To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People March 18, 2000 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/2000/03/18/npw0318 The Flockhart-Winslet Liberation Front Hollywood's favorite girl-gripe is back! What do savvy Hollywood insiders do when they see Halle Berry's car coming? Run! Plus: Sally Jessy Raphaël producer busted in on-set after-hours porn scandal! - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter What's the fastest way of traveling from a Kate Winslet who expects to blow up like a balloon to a Jane Fonda with a deep, abiding and downright possessive love for an inanimate object? A high-speed satin dirigible? No, an SUV, but only if Halle Berry's at the wheel. Read on to decode the preceding sentence. - - - - - - - - - - - - Monday: "Re-heat after me" Griping about Hollywood's unhealthy obsession with actresses' weight is the whine of the times. Calista Flockhart, for instance, says she feels Monica Lewinsky's pain. And she believes that Linda Tripp is, in at least one respect, just like her. "All people talk about is the way they look," the "Ally McBeal" star protests in the April issue of W magazine. Having been down that road many times before, the actress observes, "It's a cheap way to take away women's power. If you talk about the way she looks, you negate her intelligence." Charlize Theron's got a plan. "Maybe we can start a whole new trend with some round fat asses and really sloppy, floppy-looking tits," she says. "I'd be all for it." And so, apparently, would Kate Winslet. "People are always going on about fat, thin, but I just don't care," the actress told the BBC last week. "I just don't. I don't think that any of us should." Her solution? Pregnancy. "I'm fully expecting to blow up like a balloon," the expectant mother says. Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Monday, March 13. - - - - - - - - - - - - Tuesday: "Gobsmacked II" If you were worried that the mainstream Hollywood machine would polish the spiky edges off notoriously nasty Rupert Everett, fear not. True, the actor, famous for once sending a critic a batch of pubic hairs "in the hope that they [would] help to avoid further grievance," has been all over the media muttering platitudes about his relationship with Madonna and thoughts on fatherhood. But in a Los Angeles magazine interview, Everett voices opinions on organized religion that would make Jesse "It's a crutch" Ventura proud. While he still goes to church, he says he's no longer a Catholic because "that's like being a gay Republican." And then there's transubstantiation. Everett believes that whole Eucharist and wine turning into the body and blood of Christ thing is a crock. "I think that's just fucking with our head," he says. "I think Jesus has been completely manipulated and used by organized religion." There goes his invitation to speak at Bob Jones University. Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Tuesday, March 14. - - - - - - - - - - - - Wednesday: "Halle on wheels" Halle Berry's recent hit-and-run scuffle -- shocking? Not to her old neighbors. They saw the skid marks coming long ago. "She was very well-known in the neighborhood as 'Halle on Wheels' or a 'Berry Berry Bad Driver'" says former "A Current Affair" producer Burt Kearns, who lived around the corner from Berry in Beverly Hills for years. "She was a menace." Neighbors learned to fear Berry's SUV. "When you saw that car coming, you got out of the way," says Kearns, who often took his dog for walks midday, "because she would drive like this speed-demon through the neighborhood. And many a time, around this little bend, she would come, 60 miles an hour, like Batman in the Batmobile, and brush you back into the wall against the road." The neighbors got used to seeing Berry fly through stoplights, Kearns says, and he remembers particularly vividly the time the actress blew his wife, who was out walking with the couple's infant, right off the road. "She might stop the car, give a dirty look and keep going," he recalls. Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Wednesday, March 15. - - - - - - - - - - - - Thursday: "Sally get out the hoses" If Sally Jessy Raphaël has been looking a little ... um ... uncomfortable on her show lately, there's a good reason why. A couple of issues back, the National Enquirer, that bastion of reliability and good taste, reported that Raphaël and her staff were recently rocked by a pornography scandal. The tabloid claimed that a high-ranking producer on the show was given the boot back in January after he was discovered filming porn after hours in the show's offices. According to one source, images of the four-time Emmy award-winning producer, an "Oprah" veteran, in "all kinds of sexual positions -- with all kinds of people" were posted on a "raunchy Web site." Studios USA officials declined to comment. But a Studios USA insider involved in the scandal aftermath swears it's all true. "It was quite a scandal on the set," he tells me. That this is just the sort of scandal the talk shows live for hasn't been lost on the Studios USA people -- who also produce "Maury" and "Jerry Springer." "The big joke around here," the insider says, "is maybe we'll see him on one of the other talk shows." Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Thursday, March 16. - - - - - - - - - - - - Friday: "A dress makes the heart grow Fonda" Jane Fonda's in love again. So what if the object of her affection is promised to another? Fonda had said she'd donate the Vera Wang strapless satin gown she'll wear to this year's Academy Awards to a charity auction, but she simply can't part with it, the Associated Press reports. "I've changed my mind. I'm not auctioning it off after all," Fonda said. "Seriously, I can't just wear this dress for 10 minutes on Oscar night and then turn it over to someone else yet." In fact, she gushed, "I've fallen in love with it." I give it a year. Read the entire Nothing Personal column for Friday, March 17. salon.com | March 18, 2000   - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Amy Reiter is a staff writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.