Not Just a Co-Star but a Candidate Too

George Clooney and Brad Pitt are teaming up to win their “Ocean’s Eleven” co-star Matt Damon People magazine’s coveted “Sexiest Man Alive” title next year.

Onetime sexiest man Clooney and Pitt, who has won twice, announced their intentions about two weeks ago at a press junket for the film around the same time the annual People issue hit the stands declaring this year’s winner Pierce Brosnan.

Elizabeth Sporkin, the People editor responsible for the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue, told us that Damon has “been off the radar” and hasn’t played enough sexy roles to win. While Damon is “hot,” Sporkin said, the world’s sexiest man must be a household name in addition to having sex appeal. “There aren’t that many people who fit that bill,” she said. Brosnan won because he’s been on the short list several times, and possesses the “wholesome, sexy, manly” traits that the magazine’s editors considered appropriate in the post-Sept. 11 world, Sporkin said.

Some news reports quoted Clooney as saying that he recently tried to place an Oscar nomination-style ad in Daily Variety that read: “For Your Consideration: Matt Damon for Sexiest Man Alive” and that Variety wouldn’t accept it. But folks at the trade paper had heard nothing of the ad. If they had, one insider said, Variety would have run it in a heartbeat.

Fictional Alter Ego

Kitty Butterfield is the James Bond of personal assistants, completing such tasks as “Operation Pantaloons.” With the fervor of a secret agent, Butterfield searches Los Angeles for the perfect pair of pants, glitter slippers or Gucci outfit for her boss, a fictional Hollywood starlet.

Butterfield is the creation of Layla Revis, a 24-year-old assistant to a Warner Bros. production executive. Revis’ columns, chronicling the adventures of Kitty Butterfield, will debut next month at www.publicitywhore.com. Butterfield, whom Revis imagines as a bohemian brunet, drives a Karmann Ghia named Brian and spends her day running errands for a diva-like boss.

We met Revis on Sunday at the bar of La Poubelle in Hollywood. She told us she moved to L.A. from Arizona three years ago and quickly found work as a music producer’s assistant. “After four months of [doing] his laundry, I had enough,” said Revis. Since then, she has worked as an assistant to a director and a literary agent.

Gathering stories from her own and others’ experience, Revis writes about life on the fringe of Hollywood. Her column is a “campy, coming-of-age story,” said Revis, a cross between “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Sex in the City,” but for a slightly younger crowd.

“Well, at least I was free to hit Dolce & Gabbana with time to spare,” reads one Butterfield column. “My ulterior motive was to grab a few ‘extras’ for myself. My boss was a size or two smaller but I could sweet talk the PR gals into just about anything.” Revis hopes her fictional alter ego will get the happy Hollywood ending that Candace Bushnell’s characters got--a TV series. If not, there’s always the personal assistant job.

“You have to have a plan B,” she said. “Hollywood is like the mob. It’s just as hard to break out of the entertainment industry as it is to break in.”

*

Wedding Bells

On Saturday, Sonny Bono’s widow, Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), married Wyoming businessman Glenn Baxley in Palm Springs. Her daughter, Chianna Bono, 10, was her maid of honor and her son, Chesare Bono, 13, was Baxley’s best man. Among the 300 guests were her stepdaughter, Chastity Bono, and Cher’s mother, Georgia Holt.

The couple met about a year ago in Mexico, where they were vacationing separately.

Bono, 40, has served in Congress since winning a special election in April 1998 for her late husband’s seat. Sonny Bono was killed in a skiing accident on Jan. 5, 1998.