Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
“Do the things you used to talk about doing but never did. Know when to let go and when to hold on tight. Stop rushing. Don't be intimidated to say it like it is. Stop apologizing all the time. Learn to say no, so your yes has some oomph. Spend time with the friends who lift you up, and cut loose the ones who bring you down. Stop giving your power away. Be more concerned with being interested than being interesting. Be old enough to appreciate your freedom, and young enough to enjoy it. Finally know who you are. ”
Kristin Armstrong -
Kristin Armstrong -
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Ronda is located in the province of Malaga, Andalusia, Spain, famous for it’s city cliffs. It is situated in the mountains at an elevation of 760 meters (2,500 ft). The city is split in two by the Guadalevin River that runs through Ronda, causing it to sit on either side of the El Tajo Canyon formed by the river. There are three bridges that precariously cross the canyon so that you can cross from one side of Ronda to the other. The city’s architecture received its influence from the Romans and Moors who once ruled the area. Ronda has the distinction of being the birthplace of bullfighting and Spain’s oldest bullfighting ring is still there.
Was on the Line
Gay Bar Mourns Elizabeth Taylor
Axel Koester for The New York Times
Patrons of The Abbey in West Hollywood, a favorite hang-out of the late Liz Taylor, pay their respects at a shrine erected in her honor.
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: March 24, 2011
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Last Halloween, David Cooley, the founder of the Abbey, a sprawling gay bar here, got a phone call. Elizabeth Taylor was on the line, and she wanted to know if it was a good night to swing by.
The Abbey was a favorite hang-out of the late Liz Taylor.
“I told her not to come,” he said. “It was too busy. And there were already a half dozen Elizabeth Taylors here anyway.”
A gay bar, even a fancy one with chandeliers and a roaring fireplace like the Abbey, seems an unlikely haunt for a megastar. But the actress, who died on Wednesday at 79, was a once-a-week regular in recent years — sipping tequila shots, downing watermelon and apple martinis or simply waving merrily from her wheelchair.
Sometimes she brought her dog, Daisy, who, some bar-goers insist, liked to nod her head along to the bar’s throbbing Madonna soundtrack.
The scene in the “Elizabeth Taylor Room” — her favorite spot amid the Abbey’s many nooks and crannies — was decidedly somber just after news of her death on Wednesday. Regulars, fans and Abbey employees started leaving flowers, candles, pictures and other tokens of affection (an autographed napkin) around a donation Ms. Taylor once made to the bar: a large portrait of herself in her prime.
Sitting untouched on an empty table nearby was a remembrance from the bar staff, a Blue Velvet martini, a bluish drink made with vodka and blueberry schnapps and named in a nod to Ms. Taylor’s 1944 film “National Velvet.”
“People have been walking up and starting to cry,” said Brian Rosman, an Abbey spokesman and a patron. “Others can’t talk, they get so emotional.”
Mr. Cooley said it should not be a surprise that people in this proudly rainbow-flag-flying town are responding to her death with such feeling. There have been other gay touchstones — Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Cher, Debbie Reynolds, Madonna — but Ms. Taylor perhaps eclipsed all of them, at least for a certain generation, with her outspoken efforts to raise the profile of AIDS at a time when people still referred to it as “the gay disease.”
“Taylor’s relationship with gay men provided a new model of gay icon,” Paul Flynn, an editor at the British gay magazine Attitude, wrote in The Guardian on Thursday. “No longer was it enough to be a woman with whom gay men retained a bass-note of empathy, the kind of strung-out glamour/tragedy axis Judy Garland immortalized.”
Ms. Taylor started raising money for AIDS research and victims after her friend Rock Hudson died of the disease in 1985. Over the next 25 years, she would become synonymous with the fight against AIDS, ultimately helping to raise more than $100 million for the cause.
“For her to testify before Congress as early as she did was really remarkable,” said John Scott, the former executive director of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Indeed, Ms. Taylor also became a heroine for many gay people for criticizing a slow response to AIDS from politicians. “I’m not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS,” she said of President George Bush in 1991.
“She helped make talking about being gay O.K.,” said Mark Conaghan, a tourist from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who had his picture taken next to the Abbey’s shrine on Wednesday night. “She let it be known, God forbid, that she even had gay friends herself.”
The Abbey, which opened in 1991 and has grown to 16,000 square feet, has become a tourist attraction because of Ms. Taylor’s patronage, which started about four or five years ago, according to Mr. Cooley. Sightseeing buses regularly drive by, with guides pointing out the door through which Ms. Taylor, usually wearing gaudy rhinestone sunglasses, would enter and leave.
One such exit can be seen in a video posted to TMZ.com in June of last year. Ms. Taylor — wearing knee-high boots, a pink blouse and a white golf hat — was wheeled to her car as people shouted greetings.
“Aside from my back, fine,” she responds when asked about her health. An Abbey employee follows behind carrying Daisy.
She was not the only star of her era to frequent West Hollywood’s cluster of gay bars. Legend has it that Loretta Lynn once judged a drag contest of men dressed in her likeness. But no other celebrity of Ms. Taylor’s wattage became such a presence, said John Heilman, a member of the West Hollywood City Council. “I used to run into her all the time at clubs on the strip,” he said.
Still, the Abbey was her hangout. Mr. Cooley said she told him on one of her visits that it was her favorite pub. He had the sentiment printed on a plaque and placed near her donated portrait, which captures her diva qualities: arms extended, wearing an extravagant, shimmering gown recalling her wardrobe in “Cleopatra.”
But the bar finds itself continually replacing the plaque.
“People steal it,” Mr. Cooley said. “We’ve screwed it on. We’ve glued it on. Nothing works. I think it’s a symbol to people — that she loved us as much as we loved her.”
Axel Koester for The New York Times
Patrons of The Abbey in West Hollywood, a favorite hang-out of the late Liz Taylor, pay their respects at a shrine erected in her honor.
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: March 24, 2011
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Last Halloween, David Cooley, the founder of the Abbey, a sprawling gay bar here, got a phone call. Elizabeth Taylor was on the line, and she wanted to know if it was a good night to swing by.
The Abbey was a favorite hang-out of the late Liz Taylor.
“I told her not to come,” he said. “It was too busy. And there were already a half dozen Elizabeth Taylors here anyway.”
A gay bar, even a fancy one with chandeliers and a roaring fireplace like the Abbey, seems an unlikely haunt for a megastar. But the actress, who died on Wednesday at 79, was a once-a-week regular in recent years — sipping tequila shots, downing watermelon and apple martinis or simply waving merrily from her wheelchair.
Sometimes she brought her dog, Daisy, who, some bar-goers insist, liked to nod her head along to the bar’s throbbing Madonna soundtrack.
The scene in the “Elizabeth Taylor Room” — her favorite spot amid the Abbey’s many nooks and crannies — was decidedly somber just after news of her death on Wednesday. Regulars, fans and Abbey employees started leaving flowers, candles, pictures and other tokens of affection (an autographed napkin) around a donation Ms. Taylor once made to the bar: a large portrait of herself in her prime.
Sitting untouched on an empty table nearby was a remembrance from the bar staff, a Blue Velvet martini, a bluish drink made with vodka and blueberry schnapps and named in a nod to Ms. Taylor’s 1944 film “National Velvet.”
“People have been walking up and starting to cry,” said Brian Rosman, an Abbey spokesman and a patron. “Others can’t talk, they get so emotional.”
Mr. Cooley said it should not be a surprise that people in this proudly rainbow-flag-flying town are responding to her death with such feeling. There have been other gay touchstones — Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Cher, Debbie Reynolds, Madonna — but Ms. Taylor perhaps eclipsed all of them, at least for a certain generation, with her outspoken efforts to raise the profile of AIDS at a time when people still referred to it as “the gay disease.”
“Taylor’s relationship with gay men provided a new model of gay icon,” Paul Flynn, an editor at the British gay magazine Attitude, wrote in The Guardian on Thursday. “No longer was it enough to be a woman with whom gay men retained a bass-note of empathy, the kind of strung-out glamour/tragedy axis Judy Garland immortalized.”
Ms. Taylor started raising money for AIDS research and victims after her friend Rock Hudson died of the disease in 1985. Over the next 25 years, she would become synonymous with the fight against AIDS, ultimately helping to raise more than $100 million for the cause.
“For her to testify before Congress as early as she did was really remarkable,” said John Scott, the former executive director of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Indeed, Ms. Taylor also became a heroine for many gay people for criticizing a slow response to AIDS from politicians. “I’m not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS,” she said of President George Bush in 1991.
“She helped make talking about being gay O.K.,” said Mark Conaghan, a tourist from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who had his picture taken next to the Abbey’s shrine on Wednesday night. “She let it be known, God forbid, that she even had gay friends herself.”
The Abbey, which opened in 1991 and has grown to 16,000 square feet, has become a tourist attraction because of Ms. Taylor’s patronage, which started about four or five years ago, according to Mr. Cooley. Sightseeing buses regularly drive by, with guides pointing out the door through which Ms. Taylor, usually wearing gaudy rhinestone sunglasses, would enter and leave.
One such exit can be seen in a video posted to TMZ.com in June of last year. Ms. Taylor — wearing knee-high boots, a pink blouse and a white golf hat — was wheeled to her car as people shouted greetings.
“Aside from my back, fine,” she responds when asked about her health. An Abbey employee follows behind carrying Daisy.
She was not the only star of her era to frequent West Hollywood’s cluster of gay bars. Legend has it that Loretta Lynn once judged a drag contest of men dressed in her likeness. But no other celebrity of Ms. Taylor’s wattage became such a presence, said John Heilman, a member of the West Hollywood City Council. “I used to run into her all the time at clubs on the strip,” he said.
Still, the Abbey was her hangout. Mr. Cooley said she told him on one of her visits that it was her favorite pub. He had the sentiment printed on a plaque and placed near her donated portrait, which captures her diva qualities: arms extended, wearing an extravagant, shimmering gown recalling her wardrobe in “Cleopatra.”
But the bar finds itself continually replacing the plaque.
“People steal it,” Mr. Cooley said. “We’ve screwed it on. We’ve glued it on. Nothing works. I think it’s a symbol to people — that she loved us as much as we loved her.”
8 Basics by Kurt Vonnegut
With his customary wisdom and wit, Vonnegut put forth 8 basics of what he calls Creative Writing 101: *
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.
what a journey..
In the new Hollywood Reporter, the Comedy Central bad boys open up about their meanest spoofs (from religion to Tom Cruise), conquering Broadway with "Book of Mormon" and how they’re working “on a deeper level.”
Trey Parker and Matt Stone sit slumped at a table, exhausted.
Their sense of humor has almost vanished, their energy disappeared, their anarchists’ willingness to say “f--- you” to anything that smacks of the establishment has utterly drained away. All they can think of is sleep.
“The schedule throws you off so much,” says Parker, referring to their new Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, about two young missionaries who are sent to Uganda. “We’ve been going to previews every night then staying up till 2 or 3. I’m worn out.”
Who can blame him? In the nine weeks since South Park’s creators decamped from Los Angeles for New York, they’ve plunged into a frenetic world of rehearsals, rewrites and directing their show — all with, between them, a wife, a girlfriend and two kids in tow. The sheer volume of work, and the lightning speed at which it has raced by, has caught them unawares.
