A compilation of 100 truly idiotic things Hollywood has done as of late.
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1. Hollywood continued to make movies despite the fact that four out of five new films don't make back even their production costs at the box office, and two out of three films never make back their production costs at all.
2. In response to criticism that Disney's plans to build an American history theme park on top of Virginia Civil War battlefields amounted to plasticizing history, CEO Michael Eisner replied, "The First Amendment gives you the right to be plastic."
3. Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson got back together again.
4. In an expensive multi-page insert in Daily Variety, Anne Rice blathered on at extraordinary length about her response to the movie Interview with the Vampire, comparing Tom Cruise to Errol Flynn and Rudolph Valentino, and claiming that "Tom's Lestat will be remembered the way Olivier's Hamlet is remembered."
5. At the opening of Planet Hollywood in Hong Kong, Sylvester Stallone arrived in a ricksha drawn by four women.
6. After Warner Bros. funded Kevin Reynolds and Kevin Costners expensive, loony, disastrous Rapa Nui, Universal funded Reynolds and Costner's Waterworld.
7. Just as the budget for Waterworld reached an eyeball-popping $160 million and became feature news in The Wall Street Journal, it was discovered that the massive steel floating set off the big island of Hawaii, which was still needed for second unit shooting, had sunk in 160 feet of water.
8. Waterworld screenwriter David Twohy took out a page in Daily Variety to present his "Open Letter to the Industry" in which he slapped the wrist of everyone he considered to be "gnawing on the hand that feeds you" for their unfriendly attention to the film's awesome cost overrun, slating that "all of us should want the studios to swing for the fences with something like Waterworld."
9. Waterworld screenwriter David Twohy stated in an interview on network TV that saying bad things about a movie no one's seen yet is like telling a pregnant woman her baby will be ugly.
10. At the Golden Globe Awards, screen writer-director Quentin Tarantino confessed that when he saw John Travolta's heroin scene in Pulp Fiction ("the best shooting-up scene in the history of motion pictures") he knew he was a great director.
11. Screenwriter-director Quentin Tarantino, who has proven he has almost no screen presence, is now devoting a large portion of his time to acting in films.
12. An Elle magazine survey voted Steve McQueen, the star of Bullitt and Papillon who's been dead for 15 years, the sexiest hunk in the world-- a distinction he shared with the also-dead Kurt Cobain.
13. In response to Movieline's naming her one of "Ten Women We Can Do Without," Penelope Ann Miller said, "It's a vindictive, ridiculous magazine."
14. Penelope Ann Miller got married and filed for divorce 40 days later.
15. A Low Down Dirty Shame star Jada Pinkett contributed $100,000 toward Tupac Shakur's bail.
16. Playboy critic Bruce Williamson and Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington both gave Robert Altman's Ready to Wear extremely positive reviews.
17. Michael Douglas was cast as a guy who protests against getting a blow job from Demi Moore.
18. Mickey Rourke said he hoped to turn his next film, Lucky Star Shanghai, which will be directed by someone whose credits include European commercials and a Madonna video, into "a modern day African Queen."
19. Kurt Russell's hair in StarGate; Tom Cruise's hair in Interview With the Vampire; Helena Bonham Carter's hair in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Juliette Lewis's hair in anything.
20. Actor Michael Moriarty declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States on CNBC's "Talk Live," saying, "This country is in such desperate need for an honest man, they're gonna go looking for me, 'cause I'm right out of a Frank Capra film."
21. Mandatory retirement was not imposed on Marcello Mastroianni after his performance in Ready to Wear, nor on Katharine Hepburn after hers in Love Affair.
22. Director Michael Ritchie bought the Brentwood home where Marilyn Monroe lived and died, and said he intends to turn it into a museum.
23. Tommy Lee Jones followed up his Oscar win last year with terrible performances in Natural Born Killers and Cobb.
24. As a way of explaining the box-office failure of Quiz Show, director Robert Redford said, the year after the success of Schindler's List, "It's risky to ask the audience to think."
25. Ben Kingsley said, "There's been a shift within me and because of that people are noticing other aspects of me which they find attractive," as he announced his interest in three upcoming romantic leading roles.
26. Warner Bros, ran a full-color two-page spread in Variety reminding Academy members that Wyatt Earp was available for Oscar nominations in several major categories.
27. Oliver Stone's ex-wife shared the following perspective on Natural Born Killers: "All the lines of dialogue are things he screamed at me. It is my divorce up there on the screen."
28. Actress Jane March married one of the producers of her box-office bomb Color of Night.
29. Supermodel Vendela broke up with producer Jon Peters before securing her first film role.
30. Shelley Long was resurrected.
31. When Michael Keaton was replaced by Val Kilmer after reportedly demanding $15 million to play Batman for the third time, Keaton's manager claimed that it was Keaton who walked out on Warner Bros., not the other way around, and stated, "money was never a factor."
