Strange Hollywood: Amazing and Intriguing Stories From Tinseltown and Beyond

By Editors of Portable Press

More like Hollyweird, right? Unearth fun facts from Bryan Cranston’s body hair double to the Martha Stewart vs. Gwyneth Paltrow Goop feud, and much more.

Hollywood stars may be accustomed to the limelight, but there are some things they may wish had never seen the light of day. Scandals, stunts gone wrong, off-camera feuds, eccentric lifestyles, it’s all here in Strange Hollywood. Dozens of entertaining articles about the world of showbiz will amuse you and make you realize that being a celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at:

·      Celebrity gaffes, online and off

·      Diva demands

·      Jeopardy’s most annoying contestants

·      Rotten reviews

·      Star Trek tidbits

·      Spooky set locations

·      Showbiz slang

And more

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684128211

Editors of Portable Press

Portable Press is a tight-knit group of writers, researchers, and editors who are responsible for some of the publishing industry’s most popular non-fiction trivia and facts books. Aside from creating the fan-favorite Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series (more than 16 million books in print since 1988), the Portable Press team also specializes in regional and kids’ titles, plus gift books, activity books, and whatever else strikes their fancy.

Book preview

Introduction

Hooray for Hollywood! This epic edition celebrates the crazy world of Tinseltown from stage to screen, music to books, actors to animals, and everything in between. Go behind the scenes of classic movies, take a peek into celebrity collections, read rotten reviews, and more. You’ll see how an ad-pub tubthumps a click through the preem and sprocket operas, navigating crix, and working with percenters to ensure thunderous mitting for outstanding perfs during kudocasts. (Take a look at the Speak ‘Showbiz’ article for translation tips!) Strange Hollywood will satisfy your curiosity about the industry, and give you a peek into the glamorous, crazy, hilarious world of entertainment. Settle in with a bucket of popcorn or a 007-inspired vodka martini (we won’t judge) and enjoy the show.

BREAKING

BACK

Before starring as everyone’s favorite chemistry teacher, Walter White, on Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston played Hal, the odd dad on the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. A method actor, Cranston preferred to do his own stunts on the show—including getting strapped to a moving bus and wearing a suit made of 10,000 bees (he only got stung once). But one stunt that Cranston couldn’t do: get all of his back hair shaved off at the dinner table for the pilot episode. Why not? Not enough real back hair, and the fake hairy back wig they glued to him couldn’t be shaved off realistically.

So one of Hollywood’s strangest ever casting calls went out for a man who had the same build as Bryan Cranston, had a hairy back, and was willing to get it shaved off in front of a bunch of strangers. Thankfully, a suitable stand-in was found for the close-up shots, and Cranston’s semi-hairy back remained unshaved.

STRANGE

CELEBRITY FEUDS:

Battle of the Living Goop

Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow

were friends until Paltrow started Goop,

a lifestyle brand. Here’s a timeline:

OCTOBER 2013: Appearing on Bloomberg Television, Stewart is asked what she thinks of Paltrow possibly becoming the next Martha Stewart. Her reply: I haven’t eaten at Gwyneth’s house and I don’t know how she lives, but if she’s authentic, all the better. I certainly hope she is. She really wants to be part of the lifestyle business. She’s a charming, pretty person who has a feeling for lifestyle. Fine, good. I think I started this whole category of lifestyle. Tabloids interpret this as a dis and report it thusly.

SEPTEMBER 2014 In the ensuing year, Stewart watches Paltrow and her Goop get more and more popular. In an interview with Net-A-Porter magazine, Stewart says that Paltrow just needs to be quiet. She’s a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn’t be trying to be Martha Stewart. (Paltrow is an Oscar winner.) Then Stewart really digs the knife in in that month’s issue of Martha Stewart Living, which features a recipe for Conscious Coupling pie, a not-so-subtle jab at conscious uncoupling, which is how Paltrow infamously described her divorce from Chris Martin. The recipe’s introduction begins: Every Thanksgiving table should be blessed with the presence of a long-married pair who bring out the best in each other.

EARLY OCTOBER 2014: Paltrow posts a recipe on her website called Jailbird Cake, mocking Stewart’s five-month prison term in 2004 for lying to the feds about a stock purchase.

LATE OCTOBER 2014: Paltrow attends Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit (Stewart didn’t), where she’s asked about the feud. No one has ever said anything bad about me before, Paltrow deadpans, so I am shocked and devastated. I’ll try to recover. Then she says that feud is actually motivating her: If I’m really honest, I’m so psyched that Martha sees us as competition. To prove there’s no ill will, Paltrow hires Lisa Gersh as Goop’s new CEO. Gersh’s previous job: Martha Stewart Living CEO, a position she held for less than a year.

SEPTEMBER 2017: On the talk show Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, a caller asks Stewart, Are the rumors true that you are happy that Goop is having deceptive health issue claims? Stewart replies, Who’s Goop?

