When Barry Levinson and his friends were growing up in Baltimore -- an experience that would later inspire his movie "Diner" -- they lusted after the "great post," their lingua franca for showing up with a gorgeous date on your arm.
"The quintessential great post," Chip Silverman wrote in "Diner Guys," his 1989 memoir, "was a blue-eyed, blonde shiksa, at least 5'6" that no one in Northwest Baltimore had ever seen."
Calling Central Casting for Miss Sharon Stone!
Friday's Liz Smith gossip column brought the word to Silverman and the other grown-up Diner Guys that their pal Levinson is dating the beautiful if reputedly predatory Stone. Could it be true? Could our hometown mensch be going out with feminism's answer to Warren Beatty?
"There's absolutely no truth to it, period," Levinson said from the Left Coast that is home these days.
Levinson said he's been negotiating a movie role, not a date, for his film, "Sphere," based on the Michael Crichton book and starring Dustin Hoffman. "She's agreed, now it's down to the business people," he said of the movie that he is producing and directing and expects to begin filming in March.
Levinson seemed more amused than irked at the column item, which links one of the least gossiped-about Hollywood figures with one of the most. Levinson rarely figures into such entertainment chatter except in relation to new projects. Stone, by contrast, is nearly a daily fixture in the Liz Smith-"Entertainment Tonight"-Page Six gossip circles, usually for romances, both real and rumored.
Most recently, the Scottish Daily Record said in early October that she was said set to marry her "chubby Frenchman" boyfriend, Michel Benasera, after he gave her a big diamond ring that so delighted her that she showed it to everyone in the "chic Paris restaurant" at which they were dining.
She even figured into the recent John F. Kennedy Jr. nuptials: the New York Post reported that he finally popped the question to Carolyn Bessette after she became incensed about rumors that he had an affair with Stone.
With or without John John, her dance have gone out with: Frank's son, Dweezil Zappa; country singers Dwight Yoakum and Ricky Lynn Gregg; actor Gary Shandling (as well as his TV alter ego, Larry Sanders); "The Quick and the Dead" assistant director Bob Wagner; Chris Peters, a musician and son of producer Jon; NFL Properties vice president Jim Connelly; restaurateur Brad Johnson.
