To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People August 16, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/16/minime Sizing up "Tattoo's" lost years Late "Fantasy Island" actor focus of tell-all profile; mama of Jagger's new nipper ignites flag furor in Brazil. Plus: Michelle Williams afflicted with new virus that causes celebrities to publicly praise their own breasts. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Reports have circulated recently that Verne Troyer, the diminutive actor who played Dr. Evil's teensy-weensy clone in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," has been seen canoodling with a variety of statuesque beauties at various public events. But, judging from info that continues to leak out about Troyer's late pint-size acting predecessor Herve Villechaize, the Dr.Evil-completer's got a long way to go to compete for the sleaziest small-guy crown. According to a juicy Villechaize profile on E!, the demi-actor who in the late '70s and early '80s played Tattoo, "boss"-chanting elbow-high sidekick to Ricardo Montalban's suave Mr. Roarke on the original "Fantasy Island," was anything but demure in the years leading up to his suicide six years ago. Villechaize had a little trouble with the sauce, his former assistant, Roger Neal, asserts, and was an angry drunk who sometimes directed his ire at "Fantasy Island" producer Aaron Spelling, with whom he had quarreled bitterly about salary. After chugging a couple of bottles of wine, says Neal, the 90-pound thespian would occasionally "watch an episode of 'Fantasy Island,' and he'd be cursing and screaming at Aaron Spelling." What's more, he was also something of a Lilliputian lothario, fond of playing a game called "Spin the Midget," his buddy Edward Artis recalls on the cable special, explaining that Villechaize would stretch out -- hands over head -- in a circle of women and ask someone to spin him. Then, whomever he ended up pointing to, he'd take out to dinner and, Artis says, "whatever else would transpire." Well, maybe not everything about the guy was itty-bitty. - - - - - - - - - - - - Terlet talk: God's favorite giggle? "I tell you, my biggest fear is that I die and I go to heaven and God says, 'Did you hear the one about the two guys who crapped on the lawn?'" -- High-end funnyman Albert Brooks on the proliferation of Adam Sandler-esque lowbrow humor. - - - - - - - - - - - - No such thing as a patriotic thong If you start her up she never stops, never stops, never stops -- causing a ruckus. Brazilian model Luciana Gimenez, mom to Mick Jagger's latest out-of-wedlock offspring, has stirred things up not only in the former Jagger/Jerry Hall household (the American model's marriage to the lippy singer was officially annulled last week) but in her home country's government as well. In an apparent reaction to Gimenez's appearance with her baby on a magazine cover clad in nothing but a Brazilian flag, Brazil's Senate approved a ban on the use of the flag on string bikinis and other "inappropriate and degrading settings," including underwear, curtains, napkins and tablecloths. "One cannot admit the use of the national flag in situations which are not recommended for the sobriety and the dignity of a symbol of the nation," the Senate's Constitution and Justice Commission said last week. So unlike America, where thongs -- flag-emblazoned or not -- are displayed in the government's most inner sanctums not just with impunity, but with pride. - - - - - - - - - - - - Bustin' out all over "I have great breasts." -- Modest Michelle Williams, of "Dawson's Creek" fame, who recently objected to photos of her taken by Maxim (a magazine whose motto may as well be "More cleavage than Cosmo, more phallic symbols than Hot Rod") because she says they "trivialized and sexualized" her. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Professor Plum in the billiards room with a birthday candle? "Clue," the preferred board game of the murder-mystery-minded masses, is celebrating its 50th birthday this month. (Miss Scarlet, how do you stay so young-looking?) The producers are flinging themselves a fete at a secret location in London; mysterious guests, who will solve a staged whodunit, will include world champ "Clue" player Josef Kollar and Agatha Christie's former butler. Quit trying to plant that candlestick on Colonel Mustard; everyone knows the butler did it. It's a solo Spice world after all. Baby Spice Emma Bunton has just been given her own weekly show on VH1, and Sporty Spice Mel C is gearing up to make her solo concert debut in the U.K. later this week. Guess what these piquant pretties wanted -- what they really really wanted -- all along was to ditch the Girl Power shtick and go it alone. The truth is out there, and so, "X-Files" star David Duchovny apparently hopes, is the money. The moody-faced TV actor has filed suit against Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox Film Corp., claiming the studio has cheated him out of millions of dollars by selling the series to its own affiliates at a discount, thus lessening his cut of the show's profits, Variety reported on Friday. Duchovny also alleges that "X-Files" creator and executive producer Chris Carter was in on the conspiracy. (Cue creepy music.) Do you suppose the Smoking Man has something to do with this? A distinction NP hopes never to receive: the world's oldest bridesmaid. Ninety-seven-year-old widow Flossie Bennett has just made it into the Guinness Book of Records after eschewing aid from her wheelchair and practicing walking down the aisle in the hospital. At least she won't have to spend too many more years contemplating what to do with that $300 mauve taffeta dress hanging in her closet. salon.com | August 16, 1999