PRIESTLEY POPS IN AT OSKAR'S
Author: By Beth Carney and Maureen Dezell
Date: TUESDAY, October 6, 1998
Page: E2
Section: Living
Sunday night is usually Oskar's big night, when restaurant and Newbury
Street types meet and mingle at the Leather District restaurant and bar. This
past Sunday the place was buzzing when ``Beverly Hills 90210'' poster boy
Jason Priestley showed up, joining a crowd that included Bruin Steve Heinze,
Channel 4 reporter Mike Macklin, and nightclub impresario Seth Greenberg.
Priestley was in town working on a documentary he's producing on the Barenaked
Ladies, who performed last night at the FleetCenter. . . . While Priestley was
at Oskar's Sunday night, Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page, Ed Robertson, and
Chris Brown stopped into the House of Blues in Cambridge to check out the
Greyboy Allstars Sidecar Project's show.
A Rogers retrospective
Museum of Fine Arts director Malcolm Rogers celebrated his 50th birthday
Saturday with a party at the Athenaeum for a few members of the ``museum
family.'' Guests surprised Rogers with a video that featured clips of his
appearances on newscasts, of him playing piano, and of childhood photos
showing the museum head wearing cowboy and pilot outfits. The pics were sent
to Boston by his mother, Ann Rogers, the evening's ``missing guest,'' from her
home in the village of Oakham, England.
Poetic justice for `Ghost Radio'
Somerville poet Dick Lourie has been getting a boost from the film ``Smoke
Signals.'' The main character reads Lourie's poem ``Forgiving Our Fathers'' at
the end of the film. As an editor at the independent Hanging Loose Press,
Lourie has published ``Smoke Signals'' screenwriter Sherman Alexie's poems, so
Alexie returned the favor in his script. Thanks to what in Hollywood they
would call product placement, Lourie said his new book, ``Ghost Radio,'' sold
out its first printing of 1,000 and is now in its second printing. ``It took
my last book 10 years to sell that many copies,'' he said.
Huntington staffers to warm up `Gross' crowd
The staff at the Huntington Theatre say they're trying to find new ways of
entertaining the audience. So tonight, before the performance of ``Gross
Indecency,'' managing director Michael Maso and several staffers will be in
the theater lobby, playing show tunes on the piano. Press director Martin
Blanco, one of the singers, said they hope it will be less a performance than
an audience ``sing-along.''
Call her Sarah, duchess of talk
Sarah Ferguson's ever-evolving career took a new turn yesterday, when she
debuted as a talk-show host. In the first show of ``Sarah . . . Surviving
Life,'' which airs in the United Kingdom, the duchess of York talked with a
woman raped by a serial killer and a hit-and-run driver who confessed 20 years
later. She dedicated the episode to her mother, Susan Barrantes, who was
killed last month in a car accident. ``Mum taught me so much about how to
survive life,'' she said. Fergie is giving her $85,000 fee to charity but will
get money for the foreign rights. The show was launched with a pile of
newspaper interviews in which she discussed her boyfriend, a still-married
Italian count. ``Yes, of course he is my boyfriend and we are very close, yes,
and I love Italy,'' she said. ``But I am also, as you know, very close to
Andrew.''
Blown away by `Beloved'
Talk-show queen and book lover Oprah Winfrey said she made the movie
``Beloved'' because she was so moved by Toni Morrison's novel about a woman
carrying her children through slavery and its aftermath. ``I wanted people to
feel what I felt when I put down the book. I felt numb and devastated,'' she
said. Winfrey was in town yesterday to promote the film, which opens today.
She said she first was inspired to try for a career in film by Sidney Poitier.
``I was 10 when he received the Academy Award. I remember sitting on the
linoleum floor in my mother's apartment in Milwaukee. I was in complete awe,
first of all that a colored man arrived in a limousine, and then he won.''
Lauer marries a model
``Today'' show co-anchor Matt Lauer, 40, tied the knot on Saturday to
32-year-old model Annette Roque, USA Today reports. The couple married at a
Presbyterian church in Bridgehampton, N.Y., with a reception afterward at the
home of friends. Lauer had two best men, his ``Today'' predecessor Bryant
Gumbel and longtime friend John Horan. ``Today'' co-anchor Katie Couric,
weatherman Al Roker, and golfer Greg Norman were among the 95 guests.
Ex-mayor steps up to Brandeis lectern
Ed Koch, the New York City mayor who became a TV judge, is making another
career move -- college teacher. Koch will spend next spring at Brandeis
University as the second Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Visiting
Professor in Politics. During his 12 years as mayor, Koch is credited with
restoring the city's fiscal stability during the 1980s. As ``The People's
Court'' judge, Koch has ruled on such cases as the bachelor who claimed he was
injured by a stripper's 69-HH breasts and the woman who sued the owner of the
snake that ate her Chihuahua. Koch will teach an undergraduate course about
major city government and current national and world issues. He won't teach
Media and the Law -- that course already belongs to Anita Hill, who joined the
Brandeis faculty this fall.
Stone cold on movie values
Sharon Stone is an unlikely champion of family entertainment. The actress,
who became a star by baring her skin in ``Basic Instinct,'' told Sunday's
Daily News (New York) that it's time for Hollywood to start making more films
about ``family experiences.'' ``I'm reaching the age and the situation now to
have a family of my own and I'm pretty shocked. Sometimes I even go to these
movies that are made for kids and maybe I'll take my goddaughter with me and
I'm overwhelmed by the movies,'' said Stone. ``There's just so much being
thrown at them so fast, and I know I sound like my parents, but it's scary.''
Stone co-produced her newest film, ``The Mighty,'' in which she plays the
mother of a disabled child.
New Englanders reap rich writers' awards
Historian Howard Zinn of Newton and Chet Raymo of North Easton, a science
writer who contributes to the Globe, are among 10 recipients of this year's
Lannan Awards, established in 1987 to stimulate the creation of literature.
Poets Frank Bidart of Cambridge, who teaches at Wellesley College, and Mary
Oliver of Provincetown, who teaches at Bennington College in Vermont, were
also cited, and there are plenty of other New England connections as well.
Writer Lydia Davis was born in Northampton, and poet Jon Davis, no relation,
was born in New Haven. Each award carries a cash prize of $75,000.
Quinn's quintessential memoir; Lilith on testosterone?
``Saturday Night Live'' co-star Colin Quinn, currently featured in ``A
Night at the Roxbury,'' is writing a comic memoir, Variety reports. Quinn
apparently hopes to tag onto the bestselling trend for Irish memoirs such as
Frank McCourt's ``Angela's Ashes'' and Malachy McCourt's ``A Monk Swimming.''
It will not be based on his recent one-man play, ``Colin Quinn: An Irish
Wake.'' . . . The boys have come up with an answer to the all-female Lilith
Fair. USA Today reports that the Male Singer Songwriter Tour is set to kick
off Oct. 13 in Solano Beach, Calif. The show includes Jewel songwriter Steve
Poltz, Pete Droge, and Glen Phillips, formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket.
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