May 14, 2010 | celebrities,lists
If there’s ever going to be a book that will rival Motley Crue’s The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Dangerous Rock Band in drug-fueled excess it’s the forthcoming Keith Richards autobiography. He promises it’ll be a “kaleidoscopic bunch of experiences”—as only someone who nearly died falling out of a tree, punctured a lung in a car accident, battled heroin, been in and out of jail, nearly electrocuted, knocked unconscious by flying garbage and had two homes burn to the ground can have and be lucky enough to still express.
In the interim, we’ll have to make do with the following instances Keef—the lifelong thwarter of Death Pools— has made it onto the printed page with this, our list of the Top 20 Keith Richards Quotes.
20. “I’m Sagittarius, half-man, half-horse, with a license to shit in the street.”
19. “In the business of crime there’s two people involved, and that’s the criminal and the cops. It’s in both their interests to keep crime a business, otherwise they’re both out of a job.”
18. “If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”
17. “You can’t accuse me of anything I haven’t already confessed to.”
16. “A painter’s got a canvas. The writer’s got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.”
15. “I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up in little bits of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared. It went down pretty well and I’m still alive.”
14. “I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.”
13. “Anything you throw yourself into, you better get yourself out of.”
12. “My epitaph will be: “Fuckers! I told you I wasn’t feeling well!”
11. “Love wears a white Stetson.”
10. “I don’t sit in trees anymore.”
9. “I’ve got nothing against daylight. I don’t live totally nocturnally. Only when I feel like it. Which is most of the time.”
8. “I hate predictions. They never turn out when I make them.”
7. “I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.”
6. ”Playing live with the Stones is like living in your own separate country. It’s like having an empire but no land.”
5. “What is life but playing with time?”
4. “Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.”
3. ”Yes, I’ve been trepanned. I’ve got pictures of it. They cut my head, brain, skull open, went in and pulled out the crap and put some back in again.”
2. “We all have our own personal laboratories. Life is an experiment, and it’s just a matter of getting the alchemical or chemical combination right.”
1. ”To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.”
For more, check out Jessica Pallington West’s fun book: What Would Keith Do? Daily Affirmations from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor.
April 19, 2010 | celebrities
Most men will go to great lengths – crafting intricate alibis, frequenting all-night dry-cleaners, bribing the family pet – to avoid being caught two-timing their spouses.
Horrified by tales of divorced men who were found cheating and left with nothing but a toaster and a fork (and a diagram suggesting on how the two could best be employed in tandem) from their vast fortunes, the need to keep “what she doesn’t know” from “not hurting her” becomes all the more pressing. Some poor slobs however just do not have luck, or perhaps it’s brains, on their side when it comes to keeping news of their carnal expeditions from reaching their wives.
Larry King is one such guy.
King, who’s been at his amphibious perch behind a CNN desk for twenty years plus, is alleged to have made a play for his wife’s sister of all people, while his wife, more appropriately, made a play for their son’s little league baseball coach. [Editors' note: One of their sons is named Cannon, who'd be a great future cast member of Donald Trump's reality show; "Cannon, you're fired". For those keeping score at home, King's sister-in-law is Shannon].
Larry (who has had a different wife for every day of the week) and most recent ex-wife Shawn, just filed for divorce after an infidelity scandal the likes of which Sylvia Browne could not have predicted—given that psychics are unable to predict anything.
Of course, who knows how much King and wife knew about and tolerated each other’s escapades?
Jim Carrey, would-be couples therapist, commenting on the Tiger Woods situation opined in 140-characters or less, “No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity… Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason.”
Speaking of Tweets, a new book is pointing out that birds are not nearly as monogamous as previously believed.
According to a Toronto biologist and author of The Bird Detective, “There are a number of theories about why birds go their separate ways. One hypothesis is that birds that are genetically or behaviourally incompatible separate when both can benefit from finding a new partner.”
Time will tell if old bird Larry will shack up with any new chicks.
March 31, 2010 | celebrities
Anyone watching Inside The Actors’ Studio for the first time would be forgiven for assuming that the interviewees did at some point within the past 24 hours regenerate a spinal cord or help a leper perform his morning ablutions. James Lipton – him of the fawning and sexually ambiguous interview – treats his guests as gods descended to Earth, who can only stay for as long as it takes to tell us mortals what their least favorite sound is. For his part, Lipton often seems on the verge of a central nervous system collapse, so overcome is he at the gift of being able to bask in Mickey Rourke’s whiskey fumes.While he might be the most consistent source of ego-stroking for actors outside the moochers who surround them, he is not alone. The veneration in which actors hold themselves was clearly demonstrated in our blog detailing the Top 10 Most Obnoxious Oscar Moments.
