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August 16, 2007
Thursday
 
 
Samizdata quote of the day
Samizdata Illuminatus (Arkham, Massachusetts)  Media & Journalism • Slogans/quotations

Tabloids don't sell movies or help anyone's career. If that were true, every Lindsay Lohan movie would open to 80 million dollars.

- Cameron Diaz, putting the much vaunted 'power of the media' into perspective.

Comments

Oh, snap.

Interesting that a lightweight like Diaz (whose thespian chops are no better than Lohan's) would make such a lucid, if not completely accurate statement.

Yes, there's lot's to like about that partcular quote.


Posted by James at August 16, 2007 03:18 PM

Who is Lindsay Lohan?


Posted by Counting Cats at August 16, 2007 03:29 PM

James, I think maybe Diaz' particular kind of looks is obscuring your judgment. Have you seen Gangs of NY?


Posted by Alisa at August 16, 2007 04:23 PM
Interesting that a lightweight like Diaz (whose thespian chops are no better than Lohan's)

No, Diaz was brilliant in Vanilla Sky and Being John Malkovich, so there is more to her than the utterly execrable Charlie's Angels.


Posted by Albion at August 16, 2007 04:26 PM

M/ Illuminatus? A link (or at least a Beck-approved citation,) please if possible? I've long suspected that Ms. Diaz is a clear thinking brain wrapped in a ditzily packaged product.


Posted by Midwesterner at August 16, 2007 05:13 PM

I find little to differentiate between the NY Times and the National Enquirer.

As for TV news, Dunaway's character in "Network" summed that up fairly well.

Becoming a "celebrity" is now the "golden ticket" to joining the new aristocracy of the trivial which dominates the media driven culture of the west.


Posted by veryretired at August 16, 2007 05:15 PM

Whenever I see her name a piece by maddox springs to mind:

At one point in the show they go to a village made of shit (literally, cow shit) and Diaz calls it "beautiful" and "inspiring." Yeah, just not beautiful and inspiring enough to give up any of the three mansions you own, right you disingenuous bitch?

Every time she opens her gaping mouth, she spews more self-righteous bullshit all over the place. One of my favorite lines is when she says "it's kind of gotten out of hand how much of a convenience we think we need." Diaz, who makes around $20 million per picture and drives a Lexus, was able to say this with a straight face. What the hell is that supposed to mean, "convenience we think we need"? We don't need it asshole, we want it. I like being able to get hot water, hot food, and hot porn whenever I want. Just as soon as you give up your mansion and live in a shit hut with your multi-millionaire boyfriend, we might give a shit about your criticism of the modern conveniences.


Posted by David A. at August 16, 2007 05:41 PM

"aristocracy of the trivial"

Brilliant. Just brilliant. May I use it, veryretired?


Posted by Richard Easbey at August 16, 2007 06:09 PM

Ahh Maddox. You never cease to amaze. ^_^


Posted by Faye at August 16, 2007 06:10 PM

David A. provides an excellent proxy to any reply that I could have prepared for Alisa, et alia.

Yes, I still think Miss Diaz is an overall stinker. (I did see Gangs of New York, and I wasn't impressed. 2+ hours of Scorcese self-pleasuring, as far as I'm concerned.)


Posted by James at August 16, 2007 06:51 PM

According to Popbitch, William Hill are refusing to take bets on Lindsay Lohan lasting out 2007. Now if only they would do that with Paris Hilton ...


Posted by Julian Taylor at August 16, 2007 10:24 PM

Mid: she talks a lot of crap about climate change - but then she is a Hollywood figure so it's par for the course I suppose.


Posted by James Waterton at August 17, 2007 02:18 AM

True. But name me any demographic that is not regular readers of blue screened blogs that doesn't talk a lot of crap about climate change.

There is a difference between people who are willing and able to think but have casually bought into popular assumptions, (which is something we have all done at one time or another and which based on other statements of her's like the one quoted, I suspect is her case) and people who don't believe in thinking, who believe truth is found in consensus, agreement and mutual approval, people who live in echo chambers of ad hominems directed at the non-sanctified. That is the norm on the left but is also found among people who hold views superficially similar to our own.

Unfortunately, climate nonsense is everywhere. And until rational scientists do a better job of denouncing the Algorian cult of all answers and no questions, we are going to hear it from a lot of other places besides.


Posted by Midwesterner at August 17, 2007 02:56 AM

Richard, be my guest. As for brilliant, read Paul Marks' comments, not mine.


Posted by veryretired at August 17, 2007 03:32 AM

Cameron Diaz?
Don't make me laugh.
Veronica Lake.
Invented the mathematics that makes the nuclear deterrant and mobile phones possible.
Spent WW2 breaking Japanese codes.


Posted by pietr at August 17, 2007 06:17 AM

Well, James, give me a break here, OK? I was referring to her abilities as an actress, on which we can certainly disagree. I could not care less what some actor or other thinks on any issue not related to acting.