“It’s crazy how fast it is,” says Parker, wolfing down dinner at Serafina restaurant. “We did four weeks of rehearsals, then two weeks of ‘tech,’ then went into previews. Seriously, this is what blew my mind: We only heard the thing with a full orchestra six days before the first paying audience.”
PHOTOS: South Park's wildest spoofs
On March 24, a far higher-profile audience is scheduled to attend Mormon’s opening night, when New York will be counting on the production to sustain Broadway’s momentum — with more than $1 billion in grosses last year — and restore some of the luster tarnished by Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
But at this point, with just eight days left before the premiere, that’s the last thing on the writers’ minds. Parker dreams of taking a vacation “somewhere in the Caribbean,” while Stone just wants to “go look at a wall and check out.”
He won’t have long to do so. A week after they leave New York around March 28, the pair hurtles into the 15th season of South Park, part of a new pact with Comedy Central that keeps the show on the air through 2013 and is said to be even richer than their previous $75 million deal. They’ll have just one week to create each episode, with no time to prep.
“Every show, we’re down to the wire,” says Parker, running his hand through his hair in exasperation. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it. It’s a nightmare.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“They’ve matured. I’m very proud of the men they’ve become.” — “South Park” exec producer Anne Garefino, on Parker and Stone
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This nightmare, a good problem to have, might have been averted if not for a chance meeting with Robert Lopez in 2004.
On producer Scott Rudin’s advice, Parker and Stone went to see the writer-composer’s Tony-winning Avenue Q, then took him for a drink.
“Bobby said, ‘I want to do something about Joseph Smith,’ ” recalls Stone, the younger and more extroverted of the South Park duo, referrring to the founder of the Mormon religion. “And we were like: ‘Wait! We want to do something about Joseph Smith!’ ”
Growing up in Colorado, next door to Utah, Parker and Stone had long been familiar with the Mormon church and its members; Parker even dated a Mormon girl and was badly hurt when she ditched him.
They had first thought of a fictionalized Smith while working on an aborted Fox TV series about historical characters. Now, with Lopez, they started bandying about more concrete ideas — though they weren’t sure if their work would lead to a play or a film or something else altogether — only to realize Smith didn’t provide a strong enough hook.
“Within a few days, we were like, ‘Nah!’ ” Parker says. “We pretty quickly got to a modern story.”
This new version revolved around two young men who would go into the world on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a missionary task that’s obligatory for all Mormons. Precisely who they would be and where they would go remained undetermined.
In an effort to hone the tale, the three creators — who jointly wrote the book, music and lyrics — took a research trip to Salt Lake City.
“Bobby had never been there,” Stone remembers, “so we ended up doing all the visitor stuff and museums but mostly talking to a lot of people.”
As their ideas evolved, the principal characters crystallized into a bright-eyed zealot and his wacky, comedic companion. But developing them further proved a challenge. Lopez was based in New York, the South Park guys in Los Angeles — and they were working ceaselessly. How would they ever find the time to create an entire musical?
In 2006, Parker and Stone flew to London, where they spent three weeks with Lopez while he was working on the West End production of Avenue Q. “We wrote four or five songs and came up with the basic germ of the idea there — that they would go somewhere not Salt Lake City-like,” Parker recalls.
During the next few years, the trio met frequently to develop what they initially called The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“There was a lot of hopping back and forth between L.A. and New York,” Parker says. “That probably helped the project because there would be, ‘Oh f---, the guy flew out; we should probably work.’ ” All the while, the format itself remained uncertain. “We were thinking, ‘Let’s make an album; let’s just write another song,’ ” Parker says.
It was Lopez who pushed for the stage, and as his partners concurred, he prodded them to take the vehicle a step further and “workshop” it. Coming from TV and film, Parker and Stone were clueless about what he meant.
“We didn’t understand the whole workshop process,” Parker admits. “Bobby had to explain, ‘We need to cast it and have people there with music stands in a little theater, reading the script and singing the songs.’ ”
The group embarked on the first of a half-dozen workshops that would take place during the next four years, ranging from 30-minute mini-performances for family and friends to much larger-scale renderings of the embryonic show. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money, still unconvinced they’d take it any further.
The workshop process was thrilling but posed its own challenges.
“In animation, we would simply have people do an ‘animatic’ [in which storyboards are designed to accompany prerecorded dialogue], something we could look at on an Avid,” Stone says. “But for Broadway, you need 20 actors and auditions — and that means dealing with Equity, the actors union. They have a pay scale just for workshops.”
A final five-week workshop took place in August, when Casey Nicholaw came on board as choreographer and co-director with Parker. By that time, several of the cast members who’d been with them all the way — like Josh Gad, the plump sidekick whose confused mangling of Mormonism with Star Wars provides some of the show’s biggest laughs — were starting to get antsy.
“August was our ‘shit-or-get-off-the-pot,’ ” Parker says. But the response they received was enough to make them commit. “Then we opened a corporation and did the whole investment thing.”
Financing Mormon proved easy and modest by Hollywood standards. “It’s more than $2 million-$3 million but less than Spider-Man,” quips Stone. An insider estimates the budget at about $10 million, low for a big musical.
With Rudin in charge, the creators had one of Broadway’s leading producers at their side, who had also worked with them on the films South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police. It was Rudin who now booked a theater and hired key players while sets were designed and built, hundreds of actors auditioned and some 28 cast. Finally, a rehearsal space was found, tape laid on the ground to mark key spots, and the actual work of producing a full-blown musical got under way.
On Jan. 10, Parker and Stone flew to New York, ready to give Mormon their all.
♦♦♦♦♦
It’s mid-afternoon on a Thursday, precisely a week before the show premieres, and their all just doesn’t seem to be enough.
They’re huddled with Rudin in the stalls of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, locked in intense discussion as Nicholaw pivots across the stage, a whirlwind of energy, putting his cast through one of the show’s bouncier numbers. The number may be bouncy, but the cast isn’t. Like the dozen or so technicians and stagehands sprinkled throughout the auditorium, they look wiped out.
Nicholaw shakes his whole head and body as two of the cast fail to get a movement quite right. “No, no, no!” he says, maintaining a remarkable ebullience despite his frustration. Across the stage, an actress who plays one of the Ugandan villagers rolls her eyes.
Parker glances up at her somberly.
At 41, he is no longer the enfant terrible who became notorious for lampooning everyone and everything — from Tom Cruise to Paris Hilton to Muhammad — and, along with Stone, even appearing in a dress at the Oscars. Rather, there’s a high seriousness to him that might surprise South Park aficionados.
He treats the series as more than a job; it’s a cause.
“South Park is way bigger than either of us,” he says. “And it’s this curse, and when we are doing it, I hate it. I’m pissed off and I’m tired, and every single Tuesday I say, ‘This is the worst show we’ve ever done!’ It’s brutal. But it’s something I am a part of that’s bigger than I am. That’s what most important.”
Says Rudin: “It’s this thing that happens rarely in the culture, where something very subversive is also very affirmative. It has affirmative values but also tears down every possible institution.”
That combination has resulted in an enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars. South Park T-shirts alone generated some $30 million in sales in the late ’90s.
And yet its success comes at a price: When they return to Los Angeles, Parker and Stone will have just two months to produce a batch of seven new episodes, followed by seven more after a brief hiatus. Without their usual two weeks of prep before the season begins — and without their habitual five-day writers retreat — they’ll be scribbling ideas on Thursdays and working nonstop till the early hours of the following Wednesday morning, the very day each episode airs, when it is finally locked.
Both write, but their chores are slightly different. Parker, the more introspective of the two, also directs, while the effervescent Stone, 39, interfaces with the world at large.
“He’s genuinely a true artist,” Stone says of his colleague. “I’m more mercurial. I have a temper more than Trey; I’m not proud of it, but I have that edge. Trey avoids conflict like the plague.”
Raised in Conifer, Colo., the son of a geologist father and an insurance-salesman mother, Parker spent a semester at the Berklee College of Music before meeting Stone at the University of Colorado, where the latter — from suburban Littleton — was a math major. Both shared a uniquely provocative, anti-authoritarian humor, which they quickly applied to their first movie, Cannibal! The Musical.
Cannibal sold to schlock purveyor Troma Entertainment and got them a writing deal with Rudin while they were still in their early 20s.
But it wasn’t until they made a much-talked-about video greeting card for Fox executive Brian Graden that they were commissioned to make South Park some 15 years ago. Other than the two forays into film and a TV misfire, That’s My Bush, they’ve remained exclusively with South Park ever since.
Parker says they’ve had it “pretty good.” He doesn’t voice the familiar complaints about interference from Standards and Practices — in fact, he says Comedy Central’s lawyers have helped the series.
“The Scientology episode, for instance, started with the idea that Tom Cruise is going to show up and he’s just flamboyantly gay, and we were going to say, ‘There’s that gay guy!’ ” he explains. “And the lawyers said, ‘You just can’t do that.’ So we went, ‘What if we say, “There’s that guy, and he’s in a closet?” ’ And they said, ‘Can’t do it.’ So we said, ‘What if he’s literally in a closet?’ And they said, ‘That you can do!’ ” He smiles. “Bargaining makes you come up with the best ideas.”
The Cruise episode was one of many that defined South Park as among the most cutting-edge shows of its era, a creation that made fun of individuals and institutions alike. Which makes it surprising to discover there’s a gentleness and even a kindness about Parker and Stone that’s far from the flipness one might expect.
South Park executive producer Anne Garefino. “I’m very proud of the men they’ve become.”
It’s easy to forget that the guys who started South Park as twentysomethings are now on the brink of middle age.
“We care about different things today,” Parker admits. “First, we were friends f---ing around, trying to get laid, breaking into Hollywood, sleeping on couches. Now Matt is married, and I’ve got a little family.”
Two years ago, Stone wed his longtime girlfriend, with whom he has a 1-year-old boy. As for Parker, after a failed earlier marriage, he says he’s found contentment with his girlfriend of the past two years, who has a 10-year-old son.
Both have become more sedate: Stone, who’s been with the same woman for 10 years, believes he’s born to be a family man, and Parker says most of his spare time is now spent at home.
“For better or worse, we’ve gotten older,” he acknowledges.
In his down time, the Cruise/Muhammad/Mormon satirist is obsessed with Food Network, and his hobby is designing houses. “I got into this little habit of architecture and building,” he says. “I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell — but then I can never bring myself to sell them.”
He laughs easily, appreciating the brief respite from all the pressure. Like Stone, he’s almost shockingly normal and decent.
Even at their most sacrilegious, Parker says, they never plan to inflict pain. He seems relieved at the Mormon response to his satire.
“The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening,” the LDS website notes, “but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people’s lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.”
“When someone goes, ‘Oh, this group is really pissed off at what you said,’ there’s not a piece of my body that goes, ‘Sweet!’ ” Parker asserts. “That means I did it wrong. I’m just trying to make people laugh.”
Which is precisely what he says he’s trying to do with Mormon.
And yet the amount of effort the writers have expended, the perfectionism they’ve brought to bear, seems designed for something far grander.
The result might have lyrics like “F--- you, God, in the ass, mouth and c---,” but that shouldn’t dispel its underlying humanity. If anything, the shock element seems a distraction, as if Stone and Parker were reminding us they’re still the South Park creators of old when in truth they’re reaching for something new.
But can they succeed?
