Having toured this fall promoting Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, Belinda Carlisle is happy to be home in the South of France, where she moved last March with her husband, movie producer Morgan Mason, and their son James Duke, 2½. "We live a very village, country life," says Carlisle, 36, who was inspired by Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. "I'd been taking French for quite a while in L.A. and thought I had a good grasp of it until I had to speak it in France. Someone tried to explain how to work the washing machine, and I just broke down and sobbed." Supermarket shopping remains one of her biggest tests in the parlez-vous department. "Everything's a struggle—just figuring out what kind of shampoo you're buying," she says. "But I love the three aisles of wine and five aisles of cheese."
SHE'S GOT A PULSE!
Dennis Hopper calls the demented character he played in the cult classic Blue Velvet "probably the most perverse, decadent, degenerate man ever seen onscreen." Then again, there was the mad bomber in the summer's smash hit Speed. "After that one, somebody called me America's psychopath," says Hopper, 58, adding a maniacal laugh. "Hey! as long as I'm American!" But now he's breaking type to play a dashing gumshoe who is also the romantic lead in Witch Hunt, a parody of the McCarthy era making its debut on HBO (Dec. 10). "I told [costar] Penelope Ann Miller, 'This is a thrill for me. It's the first time in a film that I get the girl.' Well, it's not the first time I get the girl, but it's the first time I get her alive."
A MATCH FOR AMANDA
Heather Locklear should sharpen her nails. Jasmine Guy comes to Melrose Place Jan. 2 and heads straight into Amanda's line of fire as D&D advertising's efficiency expert. Guy has had considerable experience in the rhymes-with-witch department, having played A Different World's spoiled southern belle Whitley Gilbert to perfection. "Caitlin, my Melrose Place character, gets what she wants, but she's nothing like Whitley, and contrary to popular belief neither am I," says Guy, 30. "But it is fun playing someone on the bad side. I think everyone enjoys the bitchiness on the show." Guy relishes being wicked on Melrose, "but I look good. They've got some hot clothes on that show. I appreciate high fashion, even though I don't wear it myself. I don't like pantyhose and tight things around my stomach."
A SOUND PRACTICE
The new doctor has checked into Northern Exposure, and for Paul Provenza, a stand-up comedian who last played the boyfriend of Carol (Dinah Manoff) on Empty Nest, replacing the departing Rob Morrow on the hit series is like winning the lottery. "I'm going through what my character's going through," says Provenza, 37, who moved from L.A. to Seattle, not far from the show's rustic set in Redmond, Wash. "I'm suddenly living in one of the most beautiful parts of the country in the midst of people who've lived together for so long it's like marrying into someone else's family." But the medical stuff comes easily to Provenza, who attended the elite Bronx High School of Science and was premed at the University of Pennsylvania before switching to theater arts. "Lucky for me," jokes Provenza. "My extensive training in colorectal surgery has really come in handy."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
