BC-People, 1st Ld-Writethru,1888

People in the News

Eds: Updates with items on Quentin Tarantino, Vince Neil, Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett. Contains items on Ingmar Bergman, James Brown and Tomi Rae Brown, Aron Ralston, Prince Harry and Donald Trump. Version of Ralston item moved on the Western regional wire.

AP Photo NY107, NY110, CODR101, NY109, NY108, CJP102, NYET196, NYET197, MDFRE101

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) – “Kill Bill – Vol. 2” isn’t even in theaters yet, but Quentin Tarantino says he’s already planning volume three.

“Oh yeah, initially I was thinking this would be my ‘Dollars’ trilogy. I was going to do a new one every 10 years. But I need at least 15 years before I do this again,” the director tells Entertainment Weekly magazine in its April 16 issue.

Tarantino says Uma Thurman, who plays a bride out for revenge in the series that began last year, won’t be the star.

“The star will be Vernita Green’s (Vivica A. Fox’s) daughter, Nikki (Ambrosia Kelley). I’ve already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) will get all of Bill’s money. She’ll raise Nikki, who’ll take on The Bride,” he says. “Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers. I might even shoot a couple of scenes for it now so I can get the actresses while they’re this age.”

“Kill Bill – Vol. 2,” co-starring David Carradine, Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, opens April 16.

—

DAYTON, Nev. (AP) – A day after a misdemeanor battery case against him was dismissed in California, former Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil pleaded no contest to battery on a Moonlite BunnyRanch prostitute.

The 43-year-old singer declined to comment when the judge asked whether he had anything to say.

“We wanted to resolve this as quickly as possible,” attorney Scott Freeman said after the brief hearing Thursday in Dayton Justice Court, 12 miles east of Carson City. “Mr. Neil personally appeared out of respect for this court and this county. Now he’s moving on.”

Prostitute Andrea “TrixXxie Blue” Terry said Neil choked her and threw her against a wall when the two met at the Mound House brothel where Neil stopped July 10, 2003, after a concert in Reno.

BunnyRanch owner Dennis Hof said he was sorry to hear that Neil felt pressured to enter a plea.

“It’s sad to see Vince do that because in my mind this girl’s an opportunist and I know that Vince did nothing wrong,” Hof told the Nevada Appeal newspaper. “I assume he did this to avoid having a lengthy trial. I will support him to the end, because I know he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Judge Bill Rogers suspended a 30-day jail sentence and ordered Neil to complete anger management correspondence courses within 60 days. He was fined $1,000 plus court fees of $132, and returned to his Las Vegas home afterward.

A misdemeanor battery case in Beverly Hills, Calif., against Neil was dismissed Wednesday after he completed more than 100 hours of community service, prosecutors said.

—

TYLER, Texas (AP) – At 70, Willie Nelson has a new album, but one that doesn’t feature his signature crooning.

The country-western icon’s “Nacogdoches” is a limited-release disc of jazz instrumentals recorded five years ago at Encore Studios in the historic deep East Texas town that bears the album’s name.

Nelson is scheduled to arrive Saturday in Rusk County for his pre-Easter concert at the Rose Amphitheatre.

The musician’s 71st birthday, April 29, also is the scheduled street date of “Nacogdoches.”

“This is a labor of love that a label probably wouldn’t be willing to release,” Nelson told the Tyler Morning Telegraph in a telephone interview for Friday’s editions.

The disc will be available exclusively through the Web site www.willienelson.com and at Texas Roadhouse restaurants, a chain sponsoring Nelson’s current tour as part of their longtime partnership.

The “Nacogdoches” idea started with a telephone call from mandolin player Paul Buskirk, one of Nelson’s earliest mentors and collaborators.

“I was coming in off a tour and Buskirk called me and told me some bad news he’d had and he said he just “felt like picking,”‘ recalled Nelson. “I went to go back to Nacogdoches from Austin, and Buskirk had put together a bunch of great musicians. We just sat down and started playing.”

He was joined by Buskirk on mandolin, Gary Weldon on harmonica and flugelhorn, Paul Schmidt on piano, Mac Nase on bass and Mac Lefarve at the drums.

—

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) – Paradise isn’t lost but the cheeseburgers are gone.

Lawyers for singer Jimmy Buffett gave a tiny roadside grill called Cheeseburgers ‘n Paradise a choice: Change the name or face a trademark-violation lawsuit.

Owner Frenis Hoffman renamed the place Beef ‘n Buns ‘n Paradise this week, at least the second restaurant in two months to change its moniker under pressure from Buffett’s lawyers.

“I’m feeling like a guppy in a tankful of sharks,” Hoffman told The Frederick News-Post for a story published Thursday.

Lawyers for the famously laid-back singer accused the Hoffmans of using the name to ride the coattails of Buffett’s 1978 hit, “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” Hoffman said.

