Producer DICK ZANUCK says, "We don't want to rush the film into theatres next year (02) - we'd rather but extra wanna-see time for the sequel. 

"Right now, we're tossing around ideas for the story. We want to take our time and get it right." 

BOOGIE NIGHTS star Wahlberg made a deal with Zanuck to make two Planet of the Apes films, before signing up for the first picture. (RGS/LA/RP) 

BLAS ELIAS (Drummer for "Slaughter" - Plays Donny, drummer for "Blood Pollution")

How realistic were the musical portions of this film?
It's against the norm for the guys who are in the movie, to actual be playing the music. Most times when you see a movie with guys playing in a band, they're actors who are lip-syncing to the music. But we are all real musicians and the actors who played also in the bands, had to go through rock and roll "boot camp" and learn how to play guitar and sing. And we went through a month and a half teaching them. And so it's all real. It's probably the first movie with an "all real" band. It was great, everything was great about it, and I think the amazing thing is they got real rockers to play in the movie and it's just so accurate because of it.

So, the soundtrack for this film will be different than most?
Yeah, because all the people in the movie are really playing. They got us together about a month and half before we started filming and they put us in a rehearsal room. We'd hang out at nights, go to bars, and then play music all day - so we actually felt like a real band. And Mark Wahlberg - he had his long-hair and so he was just like one of us.

How good was Mark Walhberg at playing a rock star?
As far as I know, he's just a rocker! I never met him until I saw him on the set and to me, he's just a long-haired rocker in a rock and roll band. He did an amazing job. He's great at it (being a rock star).

What's your character in this film?
I play the drummer in the tribute band "Blood Pollution" and we are supposed to look like the guys in "Steel Dragon," and everyone else has matching wigs but the drummer for "Steel Dragon" - Jason Bonham. They made him a wig to look exactly like my real hair and he didn't want to give it back.

What do you think about the rock and roll stereotypes?
Most of them are probably not even close to the truth. I mean, it's probably way worse than they tell it to be (laughing). 

BRIAN VANDER ARK (Bass player for "The Verve Pipe" - Plays Ricki, bass player for "Blood Pollution")

Are you enjoying this experience (walking the red carpet)?
It has nothing to do with what I do, but I tell you what, once in awhile, it's a lot of fun, that's for sure.

A whole new set of people will get to hear your work in this film. What do you want them to see about your work in "Rock Star?"
I think that the most important thing to me is the fact that the song that I wrote for the movie - which isn't til toward the end of the film - I like the idea that there's a lot of rock and roll people that can hear that. The guys from "KISS" - we opened up for "KISS" - they've been huge supporters of us from that first tour when they put the makeup back on and I like the fact that they're going to see this song and see me do a little bit of silliness in this movie. I'm normally a pretty serious guy.

STEPHAN JENKINS (Lead singer with "Third Eye Blind" - Plays lead singer of rival "Steel Dragon" tribute band)

What's the biggest thrill about being a rock star?
It's something I feel very blessed to do. I get to reach people with music and I get to make a connection, and that's something that's my dream.

Was Mark Wahlberg a convincing rock star?
Yes, he was. I think he's a really great actor. I think he's convincing in everything he does. I think he's brilliant - I really do. I'm a huge fan.

What about Jennifer Aniston?
I think Jennifer is a really cool girl and I liked working with her a lot.

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT (Plays Mark Wahlberg's best friend and guitarist in "Blood Pollution")

Did you have a musical background - before this film?
None baby.

And what was the practice for this role like?
It was as little as possible and just kind of wing it (laughing). That's my philosophy.

Did you do anything special to prepare for your role?
Just learn the lines, show up, hit the mark, get the paycheck and go home.

