Public Enemies Quotes

Billie Frechette: What do you want?

John Dillinger: Everything. Right now.

Melvin Purvis: What keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?

John Dillinger: Coffee.

[last lines]

Billie Frechette: They say you're the man who shot him.

Charles Winstead: That's right. One of 'em.

Billie Frechette: So why are you coming here to see me? To see the damage you done?

Charles Winstead: No. I came here because he asked me to. When he went down, he said somethin'. I put my ear next to his mouth, and what I think he said was this. He said, 'Tell Billie for me: Bye bye, Blackbird.'

[Billie starts to cry as Winstead gets up to leave]

John 'Red' Hamilton: We don't work with people we don't know. And you don't work when you're desperate. Walter Dietrich. Remember that?

John Dillinger: Walter forgot. When you're desperate, that's when you got no choice.

Melvin Purvis: Pretty Boy Floyd, you are under arrest

Pretty Boy Floyd: It's Charles, Charles Floyd. Who are you?

Melvin Purvis: Melvin Purvis, Bureau of Investigation. Where's your friend, Harry Campbell?

Pretty Boy Floyd: I believe you've killed me, so you can go rot in hell

Police Chief Fultz: How long does it take you to run through a bank?

John Dillinger: About 1 minute... 40 seconds... Flat

Billie Frechette: They're looking at me because they're not used to having a girl in their restaurant in a $3 dress.

John Dillinger: Listen, doll. That's 'cause they're all about where people come from. The only thing that's important is where someone's going.

Billie Frechette: [smiles] Where are you going?

John Dillinger: Anywhere I want.

J. Edgar Hoover: John Dillinger held up a bank for $74,000 while you failed to arrest Nelson.

Melvin Purvis: Sir, I take full responsibility. And I would like to make a request. That we transfer men with special qualifications to augment the staff here in Chicago. There are some former Texas and Oklahoma lawmen currently with the Bureau in Dallas.

J. Edgar Hoover: I thought you understood what I'm building. A modern force of professional young men of the best sort.

Melvin Purvis: I'm afraid our type cannot get the job done.

J. Edgar Hoover: Excuse me, I cannot hear you.

Melvin Purvis: Our type cannot get the job done.

J. Edgar Hoover: [dropping the hint more insistently] I cannot hear you.

Melvin Purvis: [more firmly] Our type cannot get the job done. Without qualified help, I would have to resign this appointment. Otherwise, I am leading my men to slaughter.

Billie Frechette: Boy, you are in a hurry!

John Dillinger: If you were looking at what I'm looking at, you'd be in a hurry, too.

[Agents Baum and Purvis are briefing the Chicago field agents]

Agent Carter Baum: According to the bank teller Barbara Patzke, this is John Dillinger's coat. It's made by Shragge-Quality out of St. Louis. Price: $35 dollars. Windproof, 32 ounce wool. Top stitching.

Melvin Purvis: [nods approvingly] Thank you, Agent Baum.

[Baum steps aside]

Melvin Purvis: Agents in our offices across the country are identifying every store in the United States that sold this overcoat. Then, we will cross-reference every Dillinger associate, in locales where that coat was sold. He was in a place, he got cold, he bought a coat. Unless he was traveling through, he was being harbored nearby. If he returns, we will be there. It is by such methods that our bureau will get John Dillinger.

[turns to Doris Rogers]

Melvin Purvis: Now Doris, would you please contact the Chicago area telephone exchange supervisors? There are six. Request appointments for Carter Baum and myself.

[as she does that, Purvis turns back to his agents]

Melvin Purvis: Gentlemen, shortly you will be provided... Thompson submachine guns, BARs, and uh, .351 Winchester semi-automatic rifles. We are pursuing hardened killers. It will be dangerous. Those of you who aren't prepared for that should go. And if you are going to go, please go now.

[No one leaves]

[Purvis and Baum are listening in on a wiretapped call]

Agent Carter Baum: This is a phone conversation from a car dealership twenty-seven minutes ago. Harry Berman.

[He pushes down the needle to play back an acetate disk]

John Dillinger's voice: When you drop it, leave the keys on the floorboard.

Harry Berman's voice: I got a DeSoto.

John Dillinger's voice: Okay.

[Purvis takes off his headphones]

Melvin Purvis: How did we get to Berman?

Agent Carter Baum: Off the Dillinger coat. The coat was bought in Cicero, Illinois, a few doors down from Berman's dealership. Now we know Berman. He's been supplying cars to the Syndicate since Capone. When Dillinger bought that coat, he must've been at Berman's switching cars.

Melvin Purvis: Soon as they call to drop the DeSoto, we'll tail it. I want men on this, around the clock.

[Hoover is at a Senate Appropriation Committee hearing]

Senator Kenneth McKellar: Why do we need this?

J. Edgar Hoover: Because criminals flee in fast automobiles across state lines, thereby defeating local jurisdiction because there is no federal police force to stop them.

Senator Kenneth McKellar: By my tally, your bureau wants to spend more taxpayer's dollars catching crooks, than what the crooks you catch stole in the first place.

J. Edgar Hoover: Well that's ridiculous. The Bureau has apprehended kidnappers and bank robbers who have stolen up to and in excess of...

Senator Kenneth McKellar: Really?

[Hoover stops midsentence]

Senator Kenneth McKellar: How many have you apprehended?

J. Edgar Hoover: We have arrested and arraigned 213 wanted felons.

Senator Kenneth McKellar: No, I mean *you*, Director Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover: Well, as Director, I administer.

Senator Kenneth McKellar: How many have you arrested, personally?