♦♦♦♦♦
Night. Ad the 1,102-seat theater fills to capacity, a rapid-fire prologue introduces us to the history of Mormonism, then we meet the show’s leads. Minutes later, we’re whisked to Africa, where we encounter cheery locals who sing with an abandon that the rehearsals simply don’t convey:
There isn’t enough food to eat/Hasa diga eebowai!/People are starving in the street/Hasa diga eebowai!
Gad’s Elder Cunningham squeals with an infectious giggle, unaware that Hasa diga eebowai will turn out to be blasphemous. Then we’re on a roller-coaster ride of comedy and characters with names like General Butt F---ing Naked — all wild and anarchic and yet so fundamentally sweet it hurts.
As the curtain falls two hours later, the audience rises in a thunderous ovation. Mormon is very possibly about to become a phenomenon.
This isn’t South Park: It’s a deeper, more mature work, which is terrific and terrifying at the same time.
“Once you get yourselves into things that are working on a deeper level, you just have to keep going,” Stone reflects. “When you reach that deeper level, you can’t go back.”
Trey Parker and Matt Stone sit slumped at a table, exhausted.
Their sense of humor has almost vanished, their energy disappeared, their anarchists’ willingness to say “f--- you” to anything that smacks of the establishment has utterly drained away. All they can think of is sleep.
“The schedule throws you off so much,” says Parker, referring to their new Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, about two young missionaries who are sent to Uganda. “We’ve been going to previews every night then staying up till 2 or 3. I’m worn out.”
Who can blame him? In the nine weeks since South Park’s creators decamped from Los Angeles for New York, they’ve plunged into a frenetic world of rehearsals, rewrites and directing their show — all with, between them, a wife, a girlfriend and two kids in tow. The sheer volume of work, and the lightning speed at which it has raced by, has caught them unawares.
“It’s crazy how fast it is,” says Parker, wolfing down dinner at Serafina restaurant. “We did four weeks of rehearsals, then two weeks of ‘tech,’ then went into previews. Seriously, this is what blew my mind: We only heard the thing with a full orchestra six days before the first paying audience.”
PHOTOS: South Park's wildest spoofs
On March 24, a far higher-profile audience is scheduled to attend Mormon’s opening night, when New York will be counting on the production to sustain Broadway’s momentum — with more than $1 billion in grosses last year — and restore some of the luster tarnished by Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
But at this point, with just eight days left before the premiere, that’s the last thing on the writers’ minds. Parker dreams of taking a vacation “somewhere in the Caribbean,” while Stone just wants to “go look at a wall and check out.”
He won’t have long to do so. A week after they leave New York around March 28, the pair hurtles into the 15th season of South Park, part of a new pact with Comedy Central that keeps the show on the air through 2013 and is said to be even richer than their previous $75 million deal. They’ll have just one week to create each episode, with no time to prep.
“Every show, we’re down to the wire,” says Parker, running his hand through his hair in exasperation. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it. It’s a nightmare.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“They’ve matured. I’m very proud of the men they’ve become.” — “South Park” exec producer Anne Garefino, on Parker and Stone
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This nightmare, a good problem to have, might have been averted if not for a chance meeting with Robert Lopez in 2004.
On producer Scott Rudin’s advice, Parker and Stone went to see the writer-composer’s Tony-winning Avenue Q, then took him for a drink.
“Bobby said, ‘I want to do something about Joseph Smith,’ ” recalls Stone, the younger and more extroverted of the South Park duo, referrring to the founder of the Mormon religion. “And we were like: ‘Wait! We want to do something about Joseph Smith!’ ”
Growing up in Colorado, next door to Utah, Parker and Stone had long been familiar with the Mormon church and its members; Parker even dated a Mormon girl and was badly hurt when she ditched him.
They had first thought of a fictionalized Smith while working on an aborted Fox TV series about historical characters. Now, with Lopez, they started bandying about more concrete ideas — though they weren’t sure if their work would lead to a play or a film or something else altogether — only to realize Smith didn’t provide a strong enough hook.
“Within a few days, we were like, ‘Nah!’ ” Parker says. “We pretty quickly got to a modern story.”
This new version revolved around two young men who would go into the world on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a missionary task that’s obligatory for all Mormons. Precisely who they would be and where they would go remained undetermined.
In an effort to hone the tale, the three creators — who jointly wrote the book, music and lyrics — took a research trip to Salt Lake City.
“Bobby had never been there,” Stone remembers, “so we ended up doing all the visitor stuff and museums but mostly talking to a lot of people.”
As their ideas evolved, the principal characters crystallized into a bright-eyed zealot and his wacky, comedic companion. But developing them further proved a challenge. Lopez was based in New York, the South Park guys in Los Angeles — and they were working ceaselessly. How would they ever find the time to create an entire musical?
In 2006, Parker and Stone flew to London, where they spent three weeks with Lopez while he was working on the West End production of Avenue Q. “We wrote four or five songs and came up with the basic germ of the idea there — that they would go somewhere not Salt Lake City-like,” Parker recalls.
During the next few years, the trio met frequently to develop what they initially called The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“There was a lot of hopping back and forth between L.A. and New York,” Parker says. “That probably helped the project because there would be, ‘Oh f---, the guy flew out; we should probably work.’ ” All the while, the format itself remained uncertain. “We were thinking, ‘Let’s make an album; let’s just write another song,’ ” Parker says.
It was Lopez who pushed for the stage, and as his partners concurred, he prodded them to take the vehicle a step further and “workshop” it. Coming from TV and film, Parker and Stone were clueless about what he meant.
“We didn’t understand the whole workshop process,” Parker admits. “Bobby had to explain, ‘We need to cast it and have people there with music stands in a little theater, reading the script and singing the songs.’ ”
The group embarked on the first of a half-dozen workshops that would take place during the next four years, ranging from 30-minute mini-performances for family and friends to much larger-scale renderings of the embryonic show. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money, still unconvinced they’d take it any further.
The workshop process was thrilling but posed its own challenges.
“In animation, we would simply have people do an ‘animatic’ [in which storyboards are designed to accompany prerecorded dialogue], something we could look at on an Avid,” Stone says. “But for Broadway, you need 20 actors and auditions — and that means dealing with Equity, the actors union. They have a pay scale just for workshops.”
A final five-week workshop took place in August, when Casey Nicholaw came on board as choreographer and co-director with Parker. By that time, several of the cast members who’d been with them all the way — like Josh Gad, the plump sidekick whose confused mangling of Mormonism with Star Wars provides some of the show’s biggest laughs — were starting to get antsy.
“August was our ‘shit-or-get-off-the-pot,’ ” Parker says. But the response they received was enough to make them commit. “Then we opened a corporation and did the whole investment thing.”
Financing Mormon proved easy and modest by Hollywood standards. “It’s more than $2 million-$3 million but less than Spider-Man,” quips Stone. An insider estimates the budget at about $10 million, low for a big musical.
With Rudin in charge, the creators had one of Broadway’s leading producers at their side, who had also worked with them on the films South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut and Team America: World Police. It was Rudin who now booked a theater and hired key players while sets were designed and built, hundreds of actors auditioned and some 28 cast. Finally, a rehearsal space was found, tape laid on the ground to mark key spots, and the actual work of producing a full-blown musical got under way.
On Jan. 10, Parker and Stone flew to New York, ready to give Mormon their all.
♦♦♦♦♦
It’s mid-afternoon on a Thursday, precisely a week before the show premieres, and their all just doesn’t seem to be enough.
They’re huddled with Rudin in the stalls of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, locked in intense discussion as Nicholaw pivots across the stage, a whirlwind of energy, putting his cast through one of the show’s bouncier numbers. The number may be bouncy, but the cast isn’t. Like the dozen or so technicians and stagehands sprinkled throughout the auditorium, they look wiped out.
Nicholaw shakes his whole head and body as two of the cast fail to get a movement quite right. “No, no, no!” he says, maintaining a remarkable ebullience despite his frustration. Across the stage, an actress who plays one of the Ugandan villagers rolls her eyes.
Parker glances up at her somberly.
At 41, he is no longer the enfant terrible who became notorious for lampooning everyone and everything — from Tom Cruise to Paris Hilton to Muhammad — and, along with Stone, even appearing in a dress at the Oscars. Rather, there’s a high seriousness to him that might surprise South Park aficionados.
He treats the series as more than a job; it’s a cause.
“South Park is way bigger than either of us,” he says. “And it’s this curse, and when we are doing it, I hate it. I’m pissed off and I’m tired, and every single Tuesday I say, ‘This is the worst show we’ve ever done!’ It’s brutal. But it’s something I am a part of that’s bigger than I am. That’s what most important.”
Says Rudin: “It’s this thing that happens rarely in the culture, where something very subversive is also very affirmative. It has affirmative values but also tears down every possible institution.”
That combination has resulted in an enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars. South Park T-shirts alone generated some $30 million in sales in the late ’90s.
And yet its success comes at a price: When they return to Los Angeles, Parker and Stone will have just two months to produce a batch of seven new episodes, followed by seven more after a brief hiatus. Without their usual two weeks of prep before the season begins — and without their habitual five-day writers retreat — they’ll be scribbling ideas on Thursdays and working nonstop till the early hours of the following Wednesday morning, the very day each episode airs, when it is finally locked.
Both write, but their chores are slightly different. Parker, the more introspective of the two, also directs, while the effervescent Stone, 39, interfaces with the world at large.
“He’s genuinely a true artist,” Stone says of his colleague. “I’m more mercurial. I have a temper more than Trey; I’m not proud of it, but I have that edge. Trey avoids conflict like the plague.”
Raised in Conifer, Colo., the son of a geologist father and an insurance-salesman mother, Parker spent a semester at the Berklee College of Music before meeting Stone at the University of Colorado, where the latter — from suburban Littleton — was a math major. Both shared a uniquely provocative, anti-authoritarian humor, which they quickly applied to their first movie, Cannibal! The Musical.
Cannibal sold to schlock purveyor Troma Entertainment and got them a writing deal with Rudin while they were still in their early 20s.
But it wasn’t until they made a much-talked-about video greeting card for Fox executive Brian Graden that they were commissioned to make South Park some 15 years ago. Other than the two forays into film and a TV misfire, That’s My Bush, they’ve remained exclusively with South Park ever since.
Parker says they’ve had it “pretty good.” He doesn’t voice the familiar complaints about interference from Standards and Practices — in fact, he says Comedy Central’s lawyers have helped the series.
“The Scientology episode, for instance, started with the idea that Tom Cruise is going to show up and he’s just flamboyantly gay, and we were going to say, ‘There’s that gay guy!’ ” he explains. “And the lawyers said, ‘You just can’t do that.’ So we went, ‘What if we say, “There’s that guy, and he’s in a closet?” ’ And they said, ‘Can’t do it.’ So we said, ‘What if he’s literally in a closet?’ And they said, ‘That you can do!’ ” He smiles. “Bargaining makes you come up with the best ideas.”
The Cruise episode was one of many that defined South Park as among the most cutting-edge shows of its era, a creation that made fun of individuals and institutions alike. Which makes it surprising to discover there’s a gentleness and even a kindness about Parker and Stone that’s far from the flipness one might expect.
South Park executive producer Anne Garefino. “I’m very proud of the men they’ve become.”
It’s easy to forget that the guys who started South Park as twentysomethings are now on the brink of middle age.
“We care about different things today,” Parker admits. “First, we were friends f---ing around, trying to get laid, breaking into Hollywood, sleeping on couches. Now Matt is married, and I’ve got a little family.”
