HEALTH WATCH It's hard to lecture if you can't breathe. Fortunately, Richard Dreyfuss successfully underwent a procedure to drain fluid from his right lung after suffering a respiratory infection. The ''Education of Max Bickford'' star was released from a Manhattan hospital Tuesday after a week-long stay. ''He's feeling good,'' his publicist told the Associated Press.
LEGAL BRIEFS BET has landed a one-on-one interview with R. Kelly, with the singer set to discuss openly the legal actions he's facing over allegations of statutory rape that have dogged him since the surfacing of a videotape a couple months ago that purportedly shows him having sex with a minor. With the widespread circulation of the tape and the lawsuit filed by another teen, Kelly has seen fan protests, lackluster sales of his latest album, and shunning by other artists. Kelly has called the tape a forgery but has otherwise kept largely silent until now. BET host Ed Gordon says, ''Mr. Kelly wanted to talk to us without restriction about the allegations.'' He'll do so tonight on ''BET Tonight With Ed Gordon,'' which airs at 11:30, well after the bedtimes of his accusers....
As highbrow entertainment, wrestling may earn an F, but the World Wrestling Federation has just upgraded itself to an E. That's right, the WWF is now the WWE. The E is for ''Entertainment,'' says Linda McMahon, CEO of the newly monickered World Wrestling Entertainment. ''WWE provides us with a global identity that is distinct and unencumbered.'' In other words, the change ends the organization's international legal battle with the World Wildlife Fund. The animal activists won an injunction in a London court in February to prevent the wrestlers from using the WWF initials, which the group trademarked in 1961, years before The Rock was even a pebble. The grapplers also had to vacate their Web domain; the new site is at WWE.com....
A Seattle autopsy has made it official: Layne Staley died of a drug overdose. The coroner's office says the 34-year-old Alice in Chains frontman self-administered the fatal speedball, a cocktail of heroin and cocaine, and died on April 5, two weeks before his decomposing body was found at his apartment, drug paraphernalia by his side....
A federal judge has dismissed a breach of contract lawsuit against DreamWorks over the marketing of the 2000 movie ''An Everlasting Piece.'' The modestly budgeted (only $14 million) comedy by A-list director Barry Levinson (''Rain Man''), was released in only 13 U.S. theaters and earned just $75,000. Producer Jerome O'Connor argued that the studio had quietly dumped the film because its subject matter -- a satirical look at The Troubles in Northern Ireland, viewed through the attempt by two barbers, one Catholic and one Protestant, to corner the toupee market -- proved potentially offensive to the British government at a time when DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg was about to receive an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. It's not clear what the terms of O'Connor's contract with the studio was, but the judge found no evidence that DreamWorks hadn't honored them. ''There wasn't even a scintilla of evidence of fraud,'' said the studio's attorney. ''DreamWorks was totally vindicated.'' O'Connor's attorney vowed to appeal, citing the studio's ''bad-faith activities.''
