Hard to believe it's serious
September 17, 2002
JENNIFER LOPEZ and Ben Affleck who are in love - or at least in lust - want to make it legal? Official?Stars and their romances create a cottage industry. Monday a spy in a certain camp whispers Harrison and Calista are talking marriage. I mean, please. Tuesday another mole swears Kelly Ripa and husband are having whatever. I know they're having whatever. She's pregnant again. But this is not the whatever they mean. Here's how the progression of "scoops" to a columnist works:
Star is dating Lover. Star is feuding with Lover. Star is dating Person B. Star is trying to make Lover jealous. Lover is dating Somebody Else. Star is back with Lover. They're engaged. They're unengaged. Star is pregnant. Denies she's pregnant. More rumors she's pregnant. She's finally pregnant. They marry, they fight, they split, they reunite, they argue again, they divorce. It starts all over.
This means that at any moment, given the star's capriciousness, your item could be wrong or right.
Print something the star doesn't yet want printed, they'll scream you should have checked with them. Try. A 10-months pregnant star's p.r. rep will say, "Oh, she's not carrying a baby . . . it's just gas."
They're the ones full of gas but now that I'm coming off as though I'm full of gas, I wish to report a report reported to me last week that Harrison and Calista are talking marriage. I discounted it. But, three minutes later, someone in the know swore Jen and Ben are serious.
You serious? I asked.
"I am serious about Jennifer and Ben being serious," they said.
J.Lo's last two marriages didn't last as long as my touch-up, I said.
Look, they said. We know, we see, we hear, we're telling you.
And I'm telling you.
And you can only imagine what their p.r. person will be telling me!
TWO months ago, Wed. July 24, I printed that Jane Clayson, whom I personally thought was nifty and liked a lot and couldn't understand why she was going, was out of the CBS Morning Show. I said it was a done deal. I now tell you they're bringing in nobody very special. Nobody who's going to jazz up ratings. They're going safe. Is all I'm saying.
THE von Bulow affair - as in did/didn't Claus try to off his wife Sunny - spawns yet another drama. Claus was acquitted, Sunny lies in her irreversible coma, now the recent death of her stepfather, Russell Aitken, triggers Act Three.
Background: The mother of Sunny von Auersperg von Bulow and brother Prince von Auersperg was Annie Laurie Aitken. Her will left her fabulous 900 Fifth Ave. apartment and palatial Newport mansion - centerpiece of the Claus/Sunny attempted murder trial - to second husband Russell Aitken for life tenancy.
Aitken then married John Roosevelt's widow, Irene - nice bloodlines but not wealthy - from Memphis. Practical Irene poo-poo'd this life tenancy gambit and legally became sole heir. Got it all. Since Newport was never her flute of champagne, Irene the Intrepid is selling the place. Sunny's kids get zip from grandma's multi-million dollar properties.
I tell you the truth, the rich have a hard life.
FOX TV's updating Eva Gabor and Eddie Albert's antique series "Green Acres." The concept is, transplanted folks. Like hillbillies in Beverly Hills or super-rich VIPs in Appalachia. Let me tell you about fish-out-of-water stuff:
I once interviewed the wife of a Tanzanian diplomat who'd just been posted here. She was terrified. Temporarily in a hotel, she didn't know how to warm the baby's milk. Placed in a cab, she didn't know to tip so the driver threw her money back. Scared to take a taxi again, next day she took a bus and tipped the driver. He also threw the money back.
This woman was so unnerved she had a breakdown. Aside from ratings and laugh tracks and casting and writing, it takes great care to spoof a fish out of water.
SOUP kitchen. Catholic church. Upper West Side. Last Sunday, a volunteer is ladling meat. The would-be eater, a lady, inquires: "Beef?" The volunteer replies, "No. Pork." The lady says, "I won't eat that. Jesus was a Jew. He wouldn't have eaten it either."
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
Celebrities often find romance at work
By Ann Oldenburg
USA Today
September 15, 2002
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are the red-hot couple of the moment.
They've been seen kissing and tooling around in a snazzy convertible Bentley, and are said to be doing "the horizontal mambo," as one New York gossip column put it.
Just how did the high-profile hunk and hunkette hook up?
On a movie set.
Cast as a thug and a female gangster in the film "Gigli," Affleck and Lopez hit it off on the Long Beach, Calif., set last winter.
Now they're working together again on "Jersey Girl," the Kevin Smith movie filming in Philadelphia.
Set romances are Hollywood's version of office love affairs. Making whoopee while making a movie has been happening for decades.
Some of Hollywood's most famous couples met in the workplace.
• Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met on the soundstage of "To Have and Have Not" in 1944.
• Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor met on the set of "Cleopatra" in 1962.
• Tom Cruise met Nicole Kidman on the set of 1990's "Days of Thunder." He and Penelope Cruz met on the set of last year's "Vanilla Sky."
• Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., who married earlier this month, met on the set of 1997's" "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
"Actors' and directors' lives seem glamorous, but if you're working a lot, where else are you going to meet someone?" says Dennis Broe, professor of film, media and television history at Long Island University.
