September 12, 2000

Douglas poses with Zeta-Jones, and baby makes three

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

CELEBRITY PROBLEM-SOLVING: What do you do if you're Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones and everyone in the world wants to take pics of you and your new bambino? If you're smart, you simply give up all thought of eluding the photogs and instead stand still for authorized pictures as taken by London's OK! Magazine.

Then the question is: What do you ask the publication to give you by way of emolument? Rumor has it that Michael and Catherine (and we'll assume the baby boy, Dylan, gets his cut) were rewarded by the mag to the tune of $1.2 million. However, a "rep" of Michael's tells USA Today that figure is off the mark, even while tacitly admitting that the pair were in fact paid for their posing pains.

PEEKABOO: This year's Emmy Awards are but a misty memory, except for the extremely fetching and very-close-to-transparent dress that Geena Davis wore to the gala affair.

A reporter who finds the subject especially fascinating contacts Pamela Dennis, the fashionista who designed the dress, to glean this comment.

"They (meaning Geena and her handlers) gave me some parameters," Pamela recalls, "but really, they said they just wanted Geena's dress to be a "Wow!'"

By the way, rumors that Geena's parameters have been surgically enhanced are without merit.

HECK TO PAY: The fine folks who run the Venice Film Festival reportedly were good enough to provide supermodel and former David Copperfield flame Claudia Schiffer with a private jet so she could appear at the fest in conjunction with a short film in which she has a role. Alas, the festival's good effort went pretty much for naught, because Claudia was late anyway.

"We sent a private Falcon plane on Tuesday night for her," a festival "rep" tells a London tab. "The plane had been there all night" while Claudia, apparently, was taking her sweet time about boarding it.

Yet according to Claudia herself the whole thing is a bunch of
baloney.

"I'm very disappointed that having had such a positive experience at the festival," she tells the New York Post, "I woke up the next morning to read a lot of false information that doesn't reflect what really happened." It just goes to show that beautiful, wealthy women have it worse than anybody.

CHELSEA IN THE MORNING OR WHENEVER: Everyone is pleased as punch to learn that Chelsea Clinton apparently is dating a young fellow named Jeremy Kane, although Chelsea herself and all of her close relations, of course, have nothing whatever to say about it. That being the case, one reporter recently had the brilliant idea of getting a pertinent quote from a former Santa Monica, Calif., neighbor of Jeremy's named Vito Cangemi.

"I saw Chelsea over here once this summer," Vito recalls. "I didn't have a chance to talk to her because there was all this Secret Service with her. But I have said hello to him, and he seems to be a very nice young man." If he's so nice, why the Secret Service?

ANGELS REVISITED: It's not enough that every glossy magazine in the country is running fantastically long articles about the "Charlie's Angels" movie that will star Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz, quite as though Orson Welles had returned from the dead to make "Citizen Kane II." It also appears necessary for every piece of newsprint produced in North America to contain some snippet concerning the darn thing. Here, for instance, is Diaz explaining to some rag why she got involved in the project to begin with.

“I wanted to do it," Cameron observes, "because Drew Barrymore is the best saleswoman in the entire world! If you want somebody to buy your product, get Drew to taste it, wear it, use it.... If she likes it, you're sold!" Maybe she can help us get rid of all these exclamation marks we never asked for.

UNMARRIED TO THE MOB: Victoria Gotti, daughter of Dapper Don John Gotti and a highly successful book author in her own right, is all of a sudden going to divorce her husband, Carmine Agnello, who currently is doing time in the Big House behind criminal charges of a federal nature.

"Carmine was jealous of Victoria's career," a "pal" explains to gossip dowager Liz Smith. "He didn't understand why she wanted to be a writer or why she attempted to put a shine on the Gotti family name. He didn't understand why she wanted to work!" More exclamation marks we have to deal with?

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

back to top