NAMES & FACES

Ambassador, musician and now documentary film star. You make us look bad, Andras.

The Hungarian ambassador to the United States, Andras Simonyi , and his band mates -- Alexander Vershbow , U.S. ambassador to South Korea; Lincoln Bloomfield, former assistant secretary of state; and Dan Poneman, former assistant to the president -- are the focus of a new documentary, "Rockin' the Beltway," that was screened at the Hungarian Embassy last night.

The flick follows the guitar-plucking ambassador and his crew, known as the Coalition of the Willing, with commentary from music notables such as Tommy Ramone (he's a fan) and Chuck Young of Rolling Stone magazine (he doesn't like the band's name).

"The ultimate goal [of the film] is to make people see that you can be a serious diplomat or security expert and play music very seriously," Simonyi, 54, told us yesterday. "It really is the story of rock-and-roll and how it affected our generation."

The Coalition of the Willing performs fairly regularly in Washington -- most recently at the 9:30 club and Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- and elsewhere around the country for charity events. "Whenever we do a concert, we want it to be a serious event and a major fundraiser for a good cause," Simonyi said.

First-time director Shauna Lawthorne , a production associate for a D.C. film company and a graduate student at American University, was roped into the project by a friend, Simonyi's daughter, Sonja . "I said, 'Your dad's an ambassador?! He has a band?!' " she recalled. "I thought it was an interesting and entertaining story."

Simonyi has lofty ambitions for the film: "I hope TV stations pick it up because it's a great story about how different diplomacy and political life has become in the past few years." Like an E! True Hollywood story?

Can't Keep a Good Stone Down

Start him up! Keith Richards has been given the "all clear to get back to work" after suffering a head injury in Fiji, the Rolling Stones announced on their Web site yesterday.

The band has rescheduled its European tour, which will kick off July 11 in Milan. The tour was originally to begin last week but was postponed when Richards injured his noggin after falling out of a palm tree while vacationing in April.

Richards, 62, went under the knife to relieve a blood clot in his brain May 8 and was discharged four days later. He seemed like his usual self in a message he posted on the site: "Excuse me, I fell off my perch! Sorry to disrupt everyone's plans but now -- it's FULL STEAM AHEAD. Ouch!!" Glad to see you're back to, um, normal, Keith.

Back in Circulation

Well, this is a new one: Hot Hollywood couple Penelope Cruz and Matthew McConaughey are "separating," their publicists said in a statement to People magazine yesterday.

"Due to busy work schedules and so much time apart, they mutually decided four weeks ago that separating was the best thing to do at this time," the statement said.