12,776 Would Have Been More Impressive

Peter Biskind, author of the indispensably lurid Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How The Sex, Drugs and Rock And Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, is now claiming in a new book that Warren Beatty has had sex with "12,775 women, give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on." Personal note to Biskind: write a book that does include those figures, and then we can talk.

You'd think that after having dredged up more dirt than the feet of Peanuts' Pig Pen, the author would have found celebrities a little more reluctant to spill juicy gossip. But you would be wrong.

Jane Fonda: " 'I thought he was gay.' That's Fonda, recalling the quick, heat-free kiss Beatty gave her during his audition for a film called Parrish in 1960. When the director urged him, 'Grab her, boy, grab her. Don't be shy,' he did just that."

An intern on the set of The Parallax View: "Some of the girls outside Beatty's trailer who got past the door were not particularly attractive, especially since Julie Christie, who was doing Uncle Vanya on Broadway, was flying in to spend every weekend with him. Some were chubby, some had hints of mustaches on their upper lips. Some had the errant pimple or mole or other blemishes."

Director James Toback, on Beatty meeting Annette Bening: "He let out this growl, a primordial yelp of love, lust, desire, enthusiasm, a sound that one would expect a starving man to make at the prospect of finally being able to devour a huge and delicious meal."

If, of course, by "devour a huge and delicious meal," you mean, "marry and have four children," that is. Damn you Annette: you killed the tally.