“I don’t even care for his music,” Hoffman said. “I like his lifestyle but not his music.”

Buffett’s representatives in Los Angeles didn’t immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

Hoffman and his wife, Faye, opened their sandwich shop 10 years ago. Buffett launched his own chain of Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurants in August 2002.

—

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – In a rare interview on Swedish television, reclusive director Ingmar Bergman said he hates to watch his own movies.

“I don’t watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry … and miserable. I think it’s awful,” Bergman said in the one-hour documentary that aired Thursday on public service network SVT.

Bergman’s films include “Smiles of a Summer Night,” “Wild Strawberries,” “Cries and Whispers” and “Fanny and Alexander.”

Interviewed at his home on Faaroe, a desolate island 100 miles southeast of Stockholm, the 85-year-old director described painful memories from his childhood and his fear of death, but also laughed when recalling receiving the French Legion of Honor in 1985.

“When we came out from the Elysee palace there was a gigantic limousine waiting for us and four police on motorcycles,” Bergman said. “It is probably one of the few times I have experienced my fame. I thought it was so fantastic that I laughed to the point of shouting. I laughed so that I fell over on the floor of this big car.”

Although there are several comedies among his more than 50 films, Bergman is mostly known for his gloomy analyses of the human psyche.

“I was terribly scared of death,” Bergman said of his state of mind when making “The Seventh Seal.”

The film contains one of cinema’s most famous scenes – a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of death. Bergman said he drew inspiration for the scene from a wall painting in a Swedish church.

—

AIKEN, S.C. (AP) – James Brown and his wife will likely have a second wedding if she’s able to annul her previous marriage, his lawyer said.

Tomi Rae Brown has said she was asked to leave Brown’s tour of Australia because of claims she was still married to Javed Ahmed of Pakistan when she wed the Godfather of Soul.

She says the marriage lasted three days and was “done under the pretense of a man trying to stay in the country.” She filed a formal petition for annulment in December and has a hearing later this month.

Brown, 70, filed for an annulment from Tomi Rae, his wife of three years, after he was charged with criminal domestic violence in January. He was arrested at the couple’s Beech Island home.

“The hope is once she gets the annulment from Mr. Ahmed finalized, we will be able to do the annulment in Aiken County very swiftly, then it’s my impression the parties would be able to enter into a marriage without these entanglements,” Jim Huff, Brown’s lawyer, said Wednesday.

—

DENVER (AP) – A year after he had to cut off his arm to save his life, adventurer Aron Ralston told a rapt group of children he owed his survival to God.

“You guys know what a miracle is, right? I think what happened to me was a miracle,” Ralston said Wednesday at Warren Village, a nonprofit organization that helps single parents with housing and child care.

Ralston was hiking alone in a canyon in southeastern Utah on April 26, 2003, when his right arm became pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. After other failed attempts, he freed himself on the fifth day by snapping his bones and using a knife to cut through his arm.

He applied a tourniquet and clambered out of the canyon. After a six-mile hike, he found tourists, who flagged down a helicopter.

Ralston believes God provided the idea to cut off his arm.

“In the end, that idea came from someplace,” he told the children.

Now fitted with a prosthetic arm, Ralston has learned to play the piano one-handed, climbed two more 14,000-foot Colorado mountains alone and returned to skiing and mountain biking.

He plans to run in a 100-mile race in August that begins and ends in Leadville, elevation 10,400 feet.

Ralston’s book, tentatively titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” is due out in September.

—

MASERU, Lesotho (AP) – Britain’s Prince Harry has wrapped up his two-month stay in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho, part of his year off from schooling.

Prince Charles’ younger son was to travel next to an undisclosed location before returning to Britain, said Mark Watchorn, Britain’s deputy high commissioner to Lesotho.

Since arriving Feb. 13, the 19-year-old prince and his traveling companion, George Hill, had dug trenches, helped build a bridge and put down the foundation of a health clinic, and visited AIDS patients with a local doctor.

Harry, who’s taking time off between his education at Eton and his enrollment at Sandhurst military academy, spent part of last year working on a ranch in Australia.

—

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – Donald Trump has put his name on a credit card – in block letters across the top.

Plans for the platinum Trump Rewards Visa credit card were in the works before Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” scored big with viewers, Bank One Corp. spokeswoman Jessica Iben said.

“We see Trump as a really strong and very versatile brand. The brand name carries a very significant reputation with it,” she said Wednesday.

Customers who use it for purchases at Trump’s three Atlantic City casinos earn two points for every dollar spent, and one point for every dollar spent on everyday items elsewhere.

For every 2,500 points they receive, cardholders get a $25 gift certificate redeemable for nongambling purchases at the casinos, such as hotel stays, gifts or meals.

Credit cards can’t be used to buy chips directly, although they can be used to obtain cash advances to do so. In that case, only one point would be earned.

AP-ES-04-09-04 1332EDT

Copy the Story Link