“
We love to say everything's going to be okay, but honestly there's no way to know. And okay can mean so many different things.
Such as:
This cereal is okay.
The movie, eh, it was okay
I'm waiting for Dad to give me the okay about the road trip.
But applied to people it generally sounds terrible --
So, what do you think about the new kid?
Eh. He seems okay
Yo, I heard about your mom. How's she holding up?
She's okay.
Hey, I heard you lost a kidney. How are you doing, man?
I'm okay.
Okay isn't as comforting as I think people intend it to be.
”
”
Justin A. Reynolds (Opposite of Always)
“
I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (All American Boys)
“
MOST DAYS MY LIFE
CAN BE SUMMED UP IN
MOVIE QUOTES
AND
HIP HOP AND R&B LYRICS
”
”
Qwana Reynolds-Frasier (Friend In Your Pocket Conversations Session One)
“
FOR THE RECORD,
this movie would've been better than that stupid one he was trying to make when he was alive that's for sure. Maybe not as happy. But definitely better.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down)
“
The only actor who I think probably might have taken a swing at me if he could have would be Burt Reynolds. He used to call Roger and me the Bruise Brothers, out of Chicago.
”
”
Gene Siskel
“
This was real life. And the beginning of a special regular story where two people meet and help each other make something beautiful, at the risk of making a mess.
No this ain't no movie. This is a mirror. This me. This her. This us.
This is real.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (Twenty-Four Seconds from Now...)
“
I was no good at all at the jitterbug, as I have just now demonstrated, but then this other song came on, a song from a movie. . . . “Tammy.” About a girl falling in love. I haven’t thought of that song for years. Debbie Reynolds sang it, in a voice that would put you in mind of maple syrup.
”
”
Monica Wood (The One-in-a-Million Boy)
“
Slowly, silently, I reach out and slip the glass out of her hand.
"What do you think you're doing?"
The old lady's voice startles me and I jump back. Mrs. Reynolds has one eye open like tha guy from the cartoon monster movie. "I, uh, thought you were napping."
"Do I look like I'm napping?"
"Right now you don't.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Leaving Paradise (Leaving Paradise, #1))
“
I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (All American Boys)
“
A school bus is many things.
A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks)
“
A point often ignored in cinema history studies of [Bette] Davis,” wrote Jim Parish and Don Stanke years later of Housewife, “is that Ann Dvorak, who plays the film’s title role, was established as a strong dramatic actress long before Bette, and it was she who set the standard for battling with the studio for better roles. In her quiet performance as Nan Wilson Reynolds, it is Miss Dvorak and not the already mannered Bette, who woos the audience’s attention and affection. It is Dvorak who provides the proper artistic control for the feature…” The big difference between the two actresses was maturity. Bette, in these early movies, was very rough around the gills; she became polished, but always tended to slip into campy tirades. Dvorak was a natural; she was intense, but always in control, even in highly emotional situations.
”
”
Ray Hagen (Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames)
“
The theme of music making the dancer dance turns up everywhere in Astaire’s work. It is his most fundamental creative impulse. Following this theme also helps connect Astaire to trends in popular music and jazz, highlighting his desire to meet the changing tastes of his audience. His comic partner dance with Marjorie Reynolds to the Irving Berlin song “I Can’t Tell a Lie” in Holiday Inn (1942) provides a revealing example. Performed in eighteenth-century costumes and wigs for a Washington’s birthday–themed floor show, the dance is built around abrupt musical shifts between the light classical sound of flute, strings, and harpsichord and four contrasting popular music styles played on the soundtrack by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, a popular dance band. Moderate swing, a bluesy trumpet shuffle, hot flag-waving swing, and the Conga take turns interrupting what would have been a graceful, if effete, gavotte. The script supervisor heard these contrasts on the set during filming to playback. In her notes, she used commonplace musical terms to describe the action: “going through routine to La Conga music, then music changing back and forth from minuet to jazz—cutting as he holds her hand and she whirls doing minuet.”13 Astaire and Reynolds play professional dancers who are expected to respond correctly and instantaneously to the musical cues being given by the band. In an era when variety was a hallmark of popular music, different dance rhythms and tempos cued different dances. Competency on the dance floor meant a working knowledge of different dance styles and the ability to match these moves to the shifting musical program of the bands that played in ballrooms large and small. The constant stylistic shifts in “I Can’t Tell a Lie” are all to the popular music point. The joke isn’t only that the classical-sounding music that matches the couple’s costumes keeps being interrupted by pop sounds; it’s that the interruptions reference real varieties of popular music heard everywhere outside the movie theaters where Holiday Inn first played to capacity audiences. The routine runs through a veritable catalog of popular dance music circa 1942. The brief bit of Conga was a particularly poignant joke at the time. A huge hit in the late 1930s, the Conga during the war became an invitation to controlled mayhem, a crazy release of energy in a time of crisis when the dance floor was an important place of escape. A regular feature at servicemen’s canteens, the Conga was an old novelty dance everybody knew, so its intrusion into “I Can’t Tell a Lie” can perhaps be imagined as something like hearing the mid-1990s hit “Macarena” after the 2001 terrorist attacks—old party music echoing from a less complicated time.14 If today we miss these finer points, in 1942 audiences—who flocked to this movie—certainly got them all. “I Can’t Tell a Lie” was funnier then, and for specifically musical reasons that had everything to do with the larger world of popular music and dance. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, many such musical jokes or references can be recovered by listening to Astaire’s films in the context of the popular music marketplace.
