Cindy Crawford: Only a Phone Call Away
It pays to return a lost cell phone. Well, at least if it happens to belong to Cindy Crawford. The supermodel mom of two recently lost her phone after a night out with hubby and nightlife impresario Rande Gerber. A good samaritan found the phone in a cab and left a message at about 1 a.m. at the only programmed number in the phone, which was labeled home. A woman called her back later that day and asked if she could send someone to get the phone. When a black SUV-like truck pulled up to the building, out popped a young woman who said she was there to pick up the lost phone. The do-gooder handed it over, and the young woman gave her $200. She declined the reward money until the woman explained, “Take it. You found Cindy Crawford’s phone.”
Tyrese Comes Between Angie Stone and her Calvin
If Angie Stone could recall the 650,000 copies she’s already sold of her most recent CD, Mahogany Soul, she probably would. The problem is that the CD features a duet, “More Than a Woman,” with ex-boyfriend Calvin Richardson, in which Richardson sings such verses as “Baby, you’re the essence of my life / Wanna make you my wife, yeah baby.” At the time of the recording, the two were rumored to be together, but shortly after the album was released in November, the romance fizzled. Now J Records is releasing the duet as a single. But Stone recently rerecorded it for radio airplay with Tyrese (left), a source tells us. They’ll shoot a video later in the month in Los Angeles. Stone refused to comment on the breakup but oozed about Tyrese, “Chocolate to chocolate, ours is a sweet combination. It’s irresistible and nothing can beat the taste.” Richardson doesn’t mind that he’s been replaced; he plans to include his own solo version of the song on his upcoming CD from Hollywood Records.
Julian Schnabel: Fellow Diners, Lend Me Your Ears
Parties at Julian Schnabel’s studio in the West Village are famous for their loud music, free-flowing booze, and plentiful, eclectic guests. But when it comes to dinner, the artist and movie director prefers things a bit more peaceful. Schnabel was recently eating at Macelleria on Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district at about 9 p.m. with his fetching wife, Olatz Lopez Garmendia, and friends Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. But Schnabel apparently was unhappy with how loud other diners were yakking away. “He all of a sudden got up from his seat and started shouting, ‘Excuse me! Excuse me! Can I have your attention?’ ” a spy tells us. “I thought he was going to tell us that something horrible had just happened in the world, or something like that, but then he started saying, ‘I’m sure you would all agree that our dining experience would be a little more pleasant if we could just turn down the volume. If we could just band together and have quiet conversation, it would be so much better.’ ” Most people clapped and cheered and went into a quiet whisper. Minutes later, it started getting loud again. Schnabel and company paid their bill and took off.
Victoria’s Newest Secret
Move over, Gisele Bündchen – here comes fellow Brazilian bombshell Ana Hickmann. Previously featured as the face and body of La Perla lingerie, the six-foot blonde, blue-eyed 20-year-old, we hear, will appear in Victoria’s Secret’s upcoming massive holiday print-and-television campaign for the lingerie giant’s new fragrance, Very Sexy for Him, along with household names Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, Laetitia Casta, Adriana Lima, and Bündchen. Although Hickmann has never appeared in the catalogue, the model made such an impression on Victoria’s Secret CMO Ed Razek during their first meeting in New York last year that he personally tracked her down at her agency, ID Models.
At the Star Room, It’s Raining Men!
Carson Daly, Ed Burns, Shoshanna Lonstein, and Molly Sims have been helping to pack them in at the newly revamped Star Room in Wainscott, but that doesn’t mean the place isn’t having some problems. Doormen at the restaurant and nightclub – which until this year had been a gay club for almost 30 years – have apparently been turning away gay men. “They say it’s a straight club and there are no gays allowed,” says one gay East Ender who wasn’t allowed in. Openly gay Star Room co-owner Scott Gray insists the bad buzz occurred over Memorial Day weekend, when one doorman told a long line of mostly straight men that no one would be allowed in without a woman on his arm. “He didn’t mean it in an anti-gay way,” Gray told us. “It was meant to prevent the club from getting filled up with drunk straight guys. But I can see how someone gay would think it was meant against him.” Even so, members of the East End Gay Organization said at a panel discussion about gay rights on the East End on June 9 that the Star Room has been reported to the state’s human-rights division.
