minor anecdotes about famous people that creep you out.

Cafe Society
121

I think it was about fifteen years ago that he said in an interview that date rape is something that everybody does. This was around the time that America was just deciding that there was such as thing as date rape and that it was a crime. There was much outrage at Depardieu’s casual comment in America, and it was shrugged off in France. It might have hurt the American side of his career.

Speaking of car accidents and Bushes, Laura Bush’s teenaged vehicular manslaughter is pretty creepy. I wish she’d break her silence and talk about it.

122

So **Going Places ** wasn’t fictional? :slight_smile:

123

Hey, that made me remember that Meredith Baxter Birney ran over my skis on the slopes of Park City once! She was clearly not in as much control as she would have preferred to be, and called out an embarrassed apology as she careened further down the hill. Didn’t creep me out, just made me think she couldn’t ski.

What I think about every time I see her, though, is what an amazing make-up/soft-focus job they must have been doing on her for on-camera work. This was the early 1990s, and, man, was she wrinkly.

124

Yeah, that made minor headlines about six months ago…

125

So it’s skeevy to think about adoption and then change your mind when you get pregnant? :rolleyes:

126

If you have already agreed to adopt a specific child and then ditch that child when you get pregnant, yes it’s skeevy. And damn mean.

127

Please tell me you’re joking. I don’t think anything bad happened in Las Vegas on September 11, did it? (Apart from the usual.)

128

Was stoppng all air traffic bad?

David Brenner grew up in Philadelphia and lived in New York City for decades. At one time he was a “hometown boy.”

129

And do you know that either couple had agreed to a specific child? Or had they just looked into getting approved for adoption? Do you have any first hand knowledge of either incident?

130

The story about Michael Landon is related in his stepdaughter Cheryl’s booki “I Promised My Dad” and here. Michael and first wife Dodie had agreed to adopt a child and when the marriage broke up they returned him to the orphanage.

George & Laura were either “looking into adotpion” or had agreed to adopt a friend’s foster son, depending on which book you read. They put the adoption on hold when Laura got pregnant, planning to finalize it if the pregnancy was not successful.

131

I think the “truth” on any political gossip (whether it be considering vs. committed to adoption or tragic accident vs. crazy bitch in a car) depends on where you stand ideologically.

Opening up about it would probably be pointless.

132

And not only would this be totally different than what you said in your original post on the subject, it’s also a totally different situation morally. Why the hell would you bring an adoptive child into a family you’re about to split up???

Everything I’ve read was that they went to the Gladney Center to see about adopting a child, but that it never got as far as choosing an individual child.

133

Manslaughter is a crime, and she was not charged with any crime.

134

No slam to Mickey, but I’ll make this post … short!
Around 1963, I was a young disc jockey in my hometown of Wheeling, WV. News spread that Mickey Rooney was to appear at an outdoor amphitheater with two other performers, and the radio station dispatched me with a tape recorder to get interviews. I was really excited, I mean, hey, I was going to interview the legendary Little Mick … live and in person!

The show was not advertised well beforehand and the audience was VERY sparce.
Maybe the other two performers on the bill with Mickey – has-been “western” star Don “Red” Berry and up-and-coming entertainer Bobby Van – just weren’t a big enough draw to make people want to attend. Anyway, the show was a real flop. One thing stands out in my mind: Berry, decidedly drunk on stage, was offering 8x10 glossies of himself to anyone in the audience willing to shell out 50 cents. Later, I saw three people head back stage to get their coveted glossies.

Rooney was a big disappointment, to say the least. I made every effort to elicit good answers to my admittedly hokey questions about his career and movie experiences, all to no avail. I got nothing but yes and no answers from him. He was too busy primping in front of the dressing room mirror, adjusting the knot in his tie, hitching his pants up with his wrists, winking at himself.

Realizing the interview was going nowhere, I asked him if he’d mind recording some station promos for use on the air. He grabbed the script from me and proceeded to purposely screw up almost every line, rattling off the words as if he were in an Evelyn Woods competition! He even added a FIFTH LETTER to the station’s call sign, for cryin’ out loud!

The topper came when I was leaving his dressing room. I made the mistake of asking him his reaction to the dismal audience showing. He looked up into my eyes and almost yelled, “Wheeling, West Virginia will NEVER see Mickey Rooney AGAIN!”

Mick, I don’t think Wheeling, West Virginia really wanted to see you in the first place! And not the way I did. The only pleasant memory of that evening was Bobby Van, a real gentleman.

135

I’m aware that she was not charged with a crime. In fact, she was not even questioned. She was driven home by nice policemen.
Nevertheless, she was driving a car that flew through a stopsign and rammed another car, killing a classmate of hers. Not everyone who commits a crime is charged with it.

136

I guess I can understand the whole depardieu thing.

I suppose he was referring to people buying people drinks to get them “loosened up” rather than actual drugging of women. A gal can always turn down a drink. It’s just one of those things that gets miscommunicated across borders. He doesn’t realize there isn’t really a PC way to connect the two different ideas…

137

Best not to “suppose” on subjects such as this.

Richard Corliss interviewed Depardieu in 1991 for Time magazine, and brought up a 1978 interview in which Depardieu talked about his gun-toting, car-stealing childhood. “What of his story that at 9 he participated in his first rape?” Corliss asked. “‘Yes,’ he [Depardieu] admits. And after that, there were many rapes? ‘Yes,’ he admits, ‘but it was absolutely normal in those circumstances. That was part of my childhood.’”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972253-1,00.html

In the 1978 interview, Depardieu said there were “too many [rapes] to count. . . . There was nothing wrong with it. The girls wanted to be raped. I mean, there’s no such thing as rape. It’s only a matter of a girl putting herself in a situation where she wants to be.”

Was he talking about statutory rape, i.e., sex with a girl below the age of consent? Or was he talking about forcible rape? He could have been more clear, but it stirred up a mini-storm of controversy in the U.S.

Not among the French, though. When Jay Leno mentioned the flap to guest Catherine Deneuve on the Tonight Show, the actress, who had co-starred in several films with Depardieu, gave a show of gallic indifference and instead asked Leno what he thought of it all.

138

Sounds like an accident to me. Most fatal accidents do not end in manslaughter charges. The incident as described is almost exactly like one that happened at work not that long ago. The woman who ran the stop sign was charged with failure to stop, a minor motor vehicle violation which carries only two points.

139

She ran a stop sign and killed somebody and the cops treated her like she was the victim. She should have at least been drunk tested.

Defend her all you want, the bottom line is she’s the only First Lady who’s known to have taken a human life, and it occurred through her own negligence, not through some unfortunate fluke of circumstance. That’s creepy. If HRC had ever killed someone, it’s all conservatives would ever talk about.

140

I was under the impression that the man she killed was not just a classmate, but an ex-boyfriend of hers.