You wanna know what clout is? It isn`t getting a good table in a restaurant. It isn`t getting put into first class on a coach ticket. It isn`t being greeted with a complimentary fruit basket in your hotel room. It`s changing the nature of candy wrappers, everywhere, forever. When ”Today”
movie critic Gene Shalit complained about the noise from candy being unwrapped by moviegoers during a show, the candy industry jumped. The next time you open a bar of Baby Ruth or Butterfinger, says American Film magazine, you`ll notice the new, noiseless wrapper.
What Merlin was to King Arthur, Zolar is to Ronald Reagan. The astrologer predicts that the worst is not over for the President, and it`s all because Neptune, the planet of deception and disillusionment, is smack dab on the President`s descendent. That`s star talk for major trouble. Zolar predicts more scandals, more health problems and more fair-weather friends. ”I expect him to resign in a true Hollywood surprise ending to what has been a most extraordinary career,” says Zolar. ”Perhaps he will even receive an Oscar for this, his greatest performance.”
Celebrity-worshipping and -bashing together form one of our favorite pastimes. There`s a good example of it cited in ”The Way of the Actor”
(Shambhala), by Brian Bates. ”When Meryl Streep flew into London to promote the film `Kramer vs. Kramer,` the media went crazy,” writes Bates.
”For three days solid, journalists jammed the corridors outside her hotel room, being admitted one by one to the inner sanctum for interviews.” Of the spectacle, one of those journalists wrote, ”Journalists from Italy, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia and South Africa came to hear a young woman, aged 33, whose job it is to pretend to be other people, talk about herself.”
REPLAYS
”It is better to be quotable than to be honest.” Tom Stoppard
”When you see yourself quoted in print and you`re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.” Laurence J. Peter
”I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
