Really! They Did!

WHAT I REALLY MEANT TO SAY WAS: THERE’S A LOT OF LOVE IN THIS ROOM!

“It was ridiculous. It was the most irresponsible bit of filmmaking--if you can even call it that--that I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why anyone would want to continue making that movie. We had nothing. This movie was the complete victim of this drowning studio head [Mark Canton] who said, ‘I don’t care. We’re making it. I don’t care what you have. Shoot something.’ . . . I tried to [walk away] when there was a week before shooting and we had 20 pages of [expletive]. But then I wanted out and the studio head said, ‘All right, we’ll let you out. But it’ll be $63 million for starters.’ ”

--Brad Pitt, on making “The Devil’s Own” (Newsweek, Feb. 3)

“It seems I unwittingly fired up a [expletive]-storm. Let me clarify. My discussion . . . had nothing to do with my experience shooting the film or the film as a final product. I was referring to my dilemma before shooting began. . . . It’s a good movie.”

--Pitt, in a letter to the editor (Newsweek, Feb. 10)

“I wanted to step off the train before it wrecked.”

--Director Robert Rodriguez, on dropping out of “Zorro” (Buzz Weekly, Aug. 1-7)

“Remarks of mine relating to ‘Zorro’ were recently published in Buzz Weekly that, read out of context, are not reflective of my thoughts on ‘Zorro.’ . . . I have heard only good things about the way it is going from my friends and crew who stayed behind to finish the movie.”

--Rodriguez, in a subsequent fax (Buzz Weekly, Aug. 22-28)

“You’ll never meet a more anxious bunch of [expletives] in your life. They’re calling you every day: ‘What have you done for me lately? What’s going on? When are we getting pages?’ I’ll think twice before signing on to a studio film again.”

--Kevin Smith, on working with Warner Bros. on the “Superman Lives” script (Buzz Weekly, April 11-17)

“When I say ‘anxious [expletives],’ it doesn’t mean I don’t like the guys.”

--Smith, clarifying his position; he’s no longer on the project (the Hollywood Reporter, April 7)

WHAT I REALLY MEANT TO SAY WAS: THERE WAS A LOT OF LOVE IN THAT TANK!

“If anything was the slightest bit wrong, [Cameron] would lose it. It was hard to concentrate when he was losing it, shouting and screaming.”

--Kate Winslet, on the making of “Titanic” (Calendar, April 19)

“At the time of the interview, I had just returned to London after months of a long, physically and emotionally demanding shoot, and I must admit that I was ‘blowing off steam.’ . . . I learned a great deal from [Cameron]. The experience was ultimately very worthwhile. I deeply regret that I may have given the impression that I felt otherwise.”

--Winslet, in a subsequent letter to The Times (Calendar, April 26)

KATE WINSLET, YOU GOT OFF EASY

“Everybody’s hoping to get fired.”

--A producer close to the principals on Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” describing the bad morale on a “nightmarish” shoot that began in November 1996 and is expected to continue into early next year (Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 17)

JUSTIFY MY BUCKS

“The movie is really an odyssey of Nic trying to go home to see his wife and child. It’s very romantic.”

--”Con Air” producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Us, June)

“I don’t think I sold out. I’m the first post-Charlton Heston, non-biblical action star wearing sandals in the history of film.”

--John Cusack, on why he did “Con Air” (Newsweek April 21)

“Money.”

--John Malkovich, on why he did “Con Air” (Us, July)

INDIE-ANA JONES VS. THE STUDIOS

“This year’s Oscar race was a coronation of smaller films and the new stars they can produce.”

--Capella Films’ Jean-Luis Rubin (Premiere, June)

“I’d rather have the Bank of America Award.”

--Anonymous studio executive, on whether he’d rather win at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the box office (Entertainment Weekly, March 14)

“I think the studios all feel kind of badly for about six weeks. They feel real bad on the day of the Oscars because they’re not going or they’re watching it at some party. . . . Two weeks later they’re back to making high-concept movies with big movie stars.”

--Producer Brian Grazer, discussing reaction to indie films getting the lion’s share of major nominations (Calendar, Feb. 12)

“There are no independents--they’re all part of the studios. We’ve bought them all. It’s just another way for us to do business. You get less control, but there’s also less overhead and less of an investment. . . . It’s less risky to make an $80-million Event Movie, because you can sell it globally and merchandise it with consumer products. You’re better off making two or three $80-million movies than 15 movies for $20 million.”

--A former studio head (Entertainment Weekly, March 14)

CATCH PHRASES OF THE DAMNED

“I’m trying to get through this show so I don’t say it.”

