To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People June 10, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/06/10/macbeth Baring it all for the Bard C'mon over, baby, whole lotta Shakespeare going on! Plus: The case of the exceedingly unpleasant cream puff; and Stone and DeGeneres slated to sing, "She's havin' my baby ..." - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Could the heat -- or even the humidity -- be to blame? Naked people seem to be popping up in the oddest places lately. A crafty Florida nightclub owner and three Shakespearean strippers are facing 60 days in the slammer after hitting the boards with an all-nude performance of "Macbeth." The double, double, toil and trouble started when the quirky quartet attempted to outsmart local anti-nudity laws requiring pasties and G-strings to be worn in clubs but not in legit theaters by staging the opening witch scene from the Scottish play sans costumes at racy Club Juana on Orlando's outskirts. But the threadless thespians did not amuse the police with their bawdy Bardisms, and -- as proof that fair is foul and foul is fair -- they were arrested in short order. Meanwhile, excitement-seeking theatergoers who ranked a nudie-petutie lap dance may well have been heard muttering, "Out, out, damn spot" as they exited the club. If the witches and their club-owning warlock do end up serving time, it won't be for lack of effort on the part of a group of 20 gutsy guys across the Atlantic. Representing an organization called the Right to be Naked, the frisky fellows staged a demonstration buck-naked outside Buckingham Palace. Five of them were promptly arrested by British police, and one -- who scrappily scrambled up a statue of morally erect Queen Victoria (nude meets prude!) -- is still being held. A palace spokeswoman told the media she didn't know if Queen Elizabeth was in residence at the time of the shameless show, but said that, even if she was, "There are just working rooms on the front bit of the palace so I would doubt that anyone saw anything even if they were there." Oh, well. Maybe Queen E can get an eyeful and a delightful evening of theater at Club Juana next time she takes the royal grandkids to Disney World. - - - - - - - - - - - - Didn't Harry Chapin once set this to music? "[Fulfillment.] That's the key word for me these days. What really is fulfillment, what do you really need? I bought a jet recently. I'm in L.A., I have this beautiful jet. I ask my son, 'You want to go with me, go fishing in Costa Rica?' He tells me, 'I can't, dad.' So then what is fulfillment? It had nothing to do with the jet." -- Film director Francis Ford Coppola on why next time he'll buy a yacht instead - - - - - - - - - - - - The case of the really crappy cream puff Before proceeding with this next appetizing item, I must invoke a line from "Macbeth" (naked or clothed): "When all's done, you look but on a stool." That was precisely the problem, it seems, at a Bucharest bakery. Last week, 67 unfortunate Romanians were hospitalized after devouring delectable cream buns and chocolate eclairs from the Opera bakery in the northeast town of Iasi. Inspectors who then visited the cake shop, the city's largest, were shocked to discover a box of human feces in the refrigerator. The owners, if convicted of violating public health laws, could be sentenced to as much as eight years in prison. There, they can revel in all the human feces they like. - - - - - - - - - - - - Well, maybe not quite as much, Joe ... "The goatees and shorts are going to get laughed at soon, just as much as the big hair and the ripped jeans did." -- Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott, on how today's pop-music fashions will one day seem as silly as his hair-metal band's rockin' '80s look - - - - - - - - - - - - No, Pat, that look was because he did recognize you It's really gotta smart when even one of your own rivals for the Republican presidential nomination doesn't recognize you. Reuters reports that when Pat "Cake Nazi" Buchanan was driving through the empty city streets of Des Moines, Iowa, early Tuesday morning and chanced upon Lamar Alexander (clad in trademark flannel?) jogging along, wacky Pat stuck his head out the window and shouted, "Aren't you overdoing it, Lamar?" "But," said Buchanan, "He didn't recognize me and just gave me a blank look." - - - - - - - - - - - - Don't blame him. His wife made him say it ... "It is a mistaken assumption that, when a bride says she will obey, it means she is going to be subservient. My wife said 'obey' and she is far from subservient." -- The Bishop of Norwich, the Rt. Rev. Peter Nott, who will conduct the marriage of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones, on the bride's decision to "love, cherish and obey" her royal hubby - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Sharon Stone and Ellen DeGeneres, a couple? It's not just the stuff of someone's deepest secret fantasy (you know who you are). Soon, it will be the stuff of celluloid history. The world's most famous pantiless leg-crosser and the world's most famous sitcomless lesbian are teaming up to portray a modern-day couple who conceive a child in a three-part film examining lesbian experiences (how closely is not clear) called "If These Walls Could Talk 2." DeGeneres will co-produce the film, and her real-life squeeze, Anne Heche, will write and direct. Said Stone recently, "I hope to glean a little something extra about comedy from these two experts." I think we all may learn a little something extra about all sorts of things from this project, Sharon. Let those nasty rumors about their needing to be coached for the love scenes in "Eyes Wide Shut" finally rest in peace. According to an Us magazine poll, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are the sexiest Hollywood couple around. With 47 percent of the vote, Cruise and Kidman outsexied Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (21 percent), Will Smith and Jada Pinkett (20 percent), Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt (8 percent), and Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley (5 percent -- Grant and Divine Brown would probably have scored higher!). Eat your heart out, Ellen and Anne. Will whoever snatched the two-headed formaldehyde-floating fetal piglet from its display case at the MacKenzie Environmental Education Center in Poynette, Wis., please give it back? The center's director, Derek Duane, promises he won't press charges if you come forward now with his prize pickled porker. "We hope someone has their fun with it and gives it back," Duane told USA Today. "What are you going to do with it? Sit it on the shelf and look at it?" Which leads me to wonder (rather reluctantly) what Duane is going to do with it -- if those walls could talk ... salon.com | June 10, 1999