Ross McElwee credited as playing...
Self
- Ross McElwee: I filmed, um, Dee Dee washing her dog, and I filmed, um, Steve going to the music company where he used to work.
- Ross's father: There, now. How is that going to be useful?
- Ross McElwee: In this film?
- Ross's father: Just in any film.
- [Ross and Charleen walk through overgrown ruins]
- Ross McElwee: The place is like a tomb.
- Charleen: No, it's not. It's like pubic hair. Part, part the bushes. Go into the place. Go with it, Ross. It's not like a tomb. That's the trouble with you. You don't know the difference between sex and death.
- Ross McElwee: Sex and death?
- Charleen: Sex and death! This is life! This is, man, you can't even tell it when it sits on your face, you can't tell which it is.
- Ross McElwee: It seems I'm filming my life in order to have a life to film, like some primitive organism that somehow nourishes itself by devouring itself, growing as it diminishes.
- [commenting on graffiti]
- Charleen: This is the way women - want to hear men talk to them. Now, see, Becky knows how to talk. "I love you and I can't help it and I don't care who knows it." What is she saying? "I give you my life and heart." This is the way I want you to talk to Dee Dee. This is what... This is the language women can understand. That's what they believe. They experience it in their own lives.
- Ross McElwee: Well, not all women, I mean...
- Charleen: Well, the only women I know believe that. That's the only way I can... could... understand you...
- Ross McElwee: But, I felt that way about a couple of people. It doesn't solve everything. That's the point. It doesn't guarantee...
- Charleen: You never solve everything, Ross. You never solve everything. The only thing you've got is a chance for a few passionate hits. You see how foolish it all is. You see what the army comes to. The bunkers, the island, the burned-out house. Hell, it's all a tragedy. It's just a matter of how you get through it. And the most interesting way to get through it is to say, "I can't help it. I'm full of passion and I'm gonna die this moment." It's the only way to pretend you're alive. It's the only way to - not be alone and depressed. You've got to kid yourself and you've got to kid her and then you'll both believe it.
- Ross McElwee: Its three in the morning and I can't sleep. I keep wondering how I should have responded to Pat's comment about not wearing any underpants. I mean that's not like telling someone you're not wearing any socks. Also, I've begun having my dreams about nuclear war again.
- Ross McElwee: In another way in which there were many failures, all of my love relationships have been a disasters - which could be, said to be the equivalent, you know, of trying to start of lumber business or a real estate business that failed terribly. I mean, that's also...
- Wini: Ross! There's no analogy between a real estate business and a love affair.
- Ross McElwee: It's a little like looking into a mirror and trying to see what you look like when you're not really looking at your own reflection.
- [last lines]
- Ross McElwee: [voiceover] After the concert I thought things over, and then somewhat cautiously asked her if she'd like to see a movie with me on the following weekend.
- Ross McElwee: Two years ago I was shooting a documentary film on the linger affects of Sherman's March on the South. I'm from the South and all through my childhood I heard stories about how Sherman had devastated the South. My Aunt even keeps a sofa in her attic, which is punctured by sword holes put there by Sherman's soldiers as they searched for hidden valuables. She says she'll never allow the holes to be sown up. Anyway, I just got a grant to make my film and I stopped off in New York from Boston, where I live, to stay for a few days with the woman I"d been seeing. But, when I arrived she told me she'd just decided to go back to her former boyfriend. We argued and then I left and went to stay alone in a friend's studio loft which happened to be vacant at the time. Finally, I headed South to see my family and to try to begin my film.
- Ross McElwee: For a long time the consensus among my family members is that what I really need to do is find what they call: a nice Southern girl. And things will be fine.
- Ross McElwee: For a long time I've had this notion that love was possible - I mean, romantic love, you know, two people falling deeply in love with each other and somehow managing to stay together for more than two weeks. But time after time it seems that a woman would get involved with me and want some sort of commitment and I would decide that it was not right or vice versa. And no matter how passionate things were in the beginning, there was never an equilibrium and nothing ever seemed to last. At any rate, I find myself slipping back into listless contemplation of my single status.
- Ross McElwee: Pat's family seems to like me a lot. Probably because they think of me as: a nice Southern boy.
- Ross McElwee: You're in love with Will and you say that he's impossible, you know, beats you...
- Pat: He doesn't beat me. No, he really doesn't beat me. He pushes me around and he's threatened to throw me out of a sixth floor window of my apartment, twice. I mean, I don't have a bruise from it.
- Ross McElwee: Well, why do you put up with it? I don't understand?
- Pat: Because he has my heart.
- Ross McElwee: As for me, I keep thinking that perhaps I should return to my original plan to make a film about Sherman's March; but, I can't seem to stop filming Pat.
- Ross McElwee: Both my life and my film seem to be in limbo. For three days I've stayed locked up in my motel room watching re-runs of "Beverly Hillbillies" and "Love Boat." In an attempt to get things moving again I decide to go sightseeing.
- Ross McElwee: I haven't skated since I was about eight years old.
- Claudia: It'll all come back to you. Its just like riding a bicycle or making love, you never forget. If you've done it once, you can do it again.
- Claudia: That's where they are gonna put the tennis court. Is right down there.
- Ross McElwee: So, they will be able to play tennis in case of a nuclear attack.
- Claudia: Right. They'll have everything they need up here in case of a nuclear attack, to survive in style.
- Ross McElwee: I'm really intrigued by William Tecumseh Sherman. I think he's one of history's tragic figures. I mean, you have the irony of this man who, you know, was, spent four years in Charleston, South Carolina and called those years the best years of his life. Later spent time in New Orleans. Loved the South. Loved the people of the South. And then, during the Civil War, was ordered to wage war against the South. And not just, you know, conventional warfare, as it was practiced at that time; but, total warfare against a civilian population. He fought it very well. And - was thought generally to be ruthless and cruel and - and - um - totally - um - unkind; but, what people don't realize is that Sherman was actually very insecure. He was - he was plagued by anxiety, by - by insomnia. He wrote to his brother about - about how he thought he - contemplated suicide. But, somehow, despite all these - these - um - fallibilities, Sherman waged war brilliantly against the South and brought the South to its knees. So, then, what did he do? He offered the South exceedingly generous terms of surrender. Frankly, much more generous than the South deserved. And what did this get him? William Stanton, the Secretary of State at that time, publicly rebuked Sherman and rescinded the terms of his surrender. The terms of surrender that he had granted to the South. Humiliated Sherman. The papers of the North, the politicians in the North, branded Sherman - *branded* Sherman; incompetent and a traitor. So, here you had this man who - who was reviled in the South, hated in the South - he still is today, I can't talk about him around here - and yet, um, also rebuked in the North, despite his victory. Sherman retired from the army and vowed never to set foot in Washington, DC, again and went back to his native Ohio. He's a very, very tragic figure: William Tecumseh Sherman.
- Wini: I told you that for a very long time I believed that the only important things in life were linguistics and sex. Its easy to see how one would get involved with a Linguistics professor.
- Ross McElwee: Do you still believe that?
- Wini: Well, I think there are other important things. I'm very fond of this cow.
- Wini: Was the March to the Sea an attempt to show people that he wasn't a failure?
- Ross McElwee: I think probably so! Until the War Between the States came along, Sherman was a failure in all modes of public life. He tried to start, I think, a lumber business, a real estate business, an insurance business, and all of them failed. He was a terrible businessman.