It was one hot evening in Beverly Hills, as celebs came out to support Women's Cancer research program at the 10th annual Fire and Ice Ball. The gala, which is held every year, raises money for the Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program. Sponsored by Revlon chief RONALD PERELMAN and LILY TARTIKOFF, the night was co-hosted by fiery "Friends" COURTENEY COX ARQUETTE, LISA KUDROW, JENNIFER ANISTON -- along with Tartikoff, Perelman and his wife ELLEN BARKIN.

Actor Brendan Fraser and his wife Afton pose for photographers as they arrive as guests for the 10th annual Fire & Ice Ball December 11, 2000 in Beverly Hills. The ball is a benefit to raise funds for the Revlon/UCLA Cancer Research Program.
REUTERS/RoseProuser

The Story Behind the Story

It's so easy to read the glitzy coverage of the beautiful, star-studded charity events in Hollywood and lose sight of the reason behind the event. The BFFC wanted to look behind the curtain and see what motivated these fine people to give of their time and pocket books to help others.

The Johnsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC)

The multidisciplinary Women's Cancers Program Area of the Johnsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) addresses research, clinical and educational activities for malignancies in women. Membership includes basic scientists and clinicians, with representation from the Departments of Medicine, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Radiation Oncology, Diagnostic Radiology, Pathology, Surgery, Psychology, Pharmacology, Immunology and Molecular Biology. The objectives of the Program Area are to: i) foster interactive and collaborative activities between and among members; ii) develop multidisciplinary research programs among JCCC members working in the area of breast and women's reproductive cancers to bring about a more comprehensive and effective approach to clinical cancer research; and iii) focus upon areas of translational research. Major research goals include: i) identification of improved diagnostic approaches to these cancers; ii) development of molecularly directed therapeutics; iii) establishment of genetic-based cancer risk assessment and counseling strategies; and iv) evaluation and implementation of preventative strategies.

The Revlon/UCLA Breast Center conducts diagnostic, therapeutic and high-risk clinics for patients with or at risk for developing breast disease. The UCLA Genetic Evaluation Program and Familial Cancer Registry provide comprehensive genetic counseling, genetic testing in the appropriate setting, and the opportunity for subjects to enroll in the Familial Cancer Registry. Information on lifestyle and exposures collected in the Familial Cancer Registry will be used by researchers to investigate the critical interactions between genes and the environment.

At the Breast Center, patients are evaluated by a multidisciplinary team that includes a breast surgeon, medical oncologist, radiation oncologist, diagnostic radiologist, pathologist, and psychologist or social worker. This team approach provides a convenient, comprehensive and empowering service for the patient, and it fosters the development of important collaborations between the various members of the diagnostic and treatment team. The Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center works closely with the Breast Center to ensure comprehensive psychosocial care and support for women with cancer. Such an interdisciplinary approach will also be used to formulate research initiatives by clinicians and basic researchers within the Program Area for advancing capabilities in preventing, diagnosing and treating breast cancer. The Revlon/ UCLA Breast Center serves as a focal point for the conduct of numerous institutional and cooperative group studies in breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

In the area of gynecologic oncology, much of the work has focused on ovarian malignancies, in part due to the demographics of the patient population, as well as the interests of investigators. Through successful development efforts and collaborations, the Women's Reproductive Cancer Program at UCLA provides a multidisciplinary team of physicians and other related specialists for women with gynecologic malignancies.

Dr. Helena Chang, M.D., Ph.D., the Women's Cancers Program Area Director, is a Professor of Surgery in the UCLA School of Medicine and Director of the Revlon/UCLA Breast Center. She holds the Revlon Endowed Chair in Breast Cancer Programs. Her long-term research interest has been in the development of immunotherapy in treating adult ductal epithelial cancer. She has developed several recombinant live vaccines that actively secrete a tumor antigen and human cytokines. The role of these vaccines in human cancer treatment and prevention is being investigated. The biological activity of the targeted tumor antigen (MUC-1 peptide) and its involvement in cancer invasion and metastases is being characterized by her research team. She is also working closely with clinician-scientists and basic researchers in studies characterizing breast cancer behavior and developing molecular classifications for locally advanced breast cancer.

