Escape from New York Quotes

Bob Hauk: You go in, find the President, bring him out in 24 hours, and you're a free man.

Snake Plissken: 24 hours, huh?

Bob Hauk: I'm making you an offer.

Snake Plissken: Bullshit!

Bob Hauk: Straight just like I said.

Snake Plissken: I'll think about it.

Bob Hauk: No time. Give me an answer.

Snake Plissken: Get a new president!

Bob Hauk: We're still at war, Plissken. We need him alive.

Snake Plissken: I don't give a fuck about your war... or your president.

Bob Hauk: Is that your answer?

Snake Plissken: I'm thinking about it.

Bob Hauk: Think hard.

Snake Plissken: [pause] Why me?

Bob Hauk: You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad. You know how to get in quiet. You're all I got.

Snake Plissken: [pause] I guess I go in one way or the other... doesn't mean shit to me. All right... I'll do it. Give me the pardon paper.

Bob Hauk: When you come out.

Snake Plissken: Before.

Bob Hauk: I told you I wasn't a fool, Plissken.

Snake Plissken: Call me Snake.

Bob Hauk: I'm not a fool, Plissken!

Snake Plissken: Call me "Snake."

Hauk: Plissken? Plissken, what are you doing?

Snake Plissken: Playing with myself! I'm going in.

Bob Hauk: Remember, once you're inside you're on your own.

Snake Plissken: Oh, you mean I can't count on you?

Bob Hauk: No.

Snake Plissken: Good!

Girl in "Chock Full O'Nuts": You're a cop!

Snake Plissken: I'm an asshole...

The Duke: They sent in their best man, and when we roll across the 69th Street bridge tomorrow, on our way to freedom, we're going to have their best man leading the way - from the neck up!

[cheering erupts]

The Duke: On the hood of my car!

Bob Hauk: You going to kill me, Snake?

Snake Plissken: Not now, I'm too tired.

[pause]

Snake Plissken: Maybe later.

Bob Hauk: We'd make one hell of a team, Snake!

Snake Plissken: The name's Plissken!

[last lines]

President: Good evening. Although I shall not be present at this historic summit meeting, I present this in the hope that our great nations may learn to live in peace...

[He plays a cassette, believing it to be the correct one about nuclear fusion. His smile drops when it instead plays "Bandstand Boogie"]

Bob Hauk: [reading Plissken's file] S.D. Plissken... American, Lieutenant: Special Forces Unit "Black Light". Two Purple Hearts, Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the President. Then you robbed the Federal Reserve Depository... life sentence, New York maximum security penitentary. I'm about to kick your ass out of *the world*, war hero...

Snake Plissken: [calmly strikes a match against Hauk's desk to light his cigarette and in a bored tone of voice] Who're you?

Bob Hauk: Hauk, Police Commissioner.

Snake Plissken: Bob Hauk...

Bob Hauk: Special Forces Unit "Texas Thunder"... we heard of you too, Plissken.

Romero: You touch me... he dies. If you're not in the air in thirty seconds... he dies. You come back in... he dies.

Romero: [Romero takes a package out of his shirt and unwraps it to reveal the President's middle finger, complete with ring] Twenty seconds.

Hauk: I'm ready to talk.

Romero: Nineteen. Eighteen.

Hauk: What do you want?

Romero: Seventeen. Sixteen.

Hauk: [to his soldiers] Let's go. Let's go!

Snake Plissken: [radioing a pullout request] All right, get your machine ready, I'm coming out.

Bob Hauk: 18 hours left, Plissken!

Snake Plissken: Listen to me, Hauk. The President is dead, you got that? Somebody's had him for dinner!

Bob Hauk: Plissken, if you get back in that glider and fly back here without the tape or the President, I'll shoot you down myself! You try to climb out, I'll burn you off the wall! Do you understand that, Plissken?

Snake Plissken: [beat] A little human compassion.

Snake Plissken: Where's the President?

Cabbie: The Duke got him. Everybody knows the Duke's got him. You don't have to put a gun to my head. I'll tell you.

Snake Plissken: Who's the Duke?

Cabbie: The Duke? The Duke of New York, A-Number-1, the Big Man, that's who!

Snake Plissken: I wanna meet this Duke.

Cabbie: You can't meet the Duke! Are you crazy? Nobody gets to meet the Duke. You meet him once and then you're dead!

President: [fires machine gun at the Duke] Ayy! Number Onnee! You're the Duke! You're the Duke!

[stops firing]

President: You're the... Duke.

[quietly]

President: You're... A-number one.

Cabbie: Brain? Brain, I brought somebody to see you.

Snake Plissken: [recognizes Brain] Harold Helman...

Brain: Snake?

Maggie: [curious] Harold?

Snake Plissken: How you been, Harold? It's been a long time.

Maggie: You never told me you knew Snake Plissken, Brain.

Cabbie: Isn't that great? Hey, Brain, I could use some gas if you could spare some.

Snake Plissken: I'm glad you remember me. Yeah, a man should remember his past. Kansas City, four years ago, you ran out on me... You left me sittin' there.

Brain: You were late.

Snake Plissken: [bitterly] We were buddies, Harold. You, me, and Fresno Bob. You know what they did to Bob, huh?

The Duke: [Snake's been captured after getting shot in the leg with an arrow] Who are you?

[Snake says nothing, staring defiantly; the Duke grabs the arrow in Snake's leg and twists it]

The Duke: I said, WHO ARE YOU?

