Fan Works
"Abandoned. I consider this the fan fic I most regret writing, but I admit it's not the worst thing I've written. A bad yaoi story I wrote in high school was WAAAAAAAAAAY worse, along with my super bad Super Robot Monkey Team fan fics from seventh grade. That being said, I don't like talking about this fic in any capacity, and I'd rather put it behind me."
Literature
The Cabalists who celebrated this mysterium,
This vast creature, named it Golem.
Perhaps there was an error in the word
Or in the articulation of the Sacred Name;
In spite of the highest esoteric arts
This apprentice of man did not learn to speak.
The rabbi watched it tenderly but
With some horror. How (he said)
Could I engender this laborious son?
Better to have done nothing, this is insanity."
This vast creature, named it Golem.
Perhaps there was an error in the word
Or in the articulation of the Sacred Name;
In spite of the highest esoteric arts
This apprentice of man did not learn to speak.
The rabbi watched it tenderly but
With some horror. How (he said)
Could I engender this laborious son?
Better to have done nothing, this is insanity."
—Jorge Luis Borges, 'The Golem
– 1958
– 1958How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic manerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something—and people seem to like it—and then you go on—and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony, gangling, vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.
Live-Action TV
"It was a bit of a flop and lasted just six episodes. Trouble is, in my day if you had a flop, and we all have flops, you took it off your CV, like a play that ran ten days, you didn't put it in Spotlight. Naturally, you put up your good notices and the losers went out the window. Now with these bloody computers and the internet, you can't get rid of it. Birds on the Wing, why would I want that on my credits? It was terrible; sorry love, it's there. All your sins are remembered."
Drew Carey: (reading from a card) "Little-known but amazing facts about Drew Carey."
Ryan Stiles: Did you know at first Drew Carey turned down the role of Geppetto? (Drew buzzes him out)
Drew: I have the power to hire and fire...
Ryan Stiles: Did you know at first Drew Carey turned down the role of Geppetto? (Drew buzzes him out)
Drew: I have the power to hire and fire...
—Whose Line Is It Anyway?, during a game of "Scenes From a Hat"
Music
If you could ever find it in your hearts,
if you could ever think to find some sympathy,
never ask us to play this song,
or that song about our pants, or our kitty doggy.
Never ask us to play 'Godzilla' or 'Shut Up'
or that song we haven't written yet about that time we did some stuff
if you could ever think to find some sympathy,
never ask us to play this song,
or that song about our pants, or our kitty doggy.
Never ask us to play 'Godzilla' or 'Shut Up'
or that song we haven't written yet about that time we did some stuff
— Five Iron Frenzy, "Never Ask Us to Play This"
Video Games
This is an old game I made years ago, for some reason I decided to publish it on itchio back in 2016 or something. So yeah, I'm embarrassed by this one...
Such an old broken game of mine, why did I publish this game? Seriously, what was I thinking.
Such an old broken game of mine, why did I publish this game? Seriously, what was I thinking.
— The description for Desperate Escape.
for Desperate Escape.Q: It's almost been a decade since Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 launched —
Naoki Yoshida: [cracks up as he realizes exactly where this question is going]
Q: — and many years since anyone had a chance to play it. Would you ever consider bringing back a limited amount of servers with some version of the 1.X series for players to experience it?
Naoki Yoshida: Nightmare!
Naoki Yoshida: [cracks up as he realizes exactly where this question is going]
Q: — and many years since anyone had a chance to play it. Would you ever consider bringing back a limited amount of servers with some version of the 1.X series for players to experience it?
Naoki Yoshida: Nightmare!
Web Animation
"99% of creators claim to loathe everything they made more than five years ago, and the remaining 1% are liars."
"Don't worry about how bad your first page looks, because you'll end up hating it for years no matter what you do."
Web Original
Aloha was arguably the biggest flop of the year: another painfully earnest, meandering dramedy from our blandest director, featuring Emma Stone in Asianface. Emma Stone! You can’t have a character named Allison Ng played by an actress who looks like she was conceived by two Irish street fairs. Some of then–Sony head Amy Pascal’s best leaked e-mails were about how much she regretted green-lighting the film: “I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous.” Maybe this will stop movie studios from handing Crowe millions of dollars to make movies solely designed to showcase his taste in dad rock.