32. Isabelle Adjani reportedly informed Daniel Day-Lewis that she was pregnant with his baby boy by sending him a fax.
33. New Line Cinema agreed to pay Joe Eszterhas $2.5 million for four pages of "notes and thoughts" on a love story that he and director Adrian Lyne were to "shape into a movie," and they agreed to pay another $1.5 million when the film went before cameras.
34. Director Paul Verhoeven, explaining there wasn't much need to change Joe Eszterhas's script for Showgirls, said, "I learned on Basic Instinct that when you start to think you know better than Joe, you're in bad shape."
35. John Tesh and Connie Sellecca named their daughter Prima Sellecchia Tesh.
36. The Samuel Goldwyn Company issued a press release announcing that O.J. Simpson trial judge Lance Ito had approved The Madness of King George for viewing by the jurors and had "claimed himself to be a great fan of [Helen] Mirren... and hoped the jurors admired her talent as much as he did."
37. Spike Lee's brother Cinqué wrote a script called No It U Lover about a guy who gets bitten by a rabid rabbit and comes out of a coma to discover that all the women in the world are now dead.
38. The makers of Legends of the Fall eliminated some of Brad Pitt's sex scenes and left in interminable passages of Anthony Hopkins's scenery-chewing as a stroke victim.
39. After agreeing to be interviewed by three fifth-graders from Kidsday, a children's page in New York Newsday, Macaulay Culkin blew the tots off and flew back to L.A., making it necessary for the studio to intercede and fly him back to New York to do the interview.
40. Bernardo Bertolucci confessed to an interviewer that, having grown up in the Italian countryside, he gets horny when he smells "the perfume of cow dung."
41. Producer Robert Evans consulted with Los Angeles magazine writer and film critic Rod Lurie in order to come up with a leading lady for the big-budget, steamy film Jade.
42. Isabella Rossellini agreed to marry Gary Oldman.
43. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
44. CQ published an investigative cover story supporting the theory that Michael Jackson was framed.
45. Upon arriving in England to shoot the film adapted from Valerie Martin's book Mary Reilly, Julia Roberts revealed to the British press that she had never read the original novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on which Martin's book was based, and had not, in fact, read Martin's book either. "It's more information than I want at this stage," she said. "I'm not sort of a big research nut. I just sort of wing it, you know."
46. Julia Ormond was given the leads in Legends of the Fall, First Knight and Sabrina without proving any value at the box office.
47. An American in Paris and Daddy Long Legs star Leslie Caron commented as follows about dancing with Patrick Stewart in Let It Be Me: "It reminds me of what I did with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire."
48. MGM/UA signed the artist formerly known as Prince, fresh from having all of his songs cut from the abortive musical I'll Do Anything, to write songs for their lap-dance musical Showgirls.
49. On a visit as an unofficial observer of the Mexican election, Edward James Olmos stopped near the rebel-held province of Chiapas, and said, "All of humanity is interested in what happens here in Chiapas."
50. Movieline put Marisa Tomei on its cover.
51. Marisa Tomei held out for her $5 million asking price on the sequel to My Cousin Vinny long enough for Only You to come out and bomb, whereupon the studio didn't want her at all,
52. Marisa Tomei decided to take on the role of Lady Anne in the film adaptation of Richard III.
53. Christian Slater tried to slip past an airport metal detector an unregistered 6.5 mm. Beretta handgun and six rounds of ammunition.
54. Upon the announcement by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen that the three were ing their own studio, Daily Variety ran the head-line, 'Troika Sets Town Atwitter."
55. Carolco and director Renny Harlin went forward with Matthew Modine for the leading male role in the $75 million pirate movie Cutthroat Island after Michael Douglas, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and others turned it down.
56. Director Renny Harlin wrote the following instruction in a memo to the Cutthroat Island production team: ''Any idea previously used has to be reinvented now and then cranked up 10 times."
57. Cutthroat Island director Renny Harlin described his wife, Oscar-winner Geena Davis, as "a female Jean-Claude Van Damme."
58. Larry King's interview with Marlon Brando.
59. Alicia Silverstone in The Crush beat out Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List for the MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Performance of the year. William Baldwin won Most Desirable Male for Sliver.
60. As a concession to pissed-off film auteur Richard Rush, who accused Cinergi and Disney of violating his artistic vision on Color of Night, the Disney company released his cut on home video and he described it as "longer, darker, denser, more erotic."
61. Coca-Cola agreed to let Oliver Stone excerpt one of its commercials in Natural Born Killers, then was incensed by the way it was used and demanded it be cut out after the movie was released.
62. Premiere magazine re-created classic scenes from quintessential New York movies by casting Sarah Jessica Parker as a substitute for Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, Ann Magnuson as an imitation of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Vincent Spano as Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
63. When Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales panned the premiere of producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason's show "Women of the House," and commented on the number of breast jokes in the episode, Bloodworth-Thomason responded by saying that Shales "might have been frightened by breasts as a child ... or maybe Tom is just not interested in breasts."
