You ain't heard nuthin' yet: Great Quotes about Movies & TV

Note: this thread is not for quotes from movies and TV shows, but rather real-life quotes about movies and TV shows, and the people who make them.

A few of my favorites:

"The nicest thing I can say about Frances Farmer is that she is unbearable" -- William Wyler

"As a human being, Joan Crawford is a great actress" -- Sterling Hayden

"You don't make a picture with Kirk Douglas, you survive it." -- Richard Fleischer

"Kirk Douglas would be the first person to tell you he is difficult to work with. And I would be the second." -- Burt Lancaster

"Jack Lord is known for three things: his demands, his demands, and his demands." -- Probably an old line, but Lord is the person I read it about

"I don't believe Peter Sellers had a heart attack, because to have a heart attack you have to have a heart." -- Billy Wilder

"They've great respect for the dead in Hollywood, but none for the living" -- Errol Flynn

"Television is a medium, so-called because it is neither rare or well-done." -- attributed to both Fred Allen and Ernie Kovacs

The 5 Stages Of Hollywood Stardom:

1. Who is Hugh O'Brien?
2. Get me Hugh O'Brien
3. Get me a Hugh O'Brien type
4. Get me a young Hugh O'Brien
5. Who is Hugh O'Brien?
-- Unknown

And perhaps my favorite of all:

"I went to Hollywood because I had no place else to go." -- Audie Murphy

 

Oscar Levant on Doris Day: " I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

Groucho Marx on television: "I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."

 

“Come,let’s all go to see Miss Hepburn and hear her run the gamut of emotions from A to B!”

Dorothy Parker

 

During the filming of The Iron Petticoat Bob Hope didn't get along very well with Katharine Hepburn. At one point he told her "If you don't shape up I'll tell everyone you're Audrey Hepburn's uncle"

 

"No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing." Roger Ebert

 

"We owe a lot to Thomas Edison - if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight." Milton Berle

 

"Being married to Troy Donahue was so boring even I don't remember it" -- Suzanne Pleshette

 

At the height of his drug-abusing craziness, Dennis Hopper was married to Michelle Phillips for eight days

When asked about the marriage later, he replied:

"The first seven days were great."

 

Tallulah Bankhead, seeing a former lover for the first time in years:

"I thought I told you to wait in the car."

 

Kevin Costner - "Field of Dreams is probably our generation's It's A Wonderful Life."

 

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

I see it's already been said, oh well

 

"I drove past Otto Preminger's house last night -- or is it 'a house by Otto Preminger'?" -- Burt Kennedy

 

From a cinema usher in 1974, describing his experience with film-goers who waited hours in line to see "The Exorcist"...

"My experience with this movie has just been incredible, especially with people fainting. About halfway into the movie, people start getting very unusal reactions, but the thing that really surprises me is that people faint. I mean, I have never in my life known of a movie that would make people faint. I mean, it's hard to make someone faint."

 

Alfred Hitchcock on Directing:

"When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says 'But what's my motivation?,' I say, 'Your salary.' "

 

I hope it's a true story, that's hilarious

 

One of my favorite anecdotes ever is about Peter Sellers.

His wife, June, answers the door and is handed a telegram which said "I would like a boiled egg, 2 slices of toast, and a cup of tea. Thank you for very much. I'm upstairs. Peter"

To this day, I laugh about this one.

 

During the beginning of filming of Lifeboat, Mary Anderson asked Hitchcock what he thought "is my best side." He dryly responded, "You're sitting on it, my dear

 

For Lifeboat Tallulah Bankhead had to climb a ladder every morning to reach the water tank where filming took place. Whenever the actress climbed, there would be scores of crew members watching her ascent. It soon became apparent why: Bankhead never wore underwear.

When a concerned bystander finally brought this matter to Hitchcock’s attention, at first the great man looked genuinely puzzled. Finally he replied, “I don’t know if this is a matter for the costume department, makeup, or hair dressing.”

Hitch, "Lifeboat" And The Actress Who Wouldn't Wear Panties

 

Roger Ebert:

"It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.”

 

From arguably my favorite director of all-time, Federico Fellini:

"If you see with innocent eyes, everything is divine".

"I did not realise that I was so loved. It can't just be for the films. I must have done something else, but I can't remember what".

 

"The important thing for a star is to have an interesting face. He doesn't have to move it very much. Editing and camerawork can always produce the desired illusion that a performance is being given." -- George Sanders

 

A letter from George Sanders to Brian Aherne, reprinted in the latter's A Dreadful Man. The two men had quarreled after Sanders, fortified by vodka, expressed his low opinion of the acting profession, and when Sanders had to rush off to catch a plane, the argument continued via written correspondence.

December 31st, 1937

Dear Brian,
I was very happy to receive your angry letter, and I am glad I shook you up a bit. Ask yourself this question: If money (greed); loyalty to theatrical tradition (pernicious exhibitionism); rigid conformity to social convention (masochism), are incompatible with personal happiness--which should be sacrificed?
You talk about the theatre as if it had some cosmic significance. As a matter of fact it is pathetically sublunary; a drab and dusty monument to man's inability to find within himself the resources of his own entertainment. It is usually rather fittingly housed in a dirty old building, whose crumbling walls occasionally resound with perfunctory applause, invariably interpreted by the actor as praise. A sad place, draughty and smelly when empty, hot and sick when full.
I wonder which is the sickest, the audience which seeks to escape its miseries by being transported into a land of make-believe, or the actor who is nurtured in his struggle for personal aggrandisement by the sickness of the audience.
I think perhaps it is the actor, strutting and orating away his youth and his health, alienated from reality, disingenuous in his relationships, a muddle-headed peacock forever chasing after the rainbow of his pathetic narcissism.
My love and best wishes for a happy New Year.

George​

 

His suicide note:

 

“God, I thought, what about the writer? The writer was the blood and bones and brains (or lack of same) in these creatures. The writer made their hearts beat, gave them words to speak, made them live or die, anything he wanted. And where was the writer? Who ever photographed the writer? Who applauded? But just as well and damn sure just as well: the writer was where he belonged: in some dark corner, watching.”

― Charles Bukowski, Hollywood

 

Hitchcock knew what he was talking about.