NY Mirror

Comments (0) By Michael Musto Tuesday, Sep 17 2002

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Anna Nicole Smith's still reachable, though. In fact, the ditsy one's upcoming Showtime documentary, Dark Roots, will make her more accessible than ever. On it, an ex-partner of Anna's reveals talents even the E! folks haven't caught. "I saw her suck the bile out of [her late husband's] mouth three or four times," the guy says. "I saw Howard upchucking and Anna was taking it." The woman just can't stop eating!

In lighter news: Kristin Chenoweth, Marc Kudisch, and Julie Brown (of Strip Mall fame) will do a September 30 Village Theater presentation of a stage musical version of Earth Girls Are Easy, the '89 comedy flick Brown co-wrote and co-starred in. This prompted me to call Brown on my cell phone—in between looking myself up on Google—and force her to reminisce about the making of the goofball movie. "I was supposed to play the lead, Valerie," the comic-actress divulged. "Finally, the studio said, 'Now that there's a bigger budget, at this level you can't star in it!' " She was filled with rage at the new Valerie, Geena Davis, but got over it once she started loving her own part (and Davis too). New problems cropped up, though, with Jim Carrey, who naturally was playing an alien who lands in the San Fernando Valley. "He had this technique where he'd sing really loud and be outrageous to rev up before each take," remembered Brown, "which I found unbelievably annoying because I was trying to concentrate. But he was so sweet!"

photo: Cary Conover

Let's hear it for gender reparations!: Yolanda primed for her appearance at the Qwe're Musicfest

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I alerted Brown to a whole new landmine by telling her that her current co-stars, Chenoweth and Kudisch, are ex-lovers. "I hope they get along, since they agreed to do it!" she responded, nervously. Please, they're utter professionals—and so is Brown, who at last has a healthy sense of distance from her original Earth Girls experience. "When it started," she says, "I was like those kids on American Idol. I was like Kelly—and now I'm like Harvey Fierstein!"

Let's end there—you can't get much qwe'rer than that. No, wait, I can top that. Queens piled into View Bar last week to scream with laughter over Shirley Q. Liquor, a pudgy white guy from New Orleans who dons blackface and a caftan and tells baked-bean jokes. Feets don't fail me now, I thought, as I ran for my sanity. When did drag queens become so serious . . . ly deranged?

EXTRA ITEM: At Cowgirl Hall of Fame on Patsy Cline’s 70th birthday, Ellis Nassour feted Honky Tonk Angel, the upcoming musical based on his intimate bio of the late country diva. Shockingly enough, a biological woman provided the entertainment, and she didn’t look 70 at all. She was Honky Tonk’s star,Renée Lawless-Orsini, who—in between belting out tunes like “Crazy” and “Walking After Midnight”—brought Patsy up-to-date by telling me, “She wouldn’t have gone for Shania, but she would have loved Reba and maybe even Wynonna!” And most likely Renée.

musto@villagevoice.com