Cool and Funny People: 250 Anecdotes and Stories

This book contain many anecdotes, most of them funny. (I hope.) A Sample: 1) In 1985, Judi Dench appeared in a BBC-TV production of Ghosts. The director decided that the credits would feature a scene with the characters of the play eating a meal. No actual dialogue would be heard on TV during the rolling of the credits, only a murmur under some music. This left the cast free to improvise their own dialogue and try to make the other cast members laugh. For example, Ms. Dench's character was asked if she wanted any potatoes. They were large potatoes, and she answered, "Yes, please. I'll take twelve." Ms. Dench frequently plays practical jokes on stage. In A Little Night Music, each night she wrote a new message on her corset where her fellow actors could see it but the audience could not. Once, her corset was decorated with the message "Happy New Year." On the last night of the play, the message was a joke directed to her USAmerican co-star, Laurence Guittard: "Go home, Yank." 2) Eudora Welty admitted that she was bad at coming up with titles. For one book, everyone seemed to dislike most of her titles. The only title that no one had an opinion about was A Curtain of Green. Her editor told her that the title did have a certain advantage: "If we call it A Curtain of Green, you'll never need another title. Your second book could be A Curtain of Black and the one after that A Curtain of Blue. Your final book could just be called Curtains."