BETH GRANT

Did you have any ties to rock and roll, prior to this film?
When I just started out I wanted to be in rock and roll. But, I can't sing and I can't play an instrument. I used to work in an office where Gene Simmons' (KISS) company was. He used to come in and type on the typewriter and he could do like - ask him - 160 or 200 words per minute, with no mistakes. I was there the day the letter arrived - because you know they were just this little group out in Queens until they got that letter, and the pyrotechnical. And, I used to hang out with War and others, so this is Heaven! I'm so excited - I've been in 40 movies and this is my favorite one ever! I love Mark Wahlberg.

Have you ever "been" with the band?
Where's my husband (laughing). You could say fairly that I wanted to be with the band (more laughing). I'll let everyone guess whether or not it happened.

EVERCLEAR

Is this film close to what life is like for your band?
We're not that kind of band. We're like - our period of music, we missed all the fun stuff, I got to say. We timed it wrong. The whole like - rabid groupie thing. I mean I think it works for some bands like these guys behind us who look like rock stars (pointing to some of the musicians in attendance). We look like guys who were looking for the pizza place and got lost. I'm saying that jokingly but I'm seriously feeling so out of my depth here. I mean we do this stuff a lot, we've sold a lot of records, and we sell alot of tickets and we're a big rock band but we don't act like it - and we don't think like it.

FRED DURST (Limp Bizkit)

How is your baby doing?
The baby is great - he's so killer.

Do you want him to be a rock star?
No, I do NOT want him to be a rock star.

What's up with your beard.
I just got lazy so I brought out the clippers and just kind of trimmed it. I'm under a weird period in my life from writing and I'm feeling like a reject and looking like...

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Mark Wahlberg and Hugh Jackman may find themselves kin in ``Pride and Glory,'' a gritty drama set in the New York Police Dept.

The Intermedia Films project centers on a three-generation family of cops who find themselves tested when one of the sons investigates a case that reveals a corruption scandal involving his brother.

Director Gavin O'Connor (``Tumbleweeds''), the son of a New York cop, will shoot from a script he co-wrote with Joe Carnahan. Intermedia picked up the project in turnaround from Fine Line Features, the company that released ``Tumbleweeds.''

Wahlberg will next be seen in Universal Pictures' ``The Truth About Charlie,'' while Jackman stars in Miramax Films' Christmas release ``Kate and Leopold.''

Tim Owens used to do a good impression of his heroes Judas Priest. So good that, when they found themselves short of a singer, the Brummie rockers asked him to join them. Now Owens's life story has been turned into a film starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston - and the band wants to sue. By Xan Brooks 

A few years ago, Tim Owens was selling office supplies in his home town of Akron, Ohio. At night he would pull on black leather and take to the stage as the singer in a Judas Priest tribute band. Then, unbeknown to him, a bootleg of his performance found its way to the real Judas Priest. The band liked Owens's impersonation so much that they flew him to England, rechristened him "Ripper" and gave him the job. And so it came to pass that the fan became the frontman, and the zero turned hero. "It's every kid's dream in a way," says Priest guitarist and principal songwriter Glenn Tipton. "That idea that you can come out of nowhere and suddenly be the singer for your favourite band. It gives hope to everyone, doesn't it?" 

If the life story of Tim "Ripper" Owens reads like some sugar-spun Hollywood fiction, it is. Sort of. Owens's journey forms the basis for the Warner Brothers movie Rock Star, which stars Mark Wahlberg in the Ripper role and is released in the UK next month. The film coincides nicely with a new Judas Priest album (Demolition) and an accompanying tour. The only problem is that Owens doesn't like the movie one bit. The band is considering taking legal action. 

I meet Ripper at a hotel perched beside a main road in Staffordshire, bordered by what appears to be landfill. The hotel looks like a Hollywood set. The whole structure screams impermanence, as though it was built yesterday especially for this occasion and will be dismantled later in the afternoon by studio technicians. Ripper likes it. He says he can buy beer from the vending machine in the lobby. 

