One of the Georgia Straight’s most prolific writers was Ian Caddell. He seemed to be curious about everything—including local politics, sports, business, and movies—and reputedly never missed a deadline.

During his 30 years with the Straight, Caddell must have written at least 3,000 articles, including reviews, features, and celebrity interviews.

His final article was about director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection, and To Live and Die in L.A.) three months before Caddell died of complications from cancer.

“I think what impressed me the most about him was his absolute kindness and his unconditional love—and his ability to express that to me on an almost daily basis,” said his partner, Anja Brown, upon his passing.

In advance of the Georgia Straight’s 50^th anniversary in May of 2017, I spent some time going through the newspaper's archives, reading many of Caddell's articles.

Below, I've reproduced a few of the many quotes that caught my attention:

“According to the National Enquirer, Cher is Yoko and Jon is dead.”

—Jon Bon Jovi on Richie Sambora’s relationship with Cher at a time when the band was on hiatus

"I’ve been treated very badly by the press. All I ever read is: 'She wasn't as good in this movie as she was in The Color Purple.' Well, I've got news for you. It will never be The Color Purple again."

—Whoopi Goldberg

“I think the kids like me being around a lot, but I don’t think their friends are particularly impressed. I walked into my daughter’s school the other day and this little boy looked up at me and said, in a kind of a snotty tone, ‘Oh, the actor.’ ”

—Robin Williams

"I opened the Globe and Mail and there, right on the front page, was a picture of Brando. I read that Brando hated our film and said he was going to retire as a result of it. But it didn't mean that much to me because I just thought he was playing another practical joke. The night before he was flicking match boxes at me and we were having a wonderful time. But then I went down to [director] Andrew Bergman's room and he was crying, and I realized something had gone terribly wrong.”

—Matthew Broderick on Marlon Brando’s reaction to The Freshman

“I was at a meeting once after I had done two big movies. This young producer brought me up to his father’s office. His father was a big man in Hollywood and he was very charming to me, asking about my life in the most interested-looking way. Then he turned to his son and said in Italian—which I took in university—‘She can’t do this movie. She’s too ugly. You need a pretty woman for this movie. Why are you wasting my time with this.’ So I said, in Italian, ‘It makes me very unhappy, what you are saying,’ and walked out.”

—Meryl Streep

“They kept telling us as we were walking along the car roofs, ‘Don’t worry—if you fall, the cord will keep you on the roof’, which is a nice way of saying, ‘If you fall, you won’t die, you’ll only break a few bones.’ That’s not my idea of a safety net.”

—Gene Hackman on walking on railcars while filming Narrow Margin in B.C.

“I am not involved in any relationship. I am not officially dating anyone, but I have lovers. No one needs to be named. We meet in hotel rooms.”

—Angelina Jolie

“[Robert] Redford and I have this bizarre relationship. I don’t know what we see in each other. We fight a lot. But he’s particularly suited to the kind of love stories I do. He’s intelligent, and I think the audience senses that he’s intelligent when he’s on screen. And it’s a treat to work with someone you know very well. You don’t have to spend a lot of time getting to know them. I know what Bob can do, and I know what he can’t do. I know how to push him in certain situations, and that’s really quite relaxing. It just makes thing, in the long run, a lot easier on everyone.”

—Filmmaker Sidney Pollack on his friend, Robert Redford

“When I was younger, my work was more important because my whole identity was rooted in it. I felt that if I was good in something then I was a good person and if I was bad I was worthless. Now that I have a couple of kids and some long friendships, my value as a person is not rooted wholly in my job. I think that can be really liberating because you can have more fun with it, but at the same time it could make you lose your hunger if you are not careful.”

—Ethan Hawke

“I really do adore him. He’s a brilliant actor and we have a fantastic relationship. We really look after each other. We were quite silly about our love scenes. We were both going ‘No tongues, no tongues’ and having a good laugh about it. I said ‘Did you brush your teeth?’ and he said ‘No, and I just had a meat sandwich and a cigarette, too,’ and I said ‘Oh, God,’ but after it was over I said, ‘Ooh, it was like kissing your brother,’ and it was very odd feeling that way.”

