We know what Kevin Spacey’s been doing this summer. The two-time Oscar winner has been making the scene in the Fire Island Pines. We hear he rented a bayside home on the furthermost east end of the Pines for the last two weeks of August through the end of September. The house has at least four en suite bedrooms, a couple of flat-screen plasma TVs, and a gym, and comes complete with a butler and gardener. “Think the St. Regis in Aspen,” an insider tells us. “It feels very lodgey.” But you won’t see Spacey traveling between the mainland and the island on the public ferry. We’re told he’s rented a private boat for that.
First Barbara Kopple won an Oscar for a documentary on coal miners. Her follow-ups included highly acclaimed films on Woody Allen’s band and on Gregory Peck. This summer, she famously (or infamously, depending on whom you ask) chronicled the Hamptons for ABC. Now she’s going after the teenyboppers. We hear that Kopple recently approached Steven C. Beer, manager of the all-girl group No Secrets, with the idea of following them around. However, the girls – Angel Faith, Carly Lewis, Erin Tanner, Jessica Fried, and Jade Ryusaki – decided to pass because they’d rather concentrate on promoting their self-titled debut album and touring with fellow teenster Aaron Carter. “They thought it might be too uncomfortable growing up in front of her camera,” an insider tells us. “It might have been a bit too stressful.” Kopple insists the idea is still on the table and that the proposed film would also focus on the Gurvitz family. Songwriter-producer Adrian Gurvitz – he’s worked with Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, among others – is Carly’s dad. “They didn’t say no,” Kopple told us last week. “They’re absolutely psyched about it.”
The mystery of the missing Mary McFadden continues to puzzle fashionistas. As WWD reported, employees at the eccentric designer’s showroom showed up for work one day in mid-August to find that the offices had been cleaned out and that they were barred from the premises. McFadden said she was headed for St. Petersburg, but no one knows if she meant Russia or Florida. However, we do know where some of her belongings have landed – at the Vintage Thrift Shop at 286 Third Avenue, which benefits people in need on the Lower East Side. Last week, two awards given to McFadden – one for her work as a member of the advisory board of directors of the now-defunct Ryan White Foundation aids charity, the other for something called the Saks Fifth Alliance from 1993 – were for sale for a whopping $2 apiece. The store’s manager, Rick Becker, tells us McFadden has long been a regular donor to the store. Most recently, she dropped off clothing, furniture, and some of her signature fabrics a few weeks back. “She’s been sending us stuff for years,” Becker says. “We love her.”
Melanie Griffith got a rise out of hubby Antonio Banderas while he was shooting his new spy thriller, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. During one intensely emotional scene, Banderas’s character is listening to a tape recording made by his late wife. Director Wych Kaosayananda (who, curiously enough, goes by the one-name moniker Kaos) asked the actress playing the dead wife to record several versions of her lines back to back on the tape so they wouldn’t have to rewind it if it took more than one take. Well, after the message played for about the fifth time, a new voice was heard on the recorder. “Hi, Antonio,” the woman’s voice cooed. “It’s Melanie, remember that time we fucked in Paris six times?” A bewildered Banderas immediately hit stop and looked around at the cast and crew, most of whom thought they had just heard something they shouldn’t have. One even muttered, “Six times?” Kaos had secretly given Griffith the tape and asked her to record her own very special message for her husband. Though you won’t be seeing – or hearing – this joke on the big screen, a tipster tells us Kaos has distributed several copies of a so-called gag reel that includes a handful of bloopers and the Griffith hoax to select cast and crew members.
Congrats to ABC newsman Chris Cuomo and Gotham magazine vice-chairman Cristina Greeven. The couple, who were married in November, are expecting their first baby in March.