A foursquare chap of 34, the Priest singer boasts tattooed arms, a hennaed goatee and spectacles that he takes off when the photographer arrives. He's in the UK to rehearse an imminent tour of Scandinavia, and flew in yesterday alongside Scott Travis, the American drummer who joined the band in 1989. Priest's old guard - Tipton, guitarist KK Downing and bassist Ian Hill - still live locally, near the Birmingham neighbourhood where they began making music in the early 1970s, when heavy metal was still known as progressive rock and nobody had heard of Spinal Tap. 

In that idyllic, irony-free age, a band could steer Harley-Davidsons around on stage and bash out blood-and-thunder lyrics in neat rhyming couplets ("Up here in space I'm looking down on you/My lasers trace everything you do") without fear of ridicule. Album covers came adorned with cartoon illustrations of robot monsters. Guitar solos were played at the top of the fret and studded leather was de rigueur. Times were good. By the early 80s, Priest was arguably the biggest band in metal. They boasted a string of platinum records (Killing Machine, British Steel, Screaming for Vengeance) and a legion of fans around the globe. 

Tim Owens was one of them. Born to working-class stock near the tyre factories of Akron, he became hooked on the band when his elder brother tripped home with the Screaming for Vengeance album in 1983. Before long, Owens was a Priest disciple, plastering images of his idols across the bedroom wall. In adulthood, he remained their number-one fan. When his regular group (Winter's Bane) had trouble getting booked, it reinvented itself as British Steel, covering Priest classics in venues across Ohio. 

Owens's vocal style (growling, potent, swoopingly theatrical) was a dead ringer for that of Priest frontman Rob Halford, and the band made reasonable money. But by now Owens was pushing 30, and still living out an extended adolescence. "I wasn't really sure what the hell I was going to do with my life," he says. "I got into selling printers and just did music on the side. I didn't really count on it, you know, but I was starting to worry about mortgages and insurance and stuff like that. I never thought anything like this would happen to me." He gestures vaguely around the motel lobby. 

Had Halford not quit Judas Priest, Owens would probably still be flogging printers today. After the singer's departure, Priest spent nearly five years on the verge of splitting up, desperately hunting for a replacement who would allow them to continue to tour and record. Then a videotape of Owens's performance found its way into the hands of Travis. 

At first, everyone had doubts. The band members suspected that Owens's vocal was so good it must be dubbed. On receiving a message to call the Priest management, Owens suspected a wind-up. Two days later, he was on a plane to England. After singing the first two verses of Victim of Changes, he was offered the job on the spot. 

It was, says Owens, a dream come true. "When I made the band I went home and gave an autographed photo of Priest to my parents. It was a sheet of paper with all their names on it, and I signed my name on it too, and I wrote underneath, 'Dreams Do Come True'. I gave it to them when they picked me up at the airport and they kind of stared at it a second and said: 'Well, maybe some day.' And I said: 'No. I'm the singer.' And they said: 'Maybe some day you will be.' It was quite funny, because they just couldn't believe it. And then my mum burst out crying. You've got to understand that my parents had always supported me with my music. So it was as much a dream come true for them as it was for me." 

It didn't end there. Owens's story was so fantastically feel-good that it soon leaked outside the metal community. In 1997, New York Times journalist Andrew C Revkin interviewed Ripper for an article headlined "Metal-Head Becomes Metal-God". The day after publication, Revkin was contacted by film producer Robert Lawrence. Ripper's adventure, Lawrence reckoned, was crying out for the Hollywood treatment. Revkin duly signed on as a creative consultant. The wheels were in motion. 

It's not hard to understand the interest. Break "Ripper" Owens down to his base components and the man is daydream fantasy made fact, the mascot for every Joe Schmoe who ever posed with a hairbrush and hollered "Hello, Milwaukee" at the bathroom mirror. But what Rock Star has done is taken Owens and accessorised him, conjured up new crazy adventures and imposed a strict narrative arc on his experiences. Owens hasn't seen the film but he knows what's in it. "There are so many things about this movie that trouble me," he says with a sigh. 

