Brady talks politics; Adams film settles on Virginia
VOTE FOR BRADY? New England Patriots QB Tom Brady says he'd consider a postfootball career in politics. The 27-year-old, three-time Super Bowl champ attended the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner Saturday night and told ABC News' ''This Week" that politics might be in his future. ''The things that I feel are fulfilling for me are beyond, you know, throwing a football," Brady said. ''It's making an influence in people's lives. If that's politics, that's politics." Brady, a native of California, hasn't gone public with his political leanings or philosophy. He was a guest of President Bush and Laura Bush during the 2004 State of the Union address, and recently made a return trip to Washington with his teammates when the Super Bowl champs were honored at a White House ceremony. ''Whatever I've chosen to do in my athletic career and hopefully in my postathletic career, I'm going to want to inspire people to do more," Brady said, ''to encourage them to be better people, to be better Americans, to be better representatives of this great country that we live in."
STATE LOSES FILM PROJECT A Tom Hanks-produced miniseries on John Adams and its $80 million-$100 million budget are heading to Virginia, choosing to use Williamsburg for filming because Massachusetts lacks tax incentives and other breaks. ''It's gone," said Robin Dawson, head of the nonprofit Massachusetts Film Bureau, who was among those working to lure the project to be filmed in Adams's home state. Although Virginia doesn't have tax incentives yet on the books, that state was able to make a deal -- including $500,000 cash and giving the production the whole of Colonial Williamsburg for free -- to approximate what the production company would get from tax incentives offered by a number of states, Dawson said. The project, based on the book by historian David McCullough, is expected to take at least eight months to film. ''We were close, but they would have had to build the sets," said Dawson. ''It's hard to match the offer made by Virginia without something on the books here." That may soon change with a bill by state Representative Thomas O'Brien slated to get its first airing later this week.
HEINZ AWARDS Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and researcher Mildred Dresselhaus, whose scholarship ''has helped keep the United States on the cutting edge of nanostructures and other technologies," is one of five recipients of the 11th annual Heinz Awards, given by the Heinz Family Foundation. Dresselhaus is a well-known scientist and advocate for increased opportunities for women in the sciences for more than four decades. Dresselhaus and the other winners each receive $250,000. The other recipients are: Mark di Suvero, sculptor from New York City, for arts and humanities; Jerry Franklin, forest ecologist from Seattle, for environment; Joseph Rogers, a Philadelphia mental health administrator, for human condition; and Sidney Drell, a theoretical physicist, educator, and arms control adviser from Stanford, Calif., for public policy.
AROUND TOWN ''Fat Actress" star Kirstie Alley, the keynote speaker at the Simmons School of Leadership Conference on Saturday at the World Trade Center, gave a freewheeling talk about losing 33 pounds, plastic surgery, and described her time on the TV show ''Cheers" as bliss. Alley brought her two children with her. They stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on Arlington Street. . . . Over at Nine Zero, when former president Bill Clinton stayed at the boutique hotel on Tremont Street last week, he was the first president to do so. He enjoyed his room service so much, we're told, that he invited chef Gabriel Frasca and the Spire kitchen team up to the Cloud NINE suite to thank them. . . . Spied at Via Matta on Saturday night were supermodels Kerstin Mannik and Juanel McKenzie. . . . Harvard professor and author Henry Louis ''Skip" Gates Jr. brought action movie actor Chris Tucker (in pre-production for ''Rush Hour 3") to dinner in the Soiree Room at UpStairs on the Square Saturday night.
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