5 Bizarre Outbursts By Celebrities You Thought Were Sane

5 Sean Connery is a Proud, Admitted Woman Beater

Wait, no. Sean Connery is an icon. He's James Bond for Christ sake. A Highlander. He's been knighted. And if you've had enough beer, he kind of sounds like a lovable cartoon pirate.

He's also an accomplished face spanker, as admitted in a 1965 Playboy interview:

But that was 1965. Times were different, and a lot more injustices were simply tolerated as facts of life. Racism, sexism, gigantic afros. A couple of decades later, Barbara Walters dug it up in a televised interview. Of course by that time, Connery had obviously changed his opinion.

Oh, wait, he didn't. When she brought it up, his first reaction was to turn his head and laugh in a way that said, "Oh great, here we go again with this petty bullshit."

Walters quoted part of the Playboy interview, stressing what he had said about using an open hand rather than a closed fist, adding, "Remember that? Yeeeeah." At this point, Connery loses his smile, which is appropriate because he's being scolded, and realizes he has to explain that of course he realizes that spousal abuse is a serious problem, right? Nope. The man is just really serious about slapping women. In a tone that makes it clear how he feels about mouthy women, Connery monotones, "I haven't changed my opinion."

When she presses him, Connery explains that you only beat women, "If you've tried everything else, and -- women are pretty good at this -- they can't leave it alone. They want to have the last word, and you give them the last word, but they're not happy with the last word. They want to say it again, and get into a really provocative situation. Then I think it's absolutely right."

So in other words, the woman has to keep bringing up something you don't want to talk about in order to create a provocative situation. Or to put it yet another way, Sean Connery is threatening to slap Barbara Walters if she keeps asking him about that quote.

It's always interesting to see the double standard we have for different categories of celebrity. If Sean Connery had been, say, a pro athlete or a politician, he'd get tarred with this reputation until the day he died. But he's so fucking suave. His accent wears a tuxedo. It's so impossible to connect that voice with the image of a drunken man slapping around a woman that we wouldn't believe it even if we had it on video. Hell, even Barbara Walters starts off the video with a subtle apology on his behalf ("I know Sean Connery regrets this conversation") and ends it with, " has been married to Micheline for 31 years, and we have not heard a single complaint."

Not that Sean is alone in his belief that women exist somewhere on the same level as dogs ...

4 Bill Maher Thinks Women and Children are Lesser Lifeforms

I always wrote off Bill Maher in the same way that I do Bill O'Reilly. He says things that are inflammatory in order to get ratings, and he's pretty good at it. But Maher is actually a pretty good standup comedian. The problem is, there is probably nothing more awkward than the moment a comedian stops his comedy in order to tell you what's really wrong with the world, and you quickly realize that their life philosophy is the stuff assholes are made of. As in this clip:

Feminine values have taken over America, and Bill Maher isn't going to stand for it! In these dark times, "Sensitivity is more important than truth. Feelings are more important than facts. Commitment is more important than individuality. Children are more important than PEOPLE!"

Wait, hold up. Children aren't people? Maybe it was just poor wording, but if that's not what he was trying to say, what was he trying to say? Did he mean to say "pets" there? Because I can see that. It doesn't really fit with the rest of his rant though. Maybe he doesn't realize that children are just younger people, and always confuses them for another race of smaller humanoids, like hobbits? And therefore doesn't understand why they get so many presents at Christmas? Seriously, help me find a way to interpret this that doesn't paint him as a shallow, hateful douchebag.

He goes on, "It is sort of politically incorrect just to be male in this country now." Actually, Bill, I think you left out a word. In this country it's politically incorrect to be a male shithead. Is that what you meant? To back up his point, he brings up sitcoms. "The wife is always brilliant and ethereal and right about everything ... and the husband is always a dumb fuck, lucky to have found her. The only smart men on television are Frasier and his brother, both of whom are gayer than Little Richard's underpants." He claims that men in this country live lives of quiet desperation, forced to pretend in order to fit in with this oppressive woman's world.

I don't know, maybe I'm just blind to an obvious problem, but I've always thought that a white, heterosexual male in the United States has it easier than every other race, gender and sexual orientation on the entire planet. I tried flipping around the TV to see what he was talking about with male characters. Isn't Dr. House a smart guy? Jack Bauer? The genius guy on Fringe? The other genius guy on Lie to Me? Don Draper?

He then sarcastically applauds while saying, "Women are smarter than men. If women ran the world, there'd be no wars," saying these are, "... things we don't really believe but we pretend to believe because it's easier to make women nod than to live in the doghouse."

This anti-woman ("men's rights" if you like bullshitting yourself) thing is becoming more and more common in the world of talk radio and comedy, and I'm not sure why that is. I recently brought up where Dilbert creator Scott Adams had said the same exact thing. Did these guys get really fucked over in a relationship (Adams is married, Maher is not), and are just taking out their frustrations? Are they just trying to cater to a male audience, and think this is how you draw them in? Is a woman somehow preventing them from becoming even richer than they are now?

