It Takes A Good Editor To Know Wheat From Chaff

The scene: a New York courtroom. Camera pulls back to reveal book editor Joni Evans.

EVANS: “I remember feeling alarmed, that it was very primitive, very much off base. It was jumbled and disjointed. It was not something anyone on the street would read or like.”

Cut to: a book manuscript, “The Ruling Passion” by Joan Collins.

Cut to: the courtroom, where Collins’ lawyer argues that Collins, already paid $1.3 million, deserves the rest of her $4 million advance. A “complete manuscript,” he says, is “a quantity term, not a quality term.”

Cut to: A voiceover of Collins’ actual prose: “Venetia’s young bronzed body filled the screen, writhing, moaning and screaming in paroxysms of pleasure which, Fabio could tell with an unaccustomed flash of jealousy, were not faked.”

Loose talk

Vice President Al Gore, explaining his image problem during the recent cold snap in Washington, D.C. (in U.S. News & World Report): “People who didn’t know me well thought I was frozen stiff.”

When life throws you Lemmon, you make Oscar-ade

Jack Lemmon turns 71 today.

Unless, say, the sweater belonged to Michael Jordan

Seems the cast on the NBC sitcom “Friends” actually are, but only to a point. “There are things you cannot talk about in front of them,” says Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe) about male members David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry. “They will not tolerate a conversation that’s gonna last too long about ‘Where did you get that sweater?”’

Graffiti in his neighborhood is done in crayon

The quote: “Crayons may seem like simple tools, but they’re important instruments of childhood.” The speaker: Fred Rogers. The occasion: On Tuesday, the host of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” was helping Crayola celebrate the manufacture of crayon No. 100 billion.

Now we know for sure why Lady sang the blues

You may have heard that actor Billy Dee Williams was arrested on Jan. 30. Well, on Tuesday the 58-year-old star of such movies as “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Return of the Jedi” was charged with misdemeanor spousal battery for repeatedly slapping his 53-year-old girlfriend. If convicted, he could face 18 months in jail and up to 2,000 in fines.

One report intimates he was auditioning for ‘Arthur 3’

It took the London Daily Mirror to report it, but Dudley Moore escaped serious injury recently when his car skidded off a Colorado mountain road and rolled 150 feet down a snowy embankment. Moore, 60, who reportedly suffered shock, cuts and bruises, was enroute to a rented home at an unnamed ski resort in Telluride. Moore has refused comment.

And next year, we’re not going to Cannes either

As for The Spokesman-Review’s coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, we pass on this tidbit from Entertainment Weekly: A waiter spilled red wine on Elle Macpherson’s sheepskin jacket.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

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