November 9, 1999

MICHAEL DOUGLAS DOES NOTHING MUCH, REPORTERS GO WILD

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

MICHAEL DOUGLAS IN THE NEWS: Papers, tabs, mags and rags love nothing better these days than to give a breathless recounting of every coming and every going engaged in by film star Michael Douglas and his light of love, Catherine Zeta-Jones. For instance, here's USA Today going to considerable lengths to inform readers that Michael and Catherine recently attended an Al Gore dinner hosted by Tina Brown of Talk mag, even though Catherine's first choice would have been to go to the premiere of "The Insider" instead.

MICHAEL DOUGLAS IN THE NEWS - THE SAGA CONTINUES: We turn now to the New York Daily News, where a doughty reporter prevails on Michael to give his opinion of the vice president's showing at Tina's do.

"I'm an Al Gore supporter," the son of Kirk Douglas admits. "I like Bill Bradley, too. But I give Gore the nod because of his experience."

CASTING NOTES FROM ALL OVER: That's nothing, though, compared to another item on the same page of the Daily News that goes into some detail about the ongoing effort to finish casting the big-screen version of the old TV chestnut, "Charlie's Angels."

Latest reports have it that one of the people being considered for one of the "Angel" roles is Lucy Liu of "Ally McBeal."

Yet the flick's producer, Leonard Goldberg, freely confesses that the gal he'd really like to ink for the job is Ashley Judd.

"Ashley would be fabulous," Leonard opines. "But she's been working non-stop. Even beyond the accident, I know she wants to rest."

Of course, the "accident" to which our man refers is this thing where Ashley broke her fibula during a jet-skiing accident in Australia. Thus Lucy's candidacy.

"Production starts Dec. 6," Leonard observes. "We're talking to a lot of people, and we still have time." That's what we used to think.

BIGGEST NEWS EVER, CONTINUED: Of course, the three networks ongoing struggle for primacy in the early-morning arena is far and away the most crucial issue facing the American public since women's suffrage, and one thing we all need to bear in mind is that Steve Friedman - the producer of "The Early Show," Bryant Gumbel's new offering - is taking a very optimistic view of his program's chances.

"What we did this week (i.e., the show's first week on the air) was get on the playing field," Steve says. "Now we have to start taking on the people on the playing field. But nobody here underestimates what a long, hard struggle it's going to be. We've got to get people to say, 'We watch CBS in the morning' - and they haven't said that in 45 years."

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE: For years, magician David Copperfield and supermodel Claudia Schiffer took a lot of heat for being romantically involved with one another, for reasons about which we were never clear. Now that Claudia has considerately clarified the matter by dropping David like a hot rock, it's interesting to note that her former beau is currently squiring another supermodel around, this one named Terri Holladay, of mixed American-Vietnamese ethnicity. While we can't pretend to give you a lot of insight into Terri’s hopes and aspirations, we can report that merely being a model isn't going to satisfy her ambition. "I want to be a spokesperson," she tells a reporter. "... That's what I find challenging."

BREAKING AND ENTERING? Speaking of women, here's word that Susan Lucci - the very same Susan Lucci who has starred in "All My Children" since the close of the Boer War and won an Emmy for her pains only last year - is going to replace Bernadette Peters in the New York revival of "Annie Get Your Gun" for three wondrous holiday weeks, having presumably scared the bejeebers out of "Gun” producers Fran and Barry Weissler by auditioning for them in their living room. (That's what happens when you forget to activate the alarm system.)

ANOTHER HAPPY ENDING: We admit that we have been lax in supplying you with blow-by-blow news over controversy, surrounding the fact that songbird Mariah Carey elected to delete a duet she sang with her current boyfriend, Luis Miguel, from her current album. In the wake of much supposition to the effect that the move signaled the end of connubial happiness in the Mariah-­Luis department, Mariah herself puts the entire thing in a nutshell for an inquiring journalist.

"It just wasn't the right song," she explains. "We do sing together in private. That's much more important to me than trying to exploit a relationship by doing a duet." Exploiting a relationship by talking to a reporter about it is, apparently, a different story.

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

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