People

By Josh Tyrangiel

Not Party Time For Garth

That Chris Gaines thing was a sign. Now we have confirmation: GARTH BROOKS is in midlife crisis. Brooks told record-industry magazine Billboard this week that he and wife SANDY "both agree that we need to get divorced... Right now we're focusing on the impact it will have on the children and how to handle that best." Brooks, who more or less announced his retirement from music last year to spend quality time with his family, said he might now make another album, but he doesn't exactly sound like a man brimming with confidence. "Making music always does excite me, but I don't know if as a songwriter I have it in me. As an artist--has the format passed me by? Has my age taken me to a place where I can't compete?" If only melancholy and self-doubt made for good country music.

WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SALES?

JEWEL's book of poems may have been critically savaged, but it netted something far more important than respect: readers. About 700,000 of them, or just 699,000 more than the average successful book of poetry. For that reason, the market is braced for Chasing Down the Dawn: Life Stories, your standard inspirational-rock-star-travelogue-and-Alas ka-guide-with-baby-snaps. "I wrote at least 1,000 pages for the book," says Jewel, though the final text comes in at a tight 176. "I enjoy writing about really small moments that are very fleeting but filled with portent...and whatever else they're filled with." In addition to the portent, the book has photos, including a young Jewel with a belly that would make Charles Durning proud and an in-the-gloaming cover shot of Jewel riding bareback. "When you grow up on a ranch, you tend to learn things like that. I can also chop wood and gut a cow." Photos of those activities will be included in the next book.

HE'S NEVER MET TIM ROBBINS?

When they were handing out media, conservatives got talk radio and liberals got the movies. It may not be fair, but that's the way it is. GARY OLDMAN apparently had no idea. The British star of The Contender says he signed on believing that his character, G.O.P. congressional inquisitor Shelly Runyon, was "the only true patriot in the film." Three guys, named Katzenberg, Spielberg and Geffen--who happen to be distributing The Contender--as well as director Rod Lurie, a self-proclaimed "die-hard liberal," saw it differently. The result is a predictably left-leaning movie that has Oldman and manager Douglas Urbanski seething. Urbanski, who has a producer credit on The Contender, tells Premiere the finished product is "almost a Goebbels-like piece of propaganda," while Oldman adds spookily, "I'm surprised that more people have not been murdered in the entertainment industry." He has not been following Kevin Costner's career.

HE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO CUT OUT NILES' TONGUE

It has been three years since we last heard from QUENTIN TARANTINO, the actor. Given his less-than-celebrated thespian skills, that may not be long enough for some people, but it's long enough for Tarantino apparently. Even though he returns to the silver screen in November as a blind preacher in Adam Sandler's Satan comedy Little Nicky, Tarantino--egged on by friends Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke--couldn't stop himself from bidding $6,000 to nab a walk-on role in an upcoming episode of Frasier at a New York City auction for the charity Room to Grow. His publicist insists he's a devoted fan of the show, and not just pathologically attention starved. Tarantino is also playing to his strengths, working on two new screenplays, one a World War II drama, the other a movie for Thurman, in which she plays a coma victim. It is not called Gattaca II: The Audience's Story.