THE YEAR IN QUOTES : TWO MICHAELS AND ONLY ONE MICKEY

“It’s working fantastically. We’ve been having a lot of fun. We’re doing everything together because I’m trying to learn Disney’s business. The first 100 days have been one of the most FANTASTIC experiences of my life.”

--Michael Ovitz (Vanity Fair, March)

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“Michael Ovitz is the Antichrist, and you can quote me on that.”

--NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer on Michael Ovitz (Time, April 15

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“Apparently, Don Ohlmeyer thinks more highly of Mike Ovitz than I do.”

--Ovitz adversary David Geffen (cited in the Chicago Tribune, Nov. 15)

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“It’s what we sit around talking about all day. The betting is it’s like ‘The Godfather Part II.’ You’ve got Hyman Roth, who says he’s going to die and pass it all to Michael Corleone. But in fact it turns out that Hyman Roth thinks he’s going to live forever; he isn’t going to give Michael Corleone anything, and in fact ends up trying to kill Michael Corleone.”

--anonymous Disney staffer on Ovitz and Michael Eisner (Vanity Fair, December)

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“We’ve talked about a two-year learning curve. . . . I probably know about 1% of what I need to know.”

--Michael Ovitz, appearing on “Larry King Live” with Eisner (Sept. 30)

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“It’s a lot of money for what apparently was a mistake.”

--executive compensation expert Graef Crystal, who helped design Ovitz’s contract for Disney, on the reported $90 million or more Ovitz will receive in severance pay for his 14 months on the job (L.A. Times, Dec. 13)

OH, SONY BOYS

“There’s opportunity for me here.”

--Mark Canton, suggesting the dismissal of ally Michael Schulhof last December might have improved his prospects at Sony (Los Angeles magazine, February)

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“I don’t feel defensive at all. When you look at us, we’re really a better company. We’re coming off a wonderful ending to 1995 and a great beginning to ’96. All the negative media stuff is going to be far in the past by the time we’re through here.”

--since-deposed Sony Pictures chief Mark Canton (Los Angeles, February)

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“I don’t want to redecorate the office.”

--what new Sony Pictures chief John Calley is said to have told his Japanese bosses, shocking and delighting them (Newsweek, Oct. 14)

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“Who wants to be the person to direct the first Jim Carrey movie that doesn’t make over $100 million?”

--”Cable Guy” director Ben Stiller, all too presciently (Us, June)

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“The fights were totally in their faces. It was in front of the entire cast and crew. They fought over dialogue, scenes, script and even wardrobe. The director would say, ‘I’m the director! What are you doing? You have to do this!’ She’d be, like, ‘You don’t know anything! You should have read the script before you signed on to it!’ Then they would go to their trailers and call their agents.”

--unnamed visitor to the set of Sony’s “Excess Baggage,” on fights between producer-star Alicia Silverstone, whom Sony awarded a two-picture, $8-million production deal, and director Marco Brambilla (L.A. Times, Oct. 30)

DON SIMPSON

“He died of spiritual suicide.”

--Simpson pal Dawn Steel (Premiere, April)

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“He succeeded at everything he ever tried to do, and he’d been trying to do this for a long time.”

--Simpson friend Rob Cohen (ibid.)

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“Don was a guy who spoke very, very highly about a man he really loathed. Which was himself.”

--Cohen (ibid.)

MEDIA & PRIVACY

“He asked me, ‘What are you doing talking to the media?’ I said, ‘How else am I supposed to know you got married? You sure didn’t tell me.’ ”

--fitness trainer Deya Pichardo, describing a call from Daniel Day-Lewis, who she believed was still her boyfriend until the press reported his marriage to Rebecca Miller (New York Daily News, Dec. 3)

PRIDE AND COWARDICE

“I have never acted naked in my whole career, and it’s not now that I’m fat that I’m going to start.”

--John Travolta, on refusing to do a nude scene for the aborted production of “The Double” (Paris Match)

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“I’ve got to show my goodies.”

--Demi Moore, on her $12-million role in “Striptease” (People, May 6)

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“No, Robin is a heterosexual. The reason he has sideburns and an earring is because he’s a circus performer. And the nipples? It never occurred to me not to have nipples on the Batsuit. I’m going to put them on Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl suit too. It’s an equal-opportunity movie.”

