Boston. Friends who live one town over from Watertown had e-mailed: “Nobody moving, going anywhere. No car or person on the street. All behind locked doors. Everyone terrified. Phones ringing off the hook.
“Been away so no food in the house. Can’t even go for milk or loaf of bread. NYPD’s in Watertown. They’re cooking for Boston law enforcement officials.”
And now congratulations to Boston, NY and the rest of the USA’s law enforcement officials.
JANE Fonda’s in “The Butler,” director Lee Daniels’/producer Harvey Weinstein’s October film about the White House’s longtime head staffer. With assorted first families portrayed, Fonda enacts Mrs. Reagan. About her casting she told me, “Many objected since she and I have such different political views.”
OK, but does Jane play Nancy’s warmth? She grinned with: “I play her firmth.”
AS Zac Efron did press for his coming film “At Any Price,” scrambling photographers said: “Zac shots sell at any price.”
Meanwhile, this hotshot was cradling his left hand. “Watch my hand,” he said.
“I just finished ‘Townies,’ a comedy movie with Seth Rogen. On set, doing a fight scene with Dave Franco, my action landed the wrong way. Happened five days ago. The bone back of my left hand broke and now there are screws with a titanium plate. Still, I went back to work. I can dress myself, but it’s tough and hurts.”
Big star today, he remembered those small days. “My first audition for my first professional job was for a movie. To play Peter Pan. My drama teacher knew an agent. Me, I knew nothing. I didn’t know how things got handled, how anything got done. Right away I started out singing and dancing on the furniture. A lady on camera said, ‘You never did this before, right?’
“Listen, all I can say now is — I’m getting better.”
Said Zac’s “At Any Price” co-star Dennis Quaid: “I love this film, but my great joy’s my kids. Five-year-old twins. I take them to school and to play at Santa Monica’s pier. My older son Jack is 21 on April 24. I’m figuring what to get him. He’s an actor in ‘Hunger Games.’ We don’t run lines together, but I did offer to help him get an agent.”
Thrilled to see me, in the middle of our talk Dennis took out his cellphone.
Then: “I’ve seen this movie four times. I’m a seed salesman with shady practices and twists and turns. I actually play a farmer.” Perfect smile, perfect teeth, perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect soft-as-your-behind brown jacket — boy did he not look like a farmer.
Does he take his babies to the movies? “Yes. To regular theaters, too, and I pay. I don’t get in for free.”
The movie’s female is Heather Graham, who’s “now into writing. I’ve done a script about women and their healthy attitudes toward sex. I’m talking to people about publishing it.”
Even more exciting than women and sex: “I’m getting an apartment in New York.”
NEW studio picked for Stadiumred’s Grammy-winning recordees like Ludacris, Nicki Minaj, Eminem is Harlem’s Lee Building on Park Avenue . . . Australia’s Baz Luhrmann, set to launch his “The Great Gatsby” with DiCaprio: “Directing this, working hard to finish it for so long, this is my first time being out in three years.” . . . Chatty, talkative Robert De Niro on his soon-due movie “Last Vegas”: “It’s about four buddies in their 60s. One gets married.” Right. Great. OK.
GOTTAHAVEIT.COM to auction an inscribed RCA TV Elvis shot with his gun. He’d entered Army buddy (and stage director) Charlie Hodge’s room while Charlie was watching Johnny Carson. After two seconds of Robert Goulet performing, Elvis pulled his gun, shot a hole through the screen then wrote across the set: “F – -k Robert Goulet if he can’t take a joke. E.P.” then told his pal: “Hell, Charlie, go sell it. The thing’s worth more now anyway.”
This TV with a hole in it is up for grabs the 24th.
Obama has said that Ahmadinejad’s basically a down-to-earth guy. Right. Trouble is, he’s just not far down enough in the earth.
THE Clinton thing. City Hallniks mumbling they know — how they’d know only they know — that neither Bill nor Hill would support a Weiner the wiener mayoral run. But, comes their whisper, they know — and how they’d know only they know — that Chelsea would lend support.
THE Weiner thing. I’m no Quinnipiac pollster bleating a 4 percent margin of error. I’ve polled everywhere and, tough to believe, but this hot dog’s pro or anti fervor is along age lines. Seniors bellow no-no-a-thousand-times-no-I’d-rather-die-than-vote-yes. Young ’uns say: “In this techie age, lots of people are doing what he did. No morals anymore. No marriages anymore. No rules anymore. Drugs. Suicides. Mayhem. Vulgar clothes. Sex in grade school. Teachers doing it with pupils. Clergy doing it with parishioners. Politicians doing it to everybody. Same sex having children. Kids of 14 having babies. What’s so terrible what he did?”
Another remark — which has zero to do with my usual tag line. They also say: “Listen, it’s New York. What do you expect? Anything happens in New York.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.