Albino Alligator - Flirting with Tension and Humor
Janet Boudreaux: [mocking his tip]
Oh, you are a big spender. I like that in a man.
Dova:
Now I just don't know what it's gonna take to make you shut up.
Janet Boudreaux:
If you don't bite, then don't bark, doggie dog.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Network - Human Connection Amidst Emotional Turmoil
Diana Christensen:
Will you go back to your wife?
Max Schumacher:
I'll give it a try, but I don't think she'll jump at it. But don't worry about me. I'll manage. I always have, I always will. I'm more concerned about you. You're not the boozer type. So I figure a year, maybe two, before you crack up. Or jump out of your 14th floor office window.
Diana Christensen:
Stop selling, Max. I don't need you. I don't want your pain. I don't want your menopausal decay and death! I don't need you, Max. Now get out of here!
Max Schumacher:
You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day.
Diana Christensen:
Then don't leave me.
Max Schumacher:
It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure and pain and love. And it's a happy ending. Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell. Final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Network - Tensions Rise Over Howard Beale's Controversial Message
Diana Christensen:
(on the phone) You're his goddamn agent. I'm counting on you to talk some sense into the lunatic. Nobody wants to hear about dying democracy and dehumanization.
Max Schumacher:
I'm sorry I'm late.
Diana Christensen:
(still on the phone) We're starting to get rumbles from the agencies. Another couple of weeks and the sponsors will be bailing out! This is a breach of contract. This isn't the Howard Beale we signed. Get him off that corporate universe kick, or so help me, I'll pull it off the air! I told him, Lou! I've been telling him every day for a week! I'm sick of telling him. Now you tell him! (hangs up) Jesus Christ. You could help me out with Howard if you wanted to. He listens to you. You're his best friend.
Max Schumacher:
I'm tired of all this hysteria about Howard Beale.
Diana Christensen:
Every time you come from seeing somebody in your family you come back in one of these middle-aged moods.
Max Schumacher:
And I'm tired of finding you on the god-damn telephone every time I turn around. I'm tired of being an accessory in your life! And I'm tired of pretending to write this dumb book about my maverick days in the great early years of television. Every god-damned executive fired from a network in the last twenty years has written this dumb book about the great early years of television. And nobody wants a dumb, damn, god-damn book about the great years of television...
Diana Christensen:
Terrific, Max! Maybe you can start a whole new career as an actor.
Max Schumacher: [[Barbara Walters]
After living with you for six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real actual life going on here. I went to visit my wife today because she's in a state of depression, so depressed that my daughter flew all the way from Seattle to be with her. And I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and my kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all of those things that you think sentimental, but which my generation called simple human decency. And I miss my home because I'm beginning to get scared shitless. Because all of a sudden, it's closer to the end than it is to the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me - with definable features. You're dealing with a man that has primal doubts, Diana, and you've got to cope with it. I'm not some guy discussing male menopause on the ] Show'. I'm the man that you presumably love. I'm part of your life. I live here. I'm real. You can't switch to another station.
Diana Christensen:
What exactly is it you want me to do?
Max Schumacher:
I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. You understand that, don't you?
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Network - The Allure of a Manufactured Prophet
Max Schumacher:
He could be jumping off a roof for all I know. The man is insane. He's not responsible for himself. He needs care and treatment. And all you grave-robbers think about is that he's a hit!
Diana Christensen:
You know, Max, it's just possible that he isn't insane, that he is, in fact, imbued with some special spirit.
Max Schumacher:
My God, I'm supposed to be the romantic. You're supposed to be the hard-bitten realist.
Diana Christensen:
All right. Howard Beale obviously fills a void. The audience out there obviously wants a prophet, even a manufactured one, even if he's as mad as Moses. By tomorrow, he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed instant God, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.
Max Schumacher:
I am not putting Howard back on the air.
Diana Christensen:
It's not your show any more, Max, it's mine.
Frank Hackett:
I gave her the show, Schumacher. I'm putting the network news show under programming. Mr. Ruddy has had a mild heart attack and is not taking calls. In his absence, I'm making all network decisions, including one I've been wanting to make a long time - you're fired.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Network - The Potential of a Captivating News Show
Diana Christensen:
We just increased our audience by twenty or thirty million people in one night. Now, you're not gonna get something like this dumped in your lap for the rest of your days, and you can't just piss it away. Howard Beale got up there last night and said what every American feels, that he's tired of all the bullshit. He's articulating the popular rage. I want that show, Frank. I can turn that show into the biggest smash on television.
Frank Hackett:
What do you mean, you want that show? It's a news show. It's not your department.
Diana Christensen:
I see Howard Beale as a latter-day prophet, a magnificent messianic figure, inveighing against the hypocrisies of our times, a strip Savonarola, Monday through Friday. I tell you, Frank, that could just go through the roof. And I'm talking about a six dollar cost per thousand show! I'm talking about a hundred, a hundred thirty thousand dollar minutes! Do you want to figure out the revenues of a strip show that sells for a hundred thousand bucks a minute? One show like that could pull this whole network right out of the hole! Now, Frank, it's being handed to us on a plate. Let's not blow it!
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Network - Television Programming and Counter-Culture Ambitions
Diana Christensen:
I think we can get a hell of a Movie of the Week out of it, maybe even a series...Look, we've got a bunch of hobgoblin radicals called the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks. Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, hijacking 747's, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors. We'd open each week's segment with their authentic footage, hire a couple of writers to write some story behind that footage, and we've got ourselves a series.
George Bosch:
A series about a bunch of, uh, bank-robbing guerrillas?
Barbara Schlesinger: [[Mao Tse-Tung]
What are we gonna call it - the ] Hour?
Diana Christensen: [[Che Guevara; [w:Vietnam War|Vietnam; [w:Watergate scandal|Watergate; She shuts the door]
Why not? They've got Strike Force', Task Force', SWAT'. Why not ] and his own little Mod Squad'. Look, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? Well, in a nutshell, it said, The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by ], ], the inflation, the depression. They've turned off, shot up, and they've screwed themselves limp and nothing helps. So this concept analysis report concludes, The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them. I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counter-culture. I want anti-establishment. I don't want to play butch boss with you people. But when I took over this department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn't one show in the top 20. This network is an industry joke. We better start putting together one winner for next September. I want a show developed, based on the activities of a terrorist group. Joseph Stalin and his Merry Band of Bolsheviks. I want ideas from you people. That is what you're paid for. And, by the way, the next time I send an audience research report around, you'd all better read it or I'll sack the fuckin lot of you, is that clear?
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Bonnie and Clyde - Critique of Ignorance and Misunderstood Love
Bonnie Parker: [to Clyde]
You're just like your brother. Ignorant, uneducated hillbilly, except the only special thing about you is your peculiar ideas about love-making, which is no love-making at all.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Bonnie and Clyde - A Call for Distance and Independence
Bonnie Parker: [to Buck and Clyde]
Why don't y'all go back to your own cabin, if you want to play with C.W.
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Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie Parker's Perspective on Life and Crime
Bonnie Parker: [[w:AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes|American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations]
*Note: ranked #41 in the ] in American cinema.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Bonnie and Clyde - Bonnie Parker's Declaration of Bank Robbery
Bonnie Parker:
We rob banks!
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.