A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : Hollywood (Quote, Unquote) 1991--They Said It, Really

It was the year of--for better or worse--male earnestness being synonymous with Costner-ness; conversely, of women with guns and, in Linda Hamilton’s case, muscles; of big-budget action movies that started with an H--for high risk; of semi-public hangings of big-spending studio executives; of weak, recessionary business, broken only by the machinations of “Terminator 2” and then the morbidity of “The Addams Family” bringing moviegoers back into theaters instead of staying home alone. It was a very good year? Don’t expect to hear that refrain from too many corners.

And now, 1991 in loose talk, leaked memos and random quotes:

Garbo Speaks

“I am an Everygirl. I am just a girl, and I am 24 years old, and I just want to have, like, this nice life and be able to run around and laugh and have fun and not sit hunched down with a hat on all the time and my hair down in my face.”

--Julia Roberts (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 22).

“A completely private person (who) doesn’t care about being in columns or having any publicity.”

--Manager Dolores Robinson, on her attention-phobic client, Jason Patric, eluding photographers with Roberts at finer restaurants everywhere (Liz Smith, June 20).

Hudson the Duck: You’ll Believe a Man Can Flop

“More than anything else, this film reflects what I think is humorous. If people think it’s funny, good. If not, I think it is.”

--Bruce Willis on “Hudson Hawk”

(Premiere, May).

“If you want to point a finger at why films cost so much, there is a much bigger target than that and no one ever talks about it: the unions. No one ever talks about how much it costs because of unions, and these guys do put a gun to your head--figuratively, not literally. Unions are the No. 1 cost in making films.”

--Willis, responding to questions about his reported $14-million salary on “The Last Boy Scout”

(L.A. Times, May 19).

”. . . when Bruce left the set and went out to the parking lot, he found . . . his car covered with spit.”

--Liz Smith (June 28).

For Those of You Who Care About Eating Lunch in This Town Again

“I think the right words to describe the book are frank and unflinching, not sour grapes or bitchy.”

--Julia Phillips, on her snippy

autobiography, “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again”

(L.A. Times, March 4).

“Borderline dirty with stringy hair.”

--Phillips, on Goldie Hawn, in one of the kindest of her book’s ruthless characterizations of Hollywood heavyweights.

“We want her to be our proxy in this smarmy subculture, rising above it all with both Oscars and integrity and telling it like it is. But it’s hard to sympathize with someone who dubs Barbra Streisand’s 5-year-old son ‘rotten Jason’ when he instinctively hits her and David Begelman with a flyswatter. . . . At one point in her rambling, Phillips laments that her parents never said they loved her. Maybe they didn’t?”

--Gossip columnist Michael Musto, reviewing Phillips’ book (Village Voice).

Dances With Backlash, Part I

“It’s very easy for people to trivialize what we do, (saying) that if it’s such a big deal how come no one remembers last year’s winner? I will never forget what happened here tonight.”

--Kevin Costner, accepting his Oscar, defending the significance of Hollywood (L.A. Times, March 26).

“Oh, Kevin, why? Why can’t you just be the character in ‘Bull Durham’? Why do we ever have to hear you say your own words? The moment you thanked Michael Ovitz was the moment that 100 million American women fell out of love with you. The moment you referred to your own ‘boyish enthusiasm’ was the moment 100 million women fell into a severe depression because the fantasies they’d been nurturing for years were shattered into bits! Oh, why, Kevin, why?”

--Columnist Cynthia Heimel, on the Oscars (Village Voice, April 16).

“Anyone who describes my show as ‘neat’ has got to go.”

--Madonna, post-Costner encounter, in “Truth or Dare.”

Dances With Backlash, Part II

“I’ve had the pulse of every movie I’ve ever worked on. I’ve known when they were going right, and I’ve known when they were going south. I don’t know where this movie is going.”

--Kevin Costner on the set of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (Premiere, June).

“I’d say mid-Atlantic, if you have to categorize it. . . . We didn’t want to go all the way to British royalty. But we didn’t want him to sound Californian.”

--John Watson, co-producer of “Robin Hood,” on Costner’s accent (L.A. Times, June 23).

“One look, one word from Kevin Costner and the awful truth dawns. The man has been grievously miscast, thrust into a century, the 12th, that knew nothing of baseball, the expression ‘laid back,’ environmental protection or dancing with wolves. Whereas character actors impale themselves on their lines, Costner just brushes against them, remaining 3,000 miles from an English accent.”

--Geoff Brown of the London Times, reviewing “Robin Hood.”

