By RICHARD JOHNSON with PAULA FROELICH and CHRIS WILSON

November 7, 2002 -- Joni Mitchell's sour-note rant

SINGING and songwriting legend Joni Mitchell can't stand Madonna.

"Madonna has knocked the importance of talent out of the arena," Mitchell tells W magazine.

"She's manufactured. She's made a lot of money and become the biggest star in the world by hiring the right people."

Sadly for fight fans, the feeling is not mutual.

"Wow," said Madonna's rep, Liz Rosenberg. "What can I say? Madonna has always been a huge fan of Joni Mitchell's. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry she feels that way. Madonna speaks frequently about her admiration and worship of Joni's talent. Wow. The feeling isn't mutual."

Madonna isn't Mitchell's only target in the bombshell interview. The "Parking Lot" singer also doesn't care much for David Letterman.

"Letterman treats musicians like the armpit of the [entertainment] industry. He tags you on at the end [of his television show], never talks to you - while he talks to the dimmest actress."

A rep for Letterman would say only: "The feeling isn't mutual."

As for everyone else, Mitchell - who claims she is leaving the music industry forever because the "business is repugnant to me" - had this to say:

* "David [Geffen] is almost like my mother . . . David seems to have an inability to see me fresh. I'm fond of David. Though I don't know why . . . It's a strong combative relationship. He was money motivated, I was art motivated. He took advantage, but he took advantage of everybody - that's the nature of the business."

* Regarding contemporary artists: "As long as they look good, they can pitch-correct them now - they can interior-decorate their music. The artists don't have to play anything - they can cheat, buy songs and put their name on them, so they can build the illusion that they are creative."

* On the music business: "[It is] the most corrupt one of all. They try not to pay you whenever possible. Part of me wants to spill the beans, but it doesn't seem to be effective . . . They're not looking for talent. They're looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate. And a woman my age, no matter how well-preserved, no longer has the look. And I have never had a willingness to cooperate."

* Regarding her 1995 reunion with her daughter Kilauren Gibb, whom she had put for adoption over 30 years ago: "I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter and my grandchildren. [After the reunion], for a year or two, it was difficult. Now we're hummin' . . . We don't have the scar tissue that's frequently built up between mother and daughter."

* On Hollywood: "There is nothing duller to me than a room full of stars. There is too much effort, straining, and they're all exhibitionists. I need a climate of affection. You're not going to find a pocket of affection in a room full of stars."

Waiter recants

EDITORS at Us Weekly are red-faced. Last week's cover proclaimed Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman were madly in love - devoting six pages of testimony from a waiter from Senor Frog's Grill in Rosarito, Mexico, where Crowe is playing Capt. Jack Aubrey in "The End of the Earth." Vladimir Cotelo was quoted as saying Crowe was "dancing, kissing, caressing" the leggy beauty he recognized from "Moulin Rouge." But Cotelo now tells the Melbourne Herald Sun it was all a lie. "The reporter asked me questions over and over," Cotelo said. "I had been drinking and said it to keep the reporter happy. We like to make people happy in Mexico."

We hear . . .

THAT Matilda Cuomo has already lined up Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sen. John McCain for "The Person Who Changed My Life, Volume II, which will launch in early January with a party at Le Cirque . . . THAT Stella Schnabel, the 20-year-old daughter of artist Julian Schnabel, is engaged to Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.

Faulty plastic

THINGS have gone downhill for Rick James since his "Superfreak" days. On Saturday, James arrived uninvited in a white stretch limo at the John Varvatos store in L.A., where David Schwimmer was hosting a Stuart House benefit. After mingling with Henry Simmons, Donovan Leitch and Tim Allen, James attempted to take advantage of the event's 25 percent discount and tried to buy a bundle of leather items - only to be turned away when his credit card was declined. "He hightailed it out of there after that," said our spy.

