Michael Douglas nel ruolo di...
Grady Tripp
- James Leer: Now, that is a big trunk. It holds a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly.
- Grady Tripp: That's just what they used to say in the ads.
- Vernon Hardapple: Why did you keep writing this book if you didn't even know what it was about?
- Grady Tripp: I couldn't stop.
- Terry Crabtree: Let me get this straight. Jerry Nathan owes you money, so as collateral he gives you his car.
- Grady Tripp: Only I'm beginning to think that the car wasn't exactly Jerry's to give.
- Terry Crabtree: Ah, so whose car was it?
- Grady Tripp: My guess? Vernon Hardapple.
- Terry Crabtree: The hood jumper?
- Grady Tripp: He said a few things that lead me to believe that the car was his.
- Terry Crabtree: Such as?
- Grady Tripp: "That's my car, motherfucker."
- Grady Tripp: Okay, James, I wish you hadn't shot my girlfriend's dog. Even though Poe and I weren't exactly what you'd call simpatico, that's no reason he should've taken two in the chest.
- Grady Tripp: I had no business trudging up to James Leer's parents' house in the middle of the night. Not when all that really mattered was trying to make things right with Sarah. But we had decided to rescue James Leer. I wasn't quite sure from what because I was pretty much convinced that everything that came out of James' mouth was basically horseshit. But maybe that really didn't matter. Sometimes people just need to be rescued.
- Hannah Green: Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?
- Grady Tripp: Yeah.
- Hannah Green: And even though you're book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.
- Grady Tripp: Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.
- Terry Crabtree: [after he lost Grady's manuscript] Naturally you have copies.
- Grady Tripp: I have an alternate version of the first chapter.
- James Leer: What are we doing?
- Grady Tripp: I'm gonna get you a nice meal, a couple cups of coffee, then I'm taking you home.
- James Leer: Take me now.
- Grady Tripp: What?
- James Leer: I'm not hungry.
- Grady Tripp: James, you gotta eat.
- James Leer: I'll get something out of the vending machine.
- Grady Tripp: Vending machine? What are you talking about?
- James Leer: At the bus station, they have these cheese sandwiches. They're pretty good. It's better if you take me now. That way, Carl won't get my spot.
- Grady Tripp: Carl?
- James Leer: Never mind.
- Grady Tripp: James, go get us a table, will ya? I'm not letting the most talented writer in my class eat some week-old cheese sandwich, okay?
- [Sara smells Antonia's perfume on Grady's clothes]
- Sara Gaskell: Is that Cristalle?
- Grady Tripp: Mm.
- Sara Gaskell: My God, I wear the same scent as a transvestite.
- [Grady offers James some codiene pills]
- James Leer: No thanks. I'm fine without them.
- Grady Tripp: Right. That's why you were standing in the Chancellor's back yard twirling that little cap gun of yours tonight. You're fine, all right, you're fit as a fucking fiddle.
- Grady Tripp: James like it or not those people out there are your parents.
- James Leer: They're not my parents.
- Grady Tripp: What?
- James Leer: They're my grandparents... my parents are dead.
- Grady Tripp: James the man is obviously your father... you look just like him.
- James Leer: There's a reason for that.
- Oola: I know you. Double Dickel on the rocks. I never forget a drink.
- Grady Tripp: And I never forget an Oola.
- Grady Tripp: [Narrating] So there it was. Somewhere in the night, a Manhattan book editor was prowling the streets of Pittsburgh; best-selling author at his side, dead dog in his trunk.
- Traxler: Say, Professor Tripp, is all that stuff true about Errol Flynn? How he used to put paprika... on his dick... to make it, you know, like... more stimulating... for the chick?
- Grady Tripp: Christ, Traxler, how the hell should *I* know?
- Traxler: [gesturing to James Leer's rucksack that Tripp is holding] You're reading his biography, aren't you?
- Grady Tripp: Oh. No, it's true. He used to rub all sorts of things on it. Salad dressing... ground lamb...
- Traxler: Sick!
- [first lines]
- Grady Tripp: "The young girl sat perfectly still in the confessional listening to her father's boots scrape like chalk on the ancient steps of the church, then grow faint, then disappear altogether. She could sense the priest beyond the grate..." On that particular Friday afternoon, last February, I was reading a story to my Advanced Writers' Workshop by one James Leer, Junior Lit major and sole inhabitant of his own gloomy gulag.
- James Leer: Professor Tripp? Can I ask you a question?
- Grady Tripp: Yeah, James.
- James Leer: What are we going to do with... it?
- Grady Tripp: I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell the Chancellor I murdered her husband's dog.
- James Leer: You?
- Grady Tripp: Trust me, James, when the family pet's been assassinated, the owner doesn't want to hear one of her students was the trigger man.
- James Leer: Does she want to hear it was one of her professors?
- Grady Tripp: ...I've got tenure.
- [Crabtree and a student drag James, hopped up on codeine, out of the auditorium]
- James Leer: The doors made so much noise!
- Grady Tripp: Is he all right?
- James Leer: It was so embarrassing! He had to be carried out.
- Terry Crabtree: He's fine. He's narrating.
- James Leer: They were going to the restroom. But would they make it in time?