People

By Rebecca Winters

FRERE JACK

When JACK NICHOLSON addressed striking French actors who interrupted his film shoot in Paris last week, he might have been overcome by feelings of labor solidarity from playing Jimmy Hoffa in a 1992 biopic. Standing on a bridge over the Seine, Nicholson grabbed a bullhorn and tried to persuade strikers to allow work on his untitled romantic comedy to proceed. But after listening to his comrades' complaints, the star shouted in broken French, "The struggle continues!" Nicholson was both diplomatic and prophetic. Two days later France's two most popular summer arts festivals were cancelled because of the strike.

Feminine Mystique 101

It all looks like fun for MARCIA GAY HARDEN and JULIA ROBERTS, but filming Mona Lisa Smile, due out in December, required some serious study. Roberts plays a professor at Wellesley College in 1953 who tries to inspire her students to think beyond marriage. Director Mike Newell made his cast of postfeminist women, including Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles, take manners lessons and wear rubber girdles. "They complained about it," says Newell. "It was antithetical to the way they were brought up."

Free-Stealin' Dylan?

Songwriters often sprinkle their work with literary references--doesn't Nelly's Hot in Herre owe something to Goethe? But legendary lyricist BOB DYLAN may have taken more than inspiration for his aptly titled 2001 Grammy-winning album, Love and Theft, from a little-known Japanese writer named Junichi Saga. A doctor and author of 15 books, Saga told TIME he was "filled with surprise and true joy" when he learned from a reporter at that frothy Dylan fanzine, the Wall Street Journal, that some of the singer's lyrics match passages in Saga's 1989 book, Confessions of a Yakuza. Dylan's publicist declined to comment on whether the singer intentionally lifted the lines. But the similarities are striking:

DYLAN: "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound." SAGA: "I'm not as cool or as forgiving as I might have sounded."

DYLAN: "My old man, he's like some feudal lord." SAGA: "My old man would sit there like a feudal lord."

DYLAN: "Tears or not, it's too much to ask." SAGA: "Tears or not, though, that was too much to ask."

ART OF THE FARRAH'S

Everyone's big worry this summer: How best to celebrate what would have been Andy Warhol's 75th birthday on Aug. 6? How about this: the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa., is hosting an exhibition of sculpture and photographs by that blow-dried '70s muse, the poster girl of poster girls, FARRAH FAWCETT, and her collaborator, artist Keith Edmier. The centerpiece of the show is a life-size sculpture of Fawcett's naked form carved in marble by Edmier, and Edmier's cast in bronze by Fawcett. Also on display is a wax seashell containing Fawcett's footprints in sand from her hometown. Sounds like a show you'd skip if there weren't a Charlie's Angel involved? Maybe that's the point.