The Great Mouse Detective

“ ‘Dick Tracy’ made demands on our time, talent and treasury that . . . may not have been worth it. . . . The number of hours it required, the amount of anxiety it generated and the amount of dollars that needed to be expended were disproportionate to the amount of success achieved.”

--Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Disney Studios, in a leaked, widely circulated memo about studio cost containment.

“They got the negative cost back out of cassette sales alone. . . . Take his time? What the hell does he mean? He took my time . . . I think Jeffrey . . . works too hard.”

--Warren Beatty, on the Katzenberg memo (Premiere, Jan. ‘92).

You’ll Never Pose With Mickey Mouse in This Town Again

“Phone monkeys.”

--Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger’s reported pejorative for their cellular-phone-wielding Disney executive “enemies” on the volatile set of “The Marrying Man,” according to Premiere magazine (Feb.).

“I don’t give a (expletive) what Mike Ovitz thinks of me. I care what Mike Ovitz’s gardener thinks of me.”

--Baldwin (Us, Dec.).

“There was a lot of agony. One of my advisers told me, ‘You just survived a plane crash. Now walk away from it.’ ”

--David Streit, line producer of “The Marrying Man,” reportedly barred from the set by Basinger

(Premiere, Feb.).

A Road Movie With Progesterone

“It justifies armed robbery, manslaughter and chronic drunken driving as exercises in consciousness raising . . . (and is) degrading to men, with pathetic stereotypes of testosterone-crazed behavior.”

--New York Daily News columnist Richard Johnson, on “Thelma & Louise”

(Time, June 24).

“The louder (men) whine about it, the better the point that I’m making.”

--Callie Khouri, screenwriter of “Thelma & Louise”

(Newsweek, June 24).

“A PMS movie, plain and simple.”

--Columnist Ellen Goodman

(Newsweek, June 24).

Hollywood: Too Darn Sophisticated

“While there is a place for the adult film, or for pictures that don’t necessarily have to be made for the most frequent moviegoers--25 and under--you don’t want an abundance of pictures clearly tilted to viewers 25 and up.”

--Brandon Tartikoff, new chairman of Paramount Pictures, citing the commercially disappointing “Regarding Henry,” “Soapdish” and “Frankie & Johnny” as examples of films that appealed only to a limited, mature audience

(New York Times, Nov. 2).

As John Lennon Said, the Dream Is Over

“I’m the dreamer, Peter’s the insider.”

--Jon Peters, on his partnership with Peter Guber, during their joint reignover Warner Bros. Pictures

(L.A. Times, March 10).

“We enjoy a very tight relationship. Not withstanding the noise you hear from time to time, we are together . . . I adore him.”

--Guber on Peters, shortly before Peters resigned his position

(L.A. Times, March 10).

“It’s possible they are restraining themselves now. But the first year was one of considerable upfront spending that distorted the economic balance of the entire industry.”

--Harold Vogel, Merrill Lynch’s entertainment analyst, near the end of Peters’ tenure

(L.A. Times, March 10).

“I’m excited about committing all of my energy to this new venture.”

--Peters, upon resigning Columbia in May, on his new independent production company

(L.A. Times, May 9).

“Everyone on the street is yawning.”

--Ray Katz of Shearson Lehman on Peters’ departure

(L.A. Times, May 9)

Forget Your Troubles, C’mon, Get Happy!

“This film’s karma hasn’t been very good. It’s like there’s this pervasive black cloud hanging over this movie.”

--Director Barry Sonnenfeld, feeling depressed on the troublesome set of “The Addams Family,” whose luck changed as it went on to open as the biggest film smash of the winter

(L.A. Times, March 31).

Coming Soon: John Bradshaw’s Development Deal?

“Once we got to talking we realized we both knew a lot about dysfunctional families and co-dependency. Sorry, I know people are beginning to get pissed off already just hearing those words. But that’s a lot of what this film is about. Both of us are into John Bradshaw.”

--Nick Nolte, star of “Prince of Tides,” on he and Barbra Streisand (Vanity Fair, Sept.).

“Barbra knows not to talk to me about this New Age stuff. Call me an old-fashioned kind of girl, but I believe in analysis and Prozac.”

--Sue Mengers (Vanity Fair, Sept.).

Silver Lining Award

“If there was a word worse than dismal, I’d use it. (But) in my judgment, this adversity may be the best thing that has happened to us in a long time. We’ve become flabby.”

--Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, on the up side of poor fall movie business (L.A. Times, Nov. 9)

“Of course we can make money on this film. What do people think, that I came to Sony and took an idiot pill?”

--Columbia Chairman Peter Guber, on the studio’s profit participation in “Hook” (Premiere, Jan. ‘92)

The Three Amigos--Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Warren Beatty.