--Billy Crystal, wincing, at the thought of “Show me the money” popping up at the Oscars (Calendar, March 23)

“We used it once--it got a big laugh. But it’s kind of like the Macarena. The first guy to make a joke about it is a hero. Then the second and third guys are [expletives]. You don’t want to be the [expletive].”

--Conan O’Brien, on using “Show me the money” (Entertainment Weekly, March 28)

“Now that ‘Swingers’ has come out, if I ever say any of those expressions, I get looks and glares.”

--Vince Vaughn, one of the film’s stars, on the dangers of using phrases like “You’re money, baby” (Us, March)

SIZE COUNTS

“A $190-million chick flick.”

--James Cameron, jokingly describing “Titanic” (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 7)

“Cameron has gone Kurtz, like he did on ‘The Abyss.’ ”

--A visual-effects insider, describing Cameron late into the epic-length shoot of “Titanic” and likening him to the errant officer in “Apocalypse Now” (Premiere, August)

“If you want to cut my film, you’ll have to fire me. And to fire me, you’ll have to kill me.”

--Cameron, to Fox Chairman Bill Mechanic, after being handed a two-page list of scenes the studio wanted cut from the script to save money (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 7)

“The movie went from three hours, 36 minutes, to two hours, 74 minutes.”

--Fox Chairman Tom Sherak, asked how much footage Cameron cut from the final print at the studio’s request (Calendar, Dec. 3)

“The Getty has come up in conversation at every Bel Air dinner for a decade now. When you have something that huge and it goes over budget by that much--I can remember when they said it was going to cost a little over $100 million--it becomes like a big movie. Half the town says it’s going to be a bomb, and, indeed, they’re rooting for it to fail. The other half is praying for a hit.”

--TV producer and art collector Douglas Cramer on the new $1 billion Getty Museum (Vanity Fair, April)

INDEED, MOVIES REALLY ARE GETTING LONGER

“I cast Mark because of his 13-inch penis. It’s true. It’s a curse, like having a hunchback.”

--Director Paul Thomas Anderson, on his “Boogie Nights” star Mark Wahlberg (Buzz Weekly, Oct. 17-23)

“I don’t want to go out with someone who has seen this movie and is looking for something they’re not going to find.”

--Mark Wahlberg, explaining why he’s so emphatic in publicly denying he has a 13-inch penis (Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 31)

“It’s sort of an additional explanation of the character we’ve spent two hours with.”

--Mitchell Goldman, New Line’s president of marketing and distribution, on the meaning of the final shot--showing Wahlberg’s character’s amply endowed physique--in “Boogie Nights” (Entertainment Weekly, April 25)

SIZE COUNTS, PART 2

“Who would’ve thought, 12 years ago, that you’d be richer than me?”

--Steven Spielberg, to his “Color Purple” star Oprah Winfrey (Daily Variety, Jan. 27)

HOLLYWOOD’S FEUDAL SYSTEM

“I really think I slapped some respect into the guy. We shook hands and agreed not to bad-mouth each other anymore.”

--Quentin Tarantino, after punching out “Natural Born Killers” co-producer Don Murphy at Ago restaurant (Daily Variety, Oct. 23)

“I didn’t say i wished Quentin Tarantino was dead. I didn’t say I wanted him dead. I just said I’d celebrate his death.”

--Don Murphy, after filing a $5-million suit against Tarantino over the restaurant scrape (Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 19)

“Larry Flynt the Movie is even more cynical than Larry Flynt the Man.”

--Gloria Steinem, on why a pornographer shouldn’t have been held up as a hero in “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (New York Times, Jan. 7)

“Gloria Steinem is an ancient, worn-out old relic whose only claim to fame is urging some ugly women to march.”

--Larry Flynt (Calendar, Feb. 4)

“From the creator of ‘Scream’!” --Sony’s ads for “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” written by “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson

“We’re going to pursue this aggressively for damages. To imply [Kevin Williamson] created their movie is b.s.”

--Neil Sacker, Miramax executive vice president of business and legal affairs, pursuing a lawsuit against Sony over its “I Know What You Did” ad and arguing for the auteur theory in claiming the “creator” title belongs to “Scream” director Wes Craven (Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 24)

“Intellectually dwarfed.”

--Variety Editor Peter Bart, describing Emilio Estevez’s directorial effort “The War at Home” (New York Times, Jan. 12)

“1. Simply not see my films. 2. Drop dead sometime soon. 3. Go [expletive] yourself.”

--Emilio Estevez, offering a menu of suggestions to Bart (Buzz Weekly, Jan. 31-Feb. 6)

IN & OUT & IN

“No one ever said the word. But other than two men, practically everyone I dated in the ‘50s and ‘60s was gay.”

--Debbie Reynolds (Premiere, December)

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you, then.”