3 Meatloaf Makes Gary Busey Look Sane

There are certain rock stars who you just know are douchebags through and through. Like Gene Simmons. He had a staged sex video he recorded, released, denied and then later admitted to for the sake of publicity. And many of you have heard the bizarre 25 minute long interview he did with NPR in which he desperately defends his intellect in an argument that exists only in his head, first making sexual advances on the female host, then using 50 cent words and literally defining them for her as if she's a child (if you haven't listened to that, you should -- the man comes off like a serial killer).

But on the opposite end of the spectrum is Meatloaf. The man made a career out of producing 12 minute power ballads, and later becoming the lovable teddy bear with huge tits in Fight Club. Who out there thinks anything bad about Meatloaf?

Well, correcting misconceptions like that is why we have reality TV:

That clip is from Celebrity Apprentice, where once-upon-a-time stars are made to do simple grade-school level projects that are clearly designed to prevent them from injuring themselves. So in this episode, they're doing an art project for a charity, and they've just returned from buying arts and crafts supplies. Each star gathers the stuff he bought, but Meatloaf can't find his and immediately blames Gary Busey. Violently.

Right off the bat he explodes, "OK! MOTHERFUCKER!" Someone asks what's wrong, and he erupts like a volcano made of cursing and fat. "I bought those motherfucking sponges! Part of that paint is mine! I'm fucking sick and tired of -- FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!" Meanwhile, Gary Busey is absolutely calm, explaining that all of the craft items on the table were his.

This only provokes Meatloaf, and the next several several minutes contain the most surreal combination of words I'm likely to ever type. Mark McGrath of the band Sugar Ray holds back a violent, swearing Meatloaf as the bassist from Lonestar separates a confused, innocent looking Gary Busey, while they try to figure out if he stole Meatloaf's arts and crafts supplies.

He screams at Busey, "You look in my eyes -- I am the last person in the fucking world you -- EVER -- fucking want to fuck with!" Everything goes quiet as he settles into a cold, psychotic stare.

Busey makes the mistake of returning the look, and Meatloaf charges.

Luckily Mark McGrath and Lil' Jon were there to hold him back as he pointed at Gary and called him a "fucking piece of shit." It's important to note that the guys all call him "Meat," so as they're getting Busey out of the room and Meatloaf is spewing obscenities, all of the guys are peppering his outbursts with, "Meat! Meat, meat, meat." Not as an encouraging chant, but in soothing rational voices, trying to calm him down.

Gary is taken out into the hallway, and McGrath goes about getting the crafts back from Gary's table. As they're sorting through the supplies, Gary walks back into the room, triggering another eruption of, "But you just don't fucking assume! You fucking ask!" At exactly that moment, the Lonestar guy finds Meatloaf's bag.

It was under the corner of a table the whole time. Gary Busey didn't take a single thing and was absolutely innocent. So Meatloaf apologized.

No, wait, he threw his paint at him and yelled, "Take your fucking spray paint!" Then continued to unload on him until the Lonestar guy explained that they were doing this for sick kids, and his actions were embarrassing. Only then did Meatloaf apologize, and he didn't do it to the guy he had just falsely accused of theft and nearly assaulted.

I realize reality shows are largely staged, and that even when they're not, they are specifically designed to produce screeching matches between spoiled, emotionally stunted human beings. But I don't think he's acting here, and I guess that's upsetting because it means living a life of fame, wealth and sustained success leaves you in an emotional place where you can be driven to a blackout rage over a bag of missing sponges. Isn't that the whole point of getting rich, that you rise to a place where you don't have to get worked up over stupid shit any more?

But what we actually see is the opposite. For instance ...

2 Hollywood is Full of Rage-Fueled Maniacs

David O. Russell has directed and produced movies like Three Kings and Anchorman. The target of this famous tirade is actress Lily Tomlin, who was one of the most famous actresses out there back in the 1980s or so. But who these people are really isn't important, it's the fact that this is apparently the one workplace in the world outside of a locker room where it's OK to just absolutely flip the fuck out.

Tomlin is complaining that it's hard to pick up something from the desk without looking awkward, which I guess is the sort of thing actors have to worry about as part of their job. David suggests putting the folder down, and she barks, "Yeah, and take your legs off the desk and a whole bunch of other stuff." So they suggest something else, and she flies into a pampered drama queen fit filled with random "fucks" and a sarcastic, "I'm not as brilliant as you ... I can't keep up with you." Sean Connery would have slapped her without hesitation.

