“I was working in a restaurant once and … [one] night I sang an aria from Carmen, and a French workmate said, ‘Oh, you have such a beautiful voice and your French is good.’ Then she asked, ‘But what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘Well, you can’t sing Don José because you’re black’.’ I just kind of froze and thought, holy cow.”
Category: people
Carolyn Cassady Would Not Read On The Road, She’ll Have You Know
Says Jack Kerouac’s sometime lover and Neal Cassady’s erstwhile wife, now living in an English trailer park (“there is nothing I like about America”), “I didn’t want to read On the Road when it came out in 1957 because I didn’t want to know what Neal was doing with Jack when he left me. And, anyway, it was not my type of literature. I prefer Dickens, Shakespeare and the classics.”
Confucius’s Ideal Ruler (He Actually Existed)
“Three thousand years ago, the Duke of Zhou set China a glowing example. A paragon of virtue, he spelled out a philosophy of a ruler in harmony with heaven that inspired Confucius, and” – centuries later, after the disastrous Cultural Revolution – “came to fill the ideological vacuum left behind by Chairman Mao.”
Bret Easton Ellis Is Still Bitching About Not Getting To Write Fifty Shades Screenplay
The American Psycho author spent the summer openly campaigning to be screenwriter for the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey, eve offering casting suggestions. When the producers announced the choice of television writer Kelly Marcel, Ellis threw a little Twitter tantrum.
Margaret Atwood’s Ten Rules For Writers
“7. You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but Âessentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”
Nguyen Chi Thien, 73, ‘The Solzhenitsyn Of Vietnam’
He acquired the moniker “for the sheaves of poems he wrote opposing the Communist government there – and for the prolonged imprisonment, including torture and solitary confinement, that his efforts earned him.”
Felicity Huffman’s Jane Fonda Impersonation
“Huffman sits bolt-upright, leans forward and grips her chin, eyes intense. ‘What do you want to talk about? That’s interesting. Now why do you say that?! Why are you getting a divorce?!'”
Alfre Woodard’s Life, On And Off The Screen
The actor and activist: “I don’t love the business that much that I would fill my days with the business. If a role is so obvious, I’d rather see someone else do it. I go to work when I feel like, ‘There’s something about this character that might get overlooked.’ That’s when I’m excited to go to work. There’s plenty to do; it’s just that my raison d’être is morphing.”
Making The Leap From Literary Novelist To Vampire Trilogy Writer
Justin Cronin didn’t expect his not-really-but-sort-of-a-vampire novel The Passage to get quite the attention it did – but now he’s got two sequels in the works, and a movie deal. How does that even work for a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop?
Stalked By Alfred Hitchcock – And Taking Her Revenge Now
Tippi Hedren, on why she wouldn’t sleep with Hitchcock: “I have a strong Lutheran background, and my parents instilled in me strong morals. This was something I could never have done. I was not interested in him that way at all. I was fortunate enough to work with him, and as far as I was concerned, he ruined everything.”