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Friday, August 2, 1996
Scoop
Exclusive News From the World of Entertainment
Joey Buttafuoco: One Rung Too Low for Anna Nicole Smith

Edited by Mary Bruno

Never let it be said that Anna Nicole Smith doesn't have standards. That's why the former supermodel is madder than hell at Joey Buttafuoco. The Long Island Lothario-turned-actor has been going around bragging to people that he's co-starring with Anna Nicole in a movie--The Underground Comedy Movie, to be exact, in which Joey plays a Mob tough and Anna Nicole has a cameo as a bag lady. "You can't take it as a positive," says Anna Nicole's publicist about Joey's involvement in his client's film. "What are his acting credentials?" Darned if we know, but then again, you gotta start somewhere.

Take The Underground Comedy Movie makers Vince Offer and Chris Watson, two first-time producers who used the money they made selling vegetable slicers to finance their film. Course, Chris and Vince had a little TV experience going in. They produced The Underground Comedy Show, which featured, among other things, Chris and Vince driving around Hollywood, spotting celebrities, and getting them to "mug" for the camera. One of the stars thus captured was Juliette Lewis , and Anna Nicole's spokesman says his client was drawn to the film because Chris and Vince dropped Lewis's name. Unfortunately, that one drive-by cameo was the extent of Lewis's involvement in the show.

Well, with or without Anna Nicole, production on The Underground Comedy Movie is supposed to begin later this month. Will Anna Nicole swallow her pride and go before the cameras? According to her spokesman, she's become way disillusioned with Chris and Vince. "At first, we thought they were nice, hip guys," he says, "but now, they seem to have gotten desperate." And speaking of desperate, it's not like Anna Nicole's phone is ringing off the hook with offers these days. Lane Bryant recently dropped her as its spokesperson, and, as of now, The Underground Comedy Movie is the only film in Anna Nicole's future.

Musical Notes:Talking Heads are back! Well, three of 'em anyway. You see, after the release of the band's 1988 album, Blind, frontman and leader David Byrne departed to pursue his solo career, leaving the remaining members--keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth, and drummer Chris Franz--singerless. But now, eight years later, the trio has decided to soldier on without Byrne. In October, MCA will release a new Talking Heads album, cleverly titled No Talking, Just Heads, on which the remaining three play behind such notable guest vocalists as Live's Ed Kowalczyk, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence, Debbie Harry (whose band Blondie was a New York City peer of the Heads), and Johnette Napolitano, a nice Italian girl best known for her old work in Concrete Blonde and her new band, Pretty & Twisted . "It has the Talking Heads sound," says a label publicist. "But each lead singer brings a little of the flavor of the bands they come from." The new Heads plan to tour following the release of No Talking, Just Heads, and it sounds like Napolitano will be assuming all the vocal duties on the road . . . They're calling it Phishstock--a two-day concert by the group Phish that takes place August 16-17 at an Air Force base in Plattsburgh, N.Y. That's big enough news itself, but here's the kicker: Phish had to get special approval from NASA to use the facility. Turns out the base is one of only a handful of emergency landing sites for the space shuttle, and NASA wanted to be sure that Phishstock didn't coincide with a shuttle mission. --Erik Flannigan & Gary Graff

Men of Steel: Shaquille O'Neal's movie career is off and running with his star turn as the genie in Kazaam . But the big guy faces at least one career obstacle that most Hollywood stars never have to confront: finding stand-ins. When you're seven feet tall and three hundred pounds, body doubles are in short supply. Nevertheless, the makers of Steel--the upcoming Warner Bros. action flick in which Shaq plays a steel-clad comic-book crime-fighter--solved the problem earlier this week. Producer Mark Allen says he's actually lined up "a few people" to stand in for the basketball giant. In fact, says Allen, finding hulking behemoths didn't really pose that much of a problem. The really hard part, he says, "was finding somebody who could ride a motorcycle." And how does one go about casting such a hard-to-fill stand-in slot? Simple, says Allen. "Call everybody." --Scott Roesch


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