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Max Rothman: Hitler, come on. I'll buy you a glass of lemonade.
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Max Rothman: You're an awfully hard man to like, Hitler, but I'm gonna try. Because if I've learned anything over the past four years, it's that we all shit the same, scream the same, and die the same.
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Max Rothman: So you're an anti-Semite.
Adolf Hitler: On the contrary, I admire the Jews.
Max Rothman: Really?
Adolf Hitler: Yes, they're very intelligent people.
Max Rothman: Well, there are intelligent ones and not so intelligent ones...
Adolf Hitler: No, no, no, they're all intelligent because they guard the purity of their blood.
Max Rothman: The what?
Adolf Hitler: The purity of the blood. Because the secret of the Jews lies in their pure Jewish blood. That's why they're the mightiest counterpart to the Aryan race.
Max Rothman: What's the secret?
Adolf Hitler: Is your father Jewish?
Max Rothman: Yes, he is.
Adolf Hitler: Mother?
Max Rothman: Why not ask whether she's a German? Isn't that a far more relevant question?
Adolf Hitler: Mensch! Of course your mom's Jewish.
Max Rothman: You're an awfully hard man to like, Hitler, but I'm gonna try, because if I've learned anything over the past four years, it's that we all shit the same, scream the same, and die the same.
Adolf Hitler: There's no need for vulgarity, Rothman.
Max Rothman: I know where you've been and God knows we've all been turned into assholes there. Now listen to me well: you may not think you're an anti-Semite, but in fact you are.
Adolf Hitler: I'm not.
Max Rothman: But in this, as in all things, there's a reason. Your own hero Nietzsche said anti-Semitism is the ideology of those who feel cheated.
Adolf Hitler: How do you know Nietzsche's my hero?
Max Rothman: Because you've obviously skimmed his ideas.
Adolf Hitler: Well, I don't feel cheated.
Max Rothman: Excellent. Then stop acting like it.
Adolf Hitler: Are you gonna smoke another cigarette? You just put one out.
Max Rothman: Exactly. But now where is my instinct, my secret instinct for self-preservation, I ask you? I've heard these theories all my life: blood science, eugenics; it's rubbish. It's complete nonsense. It's kitsch. Put it out of your mind. It's not modern. It's not scientific. It will hold you back as an artist.
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George Grosz: What's his name?
Max Rothman: Hitler.
George Grosz: Never heard of him.
Max Rothman: You will.
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Max Rothman: Try not to be one of those people who finds a slight in any compliment.
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Max Rothman: [to His Kids] Hello midgets.
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Max Rothman: [referring to Hitler] He had a bad war.
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Max Rothman: I've seen the future. Believe me, it came straight at us. There's no future in the future.
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Liselore Von Peltz: I didn't know you had a Monet.
Max Rothman: [mouths] I don't.
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Liselore Von Peltz: Where's your wife?
Max Rothman: Waiting for her entrance, I suppose.
Liselore Von Peltz: And where does that leave me?
Max Rothman: Talented, with options.
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Max Rothman: Half man, half doll - every woman's dream.
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Max Rothman: [talking about Hitler's art] I keep going back to this notion of "authentic voice". What I mean to say is, I was there, and you were there, and I know what it looked like... but what did it *feel* like?
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Art patron/friend of Max's: So if art, as an object, is dead, why is everything so expensive?
Max Rothman: Otherwise nobody would buy it.
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Adolf Hitler: Listen Rothman, I've lost FOUR YEARS!
Max Rothman: Yes, we've *all* lost four years. Some of us a little more. Do you want a show?
Adolf Hitler: I'd kill for you if you gave me a show!
Max Rothman: Don't kill for me, please. Just do what you do. Be anxious, be nervous, *tell* me you're the unknown soldier come back to haunt us - with your brush, Hitler! With your brush - can you do that? 'Cause that's what you've got to do. You've got to take all this pent-up stuff you're quivering with, and you've got to hurl it onto the canvas. It doesn't have to be good and it doesn't have to be beautiful, it just has to be true.
[pause]
Max Rothman: And even if it's a lie, make it an interesting lie, and I'll put it up. I swear.
Adolf Hitler: You do think I'm talented, don't you?
Max Rothman: I think there's definitely *something* rustling behind your curtain, yes.
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Max Rothman: [re patriotic propaganda] I used to think we rode into the war on horseback. But now I realize that in fact, we rode into the war on words. Yes, my friend, words. If the high command had used nails to hammer our feet to the mud, I think we would have found a pair of pliers, passed them down the line, and made a break for it. But the words... the words kept us rooted to the ground.
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Hildegard: Just remember, Max, Florence Nightingale died of syphilis.
Max Rothman: And that means what?
Hildegard: Don't get too close to your charity cases.
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Adolf Hitler: Politics is the new art!
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Adolf Hitler: I am the new avant garde!
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Adolf Hitler: "Would you die for the mother in law land?"! You're a menace, Rothman.
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Max Rothman: Listen, do you wanna meet some girls?
Adolf Hitler: Girls?
