A Quote by Leslie Ford

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.
There are many other writers whose work I admire tremendously, but none whose work struck me at just the right young age. Jack Vance taught me that speculative fiction, science fiction, could be wonderfully and liberatingly stylistic. It didn't have to be pulp stuff. He really changed my writing and my view of science fiction, so if nothing else, my little homage to him in the novelette I wrote for that anthology is my thank-you to him. He helped me see that any genre can have excellent writing in it.
My secretary stopped and got gas (Wednesday) for $2.67. (Yesterday at) the same gas station, she got gas again. It was $3.12, ... It has really gotten very, very restrictive to people. It's really hurting. ... My impression, of course, is that they have certainly gone up more than they should have.
Los Angeles is Hollywood and Hollywood is Hollywood Blvd. It's the first thing you want to see. It's the only thing really that you know about as far as Los Angeles is concerned. And so you go and you look at Joan Crawford's hands and feet and the whole history of American filmmaking is encapsulated in that one little area on that one street. That street, to me, has always been the street of dream.
In Holland, we have a saying: 'A knife cuts on two sides.' With the rubber duck, I'm trying to show people what they haven't been seeing in their public space. When the rubber duck is there and when it's gone, you know.
I can remember when I first got to los Angeles . I didn't have a car, I didn't have any money. I was walking the streets, you know, trying to get from place to place on foot almost. Sometimes, you know, you say, how am I ever going to get from here to there? There are a lot of people still having that dream and not being able to get there. So you never know. The idea is to keep on tap dancing, though.
So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home.
These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.
My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.
It was like there's got to be some way to stay working and stay productive in Los Angeles. TV is that kind of thing for an actor. Unless you get stuck in one of these shows where you have to go to Vancouver.
In a foreign country people don't expect you to be just like them, but in Los Angeles, which is infiltrating the world, they don't consider that you might be different because they don't recognize any values except their own. And soon there may not be any others.
I remember when I first came to Los Angeles being staggered by the range of roles open to me. These were leading parts in shiny new projects, and what always excited me was knowing there was a possibility that I could actually get these parts. I always had the impression that I had a chance.
I don't live in Los Angeles. I work in Los Angeles, and even that - I audition in Los Angeles; I very rarely film in Los Angeles. I don't hang out with producers on my off-hours, so I don't even know what that world is like.
You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.
Los Angeles is a Yukon for crime-story writers.
I had no idea if I could fight when I first started. My first four amateur fights, I had never even been punched in the face or trained of any kind.
When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside.
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