WEEK IN REVIEW: Clooney Loses His Cool

By Stephen M. Silverman

Friday February 14, 2003 10:20 AM EST

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TEMPER, GEORGE: At a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival for his film "Solaris" (which tanked in the U.S.), George Clooney, 41, didn't take a comment by one Turkish journalist lightly -- responding with what Reuters termed a stream of invective. In front of everybody, the journalist called the space movie "boring." "I find you fascinating," Clooney snapped back at the guy. "You crack me up, man. You just wanted to get up and be a rat, you know that? You just wanted to get up and say something rotten. What a jerk! I mean honestly, you know, what a (expletive) thing to say!" Clooney finished the fellow off by calling him "a jerk."

MADONNA'S GIFT: Madonna granted a dying teen's final wish. According to Canada's Windsor Star newspaper, Kerri Yascheshyn, 17, had been receiving daily phone calls from the star since late January, after the initial contact between the two had been arranged by the Children's Wish Foundation. Madonna and Yascheshyn, an aspiring actress-dancer who died last Sunday, shared conversations on such subjects as dancing and the afterlife. "Madonna was very positive and encouraged Kerri to pray," said Kerri's mother, Gail Yascheshyn. "She kept telling her not to be negative, and would call whenever she thought about Kerri, sometimes from her cell phone."

HELLO! YOURSELF: Things got testy in London's High Court, where Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones squared off against Britain's Hello! magazine in their lawsuit against the publication for running unauthorized photos of their splashy November 2000 New York wedding. In a packed courtroom, Zeta-Jones, 33, claimed that sneaky paparazzi spoiled the afterglow of her wedding with fuzzy images that made her look overweight and the reception (at the stately Plaza Hotel) look like a "disco," reported Reuters. Douglas, 58, called the defense lawyer's comments "offensive" after his compensation claim against Hello! magazine was deemed "trivial."

NO 'SEX': There was disappointing news for Carrie Bradshaw and the women of "Sex and the City." Reps from ABC, NBC and FOX told the Associated Press that they have no interest in airing a sanitized version of HBO's often-explicit, Emmy Award-winning comedy, which, come next January, is heading into its final season on the pay-cable network. (HBO, like PEOPLE, is part of AOL Time Warner.) CBS did not comment on whether it had decided to pick up the reruns.

DURST DUMPS: Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst, 32, just won't let go of Britney Spears, 21. In an interview with TV's "Access Hollywood," Durst claimed Britney's life is too much for him to get involved with. When they first met, he said, he thought, "Wow, this is just a very sweet Southern girl, just simple, you know, Southern girl. But actually, she has a life like Michael Jackson. It's, like, out of control. ... The people around her, pulling at her, people around her that are full of (expletive), just agreeing with her, like, it's kind of crazy, she almost can't see what's real and what's not."