"Yes, Oscar®, you may quote Cloud 9!"

Last year at this time, connections to the newly-released Frozen Pictures motion picture comedy Cloud 9 proved to be startlingly influential when it came to Academy Awards® nominees and winners. The six degrees of Kevin Bacon definitely made way for the two-degrees-or-less connections to Cloud 9. This year, as we approach Sunday's 79th Academy Awards®, insiders have hoped to forget The Number 23-- and look Cloud 9 to for more winning links.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the energy or time to pick through the nominees ties this season, so we’ll be probably check in after Martin Scorsese, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Hudson and Babel pick up the major awards®—how’s that for a little controversy? But it's clear the beach volleyball stripper comedy, written and produced by Burt Kearns & Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures along with Academy Award® winner (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) Albert S. Ruddy, and starring Burt Reynolds, DL Hughley, Paul Rodriguez, Angie Everhart and Gary Busey is becoming more influential than ever as it now plays on pay cable systems around the world.

And in tribute to the Oscar®’s ad campaign, May We Quote You?, which centers on memorable movie quotes, we give you a few of great lines from the Cloud 9 script. Thanks to Brett Hudson, Burt Kearns and their partner and old pal, Academy Award winner® (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) Albert S. Ruddy, the team that wrote this keeper and sports perennial:

"I gotta re-invent myself... do something big--
something that says, ‘Billy Cole’s back!’"
-- BURT REYNOLDS as BILLY COLE

"In this town, you're Mexican, you’re just
an ordinary gardener-- you're Asian, you’re
a landscape designer."
--PAUL RODRIGUEZ as WONG

"You talking about us hooking on boats?"
--KENYA MOORE as CHAMPAGNE

"I’m supposed to say stuff like,
'When the going gets tough, the
tough get going...' But I’m not
gonna say that. That’s shit.
So forget it! Forget the other
team. Play to the crowd. Pretend it’s the biggest strip
club in Vegas!"
--BURT REYNOLDS
as BILLY COLE

"I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’d rather
be known as a big weiner than a big whiner!"
--D.L. HUGHLEY as TENSPOT

"Let’s kick some rich white
hire-my-cousins-for-minimum-wage
westside ass!"
--PATRICIA de LEON as CORAZON

"It’s Billy Cole’s way... or the highway."
--BURT REYNOLDS as BILLY COLE

"I don’t dislike you Billy...
you’re just not a heavy lifter."
--ANGIE EVERHART
as JULIE

"They're not hookers. They're strippers!"
--BURT REYNOLDS
as BILLY COLE

Good luck to all the Oscar® nominees! Especially to The Departed... whose costar Martin Sheen narrated the Frozen Pictures documentary series, All The Presidents' Movie... which was produced by Cloud 9's writer-producers, Brett Hudson & Burt Kearns... and to Letters from Iwo Jima director Clint Eastwood, whose Million Dollar Baby, as we'd mentioned, was produced by Albert S. Ruddy-- ah, there we go again...