Oprah Orders Her Own Change of Venue

How do you do a nationally syndicated talk show in Amarillo, Texas? You start off by doing country-western dancing with “Dirty Dancing” star--and Texas native--Patrick Swayze. That’s the plan for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which today begins an open-ended number of broadcasts from Amarillo, where the hostess is a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Texas cattlemen over remarks she made on her show in 1996 about American beef and “mad-cow” disease. Unable to win a change of venue, Winfrey has moved her show to Amarillo for the duration of the trial, reaping a bonanza of media attention as she goes. Winfrey and her staff have taken over a bed-and-breakfast in Amarillo, and they’re taping the shows at night at a local theater after she attends the daily sessions in court. Besides Swayze, her guests this week will include Clint Black, Lisa Hartman Black and other Texas-born celebrities, with cameos on videotape by such Texas natives as Charles Barkley, Chuck Norris and Phylicia Rashad. No word on whether Winfrey plans to have any cattlemen as guests.

Will Pearl Jam’s Single ‘Yield’ a Hit Album?

Encouraged by the early success of “Given to Fly,” the first single from the upcoming Pearl Jam album, record retailers will be looking at the charts this week to see if the single is continuing to take flight, thereby creating interest in the album itself. Anticipation for the Pearl Jam collection, which is titled “Yield” and due in stores Feb. 3, seems to be building despite the band’s reluctance to promote its albums aggressively. “Given to Fly” has topped Billboard’s mainstream rock airplay chart for two weeks and is No. 3 on the magazine’s modern rock chart. And just to make sure Angelenos know that the album is coming, a billboard looms large over Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles to remind them. But Kelly Curtis, the group’s manager, says the concept behind the giant advertisement is fun, not profit. “It’s not like we’re buying prime-time Super Bowl space or something,” he says. You can expect much higher-profile campaigns to trumpet the arrivals of the year’s next two superstar releases: Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” which is due in stores March 3, and Van Halen’s “III,” which is set for a March 17 release.

A Bronx Tale and the California Dream

For the last month, three guys who hail from the Bronx, N.Y., have been standing outside Los Angeles-area theaters handing out fliers trying to interest passersby in a movie they made called “True Friends.” The film--produced for $100,000 on maxed-out credit cards, loans from friends and family and freebies from several vendors--is based on the real-life experiences of James Quattrochi and Rodrigo Botero, Studio City residents who co-wrote the screenplay, and Loreto Mauro of Whittier. All have acting backgrounds and star in the film. “True Friends” tells the story of a Puerto Rican boy whose family moves into an Italian neighborhood in New York and the strong bond that develops between him and his newfound pals. The idea came to them a year ago this month. “A close friend of Rodrigo’s named Eddie Duffy had an inoperable brain tumor,” Quattrochi says. “He was dying. This kind of inspired us to tell what it was like from age 12 to 30 growing up in New York.” Duffy died the second day of filming. Singer Jerry Vale donated four of his songs, including “Arrivederci Roma,” to the soundtrack. Quattrochi says that Mauro’s family, who hail from Sicily, allowed the cast and crew to shoot scenes in their Whittier restaurant, and another restaurant in Sherman Oaks also opened its doors to the production after hours. On Friday, the film opens for a limited run in the Los Angeles area. In memory of Duffy, the filmmakers plan to donate a portion of the proceeds to the American Cancer Society. They also expressed hope that a big studio will step up and acquire the distribution rights to the movie. “It’s the California dream,” Quattrochi says.