Monday, April 27, 1998 | 9:21 a.m.
It's the bottom of the ninth and not looking good here at People in the News. Or is it third and long with the clock winding down? Or are we four points down with three seconds left and our big man on the bench? Who knows? Perhaps no sports cliche can capture the desperation of a slow news day, a day when you dig deep at gut-check time and still your strongest stuff is a Spike Lee item with no heat. Yep, we got lame. "One of the reasons most sports films are so bad is because it's very hard for an actor to play a believable athlete," says Lee. Think of John Goodman as Babe Ruth. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Stewart as baseball players. The entire cast of "Major League." "For an actor to play basketball, that's taking a big step," Lee says. To avoid slam junk in his first sports film, the hoopstravaganza "He Got Game" (opening this week), Lee selected Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen, 22, to play a high school basketball phenom opposite Denzel Washington. The film also features NBA players John Wallace, Walter McCarty, Travis Best and Rick Fox. Allen had to pay a steep price for basking in the reflected glow of Denzel: Lee forced him to submit to eight grueling weeks of acting classes.
Miscellany
Matthew Perry is more than just a talking mannequin in the animatronic hitcom "Friends." Let's humanize him through his pain, specifically the pain of breaking a painkiller addiction. He's taking it one day at a time, just trying to play his game ... er, hey, buddy, spare a sports metaphor? "I know that given a really difficult situation, I stepped up and swung the bat and helped myself," Perry says. Ah, yes, thanks. And now he's taking it to the next level. "Anything can come at me now and I feel like I can take it because I got myself through that." Now he hasn't got time for the painkiller. Perry also denies being hooked on anything stronger than the medication he was prescribed after wisdom teeth surgery and a freak Jet Ski accident. "I'm telling the truth. It was just that," he says. And so, with the game on the line, People in the News bunts in the winning run. It wasn't exactly what we wanted to do, but it worked.
Compiled by Scott Dickensheets
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