”
”
Todd Decker (Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz)
“
A prone form lay face down in the stream, a pool of red seeping from his head. It was Sergeant Reynolds.
”
”
Zara Keane (How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #3))
“
All of a sudden, Reynolds made a gurgling noise. I
”
”
Zara Keane (How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #3))
“
McReynolds emphatically shook his head. “No way. Legal’s all over that deal. It’s squeaky clean. Even the woman signed off. Trammel. I could make her a three-hundred-pound whore who likes black dick in the movie and she couldn’t do a thing about it. That deal is perfect.” “Yeah, well, what Legal’s missed is the part about neither one of them having the rights to the story to sell you in the first place. Those rights happen to reside here with me. Trammel signed them over to me before Dahl came along and took second position. He thought he could move up one by stealing the original contracts out of my files. Only that’s not going to work. I’ve got a witness to the theft and Dahl’s fingerprints. He’s going to go down on fraud and theft charges and your choice here is to decide whether you want to go down
”
”
Michael Connelly (The Fifth Witness (The Lincoln Lawyer, #4; Harry Bosch Universe, #23))
“
It’s popcorn,” I tell her slowly. I have no idea where she got the whole cockporn thing, but that is definitely not something I want her saying in public, or ever, for that matter. I can just see us going to a movie and her yelling, ‘I want COCKPORN!’ at the top of her lungs in the middle of a packed theater.
“I know, cockporn.” She nods, licking her palm again.
“No, Angel. POP-corn,” I tell her, pronouncing each syllable.
“COCK-porn,” she says slowly back, like I’m deaf, and then places her hands on her hips.
“Oh, geez,” I mutter, giving up, looking at Lilly, who is fighting laughter, and ask her, “Do you have a bag for this?” while holding my hand upside down, showing the ball is stuck to my palm and now looks like a penis and balls.
”
”
Aurora Rose Reynolds (Until Jax (Until Her/Him, #2))
“
I tap on The Proposal. I’ll swap one fantasy for another. I’ve always dreamed of having Ryan Reynolds as my personal assistant. The movie begins, and I smile at the screen. I love this movie. No matter how many times I watch it, I always laugh. Gammy is my favorite.
”
”
T.L. Swan (The Stopover (Miles High Club, #1))
“
I’ve watched movies, okay? You can learn a lot from Ryan Reynolds.
”
”
Bella Matthews (Iced (Defiant Kings, #3))
“
Ali pulled one of the few unoccupied chairs into what appeared to be neutral territory. Settling into it, she opened her computer. While she waited for her AirCard to connect, she listened to the talk buzzing around her. Sister Anselm was right. It was as though the presence of the computer rendered her invisible. The kids may have been there because of James, but they weren’t talking about him. They were more concerned with other issues—who had flunked which class and was having to go to summer school; who had dropped out and was going to get a GED; who had gotten tossed out of a local movie theater for fighting; and whose parents had kicked someone out of the house when they had figured out at the last minute that he wasn’t going to graduate.
”
”
J.A. Jance (Trial By Fire (Ali Reynolds, #5))
“
I can't believe this is really happening," Caroline said to Wally, both of them wearing their goblin cloaks and hoods. "I'm a real actress at last. Do you know where you'll see my name someday?"
"On a tombstone?" said Wally.
Caroline flashed him a disgusted look. "In lights! On Broadway! Someday you and your brothers will go to the movies and see me up there on the screen."
"If we see you on the screen, we'll ask for our money back," Wally told her.
”
”
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (The Girls Get Even (Boy/Girl Battle, #2))
“
I am so accustomed to the young mom phenomenon, that when I saw the poster for The Proposal I wondered for a second if the proposal in the movie was Ryan Reynolds suggesting he send his mother, Sandra Bullock, to an old-age home.
”
”
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))