Rock Star was initially intended as an authorised biography. The film was to be titled Metal God (after a track on the British Steel album), and Judas Priest were approached to write the soundtrack. But the band's demands for creative input soured the deal. "They wanted to see screenplays and stuff," remembers Andrew Revkin. "[But] if you were Warner Bros and were going to throw $30m into making a movie, would you want a bunch of middle-aged former heavy-metal stars to have creative control? No." When the band members got wind of the way the film was going, they immediately distanced themselves from the affair. "We refused to endorse this film by having our name attached to it," says Glenn Tipton. "Because, whatever else this is, it is not the story of our band, and it is not Ripper's story either." 

Except that it kind of is; fleetingly, in portions and more than enough to muddy the waters. Directed by Stephen Herek, Rock Star casts Mark Wahlberg as Chris "Izzy" Cole, a midwestern office-supply salesman who moonlights in a tribute band covering songs by his favourite metal outfit, the British-born Steel Dragon. Like Ripper, Izzy sings as a boy in the high-school choir. Like Ripper, his mother runs a daycare centre from her home. Like Ripper, Izzy gains an audition with his idols via a bootleg videotape. Like Ripper, Izzy replaces a gay lead singer who has quit the band under a cloud of bad feeling. You have to admit that the similarities are striking. "Of course, it is totally similar," says Owens. "So you can tell people that this part and this part and this part are not true, and they still come away believing that the film's about me." 

Elsewhere, however, Rock Star takes some gaudy liberties. For a start, the time frame is different, shunted back into a candy-coloured mid-80s of big hair and spandexed excess - "the whole stupid, cliched rock-star thing," says Owens. And rather than spinning a simple boy-makes-good fairy tale, Rock Star morphs into a morality play. Success is the ruin of Chris "Izzy" Cole. He finds himself corrupted by the odious, fat-cat rockers who take him on board. His life becomes a whirl of sexed-up groupies and rapacious drug consumption, and his sweet, smalltown girlfriend (played by Jennifer Aniston) walks out on him. At one stage he hops into bed with a transsexual. 

All of which is offensive to Owens. "I ain't never gone to bed with no trans-sexual, that's for sure," he says. "And I ain't never been invited to no orgies either." In contrast to his alter ego, he insists that his feet remain firmly on the ground. He still lives in the same street in Akron that he grew up on, still hangs out with the same old buddies during his time off. At the time he joined the band, he was single. Now he's happily married to Jeannie, who works as a computer engineer. It turns out that Jeannie's sister is married to Owens's brother. He has known the family all his life. 

"The film goes the Hollywood route with the whole sex, drugs and rock'n'roll thing," says Owens. "I'm sure it goes on, but it's never been a part of my scenario. I mean, we drink, you know, but there's not even cigarette smoking in a lot of the dressing-rooms these days." 

Owens argues that the way Rock Star has adapted his story is no different from being libelled in the press. He feels misrepresented and exploited. And on top of that, he hasn't made a dime. "It does piss you off," he says, switching abruptly to the second person. "It pisses you off when you have ex-wives and other people thinking you're making all this money from the movie." He has an ex-wife? "Oh, yeah, she thinks I'm making big money, when the truth is I have a hard enough time paying the mortgage and I'm still living in the same small house that I didn't want to live in when I was growing up, and I make as much as I would working up at the glue factory." Surely he makes more than that. "OK," he concedes. "Maybe the supervisor at the glue factory." Owens explains that he is paid a retainer by Judas Priest and receives more when they go on tour. Off duty, he supplements his income by helping his father-in-law on construction jobs around the neighbourhood. He says his wife makes more than he does. 

