Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Politics has become entertainment.
I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.
I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.
I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.
Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.
Bette Davis had a phrase that called it "cigarette smoking acting" .
The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.
There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.
That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.
Sirens wailed; the revolution had come to Harrisonville. Blood was flowing on Pearl Street.
A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old.
Don't smoke. Don't kill yourselves. Don't maim yourselves. Tell your friends. Please don't smoke.
I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.
I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.
No one is going to tell a movie star to smoke or not smoke because they can do whatever they want.
Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.
I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.
I always try to do true endings and that's where I got into trouble always because Hollywood wants to do happy endings.
Actors always loved props and-so instead of a hat or an umbrella, they feel really comfortable with a cigarette as a prop.
I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.
Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.
I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.
I think the main issue is that a lot of the stars today are very addicted, and they simply feel more comfortable smoking as they act.
I haven't really spoken to God since I was a boy and I've rediscovered god and prayer in the process and all of that has come together.
There's no doubt in my mind that Bill Clinton will stop smoking cigars, will never smoke them again, as a result of what he did with that cigar.
They do the same thing [with cigarette] that they do in the kind of action picture where you know 200 people are killed and then there's no pain.
Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression.
There are some young women movie stars who are doing it everywhere, smoking in every movie, sometimes even with placements with a pack of cigarettes.
Let's make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he 'clarifies' his position to the satisfaction of our creative freedom.
I was surprised by how warm the response was, even among studio heads, who said they really, we do have to do something about glamourization of smoking.
Anyone I think who - that would go through a cancer ward and would see the result of what smoking does, would never, ever think of smoking is sexy again.
If they gave a Nobel Peace Prize for work against big tobacco, not just in the industry, but also with the California tax initiative, he really deserves one.
I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.
In the olden days, of course, cigarette companies would pay to have their product advertised in movies and to have actors smoke cigarettes.[Ronald Reagan used to do it.]
My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn't want them to be checking his writings.
I started making a point earlier that women's cancer rates are skyrocketing, and we have some women movie stars, young women movie stars, who are smoking in many of their movies.
The-one of the odd things that's going on with smoking these days is that in the '90s, smoking at movies in the '90s, there were more movies showing smoking than there were in the '60s.
Your characters get angry at you if you speak about them and stop you from giving birth to them on the page in revenge. Real writers sit down and write. Wannabe writers sit around and talk.
Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.
I've seen Joe take on many battles, cancer being one of them, and the determination that he has, and he won't stop, he's not going to make one announcement and write one editorial and go away.
I think it's terrible to show that to kids. It's - I think you should - if you - if you do a piece where something violent happens and someone dies or is badly injured, you must show the pain.
You must show how gruesome that death is because if you don't, then you turn into some kind of comic book and pain, then death, doesn't have a consequence, and pain doesn't have a consequence.
I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.
Cigarettes, cigarettes were much tougher. Booze was tough And I had a real drinking problem before as we discovered in the hospital really, but the cigarettes are much tougher and to tell you the truth.
Bill Klinton was the ultimate rock star as president. I don't think as a result of his presidency we will ever have a rock star as president again. In the same way that we will never get involved in another Vietnam.
Joe Lieberman was threatening censorship. What I'm arguing is that if the creative people in Hollywood themselves have a responsibility, have a moral responsibility in terms of smoking, not to show smoking in movies.
I do want to make a special appeal to women movie stars to, I think, have a special responsibility these days to stop smoking, not to do it up on screen because the example that's being set is really an awful example.
From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.
From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.
I began my addiction when I was 12 years old. By the time 40, 45 years later, when it, you know, it threatened my life and maimed me in terms of my voice, I was so addicted that I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.