Web Video
"Tuvok is ranting and throwing papers about in frustration. I believe this scene was inspired by Robert Beltran reading his script once."
"Effectively, Disney has gone and made a movie which differs in content only in that it appears to exist to appease the pedantic f*cks of YouTube with their decades of bad-faith criticism. And for ever having enabled that atmosphere of pedantic f*ckery that led to the creation of a film that goes out of its way to address the plot holes of the film that it's based on, I will never cease my penance walk."
"Sometimes you have to take a nasty shit before you take a better shit."
Yugi: Hey Joey! Earth to Joey! Hey, are you in there? It's your move!
Joey: Sorry, Yug. Doing this Brooklyn accent makes it difficult to concentrate on—wait a minute. Haven't we done all this before?
Téa: It does seem very familiar.
Yugi: You're right, Joey. Look around. The acting and audio is terrible. And our mouths aren't even moving in time with our voices. We're back in the first episode!
Joey: Noah must have trapped us in our memories.
Yugi: It looks like we're just going to have to keep repeating the same jokes that everyone got sick of ages ago until he sets us free.
Joey: Isn't that what we've been doing for the past four years?
(ba-dum-tiss!)
Joey: Sorry, Yug. Doing this Brooklyn accent makes it difficult to concentrate on—wait a minute. Haven't we done all this before?
Téa: It does seem very familiar.
Yugi: You're right, Joey. Look around. The acting and audio is terrible. And our mouths aren't even moving in time with our voices. We're back in the first episode!
Joey: Noah must have trapped us in our memories.
Yugi: It looks like we're just going to have to keep repeating the same jokes that everyone got sick of ages ago until he sets us free.
Joey: Isn't that what we've been doing for the past four years?
(ba-dum-tiss!)
"Watching really old videos of yourself, whether it's something that you made or ancient family home videos, is exactly like your first kiss: it's surprising, it's awkward, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and there may even be a bit of blood. But everybody's videos suck when they start out. You don't know editing software tricks top to bottom, your writing blows, you've got no experience, your acting is as convincing as a plastic slide, you've got no confidence in your voice, so it's okay. It's completely normal and understandable to be bad when you're starting out. Still, though, that doesn't mean the videos you made all those years ago aren't unbearable, because they are. Everybody's are."
"…Well, that proves it. Nineteen is still way too young to have the intellect or the experience to form good opinions. At least I couldn't."
— Josh Wallen regarding a very old forum post where he used reasoning such as "the plot is great" to describe Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) more favorably, The Geek Critique
Western Animation
"I've come to hate my own creation. Now I know how God feels."
— Homer Simpson, on his Christmas carol "Everybody Hates Ned Flanders", The Simpsons, "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"
Real Life
"Surely I've written better things."
—Ludwig van Beethoven on "Moonlight Sonata"
You may marry him, murder him, do whatever you like with him!
— Arthur Conan Doyle, on a request by a playwright to introduce a romantic subplot in a Sherlock Holmes adaptation.
In its final phase I experienced the essential paradox of the production: the play grew more and more effective, and I felt less fulfilled as a writer.
— William Gibson, The Seesaw Log
"I hate jelly babies but at the time it was such a joke. And a joke that worked, you work it to death and finally you grow to hate it."
"I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars to me."
"Don't make a film if it can't be the film you want to make. It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill you."
—David Lynch on making Dune (1984)
A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've received great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though.
— Josh Trank, shortly before the release of his reboot of Fantastic Four.
"We botched Indy."
"Mass appreciation doesn't always equate to something good. Think of Hitler!"
—Jamie Dornan promoting(?) Fifty Shades of Grey
"'So What" or Kind of Blue, they were done in that era, the right hour, the right day, and it happened. It's over...What I used to play with Bill Evans, all those different modes, and substitute chords, we had the energy then and we liked it. But I have no feel for it anymore—it's more like warmed-over turkey."
"The worst fucking song that I have ever heard."
—Frank Sinatra on Strangers in the Night
Congratulations, you've just bought our worst album!
— Elvis Costello, in the liner notes to a reissue of Goodbye, Cruel World.
"...all the songs are really long, and all the lyrics are shit."
— Noel Gallagher, on Be Here Now
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
— Johnny Rotten, at the last Sex Pistols show in 1978.
