But “We Hear” Is So Entertaining!

Doug Dechert writes in the New York Press about how it works when Page Six is running on all cylinders:

In early March of 2002, I was in Langan’s on 47th Street during happy hour, and through the crowded room I spotted Chris Wilson with The Observer’s George Gurley having an animated conversation with Barry Levine and Courtney Callahan from the National Enquirer. As I sidled over to the huddle with my back turned (some uncharitably disposed readers might call this eavesdropping), I was able to discern Wilson making an emphatic case to Levine, the Enquirer’s editor, that he and Gurley could give him the girl they insisted was then having an affair with Sopranos star James Gandolfini. Wilson said, “She won’t admit to you that she fucked him, but we’ll tell you as ‘sources’ that she did. And you can quote from Page Six on top of that.”

Later on, I asked Callahan what that was all about, and she told me that Wilson and Gurley were encouraging the Enquirer to print a story echoing the one Wilson was doing for Page Six about Cynthia Demoss, a girl who told them she was Gandolfini’s mistress. Callahan asked me to look into it for her, and so I did.

I found out that Gandolfini was a habitué of Gaslight on 14th street, a joint where he’d had several encounters with Demoss. The staff there made a convincing argument to me that Demoss was a creepy barfly who seemed to be stalking Gandolfini until they finally had to eighty-six her. Peter Collins, the bar’s owner, told me that there was no way his friend Gandolfini had ever gone home with her. “The chick was such a pain in the ass,” he said “I mean, she used to steal the customers’ drinks.” I reported to Callahan that the whole thing looked like a set up.

Weeks after that conspiracy was launched at Langan’s, the Demoss story received a blind item in Page Six, three more items naming names in Page Six, a long piece in Cindy Adams’ Post column, an Enquirer feature story and even a Gurley interview (at length) in The Observer. Who knows how much this spurious nonsense contributed to the eventual breakup of Gandolfini’s marriage and family? As a PR campaign for a struggling actress, it showed some determination on the part of two guys for whom misrepresentation has possibly become second nature.