
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 4, 1994                   TAG: 9401040183
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

PEOPLE COLUMN

Will Smith had no problem playing a gay man in "Six Degrees of Separation." But the rap star drew the line at kissing co-star Anthony Michael Hall.

Smith forced director Fred Schepisi to use a stand-in during the kissing scene in the film, about a gay black man in New York who cons several rich white couples into believing he's the son of Sidney Poitier.

"I was worried about how it could affect the rap career, the television show," said Smith, who makes records as half of D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and is a sitcom star on NBC's "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

\ Despite Howard Stern's urgings - and the temptation of $15,000 in cash from the shock jock - John Wayne Bobbitt kept his pants on. And a grateful nation breathed a sigh of relief.

"Show the world your scar and everything," the "Private Parts" author begged Bobbitt, he of severed-and-reattached penis infamy. Bobbitt, knifed by his aggrieved wife, Lorena, later told the New York Daily News: "I couldn't get up there. I just couldn't do it."

The occasion was Stern's pay-per-view New Year's Eve special, "The Miss Howard Stern Beauty Pageant," a two-hour, $39.95 event.

by CNB