Million Dollar Picture Quotes

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those well-arranged words are worth a multi-million-dollar motion picture.

The biggest spur to my interest in art came when I played van Gogh in the biographical film Lust For Life. The role affected me deeply. I was haunted by this talented genius who took his own life, thinking he was a failure. How terrible to paint pictures and feel that no one wants them. How awful it would be to write music that no one wants to hear. Books that no one wants to read. And how would you like to be an actor with no part to play, and no audience to watch you. Poor Vincent—he wrestled with his soul in the wheat field of Auvers-sur-Oise, stacks of his unsold paintings collecting dust in his brother's house. It was all too much for him, and he pulled the trigger and ended it all. My heart ached for van Gogh the afternoon that I played that scene. As I write this, I look up at a poster of his "Irises"—a poster from the Getty Museum. It's a beautiful piece of art with one white iris sticking up among a field of blue ones. They paid a fortune for it, reportedly $53 million. And poor Vincent, in his lifetime, sold only one painting for 400 francs or $80 dollars today. This is what stimulated my interest in buying works of art from living artists. I want them to know while they are alive that I enjoy their paintings hanging on my walls, or their sculptures decorating my garden

Facebook, Oliver. You’d know what I’m talking about if you logged in more than once. All you’ve posted is an off-centered picture of a blurry raccoon.” “I’m still getting acclimated to the camera feature.” “You also only have two friends, and they’re both fake accounts.” “They told me I had funds available in a deceased relative’s account that they would help me retrieve. It sounded promising.” A sharp laugh hits me. “You didn’t even accept my friend request.” “You weren’t offering me two-million dollars.” Another laugh that prompts my own.

Local Girl Missing, Feared Dead. Beneath it was a photo of me-my most recent school photo. “Oh, no.” My heart filling with dread, I took the paper from Mr. Smith’s hands. “Couldn’t they have found a better picture?” Mr. Smith looked at me sharply. “Miss Oliviera,” he said, his gray eyebrows lowered. “I realize it’s all the rage with you young people today to toss off flippant one-liners so you can get your own reality television shows. But I highly doubt MTV will be coming down to Isla Huesos to film you in the Underworld. So that can’t be all you have to say about this.” He was right, of course. Though I couldn’t say what I really wanted to, because John was in the room, and I didn’t want to make him feel worse than he already did. But what I wanted to do was burst into tears. “Is that about Pierce?” John looked uneasy. Outside, thunder rumbled again. This time, it sounded even closer than before. “Yes, of course, it is, John,” Mr. Smith said. There was something strange about his voice. He sounded almost as if he were mad at John. Only why would he be? John had done the right thing. He’d explained about the Furies. “What did you expect? Have you gotten to the part about the reward your father is offering for information leading to your safe return, Miss Oliviera?” My gaze flicked down the page. I wanted to throw up. “One million dollars?” My dad’s company, one of the largest providers in the world of products and services to the oil, gas, and military industries, was valued at several hundred times that. “That cheapskate.” This was all so very, very bad. “One million dollars is a lot of money to most people.” Mr. Smith said, with a strong emphasis on most people. He still had that odd note in his voice. “Though I recognize that money may mean little to a resident of the Underworld. So I’d caution you to use judiciousness, wherever it is that you’re going, as there are many people on this island who’ll be more than willing to turn you in for only a small portion of that reward money. I don’t suppose I might ask where you’re going? Or suggest that you pay a call on your mother, who is beside herself with worry?” “That’s a good idea,” I said. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I felt much better already. I could straighten out this whole thing with a single conversation. “I should call my mom-“ Both Mr. Smith’s cry of alarm and the fact that John grabbed me by the wrist as I was reaching into my book bag for my cell phone stopped me from making calls of any sort. “You can’t use you phone,” Mr. Smith said. “The police-and your father-are surely waiting for you to do just that. They’ll triangulate on the signal from the closest cell tower, and find you.” When I stared at him for his use of the word triangulate, Mr. Smith shook his head and said, “My partner, Patrick, is obsessed with Law & Order reruns.

