Big Stars Small Screen
Geena Davis and a passel of film actors are looking at TV in a new light

Focus

So much for treading the boards in some Off-Off-Broadway play to buff one's acting chops between films. Coming soon to a TV near you: stars of the cinema strutting their big-screen stuff for your viewing pleasure. What's with the tube trend? "Not everybody can have a blockbuster movie every week," says Raquel Welch, who stars in American Family, a drama under consideration at CBS about a Latino family in a changing world. "If you want to have continuity with your public, television is the way to go. Millions of people get to see your work."

Consider the lineup of pilots vying for a slot on the airwaves this fall. In addition to Welch and company, CBS is also eyeing Mary Stuart Masterson as a struggling single mother in Further Adventures and Bette Midler as (go figure) Bette. Hot on the heels of Kyra Sedgwick and Beverly D'Angelo in ABC's Talk to Me, look for the return of Geena Davis-featured in the 1983 TV series Buffalo Bill before films like Beetlejuice and Thelma and Louise-as a Noo Yawk career woman. The network is also weighing fall series to be led by Gabriel Byrne and Jon Cryer. NBC has nabbed Casper Van Dien for Aaron Spelling's upcoming soap Titans, Oliver Platt as a reporter in Deadline and Brian Dennehy to play Dad to The Fighting Fitzgeralds, a series produced by Saving Private Ryan's Ed Burns. And FOX is wooing John Goodman and Anthony LaPaglia as divorced dads/roommates in Don't Ask.

Says David Nevins, FOX's executive veep of prime-time series: There's not "that much stigma" anymore to acting on the tube. Besides, he adds, "Talented people want to go where their voices can be heard."

BETTE

The Pitch: Bette Midler plays a performer who looks and acts uncannily like...Bette Midler.

Strongest Selling Point: Ah, Grasshopper, its strength is also its weakness: It's the perfect bet for those who like Bette, but are there enough faithful?

MADIGAN MEN

The Pitch: Divorcé Gabriel Byrne gets dating advice from his widowed dad and teenaged son.

Strongest Selling Point: Art imitates life. The recently divorced (from Ellen Barkin) Byrne can act from I experience.

TALK TO ME

The Pitch: Kyra Sedgwick is Janey Munro, a perky morning-show radio host who contends with loony colleagues like Beverly D'Angelo as an on-air shrink.

Strongest Selling Point: May not have one. Already aired, already panned.

AMERICAN FAMILY

The Pitch: Raquel Welch costars in a saga about a Latino family in East L.A.

Strongest Selling Point: With Edward James Olmos as the patriarch and Sonia Braga as his wife, Welch is in winning company.

I've Got You Under My Skin

One can only hope the new relationship between Oscar winners Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted) and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade) works out. Otherwise, the 24-year-old actress may be in danger of entering Tommy Lee Tattoo Territory. Anne Woodward, a spokeswoman for the irrepressible Jolie, will say only of the couple, "They are friends, yes, ever since they met on Pushing Tin." Anything more? Woodward repeats, "Like I said, they are friends."

Ah, but who needs verbal assurances when the evidence is in ink? Jolie has been sighted sporting a new tattoo, "Billy Bob," on her already crowded epidermis. (Other local landmarks include a cross, a dragon and the letter H.)

Does this mean the 2½-year relationship between the four-times-married Thornton, 44, and Laura Dern, 33—who are set to costar this spring in Daddy and Them, a dark comedy about a dysfunctional couple written and directed by Thornton—is over? Apparently the handwriting is more than on the wall.

Magnum Baywatch

Scientists know that the right answer is often the most elegant, a solution so pure and simple it rings like a crystal glass. So too, in Hollywood, is there an occasional perfect pitch, an idea so brilliant it can be summed up in—no, not a few words—just six letters. Yes, get ready for I Spike, a recently wrapped pilot about three gorgeous female beach-volleyball stars who are also—get ready—undercover FBI agents! The title, of course, is a nod to the old Bill Cosby-Robert Culp series I Spy, but the concept also contains a dash of Bay-watch, a dish of V.I.P. and more than a jiggle of Charlie's Angels. And for good measure the characters will all be masters in the martial arts.

"We think the formula can work again," says executive producer Robert Greenblatt, who has cast Melrose Place's Lisa Rinna as the Smart One, MTV's Daisy Fuentes as the Former Navy SEAL and model Marika Dominczyk as, well, the Reformed Bad Girl. "We wanted the women to be athletic. They could have been swimmers or basketball players undercover," says Greenblatt, "but women's volleyball is kind of sexy." They may have some problems hiding their guns, however.

