Oh excellent - thanks! Had to look her up, and this appears to have been the first of a set of recurring bits with her.

(shamelessly ripped from wikipedia) "In her early career as a regular on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour of the late-1960s, French portrayed a somewhat spaced-out or ditzy hippie named Goldie O'Keefe. The character was originally introduced, in an ostensible studio-audience interview segment, as Goldie Keif; both "Goldie" and "Keif" were slang terms for marijuana at the time. Reportedly, the slight name change to O'Keefe when she became a semi-regular was at the television network's insistence. Her segment of the show was called "Share a Little Tea with Goldie." At the time, "sharing tea" was a popular euphemism for getting high on marijuana. Following suit, her segment consisted largely of "helpful" household advice loaded with sex and drug-related double entendres."

Filing away "goldie" and "sharing tea," those were new to me

She's got a gift. Don't you want it?

(reminds me a bit of Lily Tomlin.. or maybe Gilda Radner? early career Whoopi Goldberg...)

In my opinion your cynicism is misplaced.

This is an industry full of people who live for the thrill of discovery and the emotional excitement of helping individuals live longer and happier lives. That said, it is difficult to get approval for novel, invasive treatments... and for good reason; unforeseeable complications can have life-altering consequences.

This current system greatly favors established companies who have the resources to build and equip a team to successfully navigate the approval processes (and absorb the fallout of a failure). An industry partner is often times THE ONLY way for a University-affiliated biomedical researcher to see their discovery possibly implemented. Another option is a group of matriculating grad students devoting their early careers to hounding venture capitalists, angel investors, grant agencies and established companies to invest in their startup... typically this involves traveling till exhaustion, and constantly hearing how great ones idea is while receiving no call backs... only the best ideas with the most patient, stubborn and lucky supporters survive.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Like any "suppressed" invention, it's way easier for the established companies to simply buy the patent (while getting their 'friends' in government to thwart progess) and also way easier for the inventors to take a large buyout instead of spending possible decades getting a product to market, especially drugs.

"Faye Dunaway has said that during the filming, she felt Joan's presence on the set many times.

During Faye Dunaway's interview on Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, James Lipton saved the topic of "Mommie Dearest" for the end of the interview, being as how Dunaway credits the film for ruining her career. When he comments on her appearance in the film as Joan, Dunaway says that she and the make-up artist worked for hours trying to get the "Crawford look". Finally Faye says she discovered that Joan looked the way she did because of the way she purposely held her facial muscles, thus explaining why Joan looked different in her very early career. Faye says "It was chilling.""

From the Wikipedia article on Mommie Dearest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mommie_Dearest_%28film%29

"OK, I have this incredible scenario: Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same movie!"
"And...?"
"That's it. That's the scenario"
"That's short"
"That's OK. They'll just portray some stereotyped characters from their early career. Like, I don't know, a dead serious leader and a funny drunken guy"
"Who will they fight?"
"Whoever...we'll just rip off stuff everyone knows about but no one has seen, and call that 'homages'. They'll just fight East Chamber Qing guards led by, say, a bride with white hair, in never-before-seen places like a Chinese inn or a bamboo forest. And we'll add some tasteless bimbos here and there"
"Good enough"
"Also, Shaolin monks"
"What for?"
"I really don't know, but no stereotyped Hollywood kung-fu movie would be complete without Shaolin monks"
"Deal. But they need to speak English"
"And they all speak English. Wait. Actually, sod Chan and Li, they'll be the sidekicks, and the hero will be an American white male. An American Dragonball kid. It will be directed by the guy who did Stuart Little"
"Genius"

I predict it will suck. Unless you have actually seen Li's and Chan's period pieces, in which case it will suck TERRIBLY.

I've been following this guy (not literally) for a while now - his sculptures are eerily realistic and beautiful. There's a few good links on <ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck">Wiki and a few hundred photos on <ahref="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ronmueck/">Flickr.

'Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in Great Britain.

Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo.

Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.'