City Hall (1996)

John Cusack: Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun

Photos 

Quotes 

• Kevin Calhoun : You keep looking at that thing as if it weren't kosher.

  Abe Goodman : A cut of meat is kosher. A piece of fish, savory foods, and all kinds of dang things are kosher, but a probation report is not kosher. A probation report is merely a probation report.

  Kevin Calhoun : I am a good Louisiana lapsed Catholic, Abe, so just don't talk to me about kosher, just give it to me straight. What's wrong with this report?

  Abe Goodman : It's too kosher.

  [pause] 

  Kevin Calhoun : Translate that for me.

  Abe Goodman : Uhhhhh, the virgin looks pregnant to me. - Look, see, the supervisor signed this.

  Kevin Calhoun : So what?

  Abe Goodman : That's a lot of weight for a 4C. So what happened to the original little probation officer? Where is his signature?

• Kevin Calhoun : Where you going?

  Marybeth Cogan : The city.

  Kevin Calhoun : Thought we were in the city.

  Marybeth Cogan : Not if you're from Queens.

• Kevin Calhoun : And you're just going to wait under that plastic awning for an hour and then ride a Queens bus and then slep on the subway into Manhattan...

  Marybeth Cogan : [interrupting]  Schlep! Schlep! Not slep, schlep!

  Kevin Calhoun : Schlep?

  Marybeth Cogan : Get the gumbo out of your Yiddish.

• Kevin Calhoun : Walter Stern looked so judicial. How could he be so corrupt?

  Abe Goodman : The sweater unravels.

• [heading into a press conference] 

  Kevin Calhoun : You look good.

  Mayor John Pappas : Of course - I'm the mayor.

• Kevin Calhoun : The only thing new about this world is the history we don't know.

• Marybeth Cogan : You're a mean prick, you know that?

  Kevin Calhoun : Where I come from, that's a compliment.

• Mayor John Pappas : Enough about me, enough about me. What are you going to do tonight, after I'm gone?

  Kevin Calhoun : Me?

  Mayor John Pappas : Yeah.

  Kevin Calhoun : I don't know, I hadn't thought about it.

  Mayor John Pappas : Well, you're going to get yourself a good meal. You're going to pass up that double cheeseburger from Roy Rogers, wherever it is you go; you're going go to Dominic's, and you're going to get takeout. On me. Get a decent meal there. But before you go to Dominic's, I want you to go to Macy's and get a chair. With legs, and arms. That apartment of yours looks like something that belongs in a homeless file. Oh, then it's off to Crate and Barrel for a knife, a fork, a spoon... oh, and a glass, while you're at it.

  Kevin Calhoun : Then I'll have to get a dishwasher.

  Mayor John Pappas : You don't have to wash them, just throw 'em out after you finish eating. It's on me. Get a life!

  Kevin Calhoun : I've got yours; it's quite enough.

• [Kevin suggests distancing themselves from a man in trouble] 

  Mayor John Pappas : "Distance"! Distance is something you do to your enemies. It's a thing of the nineties, to make friends extinct. Distance... is the absence of menschkeit!

  Kevin Calhoun : Translate that for me.

  Mayor John Pappas : You don't know what menschkeit means?

  Kevin Calhoun : No, I don't.

  Mayor John Pappas : Menschkeit, you know... something between men... it's about honor, and character... untranslatable. That's why it's Yiddish.

  Kevin Calhoun : I didn't know you'd taken up the language.

  Mayor John Pappas : Abe laid it on me.

• [Marybeth suggests lunch at a specific diner] 

  Kevin Calhoun : Now, who we gonna meet in this diner?

  Marybeth Cogan : What are you talking about?

  Kevin Calhoun : You surface in front of my car at the cemetery, you show just enough leg so I'd stop, and the Grand Central Parkway is the long way around. Who we gonna meet?

• Kevin Calhoun : Now there's four deaths, they're all connected, and that's all I know, that much I learned...

  Mayor John Pappas : [interrupting]  And that's all I want to know!

  Kevin Calhoun : I'm just trying to circle the wagons here, John.

  Mayor John Pappas : Circle the wagons? What do you th - Who do you think you are? Some gumshoe in a dime novel, loose-cannoning around the city? Consorting with known mobsters? Kevin, for God's sakes!

  [long pause] 

  Mayor John Pappas : You see this desk? This desk belonged to Fiorello La Guardia, "the Little Flower". He was about 5 foot tall, used to read the funny papers to his constituents' children over the radio, and was about the best goddamned mayor this city ever had. You know what La Guardia said? "Why is it, every time you can do some good, the nice people come in and mess you up?" Kevin... be nice, don't mess me up.

• Mayor John Pappas : Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment. There are no cold answers, are there? There's no simple yes or no. A man's life is not the bricks, it's the mortar, pappy, it's the stuff that lays between, the stuff... the stuff you can't see. I've known Walter my whole life. God, the man is - he's a decent man, he's a good man.

  Kevin Calhoun : This is tough stuff. This is body bag stuff. You tell me, if there's some other way.

  Mayor John Pappas : There isn't. The die's been cast; it was cast a long time ago. Go easy: give him a blindfold and have mercy. Walter Stern was a tough man, but he was fair. We give back the same, no?

• Kevin Calhoun : If I didn't know better, I'd be bursting with admiration. I thought I'd come here and find you on your knees; instead you're ready to turn adversity into triumph.

  Mayor John Pappas : Oh, it's just a reflex, an old habit of mine. But it's still good to hear you say it... the way you say it, too. "Adversity into triumph." Good to you know still believe in me.

  Kevin Calhoun : Did I say that?

• Kevin Calhoun : Let's bring you in.

  Marybeth Cogan : We'll put you in the Witness Protection Program.

  Vinnie Zapatti : No, thanks. I got my own Witness Protection Program.