Dustin Hoffman Monologues

This is NOTHING.

It's all, you know, thinking ahead thinking ahead.

Yea, it's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit.

Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It's the best work I've ever done in my life, because it's so honest.

The war isn't over 'til I say it's over. This is my picture - this is NOT the CIA's picture. You think you're in a tight spot now? Alright, Conrad, try making The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse - tell 'im, King.

Hear what he's saying? Three of the horseman DIED. Two weeks before the end of principal photography. This is NOTHING. This is nothing, this is - this is - this is just, "Act One, The War". Now we really do need an Act Two.

Big mistake, big mistake. You gotta bring them in by stages. Big mistake to reveal Schumann before the election.

Sweetheart, Schumann is the shark. Okay? Schumann is Jaws, you know? You have to tease them. You gotta tease them. You don't put Jaws in the first reel of the movie. It's the contract, sweetheart. The contract of the election, whether they know it or not, is "Vote for me Tuesday, Wednesday I'll produce Schumann." See, that's what they're paying their seven bucks for.

Fuck the world. Try a ten a.m. script meeting, coked to the gills, no sleep and you haven't even read the treatment.

This is nothing! Piece of cake! Producing is being a samurai warrior. They pay you day in, day out for years so that one day when called upon, you can respond, your training at its peak, and save the day!

You take the fruit of forty years - hard lessons, mistakes - and you call it wisdom.

When it's cooking, it's cooking.

This is politics at its finest.

Haven't had this much fun since live TV!

You know, Connie? I felt very much at home in there. Simple quirk of fate. I could have gone this way. It's all a change in wardrobe.

You know, you can't save the world. All you can do is try.

I think it's Magruder because at one time he was the temporary head of the Committee to Re-Elect before Mitchell.

Boy, that woman was paranoid! At one point I - I suddenly wondered how high up this thing goes, and her paranoia finally got to me, and I thought what we had was so hot that any minute CBS or NBC were going to come in through the windows and take the story away.

Bob, listen, I think I've got something, I don't know what it is. But somewhere in this world there is a Kenneth H. Dahlberg, and we gotta get to him before the New York Times does, because I think they've got the same information.

So if the break-in was just one incident in a campaign of sabotage that began a whole year before Watergate…

This isn't so crazy. This whole thing didn't start with the bugging of the headquarters.

And a year before, Nixon wasn't slaughtering Muskie, he was running behind Muskie, before Muskie self-destructed.

I was wondering if Hugh Sloan was being set up now as a fall guy for John Mitchell? What do you think?

No, do you have to see him that way? Can't you just call him up on the telephone and say you want to have a drink with him? Just feel him out? You say the relationship is over. What the hell do you have to lose?

All these neat, little houses and all these nice, little streets... It's hard to believe that something's wrong with some of those little houses.

Thank you, Gordon. Well, I cannot tell you all how deeply moved I am. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be the object of so much genuine affection. It makes it all the more difficult for me to say what I'm now going to say. Yes. I do feel it's time to set the record straight. You see, I didn't come here just as an administrator, Dr. Brewster; I came to this hospital to settle an old score. Now you all know that my father was a brilliant man; he built this hospital. What you don't know is that to his family, he was an unmerciful tyrant - a absolute dodo bird. He drove my mother, his wife, to - to drink; in fact, she - uh, she she she went riding one time and lost all her teeth. The son Edward became a recluse, and the oldest daughter - the pretty one, the charming one - became pregnant when she was fifteen years old and was driven out of the house. In fact, she was so terrified that she would, uh, that, uh, that, that, that the baby daughter would bear the stigma of illegitimacy that she, she - she decided to change her name and she contracted a disfiguring disease... after moving to Tangiers, which is where she raised the, the, the little girl as her sister. But her one ambition in life - besides the child's happiness - was to become a nurse, so she returned to the States and joined the staff right here at Southwest General. Well, she worked here, she knew she had to speak out wherever she saw injustice and inhumanity. God save us, you do understand that, don't you, Dr. Brewster?

Yes, you did. And she was shunned by all you nurses, too… and by a, what do you call it, what do you call it, a - something like a pariah, to you doctors who found her idealistic and reckless. But she was deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply loved by her brother. It was this brother who, on the day of her death, swore to the good Lord above that he would follow in her footsteps, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just owe it all up to her. But on her terms. As a woman. And just as proud to be a woman as she ever was. For I am not Emily Kimberly, the daughter of Dwayne and Alma Kimberly. No, I'm not. I'm Edward Kimberly, the recluse brother of my sister Anthea. Edward Kimberly, who has finally vindicated his sister's good name. I am Edward Kimberly. Edward Kimberly. And I'm not mentally ill, but proud, and lucky, and strong enough to be the woman that was the best part of my manhood. The best part of myself.

Dr Brewster tried to seduce several nurses in this unit, claiming to be the throes of an uncontrollable impulse. Do you know what? I'm going to give every nurse on this floor an electric cattle prod and instruct them to just zap them in his badubies!

Oh I know what y'all really want is some gross, caricature of a woman to prove some idiotic point that power makes a woman masculine, or masculine women are ugly. Well shame on you for letting a man do that, or any man that does that. That means you, dear. Miss Marshall. Shame on you, you macho shit head.

Here I am, goin' to Florida, my leg hurts, my butt hurts, my chest hurts, my face hurts, and like that ain't enough, I gotta pee all over myself.

That's funny? I'm fallin' apart here!

