The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Michael Caine: Peachy Carnehan

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Daniel Dravot : Peachy, I'm heartily ashamed for gettin' you killed instead of going home rich like you deserved to, on account of me bein' so bleedin' high and bloody mighty. Can you forgive me?

  Peachy Carnehan : That I can and that I do, Danny, free and full and without let or hindrance.

  Daniel Dravot : Everything's all right then.

• Peachy Carnehan : [When being chased by a large angry mob]  Billy Fish, mount the mule and ride! There's a chance you'll make it!

  Billy Fish : Gurkha foot soldier, not cavalry.

  [Billy salutes Peachy and Danny] 

  Billy Fish : Rifleman Majendra Bahadur Gurung wishing you many good lucks!

  [Billy draws his kukri and charges the mob single-handedly] 

  Billy Fish : Ayo Gorkhali!

• Billy Fish : He wants to know if you are gods.

  Peachy Carnehan : Not gods - Englishmen. The next best thing.

• [speaking to Billy Fish in Kafiri] 

  Billy Fish : Ootah say take your pick. He have twenty three daughters.

  Danny : Those are his daughters? Why the dirty old beggar!

  Peachy Carnehan : Now, now Danny. Different countries, different ways. He's only being hospitable according to his lights. Billy, tell him one's as pretty as the next and we cannot choose.

  [Billy translates; Ootah replies in Kafiri] 

  Billy Fish : Ootah say he also have thirty-two sons if you are liking boys.

  Peachy Carnehan : [angrily]  Tell him he makes my gorge rise; tell him!

  Danny : Now Peachy, different countries, different ways. Tell Ootah we have vowed not to take a woman until all his enemies are vanquished.

• Peachy Carnehan : It took him half an hour to fall.

• Peachy Carnehan : Danny's only a man. But he break wind at both ends simultaneous - which is more, I reckon, than any god can do.

• Daniel Dravot : [admiring Roxanne, while a worried Peachy looks on]  Just looking, Peachy. There's such a thing as admiring beauty for its own sake.

  Peachy Carnehan : [sharply]  Being only human, one thing leads to another.

• District Commissioner : The may be no criminal charges against you, but I'll see these files reach Calcutta with a recommendation that you be deported as political undesirables, detriments to the dignity of the Empire and the Izzat of the Raj.

  Peachy Carnehan : Detriments you call us? Detriments? Well I want to remind you it was "detriments" like us that built this bloody Empire *and* the Izzat of the bloody Raj, 'ats on!

• District Commissioner : It would have been wiser if you'd both gone home at the end of your army service.

  Peachy Carnehan : Home to what? A porters uniform outside a restaurant, attainin' tips from belching civilians for closing cab doors on them and their blowsy women?

  Daniel Dravot : Not for us, thank you. Not after watching Afghans come howling down out of the hills and taking battlefield command when all the officers had copped it.

  Peachy Carnehan : Well said, Brother Dravot.

• Peachy Carnehan : What's he saying, Billy?

  Billy Fish : Danny's bleeding. They know! He says not god, not devil, but man!

  Peachy Carnehan : [approaches Danny]  They've twigged it, Danny. You've had it! The jig's up!

  Daniel Dravot : [grabs arrow and raises hand in proclamation]  I, Sikander -

  Peachy Carnehan : [cuts off Danny]  For God's sake!

  Peachy Carnehan : [grabs Danny and leads him down the temple stairs]  We've got to brass it out, Danny. Danny, brass it out!

  Peachy Carnehan : [Danny, Peachy and Billy Fish try to escape the mob with heads held high]  Bags of swank!

  Daniel Dravot : [Danny, Peachy and Billy Fish on the run]  We'll get your riflemen, Peachy, and we'll come back and slaughter the dogs! A drenching in their own blood we'll give them! Riflemen, prepare to advance!

  Peachy Carnehan : [grabs rifles]  Too many for that, Danny. Retire in sections!

  Daniel Dravot : Retire? Retire be damned!

  Peachy Carnehan : We've gotta make a run for it!

• Peachy Carnehan : [final lines]  And old Danny fell. Round and round and round and round, like a penny whirligig. Twenty thousand miles and it took him half an hour to fall before he struck the rocks. But do you know what they did to Peachy? They crucified, him, sah, between two pine trees. As Peachy's hands will show.

