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Steve Nash

Monday was a night full of surprise guests. Steve Nash, point guard for the Phoenix Suns, turned up with his wife, Alejandra, at a fundraising dinner for the new Ghetto Film School in the Bronx. The party, held at the Time Warner Center, was one of many this year to help get the high school off the ground come September. Nash, who’s 35, is smartly already looking to a future beyond basketball. He’s started a production company in Phoenix, and is making a documentary about Terry Fox for ESPN…Anderson Cooper also put in appearance ‘ he’s on the board of the Ghetto School, which is led by Joe Hall. Also on the board and very excited about the school: IFC Channel and Sundance Channel chief Evan Shapiro…

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Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend

Miramax Films gave a really nice premiere last night for Stephen Frears’s sexy new film, “Cheri.”

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After the premiere screening at the Directors Guild, the studio took over the Hudson Hotel and tossed a lovely get-together. Almost everyone came ‘ Frears plus cast members Kathy Bates and Rupert Friend. But star Michelle Pfeiffer must have decided it wasn’t for her. She came to the screening, took a bow at the start, then skipped out and was never seen again. Maybe she doesn’t like finger food.

The premiere did draw an eclectic crowd including Jean Reno, Dana Delany (on shore leave from “Desperate Housewives”), Bob and Lynne Balaban, and Donald Trump with wife Melania. Frears introduced the film, based on a novel by French legend Colette. As usual the director of “The Grifters” and “The Queen” ‘ among others ‘ has made a beautifully crafted, compelling piece of cinema. It’s almost like a sequel to his “Dangerous Liaisons,” except, as he pointed out to me, it’s not. It’s just that Pfeiffer is the star again, Christopher Hampton translated and adapted the story.

“The two have almost nothing to do with each other,” he told me. “When we made that movie, we were children.” It was 20 years ago, believe it or not. “This one was hard. It’s a chamber piece. And maintaining the tone was the biggest problem.”

Well, he did it. “Cheri” is the nickname of Friend’s foppish young man who sleeps around Paris in the early 1900s until he falls for the older Pfeiffer. She’ s a retired courtesan with a lot of money. Cheri’s own mother is a retired whore with money, played to perfection by Kathy Bates. The affair unfolds until, well, it doesn’t.

“Cheri” is one of those rare films that builds interest as it develops. If only Pfeiffer had come to the party, we would have told her that. Ah well. At least we got to talk to Kathy Bates. And the lambchops were terrific!

P.S. Outside the DGA Theatre on West 57th St. a’ well spoken young woman stopped Dana Delany. She said, “I’m from Germany, but I learned all my English from ‘China Beach’ and ‘The Cosby Show.’ My mother and I used to watch ‘China Beach’ all the time and studied how you spoke.”

Delany was a little concerned since her character cursed a lot and was a borderline alcoholic. But that’s the power of American TV. She told the woman she was honored.’ Nice.

P.P.S. “Cheri” boasts rare appearances by two women closely associated with the history of rock, of all things. Anita Pallenberg, famously Keith Richards’s ex, makes a cameo as a fellow courtesan. The scene was shot in Maxim’s in Paris. And Frances Tomelty, first wife of Sting, and mother of his two eldest children, plays Pfeiffer’s maid. Tomelty works regularly in British TV and theater but we rarely see her in films released here. Neat casting in both cases.

Michael Richards

Michael Richards, the Emmy winning actor who played Kramer on “Seinfeld” to acclaim, is a new man according to Larry David.

Richards, one of the funniest actors in TV history, hit bottom a few years ago after Seinfeld went off the air. He wound up in a career-stopping scandal that involved two alcohol-fueled rants ‘ one racist and the other anti-Semitic ‘ during November 2006 stand up routines at Los Angeles comedy clubs.

Neither event was the Richards any of his friends recognized. It was liquor and anger.

But now Richards, and Kramer, are back. In fact all of the ‘Seinfeld’ stars ”Richards, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld ‘ appear later this summer in about half the episodes of the new season of David’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ on HBO.

I’m told that the Seinfeld cast appears about midpoint in the season and takes the show to its season conclusion.

Neither Larry nor Jeff Garlin, a show producer who plays Larry’s agent, would tell me much more about it.

But Larry did say that Richards ‘is like a new man. He really went through something [with that incident]. He used to be very angry and bitter. He’s completely different now. You can see it, and he can feel it. I’m very happy for him.’

The most I could glean from David and Garlin ‘ and this is just adding a lot of supposition ‘ is that somehow the gang decides to do a reunion show or revive the ‘Seinfeld’ series in some fashion. We can only imagine for now that it doesn’t work out, and fails spectacularly.

‘I told Larry, I said, I can’t believe we haven’t done this before. It’s a natural,’ Garlin told me the other night. (By the way, viewers will see that Garlin has lost a lot of weight. How did he do it? ‘I stopped eating, and I exercised. It actually works.’)

As for David, he opens on Friday in Woody Allen’s really wonderful and funny ‘Whatever Works.’ Old time Woody Allen fans are going to really enjoy this return to a New York comedy. David is a gem, and actresses Patricia Clarkson and Evan Rachel Wood are cinches for Oscar nominations. There are also great, smaller turns by Ed Begley, Jr. and ‘Tudors’ star Henry Cavill.

You might find an unusual ad this morning on the front page of the New York Times’s website. It’s from the CIA, aka Central Intelligence Agency.

The ad reads: National Clandestine Service Careers. “Business Professionals: Central Intelligence Agency. The Work of a nation. The center of intelligence.”

At first glance, you’d think it was placed by The Onion, the satirical newspaper, and not by the nation’s spy organization. But it’s real. Times must be tough.

My favorite part of the website, once you click into it, is the Kids Page. There are actually kids’ pages for K-5th grade and 6th-12th grade. You get different kinds of explanations for appropriate age groups. There’s no mention, however, of overthrowing governments, assassinating heads of state, or infiltrating terrorist organizations. They might be leaving that for a possible still to come “college age” distinction.

So what is “National Clandestine Service”? According to the site:

“Our people in the NCS love to travel and they have a great curiosity about the world and its different cultures. They love to work with people from all over the world and they can adapt to any situation. They’re highly educated and highly motivated, and many of them can speak other languages.”

It’s just like being a flight attendant, except with a Luger. School kids should note however that “A late report here doesn’t mean a flunking grade; it means possibly endangering our country and her citizens.”

On the plus side, especially for the K-5 set, the CIA is looking for : “People that are good at puzzles or solving mysteries succeed in these jobs.”

Get out that Clue board and start practicing, kids!

Sunday would have been New York writer, novelist, essayist and short story writer Laurie Colwin‘s 65th birthday. This is unbelievable. Laurie died in 1992 at age 48, unexpectedly, of a heart attack. All of her wonderful books are still in print, including “Happy All the Time,” “Another Marvelous Thing,” “Shine On Bright and Dangerous Object,” and “Family Happiness” — as well as her essays “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking.” Laurie’s death was one of those inexplicable tragedies, but her legacy lives on in her work and in her daughter, Rose Jurjevics, a contributing writer to the San Diego Reader. Someone should look into turning Laurie’s stories into films. Actresses from Scarlett Johansson to Jennifer Connelly to Rachel Weisz would be perfect fits for her lead characters. FYI: ‘Happy All the Time’ is one of the funniest novels ever written. Laurie, you remain sorely missed.