And end up a hunchback like my old man? You think I'm crippled, you should have caught him at the end of the day. My old man spent 14 hours a day down in that subway. He come home at night - 2,3 dollars worth of change stained with shoe polish. Stupid bastard coughed his lungs out from breathing in that wax all day. Even a faggot undertaker couldn't get his nails clean. They had to bury him with gloves on.

He was even dumber than you. He couldn't even write his own name. "X," that's what it ought to say on that goddamn headstone, one big lousy "X". Just like our dump. Condemned by order of City Hall.

I gotta get outta here, gotta get outta here. Miami Beach, that's where you could score. Anybody can score there, even you. In New York, no rich lady with any class at all buys that cowboy crap anymore. They're laughin' at you on the street.

The two basic items necessary to sustain life, are sunshine and coconut milk. Didya know that? That's a fact! In Florida, they you got a terrific amount of coconut trees there. In fact, I think they even got 'em in the, eh, gas stations over there.

You want the word on that brother-and-sister act, Hansel's a fag and Gretel's got the hots for herself, so who cares, right? Load up on the salami.

Go ahead. Get the money. Listen, get the cash! Remember that lady in the penthouse. Get the cash! Those rich ladies write out a check at night and then in the morning they call the bank and stop payment. Go ahead.

You got more ladies in Miami than in any resort area in the country there. I think per capita, on a given day, there's probably, eh, three hundred of 'em on the beach. In fact, you can't even scratch yourself without getting a belly button there up the old kazoo there.

Is that what you think? No. That's not it, Billy. Your mom loves you very much... and the reason she left has nothing to do with you. I don't know if this will make sense, but I'll try to explain it to you. I think the reason why Mommy left... was because for a long time... I kept trying to make her be a certain kind of person. A certain kind of wife that I thought she was supposed to be. And she just wasn't like that. She was... She just wasn't like that. I think that she tried for so long to make me happy... and when she couldn't, she tried to talk to me about it. But I wasn't listening. I was too busy, too wrapped up... just thinking about myself. And I thought that anytime I was happy, she was happy. But I think underneath she was very sad. Mommy stayed here longer than she wanted because she loves you so much. And the reason why Mommy couldn't stay anymore... was because she couldn't stand me. She didn't leave because of you. She left because of me. Go to sleep now because it's really late, okay? Good night. Sleep tight.

You go right back and put that right back until you finish your dinner... I'm warning you, you take one bite out of that and you are in big trouble. Don't... Hey! Don't you dare... Don't you DARE do that. You hear me? Hold it right there! You put that ice cream in your mouth and you are in very, very, VERY big trouble. Don't you dare go anywhere beyond that... Put it down right now. I am not going to say it again. I am NOT going to say it AGAIN.

o the other morning, I'm at the refrigerator… you know, getting Billy ready for school. So I'm just in my underwear and he notices I've lost weight. And he comes in and pats me. He comes up to here , and he says "Daddy, you've really lost a lot of weight", he looks up at me and he says "And it's all gone to your nose."

My wife used to always say to me, "Why can't a woman have the same ambitions as a man." I think you're right. Maybe I've learned that much. But by the same token, I'd like to know, what law is it that says a woman is a better parent simply by virtue of her sex? I've had a lot of time to think about what it is that makes somebody a good parent, you know. It has to do with constancy. It has to do with patience. It has to do with listening to him. It has to do with pretending to listen to him when you can't even listen any more. It has to do with love - like, like, like she was saying. And I don't know where its written that says that a woman has a corner on that market. That a man has any less of those emotions than a woman does? Billy has a home with me. I've made it the best I could.

Come here. We didn't have diet soda. We had egg creams - which is a little bit of chocolate syrup and a little bit of seltzer water and a little bit of milk and you went Shoooosh! all swooshed up when you drank it and it was de-licious. We didn't have the Mets, but, we had the Brooklyn Dodgers. We had the Polo Grounds. We had Ebbits Field. Ah, boy, those were the days. And we didn't have the Volkswagens; but, we had all those different kind of cars with the funny names on 'em. We didn't have any Burger Kings or McDonalds. We had automats where you went inside and you put a quarter in and you get, you know, a piece of pie or a sandwich that you see through a window. We didn't have any graffiti; but, we had this guy, Kilroy, and he went down the street...

The fact is that for the last six months I've been spitting blood to get this agency one of the biggest accounts its ever had and at five o'clock this afternoon we got the account! At eight o'clock I'm walking home with the Vice President who tells me I'm going to be the next Creative Director of this Department and I come through this door, to share with my wife who what was going to be one of the five best days of my life and she looks at me and tells me she doesn't want to live with me anymore! Don't you understand what she's done to me?

Walk in very serious. You are not applying for a boy's job. Money is to pass. Be quiet, fine, and serious. Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

Walk in with a big laugh. Don't look worried. Start off with a couple of your good stories to lighten things up. It's not what you say, it's how you say it - because personality always wins the day.

I get so lonely - especially when business is bad and there's nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I'll never sell anything anymore, that I won't make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys.

My father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man! We've got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family, Howard. I thought I'd go out with my older brother and try to locate him and maybe even settle in the North with the old man. And I was almost decided to go - when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman. And he was eighty-four years old, and he'd drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up the phone and call the buyers, without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career that a man could want. Because what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up his phone and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? You know, when - when he died, by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the NewYork, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston - when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains - for months after that. You see, in those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect and comradeship and gratitude in it. Today, it's all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear or personality. You see what I mean? They don't know me anymore.

I'm talking about your father! There were promises made across this desk! You mustn't tell me you've got people to see. I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can't pay my insurance! You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit!

It's not what you do, Ben, it's who you know and the smile on your face! It's contacts, Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that's the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked!