Pen To Paper: Simpson a sex object, Smith keeps Clerking and Bowie demands Prestige

Jessica Simpson is getting out of her daisy dukes and into a shop assistant’s uniform for Employee Of The Month. She’ll play a sexy cashier who causes two geeky fellow clerks to start a fierce competition for her affections. Australian comedian Dane Cook is already signed to play one of the nerdy employees, who are also locked in competition for the titular award.

Sticking with the world of commerce, fresh news from Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2: The Passion Of The Clerks. With filming now just about wrapped, Smith has revealed two big cameos from the film: old hands Jason Lee and Ben Affleck both make brief appearances, despite the director’s earlier claim that his former stars wouldn’t feature. Still, it’s always good to see Lee and Affleck in a Smith film… And for the fans who need to know, they’re playing new characters, though Affleck is on record as saying he just might be the Bartelby angel character he assayed in Dogma, cast back down to Earth.

On to more historical matters: David Bowie – best known for acting in The Man Who Fell To Earth – is considering a new screen thesping gig. He’s negotiating to play cult scientific figure Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Based on Christopher Priest’s 1996 novel, the film tells the tale of rival magicians in early 20th century London. The warring wizards will be played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. If he signs, Bowie will play Tesla, the real-life Serbian-American inventor who discovered the rotating magnetic field.