- Max Bialystock: How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?
- Franz Liebkind: Nobody ever said a bad word about Winston Churchill, did they? No! "Win with Winnie!" Churchill! With his cigars. With his brandy. And his rotten painting, rotten! Hitler, there was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!
- Roger De Bris: Will the dancing Hitlers please wait in the wings? We are only seeing singing Hitlers.
- Leo Bloom: [Searching for the sure-fire flop] ... Max, let's call it a night. It's two in the morning; I don't know what I'm reading anymore!
- Max Bialystock: Read, read! We've got to find the worst play ever written!
- [reads]
- Max Bialystock: Ah. 'Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to discover that he had been transformed into a giant cockroach.'
- [thinks]
- Max Bialystock: It's too good.
- Leo Bloom: [later] ... Wait a minute... wait a minute - I've read this play. I'm reading plays I read this morning! I can't go on! It's too much! Max, let's face it; we'll never find it!
- Max Bialystock: [laughing] ... O-ho! We'll never find it, huh...?
- [singing]
- Max Bialystock: Rio, Rio by the sea-o, Bialystock and Leo, oh me-oh, oh my...
- [holding a script]
- Max Bialystock: Leo, smell it! See it? Touch it, touch it...
- Leo Bloom: What is it?
- Max Bialystock: What is it! We've struck gold. Not fool's gold, but real gold! The Mother Lode. The Mother of them all! Kiss it, kiss it!
- [Leo does]
- Leo Bloom: You found a flop?
- Max Bialystock: A flop! That's putting it mildly. We've found a disaster, a catastrophe, an outrage! A guaranteed-to-close-in-one-night beauty. This is freedom from want forever. This is a house in the country. This is a Rolls Royce and a Bentley. This is wine, women, and song... and women.
- Leo Bloom: Let's see it.
- [reading]
- Leo Bloom: ... 'Springtime For Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden.' Wow...!
- Max Bialystock: Wow! It's practically a love-letter to Hitler!
- Leo Bloom: This won't run an WEEK!
- Max Bialystock: A week! Are you kidding? This has got to close on page four!
- Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings!
- Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?
- Max Bialystock: You have exactly ten seconds to change that look of disgusting pity into one of enormous respect!
- Women in Theatre; investor: [during the Springtime for Hitler performance] Will you please, shut up!
- Franz Liebkind: You shut up! You are the audience! I am the author! I OUTRANK you!
- Roger De Bris: Ah, Bialystock and Bloom, I presume! Heh heh, forgive the pun!
- Leo Bloom: [to Max] What pun?
- Max Bialystock: Shut up, he thinks he's witty.
- Roger De Bris: What have you done, L.S.D.?
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: About six months... but I'm on probation, so it's all good, baby!
- Roger De Bris: No, I mean, what do you do best?
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: I can't do that here. That's why they put me away, baby!
- The landlord: He who signs a lease must pay rent. That's the law.
- Max Bialystock: You miserable wretch! How dare you take the last penny out of a poor man's pocket?
- The landlord: I have to. I'm a landlord.
- Max Bialystock: [to God] Oh, Lord, hear my plea; destroy him! He maketh a blight on the land!
- The landlord: [also to God] Don't listen to him; he's crazy.
- Drunk: Eternally grateful... A TOAST!
- Max Bialystock: A TOAST!
- Leo Bloom: A TOAST... to what?
- Drunk: To... to toast, I love toast.
- Max Bialystock: To toast.
- Leo Bloom: To toast.
- Leo Bloom: Let's assume, just for the moment, that you are a dishonest man.
- Max Bialystock: Assume away.
- Leo Bloom: It's very easy. You raise more money than you need.
- Max Bialystock: What do you mean?
- Leo Bloom: Well, you did it yourself, only you did it on a very small scale.
- Max Bialystock: What did I do?
- Leo Bloom: You raised $2,000 more than you needed to produce your last play.
- Max Bialystock: So? What did it get me? *I'm wearing a CARDBOARD BELT*!
- Leo Bloom: Well, that's where you made your mistake: you didn't go all the way. You see, if you were a truly bold criminal, you could've raised a million.
- Max Bialystock: But the play cost me only $60,000 to produce!
- Leo Bloom: And how long did it run?
- Max Bialystock: One night.
- Leo Bloom: You see? You see what I'm trying to tell you? You could've raised a million dollars, put on your $60,000 flop, and kept the rest.