64. Uma Thurman described herself in an interview as "a goofball nerd."
65. In Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Jennifer Jason Leigh so faithfully re-created the corrosive, alcoholic Dorothy Parker's speaking manner that most of Parker's witticisms were practically indecipherable.
66. Brad Pitt insisted on doing his own stunt in a difficult action scene in Seven and wound up with a cast on his arm that had to be written into the movie.
67. The marketing campaign for the money-losing Quiz Show displayed the back of star Ralph Fiennes's head; the marketing campaign for the money-losing The Shawshank Redemption showed star Tim Robbins from behind.
68. Laurence Fishburne followed his Oscar-nominated performance in What's Love Cot to Do With It with roles in the dreadful Bad Company and Just Cause.
69. DreamWorks SKG, the new studio launched by Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg, announced that its first animated movie project would be an epic version of The Ten Commandments.
70. Kurt Russell is being paid $7 million a movie.
71. Roman Polanski told the press that he was fascinated by Death and the Maiden, a play he made into a movie-- in which a woman who may or may not be a little crazed avenges herself for a torture that we finally find did indeed occur--because it was ''about the relativity of truth."
72. Dressed in a traditional wedding dress of her own design, plus ski boots, Christie Brinkley married her boyfriend on a ski slope in Colorado not far from the location of the couple's near-fatal helicopter crash.
73. The "feminist" backlash against True Lies.
74. The makers of Junior believed they could make a blockbuster comedy about a guy who gets pregnant and requires a cesarean section.
75. Pulp Fiction producer Michael Shamberg said of the upcoming baseball movie Sunset Park, "It's our next Pulp Fiction," and of his lead actress, Rhea Perlman, "Rhea will be a movie star after this one."
76. Barbra Streisand lectured at Harvard University.
77. Robert Stigwood, vowing Evita won't get made unless Madonna, star of Body of Evidence, plays Eva Peron, criticized opposing views by saying, "Just because she did a bad 'Letterman' show, you don't give her the role?"
78. Exit to Eden.
79. Greta Scacchi claimed in an interview that Sharon Stone was getting the scripts that she, Greta, had turned down.
80. The Road to Wellville.
81. Rob Morrow left "Northern Exposure" to star in movies. David Caruso left "NYPD Blue" to star in movies.
82. Producer Robert Evans called David Caruso "the next Steve McQueen."
83. Eric Roberts got himself arrested for allegedly throwing his wife against a wall.
84. Attempting to lure the Academy into nominating The Lion King for Best Picture, Disney sent out to Academy members a package of materials that included a cassette box of The Lion King with no cassette inside.
85. Steve Guttenberg is working again in feature films.
86. Mickey Rourke gave interviews letting the industry know he had cleaned up his act and is ready to work in Hollywood again.
87. The Village People are hot again.
88. Kevin Costner, star-director of Indian-sensitive Dances With Wolves is developing the Dunbar resort-casino in Deadwood, South Dakota, in direct competition with the casinos run by South Dakota's nine Indian tribes.
89. Sally Kirkland agreed to have plastic surgery live on "Geraldo!"
90. Alec Baldwin recorded a series of radio advertisements asking everyone to refrain from eating animals on Valentine's Day.
91. Sean Connery accepted the lead in a movie (Just Cause) in which he had to deliver the line: "If that's a concession, my ass is a banjo."
92. Raquel Welch declared that Sylvester Stallone is the next Brando.
93. After not receiving an Oscar nomination for her performance in Forrest Gump, Sally Field said, "I was thrilled I wasn't nominated."
94. On the subject of being accused of molesting his adopted daughter, being denied custody of his, adopted children and being tabloidized for over a year. Woody Allen said, "It's been fun! It's been fun being the bad guy in the press!"
95. Richard Pryor and ex-wife Jennifer Lee, whom he violently abused while they were married, watched the OJ. Simpson trial together.
96. Chynna Phillips's explanation in part to why she had moved from Hollywood to Manhattan, as told to New York magazine, was: "I got a cashmere coal at Bergdorf's 50 percent off. I love feeling intellectually stimulated."
97. Andy Borowitz, the writer and co-creator of such TV shows as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." stated that one of the main reasons he has moved from Hollywood to Manhattan was: "[In L.A.,] there are too many times in a given year where normal TV transmission is completely suspended for the extended broadcast of [a] cataclysm. If you wanted to see 'Full House,' you couldn't."
98. Kate Capshaw claimed she and husband Steven Spielberg want to live in New York so they can eat hot dogs on the street and experience the "randomity" of life on the streets of the Big Apple.
99. Andre Vajna, co-founder of budget-busting Carolco Pictures, and producer of Tombstone and Color of Night, received the NATO/Sho West Lifetime Achievement Award.
100. Daniel Baldwin proposed marriage to his girlfriend and "Homicide: Life on the Street" co-star with Conan O'Brien's help on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."