Linda Hunt: Billy Kwan
Photos
Quotes
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Billy Kwan : What then must we do? We must give with love to whoever God has placed in our path.
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Billy Kwan : -Don't think about the major issues. You do what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your light to the sum of all light.
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Billy Kwan : If it's in focus, it's pornography, if it's out of focus, it's art.
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Billy Kwan : I would have given up the world for her. You wouldn't even give up one story.
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Billy Kwan : Krishna says to him, "All is clouded by desire, Arjuna, as a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. From these, it blinds the soul."
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Kumar : At least they will give us discipline.
Billy Kwan : Stalin had good Discipline. He wiped out 10 million.
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Billy Kwan : We'll make a great team, old man. You for the words, me for the pictures. I can be your eyes.
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Billy Kwan : [Despairing over a shift in Guy Hamilton's values] Why can't you give yourself? Why can't you learn to love?
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Billy Kwan : I believed in you. I thought you were a man of light. That's why I gave you those stories you think are so important. I made you see things. I made you feel something about is right. I gave you my trust. So did Jill. I created you.
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Billy Kwan : [as Billy and Guy enter a very poor area] "And the people asked Him, saying, 'What shall we do then?"'
Guy Hamilton : What's that?
Billy Kwan : It's from Luke. Chapter 3, verse 10. "What then must we do?" Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
Guy Hamilton : Wouldn't do any good. Just be a drop in the ocean.
Billy Kwan : Ah. That's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to. I disagree.
Guy Hamilton : What's your solution?
Billy Kwan : Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think that's naïve?
Guy Hamilton : Yup.
Billy Kwan : It's all right. Most journalists do.
Guy Hamilton : We can't afford to get involved.
Billy Kwan : Typical journo's answer.
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Billy Kwan : Most of us become children again when we enter the slums of Asia. And last night I watched you walk back into childhood. With all its opposite intensities: laughter and misery, the crazy and the grim, toy town and a city of fear.
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Pete Curtis : Let me ask you something. I've worried about this since you got here. What do you do for sex?
Guy Hamilton : You're worried about that?
Pete Curtis : Whenever I hit the front page, I get a hard-on. So what do you do? I go up to the cemetery.
Guy Hamilton : [chuckling] Are you a necrophiliac?
Billy Kwan : It's where the prostitutes hang out.
Pete Curtis : Fantastic girls, Hamilton. Best value-for-your-money ass in Asia. I'll take you up there right now, huh?
Guy Hamilton : Some other time.
Wally O'Sullivan : Wise man.
Kevin Condon : They're riddled with VD.
Pete Curtis : You never heard of penicillin? You will love this action. You want to spend the night? Costs you one dollar.
Billy Kwan : Starvation's a great aphrodisiac.
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Billy Kwan : Are you going to this?
Guy Hamilton : You're joking.
Billy Kwan : You might learn something.
Guy Hamilton : I doubt it. The British don't let much slip.
Billy Kwan : Oh, yes they do. They're just more subtle. You ought to listen harder.
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Billy Kwan : But the one great advantage of being a dwarf is that you can be wiser than other people and no one envies you.
Guy Hamilton : You're not a dwarf.
Billy Kwan : That's what I like about you, Guy. You really don't care, do you? Or, maybe you just don't see.
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Billy Kwan : What do you think of her?
Guy Hamilton : Who?
Guy Hamilton : [Kwan indicates a photo of Jill] Not my type.
Billy Kwan : Oh. Why's that?
Guy Hamilton : It's her attitude. You know how the British can be so damn superior? It's like the colonel with his gin, tonic and ice.
Billy Kwan : Jill is not like that at all.
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Billy Kwan : [narrating, from the pages of his personal files that he keeps on various people] Bryant, Jillian Edith. Nationality: British. Born: 1938, under the sign of Pisces. Occupation: Assistant to military attaché... British Embassy, Jakarta. Former postings: Brussels, Singapore.
Billy Kwan : [continues] Little religious feeling, yet has a reverence for life. This is a spirit like a wavering flame which only needs care to burn high. If this does not happen, she could lapse into the promiscuity and bitterness of the failed romantic.
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Billy Kwan : The unseen is all around us - particularly here in Java.
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Billy Kwan : That's the real Jakarta. Scrounging for a few handfuls of rice to keep them alive another day. That's a story you journalists don't tell in your reports.
Guy Hamilton : Well, nobody wants to hear it.
Billy Kwan : Tell them anyway!
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Billy Kwan : You like my puppets? If you want to understand Java, you have to understand Wayang: the sacred shadow play. The puppet master is a priest. That's why they call Sukarno the great puppet master - balancing the left with the right. Their shadows are souls and the screen is heaven. You must watch their shadows, not the puppets. The right in constant struggle with left. The forces of light and darkness in endless balance. In the West we want answers for everything. Everything is right or wrong. Good or bad. But, in wayang, no such final conclusions exists.
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Billy Kwan : Here, on the quiet page, I'm master. Just as I'm master in the darkroom, stirring my prints in a magic developing bath. I shuffle like cards the lives I deal with. Their faces stare out at me. People who will become old, betray their dreams, become ghosts.
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Billy Kwan : [at his typewriter] Here, on the quiet page, I am the master.
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Billy Kwan : You're an enemy here, Hamilton. Like all westerners. President Sukarno tells the West to, "Go to Hell!" And, today, Sukarno is the voice of the third world.
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Billy Kwan : Don't take it personally. You're just a symbol of the West.
Guy Hamilton : I feel more like a spittoon.
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Billy Kwan : What do you think?
Jill Bryant : About what?
Billy Kwan : Hamilton!
Jill Bryant : Oh, cheeky.
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[first lines]
Billy Kwan : June 25th, 1965. Dossier H-10. Hamilton, Guy. Born 1936 under the sign of Capricorn. Occupation: Journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Service. Jakarta: first assignment as foreign correspondent.
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Jill Bryant : [after Colonel Henderson challenges Guy to a swimming race] When Ralph says race, he means it.
Colonel Henderson : Well, there's no sense in being half-hearted.
Billy Kwan : Games are a serious business with the English. Right, Colonel?
Colonel Henderson : They have their place.