It’s also evident whenever actors get carried away talking about their craft and the schools of acting – classical, in which an actor’s life experiences differ drastically from those of the character being played, and method, whereby you draw upon your life experiences for a scene – conjuring up images of Slippy the Hamster distending the belly of the neighbor’s python to bring the tears needed for a scene in which your love interest is run over by a car.
Acting in films looks fairly easy— at least when you compare it to landing a plane or removing a gall bladder. Theatre would be tougher as a live audience gives immediate feedback—chatting during the main course, sneaking out for a smoke, being on a different plane of wakefulness—than the relatively small, indifferent group (nude scenes notwithstanding) assembled on a movie set. While stage actors have to memorize say, the soliloquy from Richard II – which contains more dialogue than the Transformers trilogy – most actors rarely have to remember anything longer than the lunch specials at the restaurants employing them.Some actors do believe the hype surrounding them and while they may be enjoyable to watch on screen are unbearable to hear interviewed. Others have a more realistic outlook on the profession and are willing to express it. Here we have assembled 20 of the best such observations on acting: Top 20 Quotes about Acting that Make Fun of It.
Actors are cattle.
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
That said, a blank bovine stare often communicates more than an entire performance by Vin Diesel.
Jaws 4: Should have been a Caine mutiny
It’s much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.
Michael Caine
Jaws 3D must have been his King Lear
[Editor's note: Oops. It was Jaws 4: The Revenge. We apologize as Sharks for this grievous error. However, in our defence, movies featuring large fish eating people tend to blend together]
Only a few of us will admit it, but actors will sometimes read a script like this: bullshit…bullshit…my part…blah, blah, blah…my part…bullshit…”
Michael J Fox
POINT
To be honest, I don’t usually do very much research, especially if I’m working with a director who also wrote the screenplay. They’ve usually done a tonne of research. And they’ll tell you about it from their perspective which is better than doing your own research…
Christina Ricci
COUNTERPOINT
for every In the Heat of the Night there are 50 Kindreds
Film acting would be about 80 percent better than it has been lately if actors did their homework, if they didn’t have egos that took the size of their talent for granted.
Rod Steiger
Mama gave me only one piece of acting advice: ‘Don’t do anything. It’s better than doing it wrong or badly. There will always be violins to give your character the right mood.’
Isabella Rossellini (referring to Ingrid Bergman)
So the wisdom that one of the legends of the silver screen had to pass on to her daughter, a famous screen presence in her own right, was basically: Be quiet and hope they don’t notice.
It’s really basically really easy. We’re not curing cancer—wish to God we were—we’re not. And it’s not rocket science. We’re just interpreting what somebody else who’s much cleverer than me, has written.
Malcolm McDowell
Silent Night Deadly Night 5, working title He Who Smelt It Dealt it
Clark Gable once said to me, “‘Acting school?’ [If you go,] I’ll kill ya!”
Mickey Rooney
Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.
Al Pacino
And for punishment, we’ll show you the lousy film that has been inflicted on the public.
My daughter used to sit and watch Murder, She Wrote. I tried to watch with her, but I fell asleep.
Angela Lansbury
Anyone not wowed by the opening credit sequence of Murder She Wrote — where Lansbury rides around her hamlet on a bicycle — is a narcoleptic.
I don’t see that anybody needs to earn $12 million for three months’ work, quite honestly.
Helen Mirren
Not unless that person has invested time and effort into establishing a successful drug cartel.
Movies today are like fast food. Today’s names won’t become legendary and lead to the next generation
Angela Lansbury
It’s a business you go into because you’re egocentric. It’s a very embarrassing profession.
Katherine Hepburn
Broadway producers are happy to have a big Hollywood name they can post on the marquee, but most of them assume that television and film stars really can’t handle stage work. Too often, they’re right.
Rue McClanahan
Who could handle making adolescent males watching TV with their parents uncomfortable by playing a promiscuous senior citizen on a popular sitcom.
There is only one thing that can kill the movies and that is education.
Will Rogers
That is especially true about when it comes to terrible movies about education, like Dangerous Minds.
An awful lot of actors who are considered very good actors are not very good actors. There are people who just strike gold, they have intrinsic talent but the point is that if they did train…it would only broaden them more.
Martin Landau
The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.
Antonin Artaud
Artaud was best known for his Theatre of Cruelty manifesto—best experienced as the director’s cut of Batman & Robin.
I despise those prick actors who say ‘I was in character’, and ‘I became the character’ and all that stuff…It’s hideous. It’s just masturbation at the highest level.
Johnny Depp
Technique is something that you use if you need it. Otherwise, to hell with it.
Sanford Meisner
Remind us not to visit his barber.
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
Dame Maggie Smith
Also better in your head: The pool of people interested in having no-strings sex with you.
[Reference: The Quotable Actor by Damon DiMarco]
