Phone fun with Dennis, Jane leaves much to be desired

Jane Fonda is baaaack. In fact, she's all over television, talking about her new memoir, "My Life So Far."

And so far she has talked to David Letterman, Leslie Stahl, Charlie Rose, Larry King . . . name the show, she's been on it. Including an eloquent and funny speech at the National Press Club that was televised by C-Span.

And, in her first film in 15 years, she's co-starring with Jennifer Lopez in "Monster-in-Law," slated to hit theaters May 13 — in which she takes a real comic turn as J.Lo's nightmare of a mother-in-law-to-be.

As for the book, at nearly 600 pages it's long but never boring.

Still glamorous at 67, Fonda is a very busy woman. So I confess to being excited when her publicist graciously scheduled me for a phone interview from a Kansas City Hotel in the midst of Fonda's exhaustive book tour.

I had to wait a couple of weeks — until the TV hoopla was over. But, hey, Jane Fonda would be worth it.

The 25-minute interview was scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon. The publicist gave me the phone number and said, "Please note, she is staying under the name Steven Bennett."

That's not surprising. Many celebrities travel undercover. (I wondered if she signed that phony name to the hotel register.)

When Tuesday arrived, the publicist called early in the day with a change. Fonda's schedule had been shuffled, so could I talk to her at 11 a.m.? "She will call you from her cell phone in a car. If she doesn't call on time, here is a back-up number where you can reach her escort."

At 11:08 I called the back-up number and got a guy who said, "Jane is just getting into the car now — she can talk to you in about 30 seconds." Then I heard him say in an aside to Fonda, "I know this was supposed to be your downtime — but they've stuck in a 10- or 15-minute interview with some guy at the Deseret Times in Salt Lake City."

Fonda, flustered and tired, comes on the line and impatiently says, "Hello." (She is obviously a victim of the book-tour system, during which the author does interview after interview until he or she drops.)

I greet her, tell her I enjoyed the book (I really did), and ask her how she managed to be so candid without being mean? "I don't know," she says. Silence.

Oh, oh. She's not going to be talkative.