Buzz

Fresh ink
Will Cowtown cotton to another newspaper? Local journalist-cum-entrepreneur Robert Camuto apparently thinks so. Camuto has resigned from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to launch his own alternative weekly.

Camuto has a solid journalistic background as a reporter at the defunct Dallas Times Herald, then covering education, Fort Worth politics, and running the Dallas bureau for the S-T. His last stint at the paper was as editor of Star Time, the paper's Friday entertainment guide.

Camuto did not return phone calls from the Observer to discuss his publishing plans, but in a staff memo, S-T deputy executive editor Gary Hardee wrote that Camuto is "moving on to a personal business project, his own media company, details of which are still in the works."

Camuto has also advertised for an ad director for a "start-up weekly in Fort Worth" in the January newsletter of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Sources tell Buzz that prototypes for the paper, tenatively titled (yawn) the Fort Worth Weekly, are in the works, and that Camuto is scouting for "cool office space" in Cowtown.

Since Camuto isn't talking, there's no word on how he'll finance his project. But the man comes from a family with deep pockets. His father is founder of the Nine West Group, the hugely successful shoe company that Camuto helped take public a few years ago.

Occupied territory
Sandwiched between the Food Network and City Council meetings on the "B" channels, Comedy Central's "Politically Incorrect" brings together the Right and the Left (and the Wrong)--celebrities like Candice Gingrich, Jerry Seinfeld, and Meat Loaf--to debate the issues of the day with host stand-up comic Bill Maher. Sometimes Dallas even comes up.

Recently, Morley Safer of "60 Minutes" was at a round table on "PI" discussing Israel in the aftermath of Itzhak Rabin's assassination. The debate quickly became heated, even obnoxious. (How could that be avoided when Wayne Knight--Newman from "Seinfeld"--was sitting across from Morley?) Safer made the point that Israel was already a volatile battleground.

"Everyone in the country carries a weapon," Safer said, referring to Israel's mandatory military service for 18-year-old citizens, male and female, to which Maher cracked wise: "Well, have you ever been to Dallas?"

Blooming in Utah
Dallas filmmakers Gretchen, Julia, and Steven Dyer are taking their homegrown film, Late Bloomers, to Utah's Sundance Film Festival later this month, where former Observer film critic Matt Seitz predicts this "swooningly romantic" story of middle-aged lesbian love will captivate audiences just as it did at the USA Film Festival and the First Look Screenings in New York.

Dyer supporters are holding a benefit screening January 9 at The Inwood Theatre to cover festival expenses. If you want to see the film and toast the filmmakers at a champagne reception, call 920-2464. Tickets are $25.