I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like (23 page)

 

Movies are just another form of merchandising—
we have our factory, which is called a stage;
we make a product, we color it, we title it, and we ship it out in cans.

CARY GRANT

I felt like a raisin in a gigantic fruit salad.

MARK HAMILL,
on acting in
Star Wars

Lana Turner is to an evening gown
what Frank Lloyd Wright is to a pile of lumber.

REX HARRISON

A movie without music is a little bit like an aeroplane without fuel.
However beautifully the job is done,
we are still on the ground and in a world of reality.
Your music has lifted us all up and sent us soaring.
Everything we cannot say with words or show with action
you have expressed for us.

AUDREY HEPBURN,
to Henry Mancini

This came in a 1961 letter Hepburn wrote to Mancini, composer of the score for
Breakfast at Tiffany's
. The movie, adapted from a Truman Capote novella, stars Hepburn as Holly Golightly, a glamorous New Yorker who is working as a high-priced escort. Her goal is to meet and marry a wealthy older man, but she becomes attracted to a handsome and struggling young
writer (George Peppard), who moves into her apartment building (he, in turn, is being kept by a wealthy older woman). Of the seven Oscar nominations the film received, Mancini took home two, one for the sound track and one (with Johnny Mercer) for the song “Moon River.”

 

The stage is actors' country.
You have to get your passport stamped every so often
or they take away your citizenship.

CHARLTON HESTON

This was Heston's way of saying that film stars needed to occasionally appear on the live theatrical stage, even though stage roles are far less lucrative.

 

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

For me the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN

Also employing an executioner's analogy, Eli Wallach famously observed: “Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.” Tyne Daly changed the metaphor, but made the same point: “A critic is someone who never actually goes to battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded.”

 

Academy awards are like orgasms—
only a few of us know the feeling of having had multiple ones.

JOHN HUSTON

Huston was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning two. He had his multiple orgasms in 1948, when he took home the Best Director and the Best Screenplay Oscars for
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
.

 

The cinema, like the detective story, makes it possible to experience
without danger all the excitement, passion, and desirousness
which must be suppressed in a humanitarian ordering of society.

CARL JUNG

Glamour is just sex that got civilized.

DOROTHY LAMOUR

Producing is like pushing Jell-O up a hill on a hot day.

LUCY LIU

This is a variation on the metaphor
nailing Jell-O to the wall
, which describes a task that is virtually impossible. The expression originated in 1903 when Theodore Roosevelt was trying to finalize an agreement with the Columbian government to build a canal in (at the time) their province of Panama. Roosevelt was so frustrated with Columbian officials that he bellowed, “Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail currant jelly to the wall.”

 

Being a writer in Hollywood is like going into Hitler's Eagle's Nest
with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.

DAVID MAMET

Mamet's dim view of Hollywood was also reflected in his 1988 play
Speed the Plow
, where a character says, “Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises and you're constantly getting fucked.”

 

A trip through a sewer in a glass-bottom boat.

WILSON MIZNER,
on his years in Hollywood

Mizner was one of Hollywood's most colorful characters (Anita Loos called him “America's most fascinating outlaw”). He and brother Addison were the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim's 2003 musical,
Bounce
. Like David Mamet earlier, Mizner also had a dim view of his bosses: “Working for Warner Brothers is like fucking a porcupine; it's a hundred pricks against one.”

 

Hollywood is high school with money.

MARTIN MULL

If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know
that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.

CLIFFORD ODETS,
on Marilyn Monroe

This appeared in a tribute Odets wrote a month after Monroe's August 1962 death by an overdose of sleeping pills (it was ruled a probable suicide). In predicting that a legend would spring up around the blonde sex symbol, Odets quoted a magnificent metaphorical line from the poet William Butler Yeats: “The tree has to die before it can be made into a cross.”

 

The difference between being a director and being an actor is
the difference between being
the carpenter banging the nails into the wood,
and being the piece of wood the nails are being banged into.

SEAN PENN

Working with Julie Andrews
is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER,
Andrews's
Sound of Music
co-star

Bond smoked like Peter Lorre, drank like Humphrey Bogart,
ate like Sydney Greenstreet, used up girls like Errol Flynn—then went to a steam bath and came out looking like Clark Gable.

HARRY REASONER,
on Sean Connery's James Bond

It's hard to act in the morning. The muse isn't even awake.

KEANU REEVES

Every playwright should try acting, just as every judge should
spend some weeks in jail to find out what he is handing out to others.

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

The camera is a little like the surgeon's knife.

JEAN RENOIR

Being given good material is like being assigned to bake a cake
and having the batter made for you.