"'Come to Daddy' came about while I was just hanging around my house, getting pissed and doing this crappy death metal jingle. Then it got marketed and a video was made, and this little idea that I had, which was a joke, turned into something huge. It wasn't right at all."
— Aphex Twin, on "Come to Daddy"
"If you thought you were sick of the memes, I was sick of it way ahead of you. For instance, cake. I've had enough cake jokes."
— Erik Wolpaw, writer for Portal
"In this cartoon we find Bugs stumbling, fumbling, and mumbling around, vainly seeking a personality on which to hang his dialogue and action, or— in better words than mine—"walking around with his umbilical in his hand, looking for some place to plug it in." It is obvious when one views this cartoon, which I recommend only if you are going to die of ennui, that my conception of timing and dialogue was formed by watching the action in the La Brea tar pits. It would be complimentary to call it sluggish. Not only Bugs suffered at my hands, but difficult as it is to make an unassertive character like Elmer Fudd into a flat, complete schmuck, I managed. Perhaps the kindest thing to say about Elmer's Candid Camera is that it taught everyone what not to do and how not to do it."
To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence...I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times.
—Alan Moore on superhero movies
If you want to know how I feel about the fandom, watch "Slice of Life" and read the tweets I wrote after that. It's not "Fame and Misfortune". I don't like the episode, I don't get the episode, it doesn't make sense to me, and I know a lot of people liked it and that's great, then you can give tons of credit and praise to everyone else on the show, but it's not my thing and I didn't like it. It was just really mean. It was a premise that was written by somebody else. Don't go on any witch-hunts, I don't know who it was. But that's what happens on a show, you have a back-log a bunch of premises, get them approved, and then you can hand them out to the writers.
— M.A. Larson explaining at a panel why the controversial "Fame and Misfortune" episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic turned out the way it did.
why the controversial "Fame and Misfortune" episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic turned out the way it did."My memory was that the rework was funnier...but that clearly isn't."
—Doug Naylor, on the revised ending for the Remastered version of the Red Dwarf episode "Polymorph" on the DVD Commentary
"Then all of a sudden, the album's called Cherry Pie, the record's called Cherry Pie, I'm doing cherry-pie-eating contests, the single's "Cherry Pie", right? If I'm lying, I'm dying. And my legacy's 'Cherry Pie', everything about me is "Cherry Pie", I'm the "Cherry Pie guy"... I could shoot myself in the [censored] head for writing that song."
—Warrant lead singer Jani Lane
"To this day, no one hates it more than me."
—David Fincher on Alien³, his feature directorial debut
"I worked as an animator for this series and we really had very little time to get the work done, all I can say it's that it's not our fault lol."
—Onion Boi on The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder, when he was an animator at Boxel Studio.
"I am the leading man behind George of the Jungle season 2, and I have gone under a false youtube account so as to keep my identity safe. What I'm about to tell you will certainly shock you, and leaves very few questions about the inner lives of the corporate producers and the way that they make cartoons as well as the decisions behind it. It's all relatively simple and easy to explain, and probably isn't as insane as you thought it would be. Poopy doopy scoop poop doop bloop. And that's why George of the Jungle season 2 happened."
—DinoCzar on the second season of George of the Jungle (2007) about why he didn't fond working on the show.
"The only thing I think I really don't like that much is the 'Perfect Drug' song. It was one of those things where you have a week to do a track for a movie, the mindset that you kind of adapt in that situation, or I did, was 'let's go in and experiment and see what happens, and it's not, y'know, whatever comes out of it, it's not the end of the world'. And I think what came out of it, married with a bloated, over-budget video, feels like ... the least thing that I would play to somebody if they said play me, y'know, the top hundred songs you've written, that probably wouldn't be in the top hundred. I'm not cringing about it, but it's not my favorite piece."
— Trent Reznor on "The Perfect Drug"
"I am probably the only cartoonist who resented the popularity of his own strip."
LESSON: Unless you don't improve, all of your early work should embarrass you.
— Andrew Nicholls, Valuable Lessons
"You birds have a hundred thousand bad drawings in you; start getting rid of them now."
— Chuck Jones, quoting one of his art school instructors
I know it's an artistic cliche, but every time I look at my past work, I want to projectile vomit.
Dear Zach, are you ever embarrassed by any of your old comics?
