Quick Takes: Mel Gibson’s ‘Hangover’?

It worked with Mike Tyson in “The Hangover.” But can director Todd Phillips make a celebrity cameo uncomfortably funny with a much more recently controversial figure?

The New York Post reported Monday that Mel Gibson will play a Bangkok tattoo artist in “The Hangover 2.” Two people close to the production confirmed to The Times that Gibson — who’s maintained public silence since recordings apparently capturing his violent rants against ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva surfaced last summer — will play an American expat living in Thailand.

It’s unclear if the character is totally fictional or if Gibson will be playing himself, banished to tattoo artistry in the wake of his scandal. The movie, in which the “Hangover” guys head to Southeast Asia for the wedding of Ed Helms’ character to a Thai American woman, is already in production and set to come out in May.

—John Horn and Steven Zeitchik

Tony Awards seek venue

The Tonys are homeless.

Producers of America’s most prestigious theater award show have been fanning across New York City in recent months to lock down a suitable venue for next summer’s razzle-dazzle after losing their elegant, long-term space at Radio City Music Hall.

While finding a large performance space in a city the size of New York doesn’t initially sound like such a difficult proposition, it turns out that locating the perfect spot to host the awards show poses a unique set of challenges.

For one, it has to be large enough to seat several thousand people. For another, it needs aisles for the multiple nominees to have access to the stage should they win, ruling out certain concert halls. It must also have a flexible stage and space for scenery. It has be affordable, of course. And, perhaps what is most important, it needs to be available.

That means the massive main arena at Madison Square Garden is out: The Nets and Knicks have booked it. It also means the Metropolitan Opera has to be crossed out: They have ballet and concerts scheduled all summer. What about the natural choice, a Broadway theater? Likely too small and unwilling to give the Tonys the several weeks they need to set up.

—Associated Press

Hockney goes digital with art

Canvas is just so 20th century.

That’s the message of David Hockney’s new Paris exhibition, where glowing iPads and iPhones — their screens a changing medley of still lives and landscapes created by the celebrated British artist on the “Brushes” application — replace traditional canvases.

Dozens of the apparatuses are bolted onto the walls, their flat screens aglow with drawings of jagged mountains, somber interiors and bouquets of flowers in eye-popping colors.

The show, which opens to the public Wednesday at Paris’ Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, grew out of the digital doodlings Hockney started sending his family and friends after his 2008 purchase of an iPhone. But it quickly grew into a serious artistic endeavor. Over the past year and a half, Hockney has made more than 1,000 drawings, first on his iPhone and then on the larger iPad, curator Charlie Scheips said.

—Associated Press

Pregnant Dion in hospital

Celine Dion has been admitted to a Florida hospital to prevent the early delivery of her twins.

The superstar singer is at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. The hospital said in a statement the admission was recommended to make sure she’s near her doctors leading to the babies’ birth.

A representative for the Dion said she is due to deliver the twin boys early next month.

—Associated Press

Finally

Renewed: NBC has given full-season orders to three freshman series: “The Event,” “Law & Order: Los Angeles” and “Outsourced.”

Reruns: “Modern Family” has barely begun its second season on ABC, but KTTV-TV Channel 11 is among the Fox-owned TV stations that has secured rerun rights to the Emmy-winning comedy, beginning in 2013.

New sounds: The folks behind the percussive theatrical hit “Stomp” are bringing their new production, the whimsically symphonic “Pandemonium,” to UCLA’s Royce Hall from Nov. 16 to 18.