ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Stuntman Dies: Another TV reality show went bad this week, with the death Monday night of a stuntman who’d been in a coma since a Feb. 16 accident on a set of UPN’s stunt series “I Dare You.” Stuntman Brady Michaels, 36, fell roughly 15 feet, striking his head on rocks, when he lost his footing while descending a ladder during preparations for a stunt in which he was to have paraglided from one moving train to another. Michaels--who had appeared in a stunt in “I Dare You’s” Jan. 18 premiere episode--was not actually performing the stunt at the time of the Arizona accident. The series, which remains in production, next airs on Tuesday at 8 p.m. and will close with a photo tribute honoring Michaels.

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Santana’s Revelation: On the eve of Wednesday night’s Grammys, guitar impresario Carlos Santana has revealed that he was molested as a child by an American man who brought him over the Mexican border. In a cover story, Santana, 52, told Rolling Stone magazine that from the age of 10 to 12 he was transported north from his native Tijuana “almost every day” by a Vermont man who would buy him food, clothes and toys, and then abuse him. Santana also discussed the abuse on Tuesday night’s “60 Minutes II.” The relationship ended in violence, Santana told Rolling Stone, when the man slapped him for staring at a girl. “And I woke up,” he said. “I looked at him for the first time for who he was: a very sick person.” In recent years, Santana said, he underwent therapy and has made peace with the past.

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Lawrence’s Wake-Up Call: In his first interview since emerging from a coma triggered by a jog in a September heat wave, actor Martin Lawrence recalls his “traumatic experience” on tonight’s “Entertainment Tonight,” noting that doctors told him he almost died. “You go under, your functions, everything shuts down. Your bowels, everything,” Martin says, noting that his recovery included learning how to walk again. Martin, who said the incident “kind of woke me up and made me appreciate life,” is back at work, making a film called “Big Momma’s House.”

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Lots of Thought Power: A Paris art gallery is rolling out 25 new bronze reproductions of Auguste Rodin’s famed sculpture “The Thinker.” Cast from a replica plaster mold made by the same foundry that made the 21 originals, the full-size reproductions of a seated man with his chin on his hand are likely to sell for close to $1 million each, art experts say. “Technically there’s not much difference between a sculpture cast in 1900 and one cast in 2000,” said Jerome Leblay of Christie’s Paris auction house, noting that Rodin had little to do with casting the originals. Paris’ Rodin Museum judged the cast to be authentic and gave Paris’ Sayegh Gallery permission to turn out the 25 replicas. The gallery says that museums in Tel Aviv, Seoul and Tokyo have already paid deposits for the new half-ton copies. The original 21 statues are housed in museums in the United States, Europe and Japan.

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Quick Takes: Oscar nominee Michael Mann (“The Insider”) has signed on to direct Will Smith in Columbia Pictures’ upcoming Muhammad Ali biography, “Ali.” . . . PBS has named Patricia Nugent, a co-producer of CBS’ “Cosby” and a former director of production for Jim Henson Productions, as its head of children’s programming, filling a post that had been vacant since 1998.