If we just knew the answers to these questions, we'd never ask, "What were they thinking?" again.
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1 Where is Roberto Benigni's "off" button?
2 Why is it that as less happens in movies, they get longer?
3 What did Elia Kazan ever do to Amy Madigan?
4 If Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace doesn't make more money than any film in history in the first 10 days, is it a failure?
5 If George Lucas is the ultimate organization freak, why does Episode I come fourth?
6 Why do people pay what they do for snacks at the movies?
7 Are any of Gwyneth Paltrow's relatives doing well?
8 How did Madonna, who hails from Bay City, Michigan, get a mid-Atlantic accent?
9 Is there any performer in Hollywood who hasn't altered his or her appearance in some artificial way?
10 Why does every story about Michael Ovitz make the front page of The New York Times business section?
11 What are the Golden Globes a front for?
12 How much of Hollywood dabbles in heroin? And how much of Hollywood is really serious about it?
13 Why has Michelle Pfeiffer wasted so much of her talent?
14 What is Tom Cruise going to do instead of aging?
15 Exactly what compensation do stars receive for wearing a specific designer's clothes?
16 Why doesn't Harrison Ford let someone else choose his leading ladies?
17 Why doesn't the Academy report totals in Oscar voting?
18 If Calista Flockhart isn't anorexic, what do they call that dress size?
19 What else is wrong with Calista Flockhart?
20 Why are there so few good women directors?
21 Why are there so few good men directors?
22 As the population over 30 grows larger and larger, why has Hollywood narrowed its sights to the younger and younger?
23 If Hollywood has narrowed its sights to the younger and younger, who decided The Out-of-Towners was a good idea?
24 What, exactly, happened to Adrien Brody in The Thin Red Line?
25 Can anyone name five cities in America that do not now have film festivals?
26 Why does Warren Beatty still assume that everyone knows who he is?
27 With Dolby and THX and digital sound, et cetera, why is it hard to hear what people say in movies?
28 Who let Pamela Anderson get her breast implants removed?
29 Why does Robert De Niro agree to have that cup of coffee with Al Pacino in Heat?
30 Why did no one notice Queen Elizabeth in the audience at Romeo and Juliet until she announced her presence in Shakespeare in Love?
31 How come the film in the projector is upside down and the wrong way round?
32 How can Elisabeth Shue do Leaving Las Vegas and then go back to being Elisabeth Shue?
33 How come Mike Figgis can do Leaving Las Vegas and then go back to being Mike Figgis?
34 What happened to Bill Pullman in The Thin Red Line?
35 How do we tell which films Nicolas Cage is doing for art from those he's doing for money?
36 Why does Patricia Arquette get cast so much more often than Rosanna Arquette?
37 Why do they make the new James Bond films seem as if they were all made in 1962?
38 Who masterminded Billy Bob Thornton's makeover?
39 Is Jack Valenti hoping Colin Powell will give him a job?
40 What is the point of the R rating, except to allow movie theaters to make money and have an alibi?
41 Is there a direct relationship between the number of life achievement awards and the overall absence of achievement?
42 Why did they keep John Travolta in The Thin Red Line?
43 Why did Al Pacino's acting get so much worse after he won his Oscar?
44 What is Debra Winger doing these days?
45 Was tap dancing supposed to be a metaphor for the bullets flying on Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan, or is Debbie Allen the worst time-consuming blight on the Oscars?
46 Why is Steven Spielberg still so uneasy in public?
47 Do Gwyneth Paltrow and Harvey Weinstein actually talk when they're not onstage together at awards shows?
48 Why did Molly Ringwald go away while Demi Moore stayed?
49 What would have happened to Ed Harris if he'd had hair?
50 Why was it only Ian McKellen who realized that Brendan Fraser gave the best performance in Gods and Monsters?
51 If Susan Sarandon is so eager to improve mankind, why did she do Stepmom?
52 If Robin Wright Penn hadn't been married to Sean Penn, wouldn't she be a major star by now?
53 Will Matt Damon ever do a better acting job than the one in Courage Under Fire?
54 What did they do with the Barbra Streisand song in The Thin Red Line?
55 Does Jon Voight just want to work, or does he want to do good work, and does he know the difference?
56 Why did it take so long for movie directors to realize there's more money in television?
57 Why does David E. Kelley waste his time with movies?
58 Why are most movies about Hollywood so boring when the city is such an interesting place?
59 If the studios are capable of producing a great movie like The Truman Show and allowing the Academy to overlook it, don't they deserve whatever they get?