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

In sum, the fruition of 50 years of research, and several hundred million dollars in government funds, has given us the following picture of sub-atomic matter. All matter consists of quarks and leptons, which interact by exchanging different types of quanta, described by the Maxwell and Yang-Mills fields. In one sentence, we have captured the essence of the past century of frustrating investigation into the subatomic realm, From this simple picture one can derive, from pure mathematics alone, all the myriad and baffling properties of matter. (Although it all seems so easy now, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, one of the creators of the Standard Model, once reflected on how tortuous the 50-year journey to discover the model had been. He wrote, "There's a long tradition of theoretical physics, which by no means affected everyone but certainly affected me, that said the strong interactions [were] too complicated for the human mind.")

opportunity. The bizarre codes on the pages she’d sorted for Randy suddenly made sense. They must have been the files that kept track of where the bank had stashed millions of dollars. Jim wanted the money out, and so did the Covellis. The Mob was somehow involved with the bank’s dealings, and Carmichael worked for them. Being a bartender was just a facade. Beatrice hadn’t known him at all. But Tony and Max had known him, she realized. Tony was a police detective; he was the one who told her about the Covellis in the first place. He must have known. Every word Carmichael might have overheard at the bar replayed in her mind—her conversations with Tony about snooping around the bank, the missing safe deposits, the missing master key. Maybe Tony had wanted Carmichael to hear. The old man pointed the gun at Teddy in her head. Maybe the Covellis would bring down the bank if law enforcement failed. No one, not even Tony, suspected that she and Max had the power to do anything but run. Max was right. They all underestimated women like them. Beatrice stepped out from behind the curtain with the keys in her hand and crept toward the vault. CHAPTER 72 Friday, August 28, 1998 A black-and-white photograph of two women looked up from Box 547 in the yellow glow of the detective’s flashlight. They were smiling. The glass in the silver picture frame was cracked. Iris picked it up and handed it to Detective McDonnell. Underneath it she found a brown leather book and a candle. That was it. “What the hell is this?” Iris

Really?” he said, the anger in his voice growing. I was about to answer when he left the booth and walked over to the counter. He flipped through a stack of magazines to read while-you-waited, grabbed one, and strode back to me. “Spike had found some of these in the house where we were,” he explained as he opened a People magazine to a picture of Brad Pitt. “So this man must have cured a disease or is a mighty warrior to command ten million dollars a movie. A movie is one of the frozen plays such as we saw yesterday, correct?” I nodded, although I’m not sure he noticed, since he kept on talking. “I am assuming that ten million dollars is a lot of money, but I haven’t quite figured out your currency system yet. Forgive me if I am incorrect. But if what I read is correct, this man makes an exorbitant sum of money for doing nothing more than being handsome. How is that different?” Before I could answer he flipped the page to a picture of Angelia Jolie. “It says this woman commands the same amount of money, so together they must be like a king and queen. Am I right? And while we are at it, please tell me what a Kardashian is.” “I wish I knew.” I mumbled.

I spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has one thousand pictures of naked movie stars: Naked woman + right hand = happy happy joy joy Yep, that’s right, I admit that I masturbate. I’m proud of it. I’m good at it. I’m ambidextrous. If there were a Professional Masturbators League, I’d get drafted number one and make millions of dollars. And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, you really shouldn’t be talking about masturbation in public.” Well, tough, I’m going to talk about it because EVERYBODY does it. And EVERYBODY likes it. And if God hadn’t wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn’t have given us thumbs. So I thank God for my thumbs. But,

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching bands, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, antitrust waivers and dozens of other things. They mostly don’t care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It’s about money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation. They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything. They get everything from the Republicans because you don’t have to make a single concession to a Republican voter. All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. Call it the “Rove 1-2.” That’s literally all it’s taken to secure decades of Republican votes, a few patriotic words and a little over-the-pants rubbing. Policywise, a typical Republican voter never even asks a politician to go to second base. While we always got free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn’t get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in schools or balanced budgets or censorship of movies and video games or any of a dozen other things Republican voters said they wanted.