What Gotbaum’s Privately Advocating
Just six months after being sworn in as public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum is said to be already considering a run for Manhattan borough president. It’s no secret that Gotbaum has grown increasingly frustrated over the budget shortfall she says she inherited from predecessor Mark Green and additional cutbacks after September 11. And while she’s technically the second-highest elected official in the city, Gotbaum is also unhappy with the lack of power she has in her position, an insider tells us. Gotbaum has been telling advisers she may throw her hat in the ring in 2005, when term limits prevent two-term incumbent C. Virginia Fields from running again. But a rep for Gotbaum insists she has no plans to jump ship. “Betsy is happy being public advocate, and plans to be here for eight years.”
Spielberg: Don’t Hate Me
Just because Steven Spielberg cuts you from his film doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you. Just ask Kathryn Morris, who co-stars as Tom Cruise’s wife in Spielberg’s Minority Report. Morris played rock star Teenage Honey in Spielberg’s A.I. “I worked my butt off,” Morris told us from her Los Angeles home last week. “I took guitar lessons and singing lessons.” Her big scene was performing in front of 1,000 people. While they were shooting Minority Report, Spielberg was editing A.I., and Teenage Honey ended up on the cutting-room floor. “When I saw Steven on the set, he was like, ‘Kath, I am so sorry. Do you hate me?’ ” Morris remembers. As if she’d actually say she hated one of the most powerful men in Hollywood: “I said, ‘You know, somehow me sitting here with you on the set of your film, working opposite Tom Cruise, makes it kind of okay.’ “
Hemmer Hammering For Early Gig
Atlanta-based Bill Hemmer of CNN is said to be a leading candidate to replace Bryant Gumbel at the Early Show, and it sure looks like he’s making himself familiar at CBS. After a recent showing of Minority Report at the Fox screening room, a spy tells us, Hemmer and Early Show co-host Jane Clayson left and walked down Sixth Avenue together. Two days later, Hemmer – who was in New York subbing for Jack Cafferty on CNN’s American Morning with Paula Zahn – was spotted stopping by the Early Show plaza on 59th and Fifth to take in the show’s outdoor Sheryl Crow concert.
The Pines: Out of the Celluloid Closet
Now that Barbara Kopple did the Hamptons, fellow Oscar winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are doing Fire Island. Over Memorial Day weekend, the San Francisco–based pair, known for Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, The Celluloid Closet, and Paragraph 175, began filming their HBO documentary about five men sharing a beachfront home in the Pines for the summer. “We liked these guys because they are all smart, funny, and sexy,” Epstein says. “And they were people we were interested in hanging out with for a summer.” One place they won’t get on film is the Pines’ legendary dance club the Pavilion, which turned down requests to film there. With HBO being home to the racy Sex and the City and Taxicab Confessions, expect more heat than Kopple captured. This won’t – or, perhaps, will – be hard.
Good Will Giving: Two friends of a publicist working at a Philadelphia screening of Matt Damon’s new movie, The Bourne Identity, on June 11 couldn’t get in because the theater was overbooked. The publicist told Damon that her pals had been turned away and asked him to give them his autograph as a consolation prize. No problem, said Damon, who then handed the publicist $20 to give to her friends. “Tell them,” Damon said, “that when the movie opens, it’s on me.”
Bachelor arts: Are the producers of The Bachelor II willing to forgive a guy for having a girlfriend and let him star in their reality marriage show just because he’s a celeb? While they’re holding nationwide casting calls for The Bachelor II, we hear, producers of the ABC show have approached Ty Pennington, the 37-year-old hunky, surferlike carpenter from the Learning Channel’s hit reality interior-design show Trading Spaces. There’s one problem: According to the show’s guidelines, eligible bachelors may not be in a “monogamous dating relationship more than two months in duration.” Pennington has had a girlfriend for the past four years. Reps for Pennington and The Bachelor II did not return several calls.
Foul Play: Brooklynite Pat Candaras is giving censorship the finger. Promotional posters for the 57-year-old grandmother’s one-woman show, Grandmotherfucker, feature Candaras smiling and shooting the bird. But the midtown club where it’s playing, Don’t Tell Mama, refused to display the posters outside – invoking a clause in Candaras’s contract that prohibits “nudity, profanity or anything in questionable taste.” So Candaras has stuck yellow tape with the word CENSORED in bold letters over the offending digit. “They booked the show knowing the content, so I really don’t get what the problem is,” Candaras told us.
With Catherine Townsend.