Chatter

MICHAEL CAINE: KISS, NO TELL

NORA EPHRON: SEX, LIES & LAUGHTER

GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FLOSS: At a bash for New York radio station WHTZ, better known as Z-100, singer CYNDI LAUPER revealed an imagination that is truly colorful. “I’ve always had these fantasies about JULIE ANDREWS singing Led Zeppelin,” said Lauper, whose slumber is sometimes disturbed by visions of the Beatles. “I always loved PAUL [MCCARTNEY], but I always had dreams about JOHN [LENNON]. I used to have dreams that I was brushing my teeth in the same sink as John. We were just brushing our teeth, and there he was, spitting in the same sink. I couldn’t figure out what that meant.”

NAKED AMBITION: Actor TONY RANDALL, who steps into the lead role in M. Butterfly this is month, will keep his clothes on while co-star B.D. WONG strips in the climactic third act. But on occasion Randall has been known to take it all off. To relieve tension during long workdays on the early ’70s TV hit The Odd Couple, “I’d show up for rehearsals stark naked,” Randall says. “I did it many times.” Randall, however, has no plans to let the public ever catch him with his pants down. “I don’t think it would be fair,” he says. “All these studs in porno—it would put them out of business.”

HANDS OFF: British actor MICHAEL CAINE has been busy this summer filming the thriller A Shock to the System, but he’ll be taking sometime off soon to write his autobiography. Caine plans to describe his journey from cockney rags to Hollywood riches but says he has “a very funny point of view” about the rewards of money. “For instance, if you catch your thumb in the door of some cheap car, you’re okay, because the space under the door is so big. But if you catch your thumb in the door of an expensive car, it hurts.” And what about his many romances along the way? “I won’t be naming all the girls I slept with,” he vows. “They all write about it in their memoirs anyway. Then my wife, Shakira [left], gets upset.”

AFTERNOON DELIGHTS: Generations star KELLY RUTHERFORD has added a new dimension to safe sex. Asked about her smoldering love scenes as the flirtatious Sam Whitmore on the NBC soap, Rutherford says, “I think love scenes are fun. What’s great about love scenes in movies and TV is that nothing really stops you because you know you won’t have to deal with it later. It’s not like normal life, where you meet someone and go to bed and then deal with the consequences. You can go to bed, and you know you’re not going to get pregnant or catch diseases. You come out of it feeling like, ‘Wow, that guy was really sexy, and it doesn’t matter if he’s married and has kids.’ I have no connections. I can go home and do my own thing.”

OZONE ALERT: Screenwriter NORA EPHRON says that men and women react quite differently to her When Harry Met Sally…deli scene in which MEG RYAN shows BILLY CRYSTAL how easily women fake orgasms. Ephron told the Detroit News that at one preview screening, “the women in the audience became completely convulsed. The men were all laughing too, but very uncomfortably.” The reason for their divergent reactions, said Ephron, is that “all men are positive it has never happened to them and almost all women have done it.” The writer, ex-wife of author CARL BERNSTEIN, made no exception for herself. “Have I ever faked an orgasm? Yes, of course I have. Otherwise, how would I know about it?”