Two years ago, Stone wed his longtime girlfriend, with whom he has a 1-year-old boy. As for Parker, after a failed earlier marriage, he says he’s found contentment with his girlfriend of the past two years, who has a 10-year-old son.
Both have become more sedate: Stone, who’s been with the same woman for 10 years, believes he’s born to be a family man, and Parker says most of his spare time is now spent at home.
“For better or worse, we’ve gotten older,” he acknowledges.
In his down time, the Cruise/Muhammad/Mormon satirist is obsessed with Food Network, and his hobby is designing houses. “I got into this little habit of architecture and building,” he says. “I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell — but then I can never bring myself to sell them.”
He laughs easily, appreciating the brief respite from all the pressure. Like Stone, he’s almost shockingly normal and decent.
Even at their most sacrilegious, Parker says, they never plan to inflict pain. He seems relieved at the Mormon response to his satire.
“The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening,” the LDS website notes, “but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people’s lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.”
“When someone goes, ‘Oh, this group is really pissed off at what you said,’ there’s not a piece of my body that goes, ‘Sweet!’ ” Parker asserts. “That means I did it wrong. I’m just trying to make people laugh.”
Which is precisely what he says he’s trying to do with Mormon.
And yet the amount of effort the writers have expended, the perfectionism they’ve brought to bear, seems designed for something far grander.
The result might have lyrics like “F--- you, God, in the ass, mouth and c---,” but that shouldn’t dispel its underlying humanity. If anything, the shock element seems a distraction, as if Stone and Parker were reminding us they’re still the South Park creators of old when in truth they’re reaching for something new.
But can they succeed?
♦♦♦♦♦
Night. Ad the 1,102-seat theater fills to capacity, a rapid-fire prologue introduces us to the history of Mormonism, then we meet the show’s leads. Minutes later, we’re whisked to Africa, where we encounter cheery locals who sing with an abandon that the rehearsals simply don’t convey:
There isn’t enough food to eat/Hasa diga eebowai!/People are starving in the street/Hasa diga eebowai!
Gad’s Elder Cunningham squeals with an infectious giggle, unaware that Hasa diga eebowai will turn out to be blasphemous. Then we’re on a roller-coaster ride of comedy and characters with names like General Butt F---ing Naked — all wild and anarchic and yet so fundamentally sweet it hurts.
As the curtain falls two hours later, the audience rises in a thunderous ovation. Mormon is very possibly about to become a phenomenon.
This isn’t South Park: It’s a deeper, more mature work, which is terrific and terrifying at the same time.
“Once you get yourselves into things that are working on a deeper level, you just have to keep going,” Stone reflects. “When you reach that deeper level, you can’t go back.”
kind words from dear friend Jenet
Great to see you and your play. I said it then and I'll say it now - you are really working and distilling your unconscious/consious life in a really clear, engaging, moving and oh so human way. Thank you. Thanks to Ocean, too
little differences add up
Really, all one has to do to transform their life, Andrew, is remind themselves to think and behave a little bit differently, each day.
Rainbows,
The Universe
Rainbows,
The Universe
top 20
1: "Big girls need big diamonds"
2: "I've always admitted that I'm ruled by my passions."
3: "I fell off my pink cloud with a thud."
4: "I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too - for being married so many times."
5: "I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about Aids. In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell Aids."
6: "I really don't remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on."
7: "I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get."
8: "Im a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive."
9: "I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage."
10: "Everything makes me nervous - except making films."
11: "I've only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?"
12: "If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."
13: "Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses."
14: "Success is a great deodorant."
15: "You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal."
16: "It's not the having, it's the getting."
17: "Marriage is a great institution."
18: "People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz."
19: "So much to do, so little done, such things to be."
20: "I don't like my voice. I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I move. I don't like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don't like myself."
In 2009, Elizabeth Taylor also joined the Twitter revolution. During a stay in hospital, she tweeted to Kathy Ireland: "Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past security?"
2: "I've always admitted that I'm ruled by my passions."
3: "I fell off my pink cloud with a thud."
4: "I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too - for being married so many times."
5: "I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about Aids. In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell Aids."
6: "I really don't remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on."
7: "I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get."
8: "Im a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive."
9: "I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage."
10: "Everything makes me nervous - except making films."
11: "I've only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?"
12: "If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."
13: "Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses."
14: "Success is a great deodorant."
15: "You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal."
16: "It's not the having, it's the getting."
17: "Marriage is a great institution."
18: "People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz."
19: "So much to do, so little done, such things to be."
20: "I don't like my voice. I don't like the way I look. I don't like the way I move. I don't like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don't like myself."
In 2009, Elizabeth Taylor also joined the Twitter revolution. During a stay in hospital, she tweeted to Kathy Ireland: "Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past security?"
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Bawdy and the Beautiful
The Bawdy and the Beautiful
Elizabeth Taylor's delightful vulgarity.
By Simon Doonan
Posted Wednesday, March 23, 2011, at 1:24 PM ET
Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011Elizabeth Taylor was wild and beautiful and unpretentious and insanely glamorous. When I was a kid the papers were filled with cascading images of her scandalous trials and fabulations: Liz in Capri pants clutching poodles and waving drunkenly from the deck of her yacht; Liz deathly ill; Liz back from the dead, suntanned and buying ever bigger bijoux; Liz and Eddie; Liz and Monty; and, most importantly, Liz and Dick.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the Brad and Angelina of their day, minus all that the earnest actor-ish stuff. A movie actress her entire life, she was so confident about her ability to deliver her lines that she never descended into all that gobbledygook—it's about "the craft" and "the work"—which spouts from the mouths of contemporary actors. Dick always claimed that his wife, with her just-shut-up-and-say-the-bloody-words attitude toward acting, relieved him of the burden of his Shakespearian provenance and taught him how to just do it.
Miss Taylor differed from today's actors in another way too. SHE BOUGHT ALL HER OWN DRAG! No freebies for Liz. In truth, La Taylor had an uneasy relationship with the world of fashion. Though lauded for the beauty of her face and her violet eyes—her catlike make-up in Cleopatra inspired a million girls around the world to break out the liquid eyeliner—she was always having too much fun to seek out the approval of the snootier echelons of the world of style. (In Cecil Beaton's odiously disdainful diaries he likens her to "a peasant woman suckling her young in Peru.") When, in 1998, La Taylor's fashion influence was finally acknowledged with a CFDA award, her acceptance speech consisted of one sentence: "Eat your heart out Mr. Blackwell!" That nasty old geezer had plopped Liz's name on the worst-dressed list for years, but Liz had the last laugh.
Liz always had a way with a bon mot. For someone who earned her living delivering other people's (screenwriter's) gems, she was remarkably capable of crafting her own. A few of my favorites:
"Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells."
"If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."
"Big girls need big diamonds."
"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."
Liz Taylor's glorious, gorgeous, generous (she was a tireless AIDS advocate long before it became trendy), incredible life is a monument to the ultimate triumph of fun and glamour and vulgarity. Yes, vulgarity. When Diana Vreeland famously said, "Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. A little bad taste is like nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. No taste is what I'm against," I feel she must surely have had a picture of the fabulous Elizabeth Taylor in her mind.
As we revisit the Taylor movie canon in the coming months, you will no doubt watch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, BUtterfield 8 and all the greats. But don't overlook the dustier nooks and crannies of Liz-obilia. Some of the best style moments are to be found in her more obscure movies like Secret Ceremony and Reflections in a Golden Eye. My fave might just be X Y & Zee with Michael Caine. How to describe this demented movie? Imagine if Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was transposed into early '70s London and 90 percent of the characters are wearing caftans. The opening credits—a busty, boozed-up Liz plays a violent game of ping-pong with a hot-looking, bespectacled Michael Caine—are pure orgasmic joy. My hubby and I were so smitten with this movie that we installed a ping-pong table in the middle of our living room, in homage to La Taylor. Why don't you give it a whirl! What better way to remember the incredible Liz: Crack open a bottle of scotch, throw on a caftan, and grab those ping-pong paddles.
RIP, Elizabeth (as you preferred to be known). You will be horribly missed.
Elizabeth Taylor's delightful vulgarity.
By Simon Doonan
Posted Wednesday, March 23, 2011, at 1:24 PM ET
Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011Elizabeth Taylor was wild and beautiful and unpretentious and insanely glamorous. When I was a kid the papers were filled with cascading images of her scandalous trials and fabulations: Liz in Capri pants clutching poodles and waving drunkenly from the deck of her yacht; Liz deathly ill; Liz back from the dead, suntanned and buying ever bigger bijoux; Liz and Eddie; Liz and Monty; and, most importantly, Liz and Dick.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the Brad and Angelina of their day, minus all that the earnest actor-ish stuff. A movie actress her entire life, she was so confident about her ability to deliver her lines that she never descended into all that gobbledygook—it's about "the craft" and "the work"—which spouts from the mouths of contemporary actors. Dick always claimed that his wife, with her just-shut-up-and-say-the-bloody-words attitude toward acting, relieved him of the burden of his Shakespearian provenance and taught him how to just do it.
Miss Taylor differed from today's actors in another way too. SHE BOUGHT ALL HER OWN DRAG! No freebies for Liz. In truth, La Taylor had an uneasy relationship with the world of fashion. Though lauded for the beauty of her face and her violet eyes—her catlike make-up in Cleopatra inspired a million girls around the world to break out the liquid eyeliner—she was always having too much fun to seek out the approval of the snootier echelons of the world of style. (In Cecil Beaton's odiously disdainful diaries he likens her to "a peasant woman suckling her young in Peru.") When, in 1998, La Taylor's fashion influence was finally acknowledged with a CFDA award, her acceptance speech consisted of one sentence: "Eat your heart out Mr. Blackwell!" That nasty old geezer had plopped Liz's name on the worst-dressed list for years, but Liz had the last laugh.
Liz always had a way with a bon mot. For someone who earned her living delivering other people's (screenwriter's) gems, she was remarkably capable of crafting her own. A few of my favorites:
"Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells."
"If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."
"Big girls need big diamonds."
"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."
Liz Taylor's glorious, gorgeous, generous (she was a tireless AIDS advocate long before it became trendy), incredible life is a monument to the ultimate triumph of fun and glamour and vulgarity. Yes, vulgarity. When Diana Vreeland famously said, "Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. A little bad taste is like nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. No taste is what I'm against," I feel she must surely have had a picture of the fabulous Elizabeth Taylor in her mind.
As we revisit the Taylor movie canon in the coming months, you will no doubt watch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, BUtterfield 8 and all the greats. But don't overlook the dustier nooks and crannies of Liz-obilia. Some of the best style moments are to be found in her more obscure movies like Secret Ceremony and Reflections in a Golden Eye. My fave might just be X Y & Zee with Michael Caine. How to describe this demented movie? Imagine if Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was transposed into early '70s London and 90 percent of the characters are wearing caftans. The opening credits—a busty, boozed-up Liz plays a violent game of ping-pong with a hot-looking, bespectacled Michael Caine—are pure orgasmic joy. My hubby and I were so smitten with this movie that we installed a ping-pong table in the middle of our living room, in homage to La Taylor. Why don't you give it a whirl! What better way to remember the incredible Liz: Crack open a bottle of scotch, throw on a caftan, and grab those ping-pong paddles.
