Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition's" tireless host Ty Pennington might need an extreme makeover himself by summer. In addition to making over homes in 25 different states for this season of the popular ABC reality show, Pennington is keeping several of his own plates spinning.

"I've got a book coming out I'm still working on, and I've got the magazine, 'At Home with Ty Pennington,' launching in May," says Pennington. The new mag "will have lots of cool projects people can do at home. It'll be great because I don't think there are too many magazines out there by a heterosexual male that actually show you how to do cool designs," he adds cheerfully. "That'll be a new thing for the market."

He also expects the store he's opening in L.A., called ADHD, to be "fully running by late spring, early summer. Sometimes to stimulate my creative juices I want to almost compete against myself and come up with even more creative things," says Pennington, whose store will feature "one-of-a-kind pieces. I want a place I can just go in and kind of have a breeding ground for ideas, so that's one of the reasons I'm doing that. It's a place I can kind of push the boundaries and do more cutting-edge stuff. I don't think anyone realizes how much design I do in my rooms (on "EM:HE") because you never really see that. Most people think I'm just a host going around yelling at people, but I actually have an extensive art background and really care about the projects I work on."

Asked when he's finding time to sleep, Pennington says, "Believe it or not, every night. I'm one of those people who can juggle lots of things at the same time, and I love doing what I do. I have the ultimate job. You don't get opportunities like this every life, and I'm definitely an old soul. I've been around."

WHAT DOES NOT KILL HIM MAKES HIM STRONGER: Armand Assante is known for his gangster-type characters, especially after winning an Emmy for playing John Gotti. That's why his next role, as the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, comes as a surprise to some (like the writer of an Internet movie site posting who asks, "Is this a joke?"). Assante tells us he's happy with his portrayal.

"It was probably the most complex role I've ever tackled. I had to at least try to fill the shoes of Nietzsche," Assante says of the recently wrapped "When Nietzsche Wept," based on the book by Irvin Yalom. "There are tremendous passages that are actually verbatim Nietzsche. That part of it I found extremely difficult. I worked very closely with a German actor because I wanted to understand the German context of the language. I was very careful in terms of what he exactly meant when he was writing particular passages."

As for what to expect from the movie, Assante explains, "I think it is a study of a man who made a choice at a particular crossroads in his life to be a pure artist. To me, Nietzsche is the Van Gogh of philosophy. He is the real romantic artist that split from society in a very painful way," he notes. "We live in an incredibly affluent time in our society where many people can choose to be artists and succeed. If you look at artists at the turn of the 19th Century, they paid dearly for their choices. The one thing I tried to bring to it was an edge of someone who had such passionate convictions about what he did that one could consider him a little crazy."

TALKING A GOOD GAME: With his Penn Jillette-hosted "Identity" game show returning to NBC March 16, TV superproducer Ben Silverman has six current programs, including "Nashville Star," "The Office" and "Ugly Betty." How does he compare doing reality TV to scripted series? "I definitely came out of the reality world, that's how I was branded," he notes, "but I've had even greater success with scripted shows. I enjoy it all, but there's no question that the scripted shows play on a kind of Formula 1 car level, the premium of how we operate. I mean, I love them all, but I watch the fan interaction with the talent on scripted shows, or the dynamic of the press with the writers, and it's definitely Tiffany, you know? It drives it."

Howie Mandel claims he's liked all of the contestants who've been on his hit NBC "Deal or No Deal" game show so far. That shouldn't be hard to believe, notes the comic, seeing that the show's production staff looks at "hundreds of thousands of applicants to find people America would like to spend an hour with," he notes. "I actually can find the positive in anybody."

(With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster)

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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