An Even Modder ‘Mod Squad’

How mod is “The Mod Squad”?

We asked an expert at Wednesday’s premiere of MGM’s update of the ‘70s TV classic--Peggy Lipton, the original blond Julie, who was traveling undercover that evening.

“No one knows me with dark hair,” she said, celebrating in a booth at Hollywood’s Colonnade.

Not just that. Wasn’t she supposed to have aged since the ‘70s? She hasn’t.

Lipton took a break from partying after the screening at Mann’s Chinese theater to deconstruct the new teen flick with Claire Danes, Omar Epps and Giovanni Ribisi. She noted that the ‘90s squad packs a bigger wallop than the one in the peace-loving ‘70s.

“If you look at the old ‘Mod Squads,’ there was a lot of space in between our dialogue. This is the ‘90s, and there’s a lot of noise, a lot of music.”

Oh, yes. And Danes’ Julie is a totally ‘90s action chick: She literally packs a wallop.

“I never hit anybody, but when she slammed that guy in the end, that completely sold it for me,” Lipton said.

Yahoo. It must be a girl thing. We also rooted for Danes when she smashed an old squeeze with a suitcase. We asked the Yalie thespianess whether she was thinking of any old boyfriends when she did the scene.

“I’m sure they all merged as one,” she said.

You must have been thinking of some of ours as well.

“Yes, they were included. I won’t discriminate,” Danes added.

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Oh, come on. Being famous isn’t that bad. Look at what it did for director Ron Howard, who enjoyed the fruits of his labor at Tuesday’s premiere of Universal’s “EDtv.”

Actually, it wasn’t fruit. It was pizza. And it was free. Lots of it.

“So how bad is that?” mused the congenial Howard.

Howard takes on the media medusa in his new comedy about instant celebrity. And he certainly seems to like a nice serving of irony with his humor. Ellen DeGeneres as an unscrupulous TV executive? Imagine that.

“She said, ‘It’s actually good for me to play this part because a lot of the stuff I feel is prejudicial, and now I see it’s not the job, it’s the individual,’ ” Howard said. Her character “wound up being very moral. It took awhile.” Howard hooted.

Elizabeth Hurley, who was slinking around the party wearing a red Ungaro dress and her arm charm, Hugh Grant, noted the nudge-nudge-wink-wink in her own casting as a fame-crazed siren who seduces Ed on the TV show that broadcasts every minute of his life.

Hurley hated it when her private life made news after Grant’s arrest for soliciting a prostitute.

“I think we all had quite a laugh at our own expense, naturally,” she said.

About 3,300 people attended the screening at the Universal Amphitheatre, and 2,000 of them reveled beneath an enormous tent on Universal’s CityWalk. The mammoth premiere raised $250,000 for the alma mater of Howard and his producing partner, Brian Grazer--the USC School of Cinema-Television.

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This must say something about the precarious fate of the written word in Los Angeles.

When the judges wrapped up deliberations of the 19th International Imitation Hemingway Competition at Harry’s Bar & Grill last Monday, the honorable Digby Diehl volunteered to notify the winner.

“When I called to tell her that she had won, she said, ‘Oh, my God. This is like winning on ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ ” Diehl said. “She works as a producer on game shows.”

Congratulations, Maxine Nunes. Or should we say cheers, because Pen Center USA West made sure a hallowed L.A. literary tradition was well watered--ferreting out the planet’s Hemingway-est finalists over drinks at Harry’s Bar in Century City. The event, also a celebration of Papa’s 100th birthday, benefits Pen.

“We assemble around 4:30,” Diehl said at 6:30 of his hardy band of judges, which also included Ray Bradbury. “We sit around and argue and drink. We used to do more drinking, but now we do more arguing.”

As the dust of battle cleared, the combatants surveyed the remains.

“We’ve now been reduced to choosing funny over Hemingway-esque,” Diehl said.

And it was good. Or at least it was funny. And now, a bit of the winning entry: “The young intern flashed her thong at me, and it was good. And it was also bad because I thought about my wife in a thong and knew she would look like a jambon that hangs in the windows of the charcuteries along the Rue de Buci. It was a long time since I had cheated on my wife, maybe even many hours or many days.”

Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.