Bill Murray

Born (September 21, 1950) fifth of nine children,
and raised in Wilmette by Chicago.

During his teen years he was the lead singer of a rock band
called the Dutch Masters
and took part in high school and community theater.
Also conducted the George Mason University pep band, Green Machine.

When he was 17 in 1967,
his father died from complications from diabetes.

He enrolled at Regis College in Denver to study premed
but dropped out after being arrested for marijuana possession.

During the first few seasons of SNL,
he was in a serious, romantic relationship with Gilda Radner.

Dan Aykroyd nicknamed him "The Murricane" for his notorious mood swings.

In 1981, sang "THE BEST THING" on the soundtrack for John Waters' Polyester.

Late Night with David Letterman premiered on February 1, 1982,
with Murray as the first guest.

He made a deal with Columbia Pictures to star in Ghostbusters,
a role originally written for John Belushi,
in order to gain financing for his film The Razor's Edge,
his only film screenwriting credit to date.



In the film, Larry's farewell speech to commanding officer Piedmont
was written by Bill as a farewell to John Belushi.
Bill even used the line "He will not be missed" at John's wake.
While Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984,
Razor's Edge was a box-office flop.
Upset, Murray took four years off from acting
to study philosophy and history at the Sorbonne,
frequent the Cinematheque in Paris,
and spend time with his family in their Hudson River Valley home.
During that time, his second son, Luke, was born.
With the exception of a cameo appearance in the 1986 (Little Shop of Horrors),
he did not make any appearances in films.
Murray returned to films in 1988 with Scrooged,
which cast all three of his brothers.

He accidentally broke Robert De Niro's nose
during the filming of Mad Dog and Glory in 1993.

Murray is an avid golfer.
Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf, 1999, is part autobiography and part essay.
After a 2007 tournament,
he was pulled over by the Stockholm police
for suspicion of driving a golf cart while intoxicated.
"There were no obvious signs, like when someone is really tipsy,"
said police commander Jan-Olov Lundgren.
"He was very calm and friendly. No problem at all."

He is a part-owner of several independent minor-league baseball teams
current and past.

Caddy Shack, a restaurant chain located near St. Augustine,
is owned by "Murray Bros" (Bill and his brothers).

Detached from the Hollywood scene, Murray does not have an agent or manager,
and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles
using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently.
This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him
from taking parts he had auditioned for and was interested in
(Monsters, Inc., The Squid and the Whale, Little Miss Sunshine,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit)

In 81, he married Margaret Kelly and had two sons; Homer ('82) and Luke ('85).
The couple divorced in 1996, following Murray's affair with Jennifer Butler.
In 97, he married Butler and had four sons: Caleb ('93), Jackson ('95),
Cooper ('97), and Lincoln ('01).
Accusing Bill of domestic violence, adultery and abandonment,
Butler got a divorce in 2008.
She alleged he is addicted to sex, marijuana, and alcohol, and
"hit her in the face and then told her she was lucky he didn't kill her."

Sofia Coppola wrote the lead role of Bob Harris in Lost in Translation (2003),
with Murray specifically in mind.
She did not know the actor and even enlisted the help of her famous father,
Francis Ford Coppola, to track down the sometimes quite elusive Murray.
Once he finally read the script, though, he agreed to do it on the spot.
Murray and Sofia Coppola are now good friends.



Murray on his Lost in Translation role:
"I remember being in Japan 10 years ago for a golf tournament.
I turned over a Kirin beer coaster, and there was Harrison Ford's picture.
He's a guy who would never be caught dead doing a commercial here.
He had a bottle in his hand and the most uncomfortable look on his face,
like, "I can't believe I'm shilling."
When Sofia Coppola, the director of Lost in Translation, sent me the script,
she included a photo and said, 'This is what I have in mind.',
It was Brad Pitt in an ad for espresso in a can, and he had the same grimace:
'I can't believe I'm selling this can of coffee.',
That influenced me when I had to do my own shtick."

He was the M.C. for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2007,
where he dressed in various guises of Clapton as he appeared through the years.
He was MC again in 2010.




He can be so funny and touching at the same time.
I've loved him in these:

2009 Fantastic Mr. Fox
2007 The Darjeeling Limited
2005 Broken Flowers
2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2003 Coffee and Cigarettes
2003 Lost in Translation
2001 The Royal Tenenbaums
1998 Rushmore
1996 Kingpin
1994 Ed Wood
1993 Groundhog Day
1991 What About Bob?
1988 Scrooged
1986 Little Shop of Horrors
1984 Ghost Busters
1984 The Razor's Edge
1982 Tootsie
1981 Stripes
1980 Caddyshack
1979 Mr. Mike's Mondo Video
1977-1980 Saturday Night Live

I haven't seen these yet, but heard good things:

1999 Cradle Will Rock
1980 Where the Buffalo Roam


Quotes -


"You know the theory of cell irritability?.
If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times,
it will change and then re-form into its original shape.
And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba,
the cell will completely collapse and become nothing.
That's kind of what it's like being famous.
People say hi, how are you doing,
and after the thousandth time,
you just get angry; you really pop."

"One of the things I like about acting is that,
in a funny way, I come back to myself."

"We used to joke about it:
'Give me an affliction and I'll give you an Oscar!'
They're not giving an award for acting.
It's, 'Thanks for making me feel something. Here's a prize.'
Somehow people don't put comedy in their emotional bank the same way.
It relieves a tension, it unties a knot,
but it's not something where people want to give you a prize.
They just want to say, 'Thanks for making me laugh,'
which I genuinely treasure.
That makes me feel good."

"I have developed a kind of different style over the years.
I hate trying to re-create a tone or a pitch.
Saying, "I want to make it sound like I made it sound the last time"?
That's insane, because the last time doesn't exist.
It's only this time.
And everything is going to be different this time.
There's only now."