WHAT OLD COMICS?
WHAT OLD COMICS?
—Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal votey (added 10 years after this comic's original publication)
original publication)"None of your goddamn business!"
"She was a total bitch, screaming at everyone and saying, 'Don't you know who I am?' ...When she fell asleep, one steward said, 'I'm going to get that bitch' and grabbed a bunch of wire hangers and put them on the seat next to her. All the other passengers were snickering. When she woke up as the plane landed, she was wide-eyed with fury, and looked around at whom to blame but had no idea who did it. Then she got up and did yoga in the aisle to calm herself down."
—Anonymous flight attendant on flying with Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway has been nominated for OSCARS for her tantrums! Studio heads have paid Faye tens of millions of dollars to flare her nostrils and open the portal to hell by widening her eyes in front of the camera! And Faye gave those ungrateful bitches a taste of her theater live and in person, and this is how they reward her?! This is the kind of shit you only see on the silver screen (or at 3am on Starz when Supergirl comes on)! They should've pulled $11 out of their pocket books and stuffed it in her ass crack while she did the downward dog in middle of the aisle!
—Michael K., "How Dare They Treat Faye Dunaway Like This!!!!!!"
, "How Dare They Treat Faye Dunaway Like This!!!!!!"All in the past and of no consequence any longer… I am very fond of Michelle's work over the years. She's really rather cool although when I need to feel better I just watch Grease 2 and howl with laughter.
Emma Thompson: The truth is, I have misled the public about my past.
Ellen DeGeneres: So you did a little soft porn.
Emma: No, it's not just that.
Ellen DeGeneres: So you did a little soft porn.
Emma: No, it's not just that.
— Ellen
"If I could go back in time to change stuff? Oh yeah, there's a few movies I would not have done."
— Thomas Howell, during an interview regarding his role as Zoom in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
"Not since the British raided Cologne had so many bombs landed in such a small space in such a short time."
— Rod Serling, on his early writing career.
Jonathan Ross: Alright, we've established — John can act. John can push a dog in a pram. John's got his own... not-particularly-well-crafted, action figure. He can sing, and so on and so forth. But can he choose the right movies to be in?
John Barrowman: ... Oh, SHIT.
John Barrowman: ... Oh, SHIT.
— Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
A number of wiser and better writers than me tell me that it is universal among writers to be embarrassed by anything they've ever written, but I never really believed it until now. The first chapter of this story is terrible. It is shamefully bad I can't imagine how any of you managed to stand it. I got three pages in and closed the lid of my laptop by reflex as a defence mechanism to get the horror away.
— Sir Poley, author of Harry Potter and the Natural 20.
.JewelStaite: Dear Internet; While I agree that I was indeed a precociously adorable child, let's go ahead and bury the PartyMania. Cool? Thx a million.
GlitchMike: @JewelStaite: You do realize that you've just caused 38,000 people to google "Jewel Staite Party Mania", right?
JewelStaite: Aw, shit.
. Cool? Thx a million.GlitchMike: @JewelStaite: You do realize that you've just caused 38,000 people to google "Jewel Staite Party Mania", right?
JewelStaite: Aw, shit.
— Twitter conversation
Per: Written for a Bette Midler-movie, but ended up in the Super Mario Bros. (1993) flop instead. We thought it was cool to have a song in that movie, because we both liked Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins.
Marie: But that was before we saw the movie.
Per: I still like the song in a way... but if you wanted to make a parody of Roxette, it would probably sound something like this.
Marie: Not one of our most inspired moments.
Per: Right, no big surprises here. Recorded in England and charted best there. That was a bit of surprise, though.
Marie: I was nine months pregnant when I recorded the vocals.
Per: That's no surprise.
Marie: But that was before we saw the movie.
Per: I still like the song in a way... but if you wanted to make a parody of Roxette, it would probably sound something like this.
Marie: Not one of our most inspired moments.
Per: Right, no big surprises here. Recorded in England and charted best there. That was a bit of surprise, though.
Marie: I was nine months pregnant when I recorded the vocals.
Per: That's no surprise.
Kirsty Young: And can you remember any of the lyrics from any of the songs?
Ricky Gervais: Um.
Kirsty: I just saw what flashed through your eyes then; you can, but you're not sure you want to say them.
Ricky: That's exactly right.
