2009 will be remembered as a year of great change.
A black man now uses the front door of the White House. At the same time, the post-racial King of Pop died, and the era of multiplatinum blockbuster records was buried with him.
Climate change skeptics were forced to admit that nature has indeed turned against us when weather records of all sorts were broken in every country. Meanwhile, snow-bound Canadians learned that their frosty Prime Minister can shut down a functioning, elected parliament whenever he wants - all it takes is a little chat over tea and cookies with the Governor-General.
Iranians expressed their discontent with authoritarian behaviour in unprecedented numbers, and time is on the young population's side. But a mullah of another sort, Kim Jong Il, finally got his bomb (or a convincing fake). Jennifer Aniston had a hit movie. (That Mayan 2012 prophecy looks better and better all the time.)
One thing that did not change, and probably never will, is the unique ability of the celebrated person to talk, talk, talk about him or her self. Celebrities are recession-proof, rising sea level-proof, and probably North Korean missile-proof. Without them, I am nothing. Here then, are the best (and worst) quotes from my conversations with the stars in 2009.
On "the craft"
"I think what I'm trying to do, if I have to put it into words, is, rather than resort to labels, consider film acting no different than a bit of music or a painting, in the sense that just as there's no top on the imagination when it comes to music or paintings, might there not be a top when it comes to the imagination of a performance on film?"
- Nicolas Cage
"The wardrobe woman was incredible. I walked into the first wardrobe fitting and she said, 'I have to apologize, Jill, we're really trying to dowdy you up here.' I said, No, bring it on, man! It is so refreshing to not have to be 'beautiful.'
- Jill Hennessy, on her performance in Lymelife
"My theory of comedy, and I hope that I don't come across as mean, is that I aim for somebody higher on the food chain. I mean, really, is Joaquin Phoenix losing sleep?"
- Carla Collins, on stand up
"I'm just in this for the money and the anecdotes."
- Patton Oswalt, star of Big Fan
"I'm not an actress, I don't really know what I'm doing, and I need to learn."
- Joss Stone, on her appearance in The Tudors
On politics
"Everybody's very critical! Everybody is complaining and whining and bitching already, and I'm like, 'The man's only been in office for six months trying to fix, like, a decade's worth of damage and incredible crime.' But people are being harsh, are you kidding me? Harsh."
- John Leguizamo, on President Obama
"The mood in America now is very, very tense. There's a lot of really broke people here - people looking at their future not being certain financially, or not stabilizing for a long time. I think the vampire thing is bit of escapism, not a comment on how we're living now. On the other hand, America, to me at least, has been an empire on fire for quite a while now."
- Henry Rollins
"One of the many things wrong about these campaigns, like Red, is the message that you buy some sneakers here to save people [in Africa] But where's the connection to people here? … What was the AIDS movement about? The AIDS movement was about a fundamental critique of health care and power, about who decides what goes in our bodies. And now we've given so much power back to the medical establishment. … What would be the single, most defining thing to define the West's relationship to Africa and to AIDS? Bono?"
- John Greyson, on the failure of mainstream AIDS activism
On showbiz
"I got into the adult film industry and I told people, openly, I'm a commodity and I'm willing to fulfill everybody's fantasies. I make no bones about it. … everybody's so concerned about hiding the fact that they are selling something, because they feel that they'll be condemned for it. And, if you have a woman saying, 'Yes, I'm selling sex,' she's condemned for it, but if you have a man, like Hugh Hefner - and I have no problem with the man - he's glorified for it."
- Sasha Grey, porn star/actress, star of The Girlfriend Experience
"I wish that I could deal with it [fame]like he [Matthew McConaughey]does. He just goes about life as normally as possible, but I loathe it and try to adapt my life to avoid it as much as possible."
- Jennifer Garner
"I haven't had a glamorous career. … The only list I ever made of the sexiest or the most beautiful was Homer Simpson's list."
- Linda Hamilton
On love and life
"I lived with my best friend until six months ago, my best friend since I was twelve, and when he left I wept like an infant."
- Jason Segel, star of I Love You, Man
"It reminds people that we are wild things, that the animal side of us is raw and primal, and the other, beautiful human side of us - well, they're both beautiful, both sides - is so sensitive, and we're so deeply affected by each other. The book and the film, really love both sides of human beings, and neither tries to explain human beings - it just says, this is what we are."
- Catherine O'Hara, on Where The Wild Things Are
"I have the old 'don't worry about me' thing going on. My whole thing was over-responsibility, that was the route I took. As kids you can go one way or the other. You can act out, rebel, and be the renegade. Or you can go, 'I'm going to be the overachieving, perfectionist, low maintenance, needless creature.' So, I went the former, and they are both equally torturous."
- Alanis Morissette, on being a child star
"When people hear friends laughing in another room, they often feel the need to rush and see - it's an evolutionary principle, the need to see that you are not being laughed at. Laughter has a very nasty side."
- Albert Nerenberg, director of the documentary Laughology