Bullets Over Broadway Quotes

Olive: Hey, didn't I tell you to make "horse durves"?

Venus: I don't make nothin' out of horses, especially "horse durves", 'cause I don't know what they are, and neither do you.

Olive: Oh, aren't you the big mouth since you hit your number!

[raising her voice]

Olive: And I said the imported stuff!

Venus: The imported stuff ate through the bottle! It's gone!

Olive: A likely story!

[composing herself - to David]

Olive: It's very hard to get good help these days.

Sid Loomis: You're a star because you're great and you are a great star, but let me tell you something, Helen. In the last couple of years you're better known as an adulteress and a drunk. And I say this in all due respect.

Helen Sinclair: Look, I haven't had a drink since New Year's Eve.

Sid Loomis: You're talking Chinese New Year's.

Helen Sinclair: Naturally. Still, that's two days, Sid! You know how long that is for me?

Nick: Open your gift.

Olive: You open it, can't you see I'm dressing?

Nick: Here.

Olive: What is it?

Nick: Pearls. What the hell do you think they are?

Olive: Pearls are white.

Nick: These are black pearls.

Olive: Oh, don't give me that. I never heard of black pearls.

Nick: Just becaus you never heard of them don't mean it don't exist.

Olive: What do think I am, some kind of chump? They're black for God's sake. They probably came from defective oysters.

Helen Sinclair: Two martinis please, very dry.

David Shayne: How'd you know what I drank?

Helen Sinclair: Oh, you want one too? Three.

[Cheech is helping Olive rehearse a scene]

Olive: Can't you see? You're living out the exact same pattern your mother lived out with your father.

Cheech: I am? Pray tell.

Olive: In some way you're trying to relive it and in the process of reliving it, correct it. As if that were possible. HA.

Cheech: It don't say "ha."

Olive: I know it don't say "ha," I added that.

Cheech: Are you allowed to do that? I don't think you're allowed to do that.

Olive: We're allowed to add things. It's called ad-libbing.

Cheech: Well, I think the whole thing stinks.

Olive: Well, I think you're a degenerate zombie so shut up and read.

Cheech: You shut up.

Olive: You shut up and read.

Cheech: You're lucky you're Nick's girl.

Olive: You're lucky you're an idiot.

Cheech: You're lucky you're Nick's girl!

Olive: You're lucky you're an idiot!

[Helen is late for rehearsal]

Helen Sinclair: Please forgive me. My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe. It required bandaging.

David Shayne: Maybe Olive's got stage fright. Maybe she won't show.

Julian Marx: Not Olive. That dame doesn't have a nerve in her body. I don't think her spinal cord touches her brain.

Sheldon Flender: [bragging] I have never had a play produced. That's right. And I've written one play a year for the past twenty years.

David Shayne: Yes, but that's because you're a genius. And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent. Means you're a genius.

Venus: Do you want the blue stuff or the green?

Olive: The imported, dummy.

Venus: Oh, you mean from the *clean* bathtub.

David Shayne: Your taste is exquisite.

Helen Sinclair: [correcting] My taste is superb. My eyes are exquisite.

Helen Sinclair: Oh, Julian. Julian Marx. I do plays put on by Balasco, or Sam Harris, not some Yiddish pant salesman turned producer. My ex-husband used to say, "If you're gonna go down, go down with the best of them."

Sid Loomis: Which ex-husband?

Helen Sinclair: Oh, I don't know which ex-husband. The one with the moustache.

[Helen complains about her role]

Helen Sinclair: She's dowdy. Sid, the ingenue has all the hot lines. Even the female psychiatrist is a better role.

Sid Loomis: But the role of Sylvia Poston is the lead.

Helen Sinclair: "Sylvia Poston." Even the *name* reeks of Orbach's. I do Electra. I do Lady Macbeth. I do plays by Noel and Phil Barry, or at least Max Anderson.

Olive: [as Nick makes an advance on her] Stop it. Stop it. I'm not in the mood!

Nick: What do you mean you're not in the mood?

Venus: You better get in the mood, honey, 'cause he's payin' the rent.

Helen Sinclair: No, no, don't speak. Don't speak. Please don't speak. Please don't speak. No. No. No. Go. Go, gentle Scorpio, go. Your Pisces wishes you every happy return.

David Shayne: Just one...

Helen Sinclair: Don't speak.

