LOS ANGELES, Calif. –Demi Lovato recalls with delight “my first — and my only! — fan mob scene.”

The 15-year-old had dropped by a friend’s autograph session at a Disney Studios event to say hi when suddenly a little girl shrieked her name. Within seconds, hundreds of kids clutching pens and autograph books had surrounded her.

“I was like, `What! How do you even know me?” says Lovato, rising partly out of her chair, tossing up her hands in disbelief and bursting into laughter.

“But yeah,” the actress adds quietly, regaining her composure. “It was like, `This is the coolest thing ever.”’

As the star of the latest Disney Channel original movie “Camp Rock” — which the Mouse House hopes will be its next “High School Musical” — it’s a scene Lovato might have to get used to.

“I’m getting kind of anxious, and a little nervous, because there was a picture I saw the other day of Ashley and Vanessa,” she says of “High School Musical” stars Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Anne Hudgens. “They were at a McDonald’s and there was paparazzi all over the place.

“I’m excited, though. For the most part,” she concludes.

Only time will tell whether the Disney Channel can capture lightning in a bottle twice in the same decade. Disney is clearly banking on it, however, rolling out buzz about the movie on the Internet for months, offering various “Camp Rock” tchotchkes and casting as co-stars the mega-hot pop group the Jonas Brothers. (It airs June 20 at 8 p.m. EDT.)

“People are expecting it to be the next `High School Musical.’ That would be an honor if it is,” says 14-year-old Alyson Stoner, who plays budding music producer Caitlyn Geller.

In the film, Lovato plays Mitchie Torres, a musical prodigy who can’t afford to attend a prestigious music camp filled with snooty rich kids until her mother gets her a break on the tuition by landing them both jobs in the kitchen.

Once there, she’s befriended by miscreant rock star Shane Gray, played by 18-year-old Joe Jonas. She’s also hounded by the rich girls, particularly after she’s outed as a kitchen worker, until one of them (17-year-old Anna Maria Perez de Tagle) comes over to her side.

Then, in the time-honored tradition of kid musicals dating to the days of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, they bring everybody together for a show at which the irrepressible Lovato says happily, “I get to rock the house.”

Indeed she does, say the Jonas Brothers.

“She’s a great singer. We’re writing with her for her new record,” 15-year-old Nick Jonas says by phone from Florida, where he was recently on tour with the band.

“And we’ll be introducing her on our `Burning Up’ tour this summer,” pipes up his 20-year-old brother, Kevin.

As was the case when the first “High School Musical” film debuted in 2006, most of its teen stars, although unknown to mainstream audiences, already have followings among the demographic of 8- to 13-year-olds.

Lovato developed a cult following as one of the stars of “As the Bell Rings,” the five-minute mini-show Disney uses to fill breaks between its regular programming. Stoner, who appeared in both of the “Cheaper by the Dozen” films, voices Phineas’ precocious girlfriend in the Disney cartoon series “Phineas and Ferb.” Perez de Tagle, whose grandmother is prominent Philippine singer-actress Sylvia La Torre, plays the tone-deaf singer, Ashley DeWitt, on the Disney series “Hannah Montana.”

“And I’m an actual singer!” she says emphatically.

“Being able to finally sing good on `Camp Rock’ is … ” she adds before dissolving into laughter during a recent interview at a Hollywood studio.

There, the actresses have scattered laptop computers, cell phones, schoolbooks and stuffed animals across tables as they rush off to pose for pictures between bites of lunch.

They say they became friends years before their current project, having bumped into one another at auditions and acting classes.

“I met Demi on a show called `Just Jordan,”’ says Perez de Tagle. “Ever since then we kept in touch. She visited me on the set of `Hannah Montana’ and we switched phone numbers. And then, all of a sudden, we were like, `We’re going to be on “Camp Rock”!”’

The three say the friendships made filming the movie easier.

Even when they had to dance all day long for days on end, they had each other for support, says Lovato.

And even when the movie’s producers took them to a remote location in Canada, “where there was no Internet or phone service and there were bears,” they still had one another, Stoner adds.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Former NBA star-cum-superhot jazz bassist Wayman Tisdale happily reports he’s back on track after recovering from bone cancer last year.

“I’m feeling great,” says Tisdale, whose new Rendezvous Entertainment CD is appropriately titled “Rebound.” “I’m still going through minor chemo and all that, but other than that I feel fine.”

