Anyone who has read about the Golden Age of Hollywood knows that part of the job of the studio system was to protect the actors and actresses that worked within its ranks. Sure, gossip-columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons dished the available dirt; but for the most part, celebrities were protected from their worst enemies - mainly themselves. Publicity machines whose job it was to crank-out good news to the press were well-oiled and successful in their goal by keeping a tight rein on the miscreants and loose-cannons whose household names were the industry’s bread-and-butter.
“I hope my child will be a good Catholic like me...”
pop star Madonna
In the years since, the collapse of the studio system together with an ever-hungry and at-times less-than-scrupulous press has replaced order with chaos. To be fair, it stands to reason that the more one is interviewed, the more open the opportunity for foot-in-mouth disease. Like most challenges in life, being Media Savvy requires the steel-trap mind of a politician and the charm of a snake-oil salesman.
“Sit by the homely girl - you’ll look better by comparison”
Debra Maffett, Miss America, 1982
Which is why Stupid Celebrities: Over 500 of the Most Idiotic Things Ever Said by Famous People doesn’t contain many quotes from politicians. No, the Gerald Fords and Bill Clintons of the world will eventually have their own shelf (or section) at your local library; here authors Ross and Kathryn Petras concentrate on the Einsteins of the entertainment industry for their calcified cranial discombobulations.
“There’s no stopping the future”
baseball great Yogi Berra
A short introduction maps-out the contradictorily sad and hilarious journey that follows when people with more money than brains wax pathetic.. er... prophetic. Folks such as Madonna, Howard Stern and Donald Trump are represented, but their quotes are less effective in that stupidity is their stock-in-trade. The real fun lies with the slip-of-the-tongue quotes from people such as director Michael Curtiz: “When I see the pictures you play in the theater, it makes the hair stand on the edge of my seat”; although there is also gold to be mined in the between rehab ramblings of actor Robert Downey, Jr.: “A lot of my peer group think I’m an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle or something somewhere on my body. That’s okay.” If you say so, Bob...
“I’m the Hiroshima of love..."
actor Sylvester Stallone
Some celebs are over-represented with several quotes, such as occurs with Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore. Ms. Shields offers conventional wisdom: “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life”. Unfortunately, most of Ms. Barrymore’s quotes are totally raunchy or other-worldly and, as such, are more esoteric than entertaining. Supermodel Tyra Banks has a simpler view of the world: “I haven’t seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Louvre. I haven’t seen anything. I don’t really care.”
”A squid, as you know of course, has ten testicles”
television chef Graham Kerr
At six inches square and 240 pages in length, Stupid Celebrities: Over 500 of the Most Idiotic Things Ever Said by Famous People represents a powerhouse of popular people perverting English proper. This appears to be an on-going project for the authors, as they encourage us regular folk to submit to them such incidence of idiocy we may happen to bear witness to in the course of our less-than-glamorous lives.
“I’m not a bus-station kind of guy, but there are a few players here I’m not sure want to be here. They’ve got a brook-trout kind of look...”
(former) New England Patriots coach Bill Parcells
Come join my “Wacky stuff floating around the Database” Write-Off.
Stupid Celebrities: Over 500 of the Most Idiotic Things Ever Said by Famous People (1998)
Authors: Ross and Kathryn Petras
Andrews McMeel Publishing
4520 Main Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64111
www.stupidest.com
ISBN: 0836268377
Cover price: $9.95 (US)
Price paid: $3.95 @ edwardrhamilton.com
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