Queer eye for
the Macedonian guy

Is “Alexander” too gay?

The opening date of the Oliver Stone epic about the Macedonian conqueror has been pushed back from Nov. 5 to Nov. 24, and an insider says one reason for the delay is that execs at the studio want to cut some of the film’s male-on-male love scenes.

“Alexander was almost certainly bisexual, and [director] Oliver Stone wanted to portray that," says the source. "So there are scenes between Colin [Farrell, who plays Alexander] and women, but there’s also some passionate scenes between Colin and Francisco Bosch.”

Bosch plays Bagoas, a Persian eunuch, who many historians believe was Alexander’s lover.

“Some of the suits at Warner Bros. think that the movie-going public just isn’t ready to see that," the insider reports. “There’s some pretty heated arguments going on over it.”

A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. tells The Scoop she knows nothing about any such controversy, and declined to look into it, explaining “we wouldn’t talk about anything involving the process of making a movie.”

Biting back
Anne Rice has heard from her readers.

The author of the Vampire Chronicles series emailed The Scoop to confirm our recent item and let us know that it was, in fact, she who posted her e-mail and home address on Amazon.com, inviting disgruntled readers to contact her directly.

“I’ve been flooded with responses,” Rice told us. “Something like 300...most of them positive, many from other writers, and a very few negative.”

Rice had posted a response to Amazon reviews, some of them scathing, of her latest novel, “Blood Canticle.”

“I have a great affection for the spirit of the Amazon site, and do hope that it will get better and better as a healthy forum for readers’ responses,” Rice wrote The Scoop. “It’s been an interesting experience. I never dreamed people would care so much.”

Notes from all over

Carlo Allegri / Getty Images

Barbra Streisand has auctioned off her teddy bear. The light brown stuffed animal was sold on eBay yesterday for $76, after 15 bids.   . . . Visiting Martha Stewart will be an ordeal, says a source who has spent some time at the Alderson, West Virginia federal prison where the homemaking tycoon will be serving her sentence. “It takes forever to get there because it’s very isolated, so I can’t imagine that her New York friends will be dropping by for too many chats,” says the source, who adds that the facility itself is “quite lovely. If it weren’t for all the guards, it would look sort of like a New England prep school for girls.”  . . . Bjork turned down an offer of an island from the government of her native Iceland because she doesn’t want to become a tourist attraction. “If you’re given an island they’ll have tourist boats circling around it pointing at you,” Bjork said, according to Australia’s MX. “I already get stalked down the street in Iceland and get tourists that walk up to me and poke me with their finger like they’ve just bought a trip to Disneyland and they met Donald Duck.”

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

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