Tisdale says February to September of last year was the worst period for him, but the music “was therapeutic for me. On tough days I stayed in bed, but between family, loved ones and my music, that’s what kept me going.” He adds, “I wrote about the whole experience in the song ‘Grateful’ — it says it all in the lyrics. And I got (gospel legend) Marvin Sapp to sing that.”

An unexpected treat on Tisdale’s eighth CD, being released  Wednesday (6/3), is country superstar Toby Keith singing the late, great Barry White’s classic hit, “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up.” “That was Toby’s idea,” says Tisdale. “We’re good friends and had talked about doing something together for a while. We were supposed to do an original song, but he hit me with the Barry White tune and I fell off the couch. He just nailed it. We were like, ‘Wow.’ It just floored everybody.”

TEEN SCENE: The Jonas Brother’s “Camp Rock” leading lady Demi Lovato says the collective young hotties are definitely an oxymoron in her book. “You don’t find three good, humble, classic gentleman rock stars…there’s no such thing, you know what I mean?” says Lovato, who plays the love interest of Joe Jonas’ character in the Disney Channel movie debuting June 20.  “They’re rock stars, but yet when they get off stage they’re nerds and gentlemen and they’re like humble — just great guys.”

Lovato has had to put recording of her solo debut album temporarily on a back burner to make a Disney Channel Original Movie “Princess Protection Program” with long-time pal Selena Gomez — then go out on tour as opening act with The Jonas Brothers. Their Burning Up concert trek launches July 4. The 15-year-old Dallas-born beauty adds, “I write my own songs and I’ve been co-writing with the Jonas Brothers too.  They’re producing it,” she says of the album.

Demi displays some powerhouse vocals in “Camp Rock” but says her off-screen style is much different. “My personal sound is more rock than pop. I love listening to rock music, so to be able to record it and go crazy on stage. I can’t wait….”

FUNNY GUY: Lil’ JJ – the 17-year-old comic/rapper/actor/musician rising star of Nickelodeon’s “Just Jordan” series – reports he’s now set to go before the cameras mid month playing Ice Cube’s son in “Janky Promoters.”  That’s the Dimension Films caper comedy about concert promoters who find themselves in a heap of complications trying to book a rapper to do a show.  “I’ve seen different people promote different shows and seen how it works.  I don’t think people know how much drama everyone goes through behind the scenes to get that done,” notes the energetic multi-talent, born James Charles Lewis.

As a fan of the rap giant cum film director, producer and star (“Are We There Yet?”), Lil’ JJ has been hoping to work with Ice Cube for years.  “I’d always see him different places.  I’d say, ‘We’re going to work together soon.’  And he’d say, ‘All right.  Just let me know.’ When I auditioned, I just gave it my all. This is going to be hot!”

Lil JJ will go from shooting the film into touring with his stand-up – and working on his next music album at the same time.  “We try to fill the whole summer up. We try to fill the rest of the year up, the rest of ’08, to work every day and not slow down,’” he lets us know.  Right now, he’s busy launching his “Almost Grown” comedy DVD – “a family show that’s clean, you know?”  It drops tomorrow (6/3).  “I’m going to all 50 states, everywhere, every city” to do comedy and promotion, he says. “I need to go to (where “Just Jordan” is now airing) and go holler at some people and find out what’s going on there. I’m hoping the DVD will be in stores in , too.  I’m going to the moon.  I want do a show on the moon.”

Gee, we weren’t sure he was exaggerating until that moon part.

LOOK OUT WORLD: The upcoming indie film “American Inquisition” stars Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton and Xzbit — but it’s a young actress named Nicole Behaire who steals the show, reports Michael O’Keefe. “She plays the lead in the film,” says O’Keefe of the movie about a young woman unlawfully arrested in East Texas. “She just graduated from Juilliard and she’s only done two films but I really think she’s special. It’s a real opportunity for Nicole to break out as a star. For lack of a better image, she strikes me as a black Audrey Hepburn. She’s diminutive in size, but she’s got this gigantic personality.” The film, he says, is “a true story. The D.A. in a town in east Texas decided he was going to do a sweep of his annual drug busts in the projects and arrested 28 people. Twenty pled to a lesser charge, 7 pled guilty but this one woman, Dee Roberts, decided to plead innocent and fight the charges. She sat in jail for two months without going to trial. The ACLU heard about her case, took it and got the charges dismissed. Then they sued the district attorney and the drug task force, and they won. I play the corrupt district attorney – or as I like to refer to him ‘the racist b—h! That’s how I was introducing myself to everyone on the set.”