ROSALIND RUSSELL

My native habitat is the theatre. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin.
I am a critic and commentator.
I am essential to the theatre—as ants to a picnic,
as the boll weevil to a cotton field.

GEORGE SANDERS

This is a classic line in cinema history, delivered by Sanders in the role of critic Addison de Witt in the 1950 film
All About Eve
(screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz). The line captures how critics have been viewed by playwrights and actors (and writers as well, as you will see in the upcoming literary life chapter). The most colorful remark about critics from a stage performer, though, comes from George Burns, who said, “Critics are eunuchs at a gang-bang.”

 

Acting is like roller skating.
Once you know how to do it, it is neither stimulating nor exciting.

GEORGE SANDERS

Making a film is like going down a mine—
once you've started, you bid a metaphorical goodbye
to the daylight and the outside world for the duration.

JOHN SCHLESINGER

A fellow with the inventiveness of Albert Einstein
but with the attention span of Daffy Duck.

TOM SHALES,
on Robin Williams

Another well-known attention span comparison was Robert Redford's lighthearted jab at Paul Newman: “He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.”

 

Going to Hollywood to talk about menopause
was a little like going to Las Vegas to sell savings accounts.

GAIL SHEEHY

This was Sheehy's explanation for the lack of interest Hollywood producers showed when she pitched them on doing a film adaptation of
The Silent Passage
(1992).

 

The body of an actor is like a well in which
experiences are stored, then tapped when needed.

SIMONE SIGNORET

Careers, like rockets, don't always take off on time.
The trick is to always keep the engine running.

GARY SINISE

This is great advice for anyone, but especially for people in an occupation with long periods of inactivity between gigs and even longer odds against success.

 

In the creative process there is the father,
the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part;
and the child, the role to be born.

KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY

Remember this practical piece of advice:
Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet.
Leave your dust and dirt outside.
Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties
with your outside clothing—all the things that ruin your life
and draw your attention away from your art—at the door.

KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY,
advice to actors

Directing is like being a father on a set; comedy is like being a kid.

DAVID STEINBERG

Steinberg was one of the best-known comics in the 1970s (he appeared on
The Tonight Show
130 times and was the youngest person ever to guest-host the show). He went on to achieve great success behind the camera, directing such TV sitcoms as
Seinfeld, Mad About You
, and
Designing Women
. In 2005, he returned to the front of the camera with his TV Land talk show
Sit Down Comedy
.

 

It's a little like wrestling a gorilla.
You don't quit when you're tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.

ROBERT STRAUSS,
on acting careers

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking—
it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

By increasing the size of the keyhole,
today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the whole door.

PETER USTINOV

The reference here is to the increased appearance of gratuitous sex in modern plays. Ustinov, a talented writer as well as a great actor, was suggesting that what used to be peeked at through keyholes was now in plain view.

 

Choice is to the cable monopoly what sunlight is to the vampire.

JACK VALENTI

Valenti said this in 1987, as president of the Motion Picture Association of America. At the time, five companies controlled over 40 percent of cable-TV subscriptions and dictated what viewers would get to watch on television.

 

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

ORSON WELLES

In 1938, Welles achieved national notoriety and everlasting fame when his
War of the Worlds
radio broadcast created a panic on the East Coast. Two years later, the twenty-five-year-old Welles was lured to Hollywood by RKO studio executives. In 1941, he came out with
Citizen Kane
, often hailed as America's greatest film. Welles once described the RKO lot as “The biggest electric train set any boy ever had.”

 

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts.
But I can't stop eating peanuts.

ORSON WELLES

This observation, made in 1956, nicely communicates the ambivalence so many people feel about television. More recently, Dennis Miller made a similar point: “Bad television is three things: a bullet train to a morally bankrupt youth, a slow spiral into an intellectual void, and of course, a complete blast to watch.”

 

Making movies is a little like walking into a dark room.
Some people stumble across furniture, others break their legs,
but some of us see better in the dark than others.

BILLY WILDER

Many plays, certainly mine, are like blank checks.
The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

THORNTON WILDER

Wilder's plays may have been blank checks, but the plays of many other playwrights are written for very precise amounts. Using two different similes, Vivien Leigh compared two famous playwrights this way: “Shaw is like a train. One just speaks the words and sits in one's place. But Shakespeare is like bathing in the sea—one swims where one wants.”

 

A movie without sex would be like a candy bar without nuts.

