SALON

Friday, Jul 21, 2000 6:00 PM UTC

Marlon Brando in “Flashdance”!

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on while His Greatness shoots new movie with De Niro; Yasmine Bleeth's new role: "I'm a bitch ..."; Mike Myers: "I'm as happy as a little girl." Plus: How George Clooney makes waves wherever he goes.

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Topics: Celebrity, Marlon Brando, Spice Girls, George Clooney,

Put down your sandwich. Today’s column contains a truly hurl-worthy image. Lunches may be lost. Keyboards may be clogged. Your screen may wiggle and blur before you. Do not say you haven’t been warned.

Here goes …

Marlon Brando, naked from the waist down.

Liz Smith reports that His Corpulence has been waltzing bottomless around the set of his latest film, “The Score,” possibly in order to make absolutely sure that the camera captures him only from the shoulders up. His godfather of bellies, he apparently believes, might be just a tad too great for public consumption.

Not surprisingly, his exposed nether region has caused quite a stir on the Canadian set, particularly among his fellow stars, Angela Bassett, Ed Norton and Robert De Niro, according to Smith.

Imagine that!

Now try to stop …

- – - – - – - – - – - -

You know you wouldn’t want it any other way

“I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child and I’m a mother.”

– Yasmine Bleeth, describing her character on NBC’s upcoming Aaron Spelling series, “Titans.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Dieter digs dirt

Ooooh. Now I am as happy as a little girl.

Things are promising to get even nastier in Mike Myers’ battle with Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment over the aborted film “Dieter.”

According to Variety, Myers has hired professional dirt digger Anthony Pellicano to smear his adversaries but good. Pellicano’s the guy Michael Jackson brought in to muddy the waters in his 1993 sex abuse suit, among other dubious claims to fame.

So if anyone’s been doing any nefarious monkey-touching, Pellicano will make it his business to find out — and leak it to the press.

Just when you thought the story was growing tiresome …

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Klump change

“I can tell you that I’ve seen many films on video, played every video game, heard every album … I’ve seen it all in that chair.”

– Eddie Murphy on spending five hours a day in the makeup chair to play six different characters in “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.”

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Juicy bits

People who no longer need to perform for people are the luckiest people in the world. Or so contends Barbra Streisand, who, after years spent battling stage fright, is giving up live performances after she gives four final concerts in September. Buttah-voiced Babs will belt out her swan song in L.A. and New York, which her manager, Martin Erlichman, labels “the two cities most closely associated with her work.” I’m feeling verklempt …

The U.K. Sun reports that George Clooney travels with his own wave machine — a contraption that causes swells for him to swim against in whatever pool he happens to be near. Sounds like someone’s taking that “Perfect Storm” role a bit too seriously.

How’s this for a lineup: John Cleese, Kathy Najimy, Jason Alexander, Seth Green, Whoopi Goldberg — and that’s just a select few of the people tapped to appear in “Rat Race,” Jerry Zucker’s new take on “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” If ever this mad, mad, mad, mad world needed a remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” it’s now!

All is not nice in Spice world. A U.K. judge has ordered the Spice Girls to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to a motor-scooter company that sponsored them. The scooter maker lost buckets of dough after Ginger Spice, Geri Halliwell, left the group in the midst of its ad campaign. Add in the band’s own legal fees, and the Girls are facing a $600,000 bill. That’s a lot of Spice bread.

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