Jackson wanted to star
as man-turned-car

Here’s a film that could have knocked “Gigli” off the worst-flicks lists: Michael Jackson wanted to star in a movie about a man who turns into a car that’s driven around by a little boy.

The singer — who’s facing child molestation charges — was trying to get a film called “Hot Rod” made, according to “Jersey Girl” director Kevin Smith.

“It was about Michael Jackson morphing into a car,” “Smith tells Playboy magazine in an issue just hitting newsstands. “Jackson was behind it, and he wanted it to be this story about a guy, played by himself, who hangs out with a little boy, and this little boy gets into the car and drives him around.”

Smith says it was the weirdest script he ever was asked to direct, but adds, “In retrospect, I’d love to make that movie. But it wouldn’t be anything like the version Jackson or the studio wanted to see.”

Smith also told the mag that while he was directing Jennifer Lopez in “Jersey Girl,” she seemed to have premonitions that her relationship with Ben Affleck was doomed. “Toward the end of the production, I was behind the monitor with Jennifer, watching Ben, and she said, ‘He just doesn’t understand.  It’ll never be this good again.’” Smith said. “And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’  She was like, ‘I mean everything is perfect.  We’re falling in love, we’re having fun, he’s working with you, and he thinks we can do this with every movie.  But we can’t.  It’ll never be like this again.”

Red hots and the Red Sox
Will Fenway Park go veggie?

Some Boston Red Sox fans have been up in arms that opening day falls on Good Friday, and Catholics attending the game will be forbidden from eating hot dogs. Last week, the Boston Archdiocese denied fans’ requests for a dispensation from the church, which said wanting a dog with their beers was too weak an excuse to ignore the no-meat rule. So People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wrote to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry with a solution.

“The curse of the Bambino is bad enough, but it sounds to us like you’re courting a curse of Biblical proportions,” PETA’s Vegetarian Campaign Coordinator, Dan Shannon, wrote in a letter to Henry. “However, we have a way that you can make amends — offer veggie dogs.  . . . Show the Church that you are concerned about this day when all Catholics and most Christians abstain from meat by taking all meat off Fenway’s menu completely, and ordering truck loads of veggie dogs and burgers to satisfy the Sox (and Christian) faithful.”

The Red Sox didn’t return calls for comment.

Notes from all over

Brian Snyder / Reuters file

Don’t expect Tom Cruise to become a fan of Dan Kelly. The Aussie musician is releasing a new CD today, and the buzz is that songs on it skewer everyone from Russell Crowe to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. "Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males Sing the Tabloid Blues" includes tunes that go after a variety of celebs, including one that, according to the Sunday Herald of Melbourne, is “an anti-Scientology ballad” about the breakup of Cruise and Kidman.  . . . Melanie Griffith’s lips are looking even plumper than usual, reports a source.  . . . Madonna and Guy Ritchie recently attended a Purim party thrown in L.A. by Kabbalah. “It was a costume party and she came as a French courtier and he was dressed as a Viking,” says an insider. “They’re both totally normal.”

Jeannette Walls Delivers The Scoop Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC.com

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