RANDOM HARTS?

Novelist and sometime screenwriter Daryl Ponicsan (“Cinderella Liberty,” “Taps”) thinks the Gary Hart-Donna Rice incident only proves that life does imitate art.

Ponicsan is at work on a script for producer-director Ivan Reitman and Tri-Star titled “Random Hearts,” to star Dustin Hoffman. The storyline: a congressman running for the Senate as a stepping stone to the Oval Office becomes involved in embarrassing sexual scrutiny.

“I’ve been watching the television all day,” he told us as news of the Hart-Rice story evolved. “I was hoping Hart would say his situation was true but it wasn’t the press’ business.

“That’s what happens in the script--he could have written the speech for me.”