Entertainment News
September 20 6:47 PM ET
Hollywood, Internet Get Serious with Dedicated Mag
By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After a few tears and lots of flirting, Hollywood's dalliance with the Internet will grow more serious Thursday with a new edition of the trade daily Variety dedicated solely to the new universe of "convergence."

The monthly glossy eV, focusing on the place where show business, technology and finance meet, hits both the streets and the Web at a time when movie moguls are embracing the technology they first regarded with fear and loathing.

"From A-list directors to television production companies, from publishing to music, every facet of The Biz has embarked on finding a relationship with the Web that will continue to change both arenas forever," said eV editor Michael Speier.

eV, which also will be available on the Variety.com Web site, expects to reach 55,000 readers globally with its in-depth look at the movers and shakers in the mushrooming world of entertainment e-businesses.

It has already attracted advertising from banks and upscale office furniture designers that have not normally used the entertainment press.

The magazine follows hard on the heels of a venture by cross-town rival The Hollywood Reporter, which in July inaugurated a daily "convergence feature" on its pages to track a world where fortunes change faster than Hollywood stars have make-overs.

"The speed of the Internet is faster than the spin of the studio," Gordon Paddison, VP of worldwide interactive marketing and development at New Line Cinema, told eV.

Initially wary of having its audiences lured away by low-cost, creative Web-based alternatives delivered by a PC, Hollywood decided instead to cash in rather than fight it out.

"Hollywood is very leery of technology, but when they see a business opportunity -- they jump on it," said eV publisher Michael Evans.

Over the past two years, almost all the big studios have developed online arms. Producers and directors have joined the boards of dot-com start-ups and scores of executives have been lured away. According to eV, Disney last year lost more than 50 Internet executives.

Marc Graser, writing in the first edition of eV, said Hollywood had already taken over the reins of entertainment on the Internet.

"For a business that traditionally waits to see what innovators create before swooping in with its big bucks, Hollywood has infiltrated the dot.com biz from the inside, recreating a familiar circle of friends, culture and business practices," wrote Graser.

It has not always been a success story. Only two weeks ago Pop.com and Shockwave.com -- both with big celebrity backers -- laid off staff ad took a hard look at their business plans, joining online multimedia company Scour, which in June laid off more than half of its employees.

"I think the future certainly exists out there, but we are all waiting to find out what it's going to be," said Douglas Trueblood, Hollywood Reporter's marketing director.

"It's a little volatile out there. But it is there and it has an influence on Hollywood and that's what we are talking about," said Trueblood.

Author [Charles] Higham reports the happy news that two of his other books have recently sewn up option rights. He says Brendan Fraser has bought the rights to his sibling-rivals book, Sisters: The Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine

To be honest, I went mainly to catch a glimpse of Brendan Fraser, the hunky star who made "George of the Jungle" one of the few kids movies I actually enjoyed.

I guess I was hoping he'd be all buffed up, in the loin-cloth attire that made watching the movie as much fun for moms as it was for kids.

Instead, the young actor turned up at last week's movie screening in jeans and a T-shirt...looking very much like the teenagers he's come to meet.

But if his outfit disappointed me, his message didn't.

Fraser hosted a history class from Hamilton High in the plush Beverly Hills screening room of Creative Artists Agency to view and discuss his 1992 movie "School Ties."

The movie, set in 1952, is about a Jewish kid from a blue-collar neighborhood who gets recruited for his football prowess by an elite New England boarding school.

He's advised by the headmaster to keep silent about his Jewish heritage, lest he upset his classmates and 100 years of school tradition. So he hides his Star of David necklace and sets out to find his way among these kids from society's upper-crust.