--David Letterman, to Harrison Ford, upon being told Ford is co-starring with Anne Heche in the upcoming romantic comedy “6 Days/7 Nights” (Entertainment Weekly, June 20)

“Don’t go there.”

--A displeased Harrison Ford, to columnist Jeannie Williams, when asked whether his screen romance with Heche would be credible in light of her newly announced relationship with Ellen DeGeneres (USA Today, Aug. 22)

“There is no lack of sexual tension on screen. Whatever her personal life is, it’s hers. It’s clear she likes this particular man.”

--”6 Days/7 Nights” director Ivan Reitman, on Heche’s chemistry with Ford (Newsweek, Sept. 1)

“Well, [Bill Mechanic] doesn’t have a crush on her anymore.”

--Fox Chairman Peter Chernin, on one effect of Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out (Entertainment Weekly, May 9)

“More so. More so now.”

--Fox’s Bill Mechanic (ibid.)

“Best of all, it means no ‘Mr. Wrong Part II.’ ”

--Producer Lee Aronsohn, on a side benefit of Ellen DeGeneres coming out (Entertainment Weekly, May 9)

“Kevin Spacey has a secret.”

--Journalist Tom Junod, in the year’s most derided celebrity profile; the “secret” turns out to be that Spacey is “a star” (Esquire, October)

“I will strongly advise all of the agents to dissuade their clients from doing interviews with Esquire as a result of their deceptive and fraudulent behavior with respect to their interview with Kevin Spacey.”

--Brian Gersh, head of the motion picture talent department at the William Morris Agency (Buzz Weekly, Oct. 3-9)

“It’s weird having a girl in the Batcave. My God, people are going to start thinking Batman and Robin are heterosexual.”

--Chris O’Donnell (Entertainment Weekly, June 20)

HOT SYNOPSES

“There are no aliens. Mulder and Scully fall in love, and it turns into this angst-ridden ‘thirtysomething’ thing. Hey, sci-fi fans, bet you can’t wait.”

--David Duchovny, asked to divulge the plot of the “X-Files” movie (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 7)

“The first thing the Christians do is kill the Jews and then, if possible, the Arabs. That’s the essence of the script.”

--Director Paul Verhoeven, synopsizing his long-delayed “Crusades” project, which he still hopes to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to star in (Buzz Weekly, Nov. 7-13)

“They’re just little fairy stories, really, there’s not a great deal going on.... They go from here, and they get stuck here.... There’s a fight there, and then they end up here.”

--Ewan McGregor, spilling the beans on the plot of the upcoming “Star Wars” prequel (Entertainment Weekly, June 13)

AN ACTOR’S LIFE FOR THEM

“I’ve always felt ambivalent about acting because if you’re good at it, that means you’re good at being insincere.”

--”Shine” star Noah Taylor (Calendar, Oct. 26)

“Once that camera hit me, baby, our girl was all right. The only frustrating thing to me was I have no patience. I never have. When we would do scenes and we’d have to do ‘em over and over again from different angles and stuff, it would just get on my nerves. So when I got to feeling kind of irritable, I would just have security walk me across the street and I’d go sign autographs. And that would be like a hormone injection for me.”

--Drag queen The Lady Chablis on shooting her first movie, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 21)

“The problem with improvisation on a movie set is that you can mistake the excitement of newness for the excitement of greatness.”

--David Duchovny (Us, January)

“It never entered my mind that I’d be considered a distinguished film actress, like Courtney Love.”

--Debbie Reynolds, accepting her American Comedy Award (Entertainment Weekly, March 7)

BAD BOYS (WHATCHA GONNA DO)

“I was a sober, nonsmoking vegetarian once, and I was never so miserable in my whole life. No blood? No smoke? No sniffy-sniffy? Why go on?”

--Robert Downey Jr., between jail sentences (Details, February)

“I’ve never really had the time to go to therapy. Well, here and there. But not enough to help.”

--Johnny Depp (Us, March)

“I am consulting by telephone. . . . What to wear, how to act when you’re full of ether. You know.”

--Hunter S. Thompson, on his duties as a long-distance consultant on Depp’s film adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (Premiere, January 1998)

“I guess I was a bit troublesome as a kid. Like, in school, when we had to write sentences on the blackboard and then diagram them, I would write stuff like ‘The baby on the meat hook jerked.’ ”

--’Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson (Spin, October)

“You can’t dive into the mosh pit after a certain age.”

--Courtney Love, who apparently passed that age since repeatedly diving into the mosh pit at Lollapalooza less than two years prior, discussing her sudden image change from punk to glamour girl (Calendar, March 25)

“I decided to move away from the dark, my-parents-are-dead, narcissistic Batman. George Clooney is 35, and if any of us had a 35-year-old friend who was just sitting around still brooding about their parents’ death 30 years earlier, we would say, ‘Can you please get on with your life?’ ”

--Director Joel Schumacher (Premiere, June)

“If I died tomorrow, there’d be 25,000 people at my funeral. Why? Because everyone would want to know that I was dead.”

