Esquire interview
Glick talks about his Comedy Central show Primetime Glick:
And now I’m blessed with the opportunity to talk to celebrities and get a sense of the worlds that they inhabit so wondrously. Case in point: A fortnight ago, I was gabbin’ with the irrepressible Kathie Lee Gifford about her switch from Jewishness to born-again-ness. She asked me if I was aware that Jesus was a Jew, and I said, No, but I had heard that he was thrifty.
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Rihanna talks about life on the road touring:
I hate going to hotels when I’m on tour. I like to stay on the bus. I can sleep, I can shower, I can just pull up right to the venue everyday. I work out. I have a trainer. So, she trains me wherever, whenever. Touring messes with my metabolism, so I have to get tight.
Esquire interview
Noujaim discusses making the film Control Room:
So with the Iraq war coming, part of my interest in making Control Room specifically came from the fact that I grew up in the Middle East, though my mother’s American and I went to college in the U. S. I was watching very different perceptions of what was happening, what would be good for this world, and whether the Iraq war was actually going to increase anti-American sentiment and terrorism among the moderates in the Middle East. I wanted to be in the center of it. But what was the center?
Esquire interview
Howard gives his thoughts on getting occasional bad reviews for movies he creates:
I keep asking myself, Why do I care? I know that my work is a result of 110 percent effort. I know how I feel about the film. Why do I care about reviews? Why do I care about the box office? But as soon as I ask the question, a voice in the back of my head always answers, Because youhave to care. You can’t live without caring. That’s who you are, and therefore you must suffer from time to time.
Esquire interview
Farrow talks about being formerly married to Sinatra:
When I married Frank Sinatra, my father had recently died, and he had just turned fifty, and people said, Oh, you’re looking for a father. It’s hard for me to, um, deny or confirm. But what I will tell you is that he was the coolest, handsomest, sexiest guy. I don’t think there are many women of any age who could have resisted him. He was utterly charming. Absolutely adorable. So you can talk father all you like — he wasn’t anything like my father.
Esquire interview
Hansen talks about the parallel investigation model used for the show To Catch a Predator:
I think it has. I mean obviously it raises issues and we discuss these issues before going into every one of these investigations. And I think we’ve addressed them. And obviously there are people, you know, at the Poynter Institute and other places that think it’s too close. You know after the Fairfax County Virginia investigation, we interviewed law enforcement after the fact, and Perverted Justice provided transcripts after the fact. But it was difficult for them [the police] to make a case. Some cases were made after that investigation. But it was difficult. You know, in the model that we used in Riverside I think it served our viewers and it served public safety in the best way that we could.
Esquire interview
Haggis talks about creating the film, In the Valley of Elah:
I told my agent, Look for anything you know will never get made. I was given Mark Boal’s Death and Dishonor and took it to the studios. Of course, nothing happened. They weren’t going to touch this. So I called Clint Eastwood.
Esquire interview
Depp talks about working on the set of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
We were doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I was on the set. We were shooting, working, working, working. All great. Everything’s cool. One of my pals comes up and says, Helena [Bonham Carter, Burton’s partner] just called. When you get a moment, she’d like you to give her a call back. Okay, I say. As soon as I’m done on set, I’ll go back to my trailer and give her a call. So I go back to the trailer, call Helena, and say, Hey, what’s going on? I thought maybe Helena had a question about little boys because Billy was a little baby then and I’ve got two kids. So I say, Is everything all right? And she says, Billy’s fine. Everything’s fine. But, well, you know how Tim is.
Esquire interview
Samberg talks about his approach to comedy:
I think the goal of most comedy, just like most movies or television, is an escape from the mundane stuff in our life, and I’ve always found it worthwhile to make something completely stupid just to prove that you can. People in general are too stressed-out, even though most things are pretty ridiculous.
Esquire interview
Andre 3000 talks about starting a clothing line in a recession:
It’s not like we planned it this way, but it actually kind of helps. The person that I’m making clothes for doesn’t want to wear the same thing as everyone else, and so our biggest advantage is that we can be exclusive. If a man’s wearing Benjamin Bixby, you know he’s in the know.
