12 Monkeys (1995)

Brad Pitt: Jeffrey Goines

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Quotes 

• Jeffrey Goines : There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion.

• Jeffrey Goines : There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we *for* then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally *ill*. Fact, Jim, fact - if you don't buy things - toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers...

• L.J. Washington : I don't really come from outer space.

  Jeffrey Goines : Oh. L. J. Washington. He doesn't really come from outer space.

  L.J. Washington : Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend?

• Jeffrey Goines : All the doors are locked too. They're protecting the people on the outside from us from the people on the outside who are as crazy as us.

• James Cole : I'm here about some monkeys.

  Jeffrey Goines : Monkeys?

  James Cole : Monkeys. Yes. Twelve of them.

• [James Cole found a spider and knows he's got to take it with him, let's it crawl over his hand while deciding what to do with it] 

  Jeffrey Goines : You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules. Take germs, for example.

  James Cole : Germs?

  Jeffrey Goines : Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See?

  [James Cole finally takes the spider into his mouth, Jeffrey Goines is either too deep into his talk or unimpressed by this and continues his talk as if nothing happened] 

  Jeffrey Goines : Ah! Ah! There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. You... you... you believe in germs, right?

• Jeffrey Goines : Sorry. Uh, sorry. I, I, I got a little agitated. The thought of, uh, escape had crossed my mind, and then suddenly - suddenly - suddenly I felt like bending the fucking bars back, and ripping out the goddamn window frames and eating them - yes, *eating* them! Leaping, leaping, leaping! Colonics for everyone! All right! You dumbasses. I'm a mental patient. I'm *supposed* to act out! Wait'll you morons find out who I am! My father's gonna be really upset, and when my father gets upset, the ground SHAKES! My father is God! I worship my father!

• James Cole : Look at them. They're just asking for it. Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.

  Jeffrey Goines : Wiping out the human race? That's a great idea. That's great. But more of a long-term thing. I mean, first we have to focus on more immediate goals.

• Jeffrey Goines : When I was institutionalized, my brain was studied exhaustively in the guise of mental health. I was interrogated, I was x-rayed, I was examined *thoroughly*.

  [turns head and coughs] 

  Jeffrey Goines : Then, they took everything about me and put it into a computer where they created this model of my mind. Yes! Using that model they managed to generate every thought I could possibly have in the next, say, 10 years. Which they then filtered through a probability matrix of some kind to - to determine everything I was gonna do in that period. So you see, she knew I was gonna lead the Army of the Twelve Monkeys into the pages of history before it ever even occurred to me. She knows everything I'm ever gonna do before I know it myself. How's that?

• Jeffrey Goines : [sighs]  Get out of my chair!

• Jeffrey Goines : There was this guy, and he was always requesting shows that had already played. Yes. No. You have to tell her before. He couldn't quite grasp the idea that the charge nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She couldn't turn back time, thank you, Einstein! Now, *he* was nuts! *He* was a fruitcake, Jim!

• Jeffrey Goines : ...and if you forget one thing, I will have you shaved, sterilized, and destroyed!

• Jeffrey Goines : You are a total nutcase, completely deranged, delusional, paranoid. Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information train is jammed, man!

• Jeffrey Goines : My father's going to be very upset when he hears about this! And when my father gets upset, the ground SHAKES!

• Dr. Leland Goines : My God, Jeffrey. You truly are insane.

  Jeffrey Goines : No I'm not.

• Jeffrey Goines : Telephone call? Telephone call? That's communication with the outside world. Doctor's *discretion*. Nuh-uh. Look, hey - all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness.

• Jeffrey Goines : Who cares what psychiatrists write on walls?

• Jeffrey Goines : Why don't we forget about my psychiatrist and concentrate on the task at hand?

• Jeffrey Goines : My father is God! I worship my father!

• Jeffrey Goines : Do you realize where he thinks he comes from?