  [Peachy displays the mutilated palms of his hands to Kipling] 

  Peachy Carnehan : Put poor Peachy who had never done them any harm. He howled there and he screamed, but he didn't die. And one day they come and they took him down and they said it was a miracle he wasn't dead and then they set him down and they let him go. And Peachy come home, in about, a year. And the mountains they tried to fall on old Peachy, but he was quite safe because Daniel walked before him. And Daniel never let go of Peachy's hand and Peachy never let go of Daniel's head.

  Rudyard Kipling : [aghast]  His head?

  Peachy Carnehan : You knew Danny, sir. Oh, yes, you knew, most Worshipful Brother.

  [Takes something out of the sack he is carrying and places it on a table] 

  Peachy Carnehan : Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that's all there is to tell. I'll be on my way now sir, I've got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.

  [Peachy limps out of the room. Kipling opens the sack and removes Daniel's decaying head with the golden crown still on his head] 

• [One of Ootah's daughters is trying to seduce Peachy] 

  Peachy Carnehan : Danny, let us seek safety on the battlefield.

• Peachy Carnehan : Now, the problem is, how to divide five Afghans from three mules and have two Englishmen left over.

• Daniel Dravot , Peachy Carnehan : God's holy trousers!

• Peachy Carnehan : I've come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don't you know me?

  Rudyard Kipling : No. I don't know you. Who are you? What can I do for you?

  Peachy Carnehan : I told you; give me a drink. It was all settled right here in this office. Remember? Danny and Me signed a contract, and you witnessed it. You stood over there. I stood there, and Daniel stood here. Remember?

  Rudyard Kipling : Carnehan!

  Peachy Carnehan : Peachy Toliver Carnehan.

  Peachy Carnehan : Of course.

  Peachy Carnehan : Keep looking at me. It helps to keep my soul from flying off.

  Rudyard Kipling : Carnehan.

  Peachy Carnehan : The same - and not the same, who sat besides you in the first class carriage, on the train to Marwar Junction, three summers and a thousand years ago.

• Peachy Carnehan : They're savages here, one and all. Leave 'em to go back to slaughterin' babes, and playin' stickball with each other's heads, and pissin' on their neighbors.

• Peachy Carnehan : Keep looking at me. It helps to keep my soul from flying off.

• Peachy Carnehan : I have urgent business to the South.

• Peachy Carnehan : Do they always use such a big ball?

  Billy Fish : Depend on size of man's head. Big head, big ball, small head, small ball. That Bashki man. Oh big damn head.

• Peachy Carnehan : And what, may I ask, did you think you were playin' at, charging the enemy single-handed?

  Danny : I got carried away. Heat of the moment. The blood was up.

  Peachy Carnehan : Acting like some green lieutenant hoping to be mentioned in dispatches. A man your age!

  Danny : Sorry.

  Peachy Carnehan : You oughta' be ashamed of yourself!

  Danny : Sorry.

  Peachy Carnehan : Supposing you got killed, eh? Supposing that? Where would I be at?

  Danny : It won't happen again.

  Peachy Carnehan : See that it don't.

• District Commissioner : I have your records before me. There's everything in them, from smuggling to swindling to receiving stolen goods to bare-faced blackmail.

  Peachy Carnehan : Sir, I resent the accusation of blackmail. It is blackmail to obtain money by threats of publishing information *in* a newspaper. But what blackmail is there in accepting a small retainer for keeping it *out* of a newspaper?

  District Commissioner : And how did you propose to keep it out?

  Peachy Carnehan : By telling the editor what I know about his sister, and a certain government official in these parts.

  Daniel Dravot : [Referring to Kipling, the journalist present]  Let him put *that* in his paper, if he has need of news.

• Peachy Carnehan : [In Sikandergul: Marveling at what they see inside a room filled with treasures]  These here make the jewels in the Tower of London look like... cheap family heirlooms.

  Danny : [picking, out of a chest filled with jewels, a very large ruby]  God's holy trousers. Look at the size of that ruby!

  Peachy Carnehan : [produces another one, even greater in size]  There's a bigger one. Why, Danny, we only have to fill our pockets and walk out of here to be millionaires. And all of it... all... would make us the two richest men in England.

  Danny : The Empire.

  Peachy Carnehan : The world.

• Peachy Carnehan : Pardon me while I fall down laughing. HA, HA, HA.

• Peachy Carnehan : [to Billy Fish]  And now, if you will take us to this Ootah bloke, we will begin his education.

• Billy Fish : Enemies all around. The Bashkari are the worst. Whole town comes out, and pisses downstream when we go bathing.

  Peachy Carnehan : Shocking!