It's time for the rehearsal. We drive a few miles down the road and alight at a small studio across the tracks from Lichfield railway station. The original Priests - Tipton, Downing, Hill - are already in attendance. These days the trio are all "around 50", their faces a little lined and their heavy-metal locks grown straggly. They seem likeable and unpretentious; a far cry from their preening, cock-rocking counterparts in the movie. 

That said, you can't help wondering about the relationship between the old guard and their new recruit. Owens says his idols are so down to earth and so welcoming that he fitted right in, although he confesses to still feeling a little awestruck at times. But how do they regard him? As an equal, an integral creative partner? Or as a genial karaoke-style mimic who just happens to do a great Rob Halford impression? 

In Rock Star, "Izzy" Cole becomes disillusioned when the band treats him as its puppet and refuses to let him write his own material. In real life, too, Judas Priest appears content to limit Ripper's input to the vocals. There are no Owens compositions on the Demolition album, although he points out that he did write the lyrics for one Japanese B-side. "But yeah, they don't take my ideas too quickly. It's not like I'll say, 'Hey, here's this' and they'll say, 'Yeah, thanks, we'll have that.' But it's also that I have such a respect for their writing that I stand back more than I probably should. Maybe I'm scared to give them my ideas." 

Later, I ask Tipton exactly what he was looking for when he came across Owens's video: a new singer, or someone who just sounded like the old one? "Well," he says, "we had to get someone who could deal with all the Priest classics as they should be sung, because that's the way the fans would want to hear them. But we also had to find someone who had flexibility and his own character. Or at least," he adds tellingly, "his own attributes that we could develop into his own character." 

When I query Owens about a possible lawsuit against Warner, he says that the band is still considering it. Tipton, though, is more circumspect. "Yes, we could have put an injunction on them. But we've learned through many experiences that the lawyers are the only ones who win, and it ends up costing us. It's not the wisest of moves, particularly with a film company." Does he see it as a bit of a David and Goliath situation? "A bit like that, yeah." Once they might have risked it. These days one wonders what kind of legal arsenal the group can command. 

You could say that Judas Priest's 30-year history reflects the fluctuating fortunes of heavy metal as a whole. The band has been there at every metal milestone along the way - helping pioneer the movement in the early 70s, playing at Donington's inaugural Monsters of Rock festival and flirting with synth metal on their critically panned Turbo album in 1986. In 1990 they even found themselves scapegoated by an outraged middle America, dragged into a Reno courtroom when the parents of two teenage fans - James Vance and Ray Belknap - claimed that their sons' suicide pact had been prompted by "backward messages" on the Priest track Better By You, Better Than Me. The case was eventually thrown out of court, though not before the band had reportedly shouted "fuck you" at the judge and gone on to inform him that "heavy metal is great". They were giants in those days. 

Since then, the kingdom has shrunk. After meeting the band, I talk to John Jackson, a product manager at Sony-Columbia, the record company who handled Priest during their 80s heyday. He remarks that while the band still has a diehard fan base, it doesn't shift anything like the number of albums it used to. The rise of grunge, Jackson says, dealt a major body blow to metal bands everywhere. "A lot of kids who were into heavy rock suddenly found themselves drawn to more sensitive, REM-style lyrics. New bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains managed that balance of heavy guitar with more introspective lyrics, and they filled that gap. In terms of sales, what is seen as traditional heavy metal has never quite recovered from that." 

This trend, it transpires, is echoed at the end of Rock Star. Warner's movie finishes up in the early 90s, with Wahlberg's character abandoning his leather trousers to reinvent himself as a plaid-shirted singer in the Kurt Cobain mould. Coincidentally, it also mirrors Owens's own experience. By the time his bootleg reached England, he had been out of the Judas Priest tribute band for nearly a year. Instead he was singing in a new group called Seattle. "We covered Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains," he says. "I was never really a fan of that music until I started to sing it, but it was fun." He says he made a lot more money with them than he had in the Priest tribute band. 