"I think that the online world has actually brought books back.
People are reading because they're reading the damn screen.
That's more reading than people used to do."


...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Murray
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000195/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6959803.stm

Paul Newman

January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008 (aged 83)

Newman enrolled in the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University,
hoping to be accepted for pilot training,
but was dropped when it was discovered he was color blind.

During the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945,
He was ordered to the ship with a draft of replacements shortly before the Okinawa campaign,
but by a fluke of war,
was held back because his pilot had an ear infection.
The rest of his detail were killed in action.

After the war, he completed his English degree at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, graduating in 1949.
Newman later studied Drama at Yale University, graduating in 1954,
and later studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City.
"Almost everything I learned about being an actor
came from those early years at the Actor`s Studio."

Newman initially was hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood:
"Too close to the cake," he was reported saying, "Also, no place to study."

Newman was one of the few actors who successfully made the transition
from 1950s cinema to that of the 1960s and 1970s.
His rebellious persona translated well to a subsequent generation.

Won an Academy Award for best actor in the 1986
for Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money
and eight other nominations.

Newman and A.E. Hotchner co-founded Newman's Own,
a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.
As of August 2010, these donations had exceeded US $300 million.
He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner;
"Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good".

One beneficiary of his philanthropy is the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp,
a residential summer camp for seriously ill children, which is located in Ashford, Connecticut.
Newman co-founded the camp in 1988;
it was named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
One camp has expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France, and Israel.
The camps serve 13,000 children every year, free of charge.

For his support of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and his opposition to the War in Vietnam,
Newman was placed nineteenth on Richard Nixon's enemies list,
which he claimed was his greatest accomplishment.

Newman was an avid auto racing enthusiast
("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") .

The Newmans lived in Connecticut far away from Hollywood.
Paul Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family.
When asked about infidelity, he famously quipped,
"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"

He died of lung cancer at home surrounded by his family and close friends.




































Quotes -

“I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either.
From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community.
There are so many qualities that make up a human being...
by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people,
what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.”

“If you're playing a poker game
and you look around the table
and can't tell who the sucker is,
it's you.”

“You only grow when you are alone.”

“You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning:
'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!'
It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.”

“If you don't have enemies,
you don't have character.”

"Just when things look darkest, they go black.”

“Acting isn't really a creative profession.
It's an interpretative one.”

“To come up here and just get in the car
where there are no telephones and nobody to bother you,
you can just run around out there and see how fast you can go.
It's just fun.”

"Acting is a question of absorbing other people`s personalities
and adding some of your own experiences."

"I don`t think there`s anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic.
It`s the other attitude that confuses me. "

"One passion drives away the one before it."

"I never ask my wife about my flaws.
Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor.
You don`t want any woman to look under the carpet, guys,
because there`s lots of flaws underneath."

"If I ever feel like I`m doing something I`ve done before,
I scrap it and start over again."

"I`ve been accused of being aloof. I`m not. I`m just wary."

"I wasn`t driven to acting by an inner compulsion.
I was running away from the sporting goods business."

"I had no natural gift to be anything-
-not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director,
a painter of garden porches--not anything.
So I`ve worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me."

"The characters I have the least in common with
are the ones I have the greatest success with.
The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it."

"I`d like to be remembered as a guy who tried
- who tried to be part of his times,
tried to help people communicate with one another,
tried to find some decency in his own life,
tried to extend himself as a human being."

"A man can only be judged by his actions,
and not by his good intentions or his beliefs."

"Study your craft and know who you are and what`s special about you.
Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen.
Make sure you live life,
which means don`t do things where you court celebrity,
and give something positive back."

"I have an extraordinary attention span.
I manage to juggle two or three different ideas at the same time,
and that`s probably, if I have a gift,
that`s probably the best gift that`s given me."

"Joanne has always given me unconditional support in all my choices and endeavors,
and that includes my race car driving, which she deplores.
To me, that`s love."

"You can only put away so much stuff in your closet."


...
http://www.quotelucy.com/quotes/paul-newman-quotes.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/paul_newman/
thanks wiki!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Newman

Obama at Top Pot Doughnuts

My company moved to this new location
RIGHT across the street from from Top Pot Doughnuts,
where I get coffee thrice a week
(and a doughnut once a week).

I just found out;
my company moved to this new location 1 month AFTER Obama came by!
I'm so bummed I missed him!!!
I would have been in line right behind him!
Or at least watched the whole thing go down from my office window.
So sad...
Still, makes me feel special that he's been to the same place
where I often get my mornings started.

Howard's End

I loved this movie.

Anthony Hopkins so consistantly good,
that we expect a lot.
I don't think he's appreciated enough.

Emma Thompson is perfect in period peices.
She's gives the impression of the depth in these women.
Smart, witty, talented and full of secrets...
So good at it, is she,
that it's difficult for me to imagine her doing modern things!
Checking her email, sending a text, etc.

The cinematography was gorgeous.
The clothes were beautifully constructed.
My cellphone camera hardly does it justice.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another;
it's one damn thing over and over."

"Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do;
Men a longer life than dogs do;
Dogs a longer life than love does."

“Life must go on; I forget just why.”



"I know I am but summer to your heart,
and not the full four seasons of the year."

“If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday - so much is true.”

“I've been a wicked girl," said I:
"But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!”



“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
...Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.”

“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”

“I love humanity but I hate people.”



“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish-and men do-
I shall have only good to say of you.”



"So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall."

"A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own."



"Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die."



"Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead."

"For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home."




Renascence -

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, --
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more, -- there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and -- crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see, --
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --
I know not how such things can be! --
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, --
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.





...
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/edna_st._vincent_millay/4.html