Fortune Cookies -- Music and entertainment


"Hello," he lied.

Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent


A wrong note played hesitatingly is a wrong note. A wrong note played with conviction is interpretation.


An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.

Fred Allen (1894-1956)


Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life.

Chuck Jones


Don't pay any attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them.

Sam Goldwyn


Everybody has different taste and finds different things offensive. That's what the radio dial is for.

Howard Stern


Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.

Irving Thalberg, advising Louis B. Mayer not to bid for film rights to "Gone with the Wind"


Having your book made into a movie is like having your ox made into a bouillon cube.

Bill Neely


I am a deeply superficial person.

Andy Warhol


I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Elvis Presley (1935-1977)


I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

Woody Allen


I heard him do what he calls singing. It's something like the noise a dying buffalo makes.

voice teacher Robert Lansing, on Bruce Springsteen


I may be a craven little coward, but I'm a GREEDY craven little coward.

Daffy Duck


I think everyone should sing all the time. If the good Lord gave you a beautiful singing voice, it's a fine way to say "Thank you"; and if he didn't, it's a good way to get even.

Van Holyoake


I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson


I'm an experienced woman; I've been around... well, all right, I might not've been around, but I've been... nearby.

Mary Tyler Moore (1936-) as Mary, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."


I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.

Gary Cooper, on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone with the Wind"


If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

Johnny Carson


In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first drafts of human beings.

Frank DeFord


It will be gone by June.

Variety, 1955, speaking of Rock & Roll music


It's always easier to see a show you don't like the second time because you know it ends.

Walter Slezak (1902-1983)


Never make predictions, especially about the future.

Samuel Goldwyn


Of all the awards I've received, this is by far the most recent.

Arnold Schwarzenegger


Public service broadcasting delivers programs to audiences. Commercial broadcasting delivers audiences to advertisers.


Kitman's Law of TV Programming

Pure drivel tends to drive out ordinary drivel.


Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for the benefit of people who can't read.

Frank Zappa


Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.


She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft

Jerry Reed song title


Swans sing before they die;
'twere no bad thing
should certain persons die
before they sing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge


The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."

Johnny Carson


The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

Sir Ralph Richardson


The singer will have to go.

Manager Eric Easton, speaking of his new talents, The Rolling Stones


Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she mets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.

Marin County newspaper's TV listing for "The Wizard of Oz"


We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out.

Decca Recording Company, turning down the Beatles, 1962


Well, I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.

Bob Dylan


When Henry Kissinger can get the Nobel Peace Prize, what is there left for satire?

Songwriter Tom Lehrer, explaining his retirement


Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927


Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Frank Zappa


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