Let’s cast the movie in our minds. Shirley MacLaine could play Rebecca Willis, the dirty dancing granny. No, MacLaine is too old. Meryl Streep?

Rebecca Willis was back in the news last week after being awarded $275,000 in a settlement with the town of Marshall, North Carolina. That comes some seven years after being banned from the town community center for dancing in a "sexually provocative manner — gyrating and simulating sexual intercourse with her partner.”

She was suggestive. She was lewd.

She wore short skirts.

She exposed her panties, or worse!

The townspeople (the population is 831) said their children would be scarred for life. They didn’t just ban Mrs. Willis, they banned her “for life.”

Why? Because Rebecca Willis was a 56 year old divorced woman. And when the townsfolk asked her to tone it down, she just danced some more.

For her, it was a matter of freedom of speech. At least that’s what her lawyer, Jon Sasser, argued, after she found him through the ACLU. So the case was argued, appealed, argued, appealed. Up and down the courts for five years, during which time the dancing divorcee got married again.

Now 64, she gave a little dance of joy after the settlement (out of which she will have to pay her lawyer). She considers it a victory, even though she had to promise not to dance in the town center again. “It just tickles me to death,” she said.

The most recent decision came after her lawyer asked the town to prove she wasn’t being singled out. Jon Sasser told First Wives World that much of the town’s attention seemed focused on the fact that Mrs. Willis was divorced.

“Some witnesses testified that she was fine when she was married, but became wilder after her divorce,” he said. “There was definitely an undertone of jealousy.”

On Sunday, October 5, there’s a marathon rebroadcast of the miniseries The Starter Wife, and for any woman going through divorce, this is a delicious way to spend a Sunday morning. The two-hour premier is at 9 am on the USA channel.

The premise: a stay-at-home Hollywood wife gets dumped by her weasely movie-producer husband. Then there are four more episodes, taking you right up to 2 pm and through shock, denial, tears, anger, resignation, and oh yes, having two men fighting over you while you live in a gorgeous Malibu beach house. The actual series begins at 9 pm and midnight (East Coast) on October 10, and you can get up to speed earlier that day asso you need to get up to speed. (And there go Friday nights.)

Debra Messing plays the wife, so you can kind of understand two men fighting over her. But what is it with fictional romances that feature a woman caught between two men? I mean, how often does a divorced woman have two men to choose between? Ok, Nancy Lee seems to have all the men she wants.

But the rest of us?

We can see it on screen, from Philadelphia Story, to Pillow Talk, to Jules and Jim, to Sleepless in Seattle, to Moulin Rouge, and The Notebook. Just this year, in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it was a woman choosing between two guys; in Mamma Mia! it was a woman choosing between three men.

This must be the ultimate female fantasy, a wealth in choice of mates, like superheroes are for men.

Debra Messing as Molly has to choose between a wealthy powerful studio head, and a penniless (but hunky and soulful) beach bum. And this is before she and her husband have even negotiated the terms of the divorce!

It’s one of those good news-bad news kind of things, especially for women going through divorce who have chosen to hit the chocolate aisle in the supermarket rather than the liquor store. It has now been conclusively proven that dark chocolate prevents heart attacks. The bad news: it doesn’t take that much.

The study, reported in the September “Journal of Nutrition” and in “Science Daily,” traced the amount of C-reactive protein, which indicates a chronic inflammatory state, in 20,000 Italians. The protein, which can be found with a simple blood test, is a marker for the risk of cardiovascular disease, including myocardial infarction and stroke.

“People having moderate amounts of dark chocolate regularly have significantly lower levels of C-reactive protein in their blood,” said Romina di Giuseppi, the lead author of the study. “In other words, their inflammatory state is considerably reduced.”

The beneficial effect is due, she said, to the antioxidants in dark (but not in milk) chocolate, in particular the flavonoids and other polyphenols. Decreasing the C-reactive protein level, she added, would reduce cardiovascular disease for women by one-third and for men by one-quarter.

The Catholic University in Campobasso, Italy, which sponsored the study, said that while chocolate has long been assumed to be heart healthy, this is the first time it was proven conclusively in a population study.

So how much is good for you? Let’s put it this way: maybe it’s better to eat dark chocolate as a reward for filing a set of papers, rather than as a way to get through filling out those papers. To achieve maximum effectiveness, women should consume about 3 ½ ounces a week. There is no further benefit (other than pleasure) after that.

So is Divorce Party a novel about a husband and wife who plan to announce their divorce at a party to celebrate their 35th anniversary?

Or is it a movie comedy to be made by Jennifer Aniston?

Or is Divorce Party a television reality show that will show a husband and wife following divorce, and then ask audience members American Idol-style to vote on which spouse was responsible for the breaking up? The “winning” spouse, the one who is not voted as responsible, will win cash.

The answer is that it’s all three.

The novel, written by Laura Dave, is set in Montauk, at the end of Long Island, and it’s about the end of a marriage. As the book puts it, it looks at “the moment toward the end … when you realize that there is something behind this person’s eyes that you were never able to touch, no matter how hard you tried. You can only guess at it, where things really end … where they really begin…”

A second story line follows the divorcing couple’s son, who is about to introduce his commitment-phobic fiancée, no doubt to be played by Jennifer Aniston in the movie.

The movie? Aniston and her partner, Kristin Hahn, optioned the novel before it was even published. If things move forward, Aniston will star in the film, which will be made at Universal and released in 2010. "We're drawn to stories about people finding their voice and finding their way,” she told Variety.

But she turns 40 next year, so Aniston will either have to play a cougar dating a younger man, or change the script to make it a 40th anniversary party.

And that reality TV show? Not nearly so high brow.

The third pilot has been been shot in Dallas for Divorce Party, which was created by Bobby Goldstein, a former divorce lawyer who is behind such classy WB reality shows as Cheaters: Totally Busted?