Mayor Washington and his staff are busy trying to put a positive spin on the James (”Speak into my lapel”) Burrell bugging story. One of the things under consideration is for the mayor to campaign, especially in the 3d Ward, with a tape recorder and to add a laugh track to a tape of one of Vrdolyak`s speeches, drowning him out. ”It`s a perfect symbol of the kinds of dirty tricks the mayor is up against,” a City Hall insider says. ”We`re looking to get as much mileage out of this as we can.”
THE MORNING NEWS BEAT . . .
The ”Today” show`s Gene Shalit got his comeuppance the other day from Butterfly (”I don`t know nuthin` `bout birthin` no babies, Miss Scarlett!”) McQueen, who was being interviewed as part of a five-part series on ”Gone With the Wind” to air the week of March 4. McQueen was primping in front of a mirror when Shalit introduced himself. Said McQueen, ”Can`t I call you Joel Segal just once?” (Segal is ”GMA`s” mustachioed reviewer.) ”Don`t do it,” he told her, ”but you can call me Rhett.” . . . ”CBS Morning News” scored back-to-back coups Wednesday with interviews with the jurors in the Gen. William Westmoreland-CBS trial and Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses, recently acquitted of soliciting the services of a prostitute. Moses held firm to his commitment to CBS in spite of the pressure put on him by the other morning news shows. There was even talk of a producer ”from another network”
stalking CBS, trying to grab Moses and persuade him to change his mind.
THAT`S ENTERTAINMENT . . .
This week`s Victoria (”I`d rather have root canal work than do this interview”) Principal Award goes to Jeff (”The Big Chill”) Goldblum, who cheated on a recent phone interview by discussing all of his answers with a nearby ”peanut gallery” before responding to questions. Goldblum stars in
”Into the Night” and is filming ”Silverado” (”A very traditional epic Western–I arrive on the stagecoach.”), but he couldn`t think of a single reason to be doing a Western in 1985–even with coaching from his gallery. . . . There`s talk that ”Beverly Hills Cop” may be turned into a TV series. ONE MAN`S MEAT . . .
. . . is another man`s jail sentence. And in this case, Stacy Keach`s unexpected layover in Reading Prison on a narcotics charge and the
accompanying suspension of his ”Mickey Spillane`s Mike Hammer” series have led to the opening of a nice Saturday night time slot on CBS. Sam (”Police Surgeon”) Groom is filling it with ”Otherworld,” a fantasy show about a family hurled into another dimension. ”It`s about a normal family in strange circumstances, but which still has all the normal problems to deal with. We`re in this `otherworld,` but we still enroll our three kids in school and try to teach them values,” says Groom, who has tried to instill values in his own three children even though they are being reared in something of an
”otherworld”–Los Angeles.
THE NAME GAME . . .
It`s no accident when products such as Matt`s Cookies or a Stanley Korshak shopping bag show up in a movie such as ”The Breakfast Club.” Those ”product exposures” are carefully engineered by companies, including Northbrook`s Cinema Promotions, that work closely with a movie`s property master to get exposure for their clients in films for a fee or exchange of services. A client whose food product gets a few seconds` exposure, for instance, may agree to provide the product for cast and crew throughout filming. For ”Code of Silence,” Four Winds Enterprises moving company transported a government robot used in the film from Chicago to Denver and back in exchange for two appearances by the company`s truck in the movie. Never underestimate the power of a few seconds` big screen exposure; the sale of Reese`s Pieces skyrocketed after ”E.T.,” and a Detroit high school has been deluged with orders for the ”Mumford Phys. Ed. Dept.” T-shirt that Eddie Murphy wore in ”Beverly Hills Cop.”
INC.LINGS . . .
Coke is it: How come cocaine is suddenly the hot topic–with Time and Newsweek cover stories and a feature on Tuesday`s ”Nightline”? Is the public relations department of the Drug Enforcement Administration working overtime? . . . Thursday birthdays: Tricia Nixon Cox, 39; Rue McClanahan, 60; Variety Club`s Haywood Mitchusson, 59. . . . Bob Fosse comes to town Thursday to supervise final auditions for Drury Lane Oak Brook`s spring production of
”Dancin` ”. . . . Chicago photographer Joan Moss will be featured in the May issue of Vogue magazine. . . . Little Pat Benatar had her not-so-little baby over the weekend, a 7-pound-1-ounce girl.