Max Rothman: Yes, Hitler, girls! You know, those brilliant creatures who make you feel artistic without doing a stitch of work? Come on.
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Max Rothman: I've heard these theories all my life: blood science, eugenics; it's rubbish. It's complete nonsense. It's kitsch. Put it out of your mind. It's not modern. It's not scientific. It will hold you back as an artist. Speaking of which, how's your work coming along? I mean, why are you making those appalling speeches for the army?
Adolf Hitler: I'm just keeping my hand in it.
Max Rothman: Keeping your hand in what?
Adolf Hitler: The army is paying my expenses.
Max Rothman: Ah, so you don't actually believe that rubbish.
Adolf Hitler: Don't tell me you're happy with the peace.
Esther: Hello, Max.
Max Rothman: Hello, Esther. How are you, sweetheart?
[Max stands up, kisses Esther on both cheeks, and sits back down]
Max Rothman: I think the peace is a travesty, but I don't think I can be bothered to pick up the German banner from the mud with my left arm. I gave at the office, you know.
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[first lines]
[George Grosz crashes and drunkenly runs stumbling in, looks around at the paintings on display, and begins to vomit]
Max Rothman: George, so glad you like it.
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[discussing Max's play]
Adolf Hitler: Rothman.
Max Rothman: What did you think? The other night? My disaster? Did it remind you of Ypres? Or was it just rubbish?
Art patron/friend of Max's: Yes, what did you think?
Adolf Hitler: It didn't remind me of Ypres
Max Rothman: No? What did it remind you of, if anything?
Adolf Hitler: It reminded me perhaps - - perhaps, of a particularly disgusting and depraved dream of Ypres.
Max Rothman: [sardonically] As opposed to the happy, glorious one.
Adolf Hitler: [sincerely] Exactly. Exactly! Which your piece implies is ipso facto impossible.
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Max Rothman: Would you like a cigarette?
Adolf Hitler: They give you cancer of the lung.
Max Rothman: Are you a doctor?
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David Cohn: Insecurity is the mother of an overdraft.
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Adolf Hitler: Modern, like uh next time, I have diarrhoea I'll take a shit on a canvas and bring it round to you.
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Adolf Hitler: I don't believe in anti-Semitism. Not in emotive anti-Semitism anyway .I don't believe that anti-Semitism should be based on emotions which leads to pogrom and anarchy but rather on the facts.My point is, Captain that the Semitic question is far too important to be left to the individual. It ought to be in the domain of the government like public health or sewage.
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Adolf Hitler: Art should only ever reflect the eternal values and natural laws especially these days. The eternal values are: Harmonious proportions, nobility and dignity and a continuation of the cultural evolution where each generation stands upon the shoulders of the next and improves the work of the last.
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Adolf Hitler: You know, Rothman when I came back from this war, I came back to nothing really nothing. No homeland, no home, no parents, no family, no fiancée, no profession, no job, no food, no closet, full of old hockey sticks and tennis rackets not even an address. All I have in this world is the conviction that I am a great artist and a master builder. And you just stole from that from the one thing that's mine a rich boy like you.
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Antique Dealer: So, if art as an object is dead why is everything so expensive?
Max Rothman: Otherwise nobody would buy it.
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Captain Mayr: Artists aren't usually known for their nerve.
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Max's Mother: Know the difference between a Jewish mother and a Rottweiler?
Max Rothman: Eventually the Rottweiler lets go.
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Captain Mayr: A peace so unjust it will surely lead to another war, thank God. Thank God because an army at peace is like a whore at mass.
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Captain Mayr: A fellow loses a game he doesn't want to play any more. You tell him he lost because someone cheated. Then you have to hold him back from picking up the cards.
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Captain Mayr: War is vitality! War is the hygiene of the world!
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Captain Mayr: You're right, he's a nothing. Perhaps that's his secret. Perhaps it's the age of the nothing
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Adolf Hitler: I'm sorry I left so abruptly the other day.
Max Rothman: You know what they say in Spain?
Adolf Hitler: No, I don't.
Max Rothman: Easy to fight the bull from the barrera. It's easier to be a critic than an artist.
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Max Rothman: Try not to be one of those people who finds a slight in any compliment
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Adolf Hitler: I'm going to die in some doorway like a dog in the street .a complete unknown!
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Max Rothman: Technique is not what makes the painting interesting. What makes the painting compelling is what Max Ernst reveals you could almost say admits confesses, about himself. Could you do that? Could you be so voluptuous with yourself?
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Adolf Hitler: Why, the patient looks perfectly healthy but then you look at the turd really look at it, and then you see the worms crawling around.
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Adolf Hitler: Sometimes you have to build a base from the base.
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Max Rothman: David, what is it your brother calls the art business again?
David Cohn: Baked air.
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Max Rothman: I've always thought you to be an intuitive futurist.
Adolf Hitler: You're so disappointing. Am I only acceptable if you can classify me?
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Max Rothman: Change the way people see or how they pay their taxes?
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Adolf Hitler: Genius and happiness go together as well as cheese and chalk.
Max Quotes
Extended Reading
