The 100 Smartest Things Hollywood's Done Lately

Finally, some things to be thankful for.

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1. Keanu Reeves turned down Speed 2: Cruise Control.

2. Twentieth Century Fox rereleased the Star Wars trilogy

3. Cindy Crawford did not make a follow-up to Fair Game.

4. Julia Roberts finally decided to make a movie that reminded people why they liked her (_My Best Friend's Wedding_).

5. At an international conference on environmental issues, Marlon Brando interrupted his own 90-minute discourse frequently to say to the audience, "I thank you for not snoring."

6. When asked by the press about his character in the film Money Talks, Charlie Sheen replied, "You guys don't want to know about this crap. You guys just want to know about the drugs and the whores."

7. At the Cannes premiere of The Fifth Element, Milla Jovovich wore a see-through dress, and told the press, "This might be my one and only time here, so I'm wearing what I want and I'm going to show my ass off."

8. Michelle Pfeiffer called herself and her husband, TV producer David E. Kelley, "the most boring couple in Hollywood."

9. After marrying Renny Harlin and making Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight under his direction, Geena Davis filed for divorce and restarted her own production company.

10. Men in Black lasted only 98 minutes.

11. Sony Pictures opened My Best Friend's Wedding opposite Batman & Robin and took in the largest gross ever for a romantic comedy.

12. After an interview in Spin magazine in which he called John Travolta "a fucking asshole" and called Robert De Niro "quite boring now" and called Skeet Ulrich "a fool who will have to invent a persona" and called the Kiefer Sutherland-directed Truth or Consequences, N.M., in which he starred, "a derivative, unoriginal piece of shit," The actor/musician/ painter/model Vincent Gallo announced he will not act in another movie again.

13. After years of being perceived as hopelessly bland, Friends star Matthew Perry announced he was addicted to painkillers and went into rehab.

14. Disney decided to shut down Hollywood Pictures, the company whose logo of a sphinx inspired the catchphrase, "If it's the sphinx, it stinks."

15. Quentin Tarantino finally stopped acting long enough to direct a follow-up to Pulp Fiction.

16. After he was stopped by police with a transvestite in his car, Eddie Murphy immediately made a public statement to explain that he had merely been acting as a good Samaritan.

17. Seagram president and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. announced plans to terminate Universal's relationship with Death Row Records.

18. John Calley took over at Sony Pictures shortly before the summer blockbusters that departing-in-disgrace Mark Canton had greenlighted began to hit the screen.

19. Stanley Kubrick proved his enduring influence in the film community by getting Tom

Cruise and Nicole Kidman to sacrifice a year of their lives to star in his movie Eyes Wide Shut.

20. Val Kilmer turned down Batman & Robin.

21. Jodie Foster turned down Conspiracy Theory.

22. Sharon Stone raised millions of dollars for AmFAR.

23. Bart the bear, star of The Edge and other Hollywood films, bought 6,260 acres of land to be preserved as a natural habitat for bears and other wild animals.

24. Kim Basinger had a New Mexico circus hosed down after an elephant died in a sweltering trailer.

25. ABC finally put a stop to Roseanne.

26. Ed Norton dated Courtney Love for over a year without killing himself.

27. DreamWorks signed Jerry Maguire writer/director Cameron Crowe to a multipicture deal.

28. Disney cleaned up Manhattan's 42nd Street.

29. ABC decided to edit portions of a "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" episode in which guest Harvey Fierstein said to fellow guest Mike Reagan, "Fuck you and fuck your father," and guest Johnny Lydon called fellow guest Lynn Redgrave a "bitch."

30. After studios all over town passed on Soul Food, a script about African Americans in which there was no graphic sex or violence and no use of the word "motherfucker," Twentieth Century Fox put up $7.5 million for the film and released it to an $11.2 million opening weekend.

31. Laura Dern started a relationship with Billy Bob Thornton, a guy who is not only tall, but can also write her a good role.

32. Michael J. Fox, Kirstie Alley, Tom Arnold, Dan Aykroyd and David Caruso all went back to TV.

33. George Clooney did not abandon ER.

34. Tori Spelling continued to play Donna on Beverly Hills 90210.

35. Steven Spielberg made T_he Lost World: Jurassic Park_ for under $100 million, and Amistad for $40 million.

36. Ridley Scott had Demi Moore beaten to a pulp in G.I.Jane.

37. No major studio agreed to release Adrian Lyne's remake of Lolita.

38. Jerome Seydoux, chairman of Pathe, the company that made Lolita, told the Financial Times, "We would not have started on the project if we had known then what we know now."

39. Jim Carrey and Peter Weir paired up for _The Truman Sho_w.

40. Jimmy Stewart died before he could be offered a role in the proposed sequel to It's a Wonderful Life.

41. NBC has refused to adopt the indecipherable new rating system.

42. DreamWorks hired Woody Allen to act the voice of a neurotic ant in Antz.

43. Arnold Schwarzenegger had elective surgery to correct a valve problem in his heart, proving he had one.

44. Ang Lee followed up Sense and Sensibility with The Ice Storm instead of a big-budget studio film.

45. Hollywood managed to convince the world that each year at the box office is bigger than the last, even though fewer and fewer tickets are being sold.

46. Cable TV ran original programming and popular movies against the rerun-happy major networks last summer, and collectively won the Nielsen race for the first time.

47. Twentieth Century Fox resurrected Ripley and the Alien franchise.

48. Hollywood mastered the art of making a trailer that can turn a mediocre movie into a $100 million box-office success.

49. Robin Williams writes into all of his movie contracts a prohibition against any commercial tie-ins connected to alcohol, tobacco, weapons, toys of violence, soft drinks or junk food.

50. At age 58, Peter Fonda proved he could act in Ulee's Gold.

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Comments

  • Marlon Brando is truly the greatest ever actor. He had the power to make even the best of his contemporaries look ordinary. And he did it all with very little effort. Brando saw acting as simply necessary to the maintenance of his life and it was this irreverance that enabled him to produce such thrilling performances. Watch him in any film and you’ll see it is all so effortless for him, yet undoubtedly brilliant.

  • Okay...got my coffee and the Star Ledger.... Let's see if there's anything positive in the paper this am...