David Shayne: You're gonna write it?

Cheech: What am I? A fuckin' idiot? They taught me how to read and write in school before I burned it down.

David Shayne: You burned down your school?

Cheech: Yeah, it was Lincoln's birthday. There was nobody there.

David Shayne: You thought my first draft was c-cerebral and tepid?

Helen Sinclair: Only the plot and the dialogue. But this...

David Shayne: Was-was-was there nothing in the original draft that you feel was worth saving?

Helen Sinclair: The stage directions were lucid. Best I've ever seen... and the color of the binder. Good choice.

David Shayne: Thank you. I've always had a flair for stage directions.

David Shayne: I studied playwrighting with every teacher, I read every book...

Cheech: Let me tell you somethin' about teachers. I hate teachers. Those blue-haired bitches used to whack us with rulers. Forget teachers.

Lord Chafee: My tongue is hanging out to present it on the London stage.

David Shayne: London.

Lord Chafee: Look at his face, Helen. You're going to be the toast of Broadway. Why not the West End, hmm?

Sid Loomis: It's a little idea she's wanted to do for years. She plays Jesus' mother.

Partygoer: Oh.

Sid Loomis: It's a whole Oedipal thing - he loves her, wants to do in the father. Well, you can see the complications. Of course, we're talking to Ira Gershwin about a modern musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. "Quasimodo Jones."

Partygoer: Helen has such a-a-a... a new vitality. Even her face looks so smooth.

Sid Loomis: I know. The monkey glands are working.

Helen Sinclair: Make love to me.

David Shayne: Here? Now?

Helen Sinclair: I see no reason to wait.

David Shayne: Jerome Kern is on the other side of the door.

Helen Sinclair: Yes, he's a wonderful composer. You'll have to meet him. Now hang up your pants.

Olive: Don't tell me you still think the world revolves around...

Stage Manager: You.

Olive: ...you.

Eden Brent: There you are. Mr. Purcell, you have been stealing our dog yummies and eating them.

Warner Purcell: Absolutely not. That's an outrageous suggestion.

Eden Brent: Then let me see in your pockets.

Warner Purcell: Would I eat dog food?

Eden Brent: You'd eat anything that didn't eat you first, you big fat pot of helium.

Olive: Why do you have to be so masso... masso...

David Shayne: Masochistic.

Olive: Masochistic? What the does that mean?

David Shayne: It means someone who enjoys pain.

Olive: Enjoys pain? What is she, *retarded*?

Nick: Sorry you guys had to hear that. Some problems with the firm.

David Shayne: Really? What type of firm is it, Nick?

Nick: It's a "don't stick your nose in other people's business and it won't get broken" type of firm.

Cheech: Olive, I think you should know this: you're a horrible actress.

[Cheech shoots Olive dead]

Eden Brent: [David has offered to get Eden's dog a saucer of milk] Oh, you needn't bother with that because I breast feed her!

Eden Brent: [awkward pause] Just KIDDING!

David Shayne: I've become involved with Helen Sinclair, and I feel terrible. But I can't help myself. She's so charismatic, and she's brilliant and beautiful. I mean, a real artist, and, and we speak the same language.

Sheldon Flender: You're wracked with guilt.

David Shayne: I'm wracked with guilt.

Sheldon Flender: You're wracked with guilt. You are wracked with guilt.

David Shayne: I don't know whether... I can't sleep.

Sheldon Flender: Guilt is petit-bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe.

David Shayne: I know that. I know...

Sheldon Flender: Well? What is the problem then? I'm gonna give you some advice. The same advice that was given to me many years ago when I had a very similar dilemma.

David Shayne: Similar to mine. To...

Sheldon Flender: Yes. Yes.

David Shayne: What did you do? What?

Sheldon Flender: You gotta do what you gotta do.

Sheldon Flender: You, you, you're all missing the point, the point is I can give pleasure many times a day!

Rita: Oh, now, really Flender, what does quantity got to do with it?

Sheldon Flender: Quantity, quantity affects quality!

David Shayne: Says who?

Sheldon Flender: Karl Marx!

Rita: Oh, so now we're talking economics.

Sheldon Flender: Sex is economics!

Sheldon Flender: You are racked with guilt.

David Shayne: I can't sleep.

Sheldon Flender: Guilt is petty bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe.

[repeated line]

Helen Sinclair: Don't speak.