Armed and (Not) Dangerous

In September 2017, police officers in Crawfordsville, Indiana, responded to a 911 call about an armed man in a ski mask prowling outside a bar. When the cops arrived, they yelled, Drop the gun! The masked man turned toward them, but he didn’t drop the gun, so one of the officers fired his weapon, nearly hitting the suspect. Drop the gun now! yelled the cop again, as did all the other officers.

The man dropped the gun, pulled off his ski mask and yelled, We’re filming a movie!

A brief pause. Excuse me?

The man, an actor named Jim Duff, clarified, This is a movie set! Then he hollered toward the doorway, You better get out here!

He was yelling at filmmaker Philip Demoret, who was using the bar to film a bank robbery scene. For some reason, he’d neglected to inform the police or any of the nearby business owners. And because all the cameras and crew were inside the bar (to film him entering), the only thing that witnesses saw was an armed man in a ski mask prowling outside the bar. Demoret thanked the cops for not killing his actor and promised he would contact them in advance before any future film shootings…er, shoots.

FIVE FAME FACTS ABOUT…

STARS IN CARS

•Comedian and television star Steve Harvey lived in his 1976 Ford Tempo for a three-year stretch.

•After Star Trek was canceled in 1969, William Shatner’s pickup truck was his command post.

•Michael Pitt, star of Boardwalk Empire, was homeless as a teenager in New York City on and off for two years.

•Sam Worthington was living in his car while auditioning for Avatar.

•Writer and producer Tyler Perry spent a good part of six years living out of his car in Atlanta, Georgia.

Say Hello to the Little Tramp

On a Hollywood back lot in 1914, a 25-year-old English actor named Charlie Chaplin was working on a short film when a studio boss blurted out, We need some gags here! Put on a comedy makeup. Anything will do. Chaplin ran to the costume room and started grabbing stuff. I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a derby hat, he later wrote. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. The clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born.

While Chaplin’s origin story…is a beautiful piece of movie myth-making, wrote the Guardian in 2014, it took much longer for the little fellow to grow into the Tramp, and longer still for the Tramp to become a hero.

The character actually started taking shape when Chaplin was a boy living in extreme poverty in London in the 1890s. His parents were both popular stage performers, but his father died from alcoholism when Charlie was only 12, and then his mother was committed to a mental asylum. But a few of their mannerisms lived on:

•The Tramp places his hands on his hips the same way Chaplin’s dad did on stage.

•The Tramp puts his finger over his mouth when he laughs, just like Chaplin’s mom.

•The big shoes: I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t trying to follow in my father’s footsteps.

MORE TRAMP-SPIRATIONS

Chaplin added the moustache and cane simply because he thought the character was supposed to be older. (He made the moustache small so it wouldn’t hide his facial expressions.) The waddle came from an old man who tended the horses at Chaplin’s uncle’s tavern.

Those elements gave the Tramp his look, but in his first few films, he was more mean-spirited, and he often had a job. It wasn’t until 1915’s The Tramp that Chaplin finally put it all together: the little fellow was perpetually unemployed and always very sweet. Audiences ate it up. All of a sudden, Chaplin was making $14,000 per week (more than $200,000 today) and his Little Tramp was the most recognized image in the world. All I need to make comedy, he once boasted, is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.

Kim and Kanye Take a Plane

Epic trolls or clueless consumers?

You decide.

The tabloids’ favorite power couple, Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West, found yet another way to make headlines in November 2018. It was only a few days after the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report that concluded Americans aren’t doing enough to curb climate change. Without more significant global greenhouse gas mitigation and regional adaptation efforts. the dire report read, climate change is expected to cause substantial losses to infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.

No big deal, said Kardashian in a video she posted on Instagram. Just taking a private 747. Then the rapper and reality TV star boarded their decked·out jumbo jet to give fans a tour. So this is what a Private 747 is like, you guys, gushed Kardashian. I’ve never been on one before, so I’m like, oh my God, there’s bedrooms everywhere! (Bedrooms?) But it wouldn’t only be the two of them taking on a plane built to hold up to 660 people, their personal trainer was on board, too. One Twitter user summed up most people’s feelings: We’re all here with reusable bottles and refusing plastic bags, whilst Kim and Kanye are taking private 747’s. Ludicrous.

The Muppet’s Show

It’s time to get things started and test your Muppet knowledge. (Answers on page 407.)

1. Jim Henson created this Muppet from the cloth of his mother’s old coat.

2. This TV star—and one of America’s favorite moms—was the voice of the babies’ nanny on the animated series The Muppet Babies. (Bonus: Name her old show.)

3. Many Muppets debuted on this educational children’s show.

4. Muppet is the combination of which two words, according to Jim Henson?

5. Caroll Spinney was the original puppeteer for which larger-than-life Muppet?

6. As a high school senior, Jim Henson got his start in entertainment by performing on a local television show in what city?

