BITS AND PIECES 08/03
PUSSSYKATT
--The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a comedy by Charles Busch, closing
September 15 on Broadway after 770 regular performances and 32 previews.
--The Parents Television Council criticizing MTV Thursday for excessive
raunchiness in the watchdog group's new report on the 10 best and worst shows
on cable television. Other shows targeted: FX's The Shield, TNT's Witchblade,
TNN's WWE Raw Is War and, of course, Comedy Central's South Park.
--PBS aiming for a September 10 airdate for America Rebuilds, its 90-minute
documentary about the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the efforts to rebuild the 16-acre site, according to the New York
Post.
NY POST/By DAREH GREGORIAN
--A top boxing official who says he "suffered permanent physical and
psychological injuries" after getting caught in the middle of a brawl between
Mike Tyson and heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis is suing the fighters for $56
million. World Boxing Council President Jose Sulaiman says both fighters
"assaulted and battered" him during a melee at a prefight press conference in
Midtown earlier this year. Knocked unconscious, the 71-year-old official woke
up to Tyson spitting on him - and then threatening to "f- - -ing kill" him,
said Sulaiman’s lawyer, Thomas Deas.
NY POST/PAGE SIX...
--PEGGY Lipton is such a convincing actress that during a performance of "The
Vagina Monologues" at the Westside Theater last week, she was propositioned.
Lipton, mother of Rashida and Kidada Jones, was in the middle of the finale,
which calls for a simulated orgasm. One male theatergoer cried out, "Let's try
that one out for real next time - I'm in room 705!" before throwing his hotel
room key onto the stage at Lipton's feet. Ever the professional, Lipton
continued on with her "climax."
--DARRELL Hammond hopping on a Cingular Wireless double-decker tour bus on the
corner of 47th and Fifth, and giving surprised tourists an hourlong speech on
New York .
--JOEY Fatone of *NSYNC - wearing a T-shirt that read "Sex Instructor, Free
Lessons" - jotting down a babe's phone number at Playboy's Midsummer Night's
Dream party at the mag's Fifth Avenue HQ . . .
--IVANA Trump giving shout-outs to her pals at Sean "Puffy" Combs' party at the
VIP club in St. Tropez.
--The Half King, the Chelsea bar co-owned by "The Perfect Storm" author
Sebastian Junger and Nanette Burstein, is offering free beers to anyone who
comes in with a ticket stub from "The Kid Stays in the Picture," the Robert
Evans documentary which Burstein co-directed . . .
--Ozzy Osbourne's favorite food is cottage cheese . . .
--Jill Rappaport bought a wild horse for Horse Whisperer Bill Brannaman to tame
at the Polo Ralph Lauren benefit at her Wainscott house for New York Horse
Rescue. Katie Couric and Billy Joel watched as Brannaman instantly tamed the
steed.
--POP artist Keith Haring's longtime collaborator Angel Ortiz claims he's been
cheated out of cash and credit for co-crafting many of Haring's pioneering
paintings. Ortiz, 35, was a teenage graffiti artist when he filled in the
spaces of Haring's most valuable canvases with his distinctive street style,
and signed "LA Rock" next to Haring's signature. But Ortiz, whose new work is
showing at the Clayton Patterson Gallery on the Lower East Side, tells the
Villager newspaper that he's been gypped by the Keith Haring Foundation, which
he believes is withholding the "trust fund" Haring promised he'd leave for
Ortiz before he died from AIDS in 1991. "They kept me away from Keith," Ortiz
says. "I should have been a millionaire when he died." Patterson, Ortiz's
dealer, figures the artist is owed at least "a couple of hundred thousand." But
Julia Gruen, executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation, says that while
the Haring/Ortiz collaborations are "very significant works," the foundation
does not give money to artists. "We're always surprised by the sense of
entitlement that comes 20 years down the road," she sniffed.
--NOW that Leonard Nimoy is due out with a photo book of female nudes, he wants
to be taken seriously as an artist. A few weeks ago, we reported that Umbrage
is publishing "Shekhina," the "Star Trek" Vulcan's first book of photos billed
as "an exhaustive study of the female form." Now, Nimoy and his wife, Susan,
have set up a $1 million endowment fund for young artists at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in L.A., artnet.com reports. The Nimoy Fund for Emerging
Artists will support exhibitions and programs that "define new categories of
culture" and "challenge traditional categories of art-making."
