Henry Fool (1997)

James Urbaniak: Simon Grim

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Quotes 

• Simon Grim : I worked, while you sat back and comfortably dismissed the outside world as too shallow, stupid and mean to appreciate your ideas.

  Henry Fool : Is that such a priority? Is that some sort of measure of a man's worth? To drag what's best in him out into the street so every average slob with some pretense to taste can poke it with a stick?

  Simon Grim : Maybe. Maybe it is.

• Henry Fool : [very calmly]  Once - I forget where I was. Central America, maybe. Somewhere hot. Stupid job, bad pay, dangerous location, and water so foul the natives wouldn't even piss in it - this crowd of drunken motherfuckers hired by the local drug cartel showed up at my hotel room and threatened to tear me limb from limb. And I say, "Listen hombres, OK, you got me outnumbered here four to one and you're gonna kill me here tonight and not a soul in this dimly lit world is gonna notice I'm gone. But one of you, one of you, one of you is gonna have his eye torn out. Period." Silence. "I repeat myself: One of you poor, underpaid jerks is gonna have an eye ripped out of its socket. I promise. It's a small thing perhaps, all things considered, but I will succeed, because it's the only thing I have left to do in this world. So why don't you just take a good look at one another one last time, and think it over a few minutes more."

  Simon : [pause]  And then what happened?

  Henry Fool : Well. Here I am, still, after all.

• Henry Fool : We gotta talk. What the hell were you trying to do when you wrote this thing?

  Simon : Nothing.

  Henry Fool : Well, you know, you wrote it in a kind of iambic pentameter.

  Simon : Iambic what?

  Henry Fool : Verse. Look. In my opinion, this is pretty powerful stuff. Though your spelling is Neanderthal and your reasoning a little naive, your instincts are profound. But the whole thing needs to be given a more cohesive shape. It can be expanded, followed through, unified. Do you see what I'm getting at? Are you willing to commit yourself to this? To really work on it? To give it its due in the face of adversity and discouragement? To rise to the challenge you yourself have set? And don't give me that wonderstruck "I'm only a humble garbage man" bullshit, either.

  Simon : It hurts to breathe.

  Henry Fool : Of course it does.

• Laura : Be reasonable.

  Simon : Why?

• Henry Fool : Can you sit there, look me straight in the eye and tell me that you don't think this poem is great? That it is not at once a poem of great lyrical beauty and ethical depth; that it is not a genuine, highly profound meditation on the miracle of existence?

  Simon : I...

  Henry Fool : *Can* you?

  Simon : No. I can't.

  Henry Fool : So you see you have no choice.