Kirsty: Go on then.
Ricky: No! No, you were right; I can, but I'm not going to say them.
Kirsty: Why not?
Ricky: Because it makes me want to crawl into a dustbin.
Ricky Gervais: Um.
Kirsty: I just saw what flashed through your eyes then; you can, but you're not sure you want to say them.
Ricky: That's exactly right.
Kirsty: Go on then.
Ricky: No! No, you were right; I can, but I'm not going to say them.
Kirsty: Why not?
Ricky: Because it makes me want to crawl into a dustbin.
"The Diamond Head Game was such a piece of you know what. They took a poorly designed game, shot it in Hawaii, and thought it was a good idea. I hated every minute of hosting it."
— Bob Eubanks
"I wrote the episode, or at least the teleplay. It's a terrible episode. People are very unforgiving about that episode. I've written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up, you know? 'Brannon Braga, who wrote 'Threshold'!' Out of a hundred and some episodes, you're gonna have some stinkers! Unfortunately, that was a royal, steaming stinker."
"I was embarrassed then to be a part of them, and I still am. ESPECIALLY To Boldly Flee."
— Lindsay Ellis on the Channel Awesome anniversary specials.
"I should have never posted the video. I should have put the cameras down and stopped recording what we were going through. There's a lot of things I should have done differently but I didn't. And for that, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry."
—Logan Paul on his infamous Aokigahara video.
Postal III is a third-person shooter in which you...ehh...alright, I'm going to level with you - don't buy Postal III. Seriously, you'd regret it. Hell, you'd regret playing it for free. It's a borderline broken, boring, frustrating, unfinished mess, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. You're a responsible adult (we hope), so I'm sure you're capable of making your own purchasing decisions. I just want you to consider all of the above, before you make the leap of regret into paying real, hard-earned money for this title. We don't own the game, we can't support it and we don't get anything from its sales, so if you decide to risk the purchase - you're on your own.
— Running With Scissors, on Postal III
I guess I should just accept "bad rom hack with swears" as part of my eternal legacy.
— Toby Fox
Yeah, we apologise for your hellish experience in playing this ROM hack. It could have been decent, but as we mentioned before, the testing was a complete nightmare and wasn't done properly, so many, many things that should have been made easier, fixed or removed weren't fixed/removed/made easier.
— Cheatmaster-30 to Levelengine on Mario Endgame.
This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
— Disney+ Content Warning found on some older films
The book you have in front of you is one half of a very, very long novel I wrote many years ago. It was my first novel, and as such, I am both very proud of it and desperately embarrassed by it. I'm told this is normal.
— Ursula Vernon in the foreword to Black Dogs, titled "The Author Apologizes"
I can't bear reading my own writing. It's one of the most exquisite tortures I can imagine. That said, I did the best job I could at the time, and I’m proud of the book.
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Should never have made Batman Forever
Or Titan A.E.!
Happy birthday to me
Should never have made Batman Forever
Or Titan A.E.!
— Drew Barrymore at her 30th birthday party
OK now... (cringe) this is the reel that we showed on Black Friday before we re-invisioned Woody's character. It's um... you know... (Beat) It's bad. You kno-(breaks) It's really bad. It's kinda r-rough to watch these days...
— John Lasseter on the Black Friday cut of Toy Story.
"This is Mega Man 1, the original bosses that I drew with my own two hands. When I look at it now, I think 'Man, I really wasn't that good was I?' If one of my character designers that work underneath me now were to bring something like this to me, I'd take one look and say 'No way! This sucks, try again!'"
— Keiji Inafune regarding the boss designs for the original Mega Man.
" [The song] was not an integral part of my emotional development ... it disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly—and not a particularly good lyric—and it can mean so much to so many people. That's disillusioning for a writer."
— George Michael, on Careless Whisper.
"Listen, Marsha (Goodman, voice director) already knows that I hated The Popples. That it was the job from hell. Because I had to come in every day and just be ultra cute and be “bishi, boffo, hoo hoo hoo!” And I wanted to vomit at the end of every session. I would sooner have sold my body on Santa Monica Boulevard than go back for another one of those."
—Maurice LaMarche interview for Quick Stop Entertainment
"I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. One is Do They Know It's Christmas? and the other one is We Are The World."
— Bob Geldof
