Movie Lawsuit Ends Up With Director In Hot Spot

Hollywood types claims they never steal stuff from amateurs. Yet lawsuits continue to appear alleging just that.

And one such suit, filed by Buffalo, N.Y., firefighters John Zoll and Terrence Burns, appears to have proven that such thefts do indeed occur.

According to Zoll and Burns, the producers of the 1991 movie “Backdraft” stole their idea for a movie about firefighters. “Backdraft,” which stars Kurt Russell, William Baldwin and Robert De Niro, involves two firefighters brothers (Russell and Baldwin) trying to resolve their relationship while solving the mystery of a killer arsonist.

A federal magistrate ruled in favor of Zoll and Burns when attorneys for director Ron Howard withheld court documents. Howard’s attorneys plan to appeal.

Loose talk

Cook County (Ill.) Hospital head John Barrett on the abilities of recent guest, Still-the-Princess Diana: “If she ever wanted to give up her day job as a princess she’d make a wonderful hospital administrator.”

To him, Mickey was just a… paycheck

Donald Duck turns 62 today.

Then why, precisely, would anyone want to read it?

Expect a memoir from Britain’s Duchess of York, recently divorced from Prince Andrew, by Thanksgiving. But don’t expect too much. The book (worth a reported $1.3 million advance) “will not be a tell-all book,” says Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy.

Her hobbies are bowling, camping and doing volunteer work

Deborah Norville says her job at “Inside Edition” is a bit less crass. “What I’ve tried to do is bring a certain sensitivity,” she told Variety magazine. “If we’re going to do the Playmate stories, let’s make them a little more intellectual.”

And, sometimes, they stop only to begin retching

Movie nights at trendy restaurants in New York have one problem: table chatter. At Manhattan’s Casa La Femme, which attracts such supermodels as Shalom Harlow, Amber Valetta and Carolyn Murphy, Volgue reports that “the only time the audience stops blabbing is during the sex scenes.”

With friends like herself, she doesn’t need enemies

She may be dating Larry King, but Cyndy Truhan - formerly Cyndy Garvey - is still guilty of filing false police reports. Her lawyer admitted that much in a La Costa, Calif., court last week. “She admitted to sending weird notes to herself,” said the Washington Post, “defacing her door with an ‘X,’ and pretending that an attacker had bitten off her ear.”

Well, that explains why he jumped off the balcony…

Snoop Doggy Dogg owns 15 pit bulls. Make that 14, since his favorite - aptly dubbed Killer - met his maker recently when he leaped off a balcony. “Killer was the only dog I let sleep in my bed,” Snoop told Details magazine. “The others had to stay outside.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster