Quote of the Day (Budd Schulberg, on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar Speech Omission)

“I watch the Awards shows year after year and I have noticed a trend. When Gwyneth Paltrow won for Shakespeare in Love, she thanked the producer and her agents. She thanked her hairdresser and every member of her family. She must have thanked 50 people. But she never mentioned the writer. She didn’t even mention Shakespeare. They don’t want to thank the people who created their characters and who put the words in their mouth. There can’t be anything without the writer.”— Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg (1914-2009), quoted in “The Real Contender: A Conversation with ‘On the Waterfront’ Screenwriter Budd Schulberg,” Hudson Reporter, July 29, 2000

Budd Schulberg, with more than 80 years of experience in the film community as the son of a studio executive, screenwriter, and observer of the industry, was venting about the lack of respect so long accorded to scribes in Hollywood.

Their indignities have been legion—they have watched in frustration as:

*their terrific script goes into “turnaround,” or development hell; or as

*their script is given to one or more other writers for polishing (Turner and Hooch, the early Tom Hanks film that teamed him with an ugly dog, went through eight different writers!); or as

*their script gets turned by some combination of other writers, directors and producers into something radically different (or, in the words of William Holden’s hack in Sunset Boulevard about his last project, it “was about Okies in the Dust Bowl. You'd never know because when it reached the screen, the whole thing played on a torpedo boat”); or as

*they are banished from the set so they can’t object to the director's damage to their work; or as

*the angrier ones try to use whatever meager leverage they’ve accumulated to protect their scripts by becoming directors themselves, as with Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder; or finally, as Schulberg noted,

*actors forget to say thanks for writing the lines that helped them win the biggest professional honor of their careers.

But, if Schulberg had lived almost a decade longer, his outrage might have been, if anything, even more intense than what he conveyed in this interview.

After all, that producer that Gwyneth Paltrow thanked in her weepy speech on Oscar night almost a quarter century ago? It was Harvey Weinstein, a figure she later described as a “bully”—and now, of course, not just the poster boy of the #MeToo movement but also a felon convicted of rape and assault.

By the way, “the writer” Paltrow neglected to mention? It was actually two: Marc Norman and Sir Tom Stoppard—and that year they shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.

So let’s see tomorrow night who thanks the writers—and who, like Paltrow, for whatever reason, never gets around to it.

Quote of the Day (Jane Austen, on Inexplicable Pleasures)

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” — Jane Austen, Emma (1815)

Though its copyright date on the title page read “1816,” the fourth novel by Jane Austen (and last to appear in her lifetime) actually came out on this day 200 years ago from her new publisher, John Murray.

In a memoir that appeared in 1870, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen Leigh wrote that she was preparing for a rougher critical reception than had greeted her earlier books: “She was very fond of Emma, but did not reckon her being a general favourite; for when commencing that work, she said, ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.’”

That did indeed prove the case in much of the 19^th century, as some literary critics did not take too kindly to the eponymous busybody protagonist. But our own time has embraced this more complicated character far more enthusiastically, not only in print but onstage, onscreen (Gwyneth Paltrow, pictured here), TV (several adaptations, most notably in a 1996 film starring Kate Beckinsale), and even more covertly but waggishly, in the form of the contemporary cinematic retelling Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone as “Cher.” (See my prior post on the latter.)

Quote of the Day (Paul Rudnick, Imagining Gwyneth’s Explanation for 2 Recent Titles)

“Did I campaign for my titles? Yes, I’ll be honest, because, as anyone who’s ever read my blog, Goop, which is a combination of ‘good’ and ‘poop,’ will tell you, I’m a firm believer in hard work and discipline. So, when I first heard rumors about the possibility of a People cover, I did start a whispering campaign. At parties and premières, I’d murmur to strangers, ‘Doesn’t Halle Berry look gorgeous? For her age?,’ or ‘Don’t you love Charlize Theron’s cropped, boyish hairdo? Wouldn’t she be popular in prison?,’ or ‘I applaud Kate Middleton for not worrying about gaining a few extra pounds during her pregnancy. Wait, what did you say? She’s only having one baby?’”—Paul Rudnick, channeling Gwyneth Paltrow’s explanation for being named “Most Beautiful” woman by People and “Most Hated” Celeb by Star Magazine, in “Shouts and Murmurs: Most Gwyneth!”, The New Yorker, May 13, 2013

TV Quote of the Day (“Glee’s” “Sue Sylvester,” on “Holly Holliday”)

“She's looser than a thrift store turtleneck and probably just as diseased."—Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch), on substitute teacher Holly Holliday (played by Gwyneth Paltrow, in the accompanying image), in Glee, Season 2, Episode 17, “A Night of Neglect,” air date April 19, 2011, written by Ian Brennan, directed by Carol Banker

Quote of the Day (“The New Yorker,” on Gwyneth Paltrow, Hearty Eater)

“Dinner guests [at the publication party for Gwyneth Paltrow’s new cookbook, My Father’s Daughter] included people who do know her: Jay-Z, Cameron Diaz, Alex Rodriguez, the Seinfelds, and assorted food-world worthies. Most guests saw nothing unusual about getting cooking advice from a stick-thin actress; in fact, many said that they associated Gwyneth Paltrow with food. Mario Batali, in pink cargo shorts, was talking to Ruth Reichl. ‘She eats like a truck driver,’ he said of Paltrow. He recalled being in Valencia, Spain, and ‘watching her eat an entire pan of paella as big as a manhole cover.’”—Lizzie Widdicombe, “Dept. of Hoopla: Gwyneth’s World,” The New Yorker, April 25, 2011

Eating like a truck driver? Sure, that’s the first thing to come to mind when I see Gwyneth Paltrow!