Ella Fitzgerald on Marilyn Monroe:
“I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild.
“The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.“
Behind the scenes of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 film The Hidden Fortress.
“In 1981, we visited George Lucas’s enormous studios… At the studio entrance stood R2D2 and C3PO, the robot pair inspired by a pair of farmers in The Hidden Fortress. Someone evidently told Lucas that Kurosawa had come to collect a copyright fee for their use. On hearing that, Kurosawa hastily told Lucas, ‘No, no!’ adding with a smile, ‘Please use them all you like.’” – Teruyo Nogami
Do the Right Thing →
Among the many devastating effects of Lee’s film, certainly the most subtle and effective is the way it leads some viewers (not racist, but thoughtless or inattentive or imbued with the unexamined values of our society) to realize that they have valued a pizzeria over a human life.
Do the Right Thing was the finest, the most controversial, most discussed and most important film of 1989. Of course, it was not nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture (that award went to Driving Miss Daisy, which has a view of race in America that is rotated just 180 degrees from Lee’s). To an extent, I think some viewers have trouble seeing the film; it is blurred by their deep-seated ideas and emotions about race in America, which they project onto Lee, assuming he is angry or bitter. On the basis of this film it would be more accurate to call him sad, observant, realistic—or empathetic.
- Roger Ebert, circa 19 Feb 2001