—Kate Winslet on shooting Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio

"When he was asked during the press conference for his book Long Walk to Freedom, 'Who would you want to play you?’ he said, 'Morgan Freeman.’ From then on it was like, 'Okay, I will be playing Mandela somewhere down the line.' "

—Morgan Freeman on Nelson Mandela

“I am okay with English unless I have to speak fast. Then I get nervous. And this is a comedy, so I had to speak fast sometimes, because in comedy you always talk faster than you would in a drama. I spoke English in a movie years ago, but it was a small part, and when I watched it I couldn’t understand a word I was saying.”

—Gérard Depardieu shortly before the release of Green Card

“He’s the only person I know who takes every buck and puts it back in the movies. And then loses it. And then wins it back. He’s the only guy who will go to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and say: ‘Hey, guys, let’s find Kurosawa’ and give someone like that a chance to show their skills to American audiences. Because he loves the movies. He really just loves the movies.”

—Talia Shire on her brother, Francis Ford Coppola

“I am not a hitter, but I drank every day till I was 48, Finally someone said, ‘You don't have to drink.' I was happy to hear that because I was able to see who I was. Katharine Hepburn said actors shouldn't be allowed to marry because they ignore their families. She liked drunk men. She told me, ‘The difference between you and Spencer [Tracy] is that Spencer would go on benders. He wouldn't drink all the time, but you just drink all the time.' Alcohol controls you.”

—Nick Nolte

“I don’t see myself as a star as much as I do someone who plays important roles in good films. And that importance comes from what people can get out of the role. I much prefer for people who see the movie to tell me what they see in the character. When I approach a character, I don’t have a shopping list of things I want to show. I just try to concentrate on the actions [of the character] in the movie. Then, hopefully, something blossoms from that. Something that the audience can relate to.”

—Willem Dafoe

“We have 300 television channels, so people are getting breaks way before they used to. They’re working at clubs for two or three years and they’re getting shows, because these channels need more shows. It used to be that you had to work for 10 years to get your break, but since movies and television pay a lot of money, some of the best standup comedians in the world aren’t doing it anymore. We are getting too much money to make movies and so we’re getting lazy. Steve Martin is great but he won’t do it. Eddie Murphy is great but he won’t do it. Robin Williams won’t do it. Whoopi Goldberg won’t do it. Billy Crystal won’t do it. I don’t know if there is anyone coming up."

—Chris Rock

“I was born and raised in Los Angeles but people still think I’m like Woody [Allen], when that’s impossible because he’s so New York. Maybe it’s this whole neurotic thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill a hundred people in a movie and he’s fine. I drive by a woman’s house twice and I’m neurotic. I read an article in the New York Times the other day that said that Woody lives across the street from his family and eats the same meal every day. Does anyone really think that I would do something like that? I mean, that’s neurotic.”

—Albert Brooks

“I was a closet comic, really. But I came from a funny family. My brother Eric [the former Progressive Conservative Deputy Prime Minister] is very funny, and so were my mother and father. My parents had to be funny, because they didn’t get along very well at all.”

—Leslie Nielsen

“The music business is almost fascistic. It’s run by the men in the suits. It’s not run by the artists, as it was in the ’70s. You have no idea what it’s like. They want to be sure that their record is going to sell and they hear my pretty, esoteric songs and they say, ‘No one is ever going to play those songs on the radio, so we won’t put your record out.’ There was at least some artistic freedom 20 years ago, but now the record business is so repressive.”

—Carly Simon

“I used to sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door in Texas, and I would go into an English accent just so they would stand there and listen to me. I had never even met anyone from England and I don’t think they believed me, because they would just look at me like, ‘What is this kid doing?’ I used to go to a lot of movies and I would feel like a character in the movie when I walked home, particularly if it was a Steve McQueen movie. Then my brother, when he was in college, got a part in The Last Picture Show, and it dawned on me that it was possible to get parts in movies.”

—Dennis Quaid

“I have always been inspired by any naysayers to keep going for what I really want, and they have almost been more inspiring than the people who are supportive. You have your reservations and fears, but you just kick in the door and don’t take no for an answer.”

—Christina Aguilera

“As an actor, you do the work and then you have to take a passive position, because even though you have worked so hard, eventually someone comes along and just cuts it. They’ll take some bad music and put it over a scene you did and it totally changes the dynamic of the scene….Of course, I try to stay involved in the process, as an actor, and try to make a strong case for my opinions, but eventually you have to let it go.”

—John Cusack