I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.
Any woman who wishes to smash into the world of men isn't very feminine.
My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England—I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.
I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power. I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right.
Keeping a feminine approach is vital - men hate bossy females.
Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.
I had no desire to crash a man's world.
You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say 'understanding', 'seeing', they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says "now I understand!" - that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.
Are you apathetic toward the saccharine goodness evangelized by sentimental, superstitious fanatics, but equally bored by the intellectuals who worship at the empty-headed shrine of scientific materialism?
Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.
Dare to be honest and fear no labor. . . . Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.