And for a while, he succeeds--becomes a football star, popular, smart--until he takes up with the girlfriend of a teammate, who then inadvertently learns he is Jewish and spreads the news among their friends.

The movie was only moderately successful at its initial release. But it has taken on a new life in circulation among area high schools, where it is used in ethics, history and human development classes to foster discussion of sensitive issues such as prejudice and diversity.

Fraser plays the hero in the film with dignity and emotion, anger layered upon hurt as his facade dissolves and his former friends turn on him--openly taunting him with vile stereotypes, hanging a hand-pained swastika above his bed, trying to pin a cheating scandal on him to save their own necks.

"It's good as a teaching tool, because you can generalize it to all kind of differences," says Louise Macatee, director of counseling at Campbell Hall private school in North Hollywood, which used the film in its human development classes.

"What the film does is point out how we make assumptions [about people] based on the group they belong to," she says. "When I ask my students if they're [prejudiced], they say no. I ask is they've ever encountered prejudice and most of them say no.

"But then you start talking about all the ways we stereotype people--whether it's because they're black or Mexican or Jewish...or Teenagers--and they see that this does apply to them. That stereotypes can hold everybody back."

There is no blueblood crowd at Hamilton High, and the 30 10th-graders at last week's "School Ties" screening seemed to struggle a bit with the notion that religion could be such a divisive force.

Until Fraser stood up and, as the kids say, made it real:

"How many of you have ever tried to fit in?" he asked. He was met with silence at first, then a few hands tentatively inched up.

"How many of you have ever had to give up some part of yourself, hide something to try to fit in?" They glanced around at each other--an auditorium full of black and brown kids...and one lone Jewish youth, wearing a yarmulke, slouched deep in his seat.

It is not, Fraser told them, just about stereotypes and prejudice. It is also about self-identity, the decisions each of us make about who we are and what we value.

"The deal is pretty simple," Fraser told them. "There are concessions people make for acceptance in life. And it's up to you to know who you are and what's important to you and how much you are willing to give up, to deny, just to fit in."

And I could see the message settle across the crowd of kids, with their gold earrings and FUBU shirts and baggy jeans, kids growing up not in the stifling claustrophobia of the 1950's New England but in an era just as imposing for urban youth--an era that asks them to be cool rather than smart; be down for the homies rather than rise up for themselves.

Whatever their differences, they share a culture that unites them across racial and ethnic lines, an urban youth culture that dictates how they dress, how they talk, what music they like...and values street savvy more than book smarts, quick money rather than straight A's.

"You don't hear a lot of talk about college with my friends," a student named Rita told me. "Sometimes I just have to go off on my own because I need to study. Because that's what it takes to get into college."

These teenagers are luckier than most, because they are among 450 students in the College Pathways Project sponsored by the Fulfillment Fund, one of Los Angeles' oldest and most successful efforts to motivate inner-city youth.

For 23 years, the nonprofit group has targeted promising inner-city students whose graduation prospects are dim because of poverty, gang pressures or family problems. Beginning in seventh grade, the students are paired with mentors, provided college and career counseling and promised a $5,000 college scholarship if they graduate from high school.

Fraser was connected with the group through a friend who brought him to Hamilton high last fall. Both students and the movie star has such a good time that Fraser asked to meet with them again to watch "School Ties."

So last week, for three hours, he mingled with students like they were old friends, posing for pictures, chatting about his movies and their homework, sitting shoulder to shoulder among them as the movie played.

And when it was over, they left feeling not like inner-city kids on a fast track to nowhere, but like college-bound kids, tied not just to their culture, but to their dreams.

By: Bill Sammon, Chief White House correspondent for The Washington Times.

Having been excoriated for last year's overcrowded Christmas party for the media, the White House retreated to its slimmed-down invitation list this year, with even President Clinton skipping the festivities.

The president was feeling under the weather, so he left the grip-and-grin duties to his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. While most holiday party-goers would be thrilled to meet the first lady, this scrum of scandal-weary reporters and photographers is so inured to political celebrity that they barely batted an eye during the rapid-fire trip through a receiving line that felt more like an assembly line.