--BRONX-BORN model Chris O was discovered when he was helping move Bill and
Hillary Clinton into their Chappaqua manse. Just days later, he was posing
naked astride a horse for Bruce Weber in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. The
former boxer has since been featured in ads for Sean John, Phat Farm and Guess?
The other night, Chris joined fellow New York Models mannequin Jamie Rishar at
Pangaea to judge the L.A. Looks Model Search.
NY DAILY NEWS/Don Singleton
--Public television's Bill Moyers has been accused of drunken driving in
Vermont.
Despite failing a roadside breath test, Moyers insisted he was sober and vowed
to fight the charge. A Vermont state trooper said he pulled Moyers over on
Route 7A in Arlington last Saturday after he saw Moyers' car repeatedly swerve
across the center line. Moyers, 68, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and
aide to the late President Lyndon Johnson, had a blood-alcohol level of .10,
state police said. The legal limit for operating a motor vehicle in Vermont is
.08, but a second test 90 minutes later yielded a reading of .079, police said.
A court appearance was scheduled for Aug. 12 in Vermont District Court in
Bennington.
FOX NEWS/By Roger Friedman
--The cow is out of the barn as they say, and the cat is out of the bag. But
Michael Jackson doesn't care. On Monday, we learned, his attorneys quietly got
Judge Andria Richey of Los Angeles Superior Court to seal parts of his court
records in the Myung Ho Lee case. The documents within the case that were
sealed include Jackson's budgets and accounts payable ledgers which this column
reported last Friday exclusively. They showed Jackson's over-the-top,
profligate lifestyle including hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on
limousines, movie candy and popcorn, audio and video equipment, flowers and
pharmacy bills. The suppressed budget for October-November-December 2000 also
showed that Jackson paid his ex-wife Debbie Rowe $1.5 million during October
2000. Other line expenses included a projected payroll for those three months
of $860,000; $50,000 to Fernscan Recording Studios; $22,000 to Steve Martin's
Working Wildlife (not the actor/comedian, but an animal trainer who supplies
films with cooperative coyotes, etc); and $85,000 to Sun City Resorts.
Altogether, the budget states that for those three months in 2000, Jackson's
drew $4.5 million from his available funds, which had been loaned to him by
Bank of America/Nations Bank. Jackson is currently being sued for $13 million
by former business manager Myung Ho Lee, who claims that Jackson signed a
promise to pay him the money last September. Jackson, in a sworn statement,
denies ever signing the agreement.
--The word from Sony Music today is that more than 100 jobs are being cut. I
told you recently that veteran producer John Kalodner (Aerosmith, Journey) is
likely to be one of those affected. Big mistake in my opinion. Kalodner at
least produces hits. The new Springsteen album notwithstanding, Sony -- which
is really Columbia and Epic -- is not doing so well on the charts now. They
have one album in the top 20, which is No. 19, Aerosmith's Greatest Hits.
Recent releases by Celine Dion, Oasis, and Marc Anthony have been huge
disappointments. We won't even discuss Jackson's Invincible...The company has
spent the whole summer living off Shakira, the Andrea True of 2002. It's not
like Sony is alone in cutting jobs or taking it on the chin in the charts.
Certainly the other labels, with the exception of the Universal labels, Arista,
and J, are having similar problems. Almost nothing is selling well. CD prices
are ridiculously high, and the quality of most of the releases is abysmal. But
Sony gets the blame when things go wrong because in good times they are
arrogant and flashy. They need to develop some new interesting acts now, and
they'd better hurry up. Their former big star, Mariah Carey, I hear is busy
completing her new release for Island/Def Jam. And it's said to be quite good.
ASSOCIATED PRESS.....
--The Whitney Museum of American Art has received a $200 million donation of
postwar American art that brings world-class status to the museum's Abstract
Expressionist and Pop Art collections. The gift comprises 86 works by artists
such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett
Newman and Jackson Pollock, The New York Times reported Saturday. It is
believed to be the largest donation of postwar American art to any museum. Ten
of the Whitney's 40 trustees donated 15 works from their personal collections.
