- director Ferrand: Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.
- Alphonse: [after being dumped by his girlfriend] I need money to go to a whorehouse.
- director Ferrand: Come on Alphonse. Go back to your room, re-read the script, learn your lines, then try to sleep. Tomorrow we work. That's what matters. Don't be a fool. You're a very good actor. No one's private life runs smoothly. That only happens in the movies. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along like trains in the night. And people like you and me are only happy in our work. I'm counting on you.
- Ferrand: What is a film director? A man who's asked questions about everything. Sometimes he knows the answers.
- Séverine: The actor had always dreamed of playing Hamlet. At last, he staged it and played the role! But he was so bad, he was booed every night. One night he was fed up, he stopped in the middle of "To be or not to be", turning to the audience, he said: "I didn't write the shit."
- Alexandre: In 80 movies I've died 24 times - electrocuted twice, hanged twice. I've been knifed, committed suicide, died in accidents, but never a natural death. Anyway, I don't think death is natural.
- director Ferrand: People used to stare at fires. Now they watch TV. We need to see moving images, especially after dinner.
- Madame Lajoie: What is this - filmmaking? You call that a business? You've no morals. Everybody sleeps with everyone! What is it but a dirty lie. You call that normal? Filthy cinema - you're a plague on the world! You smell of filth! You'll pay for your sins! I despise you!
- Alexandre: How's your mother?
- Julie: Very good. I told her we were working together. She sends her love.
- Alexandre: Marvelous woman! Everyone in Hollywood loved her. Too bad she quit when she did.
- Julie: But she's still very busy.
- Alexandre: She hated the way we shoot movies - in bits and pieces! I remember escorting her to the premiere of her first big Hollywood movie. A fantastic evening! When the film ended, she sat there, then turned to me and said: "I did all that? All I remember is the waiting."
- Julie: It's so true!
- Ferrand: Quiet! A full rehearsal. Let's go, Séverine.
- Séverine: "I don't understand you Alexander! You're - "
- Alexandre: "Peculiar"
- Séverine: Oh, yes.
- Ferrand: It's all right! Take it from the top, right away. Let's go, Séverine.
- Séverine: "I don't understand you Alexander! You've been peculiar, lately. Walking out on dinner last night! That was an insult to Julie." Damn! I said Julie instead of Pamela.
- Ferrand: Not to worry.
- Séverine: I've got an idea! I'll use numbers, the way I do for Fellini! Instead of "I don't understand you Alexander..." I'll say, 22, 83, 16, 72, 5, 3, 18, 9, 14, 7, 9. 17, 10, 10, 4, 18, 69...
- Ferrand: Impossible, Séverine. In France, we have to say the lines.
- Alphonse: Bernard, are women magic?
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Not women, their legs! That's why they wear skirts.
- Alphonse: Let me ask you, are women magic?
- Lajoie, le régisseur: No, they're not. Neither are men. If a woman says she's known outstanding men, it means she's slept around.
- Alexandre: Actors are so vulnerable!
- Dr. Michael Nelson: Of course they are. Everyone is afraid of being judged. But actors are always being judged. In your work, and in your life!
- Alexandre: Yes. We wonder what people think of us, if they love us. It must be the same for all performers. As a child, when Mozart was asked to play, he'd reply: "Gladly, but first say you love me."
- Dr. Michael Nelson: And in your job, you're always kissing.
- Alexandre: As you say, yes, we do a lot of kissing. The handshake was invented to show you're unarmed, friendly. We went one better: we show our love.
- Joelle: Back to work! You dictate, I'll type. We promised it to Julie tonight.
- Ferrand: Okay, back to the kitchen. No more guilt or sense of shame. They decide to run away like thieves in the night.
- Joelle: "Pamela" could actually say that! We must show that she's completely lucid. She loved the son, now she loves the father. That must come across.
- Ferrand: Yes. Julie explained it very well. Here's her interview in the morning paper: "The girl realizes the boy she married is only a pale reflection to his father." She understood the script! Why? Because her mother was an actress. She knows Hollywood, where many kids try to live up to famous parents. Fairbanks, Barrymore and others.
- Lajoie, le régisseur: Hey, the movie quiz!
- TV Game Show Host: In what movie did Jeanne Moreau co-star with Orson Welles, in a Shakespeare film?
- Lajoie, le régisseur, Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Falstaff!
- TV Game Show Host: In what movie was she Charles IX's sister and and Henry IV's wife?
- Lajoie, le régisseur: Queen Margot
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Right! You know your stuff.
- Julie: He loves you and wants to marry you.
- Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: He mentioned marriage, I didn't! Just the word gives me the creeps. Anyway, he needs a wife, a mistress, a nanny, a nurse, a sister. I can't play all those roles!
- Séverine: What a funny life we lead! We meet, we work together, we love each other and then, as soon as we grasp something - it's gone.
- [last lines]
- TV reporter: Tell me: Wasn't this a hard film to make? I heard there were some rocky moments.
- Bernard: Not at all. It went fine! And we hope audiences enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Joelle, if you're in the mood...
- Joelle: For what?
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: We're all alone here...
- Joelle: Okay, you're on!
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: What?
- Joelle: All bark and no bite! But when it's time for action...
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: You're willing?
- Joelle: Yes. But we haven't got all day. - - Move it!
- Alphonse: You see, I've made a terrible discovery. You can be desperately in love with someone you despise, whose every gesture, word and thought you detest!
- Julie: What right have you to say that? Say you made a mistake but never be ashamed of having loved. By despising Liliane, you're merely degrading yourself.
- Alphonse: Maybe you're right. Anyway, my love affairs have always ended badly. I thought women were magic.
- Julie: Of course they're not magic. Or men are too. Everyone's magic, and no one is.
- Le producteur de films érotiques: [to Ferrand] I'd like you to meet two German girls. They're sisters: Greta and Diana. She was in a big German political film. Do you do any? She was in an erotic film. Why don't you do one? I have a good script about pollution.
- Alexandre: There was an Austrian actress, Hedy Lamarr, became a big Hollywood star. She really missed the rainy climate of her native Tyrol. So, in her garden in California, she installed a rain-making machine.
- Ferrand: Walter, have a look. The pictures of Julie.
- Walter, le chef opérateur: I remember her in that movie with the car-chase.
- Alphonse: Do me a favor. Walk ahead so I can watch your ass.
- Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: Like this?
- Alphonse: Yes, like that!
- Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: I saw you!
- Alphonse: Saw me, what?
- Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: You're hot for the maid.
- Alphonse: I am?
- Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: Bastard! She's your type. A bouncy little duckling.
- Séverine: Isn't he adorable? When did I work with him...? Oh, Mamma Mia, 20 years ago in Hollywood! We were there at the same time. You know, he was a real ladies man. In Hollywood, they called him the continental lover. I loved him, too.
- Odile, la maquilleuse: Is he married?
- Séverine: I don't know if he is now. He was married and divorced twice. Maybe he lives with someone. No one knows. He's very secretive.
- Odile, la maquilleuse: He has a moustache in the movie. I like it.
- Séverine: Moustache or not, he is still playing lovers! And look at me... I'm only cast as the neglected wife! Desperate... tragic... a real pain...
- Joelle: How about Alexander? He fooled everybody. We all expected a Lolita and a handsome Romeo got off the plane!
- Alexandre: Any champagne left?
- Bernard, l'accessoiriste: No, we'll have to move on to Pernod.
- Alexandre: Champagne's gone. You won't get drunk.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