Words of wisdom from Justin

TEEN heartthrob Justin Timberlake isn't sure how he feels about his huge gay following. Asked about his legions of non-hetero fans in a telephone interview with gay culture rag HX, the pop star stammered, "Um . . . honestly I've never really, uh, I've never really . . . something that I've thought a lot about . . . Something that I will say, you know, about the whole community is . . . that I appreciate is that . . . and the people that I've met that are, I mean, it's so nondiscriminating where music goes that it's . . . it's all . . ." Pausing for breath, the man who took Britney Spears' virginity then burbled on, "I don't know, for some reason I find it in this community more than one another is that . . . you know, um . . . honestly, I don't know. I think, uh . . . I never really thought about it. I hope that, uh, all types of different people, they like it, I mean, 'cause uh . . . it's kinda somewhere in the middle of . . . of . . . of the styles that are going on right now . . . I don't want to come off sounding pretentious." No danger there.

Rhetorical query

THE stunning election-night success left White House spokesman Ari Fleischer feeling a little bolder in his usual testy briefing with reporters yesterday. When Helen Thomas, the dean of the press corps - who is more outspokenly liberal than her peers - asked Fleischer if George Bush believed the election results gave him a "mandate" for "going to war with Iraq, privatizing Social Security, weakening the Civil Service Commission and so forth?" Fleischer told the ancient reporter: "Helen, you sound like a commercial that didn't work."

Aging process

IN the forthcoming coffee-table book "TV Guide: 50 Years of Television" - with sparkling text by Mark Lasswell - William Shatner uses the afterword to mourn seeing himself "aging gracelessly" on TV: "I've watched my skin go from a youthful glow segueing to a flop sweat-sheen and finally to moisturized opaqueness." Then he muses on the physical fates of other small-screen stars: "Doesn't David Letterman's hairline make you curiously interested? Is Peter Falk decaying under that raincoat? And the one I really can't figure out is Regis. He looks exactly the same. Botox?"

Scalding tix

THE hottest ticket in town tonight is the Robin Hood Foundation's Bon Jovi concert at the Roseland Ballroom. Gwyneth Paltrow, Harvey and Eve Weinstein, Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman and Liev Schreiber are all on board to catch the 7 p.m. show hosted by Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog).

Spittin' image

AVRIL Lavigne, 17, nearly got caught in a bar brawl early yesterday. The singer had to be hustled out of Lit on Second Avenue, where she had been boozing with pop punkers Sum 41, after the band's singer Deryck Whibley spit in a patron's face. It started when Whibley, 21, who was "tired and emotional" as the U.K. papers diplomatically put it, briefly locked himself in the john. When he freed himself to find another patron laughing at him, Whibley spit in his face. Sum 41's tour manager whisked Whibley out of the bar, before the heckler could land a punch, then returned to apologize and bought the peeved patron and his pal a round of drinks.

Staff still in need of a new boss

MARTY Staff, the hard-partying former head of Hugo Boss AG America, is pulling up his stakes in the lucrative Thousand Islands area of Northern New York. Staff resigned under duress from Hugo Boss last year. Though he had talks with Frederick's of Hollywood, he is still unemployed, and might be able to use $1.4 million, which is what he's asking for his private island and Cape Cod-style home. The six-bedroom, four-bath manse sits on 7.7-acre Pine Island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. "Mr. Staff has been, unlike much of the 'new money' that discovers the islands, a welcome fixture," writes one neighbor. "He has been friendly with many year-'round mainland residents and has helped several of them on more than one occasion by offering them jobs, paying for their children's education, etc. We will be sad to see him go." It's a bad time to put a house on the market. In the winter, the only access to the island is via dog sled or hovercraft. Staff could not be reached for comment.

Well-dressed

THE elusive Patrick McCarthy will make a rare appearance today to host the first Women's Wear Daily CEO summit at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park. Ralph Lauren, Gucci's Domenico De Sole, MTV's Tom Freston, eBay's Meg Whitman and Saks CEO Brad Martin are congregating to chat abut the future of fashion with Vogue's Anna Wintour, Carolina Herrera, Narciso Rodriguez, Lars Nillson, John Varvatos and Joseph Abboud. The sartorially superb group will celebrate with a cocktail party tonight on the floor of the NYSE.

Never too old

MICHAEL Douglas' 79-year-old mother is getting married for the third time. Actress Diana Darrid weds 72-year-old Donald Albert Webster - a former Treasury chief of staff under President Nixon - in her native Bermuda on Dec. 28. The couple met in 1999 at a Washington, D.C., book party for Darrid's memoirs, "In the Wings." Darrid co-stars with Michael, ex-husband Kirk and grandson Cameron in the upcoming "A Few Good Years," about a feuding family.