--director Joel Schumacher, on insinuations that Batman and Robin bear some resemblance to “SNL’s” Ambiguously Gay Duo (Us, June)

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“Shaq did a kids’ movie. That’s not acting. I can do that with my damn eyes closed. . . . I want to do a drama, something that’s going to fulfill my mind. But an action movie’s good for me to start off. Once that’s a big hit, the next one will be something serious. And if these other things work out, and if I have other offers, I’m going to say the hell with basketball.”

--Dennis Rodman (Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 13)

AGING

“The age I’m at now, you go from being a young girl to suddenly, really, you blossom into a woman. You ripen, you know? And then you start to rot.”

--Liv Tyler (Us, June)

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“There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney and ‘Driving Miss Daisy.’ ”

--Goldie Hawn’s character in “The First Wives Club”

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“When I was 20, I would have taken a bullet in the head to never have to be 35.”

--Michael J. Fox, who turned 35 in June (Us, September)

CHARLIE’S ANGELS

“I don’t know if it was because Charlie [Sheen] was good in bed, if it was the money he paid for her services or if it was the fact that Charlie was so famous, but she always had a smile on her face.”

--passage from the tell-all “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again”

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‘It was actually flattering. . . . That’s the only thing they said about me. I saw that and went, wow! I ate the bullet and went through all this b.s. and then, karmically, these other people are finally talked about in a really despicable manner--and I’m given a compliment! I’m not saying, ‘Hey, Mom, look!’ ”

--Charlie Sheen (Us, May)

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“How many times did Charlie Sheen get to vote?”

--Whoopi Goldberg, at the Oscars, pointing out the number of actresses nominated for playing prostitutes

WY MOVEES ARE SO GUD LATLEY

“It’s almost good that English is Roland’s second language, because he can’t just sit there and listen to the words; he wants images moving.”

--Bill Pullman, on “Independence Day” director Roland Emmerich (Us, June)

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“If the Bible can be rewritten, somebody’s script can.”

--producer Robert Evans (Vanity Fair, April)

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“One day I had to get him underwater holding his breath with a fireball coming over him. I think the word f---head came out in the air.”

--”The Rock” director Michael Bay, on his sometimes contentious relationship with Sean Connery (Premiere, July)

PRIDE AND COWARDICE

“Army, if you call me Larry one more time, I’ll break both your legs.”

--Laurence Fishburne, being interviewed by Army Archerd on the red carpet outside the Oscars (Entertainment Weekly, April 5)

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“This role is so Jennifer Jason Leigh, in terms of taking the high road and just having no shame. . . . I had zits and I went to Milos [Forman] and I said, ‘Look! I gave you a present!’ ”

--Courtney Love, on her role as Althea Flynt (Premiere, December)

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“Sometimes, I’ll be sitting with a really serious director talking about a project, and I’ll go, ‘I think what this piece really needs is a little bit more mugging. And possibly, I’ll just spaz out every once in a while.’ And I watch their faces drain of blood.”

--Jim Carrey (Movieline)

CULTURE VULTURES

“You can’t be oblivious to the fact that, at least in years, you are getting older. But I have so much energy--I never get jet lag, I don’t get sick. I’ve led a very charmed life.”

--Ernest Fleischmann, announcing his retirement as managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, effective June 30, 1997. (L.A. Times, Jan. 27)

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“I see it clearer and clearer that the hall is really the key issue here. It’s not a question of survival in the Darwinist sense, but . . . if the hall were not to happen, it would mean that we aren’t important enough, and that would be very hard to cope with psychologically. I don’t even want to think about it.”

--Esa-Pekka Salonen, on the threatened prospects for the building of Disney Hall. (L.A. Times, Oct. 20)

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“We’re not going to get this thing off dead center without some mega-gifts.”

--Harry Hufford, leader of the fund-raising group seeking to add $50 million to the coffers of Disney Hall by June 1997 and an additional $100 million after that. (L.A. Times, Aug. 4)

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“We are in Las Vegas now, where they have an artificial New York, an artificial Cairo, an artificial Rome. But now has arrived the real Bolshoi, and people won’t go to see it. Why? Crazy world.”

--Vladimir Kokonin, executive director of the Bolshoi Ballet, as his company faced its first box-office disaster in history, in a two-city, four-week tour to Las Vegas and Los Angeles (L.A. Times, Oct. 19)

BUTT SERIOUSLY FOLKS

“My ass doesn’t look fat, does it?”

--Courtney Love, worried about being back-lit on the set of “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” (Premiere, December)

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“You know what the great thing about Selena was? As a Latin woman in the United States, you’re taught that you should be skinnier, that you shouldn’t have such a big butt. You feel self-conscious. I was really thin, but I had a booty on me that you would not believe. But Selena went out there and wore tight things and showed her butt and all of a sudden, young girls were like, ‘You know what? I’m beautiful.’ She embraced the fact that she was Latin and showed the world that there is beauty in diversity.”

--Jennifer Lopez (Movieline, October)

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“That’s a body double. Everybody will think it’s my butt, and let me tell you, I’ll have some more fans, because that girl had a whole bubble butt.”

--Jada Pinkett, on “Set It Off” (Movieline, December)

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“Peters overwhelmed women, always starting his beloved on a regime of buttocks exercises.”

--passage on Jon Peters from the Sony expose “Hit and Run” by Kim Masters and Nancy Griffin

CONTROVERSY

“The people with warped minds are really gonna like it. . . . Imagine the first teenager who decides to have sex while driving a hundred miles an hour, and probably the movie will get ‘em to do that.”

--Ted Turner, on David Cronenberg’s “Crash,” which was bumped from a ’96 release to next year after Turner’s company merged with Time Warner (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 22)

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“I was baffled. . . . What is the need to know its exact authenticity? This is not about what Kennedy did or didn’t do or whether Nixon had a conversation.”

--Director Barry Levinson, on the widespread disbelief that Lorenzo Carcaterra’s “Sleepers” was autobiographical as billed (Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 23)

AH, YOUTH

“I’d walk in front of the camera, and Leonardo would do my line all screechy, ‘Thou or I must go!’ So the next time I’d become really self-conscious. I just hated him, because it came so easy to that little blond, happy, golden-boy [expletive]. He’d smoke a cigarette, do some laps, do Michael Jackson, go on the set, and there it was.”

--John Leguizamo, on “Romeo and Juliet” co-star Leonardo DiCaprio (Premiere, October)

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“Our ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a little more hard-core and a lot cooler. Because I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had to jump around in tights.”

--Leonardo DiCaprio (Premiere, October)

WHO SAYS MOOVEES AR GETING WOURSE LATLEY

“ ‘Twister’ started a whole new era where the story and characters are totally unimportant. I feel the screenwriter’s job is now similar to being a theme park ride operator.”

--screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, whose credits include “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (Movieline, November)

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“There isn’t going to be any take in this movie longer than five seconds.”

--Ed Harris, on director Michael Bay’s rock-video approach to “The Rock” (Premiere, June)

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“ ‘Space Jam’ isn’t a movie. It’s a marketing event.”

--Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin (New York Times)

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“A lot of people argued with Tony that they don’t play baseball in the rain. In fact, everybody argued with him.”

--”The Fan” screenwriter Phoef Sutton, on director Tony Scott’s much-commented-upon decision to stage the climactic ballgame scene in a monsoon (Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 4)

FEUDS ‘R’ US

“I know who you are. You don’t live here, you rent!”

--Shannen Doherty, to new Hollywood Hills neighbor Molly Ringwald, according to Ringwald (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 1)

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“The guy who wrote that book, he’s going around saying, ‘No, it’s not really about Bruce,’ but everybody knows that’s b.s. . . . I think he’s an [expletive] who should have said, ‘Yes, I am a talentless [expletive] and can’t really create anything out of my own mind. I’m gonna fictionalize some [expletive] that really happened and make some money off it.’ [Expletive] him. And if I see him, in my mind, I’d have to give him a [expletive] shot, I really would.”

--Bruce Willis, on the novel “A Place to Fall,” by ex-”Moonlighting” writer-producer Roger Director (Movieline, August)

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“A scumbag. . . . a disgrace to journalism.”

--Ted Turner, on media mogul Rupert Murdoch

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“Is Ted Turner veering dangerously toward insanity . . . or has [he] come off the medication he takes to fight his manic depression?”

--the Murdoch-owned New York Post

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“One step short of a snuff film.”

--Don Ohlmeyer, on Murdoch’s Fox network and its programs about animal attacks