August 16, 1999
Web posted at: 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT)

• NBC plans its own Y2K disaster
• La Salle sees green on 'ER'
• Not your starving Artist sale
• 'Dandridge' role recalls racism in Hollywood
• Van Damme says he's a new hunk

NEW YORK (CNN) -- We're 137 days away from the new year. Do you know where your wits are? Try to keep them about you. Because NBC would like you to scare you out of them with "Y2K," a thriller that imagines catastrophic results triggered by the endlessly debated Y2K computer bug. The film stars Ken Olin ("L.A. Doctors") as a techie who tries to save the United States from havoc spawned by computer failures.

The picture is the only broadcast project announced so far as an attempt to capitalize on -- some might venture to say exploit -- concerns about the programming glitch in which machines might misinterpret the last two digits of the year 2000 as those of 1900. Some observers predict chaos. Others say we're heading for an anticlimax.

We do have sketchy information about a theatrical release, also titled "Y2K," directed by Richard Pepin to star Louis Gossett Jr. and Malcolm McDowell. But at this point, more is known about NBC's rush to cash in before the ATMs go kerflooey at midnight.

In NBC's "Y2K," the bug causes a power outage on the East Coast, those eagerly anticipated ATM failures, airplanes with malfunctioning instruments and a nuclear power plant glitching its way toward meltdown.

This isn't the first time NBC has flirted with disaster. Earlier this year, it released the miniseries "Atomic Train," in which only Rob Lowe could save Denver from a runaway train loaded with nuclear weapons. The network is sticking with director Dick Lowry for "Y2K." Lowe fell off the train.

Joining Olin in this cast are Joe Morton ("Miss Evers' Boys," 1997); Ronny Cox (the current "Deep Blue Sea"); and Lauren Tom ("The Joy Luck Club," 1993).

Forget the popcorn. You view this one with canned goods.

La Salle

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "ER" Dr. Peter Benton has agreed to stay in scrubs for three more seasons. Actor Eriq La Salle signed a deal with Warner Bros. TV for $27 million in the next three years.

That figure is $8 million shy of the salary that co-star Anthony Edwards makes. He's considered prime time's top-salaried star. Still, La Salle's deal isn't too shabby. The agreement makes him one of the best-paid series actors in TV history. No comment from WB, a sister Time Warner company to CNN Interactive.

While Edwards and Noah Wyle re-upped last year to gigantic raises, La Salle was thought to be leaving the show along with Julianna Margulies and Gloria Reuben this coming season.

NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa recently singled out La Salle's African-American character on "ER" as a positive role model for minority viewers, one he says the network has been trying to foster.

The Artist

CHANHASSEN, Minnesota (CNN) -- Call it a garage sale fit for a prince.

The Artist formerly known as You Know Who sold CDs, tapes, T-shirts, posters and other paraphernalia at his Paisley Park Studios in suburban Minneapolis over the weekend. More than 300 fans turned up, including Kii Arens of St. Paul. He said he was bummed out that the musician was nowhere to be seen.

"I was hoping to come and see Prince sitting on a lawn chair, marking down prices," said Arens, who settled for some video props.

Arens, a member of the local band Flipp, and his friend Dave Wolf, of the local Vibro Champs, spent $300 altogether. They took home neon tubes, guitar strings and electric arrows used in the "Sign o' the Times" video.

"I got a really sweet barber chair for 50 bucks," Wolf said.

Since there was only one cashier, buyers had to stand in line for up to two hours -- a royal pain just to get leftovers.

Berry

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Halle Berry is comparing her Hollywood experience to that of Dorothy Dandridge, the black film star of the 1950s and '60s whose nomination for a best-actress Academy Award couldn't eclipse the discrimination she faced. Berry plays Dandridge in an upcoming HBO film, "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge."

"Dorothy wanted to be treated like her white counterparts," Berry tells Sunday's Daily News, "and she suffered for it."

Dandridge earned an Oscar nomination for the 1954 film "Carmen Jones," an updating of the Georges Bizet opera with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The film was directed by Otto Preminger and co-starred Harry Belafonte and Pearl Bailey. Dandridge died in 1965 of a prescription drug overdose. She was 42.

Berry says doing the film biography has changed her perspective on her own struggles as a black actress in Hollywood. "I used to believe conditions (were) hard for black artists," she said. "But if you lived Dorothy Dandridge's life for a while, you'd realize how far we've come. Dorothy didn't know that Halle would be sitting here in 1999 seeing a bright day dawning. I may not see the end of the tunnel, but someone else may."

Still, Berry says race remains a factor in Hollywood decision-making. She can't compare, she says, "the choices I make in my career to the choices Meg Ryan has."

Van Damme

NEW YORK (CNN) -- After five marriages and his confessions about cocaine use, Jean-Claude Van Damme says he's going for a new image.

"I have to reinvent the brand name, because I'm a brand name," Van Damme tells Sunday's Daily News. "Arnold (Schwarzenegger) knew how to do that."

Van Damme is back on the silver screen with "Universal Soldier: The Return," a sequel. He says he feels "indestructible" after remarrying Gladys Portugues, making her wife No. 3 and No. 5, and that the drug problem he went public with last year is "gone -- oh yeah, gone.

"I'll be successful no matter what," he says, "because you cannot stop a guy who believes in himself. If I don't make it in a movie, I can be the new guy on TV. I can do, like, a romantic James Bond, French-accented comedy, like 'To Catch a Thief.' And people will say, 'Hey, cool guy!'"

Or, if they're his countrymen, "Hey, égoïste!"

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.