6 Crazy Hollywood Stories You Probably Haven’t Heard (Bonus story available on The Chive)

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Actor Christopher Plummer once said of Hollywood, “The Stars end at La Brea.” implying that where the stars on famed Hollywood Boulevard end, the real Hollywood begins. The cogs and gears that actually move Hollywood forward are oiled with dirty back lot stories. Here are some great ones you might not have heard.

How James Cameron got Aliens a green light

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From Hello He Lied by Linda Obst. Story told by Gordon Caroll, Executive Producer, Aliens.

Cameron was young. He had just directed Terminator. Cameron had called a meeting to discuss his “next project.” Everyone knew Cameron had written a treatment for Alien 2 that nobody would touch because Alien was not a massive financial success. Alien 2 was not on the table. We expected a professional pitch from Cameron, an outline and a treatment of what he had in mind with a cursory budget; perhaps a couple assistants to run a slide show.
Instead Cameron walked in the room without so much as a piece of paper. He went to the chalk board in the room and simply wrote the word ALIEN. Then he added an ‘S’ to make ALIENS. Dramatically, he drew two vertical lines through the ‘S’, ALIEN$. He turned around and grinned. We greenlit the project that day for $18 million.

Behind the Scenes of Basic Instinct, abridged.

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Basic Instinct grossed over $350 Million and made Sharon Stone a household name. Basic’s writer, Joe Eszterhas wrote a tell-all book about the film Hollywood Animal in which he writes of Sharon,

“(Stone) was so despised by co-workers that on one of her films, crew members took turns urinating in her bathtub.”

Jack Nicholson at the Playboy Mansion

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From the upcoming book, You’ll Never Bounce in This Town Again by Charlie Backer (pseudonym).

“I was working valet at the mansion. We used to park the nicer cars in the roundabout just for show. At 2 AM Jack comes out with a tall blond girl. She couldn’t have been a day over 25 and they start going at it on top of a 1952 Jaguar Roadster. It wasn’t the kissy-kissy stuff either. They were both drunk. I’m watching this when the owner of the Jag walks up to me. It was James Caan. I thought he was going to kill me for allowing this to happen. Caan was a nice guy but he had a temper. I said, “Mr. Caan, Shall I go fetch your car.” James Caan looked at me and said, “Son, you don’t take meat away from a lion when it’s eating. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Ben Stiller is an Asshole

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It all started on the set of Zoolander. Ben Stiller mandated that none of the extras make eye contact with him whatsoever. Stiller also hired and fired ‘a herd of personal assistants’, many of which came forward claiming they were verbally abused by the bi-polar actor.
Stiller’s bad boy behavior continued until Along Came Polly when a number of his fired personal assistants made the same verbal abuse accusations. There was even an (unverified) accusation from a PA who claimed that Stiller had demanded that she cut his toenails. In the face of scrutiny, Stiller actually admitted to being an asshole,

” In the movie business you’ve constantly got to prove yourself. So I can be a real asshole on the set sometimes.”

The real reason Bill Murray didn’t do the Charlie’s Angels sequel

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Bill Murray and Lucy Liu didn’t get along on the set of the first Charlie’s Angels. Bill was always uncomfortable around her and nobody knew why until one day a huge fight erupted between the two while they were filming a scene. People Magazine reported the Bill ‘loudly complained about her technique.’ People was being gentle.

What actually transpired was much more intense. Bill Murray stopped a scene in progress and pointed to Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu saying in order, “I get why you’re here, and you’ve got talent….but what in the hell are you doing here. You can’t act!” At that, Liu blew her lid and attacked Murray, wildly throwing punches. The actors had to be separated to opposite corners of the room while they lobbed verbal hand grenades at each other.
With a Columbia Pictures gun to their heads, both actors would publicly downplay in incident but insiders know better. Bill Murray would not do any sequel with Liu attached and was subsequently replaced by Bernie Mac.