Rock Star plays the Ripper story as a cautionary rags-to-riches parable. It's a film that amps up the contrasts; a world of rollercoaster highs and lows, where whirlwind success begets instant burn-out. But the truth is more subtle and shaded than that. Instead of stepping from obscurity to lead the biggest rock monsters on the planet, Owens was grabbed as a lifeline by a band with one foot in the past. Employed on a modest retainer, his job is to keep the outfit ticking over and to honour the back catalogue on tour. 

As the lead singer for Judas Priest, Tim "Ripper" Owens is living his dream. But the dream, it turns out, is not so radically different from the life he led before. "I wish someone would tell the real story some day," he says. "Because it's a pretty exciting story, you know. The fact that someone can do his dream job and still stay normal. It could be a film about someone who likes sports. Stays at home. Keeps a couple of dogs." Owens mulls this over for a while, then shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe it's just too corny." 

Rock Star is released on December 28. Judas Priest play the Brixton Academy in London on December 19.

You've seen the telethon. Now you can finally own the soundtrack. Or see the telethon again. 

After months in the works, organizers announced Tuesday that the star-studded America: A Tribute to Heroes would be released as a double-disc CD, DVD and videocassette. 

The CD will include all 21 performances, among them such standout tracks as Bruce Springsteen's "My City of Ruin," Stevie Wonder and Take 6's rendition of "Love's in Need of Love Today," U2's rousing "Walk On," Neil Young's take on John Lennon's "Imagine," a teary-eyed Billy Joel reviving his classic "New York State of Mind," Paul Simon playing a haunting "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Eddie Vedder's intense "The Long Road," Celine Dion's "God Bless America" 
and Willie Nelson leading an all-star finale in a countrified version of "America the Beautiful." 

Other performers include Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Sheryl Crow, Sting, Faith Hill, Wyclef Jean, Mariah Carey, Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit and John Rzeznick, the Dixie Chicks, Alicia Keys, Enrique Iglesias and Bon Jovi. 

The five major record labels--BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner--say they will suspend artists' exclusivity clauses and waive all publishing fees so that all proceeds from the sales of the CD and videos will go straight to the United Way's September 11 Telethon Fund. All the artists have also waived their own rights and fees in order to contribute as much money as possible. 

The DVD and VHS will also feature such celebrities as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Kelsey Grammer, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Robin Williams, Will Smith and Muhammad Ali recounting acts of heroism and reciting historical quotes. 

Both the CD and DVD/VHS of America: A Tribute to Heroes are slated to hit stores in North America on December 4, a day after going on sale abroad. 

The telethon, organized and underwritten by ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, originally aired September 21 to an audience of more than 100 million. It was simulcast on nearly three dozen channels, 8,000 radio stations and the Internet and seen in more than 200 countries. So far, it has raised more than $200 million. 

Coincidentally, today's news comes on the heels of some controversy over where all the money is going. 

Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly has been dissing the celebs' charitable works on his O'Reilly Factor, claming the September 11 Telethon Fund wasn't disbursing money to victims' families because of mismanagement and that stars had a responsibility to speak up about it. In response, Clooney wrote a scathing letter accusing the commentator of spreading lies. O'Reilly has refused to back down. 

In Beverly Hills, singer, actor and underwear model Mark Wahlberg has purchased a large Mediterranean home for $5.5 million, according to local sources. The 9,000-square-foot property was on the market for about a year at $5,595,000; area realtors said it took a long time to sell because it is an unusual house. Besides features such as a library and a gym, the house has its own beauty salon, a theater with a projection room and waterfalls on the grounds. It also has five bedrooms and eight baths, as well as a spa complex with a wading pool and pool house. 

Wahlberg began his career in show business as a singer, appearing as Marky Mark with his band The Funky Bunch. He increased his visibility through an ad campaign for Calvin Klein underwear, then made the transition to movies in 1994's Renaissance Man, followed by Boogie Nights. He most recently starred in the films Planet of the Apes and Rock Star.