Bruce Robinson

The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angka are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive.

They tell us that God is dead. And now the Party, they call the Angka, will provide everything for us. He says, Angka has identified and proclaims that the existence of a bad new disease, a memory sickness like those that think too much about life in pre-revolutionary Cambodia. He says, we are surrounded by enemies. The enemy is inside us. No one can be trusted.

We must be like the ox and have no thought, except for the Party. No laugh, but for the Uncle. People starve, but we must not grow food. We must honor the comrade children, whose minds are not corrupted by the past.

I'm a reporter too, Morgan! I know his heart. I love him like my brother, and I'd do anything for him! Anything!

Sydney, Angka says that those who were guilty of soft living in the years of the great struggle and did not care for the sufferings of the peasant, must confess. Because, now is the year zero and everything is to start anew.

Tell my wife I love her and look after all my children. She doesn't speak any English, Sydney. Please, I don't want anyone to be bad to my wife.

I'm full of fear, Sydney. I must show no understanding. Not of French or English. I must have no past, Sydney. This is the year zero and nothing has gone before.

If anybody ever gets to read about this, you won't be able to look them in the face!

Life isn't a '40s movie. You can't just get on a God damn plane and make the whole *world* come out right!

We made a mistake. Maybe what we underestimated was the kind of insanity that $7 billion worth of bombing could produce.

They brought in the whole fucking press corps! They want to sanitize the story? Bastards!

Dith Pran! P-R-A-N. He disappeared in Phnom Penh in 1975. Pran is his first name. Any information you can give… well, we're hoping for any information at all! He was last seen in '75.

As they pondered their options in the White House, the men who decided to bomb and then to invade Cambodia concerned themselves with many things: great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes, looking tough and dangerous to the North Vietnamese, relieving pressure on the American troop withdrawal from the South. They had domestic concerns, as well, which helps explain why they kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret for as long as they could. And they may be assumed not to have ignored self-interest in their own careers. But they specifically were not concerned with, were the Cambodians themselves. Not the people, not the society, not the country. Except in the abstract as instruments of policy. Dith Pran and I tried to record and bring home here the concrete consequences of these decisions to real people - to human beings, the people left out of the Administration's plans, but, who paid the price and took the beating for them.

Cambodia. To many westerners it seemed a paradise. Another world, a secret world. But the war in neighboring Vietnam burst its borders, and the fighting soon spread to neutral Cambodia. In 1973 I went to cover this side-show struggle as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times. It was there, in the war-torn country side amidst the fighting between government troops and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, that I met my guide and interpreter, Dith Pran, a man who was to change my life in a country I grew to love and pity.

I got a right to go wherever I like in this sad little country. That's their law, that's our law. You impede me, you're breaking the Cooper-Church Amendment!

K.R.'s making a push for the airport road. If they cut it, the city could be lost. We hype these people up. "You'll be all right with us," we tell them. Now look at all this *fucking* mess!

I never really gave him any choice. One time we tried to discuss leaving. I talked to him about it, but we never really discussed it. I discussed it with Swain and Rockoff. But I never discussed it with him. He stayed because I wanted him to stay. And I stayed because...

I feel like a pig shat in my head.

We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!

Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can't.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. And indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory... This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors! What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel in apprehension! How like a *god*!

The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me… no, nor women neither… Nor women neither.

All right, this is the plan. We get in there and get wrecked, then we'll eat a pork pie, then we'll drop a couple of Surmontil-50's each. That means we'll miss out Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning.

Look at that, accident black spot! These aren't accidents! They're throwing themselves into the road gladly! Throwing themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness!

Throw yourself into the road, darling! You haven't got a chance!

I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze!

I have a heart condition. I have a heart condition, if you hit me it's murder.

My wife is having a baby. Listen, I don't know what my f... acquaintance did to upset you but it's nothing to do with me. I suggest you both go outside and discuss it sensibly, in the street.

Oh, look at this little bastard. "Boy lands plum role for top Italian director" Course he does! Probably on a tenner a day, and I know what for! 2 pound 10 a tit and a fiver for his arse!

This is ridiculous. Look at me, I'm 30 in a month and I've got a sole flapping off my shoe.

Easy for you to say, luvvie, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? It's ridiculous. I've been to drama school. I'm good looking. I tell you, I've a fuck sight more talent that half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can't I get on television?

Will it? That's what you say. The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news.

Listen to this. "Curse of the Superman. I took drugs to win medals says top athlete Geoff Woade."

"In a world exclusive interview, 33 year old shot putter Geoff Woade who weighs 317 pounds, admitted taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, drugs banned in sport. It used to give him bad tempers and act up said his wife. He used to pick on me. But now he's stopped he's much better in our sex life and in our general life." Jesus Christ. This huge, thatched head with its earlobes and cannonball is now considered sane. "Geoff Woade is feeling better and is now prepared to step back into society and start tossing his orb about." Look at him! Look at Geoff Woade! His head must weight fifty pounds on its own. Imagine the size of his balls. Imagine getting into a fight with the fucker!

That's what you'd say, but that wouldn't wash with Geoff. No! He'd like a bit of pleading. Add spice to it. In fact, he'd probably tell you what he was going to do before he did it. "I'm gonna pull you head off." "Oh no, please, don't pull my head off." "I'm gonna pull your head off because I don't like your head."

You're not leaving me in here alone. Those are the kind of windows faces look in at.

At some point or another I want to stop and get hold of a child.

To tutor it in the ways of righteousness, and procure some uncontaminated urine.

This is a device enabling the drunken driver to operate in absolute safety. You fill this with piss, take this pipe down the trouser and sellotape this valve to the end of the old chap. Then you get horribly drunk and they can't fucking touch you. According to these instructions, you refuse everything but a urine sample. You undo your valve and give them a dose of unadulterated child's piss and they have to give you your keys back. Danny's a genius.

How dare you. How *dare* you!

Bastard asked me to understudy Konstantin in The Seagull. I'm not gonna understudy anybody. Especially that little pimp! Anyway, I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow.

How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold.

Look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones. Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels.

I'm utterly arseholed.