When Sitting At A Bar, No One Likes A ‘Wiseguy’

Remember Ken Wahl, the former “Wiseguy” star who parlayed his greasy-jeans aura into an acting career? Well, he’s in trouble again.

Wahl, 43, is accused of threatening a Los Angeles bartender with a six-inch hunting knife. Seems the barman thought Wahl was too drunk to serve.

“Apparently Mr. Wahl was very intoxicated, or at least appeared so, and the hotel bartender refused to serve him anymore,” a police spokesman said, adding that “this infuriated Mr. Wahl.”

Wahl admits he has a problem with alcohol. But he says he drinks to mask the pain of injuries from a motorcycle wreck. “I don’t like the fact that I drink to kill the pain,” he told TV Guide. “I’m trading my liver for my neck.”

Loose talk

Entertainment Weekly on Ethan Hawke’s first novel: “A thin, predictable novel about a young actor named William who falls in love with a young woman named Sarah. Safe to say this coltish effort would never have gotten onto a major publisher’s racetrack were it not for Hawke’s celebrity.”

We could use a little more of her right about now

Donna Summer turns 48 today.

Now, here’s an alien who’ll walk a light-year for a Camel

Here’s Entertainment Weekly’s nomination for best television quote of 1996. It was spoken by John Lithgow’s character from the sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun,” and it is his response to someone telling him how smoking takes 10 years off your life: “Yeah,” he says, “but they’re off the end of your life, and those years are crappy.”

He needn’t worry because he’s in tights with the producers

He may be the hottest actor since… well, since the last flavor-of-the-moment. But years of struggle have given George Clooney a perspective on show business. To wit: He understands that, even as the main title character in the forthcoming “Batman and Robin,” he likely will play second kazoo to bad-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Batman isn’t the most interesting character in the ‘Batman’ projects,” Clooney says, “and I probably won’t be the most interesting Batman.”

So expect her tell-all study to be very, very expensive

If French actress Catherine Deneuve ever does write an autobiography, don’t expect a cheesy recounting of her lovers a la what Brigitte Bardot did in her memoirs. “What people expect in memoirs of an actress is not what I’d be interested in,” Deneuve says. “My private life - that’s all people want to know, and I find that so cheap.”

After that, he enjoyed one ‘Big Night’ after another

After sitting through a couple of the major offerings at his annual Sundance Film Festival a couple of years ago, Robert Redford had second thoughts on their content. “There are too many films here that have token violence that’s appealing to the commerciality of the marketplace,” he says. “That’s when I said, ‘Let’s be aggressive about finding edgier, more experimental, riskier films that don’t depend on anything formulaic whatever.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

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