Hello, Schmoopie!
Unlike the Seinfeld episode in which he showed no interest in a friend's baby, Jerry Seinfeld, 45, is clearly tickled about his own child-to-be. On April 5 he leaked the news that his wife of four months, Jessica, 28, is pregnant in a phone call to Regis Philbin, who revealed it the next day on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. "There's a little Jerry Seinfeld coming," Philbin told the audience. He reported the couple are expecting in six months. Comedian George Wallace, best man at their Christmas Day wedding, also talked with Jessica and Jerry. "They were both very emotional and quiet and happy and a little scared—you know, nervous," says Wallace. Seinfeld's close friend Mark Schiff, also a comic, confirms that "[Jerry's] very excited about becoming a dad." Schiff adds that he and his wife are already thinking of gifts: "Maybe we'll get the baby a rattle in the shape of a microphone."

In Search of a Legend
Among the highlights of the annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference last Feb. 23: the song stylings of Wayne Newton. It was his way of saying danke schon to two of its members, Dr. Henry Lee and Dr. Michael Baden, for helping him try to locate and bring home the remains of Pocahontas, the 17th-century Native American. Wayne's motivation? "He's from the same tribe as Pocahontas," says Baden, who will join Lee and British coroner Peter Dean in analyzing bones from the St. George's churchyards in Gravesend, England, where they believe Pocahontas is buried. If they find her, Newton will build a Pocahontas memorial, says Lee, "so everyone can remember her." Newton's performance will also be remembered. "He threw in forensics jokes," says Lee. "Everybody loved him."

Sabrina's Perfecta Birthday

Through the magic of television, Melissa Joan Hart continues to play Sabrina, the teenage witch, at the ripe old age of 24-a milestone marked by a day at the races on April 9. "Everyone thinks I'm 16," says the actress, who invited a happy coven of about 60 family members, friends and Sabrina coworkers to her birthday celebration at Santa Anita Park. (Her actual birthday is April 18.) After a carriage ride around the track with Bryan (One World) Kirk-wood, her significant. other for the past six months, and her half sisters Alexandra, 6, and Samantha, 3, Hart called on her witchy skills, placing winning bets in the first four races. "She worries me sometimes. She's powerful," noted Kirk-wood. She suffered a power shortage in the fifth, however. "I think," she said later, "I'm breaking even right now."

Since her character's name isn't Sabrina, the twentysomething witch, shouldn't she cool it about announcing her age? "I don't think she worries about it," says Kirkwood, 25. "She's not caught up in it. She's very un-Hollywood."

POP QUIZ

with John and Joan Cusack

John Cusack, 33, and sister Joan, 37, have appeared in eight films together, from 1983's Class to this year's High Fidelity, in addition to having solo careers. Scoop sought the secret of sibling success.

So you're sort of an acting dynasty, like the Arquettes?

John: (Long pause) Okay.

Or not. In growing up, how much was show business a part of your lives?

Joan: We grew up with comedy. That was an important value in the house. We watched Monty Python movies and Mel Brooks movies.
John: Our comedy was an absurd, self-deprecating, strange kind of thing.

How do you two end up in movies together?

John: I'd call her up and she'd say yes before she found out what the part was.
Joan: I trust him completely.
John: Usually I'll be asking her to do a part where she goes off on me. She seems very good at it.

Is that what they call Method acting?

John: Something like that.

When you're the producer, John, Joan is technically working for you.

John: That's the way I like it.
Joan: I do have to call you sir, I've noticed.
John: That's not...oh, yeah, you did [call me sir] in Grosse Pointe Blank.

John, when you cast Joan, do you have to go through her agent or manager?

John: Not yet.
Joan: You can go that way, but why? What's the point?

Do you ever give each other career advice?

John: I'll tell her who would be good to work with or who to look out for.
Joan: It's one of those things where we're a close family, and it's such a hard business, a business of illusion, and it's so hard to get things done. And it's a high-pressure, highly competitive job. And if you can get advice from somebody who's on your side, it's valuable, it's incredible.

California Wheel Estate
What's more important, a roof over your head or really cool wheels? Okay—but how about in L.A.? The latter question was addressed April 3 in a London courtroom, where singer Phil Collins's corporate entity is battling musicians Rahmlee Davis, 51, and Louis Satterfield, 63-both part of the horn section that once played with the band Earth, Wind and Fire-over royalties he may or may not owe them for work on his 1990 Serious Hits...Live album. The revealing moment came when Davis, maintaining that he is in serious financial trouble, testified that he could not meet his mortgage payments in 1995-but just months later he bought a flashy Jaguar. There was a reason, explained the trumpeter. "You need a quick car in Los Angeles."

ON THE BLOCK

SANDRA IN SOHO
Sandra Bullock, who hit it big in Speed, might call her next project Space. The actress sold her 3,000-sq.-ft. loft (left) in New York City's SoHo district for $1.5 million and moved on to something bigger: a four-story town-house with an extra 1,600 sq. ft. Bullock, 35, who opened this week in 28 Days, now counts Richard Gere and Matthew Broderick as neighbors. And should old buddy Matthew McConaughey, known for his nude bongo playing, drop by, she can relax. One real estate agent calls her quiet street "a great location for someone who doesn't want to be seen."

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