Weekend, 10 January 1998

Laurence Fishburne will turn actor/producer when he plays Detective Pharoah Love, the black, gay detective hero of A Queer Kind of Death. With all those titles with which to address the actor nicknamed Fish, only one will get him really riled. Don't ever call him Larry.

P.J. Hogan, who directed last summer's smash hit, My Best Friend's Wedding, is about to sign on the dotted line to do a biopic on one of the most important figures in American history. Chuck Barris. Yes, that Chuck Barris, producer/creator of "The Dating Game," "The Newlywed Game" and "The Gong Show" (which he hosted). Barris already directed and starred in The Gong Show Movie, a pseudo-biographical mockumentary in 1980, but that one didn't cover Barris' supposed career as a CIA assassin who knocked off Soviet agents while traveling on Dating Game trips with the winners. His method must have been to make KGB agents watch his shows for hours until they begged for death.

When "Taxi" star Andy Kaufman died in 1984 at the age of 33, people were pretty sure it was an elaborate joke. It wasn't. Now, the men who brought The People vs. Larry Flynt, Ed Wood and That Darn Cat to life on screen, writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, have the green light to make the Andy Kaufman movie, Man In The Moon, with Milos Forman as director. Danny DeVito will produce and co-star as Kaufman's manager. Reports of potential leads include superstars Carrey, Cage, Hanks and Cusack, but my bet is on Edward Norton, who would fit into the role and not over it. And what is it with the 33rd year of a great comic's life? Belushi, Kaufman and now Farley all died at 33. I'm 33. Good thing I'm not that funny.

United Artists is following the rest of Hollywood by going back to the well -- probably too many times. The 1998-99 slate includes a sequel to Basic Instinct, starring Sharon "Damn, I Need A Hit" Stone without Michael Douglas or screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. Also, a follow-up to The Birdcage is in the works, with a screenplay by Bruce Villanch, one of Hollywood's best joke writers (he's an Academy Awards writer every year). Robin Williams and Nathan Lane aren't even in discussions yet and look for the studio to find a director much easier to deal with than Mike Nichols this time around. Unless Williams demands him.

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