Category: people

“Gibson’s handiwork includes the buccaneers of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, the fearsome ghosts and goblins of the Haunted Mansion, the colorful birds of Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and the global village children of It’s a Small World. He created the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that became the first Audio-Animatronic figure.”

“A Vickers performance in the opera house was a grand, sweeping, overriding affair. It was often a performance of extremes, something more readily comparable to what Marlon Brando or Zero Mostel might do than to what his operatic colleagues did.”

Robin Thede, the first African-American woman to head a comedy writing team for a late night host: “The thing about tragedy is that it causes people to react in a myriad of ways … [and] some of them are very hilarious. You don’t make fun of the actual tragedy. You make fun of the ridiculous ways people react to it.”

“Sharif died of a heart attack in a Cairo hospital, his longtime agent, London-based Steve Kenis, and the head of Egypt’s Theatrical Arts Guild, Ashraf Zaki, told The Associated Press. The actor had been suffering from Alzheimer’s.”

Ella Baff has been at Jacob’s Pillow, which is home to America’s longest-running dance festival, for 17 years. In a statement, Mark Leavitt, the board chairman at Jacob’s Pillow, wished Baff well. “The Mellon Foundation is an important institution that has been a longtime supporter of the arts and some of the Pillow’s most successful programs,” he said.

“Nabokov arrived on these shores, penniless and without prospects, in 1941, at the age of forty, having only begun writing in English shortly before his flight from Europe. How could a book so thoroughly – so definingly – American have arisen … from so seemingly unlikely a source?”

“The bottom line when people talk about all the reasons, you know the biggest reason? It stopped being fun. It just stopped being fun. It really wasn’t. That’s a big deal to me. It may sound like “Why do you have to have fun to go to work?” I don’t know. I like to be in a good mood. The ratio of bullshit to the fun part of doing the work was really starting to get out of whack.”

“He is bald, with blue eyes and a deep tan, and he looks as much like a personal trainer as like a personal guru. … He speaks with the kind of Estuary English accent that you might encounter in a London pub.” Andy Puddicombe “trained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk before creating an iPhone app called Headspace, which teaches meditation and mindfulness techniques [and] has been downloaded by three million users.”

“The Brooklyn-born son of a Bronx jeweler, Weintraub rose from the mailroom of a talent agency to become a top concert promoter before shifting into a decades-long career as a top Hollywood producer. Along the way, Weintraub worked with the most famous of stars — Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, George Clooney, Brad Pitt — and was a close friend of former President George H.W. Bush. He relished his insider status, just as they savored the stories that eagerly poured out of him.”

“As these things go, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t actually lose any teeth or break any limbs or misplace an eye. … I was furious and ashamed, but above all else I was afraid. Afraid of my assailants. Afraid they would corner me again. Afraid of a second beat-down. Afraid and afraid and afraid. Eventually the bruises and the rage faded, but not the fear.”