2001: A Trace of Oddity, and More

Somehow 2001 didn’t turn out quite the way Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had imagined. It was a year when the most talked-about critic in America was Dave Manning, an imaginary film reviewer invented by Sony Pictures who gave rave blurbs to a host of duds released by the studio. It was a year when $2-million-a-picture actress Winona Ryder got picked up for allegedly shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue and $20-million-a-picture star John Travolta was so cold that the studio releasing “Swordfish” stuck him in the background of its ads with the lesser-known supporting players.

It was also a year when starlet Jennifer Lopez insisted that her dressing rooms be stocked with white muslin and lilies, film crews had to secure permission to speak to Martin Lawrence on his movie sets and Ben Stiller took six different credits on his film “Zoolander.” Here’s a look back at a few of the year’s other strange moments and dubious achievements:

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Eddie Murphy Impersonator of the Year: Just hours after being convicted of attempted murder this July, Kevin Jerome Pullum escaped from Los Angeles’ Twin Towers jail using a fake identification card with a picture of Eddie Murphy clipped from a newspaper ad for “Dr. Doolittle 2.”

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Do They Make a Thomas Bros. Map for New York?: Introducing “Serendipity” at its premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Miramax czar Harvey Weinstein praised the film as “a movie about New York--and filmed in New York,” despite the fact that much of the movie was shot in Toronto and one of its scenes mistakenly located the New York Times building on 42nd street instead of 43rd street.

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But Maybe He’s Responsible for Tara Reid Dumping Carson Daly: When the tabloids pointed an accusing finger at George Clooney as the source of the Julia Roberts-Benjamin Bratt split, Clooney pleaded not guilty, saying, “I was too busy breaking up Tom and Nicole.”

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King for a Day, Take One: “I have a cameo role in the movie ‘America’s Sweethearts,’ opening Friday. That said, it is one of the funniest comedies to come down the pike in years.” Larry King, USA Today, July 16, 2001.

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And Now Direct From the Dave Manning School of Mathematics: To promote the DVD release of “America’s Sweethearts,” Sony Pictures took out trade ads proclaiming “$100 Million Box Office Is Sweet!” even though the film actually only grossed $94 million during its domestic theatrical run.

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We Had an Inkling the Voting Wasn’t Unanimous: Although the New York Film Critics Circle named David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” as best film of the year, New York Observer critic Rex Reed called it “the worst movie I’ve seen this year, a load of moronic and incoherent garbage that started out as a rejected TV pilot and predictably ended up at the New York Film Festival, where pretentious poseurs sit with their eyes glued to the screen as long as the projector is running.

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Are These Guys Ready for “Celebrity Death Match” or What?: Stung by director Kevin Smith’s charge that the surprise ending of “Planet of the Apes” was brazenly lifted from one of Smith’s “Jay and Silent Bob” comic books, “Apes” director Tim Burton retorted that “anybody who knows me knows that I don’t read comic books, and I especially wouldn’t read anything that was created by Kevin Smith.”

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Coming Next Summer: Disney’s “Darn the Torepedos”: In a key scene in “Pearl Harbor,” Alec Baldwin, playing Col. Jimmy Doolittle, tells his men that if he’s shot down during a retaliatory raid on Tokyo, he plans to “kill as many of those bastards as possible.” But in the version of “Pearl Harbor” Disney released in Japan this year, the subtitles for the Doolittle remark read: “I myself would choose a tasty target.”

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King for a Day, Take Two: “Put aside that I make a cameo appearance in the film ‘Dave.’ Ivan Reitman’s latest is one of the funniest movies to come down the pike in a long time.” Larry King, USA Today, April 26, 1993.

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Soon He’ll be Saying the Baby Looks an Awful Lot Like George Clooney: After actress Elizabeth Hurley named Steve Bing as the father of her child, due in April, the film producer released a statement disputing her, saying he and Hurley “were not in an exclusive relationship when she became pregnant.”

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And Now That You Mentioned It, I’m Not Sure I Directed It Either: Asked why her movie adaptation of Beverly Donofrio’s memoir “Riding in Cars With Boys” left out so many major parts of the author’s life, director Penny Marshall responded: “What can I say? I didn’t write it.”

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But That’s Not at All Why the Studio Postponed the Movie’s Release for Six Months: Even though “Rollerball” director John McTiernan took Ain’t It Cool News’ Harry Knowles to New York in his private jet to see an early screening of the upcoming MGM action movie, the online movie critic still panned the film, calling it “amateurish, nonsensical and a complete embarrassment.”

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But, Honey, Don’t Throw Away That Costco Card Just Yet: After being paid $1 million to star in “Legally Blonde,” actress Reese Witherspoon told Time magazine that after the movie opened big, she told husband Ryan Phillippe, “This might be it. We might finally get air-conditioning,” adding that “there’s this whole fallacy that because you’re in the movies, you make a load of money. But you really don’t.”

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As a Matter of Fact, Think of Them as Your Mother-in-Law: Interviewed by ABC News several weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, actor Richard Gere said he worried about “the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. If you can see the terrorists as a relative who’s dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion, there’s nothing better.”

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King for a Day, Take Three : “Even though I appear as myself in ‘Crazy People,’ you’ll have to take my objective view that it’s one of the funniest movies to come down the pike in a long, long time.” Larry King, USA Today, March 19, 1990.

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Imagine How Long It Would’ve Taken Him to Get to the “Pearl Harbor” Premiere Party: Even though the post-premiere party for “Baby Boy” was held directly across the street from the theater the film screened in, it took co-star Snoop Dogg an hour and a half to cross the street, according to an account of the party in Variety. After his car failed to start, the hip-hop star and a posse of bodyguards eventually boarded a tour bus that ferried them across the street to the after-party.

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“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.