Call it Leogate. A minor story about Leonardo DiCaprio doing a quickie interview with President Clinton in the White House on Friday is refusing to go away until it mushrooms into a full-blown Beltway controversy.
At issue: What did ABC News know and when did it know it?
As reported earlier, ABC reporter types got bent out of shape upon hearing that Leo bagged Clinton for a network special on Earth Day. (They like to think that chatting up the leader of the free world is their job.) Hand-wringing ABC News honchos immediately turned on Leo, saying the “Titanic” hottie wasn’t a reporter, he wasn’t at the White House to be a reporter, and his Clinton interview maybe even wasn’t going to make it to the air. The network maintains that Leo was dispatched to the White House to walk — not talk — with Clinton. It was the president, they say, that turned the get-together into an interview, inviting Leo to conduct an impromptu chat.
But the White House says that ain’t so. “They [the ABC News crew] set up their equipment for four hours in one place,” a White House rep tells The Associated Press. “Does that sound like they were surprised?”
No word on where Leo stands on all this.
Dick Clark BLEEPIN’ GREAT NEWS! Dick Clark’s “Bloopers” specials — the stuff of great bad 1980s TV — will be the stuff of great bad millennial TV. Clark’s inked a deal with ABC to provide at least seven — and as many as 21 — new “Bloopers” specials to the network through 2003.
IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM: Cable’s Sci-Fi Channel has plunked down $12 million for the privilege of airing “Babylon 5” (1994-98) reruns starting in September.
CRAZY STUFF: Responding to a boycott call from an advocacy group for the mentally ill, a pharmaceuticals maker has pulled its ads from ABC’s “Wonderland,” the new Thursday night drama about a psychiatric hospital.
