James Wolcott Quotes - Page 2

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• Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian would have left little more than lipstick stains in their passing had it not been for the sex videos that lofted them into reality-TV notoriety. Once notoriety has warmed into familiarity, celebrity itself becomes one big 'Brady Bunch' reunion, or a therapy session with Dr. Drew.

  James Wolcott

  Sex, Reality, Paris

  7 Copy quote

• Since I'm a fan of collections and anthologies, believe that the best writing often shines in shards and galloping stretches, I never find myself lobbying for a writer I enjoy reading regularly to hole up in Heidegger's hut for four or five years to bring forth a mountain.

  James Wolcott

  Believe, Reading, Writing

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• The advent of DVD/Blu-ray reissues of classic Hollywood and foreign films has been a boon to film buffs, who can now study their favorites in all their glistening detail and restored palettes.

  James Wolcott

  Dvds, Rays, Hollywood

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• What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.

  James Wolcott

  Inspirational, Dance, Art

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• Whenever I catch a chunk of an Adam Sandler comedy on cable, it looks as badly shot and goofily tossed off as a Jerry Lewis gag reel once he hit the late downslide with 'Hardly Working' and 'Cracking Up.'

  James Wolcott

  Looks, Comedy, Adam

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• Robert Pattinson is rebel cool incarnated -- the James Dean of the undead.

  James Wolcott

  Rebel, Dean, Undead

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• And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of 'The Book of Mormon,' the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central's 'South Park,' are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike.

  James Wolcott

  Team, Book, Moon

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• In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.

  James Wolcott

  Reality, One Direction, Passivity Is

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• Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

  James Wolcott

  Kings, Grief, America

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• What stars do in their off-hours is a never-ending source of diddling curiosity to the tabloid sensibility.

  James Wolcott

  Stars, Curiosity, Tabloids

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• Today a celebrity sex video isn't a stigma that requires penance and smarm removal; it's a branding device, a platform enhancer, a show reel.

  James Wolcott

  Sex, Today, Penance

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• At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.

  James Wolcott

  Voice, Office, Break Out

  "James Wolcott’s Old New York". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 25, 2011.

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• A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection.

  James Wolcott

  Fun, Reflection, Class

  4 Copy quote

• A lost election can have the jolt of a drop through the gallows door, leading to a dark night of the soul in which the future presses down like a cloud that will never lift.

  James Wolcott

  Dark, Night, Clouds

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• My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

  James Wolcott

  School, College, Paper

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• I understand that one of the purposes of bipartisanship is to cram something difficult and necessary down the American people's gullets for which neither party has the fortitude to assume full responsibility. It's a way of turning a possible gangplank into a teeter-totter.

  James Wolcott

  Party, Responsibility, People

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• High expectations weren't nurtured in my neck of nowhere back then - children weren't fawned over from an early age as 'gifted' and groomed for a prizewinning future; self-esteem was considered something you had to pick from the garden yourself.

  James Wolcott

  Birthday, Children, Self Esteem

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• Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.

  James Wolcott

  Night, Vampire, Dawn

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• Bad acting comes in many bags, various odors. It can be performed by cardboard refugees from an Ed Wood movie, reciting their dialogue off an eye chart, or by hopped-up pros looking to punch a hole through the fourth wall from pure ballistic force of personality, like Joe Pesci in a bad mood. I can respect bad acting that owns its own style.

  James Wolcott

  Wall, Eye, Personality

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• Historically, Hollywood comedy has arrived in skinny envelopes. From fence post Buster Keaton to herky-jerky Jerry Lewis to wiry nerve-bundle Woody Allen to hung-loose Richard Pryor to whippy contortionist Jim Carrey, its comics and clowns have tended to be sliced thin and bendable.

  James Wolcott

  Fence Post, Envelopes, Skinny

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• In 2008, Barack Obama did get Democrats hyperventilating, whipped up to a creamy froth, while John McCain creaked ahead like a cranky granddad whom Republicans let move to the front of the buffet line, deferring to seniority, as they had in 1996, when Bob Dole turtled to the top of the ticket.

  James Wolcott

  Moving, Bob, Buffets

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• 'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck.

  James Wolcott

  Stars, Kings, Swings

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• Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

  James Wolcott

  Running, Team, Character

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• As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.

  James Wolcott

  Stars, Dimensions, Clicks

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• After a decade this glum, we deserved a shot of 'Glee,' a show that restored our faith in the power of song, the beauty of dance, and the magic of 'spirit fingers' to chase our cares and woes into somebody else's backyard.

  James Wolcott

  Inspirational, Dance, Song

  7 Copy quote

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