Geffen Babies

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Perhaps the most pervasive and heavily debated lore in Hollywood revolves around Geffen Records founder/billionaire David Geffen. He’s also known as the “G” in Dreamworks SKG. Geffen is an eccentric homosexual who lives in an LA compound often referred to in Hollywood as Gay Mafia Xanadu.
Geffen reportedly has a staffer whose job is to populate Geffen’s abode with a revolving door of nubile gay men known as ‘Geffen Babies’. The perspective Babies are asked to come to Geffen’s house as paid models. The Babies are well compensated for services rendered. Geffen has been know to lavish his Babies with cars, jewelry, and even career favors. Such career compensation has lured otherwise hetero men into becoming temporary Babies themselves.
Some of Hollywood’s top leading men are whispered to have been Babies most notably, Keanu Reeves. Many say his casting as the lead in My Own Private Idaho was a favor from Geffen. Some went as far as to say they were secretly wed, a rumor which has since been debunked. Recently, Sean William Scott has been spotted about town with the mogul. The NY Daily News even went so far as to say he was seen with Geffen at a local gay bar. Personally don’t believe a man who will be forever known as ‘Stiffler’ could ever be gay but one thing is certain, the Geffen Baby does exist. Exactly whom of the Hollywood illuminati are baby alum, we may never know.

Comments (45) “6 Crazy Hollywood Stories You Probably Haven’t Heard (Bonus story available on The Chive)”

sunny beachJune 26, 2008 @ 1:49 pm

Love the ‘Aliens’ photo. It’s true this sequel was all about the cash and very little about the plot.

johnJune 26, 2008 @ 6:51 pm

the geffen one couldnt possibly be true! its just sounds ridiculous! gay mafia xanadu??? come on some one made that up.

johnJune 26, 2008 @ 6:52 pm

the geffen one couldnt possibly be true! it just sounds ridiculous! gay mafia xanadu??? come on some one made that up.

detarameJune 26, 2008 @ 7:14 pm

Well, just because that’s how he pitched Aliens doesn’t mean there is no plot. It was a fantastic movie, you just need to see a couple more WWII Storm The Beach/Dirty Dozen type WWII movies to see what he was trying to do, I think. (Shit, the subtitle for aliens was “this time it’s war.”)

I mean, before Ripley in Alien there was *no* strong female character in a SciFi movie. (If you say Barbarella you get shot out the airlock) She wasn’t even the lead in Alien, Skerritt was. So, seems like a natural enough way to give her the lead.

I think he just meant that he would make it into a blockbuster. He likes making well-crafted, popcorn films. He’s like what Michael Bay that way, actually. Anyway, he’d just made almost 40 million on a 6 million dollar investment with Terminator, why wouldn’t they green light it?

DarbyJune 26, 2008 @ 7:22 pm

I would let sharon stone piss on me…what?!?!

JacobJune 26, 2008 @ 8:20 pm

I think you mean “The prospective Babies are asked” not “The perspective Babies are asked.”

Bob 'The Bitch'June 26, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

I mean Jack Nicholson was pile driving some dame in the round about area at the Playboy Mansion. Bill Murray called out Lucy Liu as an actress in Hollywood. Shit is crazy

Bob 'The Bitch'

[…] 6 Crazy Hollywood Stories You Probably Didn’t Know. (DR) […]

jbJune 26, 2008 @ 11:44 pm

wow.. very detailed post. and lots of dirty stuff revealed… kick ass boys

d00dJune 26, 2008 @ 11:54 pm

Lucy Liu was the only reason to watch that movie. Her tight, jiggling body when she was slinging those chains gave me a hard on for a week.

massivemutant.comJune 27, 2008 @ 3:55 am

Crazy stuff.

Jimmy Do DoppJune 27, 2008 @ 5:41 am

LOL, that shiz cracks me up! Crazy stuff indeed.
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henryJune 27, 2008 @ 7:46 am

Aliens story doesn’t add up. Alien had a production budget of 11 million dollars. It grossed 79 million dollars (this is excluding foreign and rerelease grosses). That’s a profit of 68 million dollars. Studios are pumping out sequels for a lot less than that.