A good example of the importance of context and collective action is breast cancer. For many of us, there couldn’t be a more personal issue. But, however personal it is, we still need the big picture. There have been very important advances in breast cancer research over the past ten years. These advances could not have happened without advocates who recognized the political, social and economic contexts of health research. These advocates have pushed breast cancer to the top of the national health agenda, raised millions of dollars and drastically increased federal funding of breast cancer research. We might be able to make individual choices that lower our risks for breast cancer, but without collective action, we wouldn’t know how to manage those risks, and we certainly would not get the level of treatment available today.

Doremus Jessup, so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. Seven years before his present credo—derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the revue Of Thee I Sing—little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the county poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors. Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said. There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect. But below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him. He could dramatize his assertion that he was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist but a Democrat—a homespun Jeffersonian-Lincolnian-Clevelandian-Wilsonian Democrat—and (sans scenery and costume) make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, the while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted Democratic inventions, every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness of Europe. Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man. Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate. But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.

People Magazine recently paid a movie star $4.1 million dollars. To make a movie? No, $4.1 million dollars was paid for the right to publish pictures of the actor’s new baby. America’s media covered the unfortunate death of singer Michael Jackson non-stop for days on end. We are “mad upon our idols.

But the Butler-Brennan collaboration splendidly informs The Prince and the Pirate, a Samuel Goldwyn million-dollar Technicolor production that spoofs the swashbuckling pictures of the 1930s that made Errol Flynn a star. Butler seems to have given Brennan free rein in bringing to life one of his most exuberant and ribald roles. As Featherhead, a scuzzy pirate, he convinces the malicious Captain Barrett, “the Hook” (Victor McLaglen) to spare a female gypsy fortune-teller, impersonated by “The Great Sylvester” (Hope) from walking the plank. The pirate crew is perplexed by Featherhead’s lascivious designs on this none too appetizing dish, but he practically slavers over his prize, which he bears away with great glee. Brennan plays Featherhead with devouring relish. But as soon as he has Hope to himself, Featherhead confesses he has known all along that she is a he. The shocked Sylvester recovers enough to say, “If you don’t tell anybody I’m not a gypsy, I won’t tell anybody you’re not an idiot.” Featherhead has appropriated the performer in a scheme to outwit The Hook and to capture a buried treasure. Brennan takes out his teeth for this role, and either through added weight or makeup, presents a rubicund complexion and a robust, rounded face that is startlingly different from the gaunt and rickety Eddie of To Have and Have Not.

Tesla applied for a patent on an electrical coil that is the most likely candidate for a non mechanical successor of his energy extractor. This is his “Coil for Electro magnets,” patent #512,340. It is a curious design, unlike an ordinary coil made by turning wire on a tube form, this one uses two wires laid next to each other on a form but with the end of the first one connected to the beginning of the second one. In the patent Tesla explains that this double coil will store many times the energy of a conventional coil.   The patent, however, gives no hint of what might have been its more unusual capability. In an article for Century Magazine, Tesla compares extracting energy from the environment to the work of other scientists who were, at that time, learning to condense atmospheric gases into liquids. In particular, he cited the work of a Dr. Karl Linde who had discovered what Tesla described as a self-cooling method for liquefying air. As Tesla said, “This was the only experimental proof which I was still wanting that energy was obtainable from the medium in the manner contemplated by me.” What ties the Linde work with Tesla's electromagnet coil is that both of them used a double path for the material they were working with. Linde had a compressor to pump the air to a high pressure, let the pressure fall as it traveled through a tube, and then used that cooled air to reduce the temperature of the incoming air by having it travel back up the first tube through a second tube enclosing the first. The already cooled air added to the cooling process of the machine and quickly condensed the gases to a liquid. Tesla's intent was to condense the energy trapped between the earth and its upper atmosphere and to turn it into an electric current. He pictured the sun as an immense ball of electricity, positively charged with a potential of some 200 billion volts. The Earth, on the other hand, is charged with negative electricity. The tremendous electrical force between these two bodies constituted, at least in part, what he called cosmic-energy. It varied from night to day and from season to season but it is always present. Tesla's patents for electrical generators and motors were granted in the late 1880's. During the 1890's the large electric power industry, in the form of Westinghouse and General Electric, came into being. With tens of millions of dollars invested in plants and equipment, the industry was not about to abandon a very profitable ten-year-old technology for yet another new one. Tesla saw that profits could be made from the self-acting generator, but somewhere along the line, it was pointed out to him, the negative impact the device would have on the newly emerging technological revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the end of his article in Century he wrote: “I worked for a long time fully convinced that the practical realization of the method of obtaining energy from the sun would be of incalculable industrial value, but the continued study of the subject revealed the fact that while it will be commercially profitable if my expectations are well founded, it will not be so to an extraordinary degree.

