Thursday, April 17, 2003 | 10:41 a.m.
VegasBeat appears Sunday through Friday in the Las Vegas Sun. Timothy McDarrah can be reached at [email protected] or at (702) 259-4096.
They're not Matt Damon and Ben Affleck -- yet.
But a pair of 24-year-old screenwriters who live in Las Vegas, Jonathan Finkel and Adam Peiken, are well on their way.
Kevin Spacey's production company has acquired rights to their script of the celebrated case of Kevin Mitnick.
Mitnick is the original computer hacker.
He was said to be the basis for the Matthew Broderick character in "War Games" -- where a high school student hacks into a government computer and nearly sets off a nuclear war by mistake.
But Mitnick did nothing by mistake.
He started as a kid using computer bulletin boards, and evolved into an adult able to easily obtain restricted computer information from a variety of companies.
His first hacking arrest was in 1987.
The authorities came looking for him again years later after a friend told authorities that Mitnick had hacked into Digital Equipment Corporation computers.
But he did not turn himself in, and became a fugitive. During his two years on the lam, The New York Times in a Page One story dubbed him, "The World's Most Wanted Computer Criminal." After he was caught, he was jailed for four years as the government made a case against him.
One stipulation of his eventual release in 2000 was that he not go near a computer for three years. He wrote "The Art of Deception" on a manual typewriter.
He now runs a company called Defensive Thinking, designed to protect companies from people like himself.
Finkel and Peiken were hired by Defensive Thinking to write an educational screenplay for an instructional video based on Mitnick's book.
Spacey approached Mitnick about filming his story for Spacey's Trigger Street production company.
Mitnick turned Spacey on to Finkel and Peiken. The rest may yet be history for the two USC Film School grads.
Spacey formed his production company in 1998 with a mission to encourage "the creative process of filmmaking and to establish a broad platform for undiscovered talent."
"Things are a ways away from actually going into production, but yeah, we're pretty excited," Finkel told VegasBeat.
Damon and Affleck won an Oscar for scripting 1997's "Good Will Hunting."
No knot
On the eve of a trip to Las Vegas, rocker Melissa Etheridge and her companion of two years, Tammy Lynn Michaels, have announced they are engaged.
Etheridge, 41, and Michaels, 28, are both going to be in Vegas this weekend when Etheridge performs at the Equestrian AIDS Foundation fund-raiser at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.
Are wedding bells -- or at least commitment ceremony bells -- in the air for this weekend?
Probably not.
Unfortunately, same-sex unions are illegal in every state except Vermont. And the couple say they plan on having a ceremony in California sometime this summer.
"But if they do decide to do something here, we'd be flattered to perform it for them," said Brady Wagoner of the Viva Las Vegas chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard.
"We do all kinds of themed ceremonies for straight and gay people, from Elvis weddings to Camelot, Intergalactic or 007 weddings."
Red rocking
Who were all those people crawling around Red Rock Canyon Tuesday and Wednesday?
It was multimillionaire Las Vegas clothing kingpin Fred Nassiri and about 100 others, including schoolchildren representing nine countries -- dressed in native garb -- and a camera crew.
They were all making a video of a song Nassiri wrote called, "Love Sees No Color," for a United Nations peace project.
Jeff Lester directed the shoot, which also featured his wife, Susan Anton. Part of the project is a documentary, which includes Robin Leach interviewing the kids and Nassiri.
Nassiri is personally underwriting the $500,000 project.
VegasBits
Any day: Maria Shriver spent most of Wednesday hanging out with Celine Dion. Shriver is preparing an upcoming segment on "The Today Show" about Diva Las Vegas ...
Onstage: "Access Hollywood" host Pat O'Brien told VegasBeat Wednesday that he will emcee the dinner that Tiger Woods is hosting before the Bon Jovi concert as part of his "Tiger Jam VI" kids charity event Saturday at Mandalay Bay ...
Velvet voice: Lou Reed -- the original punk and one of the most influential musicians of the modern era -- makes a rare Vegas appearance at The Joint June 20. His new disc, "The Raven," is a strikingly original interpretation of the works of Edgar Allen Poe ...
The winner: Former Playboy model Shannon O'Keefe, who is the lead in "Skintight" at Harrah's, won Ed McMahon's Miss BestBet Pageant at The Orleans Wednesday. She wowed judges Rich Little, Marty Allen, Lon Bronson, Kerry Simon and Clint Holmes ...
Sheet pulled: Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke started serving a 15-month sentence for mail and tax fraud Tuesday in Texas. Part of the problem for Duke, according to the Associated Press, was that he had gambled away his money in Las Vegas ...
New 'do-er: Celebrity stylist Brannon Zimbelman has joined the staff at the Amp Salon at the Palms. At the Frederic Fekkai salon in New York, Zimbelman worked on the famous coifs of clients like Stephanie Seymour and Sigourney Weaver and worked on photo spreads in Allure, W, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar ...
Kid stuff: Budding country/western singer Aubrey Collins, 15, of Denver, appears on "America's Most Talented Kid" on KVBC Channel 3 at 8 p.m. Friday. Her cousin, Las Vegas resident and Montecristo Rum marketing chief Stephanie Wilson, is having a viewing party to celebrate ...
Righteous: On Monday, billboards went up around town advertising the "Rightous" Brothers at The Orleans from April 23 to May 4. On Wednesday, an "e" was added to the Righteous Brothers signs.
From Sun wires
About 50 actors gathered outside the Screen Actors Guild headquarters to oppose SAG's proposed merger with the leading television and radio actors' union, saying screen actors would not be properly represented after the consolidation.
Those present included Elliott Gould, Valerie Harper, Tyne Daly, Kent McCord, Esai Morales and Rob Schneider ...
A jury began deliberating whether to hold rocker Tommy Lee responsible for the death of a 4-year-old boy who drowned during a pool party at the drummer's home.
Daniel Karven-Veres drowned during a birthday party for Lee's son Brandon on June 16, 2001.
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