Angry RoyJune 27, 2008 @ 10:57 am

I WOULD TOTALLY BLOW DAVID GEFFEN TO APPEAR IN A HOMOEROTIC MOVIE WITH RIVER PHOENIX BASED ON A SHAKESPEAREAN HISTORY PIECE.

HayleyJune 27, 2008 @ 6:16 pm

Wow, I really ope the thing about Keanu Reeves isn’t true.

I’m kind of in love with him.

butane bobJune 27, 2008 @ 8:00 pm

Bullshit Alien wasn’t a success o_O

mr.edJune 28, 2008 @ 8:50 am

“Son, you don’t take meat away from a lion when it’s eating. I’ll be in the kitchen.” hilarious

J. D.June 28, 2008 @ 3:02 pm

*Aliens* is, by far, the best spec script ever written.

The thing is legendary. As is the picture of Cameron working on three different screenplays on three different desks at the same time.

Terrific scripts written by massively successful rookie directors get greenlit, sometimes.

VickieJune 29, 2008 @ 7:38 am

Ben Stiller probably just upset because he isn’t funny.

seanJune 29, 2008 @ 10:43 am

‘Stiffler’ likes stiffies?

MermaidJune 29, 2008 @ 9:44 pm

The “Geffen Babies” thing is absolutely true. I’ve heard confessions from more than 4 such beautiful creatures. Ask around at upscale dinner parties near Silverlake. (Even that’s not a myth), you’ll find them all over the place.

TonyJuly 2, 2008 @ 10:41 pm

“Stiffler, we hardly knew ye.”

Alien_77July 21, 2008 @ 3:52 am

As other mention allready, the first Alien was a boxoffice sucess. The Cameron story sounds bollocks to me. There are funnier storys about aliens from Cameron himself (as heard in the DVD Audiocommentarys) like the 5pm Tea breaks of the english crew.

erichansaAugust 6, 2008 @ 7:03 am

this is crazy

lboySeptember 4, 2008 @ 9:21 pm

Don’t Think Seann William Scott is Gay? Check out Chad’s World his Gay Web Show

ARYAJune 23, 2009 @ 9:35 am

Liar liar pants on fire.

Ho HumOctober 17, 2009 @ 10:15 pm

Ho hum. The Geffen story has been around for dog years. Not only was Keanu Reeves one of the Babies, but so was River Phoenix. Hell, Reeves and Phoenix were a couple for a while. Some of us are old enough to have been on the internet when this shit went down and got the news first-hand – instead of 8,000,000,000 times removed nearly 20 years after the fact…

ThomasNovember 15, 2009 @ 2:03 am

This is a really funny post

MikeFebruary 1, 2010 @ 12:04 pm

One time stiffler, always stiffler

MimJune 10, 2010 @ 12:55 pm

The marriage between Geffen and Reeves was a ridiculous rumor. I did hear a rumor that I put more stock in. Geffen wanted Reeves to take it from a rentboy and Keanu got mad and ripped one of Geffen’s famous paintings apart. That was the end of Reeves and Geffen. Don’t know if it’s true but the story did make me wonder.

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James Caan never owned a Jaguar.

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ShempJanuary 6, 2014 @ 1:55 am

Ben Stiller a ***hole?!?! Say it ain’t so…actually, it doesn’t seem too surprising.

As for J. Cameron, he’s a jerk — he’s one of these “We must cut back on our excessive lifestyles in order to save planet Earth!” types…yeah, Jimmy C, like you’re going to give up your ESTATE and mini-fleet of submarines!

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Alien$ | Strange ShapesApril 22, 2017 @ 9:55 am

[…] a year before ‘The Futurist’ was published. The earliest source that I can find: a series of movie trivia sites specialising in scandalous and titillating Hollywood […]

[…] then allegedly threw a volley of punches at Murray and the 2 needed to be […]

[…] then allegedly threw a volley of punches at Murray and the two had to be […]

[…] once production began, things got worse. He supposedly got into a feud with Lucy Liu. There were rumors that Murray questioned why she had been cast in the movie, which supposedly prompted Liu to punch […]

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