Copyright 1995 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
May 1, 1995, Monday
SECTION: Gossip Pg. 19
LENGTH: 942 words
HEADLINE: THE LAW OF 'INDISCRETIONS': HEY, JUDE! THIS GUY IS NUDE
BYLINE: By George Rush and Joanna Molloy
BODY:
The big stars were out for the Broadway opening of "Indiscretions" last Thursday and it seemed a fine night to talk about male frontal nudity.
Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, John Waters, Demi Moore, Julia Ormond, Rufus Sewell, Chris Reeve and Debi Mazur all showed up to see Kathleen Turner play the mother in a family that makes the Windsors look normal.
Jean Cocteau wrote it in 1938 on an eight-day opium binge. How's this for a plot? Mom loves boy. Unfortunately, the boy's her son. But Boy loves Girl. What a coincidence, Daddy does, too. In fact, Girl is Daddy's mistress. Mom's not happy. Nobody is. One character asks, "How could this happen in a city of this size?" Man, we could tell you stories.
But the jaded New Yorkers celebrating the play at Tavern on the Green afterward weren't as shocked by the plot as they were by 22-year-old Jude Law. He's the dyed-blond Brit who has a brief onstage bath only to take a long, long time afterward to towel off.
"It was gratuitous male nudity," said one shocked woman of Law's toilette.
"That's an oxymoron," said Village Voice columnist Michael Musto right off the top of his curly head. "Like 'L.A. Style.' "
"To me, it seems completely natural," boomed Turner in a, well, theatrical baritone. "In the script, the boy takes a bath. It seems appropriate. Why do people try to preserve fake values?"
"Nudity?" asked Walter Cronkite. "I've seen men before."
Jovial expectant father Alec Baldwin said, "What was shocking 40, 50 years ago is no longer." Baldwin, now shooting "The Juror" with Demi Moore, grew a beard for the role. "I'm just tired of my face," said Baldwin, though it was clear many young women circling his table were not. (Note to Kim Basinger: He ignored them.)
Just then the young object of debate entered Tavern on the Green, with clothes on to spare. Law took our question as a full frontal assault.
"Well, I'm sorry people don't like it," said Law. "I guess I'd better go to the gym."
Baby talk
When they weren't talking about nudity, people at the party were talking about getting pregnant.
Turner has said that she and her husband have had to hold off on expanding their family while she's been treated rheumatoid arthritis. She told us she's now off medication.
Baldwin now that he and Basinger are expecting their first child was happy to share his secrets of procreation.
"My wife wouldn't let me eat papaya because it's supposed to kill male sperm," said the eldest of acting's Baldwin brood. "You're also not supposed to ride a bicycle. And I abjure all tight underwear. I'm strictly a boxer man."
Mostly, he said, they needed time together, away from the "cesspool of show business."
Meanwhile, word from Star magazine is Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are expecting. Illustrator a big draw
So many people showed up at the opening of fashion illustrator Joe Eula's retrospective at Stubbs Books & Prints that the party spread to the sidewalk and the local pizza joint around the corner.
There we spotted style genius Andre Leon Talley, who recently left Vogue, and asked if it were true he'd soon be working at Chanel. He denied it.
Talley wasn't aware until we told him that he'd been inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame. His secret?
"I never throw anything out," said Talley. "I have 12 or 13 Perry Ellis topcoats. I have Russian Orthodox vestments. I have military uniforms from Prince Charles' regiment. I have Galliano kimonos that are worn just to slide across Karl Lagerfeld's floor to dinner."
And he lives in a studio. Just kidding. Defusing matters?
Bob Guccione is ready to print the writing of the terrorist known as the Unabomber.
"I'm making this offer to save lives," insists the Penthouse publisher in the letter, referring to the terrorist's vow last week to build another bomb unless a "nationally distributed periodical" printed his 29,000-plus-word manifesto. Guccione tells us that arguments against dealing with terrorists are "irrelevant" since "we have no other choice."
"The psychological profile of this individual [shows] he doesn't want to kill people; he wants to get his message across. Once a guy like this gives his word, he will not bomb anyone else, he will discredit his own public statement if does."
Guccione said that "even editing one word of his manuscript would be a mistake, because it gives him an opportunity to go back on his word.
The publisher, who offered space in any of his magazines, predicts that the opus "will give us a fuller picture of him and his motivations.
"Bombing is his way of getting attention. Give him what he wants and you will neutralize him." Incidentally...
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis called just four friends to her bedside at the end to say goodbye. Tonight, most of them Carly Simon, Bunny Mellon and Joe Armstrong will have a reunion of sorts to remember her. They'll join Caroline Kennedy (who's dropped the appellation "Schlossberg" on the invitation) and John Kennedy Jr. at the gala for Jackie O's beloved American Ballet Theater.
What does it say about New York City public education that the two kids who won the Daily News' citywide spelling bee are from parochial schools? Little Alexis Ann Serrano attends Holy Cross School, across from the Port Authority bus terminal, with 300 kids from Hell's Kitchen. Our favorite priest, Pete Colapietro, says the children there speak 17 different languages and only 60% are Catholic.
The Inner City Scholarship Fund and the Student/Sponsor Partnership help poor families pay tuition to these inner-city oases, which must be doing something right. . . .