THE MAN WHO GOSSIPED TOO MUCH

For almost two decades, JOHN NELSON anonymously published blind items skewering the Hollywood elite on the blog CRAZY DAYS AND NIGHTS. Then his identity was revealed in the midst of a messy affair.

- Lila Shapiro

One afternoon nearly 20 years ago, a lawyer named John Robert Nelson began to lead a double life. He was 37, working for a small firm in a small town on the coast of Northern California and earning so little that he had to get up at three every morning to deliver newspapers. The alter ego he created led a more glamorous existence. “Enty Lawyer,” as that persona was known, was the author of Crazy Days and Nights, a Hollywood-gossip blog that would go on to acquire cult status among devotees of celebrity dirt. In his first post, Nelson wrote that he’d started the blog because he was in a “unique position of being able to tell you what really goes on behind the scenes and what even the gossip magazines can’t find out.” In the short biography he posted on the site, he claimed he had represented big stars going through “arrests, divorces, breakups and hookups, new deals and cancellations.” He promised to dish about his clients as well as his own Hollywood adventures with the celebs and pseudo-celebs who populated his life. If his claims were to be believed, Enty was among the most connected guys in Hollywood. He was friends with Leonardo DiCaprio. He drank with Frank Sinatra. He’d picked up Katherine Heigl on the side of the highway at three in the morning when she ran out of gas and collected Quentin Tarantino off a bender in Krakow. A disclaimer said the site published “conjecture and fiction” in addition to “accurately reported information." It did not specify which anecdotes were which.

It was a good time to launch a gossip blog. By the mid-aughts, the public had grown weary of the fawning celebrity coverage that mainstream entertainment outlets had been offering up for decades.