Barbra Streisand's live-in love, Richard Baskin (yes, he's an heir to all those flavors), will make his directorial debut with the appropriately titled Sing. The musical profiles contemporary Jewish and Italian neighborhoods in Barbra's hometown of Brooklyn. Baskin, who was music director for 1975's Nashville, joins an all-pro team. The film is being produced by Craig (Footloose) Zadan, and Oscar-winner Dean (Fame) Pitchford is writing the screenplay and the lyrics. No word yet on whether Streisand will clear her pipes and help out her boyfriend, though he won't have far to go if he needs a technical adviser.
"Ma-ma" and "Da-da" are the next terms of endearment Debra Winger and Timothy Hutton are going to hear: The baby, their first, is due next spring.
While rumors of discord between Moonlighting's Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis swirl, the producers may have come up with a classic solution: Maddie and David are going to slug it out in a rube-tube version of The Taming of the Shrew, complete with Elizabethan costumes. Even the ditzy receptionist Ms. Dipesto (Allyce Beasley) gets into the act: She'll play the good sister, Bianca.
As Robert De Niro eats his way through Rome, putting on 30 pounds for his role as Al Capone in The Untouchables, the word from pastaland is that Margaux Hemingway must be competing for the same part, judging from her pudge. But Hemingway's business is to shoot a movie for Italian television, Get Me the Moon, one of those potboilers with sex, betrayal, family vendettas and money. No word on whether the movie will be seen in the U.S.
The sins of the father may be visited on some sons, but Daniel William Vesco, 32, son of fugitive financier Robert Vesco, has had enough already. A Palm Beach County real estate investor, the young Vesco is having his name legally changed to Daniel V. Williams. "He wants people to understand he is not his father," says his lawyer, San-ford Bohrer. Dad fled the U.S. 14 years ago to avoid prosecution on charges that he swindled $224 million from a Switzerland-based mutual fund.
His named used to be José Jiménez but soon it will be Jonas Fiscus. Comic Bill Dana will check into St. Elsewhere as the father of Wayne Fiscus, played by series regular Howie Mandel.
Woody Allen, hit for $310,000 in back taxes after the IRS disallowed deductions in the writer's 1977 and 1978 returns, is suing. Piqued that the IRS went back nine years and then called one of his investments a "sham," Allen filed suit in U.S. Tax Court in Washington, D.C. Claiming that the government has erred, Allen is asking the court to find the IRS ruling "arbitrary and unreasonable."
There is a limit to Alexis' greed—it's the sky. A forthcoming episode of Dynasty will find Joan Collins in front of the television salivating as she watches a recycled episode of Life-styles of the Rich and Famous that featured a party thrown by Adnan Khashoggi, one of the world's richest men. Purrs Alexis: "That's the way I get the money. That's the man for me." Alexis later pursues one of the partygoers to help her out of some financial woes. No, it's not Robin Leach.
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