60 Do Joseph Fiennes and Ralph Fiennes really share any DNA?
61 lf Dustin Hoffman is one of our great actors, why does he only get a good role every 10 years?
62 Why is it that movie credits now list 600 people when in Hollywood's Golden Age there were seldom more than 30?
63 Why are there supporting roles in films, but not in life?
64 Is there a more cringe-making sight than Robin Williams when he's deeply moved?
65 How come there's good stuff in previews that turns out not to be in the movies?
66 Why does no one ever really do what's necessary to keep their own budget down?
67 Why is it always simply accepted as true that a movie breaks even when it makes two-and-a-half times what it cost?
68 Was Bruce Willis good doing those small roles he used to do because they kept him from getting tired?
69 How did Julia Roberts let Shakespeare in Love get away?
70 How did God let Keanu Reeves get born 75 years too late for the great Silent Movie Era?
71 Did Oliver Stone discover in all those released Kennedy papers that JFK was nonsense?
72 Why doesn't Alec Baldwin write some speeches for Al Gore?
73 What does Nick Nolte have to do to win?
74 What's wrong with Andy Garcia's career?
75 Was it just reasons of raw commerce that made them cut the big beach barbecue scene from The Thin Red Line?
76 How come if Shakespeare was such a great writer he did it all in longhand?
77 Why doesn't Michael Douglas make a comedy about a U.S. president who's always in danger of making big and horrible mistakes if he doesn't get a blow job every day?
78 Why does Emily Watson only play people who are pains in the neck?
79 Does anyone really believe Mark Canton is the only executive who ever fell asleep in one of his own studio's pictures?
80 Will Matthew McConaughey ever again look like he did in A Time to Kill?
81 Is that Helena Bonham Carter's real height on-screen?
82 Does anyone really care whether they ever make another Batman movie?
83 Wouldn't you rather have 93-year-old Billy Wilder directing a movie than most of the people behind the camera these days?
84 Instead of replacing Siskel, why not get rid of Ebert and have Billy Wilder do the talking about new releases?
85 Why won't Bruce and Demi just get divorced?
86 Is it true that box-office figures run in the papers every week to establish a precedent--so they can be quoted in deal negotiations?
87 Who was Irving G. Thalberg--founder of valet parking?
88 Will Joan Rivers have to die before the E! network gets rid of Melissa?
89 If it's true that no one ever quite knows what the audience will like, but everyone loves the work, why isn't everything done for scale and a cut of the profits?
90 Are they ever going to stop making bad movies from bad TV shows?
91 Why don't I ever want to see Kenneth Branagh in anything again?
92 Wouldn't we all have been happier with the Oscars if Sophia Loren and Whoopi Goldberg had traded places?
93 How come there are thousands of screens in the US and no more than a few hundred in European countries?
94 OK--a cop show, with David Caruso and Jimmy Smits--what do you think?
95 If the sun is always behind Robert Redford's head, why is his face so lined and tanned?
96 Did anyone ever really understand the plot of The Usual Suspects?
97 My friend says that Woody Allen was originally in The Thin Red Line, but they cut him because the scenes where he talked to the butterflies and the lizards altered the tone. Can this be true?
98 Why is it that the Writers Guild always goes for more money instead of keeping the copyright?
99 Why, according to a Movieline survey, do only 21.7% of readers realize we aren't kidding about "The X and Y Files"?
100 What happened to the kittens I sent to John Malkovich?
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