Seventy-one others were found in studios, galleries and auction houses, where
they were purchased as gifts for the museum. The donated works will be
displayed at the Whitney from Oct. 24 to Jan. 26. The Whitney, known for
temporary exhibitions such as its biennial survey of contemporary art, long has
been in the shadows of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum. The gift is expected to build the Whitney's permanent collection into a
bigger draw.
--SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A helicopter carrying Grammy
award-winning pop singer Shakira was forced to make an emergency landing on a
baseball field in the Dominican Republic due to bad weather, officials said.
The helicopter was traveling from Punta Cana to La Romana, some 68 miles east
of the capital Santo Domingo, when it encountered strong winds and heavy rain,
authorities said. No one was injured. Authorities did not say who was on board
the helicopter besides Shakira. The Colombian singer, her parents and brother
arrived in the Dominican Republic on Monday for a month of vacation at her
summer home in La Romana. After leaving the Dominican Republic, the 24-year-old
singer is scheduled to continue marketing her latest album, "Laundry Service."
--Veteran sportscaster Pat Summerall was hospitalized for treatment of internal
bleeding this week, but he is recovering and is expected to be released soon, a
spokesman for Fox television said on Friday.
--This year's "Neon Circus and Wild West Show" has come to a close, after
months of exhaustive touring. The Brooks & Dunn vehicle has become one of the
most energetic and unusual acts in the nation. CMT reports that when the final
performance ended this week (in Holmdel, N.J.) "snakes slithered underneath
drum risers ... midgets lined the stage ... and uniformed Marines marched
proudly." Old P.T. Barnum would have been proud. Between the "sideshows" this
year's tour has featured the talents of funnyman Cledus T. Judd, and singers
Chris Cagle, Trick Pony, Gary Allan and Dwight Yoakam. It would appear that
Brooks & Dunn have found the formula, bringing back the best of Ed Sullivan and
a county fair with the best of country thrown in.
--Devotees of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" have a new connection to use -- his
upcoming appearance on the NBC comedy series "Will & Grace." Bacon ("Apollo
13," "A Few Good Men," "Footloose") will guest-star as himself in the season's
second episode -- in which he hires Jack (Sean Hayes) as his personal
assistant, without realizing that Jack has been stalking him. One of Jack's
first assignments is to track down the person who has been making Bacon so
uncomfortable. "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" is a trivia game played by movie
trivia buffs, based on the "Six Degrees of Separation" theory -- which holds
that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six or fewer
personal connections.
www.zap2it.com......
--In a previous series, Sebastian Spence was trying to save the world from
alien invasion. In his latest gig, he's teaching college students. It's
anyone's guess as to which is more difficult. Starting with the two-hour
Wednesday, Oct. 2 season premiere, Spence, who starred for three seasons in Sci
Fi Channel's "First Wave," joins the cast of The WB's "Dawson's Creek," playing
Matt Freeman, one of Jennifer (Michelle Williams) and Jack's (Kerr Smith)
professors. He's described as "good-looking, charismatic and entertaining," and
apparently also has a dark secret (who doesn't in TV land?). Spence isn't the
only one heading to Wilmington, N.C. (where the show is filmed), this year.
Joining him are Oliver Hudson (son of Goldie Hawn, brother of Kate), star of
The WB's short-lived "My Guide to Becoming a Rock Star," who is set for 10
episodes this fall. He plays Eddie Doling, a guy from a blue-collar background
who charms coed Joey (Katie Holmes). Jensen Ackles, late of NBC's "Days of Our
Lives" and FOX's "Dark Angel," appears in several episodes as CJ, a
good-looking and clean-cut peer counselor with secrets of his own (see above).
Roger Howarth, who played the volatile Todd Manning on ABC's "One Life to
Live," will guest-star as Professor Greg Hetson, Joey's handsome English
professor and academic advisor. The WB also tells Zap2it that Jack Osbourne
("The Osbournes") will also make an appearance in the season premiere. Few
details are known, but a network spokeswoman says he'll likely play himself.
