Sterling Silver Dialogue #5

Sterling Silver Dialogue From The Movies: 

Do you know where they're from?

"You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."

(reply) "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

(response) "Uh huh, I knew there was something wrong with them." 

"I'm not an executive, just a writer."

(reply) "You are? Writing words, words, more words! Well, you've made a rope of words and strangled this business: A-ha! But there's a microphone right there to catch the last gurgle, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongue!"

"Roger O. Thornhill. What does the O stand for?"

(reply) "Nothing." 

"Now wait a minute you listen to me: I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed." 

"It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of 'em. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile, Nat. The Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra. Come here: Purple the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke..."

(After getting the drink orders from his guests he turns to his wife) "Martha?... Rubbing alcohol for you?" 

“I'd like to say I didn’t intend to kill her, but when you have a gun, you always intend when you have to…”

"And as for going around with you, I still pick my own gutters."

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal! That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petrodollars, Electro-Dollars, MultiDollars, Reichmarks, RINs, Rubles, Pounds, and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And YOU. WILL. ATONE!  Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquillized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen... you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel." 

Answers to Sterling Silver Dialogue #5 are here.