There’s another level at which attention operates, this has to do with leadership, I argue that leaders need three kinds of focus, to be really effective, the first is an inner focus, let me tell you about a case that’s actually from the annals of neurology, there was a corporate lawyer, who unfortunately had a small prefrontal brain tumour, it was discovered early, operated successfully, after the surgery though it was a very puzzling picture, because he was absolutely as smart as he had been before, a very high IQ, no problem with attention or memory, but he couldn’t do his job anymore, he couldn’t do any job, in fact he ended up out of work, his wife left him, he lost his home, he’s living in his brother spare bedroom and in despair he went to see a famous neurologist named Antonio Damasio. Damasio specialized in the circuitry between the prefrontal area which is where we consciously pay attention to what matters now, where we make decisions, where we learn and the emotional centers in the midbrain, particularly the amygdala, which is our radar for danger, it triggers our strong emotions. They had cut the connection between the prefrontal area and emotional centers and Damasio at first was puzzled, he realized that this fellow on every neurological test was perfectly fine but something was wrong, then he got a clue, he asked the lawyer when should we have our next appointment and he realized the lawyer could give him the rational pros and cons of every hour for the next two weeks, but he didn’t know which is best. And Damasio says when we’re making a decision any decision, when to have the next appointment, should I leave my job for another one, what strategy should we follow, going into the future, should I marry this fellow compared to all the other fellows, those are decisions that require we draw on our entire life experience and the circuitry that collects that life experience is very base brain, it’s very ancient in the brain, and it has no direct connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words, it has very rich connectivity to the gastro- intestinal tract, to the gut, so we get a gut feeling, feels right, doesn’t feel right. Damasio calls them somatic markers, it’s a language of the body and the ability to tune into this is extremely important because this is valuable data too - they did a study of Californian entrepreneurs and asked them “how do you make your decisions?”, these are people who built a business from nothing to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they more or less said the same strategy “I am a voracious gatherer of information, I want to see the numbers, but if it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go ahead with the deal”. They’re tuning into the gut feeling. I know someone, I grew up in farm region of California, the Central Valley and my high school had a rival high school in the next town and I met someone who went to the other high school, he was not a good student, he almost failed, came close to not graduating high school, he went to a two-year college, a community college, found his way into film, which he loved and got into a film school, in film school his student project caught the eye of a director, who asked him to become an assistant and he did so well at that the director arranged for him to direct his own film, someone else’s script, he did so well at that they let him direct a script that he had written and that film did surprisingly well, so the studio that financed that film said if you want to do another one, we will back you. And he, however, hated the way the studio edited the film, he felt he was a creative artist and they had butchered his art. He said I am gonna do the film on my own, I’m gonna finance it myself, everyone in the film business that he knew said this is a huge mistake, you shouldn’t do this, but he went ahead, then he ran out of money, had to go to eleven banks before he could get a loan, he managed to finish the film, you may have seen

Oh my god, he’s naked on my couch? My eyes widen. I alternate between being curious and angry and thoroughly, disturbingly . . . a little bit aroused. I take a picture of him sleeping and shoot it to Jeanine. Me: Fuck, marry, or kill? Jeanine: Fuck. No regrets.

