ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

POP/ROCK

Checker Wants More Respect

Chubby Checker, king of “The Twist,” took out a full-page ad in Billboard magazine recently, arguing that he’s one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most important figures--and one of its most underappreciated.

In an open letter to the entertainment industry, he demanded a statue of himself in the courtyard of Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. If he doesn’t get one, the singer said, he’ll refuse induction into the venue.

Checker, who turns 60 today, has yet to be voted into the venue, which is announcing new inductees in December.

“I want my flowers while I’m alive,” he wrote. “I can’t smell them when I’m dead.”

During a recent tour stop in Michigan, he added, “Rock ‘n’ roll did not have a dance until Chubby Checker went on ‘American Bandstand’ and did ‘The Twist.”’

Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, called Checker’s proposal unreasonable. “The idea that we could elevate one individual with a statue out front would suggest I would have to do likewise for all the rest of the people in the pantheon,” he said.

Rapper Injury Seen as Possible Suicide Attempt

Rapper Erick Sermon, who was said to have been critically injured in a car crash last week, is now believed to have plunged from a third-story window.

Police in Patterson, N.J., said they were called Sept. 25 on a report of an attempted suicide. They were unable to interview Sermon, who is being treated for head and facial injuries and is listed in fair condition.

A publicist for Sermon’s label, J. Records, initially said that the singer fell asleep at the wheel and ran into a wall after shooting a video in upstate New York. Another spokesman now says he doesn’t know where that information came from.

MOVIES

Stone to Undergo Further Testing

Though initial tests showed that actress Sharon Stone had suffered a minor aneurysm Saturday, further observation has revealed that she had a “subarachnoid hemorrhage”--bleeding into the space between the brain and the arachnoid membrane, which causes 5% to 10% of strokes.

While this condition can sometimes stem from a brain aneurysm, her publicist said Tuesday, doctors still haven’t determined the exact cause.

Stone, resting comfortably in a San Francisco hospital, is set to undergo another angiogram Friday. “That should be the final determination, at which point every part of my anatomy will have been photographed in detail,” Stone said in a statement. “At last, the mysteries will be resolved.”

THE COURTS

Court Rulingson Shakur, Amblin

In its first day back, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a host of decisions Monday, including one involving rapper Tupac Shakur’s estate and another Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

The judges refused to hear C. DeLores Tucker’s libel case against Time and Newsweek, which reported that her sex life had been damaged after Shakur mentioned the longtime anti-rap activist in his 1996 album, “all Eyez on Me.”

A federal court had ruled that the former Pennsylvania Secretary of State and ex-head of the National Political Congress of Black Women was a public figure and had to prove that the magazines acted with malice.

The court also refused to hear an appeal by Maryland quilter Barbara Brown, who charged that Amblin had used her designs improperly in the 1995 movie “How to Make an American Quilt.”

Though a lower court sided with Brown, she was awarded only $2.35, because the film never took off at the box office.

QUICK TAKES

Much of the material contained in “Beneath the Veil,” a BBC Channel 4 documentary about women under Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, will be incorporated into a book by Alfred A. Knopf. The film, by British journalist Saira Shah, has been getting major CNN airplay. Knopf reportedly paid $600,000 for the rights ....Tom Brokaw will donate all his proceeds from his latest book, “Album of Memories,” originally designated for the World War II Memorial Commission, to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, set up for children of attack victims .... Mavis Leno, a Feminist Majority activist, will appear on husband Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” tonight to discuss the plight of women under the Taliban ....The Rev. Jesse Jackson will appear on the “Allred and Taylor Show” at 10 a.m. Thursday on KABC-AM (790) .... Laszlo Kovacs (“Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces”) will receive the lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers on Feb. 17 at the Century Plaza Hotel .... On Nov. 11, PBS’ “American Experience” will mark Veterans Day with “War Letters,” a collection of personal correspondence from participants in conflicts ranging from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War, taken from Andrew Carroll’s recent book .... Mandy Patinkin will perform two concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Dec. 30 at 2 p.m. and Dec. 31 at 8 p.m., focusing on music from his new CD “Kidults”