I happen to like Scorsese, so sue me:-) Gangs was not one of his best, The Departed was, though.


Posted by Alisa at August 17, 2007 12:35 PM
I was referring to her abilities as an actress, on which we can certainly disagree. I could not care less what some actor or other thinks on any issue not related to acting.

Quite so!


Posted by Perry de Havilland at August 17, 2007 12:45 PM

I still don't know who Lindsay Lohan is.


Posted by Counting Cats at August 17, 2007 12:50 PM

Pietr, you are the one making me laugh. Got a source for that?

Perhaps, you mean Hedy Lamarr?


Posted by Midwesterner at August 17, 2007 02:43 PM

There is no problem not knowing who Lindsay Lohan is. There's a fair chance she has no idea who any of us are either.


Posted by watcher in the dark at August 17, 2007 02:46 PM

I haven't seen any of the gangs of New York, and if they are anything like the gangs I saw in Chicago, I don't want to.


Posted by triticale at August 17, 2007 04:14 PM

Sorry Mid.
I meant Hedy Lamarr.
But this is the end of my first week in a new job, and a new home.
Both great.
And I have to start at 830 in the morning, which leaves little time for error checks.


Posted by pietr at August 17, 2007 05:39 PM

The quote was not really about Cameron Diaz but rather her quite correct remark about the media.

Sure, she is a typical Hollywierd twit, but she is right about this... and she has great legs. Almost as good as Jessica Biel :).


Posted by Perry de Havilland at August 17, 2007 05:45 PM

"I still don't know who Lindsay Lohan is."

Starred in a remake of The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Herbie The Love Bug, flashed her nethers to the camera about the same time as Britney Spears, recently got busted for driving on a suspended license after chasing her former assistant around LA while in possession of cocaine (and subsequently blamed it on the black guy she was riding with).

Basically some pop-tart who let a minor amount of fame go straight to her muddled little head.


Posted by Robert at August 18, 2007 08:22 AM

Perry, Perry, PERRY!

Jessica Biel! Do not mention her in the same sentence as the divine Ms Diaz. The only reason I'm not round your house now with a combination of threats and a claw-hammer is that you didn't diss Ms Thurman in such a way (or Delpy, or Minogue, or Weaver, or Harry, or Davis)

I went to see "The Mask" (Gawd knows why) and I tented when Diaz made that entrance*. Something that the comedic antics of Jim Carrey (though moderately amusing) would not have managed. My date thought it was because of her. In that and many other things she was sadly misguided.

CC,
Not only do I not know who Lindsay Lohan is I frankly can't give a flying one. Is it the name - once in a technical drawing lesson I timed (Seiko) a Lindsay fart 64 times in a minute. It was an achievement of a sort I guess but it didn't make me want her. On the other hand it was probably the most interesting thing that happened in tech drawing, ever. Or is it just that I just know she ain't no Audrey Hepburn.

Robert,
So that's Linsay Lohan. So she flashed her minge getting out of a taxi? The old vulva-MAXIMus... Bloody hell, I display my genitalia in public and I'm looking at a conviction for a public order offense if I'm lucky. Why is it that I find Halle Berry getting her kit off for Playboy vastly more erotic than some slag displaying her Brazilian in a car. I recently saw courtesy of my Mum and the RSC Ian McKellen's wizard's staff during a production of King Lear. While I didn't get turned on by it, it wasn't the repulsive spectacle that Britney's inexpertly shaved pubenda on the back seat of a Ford Crown Victoria was. She should've stuck to the school-girl uniform. Now that raised the flag-pole and everyone saluted.

In case any of you are wondering, Sir Ian is hung like a donkey. It fair gave my brother the evils for the rest of the night. I also saw Warren Mitchell** pull down his stained US civil-war era longjohns ("Is he, isn't he, oh fuck me he is, oh Jesus Christ he's done it, he's done it")*** and reveal the beast (not that it was frankly worth the bother - and I was in the stalls) at the Hackney Empire. I was again with my mother (she's an English teacher and Lear is her fave Shakespeare) and I have never been more embarrassed in my entire life. We cringed together because the sixth-form trip she'd taken down to London had erupted in spontaneous hilarity at what should've been one of the most tragic episodes of the play. Having said that, my wife saw Hamlet at Stratford in '96 on a school trip and one of her friends interrupted a particularly moving scene (possibly a soliloquy - I wasn't there) by shrieking "Oh fuck, Nol" because she'd been listening to the Euro '96 semi on the radio and England had just been beaten on penalties by the Krauts.

*insert your own joke here on the subject of Cameron Diaz and entrances.

**Alf Garnet on UK TV. It was adapted for the US and American's might know the character better as Archie Bunker.

***It was like the Whicker Man but not in a good way. Oh, Jesus Christ, No!!!


Posted by Nick M at August 18, 2007 11:31 AM
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