A few months later, Sandler got word that Netflix, newly interested in movies, had set its sights squarely on him. Using data gathered from Sony movies that Netflix had played through its Starz deal, Sarandos’s team knew that even as his box-office power waned, Sandler remained one of the most popular stars on the streaming service. His aging audience might be less likely to pay to see him in a theater, but they still loved laughing at his antics at home. “We knew he was popular in markets where his movies had never even opened,” Sarandos said. The mid-budget star vehicle, in other words, still worked great for Netflix. When people went to theaters, they preferred brand-name franchises. But when they were browsing for something to stream rather than pay fifty dollars for a night out, a familiar face doing the familiar shtick was perfect. Movies without massive visual effects were just as enjoyable at home, after all, if not more so. And if the stars had chosen to stretch their wings and you didn’t like the movie you clicked on, you could turn it off immediately. You lost a little bit of time, but not any money. And though there may not be as many fans of Adam Sandler, or any movie star, as there used to be, that didn’t necessarily matter to Netflix. All studios care about is how many people buy tickets or DVDs. They get their money whether you loved the movie or hated it. But Netflix measures success by how many people finish a movie and are satisfied enough to keep subscribing as a result, or who sign up just in order to watch it. Adam Sandler’s fan base may have shrunk, but those who remained were loyal and they were global—just what Netflix wanted. Additionally, Netflix wouldn’t have to spend millions of dollars on billboards and TV ads to market each film. Its algorithm would prominently suggest each Sandler movie to his fans on their home screen the moment it was available.

I had been exposed to the motion picture industry at oblique angles ever since I arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, and some of its working arrangements seemed to me far more magical than that glamour for which the Industry was noted: there was the way in which failure escalated the possibilities of success, the way in which price bore no relation to demand. There was the way in which millions of dollars were gambled on ephemeral, unpredictable and, uncomfortably often, invalid ideas of marketability. There was the way that many, perhaps most, people in the Industry remained unconscious of their own myths and superstitions. There was the Eldorado mood of life in the capital, the way in which social and economic fortunes could shoot up or plummet down, as in a mining boom town, on no more than rumors, the hint of a rich vein, the gossip that the lode was played out.

One of the most difficult parts of the case was that Snapchat’s valuation continued to soar throughout the lawsuit, climbing from $ 70 million when Reggie filed to $ 800 million in a matter of months. Soon, the company was worth billions. If Reggie was owed something, what was a fair amount? If a picture is worth a thousand words, and Evan’s disappearing pictures company was worth millions and then billions, how much was Reggie’s idea worth? The lawsuit had a significant effect on Evan; he was already secretive and a bit paranoid by nature, but the lawsuit, combined with Snapchat’s growing public profile, made him retreat further into the bunker—he preferred to take walking meetings so that others wouldn’t overhear him, and he noted that iMessage and emails are permanent records. The stress was clearly getting to him. He would frequently blow up at his lawyers, screaming at them in the hallways in between depositions and settlement talks. It would be many months before the lawsuit reached a conclusion.

Success, to Brando, meant “understanding yourself.” Success, as it was defined by Hollywood, held no appeal to him. This was a man who was hailed as the greatest in his field, a two-time Oscar winner, a box-office champ, the first actor to get a million dollars a picture. He made it to the top of the heap—and when he got there, he found success didn’t have “the fiber,” as he told talk show host David Susskind. He spent his life searching for things that did have the fiber, those permanently true things for which he could lay down his life. He wanted to feel as if he were—to play on his famous line from On the Waterfront—a “contender,” someone who mattered, someone who had fought the good fight. He wanted to feel as if he had made a difference, left a mark, and not just on acting. What he did not want to be was an “unthinker,” the way he described those people who never examined themselves or their place in the world.

Preston Bailey is the be-all, end-all." Mary Ellen sighed. "He is the top celebrity and Saudi royal-family wedding planner, and people pay him millions of dollars just to plan an event. He's like the Baz Luhrmann of weddings---he creates the most transportive, gorgeous fantasy worlds." She pulled a coffee-table book from the top shelf above her desk, ignoring Abigail as usual. At least the indifference was mutual. Claire and I drooled over every picture in the book about Bailey's events. There was a twelve-foot Arc de Triomphe made entirely of rose heads, massive chandeliers hanging from the ceiling hanging from the ceiling dripping in white phalaenopsis orchids and crystals, every kind of animal you could imagine made completely out of roses, and that was just the first chapter.

