Christopher Plummer Monologues

Time? BULLSHIT! You corporate LACKEY! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me! I'm trying to band-aid a situation here, and you're too dim to…

Mike? "Mike." Try "Mr. Wallace". We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now? You're gonna finesse me, lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession 50 FUCKING YEARS! You, and the people you work for, are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!

In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.

I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

Do me a favor, will you - spare me, for God's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no". I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made.

I mean, he's got a corporate secrecy agreement - give me a break! I mean, this is a public health issue! Like an unsafe airframe on a passenger jet or some company dumping cyanide into the East River, issues like that! He can talk, we can air it! They've got no right to hide behind a "corporate agreement"! Pass the milk.

A servant of God? Really? Americans believe that you, as an Islamic fundamentalist, that you are a leader who contributed to the bombing of the US Embassy...

There's a purity to beautiful things that I've never been able to find in another human being.

I have no idea. But, if you can count your money you're not a billionaire.

I'm, uh, building a house in California. An exact replica of my imperial villa in Rome, down to the very last detail. But with flush toilets. Yes, the mountain may not have come to Muhammad, but it sure as hell came to me.

Well, for a moment, money loses all meaning and becomes as plentiful as air. Like flight. And then, it passes.

What's, uh, all this I see on TV with Gail paying the ransom in full? We both know she doesn't have it.

But she doesn't have the money. So, uh, what's going on? Come on. Where did she get it? Is she fucking somebody?

No, no, you couldn't begin to. So, spill it. What's going on? What's her game? Don't forget, Chase, I have a contract. And I'll enforce it.

When a man gets wealthy, he has to deal with the problems of freedom. All the choices he could possibly want. An abyss opens up. Well, I watched that abyss. I watched it ruin men, marriages, but most of all, it ruins the children.

A man who has children gives hostages to fortune.

Everything has a price. The great struggle in life is coming to grips with what that price is.

Pardon the laundry. I just see no point in paying $10 for room service to come up and launder my undershorts when I could do the same thing for just a few lira. And it's tax-deductible. Almost everything is if you know how to play it.

I had to focus on my mission, you understand? On my business. And... I couldn't be weighed down mentally with a family. You understand that, don't you, Paul?

Is something wrong?

Of course you do. You're the secret agent. Marvelous.

I'm ashamed to say that before and after my first marriage I, myself, fathered at least two illegitimate children: one with an Austrian countess, another with a French prostitute who was known in court circles as Madame L'Amour. Both of them, incidentally, blackmailed me for huge sums of money, the Countess and the prostitute. I expected better of the prostitute.

What do you think of the ducks, child? I'm very fond of them. They are beautiful creatures, and yet they ask for so little. A duck will never blame you for his troubles, or force you to abdicate your throne.

You're right. And it was.

Am I to blame for every misfortune on this earth? I gave my life to the Fatherland, and this is my thanks? Nobody cares my navy betrayed me! Nobody remembers my army fell apart! Ludendorff, Bethmann, Tirpitz, where were they? Where were they? Where were they? After all I'd done for them, they stabbed me in the back! They lost me the war. They lost me my country.

These books they're writing! My God! They just dump bucketloads of filth on my head and nobody does anything! Bismarck would have had something to say on the subject. But then he had something to say on every subject, which is why I got rid of him.