Quote of the Day posts

Thursday March 06, 2014

When Modern Celebrity Began

“It seems so strange that so many people would gather at the train to welcome one they had never seen, only in pictures.”

-- Florence Lawrence, “The Biograph Girl,” and the first designated movie star, after she was mobbed by fans at the St. Louis railroad station in March 1910, as reported in Ty Burr's “Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame,” pg. 17. Burr adds: “No one understood what had just happened, least of all the woman at the center of the rapture.” You could say our modern world, with its heavy focus on fame and celebrity, began here.

Posted at 07:04 AM on Mar 06, 2014 in category Quote of the Day
Tags: Florence Lawrence, Fame
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Monday March 03, 2014

Nikki Finke on What We'll Be Watching in Five Years

“It will all blur, now that you’ve got Netflix and Amazon and everything. I think a lot of it is going to blur. It used to be you only wanted to be in a movie. If you couldn’t be in a movie you wanted to be in a network series. If you couldn’t be in a network series, then maybe HBO. Because remember, you’re not getting paid as much for all these things. And then cable. In five years, you’re not even going to be aware of where the hell you’re watching, if it’s broadcast, if it’s cable, if it’s Netflix. TV is getting so smart right now and the platforms on your phone and your iPad and everything, you’re just watching. You’re not even going to be aware what it is, you’re just watching.”

-- Nikki Finke, in “Nikki Finke: The Kindle Singles Interview” by David Blum. I read it in about an hour. Pretty interesting. She's particularly good on the studios and studio chiefs, and who greenlit what, and who was a bastard to whom, all of which I know almost nothing about. I particularly like the last line of the quote above. Reminds me of Chance the Gardener.

Kevin Spacey, House of Cards

“Democracy is so overrated.”

Posted at 07:32 PM on Mar 03, 2014 in category Quote of the Day
Tags: Nikki Finke, Netflix, Kindle Singles, Amazon.com, TV
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Saturday March 01, 2014

Quote of the Day

“'Fox approached news differently,' a staffer who had done time at other networks said. 'It wasn’t actual journalism where you say, “Let’s go see what’s going on.” At Fox, it’s “This is what we’re doing, so go do it.”'”

-- from Gabriel Sherman's “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Bombastic, Brilliant Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country.”

Posted at 02:33 PM on Mar 01, 2014 in category Quote of the Day
Tags: FOX-News, Roger Ailes, Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room
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Friday February 28, 2014

Quote of the Day: Posnanski on Ken Griffey Jr.

“Junior was such a joy to watch play baseball as young player. He had this youthful exuberance, he exuded joy (he wore his hat backward, which drove the get-off-my-lawn grumps insane but was for people of his generation just about the coolest look ever), and there was that singular grace he played with — the way he ran after fly balls, the way he moved on the bases, the way he would turn on even the best fastballs, all of it just seemed impossibly lovely. That’s the word that comes to mind. Lovely. They used to say that Fred Astaire just standing against a building looked like a dancer. Junior standing outside waiting for the team bus looked like a ballplayer.”

-- Joe Posnanski, “No. 51: Ken Griffey Jr.,” in his hot-stove-league listing of the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. It's a nice piece, sad, too, but I'll be waiting to see the 50 players Posnanski thinks are better than Junior. I anticipate doing a lot of this: “No, no, no ... yes ... no” over the next few months.

My piece about Junior the month he retired.

Ken Griffey Jr., swinging

Yep.

Posted at 02:31 PM on Feb 28, 2014 in category Quote of the Day
Tags: Joe Posnanski, Ken Griffey Jr., Fred Astaire
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Tuesday February 25, 2014

Rupert Murdoch on the Downside of Watergate

“Though separated by class and culture, Ailes and Murdoch were men of the same mind. The self-appointed elites of journalism elicited their unbridled disgust. Watergate particularly stung, and Murdoch spoke of it in Ailesian terms, long before the two met. 'The American press might get their pleasure in successfully crucifying Nixon,' Murdoch told a friend, 'but the last laugh could be on them. See how they like it when the Commies take over the West.'”

-- from Gabriel Sherman's “The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Bombastic, Brilliant Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country.”