A couple of weeks before, while going over a Variety list of the most popular songs of 1935 and earlier, to use for the picture’s sound track – which was going to consist only of vintage recording played not as score but as source music – my eye stopped on a .933 standard, words by E.Y. (“Yip”) Harburg (with producer Billy Rose), music by Harold Arlen, the team responsible for “Over the Rainbow”, among many notable others, together and separately. Legend had it that the fabulous Ms. Dorothy Parker contributed a couple of lines. There were just two words that popped out at me from the title of the Arlen-Harburg song, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. Not only did the sentiment of the song encapsulate metaphorically the main relationship in our story – Say, it’s only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me – the last two words of the title also seemed to me a damn good movie title. Alvin and Polly agreed, but when I tried to take it to Frank Yablans, he wasn’t at all impressed and asked me what it meant. I tried to explain. He said that he didn’t “want us to have our first argument,” so why didn’t we table this conversation until the movie was finished? Peter Bart called after a while to remind me that, after all, the title Addie Pray was associated with a bestselling novel. I asked how many copies it had sold in hardcover. Peter said over a hundred thousand. That was a lot of books but not a lot of moviegoers. I made that point a bit sarcastically and Peter laughed dryly. The next day I called Orson Welles in Rome, where he was editing a film. It was a bad connection so we had to speak slowly and yell: “Orson! What do you think of this title?!” I paused a beat or two, then said very clearly, slowly and with no particular emphasis or inflection: “Paper …Moon!” There was a silence for several moments, and then Orson said, loudly, “That title is so good, you don’t even need to make the picture! Just release the title! Armed with that reaction, I called Alvin and said, “You remember those cardboard crescent moons they have at amusement parks – you sit in the moon and have a picture taken?” (Polly had an antique photo of her parents in one of them.) We already had an amusement park sequence in the script so, I continued to Alvin, “Let’s add a scene with one of those moons, then we can call the damn picture Paper Moon!” And this led eventually to a part of the ending, in which we used the photo Addie had taken of herself as a parting gift to Moze – alone in the moon because he was too busy with Trixie to sit with his daughter – that she leaves on the truck seat when he drops her off at her aunt’s house. … After the huge popular success of the picture – four Oscar nominations (for Tatum, Madeline Kahn, the script, the sound) and Tatum won Best Supporting Actress (though she was the lead) – the studio proposed that we do a sequel, using the second half of the novel, keeping Tatum and casting Mae West as the old lady; they suggested we call the new film Harvest Moon. I declined. Later, a television series was proposed, and although I didn’t want to be involved (Alvin Sargent became story editor), I agreed to approve the final casting, which ended up being Jodie Foster and Chris Connolly, both also blondes. When Frank Yablans double-checked about my involvement, I passed again, saying I didn’t think the show would work in color – too cute – and suggested they title the series The Adventures of Addie Pray. But Frank said, “Are you kidding!? We’re calling it Paper Moon - that’s a million-dollar title!” The series ran thirteen episodes.

I scared your daddy into getting rich. He’s so scared of me that for twenty years he’s done nothing but run around trying to find things to please me. He’s never found the right things but he made a million dollars looking.” “If Daddy could do it Duane could too,” Jacy insisted, pouting. “Not married to you, he couldn’t,” Lois said. “You’re not scary enough. You’d be miserable poor but as long as you had somebody to hold your hand and tell you how pretty you are you’d make out.

You can get all the pictures you want at fifty thousand dollars apiece – that’s easy. But to get pictures at a quarter of a million apiece – that wants doing!

Picture a countryside with one hundred million chickens roaming the land. It is challenging to imagine anything of that magnitude. It happens to be the number of cooked rotisserie chickens Costco sells annually. The Chief Financial Officer shared that the retailer loses upwards of US$40 million a year selling the chicken. This is not altruism. People are lured by the five-dollar item but leave with a cart overflowing with bulk underwear, photocopier paper, and lawn ornaments. This practice of selling rotisserie chicken has spread to most grocery chains in North America.