7. What Muppet’s signature phrase was Wocka, wocka, wocka?

8. These crabby critics, named after two famous New York City hotels, considered it like a kind of torture to have to watch The Muppet Show.

9. This English-born actor voiced many Muppet characters, as well as Yoda in the Star Wars movies.

10. This famous facility on Los Angeles’s La Brea Avenue has dreamed up creatures for many movies, including The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Babe.

I’d move to Los Angeles if

New Zealand and Australia

were swallowed up by a

tidal wave, if there was a

bubonic plague in England

and if the continent of Africa

disappeared from some

Martian attack.

—RUSSELL CROWE

CELEBRITY

CHOW

Dive!: L.A.’s gourmet submarine sandwich restaurant owned by Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg opened in 1994, and took a dive in 1999.

Flav’s Fried Chicken: The Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav’s restaurant opened in Clinton, Iowa. And closed after four months due to bounced checks to employees.

SHe: Eva Longoria’s second foray as a restaurateur opened in Las Vegas in 2011. It was a female-focused steakhouse, serving smaller portions of steak. SHe SHut down after 32 health code violations in 2014.

Thunder Roadhouse: Best known for his role in the classic biker movie Easy Rider, Peter Fonda launched this biker-friendly restaurant on the Sunset Strip. A fire destroyed it four years later.

Twins: Financed by Tom Berenger ( Platoon, Major League ) in 1994, this NY restaurant used identical twins as the hostesses, bartenders, and waitstaff. When Twins closed six years later, more than 100,000 identical twins had patronized the restaurant.

Putting the REAL in Reality TV:

Real Housewives

Unscripted, or carefully calculated?

You be the judge.

REALITY SHOW: Cameras follow the exploits of cliques of well-to-do women from various American cities. Episodes feature fights, betrayal, drinking, and sexual situations.

REAL SHOW: The gossip website RadarOnline posted photos of the cast and crew of Real Housewives of New York City filming a spontaneous street scene: Carole Radziwill and Heather Thompson were taking instructions from producers, shooting multiple takes, and waiting for breaks in dialogue to ensure cameras were set up. The gossip site also reported that Real Housewives of Atlanta cast member Walter Jackson confessed that—at the behest of producers—he pretended to be Kenya Moore’s boyfriend to give Kenya a story line. Contrary to what viewers saw, the two were not a couple.

STAR TREK

TIDBITS

VULCAN HAND SALUTE: Leonard Nimoy invented this for Mr. Spock during the filming of a Star Trek episode. The gesture was borrowed from the Jewish High Holiday services. The kohanim priest blesses the congregation by extending the palms of both hands…with thumbs outstretched and the middle and ring fingers parted. Nimoy used the same gesture, only with one hand.

SCHIZOPHRENIC SPOCK: Mr. Spock was the show’s most popular character, but Nimoy was concerned about being typecast for future roles. In 1975 he wrote a book entitled I Am Not Spock, distancing himself from the character. Nimoy eventually embraced his career-defining role, and twenty years later wrote another book: I AM Spock.

Savaging the Classics

In which cranky critics lambast beloved block busters. The irony is thick with this one.

(Star Wars) is a film that’s totally uninterested in anything that doesn’t connect with the mass audience. It has no emotional grip…It’s an epic without a dream.

—PAULINE KAEL, The New Yorker

(The Wizard of Oz) has dwarfs, music, Technicolor, freak characters, and Judy Garland. It can’t be expected to have a sense of humor as well—and as for the light touch of fantasy, it weighs like a pound of fruitcake soaking wet.

—OTIS FERGUSON, The New Republic

What (the Black Panther) doesn’t get to do much of is jump around beating up bad guys. That’s a shame. Marvel has finally given us an African superhero. The hope surely was that he would be allowed do superheroic things.

—ED POWER, Irish Independent

Get Out is the recrudescence of Obama-era unconsciousness. Reducing racial politics to trite horror-comedy, it’s an Obama movie for Tarantino fans."

—ARMOND WHITE, National Review

(this negative review ruined the film’s 100% Rotten Tomatoes score)

What’s most bothersome about Pulp Fiction is its success. This is not to be mean-spirited about Tarantino himself; may he harvest all the available millions. But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming.

—STANLEY KAUFFMANN, The New Republic

Toy Story 3 was also on its way to a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score until Armond White got ahold of it. In his absolute shredding of the movie, White slipped in one of the trolliest comments in the history of film criticism: "None of these digital-cartoon characters reflect human experience; it’s essentially a bored game that only the brainwashed will buy into. Besides, Transformers 2 already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence."

HOLLYWOOD

HOBBIES

Celebrities—they’re just like us?

Mila Kunis has a collection of vintage Star Trek figurines from the 1960s and 1970s. She’s even attended a Trek conference in Las Vegas.

Demi Moore has so many vintage dolls—more than 2,000—that she had to build a separate house to store them all. Most of the dolls are more than 100 years old.

The Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp reportedly owns character dolls