- Max Bialystock: But what if the play was a hit?
- Leo Bloom: Well, then you'd go to jail. See, once the play's a hit, you have to pay off all the backers, and with so many backers, there could never be enough profits to go around. Get it?
- Max Bialystock: Uh-huh. A-ha! So, in order for this scheme to work, we'd have to find a sure-fire flop!
- Leo Bloom: What scheme?
- Max Bialystock: What scheme! YOUR scheme, you bloody little genius!
- Leo Bloom: I meant no scheme. I merely posed a little academic accounting theory; it was just a thought.
- Max Bialystock: Bloom, worlds are turned on such thoughts!
- Franz Liebkind: Baby! Baby!... Why does he say this "baby"? The Führer has never said "baby". I did not write, "baby". What is it with this, "baby"?
- Max Bialystock: You're an accountant! You're in a noble profession! The word "count" is part of your title!
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: [singing] And I give a flower to the big fat cop / He takes his club and he beats me up / I give a flower to the garbage man / He stuffs my girl in the garbage can / And I give it to the landlord when the rent comes 'round / He throws it in the toilet and he flush it down / It goes into the sewer / With the yuck runnin' through 'er / And it runs into the river that we drink / Hey, world, YOU STINK! Ugh! Man it's later than you think! Girl you got just one more chance/ Come on baby while I dance!
- [dances]
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: [speaking] You don't think 'bout no little flowers! Oh no, all you think about is guns. If everybody in the world today had a flower instead of a gun, there would be no wars. There would be one big smell-in. Just the flowers...!
- [rips his flowers in half]
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: Hey, man, my flower... My flower. What'd you do to my flower, man? You hurt it, like everything else... Everything else... flowers.
- [he sits down onstage and starts eating a banana, then sucks his thumb]
- Max Bialystock: THAT'S OUR HITLER!
- Max Bialystock: Bloom, I'm drowning. Other men sail through life, Bialystock has struck a reef. Bloom, I'm going under. I'm condemned by a society that demands success when all I can offer is failure. Bloom, I'm reaching out to you. Don't send me to prison... HEEELLP!
- Franz Liebkind: [runs backstage to try to stop the play]
- Stagehand: Hey, what can I do for you?
- Franz Liebkind: You will please be unconscious.
- [hits him on the head]
- Max Bialystock: This pin used to hold a pearl the size of your eye. Look at me now, LOOK AT ME NOW! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!
- Concierge: Who d'ya want?
- Leo Bloom: I beg your pardon?
- Concierge: Who d'ya want? Nobody gets in the building unless I know who they want. I'm the "concierge". My husband used to be the "concierge", but he's dead. Now I'M the "concierge".
- Max Bialystock: We are seeking Franz Liebkind.
- Concierge: Oh... the Kraut! He's on the top floor, apartment 23.
- Max Bialystock: Thank you...
- Concierge: ...But you won't find him there... he's up on the roof with his boids. He keeps boids. Dirty... disgusting... filthy... lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!... You get my drift?
- Leo Bloom: We... uh... get your "drift". Thank you, madam.
- Concierge: I'm not a "madam"! I'm a "concierge"!
- [Leo Bloom walks in on Bialystock romancing Holdmethouchme]
- Leo Bloom: Oh my God!
- Max Bialystock: You mean "oops," don't you? Just say "oops" and get out!
- Leo Bloom: ''stammering'' Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a
- Max Bialystock: Not "Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a" Oops!
- Leo Bloom: Oops!
- [slams the door]
- [singing as Hitler in the play]
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: One and one's two/ Two and two's four/ I feel so bad 'cause I'm losin' the war!
- Leo Bloom: I would like to say something, your Honor. Not in my behalf, but in reference to my partner, Mr. Bialystock.
- Judge: Proceed.
- Leo Bloom: Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury - Max Bialystock is the most... selfish man I ever met in my life.
- Max Bialystock: [whispering angrily] Don't help me!
- Leo Bloom: Not only is he a liar, and a cheat, and a scoundrel and a crook, who has taken money from little old ladies, but he's also talked people into doing things, especially me, that they would never, in a thousand years have dreamed of doing! But, your Honor, as I understand it, the law was created to protect people from being wronged. Your Honor, whom has Max Bialystock wronged? I mean, who has he really hurt? Not me. Not me. I was... this man... No one ever called me 'Leo' before! I mean, I know it's not a big legal point, but even in kindergarten they used to call me 'Bloom!' I never sang a song before! I mean with someone else, I never sang a song with someone else before. This man... This man... this is a wonderful man! He made me what I am today. He did. And what of the dear ladies? What would their lives have been without Max Bialystock? Max Bialystock, who made them feel young, and attractive, and wanted again? That's all I have to say.