Our media also lavish mega attention on our idols, devoting countless hours of coverage to actors and sports figures, much of the coverage about how they get into trouble. Some networks admit to trying to include some daily snippet of “news” about Britney Spears, or Lindsay Lohan, or some other troubled famous young actor, co-enabled by the coverage and public attention, into their behavior. Some of the nation’s bestselling magazines and weekly newspapers exclusively report on the varied activities of public figures, almost all in the entertainment industry. People Magazine recently paid a movie star $4.1 million dollars. To make a movie? No, $4.1 million dollars was paid for the right to publish pictures of her new baby. America’s media covered the unfortunate death of singer Michael Jackson non-stop for days on end. We are “mad upon our idols.

Some viewed Chinese investors as the latest “dumb money” to hit Hollywood. It is no doubt true that financing movies is not the smartest way for any investor, from anywhere in the world, to earn the best returns. Others had a different theory—that some wealthy Chinese individuals and businesses were seeking to get their money out of China, where an autocratic government could still steal anyone’s wealth at any time, for any reason. Certainly Hollywood had long been a destination for legal money laundering. But those who worked most closely with the Chinese knew that the biggest reason for these investments was a form of reverse-colonialism. After more than a decade as a place for Hollywood to make money, China wanted to turn the tables. The United States had already proved the power of pop culture to help establish a nation’s global dominance. Now China wanted to do the same. The Beijing government considered art and culture to be a form of “soft power,” whereby it could extend influence around the world without the use of weapons. Over the past few years, locally produced Chinese films had become more successful at the box office there. But most were culturally specific comedies and love stories that didn’t translate anywhere else. China had yet to produce a global blockbuster. And with box-office growth in that country slowing in 2016 and early 2017, hits that resonated internationally would be critical if the Communist nation was to grow its movie business and use it to become the kind of global power it wanted to be. So Chinese companies, with the backing of the government, started investing in Hollywood, with a mission to learn how experienced hands there made blockbusters that thrived worldwide. Within a few years, they figured, China would learn how to do that without anyone’s help. “Working with a company like Universal will help us elevate our skill set in moviemaking,” the head of the Chinese entertainment company Perfect World Pictures said, while investing $250 million in a slate of upcoming films from the American studio. Getting there wouldn’t be easy. One of the highest-profile efforts to produce a worldwide hit out of China was The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon and made by Wanda’s Legendary Pictures. The $150 million film, about a war against monsters set on the Chinese historic landmark, grossed an underwhelming $171 million and a disastrous $45 million in the United States. Then, to create another obstacle, Chinese government currency controls established in early 2017 slowed, at least temporarily, the flow of money from China into Hollywood. But by then it was too late to turn back. As seemed to always be true when it came to Hollywood’s relationship with China, the Americans had no choice but to keep playing along. Nobody else was willing to pour billions of dollars into the struggling movie business in the mid-2010s, particularly for original or lower-budget productions.

RAND HOLSTON: Forrest Gump is a movie I am extremely proud of. I represented Wendy Finerman and Steve Tisch, the producers. STEVE TISCH: Gump was ’94 but we set up the project at Warner Bros. in ’85—a nine-year development gestation period. It didn’t hurt that Ovitz wanted Gump to be made. Hanks and Zemeckis were clients. When the head of the most important talent agency in the business at that time says he wants to make something happen and he’s very passionate about making something happen, it’s a lot of wind in your sail. RAND HOLSTON: We had to restructure the deal more than once. The studio decided it wasn’t willing to make the picture for what had been previously discussed, and when they gave us the new number, it was clear the only way to get the film made was taking the principals above the line—Bob Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, Wendy, and Steve—to take less cash up front, and we made sure they were able to get more gross points on the back end. This turned out to be a really good deal for all of them. ROBERT ZEMECKIS: The studio was going to shut the movie down if Tom and I didn’t give our fees back. This was something that they do all the time: There’s forty-eight hours left before you shoot, and they say you’ve got to take X amount of million dollars out of the budget. So we said, “How are we going to do that now? We’ve got to start shooting in forty-eight hours.” And it comes back, “Well, you guys are just going to have to give us back your fees.

Not according to my morality clause,” Devlin replied. “This whole room could study that morality clause! Who let me make a multi-million-dollar motion picture with a bunch of fairies, Commies, and Chinese?