Was Patrick Swayze half-crocked when he made that emergency landing in his plane a couple of weeks ago?
The world may never know. But three construction workers have been charged with lying to police for neglecting to tell authorities that they helped the dirty dancer remove a 30-pack of Miller Lite beer and a near-empty bottle of wine from his injured plane before giving him a lift to a hotel.
Although they initially denied that they witnessed the plane's landing in a Phoenix area construction site, the three men later told police that they had. They also contended that the actor was confused, his eyes bloodshot and his speech slurred when they came upon him, but, for lack of evidence, Swayze is not likely to be charged.
Swayze's publicist, Annett Wolf, meanwhile, insists there was no alcohol on the plane to report. "It's unfortunate that there were people there who felt the need to say what they said," Wolf felt the need to say to the Associated Press.
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Woody's big win
"I'm very pleasantly surprised. I'm so used to losing."
-- Woody Allen, after he won a battle with New York over the erection of an apartment tower on the Upper East Side.
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Getting over the horror
So what if you're still haunted by "The Blair Witch Project"? You've got nothing on the flick's star Heather Donahue, who, it seems, is still trying to move beyond what she considers the movie's scariest image: her big fat booty.
"When I saw my big butt up on the screen in the movie it made me feel vulnerable and naked, but we emphasized that shot because my character had to be real-life," Donahue told New York gossipist Baird Jones at the opening of her new flick "Boys and Girls."
The actress says she's still trying to take off the 25 pounds she gained for the role by running marathons. "I have run so much that some of my muscles are now coming loose from the bone," she says.
Now that's scary.
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Break out the saltines
"If we were cheese, Brad [Pitt] would be brie, and I'd be Velveeta."
-- Freddie Prinze Jr. on why he was "uncomfortable" doing a sex scene in "Boys and Girls" with Claire Forlani, who'd previously gone at it with Pitt in "Meet Joe Black."
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Kiss, kiss ...
And speaking of uncomfortable love scenes ...
In an upcoming Lifetime "Intimate Portrait," "Dynasty" star Linda Evans reveals that she knew something was amiss during her notorious kissing scene with Rock Hudson, not long before he died of AIDS in 1985.
"When we did the scene he was very timid with me," she recalls. "As a result of it, they reshot it because they said it wasn't passionate enough." Later, she says, when she discovered he was ill, she "understood how much he tried to protect me."
But while many people on the set freaked out -- and steered clear of Evans -- the actress herself was unconcerned. "I never thought I could catch it," she says. "In my mind, I felt fine."
Who knew she kept such a cool head under all that hair?
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The fungus of love
If you thought that luv thing between Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton was all one way, cast an eyeball upon Billy Bob's arm. According to the New York Post, he's now matched his bride's "Billy Bob Forever" tattoo with a little skin art of his own -- a mushroom inscribed with her name, "Angie."
A mushroom?
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Juicy bits
The latest twist in the continuing Eminem saga? His arrest last week has reportedly prompted a group calling itself the "South Warren Street Kids" to send a letter to Warren City, Mich., attorney George Constance, dubbing the rapper "our Christ" and threatening an arson attack unless the charges against him are withdrawn. "We party in [Eminem's] name. You'll be dropping the charges. We're coming uptown with 20-oz. Mountain Dew bottles full of gas and charcoal lighting fluid, and matches," they wrote. Blame it on the caffeine.
Call it jumping to conclusions if you must, but Canadian police are blaming "Gone in 60 Seconds" for a recent rash of car thefts. Constable Phil Reid of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the press that, while on a normal weekend, Burnaby, British Columbia, had about 20 car thefts, last weekend, when the film was released, there were 31. "It does raise an eyebrow," he said. "It would be silly for us not to think that it is a factor."
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