Noises Off... (1992)
Michael Caine: Lloyd Fellowes
Photos
Quotes
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Lloyd : [Barging in from the house] What the *fuck* is going on?
Belinda : Lloyd!
Frederick : Holy cow!
Poppy : I didn't know you were here.
Lloyd : I'm not. I'm in New York. But I can't sit out there and listen to two minutes, three minutes, one minute, two minutes!
Belinda : Lloyd! We're having big dramas back here!
Lloyd : We're having big dramas out *there!* This is a matinee, Love! There are senior citizens out there! "The curtain will rise in three minutes," we all start for the gents! "The curtain will rise in one minute," we all start running out again! We don't know which way we're going!
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Gary : Lloyd, let me just say one thing, since we've stopped. I've worked with a lotta directors, Lloyd. Some of them were geniuses, some of them were bastards. But I've never met one who was so totally and absolutely... I don't know.
Lloyd : Thank you Gary, I'm very touched. Now will you get off the fucking stage?
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Usher : Mr. Fellowes, uh, is there anything wrong with your seat?
Lloyd : [thinking] Yeah, it's facing the stage!
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Lloyd : Think of the first night as the dress rehearsal. If we can just get through the play once tonight - for doors and sardines. That's what it's all about, doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's - that's the theatre. That's life.
[pause]
Belinda : God, Lloyd, you're so deep.
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Lloyd : Like the band playing on as the Titanic sank.
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Lloyd : Don't fall down, Tim. We may not be insured.
[Tim falls down]
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Lloyd : And God said, "Where the Hell is Tim?" And there the Hell was Tim. And God said, "Let there be doors that open when they open, and close when they close."
Tim : Do something?
Lloyd : Doors!
Tim : I was getting the bananas for the sardines.
Lloyd : DOORS!
Tim : Doors?
Lloyd : I bet God had a stage manager who understood English, too!
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Lloyd : Tim, let me tell you about my life in the Big Apple. I have Hamlet's ghost on the phone for an hour every evening after rehearsal complaining that Polonius is sucking sourballs through his speeches. Claudius is off every afternoon doing a soap, and Gertrude is off the entire week doing a commercial for Gallo wine. Hamlet himself, would you believe, has come down with a psychological problem. Then, last night, Brooke rings me to say that she's very unhappy here and she's got herself a doctor's certificate for nervous exhaustion. I haven't got the time to find and rehearse a new Vicky. I have just one afternoon, while Hamlet sees his shrink and Ophelia starts divorce proceedings, to cure Brooke of her nervous exhaustion with no medical aids, except a little whiskey - you've got the whiskey - a few flowers - you've got money for the flowers - and a certain fading bedside manner. So, I haven't come to the theater to hear about other people's probelms. I've come to be taken out of myself, and, preferably, not put back again.
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Selsdon : So, what's next on the bill?
Lloyd : Well, Selsdon, I thought we might try a spot of rehearsal.
Selsdon : Oh, I won't, thank you.
Lloyd : You won't?
Selsdon : No, you all go ahead. I'll just sit and watch. This is the beer in the wardrobe, is it?
Belinda : No, my dear, he wants us to rehearse.
Selsdon : Yes, but I think we gotta rehearse, haven't we?
Lloyd : Rehearse! Yes, Selsdon. Well done. I knew you'd think of something.
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Dotty : And I take the sardines. No, I leave the sardines. No, I take the sardines.
Lloyd : You leave the sardines and you hang up the phone.
Dotty : Yes, right. I hang up the phone.
Lloyd : And you leave the sardines.
Dotty : I leave the sardines?
Lloyd : You leave the sardines.
Dotty : I hang up the phone and I leave the sardines?
Lloyd : Right!
Dotty : We've changed that, have we, dear?
Lloyd : No, dear...
Dotty : That's what I've always been doing?
Lloyd : I wouldn't say that, Dotty my precious.
Dotty : Well, how about the words, dear, am I getting some of them right?
Lloyd : Some of them have a very familiar ring.
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Lloyd : I'm just God, Belinda, love. I'm just the one with the English degree. I don't *know* anything.
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Frederick : Alright, I see all that.
Lloyd : Oh no.
Frederick : I just don't know why I take them.
Lloyd : Freddy love, why does anyone do anything? Why does that other idiot go out of the front door holding two plates of sardines? I mean, I-I'm not getting at you, love.
Gary : Course not, Lloyd. I mean, why do I? I mean, Jesus, when you come to think about it, why *do* I?
Lloyd : Who knows?
Gary : Who knows. You see, Freddy?
Lloyd : The wellsprings of human action are deep and cloudy. Maybe something happened to you when you were a very, very, very small child that made you frightened to let go of groceries.
Belinda : Or it could be genetic.
Gary : Yes, or it could be... you know.
Lloyd : Could-could well be.
Frederick : Of course, thank you. I understand all that, but...
Lloyd : Freddy love, I'm telling you I don't know. I-I don't think the *author* knows. I don't know why the author came into this industry in the first place. I don't know why any of us came into it.
Frederick : All the same, if you could just give me a reason I could keep in my mind.
Lloyd : Alright, I'll give you a reason then. You carry those groceries into the study, Freddy honey, because it's just slightly after midnight, and we're not going to be finished before we open tomorrow night - Correction. Before we open TONIGHT!
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Lloyd : I'm not running away. I'm just not the kind of person who gets a kick out of watching an automobile crash, particularly when it's my automobile! It's gonna be the worst catastrophe Broadway has ever seen. They're gonna forget their lines, the set will fall down. None of us will get out of New York alive; they've got big pictures of us in the lobby. I'll get on a plane. I should've got on a plane when we first opened in Des Moines! I should've got on a plane *before* we opened in Des Moines! I should've got on a plane at the dress rehearsal! As soon as that curtain went up at the beginning of act one! As soon as that damn phone rang and Dotty came on with that first plate of sardines!
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Brooke : You can't even get the door open.
[and, in fact, Gary can't]
Lloyd : [distant] Hold it.
Frederick : [entering with Belinda] Yes, but this is Mrs. Clackett's afternoon off.
Lloyd : [a little louder] Hold it!
Frederick : We've got the place entirely to ourselves.
Belinda : Look at it.
Lloyd : [Freddy tries to close the door but can't] HOLD IT!
[they continue to try to open or close their respective doors]
Lloyd : And God said HOLD IT!
[they stop]
Lloyd : And they held it. And God saw that it was TERRIBLE!
Gary : Sorry, folks. The door won't open.
Belinda : Sorry, folks, this door won't close.
Lloyd : And God said, "POPPY!"
Frederick : Sorry folks, am I doing something wrong? You know how stupid I am about doors.
Belinda : Freddy, darling, you're doing it perfectly.
Frederick : As long as it wasn't me that broke it.
Lloyd : [Poppy comes on stage] ... And there was Poppy. And God said, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fetch Tim to fix the doors."
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Lloyd : Nothing could have prepared us for the final horror: Cleveland!
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Lloyd : I don't know what you're waiting for. Her eighteenth birthday?
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Lloyd : On we blindly stumble!
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Lloyd : Right, from Belinda and Freddy's entrance.
[Poppy comes running onstage]
Lloyd : Oh my God, what's happened now?
Poppy : The police.
Lloyd : The police?
Poppy : They found an old man lying unconscious in the doorway just across the street...
Lloyd : Oh, yes, thank you.
Poppy : ...and they say he's *very* dirty and pretty smelly...
Lloyd : Yes, thank you, Po...
Poppy : ...and I thought, "oh my God," because-because when you get close to Selsdon...
Belinda : Poppy!
Poppy : ...no, no, I mean, if you stand anywhere *near* Selsdon, you can't help noticing this very distinctive...
[She sniffs and stops dead]
Selsdon : I'll tell you something, Poppy. Once you get it in your nostrils, you never forget it. Sixty years now, and the smell of the theatre still haunts me.
[He walks away]
Belinda : Bless him!
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[everyone except Poppy and Tim are on-stage and have no idea where they are or what to do now]
Lloyd : I've got to get the 8:40 to New York!
Poppy : [Lloyd opens the door to find Poppy wrapped in sheets, playing Freddy's part] Ah! House of heavenly peace! I rent it.
Dotty : Oh! It's the other one! And in her wedding dress.
Belinda : Yes, yes, it's their wedding day!
All : Oh!
Belinda : What a happy ending... to the... to the first act!... Of their new life together! And they just want to be alone in their new home... if only someone would pull the shades!
[Indicates that the curtain should come down]
Tim : [Tim enters in the black sheets, prepared to play Brooke's part] Come in?
Dotty : Oh, and it's the mother of the bride.
Tim : Go out?
All : Pull the shades!
[Tim runs out to lower the curtain]
Selsdon : Last line?
All : Last line!
Selsdon : I'll tell you one thing, Vicky.
All : [Dotty slaps Vicky, who loses a contact lens and goes looking for it] What's that, Dad?
Selsdon : When all around is strife and uncertainty, there's nothing like an old fashioned plate of, uh... curtain!
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Lloyd : You hang up the phone, you leave the sardines, and you got out with the NEWSPAPER!
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Lloyd : What's the line, Freddy?
Frederick : [with glue on his pants] I've heard of people getting stuck with the problem...
Lloyd : *stuck* with the problem.
Frederick : *stuck* with the problem?
Lloyd : *stuck* with the problem.
Frederick : I've heard of people getting *stuck* with the problem, but this is ridiculous!
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[first lines]
Usher : Curtains going up! Curtains going... up! Curtains going up!
Lloyd : [voiceover] A big Broadway opening. Everybody who's anybody in New York is inside this theater tonight. Everybody but one man. This man - ME!
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Lloyd : WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
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Lloyd : [They are discussing why the sheik looks like Phillip] It is kind of a coincidence, Freddy. Until you reflect that there was an earlier draft of the play, now unfortunately lost to us, and in this the author makes it clear that Phillip's father, as a young man, traveled extensively in the middle east...
Frederick : I see. Oh, I see!
Lloyd : You see!
Frederick : That's very interesting.
Lloyd : I thought you'd like that.
Frederick : But will the audience get it?
Lloyd : Well, you must show them Freddy. With looks, with gestures. That's what acting is all about. Ok?
Frederick : Yes, thank you Lloyd. Thank you.
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Lloyd : Listen, I think this show is beyond the help of any director. You just do it. I'll sit out there in the dark with a bag of gummy bears and enjoy it. One minute was the last call. If your memory goes back that far!
