Raymond Chandler on Hollywood

I hold no brief for Hollywood. I have worked there a little over two years, which is far from enough to make me an authority, but more than enough to make me feel pretty thoroughly bored. That should not be so. The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.

-- Raymond Chandler
"Writers In Hollywood" 

The Atlantic Monthly (1945)

Converting clichés into journalism

Journalists, as a group, have to believe that the act of writing can bring light to darkness, help our fellow-citizens make sense of the world, and compose the first draft of history. The job, in many ways, is about converting chaos into clichés, in order to satisfy the profession’s clichés about its own importance.

-- Jay Caspian Kang

"The Futile Race to Label Paul Pelosi’s Attacker"

The New Yorker -- October 30, 2022

Um, well duh me too

Steely Dan, the band famous for a certain brand of cynical, pristine nineteen-seventies jazz-infused rock, released their first album, “Can’t Buy a Thrill,” fifty years ago. They have retained a core of perfectionistic, hyperverbal fans ever since.

-- Chelsea Leu

"My Unlikely Connection to Steely Dan"

The New Yorker (October 12, 2022)

Enjoy the poetry

It is better to be spurred to acquire scholarship because you enjoy the poetry, than to suppose that you enjoy the poetry because you have acquired the scholarship.

--T. S. Eliot

an essay on Dante (1930) 

I have not found the exact source.

That joke's been done

Willie Nelson’s sound guy, who’s a friend of mine, once asked me, “Why is it that any time somebody grabs a microphone in comedy there’s feedback?” I thought, Wow, that’s true—every single time. And then, with “Silicon Valley,” I was, like, I’m not going to do this in this whole series. No feedback on the mike! In the pilot, there’s a scene where a tech guy comes up and grabs a mike. And the editor put in feedback. I said, “Take it out.” The sound mixer put it back in. I said, “Take it out.” It got all the way to the final mix, and we were playing it back, and another guy who just started goes, “Oh, wait, the feedback’s gone. We’ve got to get the feedback on it!”

No. No feedback!

-- Mike Judge
Mike Judge’s Secret Art of Satire

The New Yorker August 7, 2022

Having confidence

I had a friend in junior high—I don’t know why I was friends with him, probably because I couldn’t get anyone else to be my friend—and “Happy Days” had just come out, and he thought he was the Fonz. He thought he was the coolest guy. I remember thinking, He’s happier than I am, and it’s just because he doesn’t know any better. There’s something to be said for that kind of unfounded confidence.

-- Mike Judge
Mike Judge’s Secret Art of Satire

The New Yorker August 7, 2022

Two and two...

Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

-- James McNeil Whistler
from Whistler vs. Ruskin (1877) (yes, a lawsuit)

How to use the F word

The Stranger: There's just one thing, Dude.
The Dude: And what's that?
The Stranger: Do you have to use so many cuss words?
The Dude: What the fuck you talking about?

-- The Big Lebowski (1998)

Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll

 You start out playing rock and roll so you can have sex and do drugs.

But you end up doing drugs so you can still play rock and roll and have sex.

-- Mick Jagger 

(reading the Top Ten List on Letterman) 12/11/2012

Sherlock Holmes rolls his eyes

Inspector Gregson: Is that Sir George Fenwick?
Sherlock Holmes: Yes.
Inspector Gregson: Is that young lady his daughter?
Sherlock Holmes: Don't be so naive, Inspector.

-- from The Woman In Green (1945 film)
script: Bertram Millhauser
(from "The Adventure of the Empty House" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Bertrand Russell has his doubts

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Bertrand Russell
"Is There a God?" (1952)

*Other* people???

 [T]here were some initial difficulties when the director first told me... that if the film was to have any semblance of reality at all there would have to be moments when other people were on-screen at the same time I was.

--Bette Midler

A View From a Broad (1981)

writing about her first movie, The Rose