[Snake... in obvious agony, still says nothing]

Brain: Snake Plissken, Duke... the Man sent him in. Somethin's goin' down, we need him...

The Duke: [releases the arrow] Snake Plissken... I've heard of you.

[strikes Snake with a tire iron, knocking him unconscious]

The Duke: I heard you were dead!

Bob Hauk: [referring to the Gullfire] Is the glider intact?

Snake Plissken: Yeah, but takin' off is for shit... I'll work it out.

Bob Hauk: There was an accident. About an hour ago, a small jet went down inside New York City. The President was on board.

Snake Plissken: The president of what?

Brain: Swear to God, Snake, I thought you were dead...

Snake Plissken: Yeah, you and everybody else!

Snake Plissken: [after threatening Brain with his machine gun] You always were smart, Harold.

Brain: Just one thing, right now... don't call me Harold!

Cabbie: [Snake runs into Cabbie's taxi cab while being chased by the Crazies] Bad neighborhood, Snake! You don't want to be walking from the Bowery to 42nd Street at night. I've been driving a cab here for 30 years and I'm telling you: you don't walk around here at night! Yes, sir! Those Crazies'll kill you and strip you in ten seconds flat! Usually I'm not down around here myself, but I wanted to catch that show. That stuff is like gold around here, you know.

[Cabbie casually lights a Molotov cocktail and throws it at approaching Crazies, which explodes in front of them, stopping them... and Cabbie speeds away with Snake in his taxi]

Bob Hauk: In 22 hours, the Hartford Summit Meeting will be over. China and the Soviet Union will go back home. Now, the President was on his way to the summit when his plane went down. He has a briefcase attached to his wrist. The tape recording inside has to reach Hartford in 22 hours.

Snake Plissken: What's on it?

Bob Hauk: You know anything about nuclear fusion?

Snake Plissken: No.

Bob Hauk: The survival of the human race, Plissken. Something you don't give a shit about.

Cronenberg: [Cronenberg approaches Snake with two injection guns] I'm going to inject you. It will sting for a second.

[Cronenberg places both guns on the side of Snake's neck and injects him, producing a loud bang]

Bob Hauk: That's it, Plissken.

Cronenberg: Tell him.

Snake Plissken: Tell me what?

Bob Hauk: That idea you had about turning the Gullfire around 180 degrees and flying off to Canada.

Snake Plissken: What did you do to me, asshole?

Bob Hauk: My idea, Plissken. Something we've been fooling around with. Two microscopic capsules lodged in your arteries. They're already starting to dissolve. In 22 hours, the cores will completely dissolve. Inside the cores are a heat-sensing charge. Not a large explosion, about the size of a pinhead, just big enough to open up both of your arteries. I'd say you'd be dead in 10-15 seconds...

Snake Plissken: [chokes Hauk] Take them out, now!

Cronenberg: They're protected by the cores. Fifteen minutes before the last hour is up, we can neutralize the charge with X-rays.

[Pushes Snake away from Hauk]

Bob Hauk: We'll burn out the charges IF you have the President.

Snake Plissken: What if I'm a little late?

Bob Hauk: No more Hartford Summit. And no more Snake Plissken.

Snake Plissken: When I get back, I'm going to kill you.

Bob Hauk: The Gullfire's waiting.

President: Oh... listen, I want to thank you back there for saving my life. If there's anything you want... anything at all...

Snake Plissken: Just a moment of your time.

President: Of course... Yes?

Snake Plissken: We did get you out. But a lot of people died in the process. I just wondered how you felt about it.

President: [cocky, distant tone] Well, I... I wanna thank them. This nation appreciates their sacrifice.

[pause]

President: Look, I'm on in... two minutes?

[shaking his head with disgust, Snake walks away]

The Duke: What did I teach you?

President: Y-You are the... Duke of New... New York. You're A-Number One.

The Duke: I can't hear you!

President: Y-You... You are the Duke of New York! You're A-Number One!

Brain: I swear to God, Snake, I thought you were dead.

Snake Plissken: Yeah. You and everybody else.

[first lines]

Narrator: In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't come out.

Bob Hauk: You going to kill me, Snake?

Snake Plissken: I'm too tired. Maybe later.

Bob Hauk: I got another deal for you. I'd like you to think it over while you're resting. I'd like to offer you a job. We'd make one hell of a team, Snake!

Snake Plissken: The name's Plissken!

[Brain and Maggie knock on a door which is answered by Romero, the Duke of New York's right-hand man. Romero is now wearing Cabbie's cap on his head]

Brain: Hey, Romero. Where'd you get that cap?

Romero: I got it from Cabbie.

Brain: How?

Romero: I traded it.

Brain: Traded it? For what?

Romero: A cassette. Something I found in the President's briefcase. Cabbie saw it and wanted it for his collection. So, I told him he had to give me something to get it.

Brain: Oh... a cassette?

Romero: Why are you so nervous?

Brain: Me and Maggie, we've come to see the President.

Romero: Who says?

Brain: The Duke.

Romero: No, he doesn't.

Brain: All right. I'll go tell him you said that.

Romero: Wait a minute. Why?

Brain: The President has something hidden in his clothes and the Duke wants it.

Romero: What is it?

Brain: Let me in and I'll show you.

Romero: You'll tell me!

Brain: Cyanide capsules. The Duke don't want a dead President.