--Stand-up comedy, once a staple of "The Tonight Show," is making at least a
brief return to the top-rated late-night show. The week of Aug. 5 will feature
a performance each night from comics making their first appearance on the show.
It will be the first time in a decade -- right around the time Jay Leno
replaced Johnny Carson as host -- that comics will be featured on the show
every night. Carson's tenure on the show included regular showcases for
stand-up comedians. A "Tonight Show" gig was considered a key break in the
stand-up circuit, and an invitation to sit down with Carson after the act was
even bigger. Since Leno -- who started in stand-up and still performs regularly
at a club in the L.A. area -- took over the show, however, slots for comics
have been increasingly rare. David Letterman and Conan O'Brien also feature
fewer comedians than in years past. The five comics scheduled for next week are
Pete Correale on Monday, Gabriel Iglesias on Tuesday, Justin McKinney on
Wednesday, John Heffron on Thursday and "American Idol" co-host Brian Dunkleman
on Friday.
--Tammy Leitner, a contestant on "Survivor: Marquesas," apparently took a
liking to being in front of the camera. Leitner will join the news staff of
KPHO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Phoenix, starting Sept. 3. The 29-year-old will
serve as the station's crime reporter. It's an area she knows well: Leitner has
worked as a cops reporter for the East Valley Tribune in nearby Mesa, Ariz.,
for the past 2 1/2 years and has also worked for newspapers in New York. "Her
communication skills and her aggressive reporting abilities will be a valuable
asset to our growing newsroom," Mitch Jacob, KPHO's news director, says of
Leitner. "The streets of the [Phoenix area] will seem tame to her after her
experience as a 'Survivor Marquesas' participant." Leitner has won several
awards for her newspaper reporting, including honors for stories on mob
informant Sammy "The Bull" Gravano and an Arizona connection to terrorist
attacks. She's also working on a true-crime book. Leitner is the second
"Marquesas" castaway to get a job in TV news. Fellow contestant Neleh Dennis
recently began working on the morning show at CBS' Salt Lake City affiliate --
although she covers decidedly lighter fare than Leitner will.
--Three more actors have signed on for season two of FOX's thriller "24." The
show, which has started production on its second season, has added Reiko
Aylesworth, Tracy Middendorf and John Terry to the cast. All three will play
recurring roles in the real-time drama following the extraordinarily
complicated life of now ex-counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer
Sutherland). The second season opens a year after the events of last season's
finale, in which Bauer's wife, Teri (Leslie Hope), was murdered. Jack and his
daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), are estranged, and he has left CTU.
Aylesworth, who co-starred in UPN's "All Souls" and appeared in FOX's
short-lived "American Embassy" last season, will play a new member of the CTU
team. Middendorf ("Beverly Hills, 90210") will play a single mom who hires as a
nanny. Terry, who played Dr. Div Cvetic on the first season of "ER," will play
the father of Bauer's new love interest (Sarah Wynter).
--About the only things not changing on "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" this
season are star Melissa Joan Hart and the name of the show. Despite the fact
that Sabrina is now a college graduate and starting her career, legal issues
involving the company that produces the comic book on which the series based
prevent the show's producers from changing the title, or even shortening it to
just "Sabrina." Just about everything else on The WB's longest-running comedy,
however, is being revamped. "It was time for her to grow up, it was time to get
her on her own two feet, and yes, it was time to reinvent the show," executive
producer Paula Hart (Melissa's mom) tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Its hard to
keep generating stories year after year after year if it stays the same." The
show's biggest on-camera move will be that Sabrina takes a job at a music
magazine. Several new cast members -- Diana-Maria Riva ("Philly"), Bumper
Robinson ("Living Single"), Andrew Walker ("Maybe It's Me") and John Ducey ("Oh
Grow Up") -- will play her co-workers. Additionally, Sabrina's aunts, played by
Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick, will no longer be part of the show. She will
now share her home with friends Morgan (Elisa Donovan) and Roxie (Soleil Moon
Frye). Behind the camera, the series has a new showrunner in David Babcock, and
its writing staff has undergone a nearly complete turnover with all but one of
the 13 writers from last season having been replaced.
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