Taking Names

Food fight

New York Post

Restaurant financier Jeffrey Chodorow takes the stuffing out of Rocco DiSpirito over their failing venture, Rocco’s, in the next New York magazine. “This guy insisted on fresh firewood, and I had to hire a fire marshal 24 hours a day to make sure the restaurant didn’t burn down,” Mr. Chodorow tells Beth Landman. “We are serving calamari in cardboard cups, and he insists on sterling silverware. This is my only restaurant that is losing money .… My manager caught one of his people taking pasta out of the restaurant, which we know he was sending over to Union Pacific, and we were paying for the labor.”

Mr. DiSpirito counters: “He said that? I hope you print that.”

The second season of “The Restaurant” begins tonight at 10 on NBC.

A Star is scorned

New York Post

Star Jones is so fed up with Howard Stern bad-mouthing her on his morning radio show, she finally decided to take a stand.

“I wouldn’t care if vultures eat him alive,” Miss Jones said on “The View” last week. But the chatty TV host felt so bad, she apologized on the next day’s show. “She thought the comment was an un-Christian thing to say,” said producer Bill Geddie.

No shabby seconds

E! Online

Donald Trump may have fired Kwame Jackson, but the Harvard MBA and “Apprentice” runner-up is still a hot commodity.

After the finale wrapped, leaving Mr. Jackson in second place before about 28 million viewers, the 29-year-old New Yorker was quick to prove that he is, by no means, a loser.

At “The Apprentice” after-party, he was reportedly offered a cushy position managing one of the portfolios of Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, according to starmagazine.com.

Then there’s the offer from KFC — $25,000 for a week spent helping the company introduce its new oven-roasted chicken line. Will Mr. Jackson bite?

“Once we negotiate a higher fee, yes,” he told TVguide.com.

There’s more on his plate. Star further reports that Mr. Jackson is planning to produce a documentary about Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden and his talent for coaching black athletes. (Mr. Bowden is white.)

Mr. Jackson also reportedly plans to start Legacy Communications — the shingle under which he’ll produce his film, for which he hopes to raise $2.5 million. He’s tapped “Pumping Iron” writer and director George Butler to helm the project.

As if any more proof were needed that Mr. Jackson is this year’s answer to Clay Aiken, Star reports that he’s been personally invited to accompany Greta Van Susteren to the White House correspondents dinner on May 1. (Miss Susteren made waves when she invited Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne to serve as her guests two years ago.)

Lost film resurfaces

Agence France-Presse

The only known copy of a long-lost silent film featuring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson has been found in Amsterdam’s film museum, the museum said on Saturday.

Movie critics and historians have been looking for the 1922 film “Beyond the Rocks” — the only one in which Mr. Valentino and Miss Swanson starred together — for three quarters of a century. The fragmented copy was found by accident in a collection left to the museum by a film collector who died in 2000. All known copies of the film, directed by Sam Woods (1883-1949), were lost in the late 1920s.

Experts from the museum are still reassembling the pieces and the restored film will be shown for the first time during Amsterdam’s biannual film festival in April 2005.

One of the first screen legends, Mr. Valentino was a huge star in the early 1920s and is remembered as the ultimate “Latin lover.”

Miss Swanson was one of the most popular actresses of the 1920s but is best known for her role as Norma Desmond in the 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard.”

“Beyond the Rocks” tells the story of a young woman who marries an older man but falls in love with a dashing aristocrat, played by Mr. Valentino, while on her honeymoon.

Compiled by Robyn-Denise Yourse from Web and wire reports.