TOM BAUM: Did you get the right cashews?
CAROL BAUM: Which are the right cashews? Both bags are the same
TB: No, the ones labeled “supreme” are yours. You said the others tasted funny.
CB: These taste all right.
TB: OK, then we can save some money next time. So…do we have an all-time favorite line?
CB: Ours tend not to be the ones like “Make my day” or “Nobody’s perfect” or “You complete me.” We like the ones that sometimes come up in daily life.
TB: “I thought there’d be more of you here.” From “On the Waterfront.” Karl Malden calls a meeting at the church and only a few people show up. That always crosses my mind when I’m driving to a reading of a play and there’s supposed to be a talk-back.
CB: Or when we give a party. What lines from Preston Sturges?
TB: “Christmas in July.” Ellen Drew gives this impassioned speech to Ernest Truex, pleading with him not to fire Dick Powell because he’s unwittingly perpetrated this hoax, a whole thing about how all people want is a chance to prove themselves, and they deserve this chance, wonderful speech, and at the end she adds, “His name’s already on the door,” and Ernest Truex says “If anything decided me, that would be it.”
CB: And Lionel Stander’s line in “Unfaithfully Yours,” at the beginning. Rex Harrison’s plane has been delayed and they keep announcing different places it could land, some place called, what, Aruska?
TB: Aroostock, I think.
CB: And Lionel Stander says, “Where is this mudhole, if I ain’t too optimistic?”
TB: Nobody but Sturges could have written it.
CB: It’sone of those we wait for. Like Edward G. Robinson’s whole speech about suicide statistics in “Double Indemnity.”
TB: And at the end of “Roman Holiday”–when they ask the princess her if anything has stood out in her trip, and Gregory Peck’s there, and Audrey Hepburn hesitates, and then says “Rome.”
CB: We forgot one from Sturges. In “The Lady Eve,” when they’re preparing for the party, the reception for Eve, icing the cake, and one of the downstairs guys is reading the fancy heraldry thing that’s supposed to go on the cake—
TB: Wait, I’ll get the Sturges book. (returns, reads) “Crest: A lion couchant gardant, or, holding between the paws an escutcheon sable, charged with a cock proper. Motto: Hyphen ‘sic erat in fatis.’” And the chef with the pastry gun says, “You do it.”
CB: What about that line from “Heaven Can Wait”?
TB: “Don’t show me any more hats.” That’s like an all-time favorite of mine. My junior year in college—my roommate—
CB: Dick Zeckhauser—
TB: —He was taking the basic calculus course, and I was a math major, and he’d come into my room with a math problem, one he’d either already solved or knew how to solve and say, “Here’s one you’ll like, Tom.” And I was just going through the motions as a math major. I basically peaked in high school–Zeckhauser was more of a whiz than I was. He kept showing me these problems that he’d worked out already and I finally told him not to bother—like Warren Beatty telling the valet not to show him any more hats. “Don’t show me any more math problems.”
CB: There’s that other hat line—
TB: In “The Last Detail.” Jack Nicholson watching Randy Quaid chatting up this girl, Luana Anders, and Nicholson says, “If this kid gets pussy out of this, I’ll eat my fucking flat hat.”
CB: We forgot another one from “On the Waterfront.” “It’s an unhealthy relationship.”
TB: Rod Steiger warning Marlon Brando to stay away from Eva Marie Saint.
CB: We say that all the time. And that line from “Breathless”? The one Belmondo says to the camera?
TB: I’d better look up the exact quote. (returns) “If you don’t like the sea…and you don’t care for the mountains…and you don’t like the big city either… go fuck yourself.”
CB: That’s not how we say it.
TB: “If you don’t like the country, and you don’t like the city…” Just two alternatives. Either we misremembered or there were two subtitled versions of the movie.
CB: Probably we misremembered.
TB: Anyway, it’s got lots of applications. “If you don’t like the movies…and you don’t like TV…go fuck yourself.” “If you don’t like kids…and you don’t like adults…” And so forth.
CB: What from “Sweet Smell of Success”?
TB: Well, we wait for every line in that movie, but life-relevant?
CB: “My big toe would make a better President.”
TB: “My big toe would make a better”…fill in the blank.
CB: What about other Billy Wilder lines?
TB: From “Stalag 17”: “Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire-cutters…” ”At ease…at ease…” We say that all the time.
CB: I just thought of an obvious one. “…You do seem to have an eerie relation to literature.”
TB: The scene in “The Group” where Hal Holbrook is interviewing Jessica Walters…It’s right out of the book.
CB: So many people in Hollywood have an eerie relation to movies.
TB: “This man is ugly.”
CB: “Sex and the Single Girl.”
TB: I know, but what’s the exact situation?
CB: Natalie Wood thinks Lauren Bacall is somehow married to Tony Curtis. Lauren Bacall has described her husband as ugly. So towards the end of the movie, Natalie sees a photo of Lauren Bacall’s actual husband—Henry Fonda. She’s completely relieved and she points to the picture of Henry Fonda and says, “This man is ugly.”
TB: Amazing line. When something in life turns out to be unexpectedly true—
CB: “This man is ugly.”
TB: What else are we forgetting? What about “What’s New Pussycat?”
CB: “All your life…” But what leads up to it? You’d better look it up.
TB: It’ll never be on-line.
CB: I’ll bet it is.
TB: (looks it up) You were right. OK, so Peter O’Toole is juggling three beautiful women, Romy Schneider, Paula Prentiss, and Capucine, and he joins this therapy group run by Peter Sellers, who’s playing a German psychoanalyst, and here’s the speech (reads): “By the way, ladies and gentlemen, we have with us a new member of our group. He’s a young man who has certain emotional problems. All your life you should have such problems as this young man has got.”
CB: So the other night, when we were watching “Mogambo”—
TB: Clark Gable with two women after him—Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner—
CB: “All your life you should have such problems…”
TB: What about “At this point we don’t know”? We say that all the time. But it’s from a play. The first Mamet we ever saw. F. Murray Abraham and Peter Riegert…he’s describing his encounter with a girl and Peter Riegert keeps asking him if the girl’s a hooker. “At this point we don’t know.”
CB: If we’re counting plays, we should count TV.
TB: All those lines from Soupy Sales. “Why don’t you do something to help me?” That tends to run through my mind when I’m doing the dishes.
CB: You never ask me to help with the dishes. Not on weekdays.
TB: I don’t know…I clean up after myself as I’m cooking…I’m just finishing what I started.
CB: Speaking of food, are we ready to eat?
TB: Wait…If we’re including Soupy, we have to include Lenny Bruce. He was like our original source of lines.
TB: In his Social Contract sketch…Don’t arrest guys while he’s around, because “I have to do business with these assholes…” Every time you’re tempted to sue somebody, we quote that line.
CB: “Same crap week after week.”
TB: From the Palladium sketch. We must have said that a thousand times. I’m sure there are others, but hold on…I forgot one I think of all the time these days. The line’s from “The Man Who Could Work Miracles.” Roland Young has gotten grandiose behind this gift the gods have given him, and he calls all the world leaders together, all the people who run the world, and tells them to “Run it better.” Run it better. That goes through my mind all the time. Run it better.
CB: It’s great.
TB: Washington.
CB: Hollywood.
TB: Run it better.
CB: Shall we eat?