Side show

HIS PEOPLE REALLY NEED TO CALL THEIR PEOPLE SO THEY CAN AT LEAST DO LUNCH: The Hollywood people financing Lance Bass' attempt to become a cosmonaut have issued their latest progress report: The 'N Sync singer has been certified as physically qualified for a fall Russian rocket flight to the International Space Station.

The people at the Russian space agency continue to say it would be nice if Bass and his people would talk to them about their plans.

"The Russian Aerospace Agency has had no contacts whatsoever with Mr. Bass," agency spokesman Konstantin Kreidenko said in an Associated Press report. "We have received no requests from either him or his representatives, not to speak about signing any contracts."

The space agency has kept one seat available for someone in the three-person Soyuz spacecraft alongside Russian flight commander Sergei Zaletin and European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne of Belgium. Kreidenko said the agency hasn't made a decision about the next space tourist, and he wouldn't comment on candidates.

Meanwhile, David Krieff, a producer arranging the money to send Bass, tells Reuters that Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems approved Bass' fitness to fly after a series of tests and he would begin space flight training Monday.

Kreidenko responds: "Anyone has the right to undergo tests in the Institute of Biomedical Problems. But that doesn't mean that such person is considered to be a candidate for space flight."

This could put a crimp in Krieff's plan to chronicle Bass' flight in a TV special.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF LEAKED SECRETS: More candidates to direct the third movie in the boy wizard series, according to Variety:

Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Thelma & Louise and whose first directorial effort, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, opens June 7.

Actor-director Kenneth Branagh, who has done a lot of Shakespeare but, more important, plays Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, the new Defense of the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in the second Harry Potter movie, due out in November.

WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE: Among this year's Tony nominees for best new play is Fortune's Fool, by Ivan Turgenev, who died in 1883. (This is the play's first production on Broadway, so it qualifies as a new play.)

The play is a success with the public, critics and Tony voters, but the New York Post says the voters have one concern about giving Fortune's Fool the award: they would be telling the world that Broadway's hottest playwright has been dead for 119 years.

To help make the voters feel better about honoring Fortune's Fool, the play's producers have sent each one a card saying 'the script . . . is a completely new adaptation by Mike Poulton, a wonderful British playwright who's very much alive."

Find out what happens when the awards are presented Sunday night.

BEST CASTING NEWS OF THE WEEK: USA is the first network to cast the pivotal role of Rudy Giuliani in its Rudy Giuliani TV movie, RUDY!, and the chosen actor is James Woods. Sean Young is the only choice for Giuliani's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Donna Hanover.

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