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Sensing an opportunity to linger in the fleeting spotlight of a cameo in yesterday's Page Six item about CAA agent Kevin Huvane saving actress Ellen Barkin from a pre-Oscar choking death, former action star Sylvester Stallone today set the record straight on his non-intervention in the esophageal blockage:

SYLVESTER Stallone took issue with our witness who said he sat "dumbfounded" while Ellen Barkin choked at dinner at the Tower Bar in L.A. last weekend. "I had no idea [Barkin] was in the restaurant," Sly told us yesterday. "If she was coughing or dying, she was doing it politely. I would have been more than happy to reach down her throat or squeeze her hard - harder than [Barkin's agent and rescuer] Kevin Huvane did. I just want to set the record straight - 'sat there dumbfounded?' Please, I would have rallied - just to avoid paying the bill!"

Barkin's surely relieved that Sly was not the first one on the scene, as the actor's brute force approach to a routine choking rescue might have had fatal complications; suffocating on Stallone's throat-probing fist or having her lungs punctured by violently snapped ribs are unquestionably worse fates than gagging on some underchewed food. However, Stallone has made an important contribution to this story by realizing the disruption of the Hollywood social order caused by an agent grabbing a headline from the talent and taking this bold, if slightly desperate-seeming, step to correct the story.