Remembering That Day, in Her Words

As Chelsea Clinton watched the World Trade Center’s twin towers crumble outside her friend’s Manhattan apartment on Sept. 11, she fought off panic when she couldn’t reach her mother by phone and then frantically made her way uptown through screaming crowds and a storm of rubble. In her first public article--a piece published in the new issue of Talk magazine, which hits newsstands next Friday--Clinton writes candidly of her fears in the wake of the terrorists attacks.

“I woke up that Tuesday morning feeling good about where I was in my life and happy about where I was going,” she writes. “Now, that sense of security is gone, and since the 11th, for some moment every day, I have been scared.”

The 21-year-old Stanford University alumna recently started graduate school at Oxford University in England. But on Sept. 11, she was visiting her best friend, who lived 12 blocks from the World Trade Center.

Two days later, she and her father visited Union Square, and she was suddenly fielding reporters’ questions for the first time in her life. “I had never given an interview and had only been caught talking on camera once,” she writes. She was moved when people holding pictures of their missing loved ones wanted to stand behind her while she was on camera. “I had stonewalled every question anyone in the media had ever asked me throughout my entire life,” she writes, “but with every answer I gave, another person was able to get a flier on camera.”

Talk magazine Editor Tina Brown said she was struck by the “honesty and the emotional clarity” of Clinton’s writing. “This is a very unguarded piece,” Brown told us. “What comes through is this very bright, very sensitive, very mature and at the same time vulnerable woman.”

Music’s Her Biz

Although few people may have heard of her, Hilary Rosen, 42-year-old president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, is to music what Jack Valenti is to movies.

She spent last year in a very public fight on behalf of the $15-billion music industry against Napster and others--a battle that’s far from over, she said. “We’re working on serious issues these days, trying to help the industry with its Internet piracy issues,” Rosen said, adding that it’s a cause close to her heart. “It’s an ethical folly for them to think they can make money off the backs of the creators.”

When not fighting for the industry, Rosen spends time at home in Chevy Chase, Md., with her partner Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, and their 2-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

Rosen and her family begin each day with music. “We have morning wake-up music--anything from the Rolling Stones to Ella Fitzgerald,” she said. “They definitely like Ella Fitzgerald better than Barney.”

On Sunday, for raising money and awareness for cancer treatment and research, she receives the 2001 Children’s Choice Award from the Neil Bogart Memorial Fund, which supports Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

From Down Under

On Tuesday, Australia’s surprise hit film “Lantana” made its American premiere to a packed house at the Pacific Theatre in Hollywood as part of this year’s American Film Institute festival. Stars Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey and Kerry Armstrong were in the audience, hoping that Americans caught the dark comic turns of the movie.

The film, by director Ray Lawrence, examines the complexities of four marriages, structured around a missing-person investigation.

LaPaglia told us the film “caters to an audience that is huge and largely forgotten, which is anybody over the age of 30.”

Shot in Australia using natural light--from street lamps, interior car lights and sunlight--the picture feels intimate, Hershey said.

“Especially, in the wake of Sept. 11,” she said. “It makes you want to crawl into bed with the person you love and hold them.”

Dancing Queen

Machine-gun tap-dancing queen Ann Miller is enjoying the attention generated recently by her role in David Lynch’s new film “Mulholland Dr.”

At a fashion show this week at the downtown restaurant Cicada, the 78-year-old hoofer held court over a glass of wine and told us about her role as Coco the landlady.

“It’s definitely offbeat and surreal, but you gotta see it and tell me what you think,” she said, flapping long, false eyelashes. “I was about the only one not asked to do a lesbian sex scene but wouldn’t have anyway,” she told us. “I’m an old-fashioned gal in that respect.”

Then, touching her lacquered flamenco-styled ‘do, she quipped: “Honey, I like keeping my makeup and hair intact.”

*

Times staff writer Michael Quintanilla contributed to this report. City of Angles runs Tuesday-Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes.com.