Neither were the journalists impressed with each other. Having spent all year working cheek-to- jowl in the White House press room, the media elites went out of their way to be nonchalant whenever a particularly high-paid correspondent or network anchor bellied up to the hors d'oeuvre table.

They were, however, wowed by one unexpected guest at the party-film actor Brendan Fraser of "The Mummy" fame. The normally too-cool-to-be-impressed journalists gaped openly at the movie star and unabashedly approached him to gush about films ranging from "Airheads" to "George of the Jungle."

Fraser handled the attention with aplomb, chatting about his work and posing graciously for pictures with journalists' spouses.

"This is my first visit to the White House," the doe-eyed actor told White House Weekly. "In fact, it's my first visit to D.C."

Fraser, who grew up in Seattle, Canada and the Netherlands, said he now calls Los Angeles home. Earlier this year, a West Coast friend invited him to a political function that featured an appearance by the president, who spoke about the need for increased gun controls.

"It's a subject I feel very passionately about," Fraser said as his wife mingled with journalists.

The only other guest at the party who came even close to holding such sway over the attendees was legendary blues guitarist B.B. King, who ducked out before some of the reporters had a chance to ooh and aah over him.

Aside from these diversions from the entertainment industry, the attendees were left to spend the evening chatting among themselves. There was no formal program and no one gave a speech or even a toast.

This year's party was much more civilized. Even if you couldn't get any quality time with the first lady, there was always Brendan Fraser.

Levine eyes move to CAA

Daily Variety
October 14, 1999
By: Chris Petrikin

Senior talent agent Peter Levine --- who reps such thesps as Brendan Fraser and Matthew Perry --- is ankling the William Morris Agency and is expected to join Creative Artists Agency later this month.

Neither Levine nor CAA would confirm his change of employment, but it's understood that reps for Levine are ironing out an early release from his WMA contract, which is to expire in March.

WMA declined comment, but one insider said Levine's departure was made by mutual consent.

Although CAA would not discuss Levine's hiring, the move was given more credibility with confirmation Wednesday that the agency had signed Levine client and "Friends" star Perry.

In addition to Perry, during his six years at WMA, Levine nurtured the careers of Fraser, Maura Tierney, Jordana Brewster, Carla Gugino and Peter Facinelli --- all of whom are expected to join him at CAA.

At WMA, Levine also looked after the careers of Gillian Anderson, Natassja Kinski and Patrick Swayze. It's unclear which, if any, of these clients will be joining him.

Assuming his deal is worked out, Levine will become the latest WMA rep to move to CAA. Most recently, former WMA talent department co-head, Michael Gruber, joined CAA in August, following senior directors rep Josh Donen, who joined the firm a year before. Craig Gering, an agent in WMA's New York office, also recently announced his departure from the firm and is expected to join CAA in November.

Creative Artists Agency, Inc.
9830 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA, 90212

Creative Artists Agency (CAA) knows that all that glitters is not gold -- but probably needs an agent. Founded in 1975 by Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, and Bill Haber, the firm is one of Hollywood's top talent agencies (with William Morris, International Creative Management, and United Talent Agency). CAA represents some TV stars, but it is best known for an A-list feature film clientele, including such "glitterati" as Tom Hanks, Madonna, Ron Howard, and Jerry Bruckheimer. In 1995 a slew of stars -- including Kevin Costner and Alec Baldwin -- left CAA when Michael Ovitz resigned to become president of Walt Disney. Control of the firm then passed to the "Young Turks," a nine-man group of younger CAA agents.

Top Competitors:
William Morris Agency, Inc.
International Creative Management, Inc.

Key Numbers:

Fiscal Year-End
December
1998 Sales ($Mil.) : 200.0
1-Yr. Sales Growth: 0.0%

Employees: 400

Key People:

CEO: Rick Nicita
CFO: Robert Goldman
HR: Arlene Newman