BASSETT ABOARD, `STELLA' IN GROOVE FOR SPRING PRODUCTION.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

The film version of Terry McMillan's best-selling ``How Stella Got Her Groove Back'' could be before the cameras by April - with Angela Bassett as star.

Bassett, who co-starred in the adaptation of McMillan's ``Waiting to Exhale,'' is filming ``Contact'' with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. She has received word that ``Stella'' is on a fast track and that, if the right director is found, it likely will roll this spring.

Prolific writer and filmmaker Ron Bass tells us that the casting for Winston - the young lover in ``Groove'' - is still up in the air, and that the part could be played by an unknown.

The story, as many know, was inspired by McMillan's own Jamaican tryst with a man many years her junior, which bloomed into a long-term relationship.

Not quiet on the set

Tisha Campbell's suit against her co-star Martin Lawrence and the ``Martin'' show's producers - claiming that working conditions on the Fox TV series were ``intolerable'' and that she was sexually harassed by Lawrence - comes as no surprise to some insiders. This column has heard rumblings from sources inside the show for a long time about Lawrence, his mood swings and alleged insistence upon complete control on the set.

``Mad TV'' star Orlando Jones told this column recently he saw the handwriting on the wall when he worked as a writer on the ``Martin'' pilot - and he and others were talking about doing the show without using the comic's repertoire of side characters (Roscoe, Momma Payne, Sheneneh ...). According to Jones, when Lawrence got wind of what was being discussed, he burst into a meeting ``in full Sheneneh gear to cuss us out.'' Jones claims Lawrence told the producers, director and writers that if the characters he wanted to do were going to be cut out, `` `You can cut me out, too.' Then he turned around and walked out. We all kind of sat there for a moment ... and I leaned over to the director, Stan Lathan, and said, `I'm not going to ride this ship to the end.' '' In the light of things, it seems lucky Jones bailed when he did.

From the inside looking out

It could - maybe - be boom time again for flame-haired Penelope Ann Miller, who has a lineup of high-profile projects en route to the public, beginning with Paramount's ``The Relic.'' Opening Friday, the feature has her going the action heroine route as a scientist fighting a hideous horror in a natural history museum, ``the kind of role that would normally be played by a man,'' she notes.

Miller seemed poised for major stardom after making a splash in features including ``Carlito's Way.'' However, her career faltered after such disappointments as the open-and-shut revival of Broadway's ``On the Waterfront'' in which she starred - and after she talked very openly about her affair with the very private Al Pacino. But that was long ago. She launched a new professional push a year ago that's now coming to fruition. Miller is before the cameras playing Joe Mantegna's Las Vegas showgirl wife in CBS' big-budget miniseries of Mario Puzo's ``The Last Don.'' And she has the big-screen romantic comedy ``Little City'' due for release in the spring. ``I don't look back with regrets,'' says Penelope. ``Whatever negatives there might have been were growing experiences.''

Grammified

Super songwriter Diane Warren's reaction to being represented in five - count 'em, five - Grammy nominations? ``I was screaming, jumping around my room. I scared my cat. He looked at me as if to say, `I don't give a damn about your nominations. Let me sleep.' '' Warren's up for Song of the Year honors for her ``Because You Loved Me'' title track for the Robert Redford-Michelle Pfeiffer movie ``Up Close and Personal.'' The same tune is up for honors in the film-TV song category. And Celine Dion's rendition of it is up for Best Female Pop Vocal honors. Two more Diane Warren-written songs have found their way into the latter category: ``Unbreak My Heart,'' sung by Toni Braxton, and ``Reach,'' sung by Gloria Estefan. ``I just hope I don't lose everything,'' Warren says. ``You'd think by the law of averages I'll do OK, but you never know.''

The videoland view

Melissa Gilbert goes before the cameras at month's end to star in ``Childhood Sweetheart,'' another CBS telepic. Gilbert will play a woman who returns home after having been abducted 15 years earlier - and something is not quite right about her. Hmm.

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Photo

Photo: Martin Lawrence

Lawsuit no surprise