Vegemite Sandwich

Got a call this morning from Jamie Lee Curtis, she was breathlessly telling me that Sony bought the rights for "The Night The Lights Went Down on Broadway" and was re-releasing it in all of the major markets this Winter, and will then do a DVD special edition of the tear-jerker I made with her mom, the late great, Janet Leigh! Needless to say I was thrilled over this development, I made The Night... early in my career and got some great reviews, and of course, it was an honor to star with Janet as her doomed lover in this May / December romance piece. Curtis asked if I'd appear at a screening of the film at The Mann on December 16th for the official re-release... I told her that I was in and she said Sony's people would call my people and fax over the contracts ... was also told that I would do the commentary along with the director, Alan Smithee ... Told Hank the news and then called Diana Luxembourg who is still in Lafayette because of the Horowitz's case; she said she was thrilled with my news and said she'd be home by next week ... Got to thinking about Janet Leigh and what a beautiful broad she was ... you have to understand, I was pretty green when I made this film, but Leigh really helped me out and it was through her professionalism that I managed to turn in a decent performance ... also recalled that the press had a field day when Janet and I took off to Paris a month after filming for a little fling, they were calling me her "boy toy", I was just thrilled that such a great star had decided to take me under her wing, she was a real class act, they don't make them like that anymore!

With the sweet comes the bitter ... Steve Gutenberg called a few hours later, to tell me that Kate Jackson is adamant about "Disco Nation", she will not sign on with the rest of the cast to prevent the DVD release, Gutenberg said, "Christ, she's so desperate for attention she's thinking about going on a tour to promote the release!" We brainstormed and decided to leave it up to the lawyers. Meanwhile Scott Baio is trying to buy up all existing copies of the film and destroy them ... her really does not one anyone to see that jockstrap dance number he and Gutenberg and I do in that one scene.

Hank asked me to look over some new 8x10's he had done recently, I told him that he looked great in them, and he does ... later on I locked myself in my office and sat down with "Neely!" to see what I could do with this mess of a script. Like I said, it's a musical version of "Valley of the Dolls" that Spielberg is going to direct, and it is rife with misfires, though the big number that the Helen Lawson character does, "Broadway Doesn't Go for Booze and Dope" is going to bring the house down ... I wrote in a few new scenes and cut two musical numbers and added a couple of nude scenes, but still this one is going to be a real stinker ... it'll probably be a make a trillion at the box office.

Hank was feeling frisky so the rest of the afternoon was spent in bed ...

Russell Crowe called and invited us to the place he is renting out in Malibu. Danielle is out of town and he wanted some company, so we packed in to Hank's BMW Z 4 Roadster and headed out ... saw Will Smith and Jada Pinkett coming out of Spago, those crazy kids are so cute together, and they both have such tight butts ... got to Crowe's house and were treated to a tasty Vegemite sandwich spread and Foster's beer ... since I don't drink, I settled for a diet Coke. Russ was his usual gracious self and after we traded war stories, we jumped into his pool for a skinny dip ... Russ is such a pussycat in real life .... later on we discussed Ricky Martin's "comeback" and Russ said that he had heard that Tom Cruise had fucked Martin in South Beach that time , we pondered that as we shared some fine Mexican weed and enjoyed a couple bowls of Capn' Crunch with Crunch Berries ... Hank said, "Russ, that can't be true, everyone knows that Cruise is straight!" We laughed and smoked some more weed while the full moon shone over the City of Angels...