevich's requests, was under investigation. The director didn't know if Eroshevich was being looked at, however.

"We don't know what's happening until the investigation is done," the director said.

The AP story did report that hundreds of pills were missing from the bottles found in Smith's room.

Eroshevich often made out prescriptions to pseudonym Michelle Chase, or to Smith's companion and the man in whose name most of her assets are recorded: Howard K. Stern. And yet, the Broward County Medical Examiner and the police found nothing wrong with any of this — no evidence of foul play.

'SNL' Creator Gets the Last Laugh

Lorne Michaels can pat himself on the back this morning — "30 Rock" has been renewed.

The creator of "Saturday Night Live" did not want NBC to greenlight Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," the self-important drama based on his 30-year-old late-night sketch comedy program. He forced the network to buy a comedy from his own production company about "SNL."

Michaels was right; they were wrong. Yesterday, NBC announced that "30 Rock" was coming back in the fall. Sometime this week they will also announce that "Studio 60" is gone.

Shortly after the "Studio 60" pilot was completed last August, this column reported that the show was a bust. This was not done with any personal rancor. The show was simply terrible. It was "The West Wing" backstage at a comedy show, without any laughs. The people seemed ridiculously pretentious.

In early fall, I told you the show would be cancelled. NBC went nuts disputing this. But here we are, and not a moment too soon. If only "October Road" on ABC could be sent to the same place.

All the actors from "Studio 60" will go on to good things. But the real winner is Michaels, who knows more about how and why shows work or don't. If we did one of those power issues, we would put a little arrow pointing straight up next to his name.