NEW YORK TIMES

BOLDFACE NAMES

By JOYCE WADLER

And We Thought Wearing the Headsets Was Enough

We have had our tiffs with publicists, but we admire the spunk of anyone who tackles a new career, and when we heard that the former flack MEREDITH MYERS was doing a one-woman show about the anguish of being a publicist, we knew we had to see it. Also, we wanted to see if someone would slap her with a subpoena.

As was reported in The New York Post, Ms. Myers - who once worked for the Los Angeles-based publicist NANCY SELTZER - received a letter from Ms. Seltzer's lawyer, warning that if she broke a confidentiality agreement there would be "immediate action."

Ms. Seltzer, who Ms. Myers says fired her for "gross misconduct," declined to discuss this with us. Ms. Seltzer's lawyer, KEN GLASSMAN, insisted, "It was a very nice letter."

Down to Opaline, a club on Avenue A, we trotted to see Ms. Myers, who has worked on accounts involving BRIDGET FONDA, HUGH JACKMAN and ROBERTO BENIGNI. Most of the people in the crowd appeared to be friends, though during the show we did see some gentlemen whose bare chests were crisscrossed with leather straps - a fetish party had been booked in another room. We also talked with ROSARIO DAWSON, who stopped in to wish Ms. Myers well and told us that she had been cast in OLIVER STONE's film about ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

Ms. Myers - sprightly, red-haired and wearing a MADONNA T-shirt - chatted with us nervously before the show. "I didn't know what publicity was. I couldn't take the huge egos, the BLEEP! the BLEEP!"

Previous employers were not mentioned by name. Ms. Myers said she went to work for "a bitter, over-the-hill publicist knocked up on pharmaceuticals."

The boss's name? "BLEEP!"

"I'm watching what I say," Ms. Myers said. "She might be here. Or her lawyer."

Ms. Myers ended the performance wearing a wedding dress, dancing to "Like a Virgin." Then she threw her Nancy Seltzer & Associates business cards to the crowd.

"I'm not a bitter person," she told us later. "It's about release, about having a voice."

And, as we departed: "So when is this going to run? Because I gave you some good BLEEP!"

with Paula Schwartz and Campbell Robertson