- [the court applauds enthusiastically]
- Judge: [banging] Order, order.
- Max Bialystock: [standing] And may I humbly add, your Honor, that we've learned our lesson. And we'll never do it again.
- [cut to Max and Leo in prison]
- Max Bialystock: Leo, how much percentage of a play can there be all together?
- Leo Bloom: Max, you can only sell a hundred percent of anything.
- Max Bialystock: And how much of 'Springtime for Hitler' have we sold?
- Leo Bloom: Twenty-five thousand percent.
- Max Bialystock: All right. All right. All right. The Contessa and the Chauffeur.
- [makes car noises]
- Hold me, Touch me: So the Count hired you this morning, Rudolfo? Watch the road. Watch the road.
- Max Bialystock: [stops making car noises] can't take my eyes off you! How can I drive when you drive me mad? Mad!
- Hold me, Touch me: [giggles] Rudolfo, you dirty pig!
- [seriously]
- Hold me, Touch me: Pull over.
- Max Bialystock: [eating a hot dog] Hm, excellent! Please tender our compliments to the chef.
- Hot Dog Vendor: Please tender half a buck!
- Hold me, Touch me: And after that, we'll play, "The Abduction and the Cruel Rape of Lucretia", and I'll be Lucretia.
- Max Bialystock: And I'll be Rape!
- Max Bialystock: That's exactly why we want to produce this play. To show the world the true Hitler, the Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his heart.
- Franz Liebkind: Gentlemen. Ve have here a technical problem. Hmm? I do not know if vat ve have here is ze quick burning fuse or ze slow buring fuse. Ja, ja, I must find zis out.
- [snips dynamite fuse]
- Franz Liebkind: Zis is critical.
- [lights fuse with match]
- Franz Liebkind: Ha ha ha, ja ja, you see zis? You see zis here vat I have told you? Yeah, zis is an example of smartness here. I have said that zis is ze quick fuse. Huh? And zis IS ze quick fuse.
- [pause]
- All: THE QUICK FUSE!
- [explosion]
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: [after Goebbels throws a reefer into a vase, and a large explosion occurs] They try; man, how they try!
- Max Bialystock: Till Thursday. Thursday. Until Thursday, then, you bawdy wench.
- Hold me, Touch me: Oh, hold me! Touch me!
- Max Bialystock: Thursday! Thursday!
- Roger De Bris: Wait! This is a decision that could affect my entire life! I shall have to think about it.
- [pauses for one second]
- Roger De Bris: I'll do it.
- Max Bialystock: Roger, did you have a chance to read "Springtime for Hitler?"
- Roger De Bris: [emerges from behind a partition wearing a dress] Remarkable, remarkable! A stunning piece of work.
- Leo Bloom: [under his breath] Max... he's wearing a dress.
- Max Bialystock: No kidding.
- Roger De Bris: Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that... Oh dear, you're staring at my dress. I should explain. We are going to the choreographer's ball tonight and there's a prize for the best costume.
- Carmen Giya: And we always win!
- Roger De Bris: I don't know about tonight. I'm supposed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, but I think I look more like Tugboat Annie. What do you think, Mr. Bloom?
- Leo Bloom: ...Where do you keep your wallet?
- Hold me, Touch me: I can't abide a peeping Tom. There's one in the apartment just opposite my bedroom window. I swear, that man never takes his field glasses off me, not for a minute. Feeling better?
- Max Bialystock: Yes.
- Hold me, Touch me: Good.
- [locking the door to Max's office]
- Hold me, Touch me: Let's fool around.
- Franz Liebkind: Gentlemen, it is magic time. Good luck. Good luck. Tonight, Broadway; tomorrow...
- [makes shape of globe with hands]
- Max Bialystock: [after Liebkind has gone in] So much for Nazi Fagin.
- [performing in the play]
- Doc Goebbels: [on stage] Danke schön, mein Führer.
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: [as Hitler] Hey, you're a German.
- Doc Goebbels: We're all Germans.
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: That's right.
- [gasps]
- Lorenzo St. DuBois: That means we *cannot* attack Germany.
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