[long pause as Hoover stares at McKellar]

J. Edgar Hoover: I have never arrested anybody.

[Other men in the chamber gasp in shock]

Senator Kenneth McKellar: You've never arrested anybody?

J. Edgar Hoover: Well of course not. I'm an administrator...

Senator Kenneth McKellar: With no field experience. You are shockingly unqualified, aren't you, sir? You have never personally conducted a criminal investigation in the field in your life. I think you're a front. I think your prowess as a lawman is a myth, created from the hoopla of headlines by Mr. Suydam, your publicist there. Crimebuster? G-Man? You're setting yourself up as a Czar? That's running wild in my estimation.

J. Edgar Hoover: A *crime* is what runs wild...

Senator Kenneth McKellar: If this country requires a bureau such as yours, I question whether you are the person fit to run it.

J. Edgar Hoover: [getting angry] Well I will not be judged by a kangaroo court of venal politicians...

Senator Kenneth McKellar: Your appropriation increase is denied.

[taps his gavel, signifying the end of the session; Hoover and his aides get up and leave]

J. Edgar Hoover: Feed the following to Walter Winchell: "McKellar is a Neanderthal, and he is on a personal vendetta to destroy me." We will not contest him in his committee. We need to fight him on the front page. Where's John Dillinger?

[Dillinger, Pierpont and Makley walk up the stairs into a bank lobby; Makley walks over to one of the guards]

Charles Makley: How are you today?

[whips the guard, who falls to the floor]

Charles Makley: On the floor now! Now! Do it! Do it!

[Dillinger heads for a marble railing]

Charles Makley: On the floor! Down! Now!

[Dillinger leaps over the railing, Thompson in his right hand, and grabs the manager]

John Dillinger: Let's play a game, Mr. President. It's called Spin the Dial.

[the alarm goes off as Dillinger marches the bank manager at gunpoint towards the vault and Makley heads for the teller cages]

Harry 'Pete' Pierpont: [to hostages] Put your hands up and sit down. On the floor.

John Dillinger: All right pops. Open it up.

[He watches the manager as a teller forces money into Makley's bag through the teller cage at gunpoint]

Charles Makley: Empty it. Move! Move!

[the manager looks for the key on his keychain]

Grover Weyland: It's one of these.

[Dillinger takes a second look at the lobby, then whips out a pistol and strikes the manager over the head, knocking him down]

John Dillinger: You can be a dead hero or a live coward. Get it open.

[the manager complies]

Charles Makley: *All of it!*

[breaks open another teller cage]

Charles Makley: Empty it - all of it!

Harry 'Pete' Pierpont: [to someone in the lobby] Sit down!

Charles Makley: Push it to me.

[Pierpont climbs up onto the railing and points his Thompson at another hostage]

Harry 'Pete' Pierpont: Oi, don't move!

[Cuts to Van Meter outside, hiding a BAR under his overcoat, watching the street. He looks to his left and sees a car pull to a stop in the middle of the nearby intersection; Van Meter quietly slips back into the doorway and taps his rifle against the door]

Harry 'Pete' Pierpont: We got company!

[Hamilton, in the getaway car, checks his watch, then pulls forward; one cop runs towards the bank while the others take up position behind their car]

Angry Cop: [to Van Meter] Move outta there!

[Makley slides his money bags along the lobby floor over to Pierpont, while Dillinger, finished with loading money from the vault, leads the bank manager towards the exit at gunpoint; he notices a customer's money on the counter]

John Dillinger: You can put it away. Not here for your money, I'm here for the bank's.

[Cut to outside, where the cop has just reached the door]

Angry Cop: I said move it outta here!

Homer Van Meter: What for?

[Van Meter whips out his rifle, and jabs it at the cop's chest, then strikes him across the neck, spinning him around. Van Meter locks the cop into a chokehold with his left hand, levels his rifle over the cop's shoulder with his right hand, and opens fire]

John Dillinger: [pointing his Thompson at a female teller] Come here sister. Take a ride.

[He, Pierpont and Makley start walking towards the door; outside, Van Meter is spraying up the police car]

Pretty Boy Floyd: [to Barbara after robbing a bank] You know, when I'm not doing this, I'm a scout for the movies.

[bug chuckle from all the boys]

Newsman: Mr. Purvis, how did you run down Pretty Boy Floyd?

Melvin Purvis: [hesitates] Through an apple orchard.

John Dillinger: The public don't like kidnapping.

Alvin Karpis: Who gives a damn what the public likes?

John Dillinger: I do. I hide out among them. We gotta care what they think.

John Dillinger: [in his jail cell] Well, here's the man who killed Pretty Boy Floyd. Damn good thing he was pretty, 'cause he sure wasn't Whiz Kid Floyd. Tell me something, Mr. Purvis. That fellow, the one who got killed at the Sherone Apartments - the newspaper said you found him alive. It's the eyes, ain't it? They look at you right before they go. And then they just drift away into nothing. That'll keep you up nights.

Melvin Purvis: And what keeps you up nights, Mr. Dillinger?

John Dillinger: Coffee. You act like a confident man, Mr. Purvis. You got a few qualities. Probably pretty good from a distance, especially when you got the fellow outnumbered. But up close, toe to toe, when somebody's about to die right here, right now - I'm used to that. What about you?

Melvin Purvis: Goodbye, Mr. Dillinger...

John Dillinger: I'll see you down the road.

Melvin Purvis: [turning back] No, you will not. The only way that you will leave a jail cell is when we take you out to execute you.

John Dillinger: Well, we'll see about that.

John Dillinger: At the arraignment, they're gonna try and transfer me to the state pen. What can you do for me?

Louis Piquett: What's on your mind?

John Dillinger: The electric chair.