Beck/Smith Hollywood

Tim Allen

Enough already! blasts Tim Allen of the Tiger Woods scandal.

The comic is referring to the endless media coverage of the story that started with the golfing champ’s crashing his car near his home in the middle of the night to allegations that he has been involved in numerous extra-marital affairs.

“This is a horror,” declares Allen. “This is a family in deep pain. I have very good friends who can’t stop talking about the story, going over detail after detail. But I feel, who am I to judge? It’s just the human way, I suppose, to build people up and then tear them down.”

Allen found himself in danger of the latter situation when, some 20 years after he served 28 months in jail for possession of cocaine in the late 70s, someone threatened to make the story public. Tim retaliated by having his publicist tell USA Today about the case, and, once the story was out, says Tim, “That was the end of it.”

Ironically, Tim portrays a man fresh out of prison in “Crazy on the Outside,” the upcoming movie he self-financed, directed and in which he co-stars with Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Kelsey Grammer. “Like me, my character straightens out his life,” says Allen.

He goes on to say that the brother-sister comedy went through three studio regimes before he picked it up and that, “I’ve been holding secret screenings around the country” and, “it’s being very well received.”

He does concede that getting the picture made meant considerable sacrifices. “Instead of costing $60 million, like one of my major studio films costs, we had to bring it in for under $20 million. And, instead of doing a page a day like I did with John Travolta, we had to grind out three or four pages a day to stay within budget.”

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Benjamin McKenzie tells us it’s been frustrating waiting to find out the fate of “Southland,” but he feels good about the show’s future, now that it’s found a new home at TNT.

“It was obviously unfortunate the way it went down. Shows do get canceled. We didn’t see it coming, so it was a bit of a shock for all of us,” admits McKenzie about NBC greenlighting a second season and then abruptly canceling it. “It’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of that.

“You get angry and impatient because we had to sort of sit around for the last couple of months while they went through the process of selling it. But, if the end result of this whole process is that we end up on TNT and we have a home there for years to come, and we can make the show that we want to make that we weren’t able to make on NBC, then that’s a great outcome,” he notes.

TNT will begin airing the entire first season starting January 12 and then they will air six episodes that have already been shot for season two. “TNT needs a little time, obviously, to gear up to promote the show. I’m excited for people to see not only the new version of the pilot, which has additional footage in it, but these new episodes which I think are some of the best we’ve done.

I think fans of the show will be rewarded for their patience,” he says. “Now that we’re on cable, we don’t have to deliver as big of a number as we did on NBC. If we get that core audience to follow us to TNT, then I think we could be around for a while.”

In the meantime, McKenzie plans to take it easy during the Christmas holidays. “I’m just going back home to Austin, Texas, where I’m from, to spend time with my family. I’ll eat some good food, get some gifts, and just enjoy my time off.”

BURNED YULE LOG: Don’t feel too bad if your holiday doesn’t quite measure up to expectations. It can happen to anyone — even celebrities.

Donald Faison admits he and girlfriend Cacee Cobb had a less than memorable Christmas last year. ‘Last Christmas, plans had fallen through for me and my girlfriend. We wound up spending Christmas day at IHOP. That wasn’t necessarily the worst Christmas in the world, ‘cuz them pancakes is delicious, but I don’t think that’s what Cacee had in mind for Christmas.”

Jeff Dunham says, “There was one year when I was in college where I went to a party with my parents in Dallas. Tom Landry, who was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was at the party, so it was one of those Dallas elite, nice parties. I sat there on the couch eating some kind of cooked pecans.

“Apparently, they didn’t agree with me overnight, so on Christmas morning, I was in the bathroom throwing up for five hours. It was definitely my worst Christmas and my mom later told me that was her worst Christmas, too.”

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster

Timothy Hutton

Timothy Hutton was glad to hear the news that Roman Polanski’s “Ghost Writer” will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February — despite the fact Polanski remains under house arrest in Switzerland awaiting extradition to the U.S. on his 1978 conviction for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. But, Hutton wasn’t surprised.

The embattled director continued to supervise post-production work on his latest movie when he was imprisoned near Zurich, as well as when he was allowed to return to his Swiss chalet.

“I knew looping and sound work had been done with the different actors and it was on track to come out next year,” Hutton says. “I don’t know the details of how the film has been worked on, but I’m sure that he’s involved with every aspect of it, every detail.”

Hutton plays an American lawyer representing the British prime minister in the feature. The adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel, it’s about a writer recruited to help a disgraced PM (said to be a thinly-veiled Tony Blair) produce his memoirs against the backdrop of a possible indictment at the international criminal court. Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor play the prime minister and the writer, respectively.

“I think it’s going to be a really terrific film,” Hutton says.

Hutton was, of course, stunned when Polanski was arrested last September. “I mean, yeah, it was just a few months before we were all working on the film,” he notes. As for his feelings on the matter? “All I care to say about it is that I had a really great experience working on the film.”

Hutton is due to return to the cameras for Season 3 production of his terrific TNT “Leverage” series in March. The show, in which he plays the mastermind of a group of tech-savvy con artists who employ their skills to bring down bad guys, returns to the lineup Jan. 13. First, time off with his sons, ages eight and 22, and “the cousins are coming up to my house in upstate New York. We’re hoping to get up to one of the local ski areas. A couple of the kids have never skied.”

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Jana Kramer tells us she loves her gig as the newest bad girl, Alex, on the CW’s “One Tree Hill,” but adjusting to life in North Carolina hasn’t been as easy. She’s especially missing being with her boyfriend Johnathon Schaech, who she met when the two filmed “Prom Night” together.

“It’s totally a different world out here in Wilmington. I was like, ‘Where’s the town?’ And, they said, ‘This is the town.’ I’m like, ‘It’s only five blocks!’ I fly back to L.A. when I can to spend time with my boyfriend. It’s hard, though. I’m so tired of being in an airplane,” she says. “My boyfriend was just in the country Georgia, so that was really difficult because he was gone for three months. Now that he’s back in L.A. it’s a lot easier.”

Luckily, the cast has become like a second family to Kramer. “I was really nervous when I first came on board because everybody’s been on this show for seven years now. I was worried in particular about Sophia [Bush], because you never know how girls are, and this being primarily her show, but she was extremely welcoming. Sophia, Lisa and I hang out all the time. Everybody’s pretty close because you kind of have to be, since most of our friends are in L.A.”

Now, Kramer just hopes the long-running show has a little more steam left in it. “We just keep crossing our fingers. Hopefully, it sticks around a couple of more years because I just got on the show. It’d be nice to have something steady and to have more time to explore the character, but I’ve learned to never get your hopes up in this business because things change so quickly.”

INDUSTRY BITS: The Russell Brand-Jonah Hill “Get Him to the Greek” shot last summer, but they’re adding new material to the feature expected in June, with production to commence mid-January. Among the parts being cast are a newscaster and two beautiful and sexy girls, one of whom will be required to go topless.

“Greek” has Brand reprising his Aldous Hill, wayward rock legend, role from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with Hill as the record company intern charged with getting him to show up to perform his own comeback concert.

Casting is underway for a pilot presentation for a new reality-style TV drama called “Nowhere Home,” following the lives of four runaway teenagers — three girls and a guy, ages 13 to 18. Let us hope the producers don’t choose to glamorize their lives.

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster