We’re Sure His Interest Is Purely Academic

So where was director Oliver Stone (“Nixon”) on Oscar night? Hanging out with some leftist guerillas in Mexico, of course.

Greeted by a mariachi band, Stone strolled into the mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas, saying he wanted to see the conditions that led to an Indian uprising two years ago.

“I’m here because I believe in their struggle,” Stone said after meeting with leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

He later donned a ski mask - the symbol of the Chiapis revolt - for a jungle meeting with similarly masked rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos. “We are honored that you are here looking at the stars, instead of with them in Hollywood,” Marcos said.

Although Stone denied he’s planning a movie project with the rebels, his production team camped out with him during the visit.

Loose talk

Neil Scanlon, winner of a visual effects Oscar for “Babe,” on his new vegetarian diet: “When you spend that much time looking at a pig, you can no longer look at it as a food source.”

Oh, sort of like Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts?

Vangelis turns 53 today.

Sounds like he should have waited to exhale

Forest Whitaker has become the latest screen star to to be busted on Sunset Boulevard, but Divine Brown was nowhere in sight. Police stopped the actor-director (“Crying Game,” “Waiting to Exhale”) for speeding in his silver Mercedes and booked him for investigation of drunk driving after he failed a sobriety test.

Want to make a man a baby? Give him a bottle

Nicolas Cage said he researched his Oscar-winning role as an alcholic in “Leaving Las Vegas” by studying screen boozers played by Dudley Moore, Jack Lemmon and Ray Milland. “Many alcoholics are very sweet people,” Cage said. “They cry easily. They sing. They can be gentle. I wanted to focus on the child-like quality of the drunk.”

The surprise ending: It was all just the D.T.’s

Reflecting Larry Hagman’s real-life liver transplant, J.R. Ewing will return in the “Dallas” TV reunion movie as a teetotaler. Said co-star Patrick Duffy, who plays brother Bobby: “It’s the appropriate thing to do, for Larry to say as J.R., ‘Well, the doctor took me off the booze. He said it was killing me.’ But Bobby still pours himself a bourbon.”

Sooner or later, he had to take his medicine

An autopsy report on “Top Gun” producer Don Simpson, found dead in his bathroom on Jan. 19, shows he died from a combination of cocaine, sedatives, antidepressants and anti-psychotic medication, including Unisom, Atarax, Vistaril, Librium, Valium, Compazine, Xanax, Desyrel and Tigan.

After all, why do you think they call it rope?

Finally, Woody Harrelson (“Natural Born Killers”) has offered to finance Colorado’s first test crop of hemp if legislators will allow it. “Industrial hemp has never and could never be used for drug trafficking,” he wrote. “You could smoke a pound and not get high.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino