Metropolitan (1989)

Edward Clements: Tom Townsend

Photos 

Quotes 

• Tom Townsend : You don't have to have read a book to have an opinion on it.

• Charlie Black : Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century... and it failed. Wasn't Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed.

  Tom Townsend : That's debatable.

  Charlie Black : Whether Brook Farm failed?

  Tom Townsend : That it ceased to exist, I'll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said.

  Charlie Black : Well, for me, ceasing to exist is - is failure. I mean, that's pretty definitive.

  Tom Townsend : Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn't mean everyone's a failure.

• Tom Townsend : [pulls out a gun after Rick punches him]  Get back, Rick!

  Rick Von Sloneker : Jesus, he's got a gun!

  Charlie Black : I warn you! He's a Fourierist!

• Nick Smith : You're opposed to these parties on principle.

  Tom Townsend : Yes.

  Nick Smith : Exactly what principle is that?

  Tom Townsend : Well...

  Nick Smith : The principle that one shouldn't be out at night eating hors d'oeuvres when one could be home worrying about the less fortunate.

  Tom Townsend : Pretty much, yes.

  Nick Smith : Has it ever occurred to you that you are the less fortunate?

• Tom Townsend : [to Serena Slocum]  I haven't been giving you the silent treatment. I just haven't been talking to you.

• Audrey Rouget : By Tolstoy, "War and Peace" and by Jane Austen, "Persuasion" and "Mansfield Park".

  Tom Townsend : "Mansfield Park"? You've got to be kidding.

  Audrey Rouget : No.

  Tom Townsend : But it's a notoriously bad book. Even Lionel Trilling, one of her greatest admirers, thought that.

  Audrey Rouget : Well, if Lionel Trilling thought that, he's an idiot.

  Tom Townsend : The whole story revolves around, what the immorality of a group of young people putting on a play.

  Audrey Rouget : In the context of the novel it makes perfect sense.

  Tom Townsend : But the context of the novel, and nearly everything Jane Austen wrote is near ridiculous from today's perspective.

  Audrey Rouget : Has it ever occurred to you that today, looked at from Jane Austen's perspective would look even worse?

• Audrey Rouget : What Jane Austen novels have you read?

  Tom Townsend : None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

• Rick Von Sloneker : Get outta here and take this flat-chested, goody-goody, pain in the neck with you

  [referring to Audrey] 

  Tom Townsend : She is NOT a goody-goody.

• Nick Smith : You haven't seen this? Detachable collar. Not many people wear them anymore. They look much better. So many things which were better in the past have been abandoned for supposed convenience.

  Tom Townsend : I had no idea anyone wore those anymore.

  Nick Smith : It's a small thing, but symbolically important. Our parents' generation was never interested in keeping up standards. They wanted to be happy, but, of course, the last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life.

  Tom Townsend : I wonder if our generation's any better than our parents'.

  Nick Smith : Oh, it's far worse. Our generation's probably the worst since - the Protestant Reformation. It's barbaric, but a barbarism even worse than the old-fashioned, straightforward kind. Now barbarism is cloaked with all sorts of self-righteousness and moral superiority. Will you look at this?

  Tom Townsend : You're obviously talking about a lot more than just detachable collars.

  Nick Smith : Yeah, I am.

• Charlie Black : I can't believe you don't have a driver's license.

  Tom Townsend : Of course I don't. I live in Manhattan.

• Tom Townsend : Pomfret. Where did you go?

  Jane Clark : Farmington. Both of us did.

  Tom Townsend : Did you know Serena Slocum there?

  Jane Clark : The inevitable question.

  Tom Townsend : What?

  Jane Clark : All the guys ask that. Serena had an incredible number of boyfriends. At least 20. She could manage it because they were all at different schools and she wrote letters incredibly quickly - three in a single study hall. She became really famous. It's incredible how naive some guys are. How do you know Serena?

  Audrey Rouget : [Interrupting]  Actually, that might give someone the wrong impression. She wrote a lot of guys, but I'm sure she liked some a lot more than others.

  Jane Clark : Oh, you think so? I never noticed that. How do you know Serena?

  Tom Townsend : I was one of her boyfriends.

  Jane Clark : [Taken aback]  Oh! You must be "Pomfret." Your letters were really good.

  Audrey Rouget : Yes.

• Nick Smith : Jane's father's dead. Very suddenly, last year.

  Tom Townsend : Must have been awful for her.

  Nick Smith : Yes. It was tough on him too.

• Tom Townsend : I'm a committed socialist, not a Marxist. I favor the socialist model developed by the 19th-century French social critic Fourier.

  Charlie Black : You're a Fourierist?

  Tom Townsend : Yes.

• Tom Townsend : Yesterday I was thinking, maybe Fourier was a crank. His ideas completely unworkable.

  Charlie Black : I wouldn't want to live on a farm with a lot of other people.

• Charlie Black : Where do you get off, "you're suprised"? At what? You were Audrey's escort, yet you blithely left her stranded in the middle of the dance so you can try to work things out with Serena! And then you try to shirk the whole thing off on Fred.

  Tom Townsend : I'm not trying to shirk it off on Fred. And I was not Audrey's escort. We were all there as a group. In any case, I'm very sorry there was a mixup.

  Charlie Black : There was no mixup.

  Tom Townsend : I'm sorry I left. But it wasn't intentional.

  Charlie Black : When you're an egoist, none of the harm you do is intentional!

• Tom Townsend : I've never been this drunk before. The problem is, with Fred no longer drinking, I can't pace myself.

• Tom Townsend : He seems less pessimistic than you.

  Charlie Black : I know: it doesn't ring true.

• Serena Slocum : I didn't save your letters but I didn't throw them away.

  Tom Townsend : I don't understand, is that a riddle?

• Tom Townsend : I'm not planning to go to any more dances.

  Nick Smith : You weren't? Well, I strongly advise you to change your mind. Is it that your resources are limited? This is about the only economical social life you're gonna find in New York. Music, drinks, entertainment, hot, nutritious meals all at no expense to you. Basically, all you need is one suit of evening clothes and a tailcoat. Dances are either white tie or black tie, so you only need two ties.

• Audrey Rouget : I read that Lionel Trilling essay you mentioned. You really like Trilling?

  Tom Townsend : Yes.

  Audrey Rouget : I think he's very strange. He says that nobody could like the heroine of "Mansfield Park". I like her! Then he goes on and on about how we modern people of today with our modern attitudes, bitterly resent "Mansfield Park" because its heroine is virtuous? What's wrong with a novel having a virtuous heroine?

  Tom Townsend : His point is that the novel's premise - that there's something immoral in a group of young people putting on a play - is simply absurd.

  Audrey Rouget : You found Fanny Price unlikable?

  Audrey Rouget : She sounds pretty unbearable. But I haven't read the book.

• Tom Townsend : You threw away all the letters I wrote you?

  Serena Slocum : I throw away nearly everything. I don't want to go through the rest of my life with the mail I got when I was 16.

  Tom Townsend : I'm surprised. Someone goes through the trouble of writing you a real letter, I save it. People don't write many personal letters anymore.

  Serena Slocum : People in boarding school do.

  Tom Townsend : And what if someone who wrote you becomes famous? Those letters could be the only record of what they were thinking at that time. Crucial for their biographers.

  Serena Slocum : Anybody who writes me who expects to become famous should keep carbons.

• Fred Neff : I think I'll be going now. I have nothing to say, and I'm completely boring without a drink.

  Tom Townsend : It's only midnight. You can't go.

  Fred Neff : I'm sorry, but without the cocktails, staying up all night loses its charm. Besides, I haven't had anything amusing to say since I stopped drinking.

  Tom Townsend : Did you have anything amusing to say before you stopped?

  Fred Neff : I know, but it seemed amusing. Now it doesn't.

• A.T. Harris Salesman : Like to try on the tuxedo?

  Tom Townsend : Okay.

  A.T. Harris Salesman : Okay. Here you go.

  Tom Townsend : I think I'd prefer one more like the one I rented.

  A.T. Harris Salesman : That is the one you rented.

• Nick Smith : There is no Polly Perkins.

  Tom Townsend : What?

  Nick Smith : There's no girl. I made it up.

  Tom Townsend : You're kidding!

  Nick Smith : I couldn't let Cynthia get away with that nonsense about Von Sloneker. And basically it's all true. I mean, Von Sloneker's doing those kinds of things all the time. Though Polly Perkins is, essentially, a composite... based on real people, like New York magazine does.

  Tom Townsend : But Cynthia said she knew all about her.

  Nick Smith : Yeah. That was priceless. I think it just shows that Von Sloneker's doing those sorts of things.

  Tom Townsend : But you really do have some factual basis for saying all those things about him?

  Nick Smith : Of course, there's a factual basis.

• [last lines] 

  Tom Townsend : Did anything happen?

  Audrey Rouget : Of course not.

  Tom Townsend : You mean you were never interested in Von Sloneker at all?

  [pause as Audrey looks ambivalently towards him] 

  Tom Townsend : They why did you come out here?

  Audrey Rouget : To get a suntan... and the whole thing with the Rat Pack was getting claustrophobic. And Cynthia insisted I come. She's terribly impressed with Rick.

  Tom Townsend : It's not something Jane Austen would have done.

  Audrey Rouget : No. I suppose Europe is over there.

  [points across the ocean] 

  Tom Townsend : No. That would be Brazil. Europe is more that way. You're really going back next week?

  Audrey Rouget : I think so.

  Tom Townsend : What can you study in France that you can't study here?

  Audrey Rouget : French. Actually, I was thinking of coming back when this semester ends.

  Tom Townsend : I was thinking of going over. Not necessarily to Grenoble, but to France and Italy... though my resources are limited.

  Audrey Rouget : There are some awfully cheap airfares these days during the winter season. It seems a shame not to take advantage of them.

  Tom Townsend : That's how I feel.

  Audrey Rouget : Do you really think I'm flat-chested?

  Tom Townsend : I haven't really thought about it. Well, I shouldn't say that. The thing is, you look great... and that's what's important. You don't want to overdo it.

• Tom Townsend : I couldn't believe you're actually going to play bridge, such a cliché of bourgeois life.

  Nick Smith : That's exactly why I play. I don't enjoy it one bit.

• Audrey Rouget : I like the French.

  Tom Townsend : Really?

  Audrey Rouget : At least those I met in Grenoble.

  Tom Townsend : Actually, the only girl I ever knew who studied in France stayed over there and got married. So I guess she liked the French too.

  Audrey Rouget : I'm not sure I like them that much.

• Tom Townsend : Is the 21 Club very expensive?

  Mrs. Townsend : I believe so.

• Jane Clark : God, how queer.

  Tom Townsend : Well, it's not so queer really.

• Tom Townsend : The whole Rat Pack thing seems to have disintegrated.

  Fred Neff : The Rat Pack is down to the rats.

• Jane Clark : Audrey's gone to Cynthia's in Connecticut for the weekend, and then on Wednesday she flies back to France. And besides that she thinks you're a total jerk. She hates you.

  Tom Townsend : [stunned]  She hates me?

  Jane Clark : Well, she despises you.

• Serena Slocum : There was a girl at school who had some kind of crush on you. She came into my room when I was throwing things out, so I gave her your letters.

  Tom Townsend : Really?

  Serena Slocum : I know it sounds queer.

  Tom Townsend : She kept them?

  Serena Slocum : Uhm, I'm sure.

  Tom Townsend : Kind of strange. She must be really odd.

  Serena Slocum : No, she's very nice. In fact, you know her: Audrey Roget.

• Charlie Black : Hey, look at this.

  Tom Townsend : What is it?

  Charlie Black : Looks like some girl's panties.

  Tom Townsend : Jesus, that bastard.

• Tom Townsend : People shouldn't get married till their late 20s, and that's a long way off.

• Man at Bar : When I was in college, we'd go to dances during Christmas vacations. Do they still go on?

  Charlie Black : Yes.

  Man at Bar : Pretty much reduced though.

  Tom Townsend : Yeah.

  Man at Bar : Ah, well, I wouldn't put much stock in them.