Hollywood Digest

'SOPRANOS' BURIES COMPETITION

According to Nielsen Media Research, 13.4 million viewers tuned in Sunday night for the season premiere of HBO's critically acclaimed organized crime family drama "The Sopranos."

That's the largest audience ever to assemble for an original program on HBO, and easily enough to make HBO the No. 1 network overall in its time slot.

STARS LINE UP FOR 'SNL'

NBC announced Tuesday that Matt Damon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will be guest hosts on the upcoming 28th season of "Saturday Night Live" in October, with musical guests Bruce Springsteen, Faith Hill and Nelly.

Damon will host the season premiere on Oct. 5, when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform songs from their new album "The Rising."

Gellar will host the following week, with Hill singing songs from "Cry," the follow-up to her Grammy-winning "Breathe" album.

On Oct. 19, McCain will join a list of politicians including George Bush, Al Gore and Rudy Giuliani who have appeared on show. Rapper Nelly ("Hot in Herre") will be the musical guest.

REEVE SLAMS BUSH, CATHOLICS

Christopher Reeve had some blunt criticism for President Bush and Catholics in an interview with The Guardian newspaper about his recently recovery of some feeling and movement if his fingers and hands, seven years after he was paralyzed from the neck down in a horseback riding incident.

The "Superman" star said it would be "defeatist" for him to dwell on his problems, but he said it's "hard to resist considering what might have been."

Reeve said when he was first injured, he had hoped that research would eventually lead to new treatments for paralysis, but he said hope "was influenced by politics." He said a lack of government support -- motivated by political fear of religious opposition -- has held back research using embryonic stem cells.

"We've had a severe violation of the separation of church and state in the handling of what to do about this emerging technology," said Reeve. "Imagine if developing a polio vaccine had been a controversial issue. There are religious groups -- the Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe -- who think it's a sin to have a blood transfusion. What if the president for some reason decided to listen to them, instead of to the Catholics, which is the group he really listens to in making his decisions about embryonic stem cell research? Where would we be with blood transfusions?"

Reeve said he can understand why stem cells derived from fertilized eggs have posed an ethical challenged, but he said there is no rational argument against cloning in which DNA is transplanted into an unfertilized egg to create an embryo.

"Some religious and social conservatives say that that egg, by itself, is an individual," said Reeve. "I find it hard to understand. If that egg is an individual, it means it has the same status as a living human being. When human beings die, the next of kin ordinarily have a funeral. So if you follow their logic, women should be having funerals for these so-called individuals that they lose every 30 days. I know it's a rather cynical way to look at it, however, it's very important to look logically at the problem, rather than emotionally."

RON HOWARD'S NEXT

Ron Howard -- who recently dropped out as director of "The Alamo" -- has plans to make a movie about another major episode in Mexican history.

According to a report in Daily Variety, Universal, with Imagine Entertainment partners Howard and Brian Grazer, has bought the "The Serpent and the Eagle" -- the story of Cortez's conquest of the Aztec nation with help from an Aztec princess-turned-slave.

The screenplay by Hans Beimler ("Profiler," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") and Robert Wolfe ("The Twilight Zone," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") looks examines Cortez's relationship with Malinali, a slave given to him by an Aztec tribe as a peace offering.

YOU KNOW HIM BETTER AS CLIFF

John Ratzenberger -- best known as Cliff Clavin, the mailman on "Cheers" -- is set to play one of the nine miners at the center of July's "miracle rescue" from the flooded Quecreek coal mine, in ABC's upcoming TV movie about the event.

The minors were trapped 240 feet underground for 80 hours before rescuers finally reached them and pulled them to safety.

Annie Corley ("NYPD Blue," "Box of Moonlight"), William Mapother ("In the Bedroom") and Marysa Ryan ("New York Undercover") will also appear in the picture.

MESSING'S NEXT

Debra Messing ("Will & Grace") is adding another feature film to her resume, with plans to join Ben Stiller in the cast of an upcoming romantic comedy written and directed by "Zoolander" and "Meet the Parents" writer John Hamburg.

The untitled picture stars Stiller as an anal-retentive, risk-averse man who makes a living as a professional risk analyst. Messing ("The Mothman Prophecies," "Hollywood Ending") will play his wife.