Donald Sutherland: Alex Morrison

Alex in Wonderland

Alex Morrison

Alex Morrison: Who's the best? On the scale of ten.
Andre: Ten is the best, right? Virginia was a ten. Is, is. There was a Greek chick once I had, uh, she was a ten. No, I guess she was a nine and a half.
Alex Morrison: What's Cherie?
Andre: Two.
[Alex laughs]
Andre: I don't care.
Alex Morrison: Beth's about an eight.
Andre: Eight is great for a wife.
Alex Morrison: Maybe a ten, I don't know.

Alex Morrison: If you have three kinds of food, three kinds of food, only three kinds of food that you can have for the rest of your life, what three foods would you pick?
Nancy: Potato chips, enchiladas and tacos.
Alex Morrison: You're gonna need a lot of water, sweetheart. A lot of water.

[first lines]
Alex Morrison: "To be or not to be that is, the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind "o suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing, end them. To die. To sleep, no more. And by a sleep, to say we end the heartache - and the thousand" something "that flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die.To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub." And then he says, he says when he says "perchance to dream" he means suddenly, of course, to die, maybe to die as to the same as to sleeping. And if it's sleeping then it's to dream and to - to dream he doesn't want to do, you know, because his head is all full of things.

Andre: You want a movie? Read the bible. Every page is a movie. Solomon, that was the cat who had 750 wives and 350 concubines, virgins without number. The smartest man in the world. The richest man in the world. Women, he had the most women in the world. They say he drank gold dust so he could come 250 times a night.
Alex Morrison: It's your dream.
Andre: No, it's not my dream It's not my dream. My dream is to find a woman, a wife, a mother for my children. You're a lucky man. You got a good woman.
Alex Morrison: You could have a good woman if you looked at chicks that were a little older than 16.
Andre: 16 is biblical.

Andre: There's still time. Right?
Gene: Yeah, there's still time. There's always time. There's always time, there's still time.
Andre: There's time for this, time for that. Time for eatin', time for fast.
Alex Morrison: Time for a movie about a cat.

Alex Morrison: I'd like to do a picture about Christ. Sydney Poitier as Christ. He was probably black anyway. I'll do a picture about Sidney with Christ as Sidney. If I went with a black lead, I'll go with white cameraman. Or a white lead with black cameraman. Or black cutter with white producer. Or a black and white film with a Technicolor producer. It's wide open, all the possibilities.

Hal Stern: I see Huckleberry Finn as a 17-year old kid. 16, 17, 18. A revolutionary. The kid whose got his head right where it's at. Revolutionary in a black man, that hasn't changed. I see it with music. Bert Brecht, Kurt Weill, that kind of feeling. Contemporary. Social comment. America is the shore. Coming down the raft as a black man - what's on the shore? What is America?
Alex Morrison: Absolutely.
Hal Stern: Racism, fascism, police brutality, that's the shore.
Alex Morrison: Yeah.
Hal Stern: Crap! But coming down the raft: black man, revolutionary, dreaming.

Alex Morrison: I'm a director from California and you are to me the greatest director in the world. From "Variety Lights" to "I Vitelloni" ,"La strada", "La Dolce Vita", "8 1/2", "Satyricon".
Federico Fellini: You left out "The White Sheik", "Il bidone" and "Nights of Cabiria".
Alex Morrison: Oh, yes. and "Juliet of the Spirits", "Nights of Cabiria".

Alex Morrison: How much?
Beth Morrison: 200,000.
Alex Morrison: Oh, that's insanity!
Beth Morrison: I know. I know. But the agents had all these houses start at ridiculous figures and then it could come down to, like, a 125,000. You just can't go by the asking price.
Alex Morrison: You can tell him that I'm not even gonna look at a house that starts at $200,000. And you can tell him that I told him so.

Amy: Do you ever wonder if you're real?
Alex Morrison: You mean if am me. If, uh, if what me is - is really what I am?
Amy: Well, like sometimes when I get up in the morning and I look at my fingers, and I wonder who I am - you know and why. It's like a miracle to be on this earth.
Alex Morrison: Do you think about dying?
Amy: Sometimes, but, you know.
Alex Morrison: What do you think?
Amy: What's gonna happen and everything and - it might be better than, you know, living. Nobody knows.
Alex Morrison: Do you think that you ever were something else?
Amy: Sometimes.
Alex Morrison: We're all alike. Each of us is a - we are like, each of us, each of us is like a God.
Amy: We are?
Alex Morrison: [laughs] Eat your banana.

Alex Morrison: What does it mean to you - when you see that? What - what do you feel when you see that, when you see two people, a man and woman, come together and kiss.
Amy: It means they must like each other.
Alex Morrison: They like each other - or they are attracted to each other? Or they feel something, a kind of energy in themselves - for each other. When, when the boy you like at school - when you, when you see him, what - what do you feel?
Amy: Nothing. I don't know.
Alex Morrison: Oh, you do. What do you feel?
Amy: I don't know.
Alex Morrison: Well, but, do you feel warm?
Amy: I feel happy.
Alex Morrison: And your eyes feel good?
Amy: Yeah.
Alex Morrison: Do you know what it feels like in your eyes?
Amy: I don't know.
Alex Morrison: It's important that you understand that. It is important that you feel - free about that, that loving is really a sensationally, marvelous, wonderful thing.

Mrs. Morrison - Mother: My big-shot son will listen to anybody. but when his mother says anything, it's a crime.
Alex Morrison: It's not what you say, mama, it's what you do. I have a wife, I have children, and I have a mother. And these are three separate things.
Mrs. Morrison - Mother: I'm a thing. Your mother is a thing.

Alex Morrison: I beg your pardon.
Jeanne Moreau: For what?
Alex Morrison: For staring. You are Jeanne Moreau, aren't you?
Jeanne Moreau: Yes.
Alex Morrison: I never walk up to actresses. I, uh, I never do. I'm - I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but I, uh, I can't help myself. I - I love your work. I think you're fantastic talent. "Jules et Jim", "La Notte", "The Bride Wore Black," " Les amants." Brilliant! brilliant, brilliant, brilliant work!

Alex Morrison: Believe me, it can work. You get - you get the whole youth movement. You get the STS in it. You get the - you get the, eh, you get the Chicano brothers. You get the Indian brothers.
Leo: You get the Gay brothers.
Alex Morrison: You got 'em all involved!

Alex Morrison: I wanna do a movie about - I wanna do something important. I wanna do a movie about life, about...
Amy: Do a movie about us.
Alex Morrison: That's "8 1/2".
Beth Morrison: I have to cook breakfast.
Alex Morrison: You've absolutely no interest in anything that I am trying to do!