“Bullets Over Broadway” quotes
(1994)
Woody Allen
directed this movie
in 1994
Title Bullets Over Broadway
Year 1994
Director Woody Allen
Genre Comedy, Crime
Year 1994
Director Woody Allen
Genre Comedy, Crime
Plot – David Shayne, a playwright with an overblown opinion of himself, asks Julian Marx to produce his most recent work. Marx's condition for the deal is that the cast must include Olive Neal, a vulgar, ignorant aspiring actress "friend" of gangster Nick Valenti. The gangster provides the money to make the show and with part of that money Marx engages Helen Sinclair, a star whose career is waning. Despite Olive's terrible acting skills, everything proceeds normally. However Cheech, the gangster's bodyguard as well as a genius playwright, realizes the faults in the play and strives to make the script more realistic, prompting first embarrassment and then amazement in Shayne. Helen Sinclair ends up manifesting very explicitly reciprocated admiration for the author, while Olive has fun with fellow actor Warner Purcell, who suffers from melancholy bulimia. Cheech warns Purcell to leave Olive alone. The gangster, who now sees the play as his own, does not tolerate the havoc that Olive does to it well and after the play's successful debut in the province and her replacement for illness, he realizes that the play is perfect without her and removes her from the cast by shooting her. Cheech stands up to an enraged Shayne, who for his part does not report him to the police. However, Cheech cannot keep up the story of a gang war to explain Olive's death to Valenti. For this reason the gangster has the bodyguard killed during another successful show. The dying Cheech tells Shayne a passionate new ending. Realising that writing plays is not for him and that Helen Sinclair's love is not real, David returns home to his long time girlfriend Ellen and abandons the difficult art of the playwright.
All actors – John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri, Mary-Louise Parker, Jack Warden, Joe Viterelli, Rob Reiner, Tracey Ullman, Jim Broadbent, Harvey Fierstein, Stacey Nelkin, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska, Charles Cragin, Nina von Arx, Edie Falco, Hope W. Sacharoff, Debi Mazar, Brian McConnachie, Tony Sirico, Victor Colicchio, Louis Eppolito, Gene Canfield, Peter Castellotti, Tony Conforti, John Di Benedetto, John Ventimiglia, Lisa Arturo, Rachel Black Spaulding, Alison Cramer, Kelly Groninger, Jennifer Lamberts, Carol Lee Meadows, Jo Telford, Meghan Strange, Leigh Torlage, Debra Wiseman, Paul Herman, James Reno, Gerald Edward Dolezar, Shannah Laumeister, Fran McGee, Annie Joe Edwards, Kernan Bell, Nick Iacovino, Frank Aquilino, Sohrab Ardeshir, Molly Regan, Phil Stein, John Doumanian, Dayle Haddon, Tony Darrow, Howard Erskine, Benay Venuta, Ken Roberts, Jennifer Van Dyck, Peter McRobbie, , José Alvarez, John Hoyt, Jeff Mazzola, Patty Sherman, Rick Washburn
show all“Bullets Over Broadway” Quotes 26 quotes
“For me, love is very deep, sex only has to go a few inches.”
“He's working on a vehicle for Helen for next season. She plays Jesus' mother. It's a whole Oedipul thing. He loves her... wants to do in the father... well you can see the complications.”
“- Sheldon Flender: I have never had a play produced. That's right. And I've written one play a year for the past twenty years.
- David Shayne: Yes, but that's because you're a genius. And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent. Means you're a genius.”“Look who's here. The big Broadway success. I don't write hits. My plays are art. They're written specifically to go unproduced.”
- Olive: Hey, didn't I tell you to make "horse durves"?
- Venus: I don't make nothin' out of horses, especially "horse durves", 'cause I don't know what they are, and neither do you.“- Helen Sinclair: Two martinis please, very dry.
- David Shayne: How'd you know what I drank?
- Helen Sinclair: Oh, you want one too? Three.”“Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do?”
“- David Shayne: Maybe Olive's got stage fright. Maybe she won't show.
- Julian Marx: Not Olive. That dame doesn't have a nerve in her body. I don't think her spinal cord touches her brain.”“- Nick: These are black pearls.
- Olive: Oh, don't give me that. I never heard of black pearls.
- Nick: Just because you never heard of them it doesn't mean they don't exist.
- Olive: What do you think I am, some kind of chump? They're black, for God's sake. They probably came from defective oysters.”“- Helen Sinclair: Make love to me.
- David Shayne: Here? Now?
- Helen Sinclair: I see no reason to wait.
- David Shayne: Jerome Kern is on the other side of the door.
- Helen Sinclair: Yes, he's a wonderful composer. You'll have to meet him. Now hang up your pants.”“- David Shayne: I studied playwrighting with every teacher, I read every book...
- Cheech: Let me tell you somethin' about teachers. I hate teachers. Those blue-haired bitches used to whack us with rulers. Forget teachers.”- Helen Sinclair: I do plays put on by Balasco, or Sam Harris, not some Yiddish pant salesman turned producer. My ex-husband used to say, "If you're gonna go down, go down with the best of them".
- Sid Loomis: Which ex-husband?
- Helen Sinclair: Oh, I don't know which ex-husband. The one with the moustache.“- David Shayne: Was there nothing in the original draft that you feel was worth saving?
- Helen Sinclair: The stage directions were lucid. Best I've ever seen... and the color of the binder. Good choice.
- David Shayne: Thank you. I've always had a flair for stage directions.”“- Sheldon Flender: I'm gonna give you some advice. The same advice that was given to me many years ago when I had a very similar dilemma.
- David Shayne: Similar to mine. To...
- Sheldon Flender: Yes. Yes.
- David Shayne: What did you do? What?
- Sheldon Flender: You gotta do what you gotta do.”“- David Shayne: Your taste is exquisite.
- Helen Sinclair: My taste is superb. My eyes are exquisite.”- Nick: Sorry you guys had to hear that. Some problems with the firm.
- David Shayne: Really? What type of firm is it, Nick?
- Nick: It's a "don't stick your nose in other people's business and it won't get broken" type of firm.“- Olive: Why do you have to be so masso... masso...
- David Shayne: Masochistic.
- Olive: Masochistic? What the does that mean?
- David Shayne: It means someone who enjoys pain.
- Olive: Enjoys pain? What is she, retarded?”“You stand on the brink of greatness. The world will open to you like an oyster. No... not like an oyster. The world will open to you like a magnificent vagina.”
“- Eden Brent: There you are. Mr. Purcell, you have been stealing our dog yummies and eating them.
- Warner Purcell: Absolutely not. That's an outrageous suggestion.
- Eden Brent: Then let me see in your pockets.
- Warner Purcell: Would I eat dog food?
- Eden Brent: You'd eat anything that didn't eat you first, you big fat pot of helium.”“Guilt is petit-bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe.”
“She's perky all right. She makes you want to sneak up behind her with a pillow and suffocate her.”
“Sylvia Pincus. Big fat Jewish broad, had a little tiny husband. She chopped him up with an ax and mailed his pieces all over the country. I don't know what she was tryin' to prove.”
“- Helen Sinclair: I haven't had a drink since New Year's Eve.
- Sid Loomis: You're talking Chinese New Year's.
- Helen Sinclair: Naturally. Still, that's two days, Sid! You know how long that is for me?”“- Cheech: They taught me how to read and write in school before I burned it down.
- David Shayne: You burned down your school?
- Cheech: Yeah, it was Lincoln's birthday. There was nobody there.”“Suddenly I'm taking suggestions from some strong-arm man with an IQ of minus 50.”
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