--Michael Ovitz (from “Ovitz: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Most Controversial Power Broker”)

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS

“My hair was a lovely shade of red, and very long and curly, the way you guys like it.”

--Julia Roberts, describing her mane’s return to its former glory in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” at the ShoWest exhibitors’ convention (Entertainment Weekly, March 21)

“My entire dress tonight is made out of squished Twizzlers.”

--Sigourney Weaver, buttering up a convention of the National Assn. of Theater Owners (Us, June)

“It was absolutely terrifying. As we got closer to the day when we were actually going to do the strip, we really began to examine ourselves and think, ‘[Expletive!] There’s gonna be 300 women there. It’s too late to go to the gym! I should’ve thought of this months ago!’ ”

--Actor Robert Carlyle, on shooting the climactic scene in “The Full Monty” (Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 5)

STATE OF THE FA . . . ER, ART

“The big movies are dumbing down. Nobody cares about logic. Nobody cares about character. It’s all about the number of jokes. Today’s thrillers move very fast, but character used to get built into those slower scenes. Character today is about commenting ironically on the action, especially after you’ve killed somebody.”

--Tom Pollock, American Film Institute head and former Universal chairman (Entertainment Weekly, March 14)

“They could pitch you a story about a little retarded girl and say it’s a franchise.”

--A development executive, on the fever among agents to pitch “franchises” nowadays (Daily Variety, July 22)

“The movies I write--if they get made--take several thousand years. . . . With TV, it’s like I get to make an independent movie every week.”

--”Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator Joss Whedon (Entertainment Weekly, April 25)

“Directing is preventing the bad picture from happening, rather than making the good movie.”

--Eternal optimist James Brooks (Premiere, January 1998)

“I don’t like scripts. I want to make movies without them. I want to start a new form of film: mistake-ist cinema.”

--”Gummo” writer-director Harmony Korine, at the Telluride Film Festival (Premiere, November)

“The grips see everything that happens on a movie set. They’re dying to tell someone about it. I’m that person.”

--Harry Knowles, operator of the Web gossip site Ain’t It Cool (Entertainment Weekly, May 2)

FAME AND MISFORTUNE

“You could take 30% of my fame away and I’d be just fine. It’s not that I don’t want to be famous, but 30% less would be great.”

--Quentin Tarantino (New York Times, Nov. 16)

“Enough’s enough. I don’t feel that when our forefathers made the laws they thought of 600-millimeter lenses.”

--Brad Pitt, on the paparazzi (Premiere, November)

“Parker’s fried. She’s Elvis, you know, at Sundance.”

--”House of Yes” director Mark Waters, on Parker Posey, unofficially anointed the “Queen of Sundance” with four films at this year’s festival (Premiere, April)

ALL IS VANITY

“He’s a consummate actor. . . . His hairline can be fixed.”

--Kevin Smith, who worked on the “Superman Lives” script, responding to Superman fans’ cries that Nicolas Cage isn’t right for the role (Entertainment Weekly, May 16)

“The big movements of history--the 15th century’s voyages of discovery, the 19th century’s industrial revolution--influenced me a lot more than ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Brazil’ or ‘Blade Runner.’ In fact, I was on the same track as Plato, though I didn’t even know it.”

--Director Luc Besson, on conceptualizing “The Fifth Element” (Entertainment Weekly, May 16)

“The pressure doesn’t come from the $20 million. It comes from what people think of the $20 million. The money goes in the bank and you never see it. It doesn’t mean anything to me, I swear to God.”

--Jim Carrey, on his per-film paychecks (Premiere, March)

“Reviews are mostly for people who still read reviews.”

--Bruce Willis, dismissing as irrelevant early critical pans of “The Fifth Element”

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“The chemistry between Sandra [Bullock] and Jason [Patric] is so great.”

--Jan De Bont, director of “Speed 2,” the year’s biggest flop (Entertainment Weekly, April 25)

“We have confidence that under Jamie’s leadership we will be able to turn around ABC’s prime-time performance.”

--ABC President Robert Iger, giving his Entertainment President Jamie Tarses a public vote of confidence in a May 5 statement, just before putting Stu Bloomberg in place over her on June 24 in order to “revitalize our prime-time lineup” (Entertainment Weekly, July 11)

“Baby, it wouldn’t matter, honey. Best supporting actress or actor, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m gonna win both.”

--The Lady Chablis from “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” asked which of the Academy Awards’ gender categories she prefers to be nominated in (Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 21)