The video cuts, and when it comes back, David has lost his ever-loving fucking mind. "FUCK YOU! I'm just trying to fucking help you, you understand me?" Lily is still in bitch mode, but her retort is lost in the sheer volume and force of Russell's temper. He leaps up from the floor, still yelling, and like a scene from a made-for-TV movie about alcoholism, swipes everything off of the desk in a blind rage.

He starts to walk off camera, still screaming, but he's most definitely not done. Stepping back into frame, he belts out, "I'm not here to be fucking yelled at! I've worked on this fucking thing for three fucking years, not to have some fucking cunt yell at me!" The "whap" is where he decided to punt something across the room in mid sentence.

Finally, he tells her to go fuck herself as he takes his leave. Tomlin tries to edge in the last word with, "Why don't you fuck your whole movie because that's what you're doing!" The following shot is of her ducking out of the way of some heavy, hard object that David threw at her.

It looks like things have been settled. Both people have gotten out their anger, and it's time to just separate and cool off for a bit. Except David O. Russell is most likely clinically insane. You can hear him shouting incoherently down the hall, as his voice fades into the distance. And then grows in volume as he makes his way back to Tomlin, screaming at the top of his lungs for her to "act like a grownup."

While he rants, one of the crew quietly ushers everyone off the set as if the room is on fire. Finally, he's had his say, and he exits the room, still in a rage, swatting down a lamp as he leaves.

As an experiment, I want you to go into your job on Monday and do exactly what he did up there. Come back and let me know if you still have a job on Tuesday. Hell, some of you wouldn't just get fired, you'd get an actual ass-beating to go along with it. Do that shit with a crew of dudes laying shingles on a roof in 107 degree weather. Call the foreman a cunt. Let me know how it turns out.

But in Hollywood, it's all good -- all of these people continue to get work, and if brought up in an interview they'll talk about how "passionate" they are (you think that argument would fly with, say, the manager at Burger King?). Between this and that famous Christian Bale rant on the set of Terminator, it really does seem like everybody on a movie set thinks they're Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, intimidating people with how "crazy" they are.

1 Quentin Tarantino Thinks He's a Badass

I'm going to give you something here, and I'm saying this as a longtime fan. Quentin Tarantino can be a douchebag when he wants to. I won't argue that. He's known in the entertainment circle as somewhat of an arrogant prick, and he doesn't take criticism well. But what you're about to see is something that I never expected of him.

At first, this appears to be like every other paparazzi video we've ever seen. A celebrity is trying to do whatever, and they ambush him. The star gets pissed off and attacks them. But this one is different for several reasons.

Tarantino walks out of a Starbucks and doesn't notice the guys with cameras. As he passes, one of them says something, and he turns around to confront them. "What's going on here? What's going on here?" He says it five times, becoming more and more angry each time.

He asks again, "What are you doing, can you not talk to me?" Finally one of the guys starts to explain, "It's just for the--" Quentin slaps the camera guy, cutting him off in mid sentence. He then lunges at them as if he, Quentin Tarantino, is about to kick some ass, and they run back. As they regroup he starts to walk away.

The crew approaches him again, and that's where the whole thing gets weird.

He tells the guy that if he weren't filming, he'd be "whipping ass up and down this street." Quentin Tarantino. Possibly the least menacing man on our continent. The guy who, as far as we all know, has no training in any sort of fighting at all. The man who has dorkiness pegged on a Dungeons and Dragons level.

That's what makes me sad. Not that he got frustrated with paparazzi -- nobody likes those guys. But Tarantino instigated the whole thing, and apparently did it out of a belief that he is capable of winning a fight. Has he really made so many movies about badasses that he now considers himself one? Like he has somehow picked up the knowledge and physical ability to actually dish out an ass kicking, simply by writing about them? Because again, he's Quentin Tarantino. I'm fairly confident that my six year old daughter can beat him down. Has his reality become so warped that he believes he's not the same geek who used to work at a video store and collect board games based on TV shows?

Evidently. Because it's not the first time he's done it. That link is from the late 90s when he slapped and punched producer Don Murphy in a restaurant and then reenacted the whole confrontation on a talk show, saying, "A little bitch slap don't hurt nobody." So knowing this now, I've changed my opinion about him from a dorky guy who projects who he'd like to be into his movie characters ... to a dorky guy who actually thinks of himself as a badass gangster.

Or ... was that was all a performance done for the benefit of the camera? Because he thought it would make him look cool? That's even sadder, if you think about it. I'll never know, I'm not his therapist. Though if I was, I think my prescription would be 5000 Milligrams of a good, solid beating. Repeat if necessary.

Special thanks to the members in this thread for video suggestions, feel free to suggest your own.

For more Cheese, check out 5 Ways Television Went Crazy Since I Quit Watching in 2003 and The Top 10 Celebrity Sex Videos Nobody Wanted to See.

What the Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror, the third book in David Wong's John Dies at the End series, is available now!