Madeleine Albright isn't the only person who gets caught up in critical international conference calls. With the Oscars approaching, popular shoe designer Stuart Weitzman found himself talking to six people on two continents in hopes of reaching agreement on...the proper height and slant of the heel for the shoes he was making to match the periwinkle-blue dress that nominee Lynn Redgrave (Gods and Monsters) plans to wear to the Oscars. Among other Weitzman designer feats: creating rhinestone-accented footwear for presenter Lisa Kudrow—and making the faux jewels look antique by soaking them in household bleach.
If the painful slaps that Billy Crystal gives fellow actor Joe Viterelli in the comedy Analyze This look real, they are. While filming the scene, Crystal, as mobster Paul Vitti's (Robert De Niro) shrink, gave Viterelli, who plays. Vitti's faithful sidekick Jelly, a whack. Afterwards Viterelli saw De Niro watching the monitor with director Harold Ramis and overheard him tell Crystal, "Hit him harder. Give him a good one." Crystal did, and Ramis said to cut and print. Then, says Viterelli, "I see [Ramis] talking to De Niro at the monitor again. I say, 'Oh, no.' De Niro was making a motion with his hand, and he brings it all the way back. He nods to Billy, and they say, 'Let's do it again.' " Take three, slap scene: "Billy did wind up, the [blankety-blank-blank]," says Viterelli. "In all the movies I've ever done, nobody's ever slapped me, and that includes my whole life and everyone on the planet."
Carly Simon and her daughter Sally Taylor (Dad is James Taylor) have finished writing and are planning to record their first collaboration, a song about friendship called "Amity." It will be heard on the soundtrack for the movie Anywhere But Here, an upcoming mother-daughter drama starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. Simon has long wanted to collaborate. Says Sally, 25, who has cut a debut album of her own called Tomboy Bride: "Writing and working on this song brought us into a new arena of friendship. All of a sudden, Mom recognized me as a musician. It was a real honor. I have tremendous respect for her. It was an amazing gift, like she was knighting me into musichood."
- Contributors:
- Hugh McCarten.