RIP, Elizabeth (as you preferred to be known). You will be horribly missed.
the queen's tweets
Timeline Favorites Following
Followers
Lists
» DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa
9 Feb Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@kimkardashian @harpersbazaarus Our interview in Bazaar came out! You look like a princess in Egyptian robes, love! http://j.mp/eqQsGa
9 Feb Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Because then it becomes about yourself...which is wrong. Giving is to give to God. Helping is to help others.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
That is the thing that will give back to you all the rewards that there are. Don't do it for yourself, because then it becomes selfish.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Give. Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You are who you are. All you can do in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves and those around them.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Never let yourself think beyond your means...mental, emotional or any otherwise.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I would like to add something to my earlier tweet. Always keep love and humility in your heart.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
RT @kathyireland: So grateful to be a part of @WishesChallenge, starting today raising support 4 @MakeAWish. Pls join us! http://ow.ly/1WNBK
15 Jun Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I thought doctors, like priests took an oath of confidentiality. May God have mercy on his soul.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just what we want in our doctors. And then to say he did not betray Michael's confidence. No wonder he has death threats.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
with someone in "Arnie's" office. It seems he supplies not only women (Debbie Rowe), but men too...how convenient.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dr. Arnie Klein declared on May 2 that he did not betray Michael Jackson by saying publicly that he had a homosexual relationship
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
God bless her always. I'll miss her.
10 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Lena Horne...one of the most beautiful women in the world passed away today. Her dignity and grace and talent shall be remembered forever.
10 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyireland. Darling, I'm still in London. Wishing you every success at Gearys on Saturday. Love, Elizabeth
7 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
The rumors regarding my engagement simply aren't true. Jason is my manager and dearest friend. I love him with all my heart.
12 Apr Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
When is someone going to stop the yellow press from lashing out at people who no more deserve it than the Dalai Lama!
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I am boiling to the point of eruption at the injustice of those statements.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I have never seen anyone epitomize glamour and grace and professionalism like she did.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
These rags said, to quote them, “She was either stoned or drunk and looked pregnant” – what???? They must be the ones on drugs.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I heard that some scum magazines, print and internet trashed Kathy Ireland on Oscar Red Carpet night.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@KathyIreland. Darling, Congratulations on your beautiful "Monkey Mischief" at Neiman-Marcus. I bought them! I love you.
15 Jan 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Geary's is such a beautiful store filled with goodies. But, I hope you'll see both places for holiday ideas.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
A special thank you to Geary's Beverly Hills who continue to carry my "Elizabeth" couture jewels.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Saturday afternoon House of Taylor Jewelry has it's opening in Beverly Hills and you're more than welcome to come.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
One Color Unites Us on WORLD AIDS DAY. Show your support for @joinred. Buy (RED) Save Lives. #red
30 Nov 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You see in front of your eyes Michael's genius blossoming on this piece of film thanks to Kenny Ortega and his crews.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
From A to Z you get Michael's input on every level. Michael's genius at work with the dancers. Mr. Ortega catches Michael in his every mood.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Kenny Ortega did a masterful job of directing the process that goes into making a complete show before hitting the stage.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
We cannot let his life be in vain / and always done with love. Remember that. Remember him and thank God for him and his genius.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
From "Black And White", "Man In The Mirror". The inspiration behind "We Are The World". We must take his words of responsibility seriously.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I won't use words like preaching because that is off-putting, but listen. Listen to his messages.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
If you listen to his lyrics they are those of a modern day prophet and it beseeches us to listen to him and what he sang.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I meant to repeat myself. I love you. I remember Michael loved you. He was totally up to now and the message of today in all his songs.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I hope I don't sound condescending. I'm sure you already know what I'm talking about, but go to see it again and again.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I loved genius in my lifetime. God was so good to me. I will love Michael forever and so will you, if you don't already.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You owe it to yourselves and your loved ones to see this again and again. Memorize it and say to yourselves, "I saw genius in my lifetime"
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To say he was a genius seems so little. I wish my vocabulary encompassed what I feel.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
God blessed him and squandered nothing, but loved it all. Michael knew how to put together every tone, every nuance to make magic.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
And we have this piece of film to remind us forever and ever that once there was such a man. God kissed him.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I wept from pure joy at his God given gift. There will never, ever be the likes of him again.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To say the man is a genius is an understatement. He cradles each note, coaxes the music to depths beyond reality.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen. It cements forever Michael's genius in every aspect of creativity.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I was honored with the great privilege of seeing "This Is It" last week. I was sworn to secrecy, but now I can let you know about it.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I know they all helped. Love you, Elizabeth
8 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, My heart procedure went off perfectly. It's like having a brand new ticker. Thank you for your prayers and good wishes.
8 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
by saying that I had diabetes, which is a total lie. But I guess they can't help themselves. Talk to later as promised. Love, Elizabeth
7 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, I was completely honest with you about my hospitalization. Now the press, bless their little hearts, had to add something
7 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better.
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart.
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Please join me in voting for her on abc.com until noon tomorrow. God Bless.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Kathy was delightful, gorgeous and fit the music they chose perfectly. If they ever do a remake of The King and I she should star in it.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Saw Dancing With The Stars tonight. Didn't think the judges were fair to Kathy Ireland.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
All of you who are watching Kathy Ireland on DWTS tonight...please vote for her. The # is on the screen. She's so gorgeous, isn't she!
22 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
She is beauty personified because it glows from within and takes her on wing.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To watch her in movement will be a golden chance to see beauty in action and grace which is what that lady is all about.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm so excited to see Kathy Ireland on Dancing With The Stars! She is so beautiful.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I give love and I'm surrounded by love...and I thank God for that.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I have to be stronger and more appreciative of what I do have.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've had many tragedies in my life, but I guess they have all taught me something. I have to look at it that way.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
But as I said before I went into the hospital, "I am a survivor."
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm home from the hospital sore, but intact. Of course I'm still grieving for Michael...I always will.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My love goes out to Katherine and Michael's beloved children.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I said I wouldn't go to the Staples Center and I certainly don't want to become a part of it. I love him too much.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I just don't believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others. How I feel is between us. Not a public event.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
And I cannot guarantee that I would be coherent to say a word.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've been asked to speak at the Staples Center. I cannot be part of the public whoopla.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I will always love Michael from the depth of my being and nothing can separate us.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I am a survivor not only for myself, but for my family and for Michael too.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Although my grief over Michael could not be any deeper, I am not on suicide watch as some of the cheaper "rags" would have you believe.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I wanted you my friends to know that I'm going into the hospital Wednesday or Thursday to complete a test I was in the middle of.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself which says, "To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever." And I will love HIM forever.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I can't imagine life without him. But I guess with God's help I'll learn.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I don't think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest most giving love I've ever known. Oh god! I'm going to miss him.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It can't be so. He will live in my heart forever but it's not enough. My life feels so empty.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I was packing up my clothes to go to London for his opening when I heard the news. I still can't believe it. I don't want to believe it.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My heart...my mind...are broken. I loved Michael with all my soul and I can't imagine life without him.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dearest Elizabeth, You make the sun shine, the clouds move and the world spin. So many people love you and so do I. Love Always,______
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Somebody I care for very much sent the following note to me with flowers and I wanted to share it with you.
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Life without earrings is empty!
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Humor is the only way to stay alive.
18 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My mind, my soul were transported by his beauty, his voice, his inner being. God has kissed this man and I thank God for it.
8 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I went to see Andrea Bocelli last night. The first time I've been out in months. The Hollywood Bowl allowed me to use my wheelchair.
8 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
So it's your name, your perfume. I hope you love it as much as I do. Wear it in love.
29 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Fellow Twitterers: Thank you for your opinions on my new perfume's name. VIOLET EYES won hands-down.
29 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@Marie_Monr0e Fortunately for me I still have an active, up to date mind which for a "hip" lady like myself comes naturally. One Slick Chick
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I think it's terrible for the California govt to retract the law on Gay Marriage after they made it legal. You can't treat people that way!
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
The perfume company wants me to name my new fragrance VIOLET EYES. I think its conceited and like FOLLOW ME. Which do you prefer?
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Thank you to all who make White Diamonds sparkle! Everyone here, my partners at Elizabeth Arden and all the wonderful people in the stores.
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
A thrill of excitement. I'm so stoked! My fragrance, White Diamonds entered the Hall of Fame at the FIFI Awards last night.
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's a shame more public servants don't have San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's courage in speaking out against Prop 8. Go Gavin!
27 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
There is no such thing as a "Gay" agenda. It's a human agenda. The California Supreme Court decision on Prop. 8...TERRIBLE!!!!
27 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm home from the hospital and feeling great. Thanks for all the love and support!
26 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyIreland Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past hospital security. Love
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've never been double-crossed by a sweet puppy or a lion in the jungle.
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's not true that I love animals more than people -- they are a very close second.
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@kathyireland "politicians"...whoops...glasses
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
"politicians"...whoops...glasses
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyIreland My Darling Kathy...Have fun at the Capitol with Lily and give our polititians hell!!! Love, Elizabeth
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
When in Rome, check out my jewels at the Bulgari retrospective at Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the brand's first in 125 years.
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm enjoying some delicious tomatoes grown in my garden.
18 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations Quinn, USC Class of 2009.
15 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just saw "Twilight" on DVD. I want more!
14 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Counting the days until Michael's opening night in London.
13 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations to Carole Bayer Sager on being selected for the 2009 Founder's Award from Lupus L.A.
12 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Thanking all my wonderful fans for their sweet messages of love and support!
11 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Also in People this week, my jewelry is on display at Cartier in NYC this month to celebrate their 100th anniversary in America.
8 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just did interview with People about White Diamonds for Mother's Day.
8 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Looking forward to Mother's Day with my wonderful family.
7 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
White Diamonds has been nominated for a FIFI Award. Please vote! http://www.fragrance.org/ballots2009/index.php
6 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Excited about my new website, now under construction -- address coming soon!
6 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations to Kathy Ireland on being named a Hero for Feed the Children.
5 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Ever since "National Velvet" I've had a passion for horses. Here are a few who need help badly: www.cghs.org
28 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Enjoying life with all its many gifts. Always something to look forward to!
24 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I just love Susan Boyle! I want to hear her magnificent voice again and again.
23 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Doing an interview with NY Times Style section today. My pearl is going in the window of Cartier.
22 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Holding the world's sweetest puppy, Delilah.
22 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Enjoying brie on a baguette, well toasted.
21 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Sending sweet birthday thoughts to my friend Dr. Lee Perry of the International Sports Medicine Institute. Happy Birthday, Leesburg!
20 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Beaming with pride and welcoming the newest member of my family, a great grandson!
20 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You can't cry on a diamond's shoulder and diamonds won't keep you warm at night, but they're sure fun when the sun shines!
17 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Reading my friend Kathy Ireland's new book, "Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity." Congrats, Kathy!
17 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Spending time with my daughter Liza in my beautiful gardens. Hope the gardenias bloom soon.
31 Mar 09 Favorite Retweet Reply
Followers
Lists
» DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa
9 Feb Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@kimkardashian @harpersbazaarus Our interview in Bazaar came out! You look like a princess in Egyptian robes, love! http://j.mp/eqQsGa
9 Feb Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Every breath you take today should be with someone else in mind. I love you.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Because then it becomes about yourself...which is wrong. Giving is to give to God. Helping is to help others.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
That is the thing that will give back to you all the rewards that there are. Don't do it for yourself, because then it becomes selfish.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Give. Remember always to give. That is the thing that will make you grow.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You are who you are. All you can do in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves and those around them.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Never let yourself think beyond your means...mental, emotional or any otherwise.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I would like to add something to my earlier tweet. Always keep love and humility in your heart.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Hold your horses world. I've been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself.