Esquire interview
Trump gives his thoughts on dressing well at all times:
I always wear a suit–looking one’s best is good for confidence. High self-esteem is important for effective performance. Dressing well is also a sign of respect, for yourself and for others. I know what I’ll wear every day, which is a suit. It saves time, and I know I’ll look appropriate. I have too much to think about to devote a lot of time to it.
Esquire interview
Webb talks about being a writer and serving in government at the same time:
I view myself principally as a writer, professionally. Writing is what I will always do, no matter what. This side of things [government service] I feel obligated to do from time to time. I sort of unwittingly started this two-track career.
Esquire interview
Eastwood talks about his relationship with his children:
I have children by other women. I gotta give Dina the credit for bringing everyone together. She never had the ego thing of the second wife. The natural instinct might have been to kill off everybody else. You know, the cavewoman mentality. But she brought everybody together. She’s friendly with my first wife, friendly to former girlfriends. She went out of her way to unite everybody. She’s been extremely influential in my life.
Esquire interview
Rust discusses his role as Private First Class Andy Kagan in the movie Inglorious Basterds:
He’s a farm boy from Illinois, hungry for some action, but he wasn’t in the original script. By the time we met and hit it off, Quentin had already filled the other roles, so he created the part for me.
Esquire interview
Doom talks about his role in the movie Inglorious Basterds:
Private First Class Omar Ulmer. I didn’t know I was going to be in the movie until two weeks before we started filming. I’ve known Quentin for a long time, and he called me and was like, I want you to come to Berlin and be a Basterd. I was like, All right. I’ve been preparing for this role my whole life.
Esquire interview
Burhard gives his thoughts about the set of the movie Inglorious Basterds:
We were always staying in character. Eli Roth, who plays our sergeant, had instructions to stay on top of us. The shoot was on such a tight schedule, and it was just about staying really concentrated and in character. We were Basterds 24/7. That was our life.
Esquire interview
Novak discusses his role in the movie Inglorious Basterds:
Private First Class Smithson Utivitch. He probably came from a family that was trying to assimilate into the Waspy mainstream by naming their kid Smithson, and the war was his chance to reclaim being Jewish. I don’t know if you’ll see that onscreen, but that’s where I’m coming from when I’m paying really close attention to Brad Pitt.
Esquire interview
Roth talks about his role as Sergeant Donny Donowitz in the movie Inglourious Basterds:
The Basterds kind of keep him in reserve, so that when they’re interrogating the Germans, they’re like, You’d better tell us where so-and-so is hiding, or we’re bringing out the Bear Jew. The idea’s that when you hear the Bear Jew, you think it’s going to be some 300-pound, huge 6-foot-7 muscle guy, and Quentin said he wants people to go, ‘That’s the Bear Jew? Eli?
Esquire interview
Franklin gives his thoughts on the drug war in the United States:
The prison population is off the hook in this country, Franklin says. In 1993, at the height of apartheid in South Africa, the incarceration of black males was 870 per 100,000. In 2004 in the U.S., for every 100,000 people we are sending 4,919 black males to prison. And the majority of those are for nonviolent drug offenses. But we’d rather send people to prison than give them information and treatment.
Esquire interview
Clinton gives his thoughts on why his proposed health care bill in 1994 didn’t get passed:
Basically, everybody who writes about this stuff today repeats the health-insurance lobby’s line from 1994. Like: The bill was long and complicated. The bill took out four hundred more pages of federal law than it put in. They say we forced a bill on Congress — untrue. I asked Congress to write the bill, and Chairman [Dan] Rostenkowski [of the House Ways and Means Committee] demanded that Hillary send him a bill — a complete bill. He said, “I won’t take it up if you don’t. We don’t know enough about it, the interest groups will eat us alive, we’ll modify your bill, but you’ve gotta send us a whole bill.” It was the demand of the most important committee in the House of Representatives.