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News from the entertainment capital

By PAT NASON, UPI Hollywood Reporter
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, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- GRAMMYS IN L.A. AGAIN

For the third consecutive year, the Grammy Awards will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

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Recording Academy President/CEO Michael Greene announced Thursday that the awards will be televised live over CBS on Feb. 27, 2002.

Greene made the announcement Thursday at a news conference attended by Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn, CBS president/CEO Leslie Moonves and recording artists Mary J. Blige, Dave Koz and Tyrese. He also announced a new long-term deal with CBS to telecast the show.


SPACEY TO CUT AN ALBUM?

Could Kevin Spacey some day place a Grammy next to the two Oscars in his trophy case?

Eight-time Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone told gossip columnist Mitchell Fink he's been wanting to make an album with Spacey since even before the star of "American Beauty" and the new movie "K-PAX" stunned the audience by singing "Mind Games" on the recent John Lennon tribute show at Radio City Music Hall.

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Ramone said he heard Spacey sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" on Sept. 10 during a warm-up for the Latin Grammy Awards.

"Kevin is Julliard-trained, and he can definitely sing," said Ramone. "For now, we're just talking."

Ramone won album of the year Grammys for producing Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" (1975) and Billy Joel's "52nd Street" (1979). He won the Grammy for record of the year for Joel's "Just the Way You Are" in 1978.


DE NIRO CHANGES COURSE

Robert De Niro has reportedly dropped out of a movie project about a severely neurotic therapist in order to do a sequel to "Analyze This," in which he played a mob boss given to fits of high anxiety.

Daily Variety reported that the two-time Oscar-winning actor has canceled plans to produce and star in "Scared Guys," as a therapist who also happens to be an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobic who hasn't left his apartment in six years.

He gets around that problem by giving therapy over the Internet, but he falls in love with a patient -- who turns out to be a police dispatcher working right across the street from his home. When the therapist learns his cyber-love is about to be murdered, he and his agoraphobic roommate have to summon all their strength to leave the apartment, go across the street and save her.

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The project is being directed by Dean Parisot, best known for the 1999 Tim Allen-Sigourney Weaver sci-fi comedy, "Galaxy Quest."

De Niro is expected to start filming in February on "Analyze That," the sequel to his 1999 -- pre-"Sopranos" -- comedy with Billy Crystal as the psychiatrist who helps De Niro's mob boss deal with his melancholy. Crystal is reportedly still in talks to join the new project.

Variety reported that De Niro will collect close to $20 million for the movie, his best payday ever. De Niro has long been one of the most respected actors in Hollywood, but he didn't start collecting super-sized fees until he connected with comedies such as "Analyze This" and "Meet the Parents."


BARRYMORE JOINS 'DANGEROUS MIND' CAST

Drew Barrymore has joined Sam Rockwell in the cast of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," the upcoming movie adaptation of game show creator-host Chuck Barris' autobiography.

George Clooney is directing the feature, with a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, who earned Oscar and Writers Guild of America nominations for best original screenplay in 1999 for "Being John Malkovich."

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Barrymore worked with Rockwell in last year's action-comedy hit, "Charlie's Angels." Rockwell is best known for his portrayal of Wild Bill Wharton, the psychotic killer, in "The Green Mile."

In "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," Rockwell plays Barris -- who wrote in his memoir that the CIA recruited him to become an assassin.


WHO TURNED ON J.R.?

According to a report in the New York Daily News, "Dallas" star Larry Hagman acknowledges in his new autobiography that he used LSD, marijuana and peyote in the past -- with a little help from Peter Fonda and David Crosby.

In the book, "Hello Darlin'," Hagman said he was obsessed with the idea of tripping in 1967, but he didn't know where to score acid -- until Fonda took him to a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert.

"After the show we went backstage and visited David Crosby," Hagman wrote. "Before we left, David handed me a handful of tabs. This wasn't ordinary LSD. It was the purest acid available, made by Stanley Owsley, the famed underground chemist from San Francisco."

Hagman said that when he was tripping, he saw "the entrance to a cave ... guarded by octopus-like creatures with long, writhing tentacles. There were also two other creatures that looked like lions with feathers."

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'DREAMCATCHER' HEADED FOR BIG SCREEN

According to published reports in Hollywood, Castle Rock is about ready to go with a movie adaptation of "The Dreamcatcher," the latest in a long line of the studio's screen versions of Stephen King's writing.

William Goldman -- who won the Oscar for best-adapted screenplay for "All the President's Men" in 1976 -- wrote the screenplay for "The Dreamcatcher." He previously adapted the King books, "Hearts in Atlantis" and "Misery" for the screen.

Lawrence Kasdan ("The Big Chill," "Body Heat") has worked over Goldman's script and plans to direct "The Dreamcatcher."


'STAR WARS' DVD SALES ARE ASTRONOMICAL

The new "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" DVD generated $17 million in consumer spending in its first day in release Tuesday, and looks like a good bet to set a new record for DVD sales in its first week, according to 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

The existing record is just one week old. "The Mummy Returns" established the new standard, selling 2 million copies in its first week.

The first-day sales for "Phantom Menace" did not measure up to last week's result for Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" DVD -- which generated more than $20 million in consumer spending on its first day in the marketplace.

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When Fox released "Phantom Menace" on VHS in April 2000, the title sold 5 million copies and grossed $100 million in two days.


CALLING ALL 'BAYWATCH' BABES

David Hasselhoff has told TV Guide he's having a bit of trouble getting all the former cast members on board for a "Baywatch" reunion movie.

Hasselhoff said he had 25 actors on his "wish list," but the salary demands were too big for the budget.

"So, now I'm trying to get the big girls like Pamela (Anderson) and Yasmine (Bleeth) to come back and work where we gave them their start," he said.

"Baywatch Blast" was supposed to start filming this week in Hawaii. Plans called for making it the premiere of a new series on Fox-TV. Now, filming has been delayed at least until next spring.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also had a disrupting effect -- messing up special arrangements for travel and accommodations, and causing some anxiety among some actors about traveling to Hawaii.


NBC READY TO GO WITH LOUIS-DREYFUS SHOW

NBC-TV has picked up the half-hour comedy being developed by "Seinfeld" alumna Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall -- the former "Saturday Night Live" regular who wrote the 1995 Matthew Modine-Paul Reiser comedy, "Bye Bye, Love."

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Plans call for Louis-Dreyfus' new show to air in March, after the network finishes its coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Louis-Dreyfus -- who played Elaine Benes for eight seasons on "Seinfeld" -- will play a professional singer and voiceover artist in the new show. Plans call for each episode to occur in real time, as opposed to the more conventional format of episodes edited together.


SAG BOOTS THREE MEMBERS

The National Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild has voted to expel three members for violating the union's "Rule One" by auditioning for or working on struck commercials during the guild's six-month commercials strike last year.

The union kicked out Southern California area members Gerry Donato and Mario Barbieri Cecchini and New York area member Robert Kalomeer.

"Our membership has been firm in its resolve to provide member benefits only to those performers who stood in solidarity with the Guild during the strike," said SAG spokesman Greg Krizman. "Our Trial Boards and the National Board of Directors agreed that these three individuals should have their Guild membership terminated."

Krizman said termination is final, and that he is not aware of any provision that might allow the actors to join the union again at some future date.

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