22 Jul Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
RT @kathyireland: So grateful to be a part of @WishesChallenge, starting today raising support 4 @MakeAWish. Pls join us! http://ow.ly/1WNBK
15 Jun Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I thought doctors, like priests took an oath of confidentiality. May God have mercy on his soul.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just what we want in our doctors. And then to say he did not betray Michael's confidence. No wonder he has death threats.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
with someone in "Arnie's" office. It seems he supplies not only women (Debbie Rowe), but men too...how convenient.
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dr. Arnie Klein declared on May 2 that he did not betray Michael Jackson by saying publicly that he had a homosexual relationship
13 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
God bless her always. I'll miss her.
10 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Lena Horne...one of the most beautiful women in the world passed away today. Her dignity and grace and talent shall be remembered forever.
10 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyireland. Darling, I'm still in London. Wishing you every success at Gearys on Saturday. Love, Elizabeth
7 May Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
The rumors regarding my engagement simply aren't true. Jason is my manager and dearest friend. I love him with all my heart.
12 Apr Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
When is someone going to stop the yellow press from lashing out at people who no more deserve it than the Dalai Lama!
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I am boiling to the point of eruption at the injustice of those statements.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I have never seen anyone epitomize glamour and grace and professionalism like she did.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
These rags said, to quote them, “She was either stoned or drunk and looked pregnant” – what???? They must be the ones on drugs.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I heard that some scum magazines, print and internet trashed Kathy Ireland on Oscar Red Carpet night.
10 Mar 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@KathyIreland. Darling, Congratulations on your beautiful "Monkey Mischief" at Neiman-Marcus. I bought them! I love you.
15 Jan 10 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Geary's is such a beautiful store filled with goodies. But, I hope you'll see both places for holiday ideas.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
A special thank you to Geary's Beverly Hills who continue to carry my "Elizabeth" couture jewels.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Saturday afternoon House of Taylor Jewelry has it's opening in Beverly Hills and you're more than welcome to come.
10 Dec 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
One Color Unites Us on WORLD AIDS DAY. Show your support for @joinred. Buy (RED) Save Lives. #red
30 Nov 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You see in front of your eyes Michael's genius blossoming on this piece of film thanks to Kenny Ortega and his crews.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
From A to Z you get Michael's input on every level. Michael's genius at work with the dancers. Mr. Ortega catches Michael in his every mood.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Kenny Ortega did a masterful job of directing the process that goes into making a complete show before hitting the stage.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
We cannot let his life be in vain / and always done with love. Remember that. Remember him and thank God for him and his genius.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
From "Black And White", "Man In The Mirror". The inspiration behind "We Are The World". We must take his words of responsibility seriously.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I won't use words like preaching because that is off-putting, but listen. Listen to his messages.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
If you listen to his lyrics they are those of a modern day prophet and it beseeches us to listen to him and what he sang.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I meant to repeat myself. I love you. I remember Michael loved you. He was totally up to now and the message of today in all his songs.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I hope I don't sound condescending. I'm sure you already know what I'm talking about, but go to see it again and again.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I loved genius in my lifetime. God was so good to me. I will love Michael forever and so will you, if you don't already.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You owe it to yourselves and your loved ones to see this again and again. Memorize it and say to yourselves, "I saw genius in my lifetime"
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To say he was a genius seems so little. I wish my vocabulary encompassed what I feel.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
God blessed him and squandered nothing, but loved it all. Michael knew how to put together every tone, every nuance to make magic.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
And we have this piece of film to remind us forever and ever that once there was such a man. God kissed him.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I wept from pure joy at his God given gift. There will never, ever be the likes of him again.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To say the man is a genius is an understatement. He cradles each note, coaxes the music to depths beyond reality.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen. It cements forever Michael's genius in every aspect of creativity.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I was honored with the great privilege of seeing "This Is It" last week. I was sworn to secrecy, but now I can let you know about it.
26 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I know they all helped. Love you, Elizabeth
8 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, My heart procedure went off perfectly. It's like having a brand new ticker. Thank you for your prayers and good wishes.
8 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
by saying that I had diabetes, which is a total lie. But I guess they can't help themselves. Talk to later as promised. Love, Elizabeth
7 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, I was completely honest with you about my hospitalization. Now the press, bless their little hearts, had to add something
7 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better.
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart.
6 Oct 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Please join me in voting for her on abc.com until noon tomorrow. God Bless.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Kathy was delightful, gorgeous and fit the music they chose perfectly. If they ever do a remake of The King and I she should star in it.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Saw Dancing With The Stars tonight. Didn't think the judges were fair to Kathy Ireland.
29 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
All of you who are watching Kathy Ireland on DWTS tonight...please vote for her. The # is on the screen. She's so gorgeous, isn't she!
22 Sep 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
She is beauty personified because it glows from within and takes her on wing.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
To watch her in movement will be a golden chance to see beauty in action and grace which is what that lady is all about.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm so excited to see Kathy Ireland on Dancing With The Stars! She is so beautiful.
17 Aug 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I give love and I'm surrounded by love...and I thank God for that.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I have to be stronger and more appreciative of what I do have.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've had many tragedies in my life, but I guess they have all taught me something. I have to look at it that way.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
But as I said before I went into the hospital, "I am a survivor."
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm home from the hospital sore, but intact. Of course I'm still grieving for Michael...I always will.
18 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My love goes out to Katherine and Michael's beloved children.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I said I wouldn't go to the Staples Center and I certainly don't want to become a part of it. I love him too much.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I just don't believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others. How I feel is between us. Not a public event.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
And I cannot guarantee that I would be coherent to say a word.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've been asked to speak at the Staples Center. I cannot be part of the public whoopla.
6 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I will always love Michael from the depth of my being and nothing can separate us.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I am a survivor not only for myself, but for my family and for Michael too.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Although my grief over Michael could not be any deeper, I am not on suicide watch as some of the cheaper "rags" would have you believe.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I wanted you my friends to know that I'm going into the hospital Wednesday or Thursday to complete a test I was in the middle of.
5 Jul 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself which says, "To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever." And I will love HIM forever.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I can't imagine life without him. But I guess with God's help I'll learn.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I don't think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest most giving love I've ever known. Oh god! I'm going to miss him.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It can't be so. He will live in my heart forever but it's not enough. My life feels so empty.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I was packing up my clothes to go to London for his opening when I heard the news. I still can't believe it. I don't want to believe it.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My heart...my mind...are broken. I loved Michael with all my soul and I can't imagine life without him.
26 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dearest Elizabeth, You make the sun shine, the clouds move and the world spin. So many people love you and so do I. Love Always,______
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Somebody I care for very much sent the following note to me with flowers and I wanted to share it with you.
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Life without earrings is empty!
19 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Humor is the only way to stay alive.
18 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
My mind, my soul were transported by his beauty, his voice, his inner being. God has kissed this man and I thank God for it.
8 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I went to see Andrea Bocelli last night. The first time I've been out in months. The Hollywood Bowl allowed me to use my wheelchair.
8 Jun 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
So it's your name, your perfume. I hope you love it as much as I do. Wear it in love.
29 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Dear Fellow Twitterers: Thank you for your opinions on my new perfume's name. VIOLET EYES won hands-down.
29 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@Marie_Monr0e Fortunately for me I still have an active, up to date mind which for a "hip" lady like myself comes naturally. One Slick Chick
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I think it's terrible for the California govt to retract the law on Gay Marriage after they made it legal. You can't treat people that way!
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
The perfume company wants me to name my new fragrance VIOLET EYES. I think its conceited and like FOLLOW ME. Which do you prefer?
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Thank you to all who make White Diamonds sparkle! Everyone here, my partners at Elizabeth Arden and all the wonderful people in the stores.
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
A thrill of excitement. I'm so stoked! My fragrance, White Diamonds entered the Hall of Fame at the FIFI Awards last night.
28 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's a shame more public servants don't have San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's courage in speaking out against Prop 8. Go Gavin!
27 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
There is no such thing as a "Gay" agenda. It's a human agenda. The California Supreme Court decision on Prop. 8...TERRIBLE!!!!
27 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm home from the hospital and feeling great. Thanks for all the love and support!
26 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyIreland Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past hospital security. Love
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I've never been double-crossed by a sweet puppy or a lion in the jungle.
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
It's not true that I love animals more than people -- they are a very close second.
22 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
@kathyireland "politicians"...whoops...glasses
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
"politicians"...whoops...glasses
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor @
@kathyIreland My Darling Kathy...Have fun at the Capitol with Lily and give our polititians hell!!! Love, Elizabeth
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
When in Rome, check out my jewels at the Bulgari retrospective at Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the brand's first in 125 years.
19 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I'm enjoying some delicious tomatoes grown in my garden.
18 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations Quinn, USC Class of 2009.
15 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just saw "Twilight" on DVD. I want more!
14 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Counting the days until Michael's opening night in London.
13 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations to Carole Bayer Sager on being selected for the 2009 Founder's Award from Lupus L.A.
12 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Thanking all my wonderful fans for their sweet messages of love and support!
11 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Also in People this week, my jewelry is on display at Cartier in NYC this month to celebrate their 100th anniversary in America.
8 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Just did interview with People about White Diamonds for Mother's Day.
8 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Looking forward to Mother's Day with my wonderful family.
7 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
White Diamonds has been nominated for a FIFI Award. Please vote! http://www.fragrance.org/ballots2009/index.php
6 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Excited about my new website, now under construction -- address coming soon!
6 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Congratulations to Kathy Ireland on being named a Hero for Feed the Children.
5 May 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Ever since "National Velvet" I've had a passion for horses. Here are a few who need help badly: www.cghs.org
28 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Enjoying life with all its many gifts. Always something to look forward to!
24 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
I just love Susan Boyle! I want to hear her magnificent voice again and again.
23 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Doing an interview with NY Times Style section today. My pearl is going in the window of Cartier.
22 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Holding the world's sweetest puppy, Delilah.
22 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Enjoying brie on a baguette, well toasted.
21 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Sending sweet birthday thoughts to my friend Dr. Lee Perry of the International Sports Medicine Institute. Happy Birthday, Leesburg!
20 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Beaming with pride and welcoming the newest member of my family, a great grandson!
20 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
You can't cry on a diamond's shoulder and diamonds won't keep you warm at night, but they're sure fun when the sun shines!
17 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Reading my friend Kathy Ireland's new book, "Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity." Congrats, Kathy!
17 Apr 09 Favorite Retweet Reply » DameElizabeth Elizabeth Taylor
Spending time with my daughter Liza in my beautiful gardens. Hope the gardenias bloom soon.
31 Mar 09 Favorite Retweet Reply
long live the Queen
Oscar winning actress Elizabeth Taylor passed away today at Los Angeles, Calif.'s Cedars-Sinai Hospital at the age of 79.
"She was surrounded by her children- Michael Wilding, Christopher Wilding, Liza Todd, and Maria Burton," Taylor's publicist, Sally Morrison, said in a statement.
In addition to her children, Taylor is survived by 10 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.
Taylor had been hospitalized six weeks ago with congestive heart failure. Though she had recently suffered a number of complications, her condition had stabilized and it was hoped that she would be able to return home.
