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Dirty Pop

Plus, more trouble for ''Big Brother,'' a new Beatles collaboration, and more

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Justin and Britney try for a harder image | britnjust_l

PRURIENT PAIR Spears and Timberlake plan to record a randy duet

Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake: Lisa O'Connor/Zuma Press

By Gary Susman

CUTTING REMARKS''Edgy'' isn't the word that comes to mind when you talk about 'N Sync or Britney Spears, but Justin Timberlake tells Rolling Stone magazine that he envisions an eventual duet with his girlfriend that would surprise listeners with its hard edge. ''I want it to be somethin' new that they haven't heard us do, that they didn't think we could do,'' he says. It won't happen anytime soon, though. ''I feel like we still have artistic growth to show, and maybe after that, then I'll think about it. It definitely would be a spectacle. It would be huge.''

Last week, Spears also expressed a desire to be ''shocking and edgier,'' which is why she's covering Joan Jett's 20-year-old hit ''I Love Rock 'n' Roll'' on her next CD and performing the 1960s Sonny and Cher hit ''The Beat Goes On'' with Cher in Las Vegas this fall. Guess you have to take baby steps before you can walk.

TUBE TALK TV critics grilled CBS Television president Leslie Moonves over the network's reality series yesterday, particularly ''Big Brother,'' where CBS' less-than-thorough background check allowed casting of a contestant with a history of arrests whom producers ultimately had to eject after he held a knife to another contestant's throat. Moonves called the incident ''unfortunate'' but said that producers didn't intervene sooner because ''we did not feel that woman's life was in danger or her health was in jeopardy.'' Nonetheless, he called the ratings-challenged ''Big Brother'' a successful experiment that beats the alternative. ''I'm tired of putting 'Diagnosis Murder' reruns on in the summer.''

Moonves announced that reality competition ''The Amazing Race,'' from ''Pearl Harbor'' producer Jerry Bruckheimer, will debut September 5, and that the Africa-set season of ''Survivor'' begins October 11. He also restated hopes that CBS could produce a celebrity edition of ''Survivor,'' in which he said Ray Romano and other stars had expressed interest. ''But with a celebrity it would be like 10 days...10 days without their assistants, no room service, no cell phones. And the idea would be every two days, vote someone off. But the truth of the matter is that, for a lot of celebrities, that's the thing that scares the heck out of them. To be rejected in front of 20 million people would be devastating for an actor.''

Meanwhile, website The Smoking Gun broke the news yesterday of another ''Big Brother'' contestant's criminal record. Rapping bar owner Michael Carri pleaded no contest to several counts of trespassing when he and two others were caught sneaking onto the Warner Bros. lot in 1996 in an elaborate plan to surreptitiously photograph the set and stars of ''Batman and Robin.'' The studio subsequently sued him for copyright infringement. A CBS spokesman said the network was aware of Carri's record but decided the nonviolent misdemeanor arrest wasn't enough to disqualify him....

NBC's summer reality slate of shows like ''Fear Factor'' and ''Spy TV'' helped it win the ratings battle among 18- to 49-year-olds for the 14th straight week, according to Nielsen, but CBS won the week among viewers overall on the strength of Wednesday's movie ''Murder at 75 Birch'' and its news magazines ''60 Minutes II'' and ''48 Hours.'' CBS pulled an average of 8.4 million viewers, followed by ABC (7.4 million), NBC (7.3 million), Fox (5 million), UPN (2.8 million) and the WB (2.3 million). The week's top show was a new episode of ABC's ''Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,'' drawing 13.94 million viewers.

LUCKY NUMBERS The Beatles' hits compilation ''1'' has been such a worldwide success, why not a ''2''? That's one of the projects the Fab Three will be discussing later this year, Ringo Starr told ''Access Hollywood'' Tuesday. ''There's a couple of projects in the works. Nothing will be out until next year, and we're all going to meet up again in October and finalize what it will be,'' the drummer said. ''I mean, everybody wants the number twos.'' Starr also echoed his earlier statement supporting George Harrison's insistence that he's not losing his battle against cancer. ''I did see George three weeks ago and he was fine. If it had been bad, he would have told me. And all these years we've been around, you have to watch what's in the press.''

REEL DEALS Two weeks ago, the Navy posthumously exonerated Capt. Charles McVay, who was court-martialed after World War II for his role in the worst disaster in U.S. Naval history, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. He was captain of the heavy cruiser, which was sunk by a Japanese torpedo after dropping off the parts for the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all but 315 of the crew of 1,196 died, either from dehydration, drowning, or sharks. Because of the secrecy of its mission, the Navy didn't even realize the ship was missing, and it took five days to find and rescue the survivors. (''Jaws'' fans will recall Robert ''Quint'' Shaw's horrifying account of the disaster.) McVay committed suicide in 1968, but his crew and his family had been fighting for more than 50 years to clear his name.

Now, Mel Gibson may star as McVay in a filmed account called ''The Captain and the Shark,'' based on ''In Harm's Way,'' Doug Stanton's book about the event. Barry Levinson, who last saw combat on ''Good Morning, Vietnam,'' will direct....

Nicole Kidman denied reports from the producers of Lars von Trier's ''Dogville'' that they couldn't wait any longer for her to sign a contract and planned to replace her as star of the movie. ''We've had enough of the star system,'' producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. ''It may be commonplace in major movies that stars play the diva and don't bother to sign contracts, but we can't handle that, either psychologically or financially.'' But Kidman's publicist and agent both told Variety that she still intends to star in von Trier's low-budget film, a drama of a woman in an American small town, much like the Danish director's ''Dancer in the Dark.''...

The ''Star Trek'' movies have been on shore leave since 1998's ''Star Trek: Insurrection,'' but plans are underway to call the Enterprise crew back to duty. Production on the 10th film in the series has no start date, but the movie does have a director (Stuart Baird of ''U.S. Marshals'') and a screenwriter (''Gladiator'''s John Logan). So far, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner are back on board; no word from Paramount Pictures on the rest of the cast.

LEGAL BRIEFS Deer beware: Jason Priestley is back behind the wheel. He has successfully completed his DUI sentence for a 1999 incident in which he crashed his new Porsche into another car, a utility pole, and some trash cans, causing passenger Chad Cook to suffer a broken arm. At the time of the Hollywood Hills accident, he claimed he'd swerved to avoid a deer, but the blood-alcohol test told a different story. Priestley was fined $700, given three years probation, ordered into a three-month alcohol treatment program, and sentenced to five days in jail, which he served at a work-release facility that required him only to stay nights. Fittingly, Priestley's most recent gig was as a commentator on ABC's Indianapolis 500 broadcast....

John and Elaine Mellencamp may or may not have wanted a little pink house, but they certainly didn't want one covered in red ink. They're getting $98,000 back from the Indianapolis contractor who allegedly double-billed them for a home that was ultimately never built. Prosecutors say Timothy O. Eldredge has agreed to plea guilty to theft, in return for the dismissal of more serious charges, and face up to three years in prison for falsely billing the Mellencamps, who ultimately hired another contractor to build their $2.5 million home near Bloomington, Indiana.

GAME BOY The ''Final Fantasy'' characters may have gone from video game console to movie screens, but Jackie Chan is going in the opposite direction. Sony Pictures Consumer Products and Encore Software are developing games based on the ''Rush Hour 2'' star's kiddie cartoon series, ''Jackie Chan Adventures,'' for play on Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's upcoming Xbox. And hey, the virtual Chan will do all his own stunts.