EARL WILSON

O
n September 17, 1787, the men responsible for drafting a constitution for the new American nation walked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. They had labored for nearly four months, first attempting a simple revision of the Articles of Confederation, and in the end drafting an entirely new document. It had been an unusually hot summer, and the framers of the constitution had sweltered inside the great hall with the windows closed to the throng of curious onlookers who had gathered outside to witness history in the making.

The Constitutional Convention, as it came to be called, was chaired by George Washington, who represented his home state of Virginia. Washington had planned to retire when the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, but his sense of duty took him to Philadelphia instead. His status as a war hero made him an obvious choice as chairman of the gathering. But many other luminaries were in attendance as well, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were in Europe and did not attend). To the gathering crowd, though, the most familiar face
was that of the eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin, an original signer of the Declaration of Independence eleven years earlier and a resident of Philadelphia since he was seventeen. As the men descended the stairs, many people in the crowd shouted out questions about the nature of the new government. One female voice shouted at Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” The Grand Old Man replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

In the years that followed, a lively debate ensued over whether a republican form of government was indeed the best model for America. As the new nation struggled to get established, there were a predictable number of second-guessers, and many even suggested a return to a monarchical form of government.

In a 1795 debate in Congress, this issue surfaced yet again. Fisher Ames, a congressman from Massachusetts, rose to speak in favor of the republican model. Ames, who would later become president of Harvard University, was one of the great orators of the era. And in one of the most memorable metaphors ever offered in a Congressional debate, he compared the competing forms of government to two very different types of eighteenth-century maritime vessels:

 

A monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well,
but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom;
whilst a republic is a raft which would never sink,
but then your feet are always in the water.

 

As often happens with particularly apt metaphors, the remark helped put things into perspective for new Americans, reminding them that their fledgling government had a plain and simple seaworthiness that was far preferable to the elegant fragility of European governments. The image was so compelling, it had tremendous staying power. Two hundred years later, the sentiment showed up in an observation from Louisiana senator Russell B. Long:

 

Democracy is like a raft.
It won't sink, but you'll always have your feet wet.

 

With the Constitutional Convention over, George Washington left Philadelphia and headed back to Mount Vernon. He was fully expecting—at long last—to spend the remainder of his life pursuing his many interests and avocations. But private life was not in his future.

In 1788, after the Constitution was formally ratified by the states, a new entity called the electoral college selected Washington as the first United States president. Once again, the hero of the Revolutionary War struggled to reconcile his personal desires with his sense of duty. He had always harbored a deep disdain for politics, and even worried that the formation of political parties would deeply—and dangerously—divide the country. He finally accepted the nomination, but he approached the new role with great trepidation. In a letter he wrote to a friend on April 1, 1789, less than a month before his inauguration, he confessed:

 

My movements to the chair of Government
will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of
a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.

 

Figurative language has had a long history in political life. In the sixth century B.C., the legendary Athenian lawmaker Solon embarked on a series of political reforms that repealed the harsh laws of the Emperor Draco (of
draconian
fame) and established the foundation for the world's first democracy. In the early days of Solon's reign, a bearded stranger showed up at his door and identified himself as Anacharsis, a prince from the distant Northern kingdom of Scythia (modern-day Ukraine). With his rustic appearance and well-worn clothing, Anacharsis was not exactly a regal sight, but he proved to be a man of uncommon wisdom, penetrating insight, and refreshing frankness. Within a short time, this curious man won over the citizens of Athens, much like Benjamin Franklin did in
the 1770s when, as America's first ambassador to France, he captivated the French people.

Anacharsis became a trusted advisor to Solon and was the first outsider to be made an Athenian citizen (he, along with Solon, went on to achieve immortality when ancient historians included them among the legendary Seven Wise Men of Greece). One day, in a show of confidence in his new confidante, Solon revealed his plans for a wholesale revision of laws governing the Athenian people. Expecting support for his great dream, the emperor was shocked when Anacharsis laughed at the idea. When pressed for an explanation, Anacharsis explained that it was impossible to restrain the vices of people by statute. And then he added:

 

Written laws are like spiders' webs,
and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak,
while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

 

This fascinating anecdote was passed along by word of mouth for centuries before the Greek historian Plutarch recorded it for posterity. Today, twenty-five hundred years after Anacharsis offered his analogy, it is routinely cited in discussions about the lack of justice in judicial systems all around the world. His observation also simulated many spin-offs, including this from a 1707 essay by Jonathan Swift:

 

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies,
but let wasps and hornets break through.

 

Metaphorical language goes back to antiquity and continues with force today. When politicians describe a campaign as
a marathon and not a sprint
, we all know what they mean. And when we say an issue is
a red herring
or describe a candidate as
a dark horse
or
a loose cannon,
we're speaking metaphorically, even if we're unaware of the origins of such expressions.