Taylor, a two-time Academy Award-winning actress who in later life became notorious for her seven marriages and sometimes eccentric behavior, had reported health problems in recent years and appeared frail in public appearances.
Taylor reported in October 2009 that she was having a
heart procedure done via Twitter, she said it was "very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery so that my heart will function better."
Taylor's past health setbacks included a fall from a horse during one of her early film shoots, bouts with pneumonia and skin cancer, a tracheotomy, treatment for alcohol and painkiller addictions, and lung, hip, brain and heart surgeries. She has had anywhere from 30 to 40 surgeries, according to biographers.
In addition, she has seen her dramatic life frequently covered by gossip magazines, which have documented evident over the years.
But she's iconic for being one of the most popular actresses of Hollywood's golden age. Born in London in 1932 to American parents who returned to the U.S. with WWII looming, Taylor bounded into the spotlight at age 12 after starring in the 1944 box office sensation "National Velvet." She won acclaim as an adult with 1951's "A Place In The Sun" and went on to score best actress Oscar nominations for "Raintree County," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and "Suddenly, Last Summer."
In 1963, she memorably starred in "Cleopatra." She later won Oscars for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8."
Beyond acting, Taylor is credited with bringing the world's attention to AIDS with her fund-raising and activism. In 1985, when Taylor's lifelong friend Rock Hudson died of AIDS, she brought national attention to the growing disease. It satisfying to her to use her celebrity for good - she raised and donated millions to the cause, founding the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
"I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about AIDS. In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell AIDS," Taylor said once, frustrated with President Bush's slow-moving efforts to address the crisis.
She was also an entrepreneur, spearheading a successful line of perfume and multiple jewelry lines. In 1999, Taylor was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Taylor's last major interview appeared in the March issue of Harper's Bazaar. In it, she dished to reality TV star Kim Kardashian about her love life, her iconic roles and her jewels.
"I never planned to acquire a lot of jewels or a lot of husbands," Taylor said. "I have been supremely lucky in my life in that I have known great love, and of course, I am the temporary custodian of some incredible and beautiful things."
Taylor also mused about one of her former husbands, actor Richard Burton.
"It was inevitable that we would be married again, but it's not up for discussion," she said
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
& more
“Everyone’s childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand. By this I don’t know if I’m just giving up with this conclusion or resigning myself - or maybe for the first time connecting with reality.
How do we know the pain or another’s earlier years, let alone all that he drags with him since along the way at best a lot of leeway is needed for the other - yet how much is unhealthy for one to bear. I think to love bravely is the best and accept - as much as one can bear.”
-Marilyn Monroe, quoted in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
“Years ago, when Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were getting divorced, a perhaps apocryphal story appeared in the scandal sheets: As an example of Grant’s supposed irrationality, Cannon cited to the judge Cary’s yearly habit of sitting in front of his television [watching the Academy Awards] and sardonically abusing all the participants. This item, true or not, must have amused nearly everyone in Hollywood, since nearly everyone in Hollywood does pretty much the same thing.
The funny thing is that from all accounts, when the Academy Awards began in 1939, they were conducted in a similar spirit of irreverence, something that has practically disappeared from the event itself. “They used to have it down at the old Coconut Grove,” Jimmy Stewart told me in the late 70s. “You’d have dinner and alawta drinks - the whole thing was…it was just…it was a party. Nobody took it all that seriously. I mean, it was swell if ya won because your friends were givin’ it to you, but it didn’t mean anything at the bawx office or anything. It was just alawta friends gettin’ together and tellin’ some jokes and gettin’ loaded and givin’ out some little prizes. My gawsh, it was..there was no pressure or anything like that.”
Cary Grant corroborated this to me: ”It was a private affair, you see - no television, no radio, even - just a group of friends giving each other a party. Because, you know, there is something a little embarrassing about all these wealthy people publicly congratulating each other. When it began, we kidded ourselves: ‘All right, Freddie March,’ we’d say, ‘we know you’re making a million dollars - now come up and get your little medal for it!’”
-excerpted from Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Hell’s In It
“Once after a dinner party, Gregory Peck and I drove Fred Astaire home. Fred lived in a colonial house that had a long porch with many pillars. When we dropped him off, he danced along the whole front porch, then opened the door, tipped his hat to us, and disappeared.
Wow! Greg and I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. It was a beautiful way to say thank you.”
-Kirk Douglas, in his autobiography Let’s Face It
How do we know the pain or another’s earlier years, let alone all that he drags with him since along the way at best a lot of leeway is needed for the other - yet how much is unhealthy for one to bear. I think to love bravely is the best and accept - as much as one can bear.”
-Marilyn Monroe, quoted in Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
“Years ago, when Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were getting divorced, a perhaps apocryphal story appeared in the scandal sheets: As an example of Grant’s supposed irrationality, Cannon cited to the judge Cary’s yearly habit of sitting in front of his television [watching the Academy Awards] and sardonically abusing all the participants. This item, true or not, must have amused nearly everyone in Hollywood, since nearly everyone in Hollywood does pretty much the same thing.
The funny thing is that from all accounts, when the Academy Awards began in 1939, they were conducted in a similar spirit of irreverence, something that has practically disappeared from the event itself. “They used to have it down at the old Coconut Grove,” Jimmy Stewart told me in the late 70s. “You’d have dinner and alawta drinks - the whole thing was…it was just…it was a party. Nobody took it all that seriously. I mean, it was swell if ya won because your friends were givin’ it to you, but it didn’t mean anything at the bawx office or anything. It was just alawta friends gettin’ together and tellin’ some jokes and gettin’ loaded and givin’ out some little prizes. My gawsh, it was..there was no pressure or anything like that.”
Cary Grant corroborated this to me: ”It was a private affair, you see - no television, no radio, even - just a group of friends giving each other a party. Because, you know, there is something a little embarrassing about all these wealthy people publicly congratulating each other. When it began, we kidded ourselves: ‘All right, Freddie March,’ we’d say, ‘we know you’re making a million dollars - now come up and get your little medal for it!’”
-excerpted from Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Hell’s In It
“Once after a dinner party, Gregory Peck and I drove Fred Astaire home. Fred lived in a colonial house that had a long porch with many pillars. When we dropped him off, he danced along the whole front porch, then opened the door, tipped his hat to us, and disappeared.
Wow! Greg and I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. It was a beautiful way to say thank you.”
-Kirk Douglas, in his autobiography Let’s Face It
shift. destiny.
“Life is a betrayal. And sometimes you betray yourself too, you know. Let’s have the guts to admit it. There isn’t anybody born here lately who didn’t play dirty sometime, somewhere in his life. So why do you hide it? Truth, honesty, that’s my key [to] filmmaking.”
-André de Toth, quoted in A Personal Journey through American Movies with Martin Scorsese (1995
Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, dir. William Dieterle) (via) “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”
“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
-Theda Bara, quoted in “The Confessions of Theda Bara”, Photoplay Magazine (1920)
“I met the French filmmaker Louis Malle through Juliette Greco. He told me he had always loved my music and that he wanted me to write the musical score for his new film, Elevator to the Gallows. I agreed to do it and it was a great learning experience, because I had never written a music score for a film before.
I would look at the rushes of the film and get musical ideas to write down. Since it was about a murder and was supposed to be a suspense movie, I used this old, very gloomy, dark building where I had the musicians play. I thought it would give the music atmosphere, and it did. Everyone loved what I did with the music on that film.”
-Miles Davis, excerpted from Miles, the autobiography
“Film operates on a level much closer to music and to painting than to the printed word, and, of course, movies present the opportunity to convey complex concepts and abstractions without the traditional reliance on words. I think that 2001, like music, succeeds in short-circuiting the rigid surface cultural blocks that shackle our consciousness to narrowly limited areas of experience and is able to cut directly through to areas of emotional comprehension. In two hours and twenty minutes of film there are only forty minutes of dialogue.
I think one of the areas where 2001 succeeds is in stimulating thoughts about man’s destiny and role in the universe in the minds of people who in the normal course of their lives would never have considered such matters. Here again, you’ve got the resemblance to music; an Alabama truck driver, whose views in every other respect would be extremely narrow, is able to listen to a Beatles record on the same level of appreciation and perception as a young Cambridge intellectual, because their emotions and subconscious are far more similar than their intellects. The common bond is their subconscious emotional reaction; and I think that a film which can communicate on this level can have a more profound spectrum of impact than any form of traditional verbal communication.
The problem with movies is that since the talkies the film industry has historically been conservative and word-oriented. The three-act play has been the model. It’s time to abandon the conventional view of the movie as an extension of the three-act play.”
-Kubrick, quoted in Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (1970)
-André de Toth, quoted in A Personal Journey through American Movies with Martin Scorsese (1995
Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, dir. William Dieterle) (via) “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”
“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
-Theda Bara, quoted in “The Confessions of Theda Bara”, Photoplay Magazine (1920)
“I met the French filmmaker Louis Malle through Juliette Greco. He told me he had always loved my music and that he wanted me to write the musical score for his new film, Elevator to the Gallows. I agreed to do it and it was a great learning experience, because I had never written a music score for a film before.
I would look at the rushes of the film and get musical ideas to write down. Since it was about a murder and was supposed to be a suspense movie, I used this old, very gloomy, dark building where I had the musicians play. I thought it would give the music atmosphere, and it did. Everyone loved what I did with the music on that film.”
-Miles Davis, excerpted from Miles, the autobiography
“Film operates on a level much closer to music and to painting than to the printed word, and, of course, movies present the opportunity to convey complex concepts and abstractions without the traditional reliance on words. I think that 2001, like music, succeeds in short-circuiting the rigid surface cultural blocks that shackle our consciousness to narrowly limited areas of experience and is able to cut directly through to areas of emotional comprehension. In two hours and twenty minutes of film there are only forty minutes of dialogue.
I think one of the areas where 2001 succeeds is in stimulating thoughts about man’s destiny and role in the universe in the minds of people who in the normal course of their lives would never have considered such matters. Here again, you’ve got the resemblance to music; an Alabama truck driver, whose views in every other respect would be extremely narrow, is able to listen to a Beatles record on the same level of appreciation and perception as a young Cambridge intellectual, because their emotions and subconscious are far more similar than their intellects. The common bond is their subconscious emotional reaction; and I think that a film which can communicate on this level can have a more profound spectrum of impact than any form of traditional verbal communication.
The problem with movies is that since the talkies the film industry has historically been conservative and word-oriented. The three-act play has been the model. It’s time to abandon the conventional view of the movie as an extension of the three-act play.”
-Kubrick, quoted in Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (1970)
successful launch & kind words.
Rick DavisVery proud of and excited for the intrepid Mason alumni/ae who launched the brand new Blacktop Theatre Company tonight with a moving reading of a completely rethought slightly used brand new play-- clearly marked lanes and as yet not a pothole in sight!
Friday, March 18, 2011
movies
Just pretend you're in a movie. Be as brave and as full of love as the main character. Because we all need to believe in movies, sometimes.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
galley-west
Really. Really, Really.
If speaking to a spiritual novice during the darker days of human evolution, Andrew, one might explain God, metaphorically, as if "He" were angry, testing, and judgmental. To someone a bit more savvy, during easier times, one might explain God, metaphorically, as if "She" were always loving, nurturing, and forever conspiring on our behalf. And to someone on the verge of a total breakthrough, during the latter days of human evolution, one might explain God by asking them to turn up the music, take off their shoes, walk in the grass, unleash the dogs, free the canary, catch a breeze, ride a wave, dance every day, get up early, take a nap, stay out late, eat chocolate, feel the love, give stuff away, earn it back, give some more, and laugh.... Really. Really, really. Catch a breeze, Andrew - The Universe
Monday, March 7, 2011
highs and lows
Low days exist to remind you that you still have choices. High days, Andrew, exist to remind you of how fast you rebound... among other things.Boing, The Universe
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Shhh'em-up!
We often have to shhhh'em-up, Andrew, here in the unseen. It's because they become so excited when they see a really HUGE dream about to manifest in the seen, they completely forget that from where you are, nothing, yet, appears any different. SHU-U-USH IT! The Universe
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
from SLATE
Every Revolution Is Different
The Arab uprisings of 2011 are like the European revolutions of 1848—complicated and messy.
By Anne Applebaum
Posted Monday, Feb. 21, 2011, at 3:19 PM ET
Protesters in Egypt"Each revolution must be assessed in its own context, each had a distinctive impact. The revolutions spread from one point to another. They interacted to a limited extent. … The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative …"
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
REPRINTS
SINGLE PAGE
FacebookDiggRedditStumbleUponCLOSEThat could be the first paragraph from a future history of the Arab revolutions of 2011. In fact, it comes from the introduction to a book about the European revolutions of 1848. In the last few weeks, quite a lot of people—myself included—have drawn parallels between the crowds in Tunis, Benghazi, Tripoli, and Cairo and the crowds in Prague and Berlin two decades ago. But there is one major difference. The street revolutions that ended communism followed similar patterns because they followed in the wake of a single political event: the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet support for the local dictator. The Arab revolutions, by contrast, are the product of multiple changes—economic, technological, demographic—and have already taken on a distinctly different flavor and meaning in each country. In that sense, they resemble 1848 far more than 1989.
Though inspired very generally by the ideas of liberal nationalism and democracy, the mostly middle-class demonstrators of 1848 had, like their Arab contemporaries, very different goals in different countries. In Hungary, they demanded independence from Habsburg Austria. In what is now Germany, they aimed to unify the German-speaking peoples into a single state. In France, they wanted to overthrow the monarchy (again). In some countries, revolution led to pitched battles between different ethnic groups. Others were brought to a halt by outside intervention.
Advertisement
In fact, most of the 1848 rebellions failed. The Hungarians did kick the Austrians out, but only briefly. Germany failed to unite. The French created a republic that collapsed a few years later. Constitutions were written and discarded. Monarchs were toppled and restored. Historian A.J.P. Taylor once called 1848 a moment when "history reached a turning point and failed to turn."
And yet—in the longer run, the ideas discussed in 1848 did seep into the culture, and some of the revolutionary plans of 1848 were eventually realized. By the end of the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had indeed united Germany, and France did establish its Third Republic. The nations once ruled by the Habsburgs did gain independence after World War I. In 1849, many of the revolutions of 1848 might have seemed disastrous, but looking back from 1899 or 1919, they seemed like the beginning of a successful change.
In the Arab world, we are also watching different kinds of people with different goals take charge of street demonstrations, each of which must certainly be assessed "in its own context," as the historian wrote of 1848. In Egypt, decisions taken by the military may well have mattered as much as the actions of the crowd. In Bahrain, the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites is clearly central. The role of "Islam" is not the same in countries as different as Tunisia and Yemen. In Libya, the regime has already shown itself willing to use mass violence, which others have avoided. Tempting though it will be to lump all these events together and to treat them as a single "Arab revolution," the differences between countries may turn out to be more important than their similarities.
It is equally true that by 2012, some or even all of these revolutions might be seen to have failed. Dictatorships might be reimposed, democracy won't work, ethnic conflict will turn into ethnic violence. As in 1848, a change of political system might take a very long time, and it might not come about through popular revolution at all. Negotiation, as I wrote a few weeks ago, is generally a better and safer way to hand over power. Some of the region's dictators might eventually figure that out.
Besides, thinking about 1848 provides a useful sort of balance. There was a moment, at the height of the Cairo demonstrations, when I found myself sitting in my living room, watching Hosni Mubarak address the Egyptians in real time. I could see him speak, hear the translation, watch the crowd's reaction: For a moment, it was possible to imagine that I was watching the revolution unfold in real time. But of course I could only see what the cameras were showing, and much of what was important was invisible—the men in uniforms negotiating behind the scenes, for example.
Television creates the illusion of a linear narrative and gives events the semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life is never like that; 1848 wasn't like that. It's useful to ponder the messiness of history from time to time, because it reminds us that the present is really no different.
The Arab uprisings of 2011 are like the European revolutions of 1848—complicated and messy.
By Anne Applebaum
Posted Monday, Feb. 21, 2011, at 3:19 PM ET
Protesters in Egypt"Each revolution must be assessed in its own context, each had a distinctive impact. The revolutions spread from one point to another. They interacted to a limited extent. … The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative …"
DISCUSS
RSS
RECOMMEND...
REPRINTS
SINGLE PAGE
FacebookDiggRedditStumbleUponCLOSEThat could be the first paragraph from a future history of the Arab revolutions of 2011. In fact, it comes from the introduction to a book about the European revolutions of 1848. In the last few weeks, quite a lot of people—myself included—have drawn parallels between the crowds in Tunis, Benghazi, Tripoli, and Cairo and the crowds in Prague and Berlin two decades ago. But there is one major difference. The street revolutions that ended communism followed similar patterns because they followed in the wake of a single political event: the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet support for the local dictator. The Arab revolutions, by contrast, are the product of multiple changes—economic, technological, demographic—and have already taken on a distinctly different flavor and meaning in each country. In that sense, they resemble 1848 far more than 1989.
Though inspired very generally by the ideas of liberal nationalism and democracy, the mostly middle-class demonstrators of 1848 had, like their Arab contemporaries, very different goals in different countries. In Hungary, they demanded independence from Habsburg Austria. In what is now Germany, they aimed to unify the German-speaking peoples into a single state. In France, they wanted to overthrow the monarchy (again). In some countries, revolution led to pitched battles between different ethnic groups. Others were brought to a halt by outside intervention.
Advertisement
In fact, most of the 1848 rebellions failed. The Hungarians did kick the Austrians out, but only briefly. Germany failed to unite. The French created a republic that collapsed a few years later. Constitutions were written and discarded. Monarchs were toppled and restored. Historian A.J.P. Taylor once called 1848 a moment when "history reached a turning point and failed to turn."
And yet—in the longer run, the ideas discussed in 1848 did seep into the culture, and some of the revolutionary plans of 1848 were eventually realized. By the end of the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had indeed united Germany, and France did establish its Third Republic. The nations once ruled by the Habsburgs did gain independence after World War I. In 1849, many of the revolutions of 1848 might have seemed disastrous, but looking back from 1899 or 1919, they seemed like the beginning of a successful change.
In the Arab world, we are also watching different kinds of people with different goals take charge of street demonstrations, each of which must certainly be assessed "in its own context," as the historian wrote of 1848. In Egypt, decisions taken by the military may well have mattered as much as the actions of the crowd. In Bahrain, the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites is clearly central. The role of "Islam" is not the same in countries as different as Tunisia and Yemen. In Libya, the regime has already shown itself willing to use mass violence, which others have avoided. Tempting though it will be to lump all these events together and to treat them as a single "Arab revolution," the differences between countries may turn out to be more important than their similarities.
It is equally true that by 2012, some or even all of these revolutions might be seen to have failed. Dictatorships might be reimposed, democracy won't work, ethnic conflict will turn into ethnic violence. As in 1848, a change of political system might take a very long time, and it might not come about through popular revolution at all. Negotiation, as I wrote a few weeks ago, is generally a better and safer way to hand over power. Some of the region's dictators might eventually figure that out.
Besides, thinking about 1848 provides a useful sort of balance. There was a moment, at the height of the Cairo demonstrations, when I found myself sitting in my living room, watching Hosni Mubarak address the Egyptians in real time. I could see him speak, hear the translation, watch the crowd's reaction: For a moment, it was possible to imagine that I was watching the revolution unfold in real time. But of course I could only see what the cameras were showing, and much of what was important was invisible—the men in uniforms negotiating behind the scenes, for example.
Television creates the illusion of a linear narrative and gives events the semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life is never like that; 1848 wasn't like that. It's useful to ponder the messiness of history from time to time, because it reminds us that the present is really no different.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
rumi for the moment
Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.
Love come with a knife, not some shy question, and now with fears for its reputation.
"I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside."
Love come with a knife, not some shy question, and now with fears for its reputation.
"I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside."
the insanity game
The world we live in, our society is one of madness. For aeons, psychologists have pointed out that the first step is to admit it. Once we can admit it, it no longer controls us, we don’t resist it. Lets face it every last one of us is insane. This is to varying degrees, of course. The second step is to allow this fact and voila we are in a position to change. So lets play the game, “Name Your Insanity!”
I’ll go first, and with great resolve I will admit that I have the idea that I’m perfect, know all the answers, and of course have incarnated on a planet of drunken howler apes, as the best possible therapy for a deep seeded ennui. The only external proof of it I have is the literary reference in Edward Gory’s, The Fatal Lozenge: An Alphabet, specifically, N is for Neville Who Died of Ennui.
Ready to play the game? Then what is your insanity? Just approaching it from this angle will make our world a saner place to be. In the event that you choose it, Thanks for commenting!
- neville johnston
I’ll go first, and with great resolve I will admit that I have the idea that I’m perfect, know all the answers, and of course have incarnated on a planet of drunken howler apes, as the best possible therapy for a deep seeded ennui. The only external proof of it I have is the literary reference in Edward Gory’s, The Fatal Lozenge: An Alphabet, specifically, N is for Neville Who Died of Ennui.
Ready to play the game? Then what is your insanity? Just approaching it from this angle will make our world a saner place to be. In the event that you choose it, Thanks for commenting!
- neville johnston
naive & amateur
Which brings me to the point of this particular writing. To wit, we call someone that retains this child like ability to be loving, naive. We seem to take it to task to break the heart on anyone this naive. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause.
Our second word is amateur. This originally (French) meant someone who did things for the love of doing them. How naive. By the way in doing something for the love of doing it your heart is leading you. Again how naive. Yet this is exactly what we all seek. Well, allot of us.
As soon as one’s heart is broken we loose naiveté. Along with the ability to love and like rats deserting a sinking ship we enter a state of watching out for number one. Along with this may go our status as an amateur. Once we have lost our amateur on board, we are then referred to as a professional. Other monikers include, a cold heartless bastard, and this is wether or not your parents were married. The lack of naiveté is called maturity.
So I put to you the questions: What are you going to do about it? What will you teach our children?
- Neville Johnston
Our second word is amateur. This originally (French) meant someone who did things for the love of doing them. How naive. By the way in doing something for the love of doing it your heart is leading you. Again how naive. Yet this is exactly what we all seek. Well, allot of us.
As soon as one’s heart is broken we loose naiveté. Along with the ability to love and like rats deserting a sinking ship we enter a state of watching out for number one. Along with this may go our status as an amateur. Once we have lost our amateur on board, we are then referred to as a professional. Other monikers include, a cold heartless bastard, and this is wether or not your parents were married. The lack of naiveté is called maturity.
So I put to you the questions: What are you going to do about it? What will you teach our children?
- Neville Johnston
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)