History repeats for quick-change artists

Loosely Speaking by Nancy Gaines

Harvard takes a makeup test Award-winning makeup artist Julie Michaud may be able to work cosmetic miracles, but she knew she couldn't blush her way through running a new business. So, when a client suggested she propose that her just-opened Newbury Street salon be a case study for the Harvard Business School, she jumped. Skirting secretaries who refused to connect her with the professor (they said the class's focus should be high-tech), Michaud was finally accepted into the B-school's Women Building Business course and now has three potential MBAs to study and advise her. Throughout this semester, the students, all female, will help Michaud research cosmetics manufacturing and packaging, as well as finish a business plan to attract investors. Her boutique stocks cosmetics, makeup tools, and skin-care products, but Michaud, formerly of New York's Bumble & Bumble and Back Bay's Solus, wants to create her own line. And for everybody, there's a bonus: the students also take the business school's Consumer Psychology course, which uses focus groups as part of its curriculum. The product they will test-focus? A future Michaud cosmetics line.

Two of the city's better-known glam gals, who also happen to be best friends and roommates, are parting ways, in several ways. Model Bethany van Delft, a former club hostess and manager at 29 Newbury and Les Zygomates, and most recently at Karma, is leaving the Lansdowne Street fold to work for Christophe Muller at Joy. Van Delft's budding career as a standup comic is making strides these days, too. Her physical comedy and tongue-in-cheek takeoffs, including a cerebral spoof of BBC broadcasters, are now on display at spots including the Comedy Connection and the Middle East. This week, too, local cover girl, dancer, and club hostess Rebecca Garrison is taking off for Milan, where she's booked for major runway shows. Van Delft, meanwhile, is accruing a track record for roommates who move on and up. She used to share quarters with fashion designer Nong Tomsugipong, who, after winning prizes and fans in these parts, moved two years ago to New York, earning a wider audience. She's now back here often, putting together a business to mass-produce her wares.

Schiff off the deep end

Writer Stephen Schiff seems to have struck gold with his screenplay for Lolita, even if the movie had its obstacles. A former Phoenix film critic (1978-'83), now cultural critic for the New Yorker, Schiff debuted as a screenwriter with the controversial Nabokov remake. His subsequent efforts have resulted in a star-studded twin bill coming soon to theaters near you, and a host of projects under way. Schiff penned the screen adaptation of the bestseller The Deep End of the Ocean, due March 12 (starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Whoopi Goldberg), as well as Clint Eastwood's True Crime, out the following week. He's completed a draft of a screenplay for Robert De Niro, with more on the way for Mike Nichols, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Martin Scorsese.

"Life on the `other side' has been eye-opening," says Schiff. "I see virtually everything differently. A prime example is the degree to which movie writers have institutionalized the auteur theory. They say, `The director thought this, the director did that.' It's bunk. The reason why things come out the way they do varies from movie to movie, from scene to scene. The real auteur is accident.

"I'll defend to the death a movie writer's right to judge on aesthetics, but this second-guessing and divination is so wrong -- it's hard for people in the business to respect journalists."

Short stop

Cabaret king Bobby Short had such a good time welcoming old pals and new plaudits last spring during his brief professional appearance in Boston -- his first in more than 20 years -- that he's coming back. Catch him holding court again at Scullers, April 29 through May 2, and, no doubt, with friends, at favorite spots such as the Ritz and Up Stairs at the Pudding.

Devaulted

After less than two years, Bob Seager, cofounder of the popular downtown wine bar the Vault, has moved on to other ventures. Partner Susan Fortuna, also an owner of Bauer Wines in the Back Bay, is now running the show solo.

Exposure for art's sake

You spend your life sculpting or penning sonnets. Who's to know about developing Web sites? Now, after a long drought, Uncle Sam is opening the spigot to help local writers, photographers, and other often-isolated creative souls strut their stuff in the 21st century. Through effort and money from the city, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the private Benton Foundation, 28 Bostonians have been picked from a pool of applicants for something called Open Studio, a federally funded program that provides intensive Web-site training for artists. While training, the artists will showcase their works on the federally funded ne-arts.net. Those selected include photographer Joe Greene, novelist Mimi Hirsh, and illustrator Miriam Shemitzer.

Why sick people love a two-newspaper town

CANCER TESTS GET KEY US VALIDATION

-- Boston Globe, February 11, 1999

DOCTOR'S 'MIRACLE CANCER CURE' A DUD

-- Boston Herald, February 11, 1999

Translation: They are two separate drugs. One works (seemingly proven), the other doesn't (maybe). Both were developed by local Children's Hospital/Harvard Med School doc Judah Folkman. The Herald story played up the previous day's announcement that some of Folkman's tests had failed. The Globe, which appeared to have been tipped off, played up the "newer" (and nicer) news that other tests had succeeded.