People in the News for April 29, 1998

Wednesday, April 29, 1998 | 10:46 a.m.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Probable Box Office Bomb: Gosh darn that temperamental, reclusive, perfectionist genius, Tom Cruise must have thought as he flipped shut his cell phone. Gosh darn you, Stanley Kubrick! Kubrick has called Cruise back to London to film additional scenes for the super-secretive movie "Eyes Wide Shut" -- this after recently wrapping a grueling 15-month super-super-secretive shoot. Of course, Cruise has worked with his share of temperamental, reclusive, perfectionist geniuses before -- make your own reference to "Legend" here -- but none as demanding as Kubrick. This filming has been a spacey odyssey: First Kubrick swore secrecy from everyone connected to the film, from Cruise and co-star Nicole "Tom's Wife, Remember?" Kidman to the lowest shapely production assistant (we're not sure if the vow "cross my heart and hope to die" was actually invoked or merely implied). Then he reportedly shot and reshot even the most trivial scenes. Then he forbid Cruise and Kidman from removing the top-secret script from the hush-hush set. Not even Warner Bros., the studio bank-rolling the film, knows what it's about -- some sort of psychosexual drama, according to rumor -- or when it will come out. 2001, perhaps? Picky, paranoid, probably completely nuts -- he apparently inspires in Cruise a strange love. Says Kidman, "He's the one director that actually intimidates Tom."

Smith blarney

Anna Nicole Smith is living out her own psycho, sexual drama on a Caribbean island so small we don't even have its name. There she is undergoing a grueling test of character, an attempt to prove "I am real ... and a brain." Which is to say, she's competing in the Miss Cuervo Gold beauty pageant. "I know I'm probably not going to win, because of my reputation," she says. "They say I'm a bad little girl, and I'm not. If I don't win, I'll be devastated." The Cuervo Gold people would like the pageant's winner to compete for the Miss Universe title, a responsibility the former Playboy bunny is ready to take seriously. "Can you imagine, Anna Nicole representing the universe? I think it'd be great." Alas, the Miss Universe people say she'd be ineligible.

Nudesuit.com

With all its talk of briefs and dropping suits, a Los Angeles court is a natural setting for this psychosexual drama: Actress Alyssa Milano has filed two legal actions against websites that she says feature photos of her nude. It's the first lawsuit of its kind, a probably First Amendment-Internet test case. Says her lawyer, "Celebrities are realizing for the first time that the Net is a dangerous force if it's not corralled. We hope that this suit starts a broader attack by Hollywood against such sex sites." Although some images are phony -- famous faces digitally placed atop nude bodies -- others are simply examples of youthful free-spiritedness coming back to haunt celebs. The owner of one site singled out by Milano, nudecelebrity.com, says he makes $10,000 a month from curiosity seekers. However, they'll no longer find pix of Milano there -- in a fit of journalistic integrity, we checked. Our eyes were wide shut, of course.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets