IN the old days, the career path for a certain brand of celebrity, the kind who is more than a flash in the pan but less than a national treasure, had these three steps: Be a big star for a while. Spend a few years on ''Hollywood Squares.'' Fade to obscurity. Trouble was, there are only nine Hollywood Squares, which left a lot of celebrities with...

The ''whole scrambled-egg episode,'' as Julius R. Nasso colorfully calls it, began in 2002. Mr. Nasso, a film producer, filed a $60 million suit against the action film star Steven Seagal, his producing partner for 15 years, for failing to appear in four films. Three months later, Mr. Nasso was indicted on charges of conspiring with members of the...