Shawn Levy > Quotes

“A man without enemies is a man without character.”
― Shawn Levy, Paul Newman: A Life

“What can you possibly say about Rome?
That it's eternal? That all roads lead to it? That it wasn't built in a day? That when there you should do as the locals do?

Please.
For millennia, Rome has embodied and repelled every cliché, description, and act of comprehension or explanation applied to it.
As a city, it has been built and destroyed and rebuilt by - and has celebrated and signified and outlasted - caesars and barbarians and popes and Fascists and prophets and artists and pilgrims and schemers and migrants and lovers and fools.”
― Shawn Levy, Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi, and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome

“And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress?
Well, there was his native charm.
People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners.
The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man."
There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words."
But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable.
Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat."
Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle."
Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it."
But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124”
― Shawn Levy, The Last Playboy : the High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa

“This is a sad town,” he said. “One can be here 10 years and not make enough friends to count. Anything with any character, any history, they will tear it down and they will put in a neon sign. Or something in plastic.”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“He also, of course, had to calibrate his performance to match Brando’s. The Don Corleone whom Brando had made world-famous had certain physical, vocal, and behavioral characteristics that De Niro would have to incorporate in his portrayal of the younger man in order to make the connection between the two credible to audiences.”
― Shawn Levy, De Niro: A Life

“JOURNALIST— (3) TERRIFIED TO DISAPPOINT MISS HABER AND HER
READERS, WE WILL TRY TO ACCOMMODATE HER
“FASCINATING RUMORS, SO FAR UNCHECKED” BY
BUSTING UP OUR MARRIAGE EVEN THOUGH WE STILL
LIKE EACH OTHER. JOANNE & PAUL NEWMAN This was a stunner, and it got folks talking. The Newmans’ marriage, then eleven years along, was considered stable: all those kids, the famed Connecticut home, the films they’d worked on together, the collaborative success of Rachel, Rachel. It didn’t seem right. Gossipy movie fan magazines had often tried to goose a few sales out of articles speculating that the Newmans were at odds with each other (“Shout by Shout: Paul Newman’s Bitter Fights with His Wife”; “Strange Rumors About Hollywood’s ‘Happiest Marriage’”) or that forty-three-year-old Newman was feeling randy and seeking consolations outside the home (“Paul Newman’s Just at That Age”; “Is Paul Newman’s Joanne Too Possessive?”). Invariably, they all stopped short of actually announcing real trouble or accusing Newman of adultery. The Newmans were supposed to be examples. But this strange advertisement didn’t so much squelch rumors as give people reason to wonder about them. They didn’t have to wait long for a fuller story. Later that year a gossip magazine”
― Shawn Levy, Paul Newman: A Life

“that was the real meat of the show. Variety all but ignored the three Latin opening”
― Shawn Levy, King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis

“Chateau Marmont has most perfectly mirrored its setting, and its setting has long been one of the shining mirrors of the culture of the entire world.”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“It’s not a real past….The past is really not that interesting.”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“an even bigger hit than A Fistful”
― Shawn Levy, Clint: The Man and the Movies

“His uniforms were always immaculate, as were, when he could finally afford them, his hundreds of suits. His manner careered unpredictably from obsequious to civil to icy. His appetites for drink, dance, pomp, and sex were colossal. His capacity for focused work seemed infinite.”
― Shawn Levy, The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa

“Newman’s body of work nicely encapsulated the history of an in-between generation of American men who helped their fathers and uncles conquer the world in war and commerce but who could only watch—likely with some jealousy—as their younger siblings and their own children acted out on the native rebellious impulse to overturn everything. He fit in precisely with neither the Greatest Generation nor the Baby Boomers but represented instead a vital link in the American century—a band of men who were meant to inherit a system that was no longer reliably in place by the time their fathers willed it to them. Torn by the conflicting impulses to rule and rebel, his was arguably the pivotal generation of the twentieth century, and Newman, almost unconsciously, was its actor laureate”
― Shawn Levy, Paul Newman: A Life

“where Endre, a biomedical researcher, worked at finding applications for hyaluronic acid, a collagen-like lubricant that occurs naturally in the eyes of cows and the combs of roosters and was proving useful in combating such ailments in humans as burns, arthritis, and cataracts.”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“He’s gone the other way. He’s used his emptiness—he’s reached down into his own anomie. Only Brando has done this kind of plunging, and De Niro’s performance has something of the undistanced intensity that Brando’s had in Last Tango.” Even more ecstatically, Jack Kroll of Newsweek”
― Shawn Levy, De Niro: A Life

“IT’S A staggering list of achievements—the acting, the racing, the earnings, the giving away—and he could sometimes seem uneasy about it all and, especially, about the image that the rest of the world had of him as a result. The great sportswriter Jim Murray, who met him on a racetrack, opined, “He’s probably the only guy in America who doesn’t want to be Paul Newman.”
― Shawn Levy, Paul Newman: A Life

“You needed a good closet.
You had to be proficient in at least one sport, the more dangerous and expensive the better.
Languages were an asset- for blandishments if nothing else- and smarts: not bookishness so much as worldliness.
It wasn't necessary to be drop-dead handsome but you had to be charming, and you got extra points for a reputation for danger and good times.
You had to dance well, it went without saying.
A little money didn't hurt, if only to get you into the right restaurants and nightclubs and casinos and hotels. (A lot of money didn't, of course, hurt either.)
Connections were essential, whether acquired through school or sports or socializing or business, if you were the sort who went in for business.
And time. Time was, as the saying went, of the essence: time to travel and time to play and time to lounge and time to get fit and time to get fitted and time to dally and time to take your time while others, less certain of themselves and what they wanted, scurried. p116”
― Shawn Levy, The Last Playboy : the High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa

“Ridiculous! People come here to write bombs, or direct them, or act in them, not plant them!”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“And then came Jane Rosenthal (De Niro's handpicked CEO to oversee his production company). She had adored Rocky and Bullwinkle as a girl, and her husband, real estate investor Craig Hatkoff, had made a Valentine’s Day present to her of the collected series on DVD. She, like others before her, thought there was a potential film in Ward’s iconic characters and surreal sensibility, and in 1998 she negotiated a deal with Universal Pictures to acquire the rights and produce a $75 million film for the summer moviegoing season.”

...Fearless Leader, a role for which Rosenthal thought De Niro was perfect. When she asked him, she recalled, “he really laughed at me.… He didn’t grow up watching it. It wasn’t his thing.” But she persisted. “I was always joking with him about it. Then I finally said, ‘Okay, you’ve got to get serious here. It’s a three-week role. Do you want it or not?’ ” Amazingly—perhaps because he knew the film was, as he called it, “Jane’s baby”—he did.

”
― Shawn Levy, De Niro: A Life

“Michael Connelly (The Drop, 2011),”
― Shawn Levy, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont

“Paul Schrader drove past theaters in New York where the film originally played and were at once thrilled and sickened to see lines of young men dressed in Bickle’s familiar outfit of army fatigues and blue jeans, waiting to see the film for, presumably, second and third go-rounds.”
― Shawn Levy, De Niro: A Life

“great sport with”
― Shawn Levy, Paul Newman: A Life

“He has hints of Brando’s jowliness and one of Brando’s most famous lines—“I make an offer he don’t refuse”—but more than that he has Brando’s bearing.”
― Shawn Levy, De Niro: A Life