One of the most famous contemporary political metaphors emerged in
1962, when Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the California State Assembly, said in an interview in
Look
magazine:

 

Money is the mother's milk of politics.

 

At the time, Unruh was one of the state's most flamboyant politicians (he was nicknamed
Big Daddy
by Raquel Welch). The remark, which vividly captured the role of Big Money in the political process, immediately took hold, and went on to become one of history's best-known political quotations. By the 1990s, as Unruh's observation began to suffer from overexposure, another colorful politician—Jim Hightower of Texas—stepped up to the plate with an updated version:

 

Money is the crack cocaine of politics.

 

Out of the thousands of new metaphors that appear every year, most have only a limited shelf life. But every now and then a great one appears and goes on to become an integral part of the cultural vocabulary. During the Reagan presidency, many Democrats were frustrated by the President's ability to remain unscathed despite a variety of mistakes and blunders made during his administration. On an August morning in 1983, as Colorado Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder was cooking breakfast for her children, she had a flash of inspiration. “He's just like a Teflon frying pan,” she thought, “Nothing sticks to him.” Later that day, in an address in Congress, she unveiled the image:

 

Mr. Speaker, after carefully watching Ronald Reagan,
he is attempting a great breakthrough in political technology—
he has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency…
Harry Truman had a sign on his desk
emblazoned with his motto: “The Buck Stops Here.”
It has obviously been removed and Reagan's desk has been Teflon-coated.

 

Schroeder's colleagues in Congress seized on the concept, and soon people all around the country were repeating it. Within a week, the
New York Times
helped make it a permanent part of the political lexicon with an article headlined “The Teflon Presidency.” Nobody before Schroeder had ever likened a politician to a non-stick frying pan. But the Teflon metaphor was so brilliant that—there is no better way to describe what happened—it stuck.

Continuing with the adhesion theme, here's hoping that you find a few more metaphorical observations with sticking power in the remainder of the chapter.

 

Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.

LORD ACTON
(John Dahlberg)

Lord Acton, a nineteenth-century British historian, is best known for the dictum, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Also on the subject of power, John Adams painted this vivid verbal picture in 1765: “The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

 

Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.

JOSEPH W. ALSOP, JR.

Man is by nature a political animal.

ARISTOTLE

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad
is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather
for not going to church on Sunday.

RUSSELL BAKER

You might think this is about the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton in
1998, but it came in 1974 in response to calls to impeach Richard Nixon over Watergate.

 

The president of the United States bears about as much relationship
to the real business of running America
as does Colonel Sanders to the business of frying chicken.

J. G. BALLARD

In the 1990s, South Carolina congressman Bob Inglis also employed a memorable KFC metaphor: “Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.”

 

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

As long as there have been governments, people have derided bureaucracies. In 1868, Russian writer Alexander Ostrovsky wrote in
The Diary of a Scoundrel
: “It's all papers and forms; the entire Civil Service is like a fortress, made of papers, forms, and red tape.” Since the early 1800s,
red tape
has been a metaphor for complicated and time-consuming procedures. The expression comes from a centuries-old practice of tying official government documents in red ribbon.

 

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.

OTTO VON BISMARCK

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks:
“As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans,
___________ __________ is to the Democrats—
a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.”

DAVID BRODER

This is how Broder began his syndicated column in April 2007. Analogies have long been a part of the school curriculum, so it was appropriate for Broder to add: “If you answered Sen. Harry Reid, give yourself an A.” The column came a week after Attorney General Gonzalez's inept performance before senators investigating the controversial firing of eight U. S. attorneys. In the column, Broder also surveyed a variety of Reid's verbal gaffes, including his 2005 comment that Alan Greenspan was “one of the biggest political hacks” in Washington.

 

We don't just have egg on our face. We have omelette all over our suits.

TOM BROKAW

Brokaw placed all the news networks into the same red-faced category when he made this comment on the premature—and ultimately wrong—announcement that Al Gore had carried Florida in the 2000 presidential election.
Egg on your face
is an American expression that means to have embarrassed oneself through a foolish action.

 

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

JERRY BROWN

“My country, right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot
would think of saying except in a desperate case.
It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

G. K. CHESTERTON

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt
was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

This is one of the great compliments in world history. Churchill, who
once wrote that “Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician,” sprinkled his speeches and writings with examples. Here are a few more:

“Hatred plays the same part in government as acid in chemistry.”

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.”

“What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammadan faith is to the Arabs.”

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”