Daily Dialogue — April 9, 2015

Vincenzo Coccotti: You know who I am, Mr. Worley?
Clifford Worley: I give up. Who are you?
Vincenzo Coccotti: I’m the Anti-Christ. You got me in a vendetta kind of mood. You tell the angels in heaven you never seen evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you. My name is Vincent Coccotti. I work as counsel for Mr. Blue Lou Boyle, the man your son stole from. I hear you were once a cop so I can assume you’ve heard of us before. Am I correct?
Clifford Worley: I’ve heard of Blue Lou Boyle.
Vincenzo Coccotti:I’m glad. Hopefully that will clear up the “how full of shit am I?” question you’ve been asking yourself. We’re gonna have a little Q&A, and at the risk of sounding redundant, please… make your answers genuine. You want a Chesterfield?
Clifford Worley: No.
Vincenzo Coccotti: I have a son of my own about your boy’s age. I can imagine how painful this must be for you. But, Clarence and that bitch little girlfriend of his brought this all on themselves. I implore you not to go down that road with them. You can always take comfort in the fact you never had a choice.
Clifford Worley: Look, I’d like to help you if I could but I haven’t seen Clarence.
Vincenzo Coccotti: You see that?

Holding a clenched fist in one direction, then striking Clifford with the other.

Vincenzo Coccotti: That smarts, doesn’t it? Getting slammed in the nose. Fucks you all up. You get that pain shootin’ through your brain, your eyes fill up with water. That ain’t any kind of fun, but what I have to offer you, that’s as good as it’s gonna get. And it won’t ever get that good again. We talked to your neighbors. They saw a Cadillac. Purple Cadillac. Clarence’s purple Cadillac, parked in front of your trailer yesterday. Mr. Worley, you seen your son?
Clifford Worley: I seen him.
Vincenzo Coccotti: I can’t be sure of how much of what he told you so…on the chance you’re in the dark about some of this, let me shed some light. That whore your boy hangs around with, her pimp is an associate of mine. That means he’s pimping and other affairs, he works for me in a courier capacity. Well, apparently the dirty little whore found out we were going to do some business. Cause your son, the cowboy, it’s claimed, came in the room blazin’, and didn’t stop ’till they were pretty sure everybody was dead.
Clifford Worley: What are you talkin’ about?
Vincenzo Coccotti: Talkin’ about a massacre. They snatched my narcotics, hightailed it outta there. Woulda got away with it, but your son, fuckhead that he is, left his driver’s license in a dead guy’s hand.
Clifford Worley: You know, I don’t believe you.
Vincenzo Coccotti: That’s of minor importance. What is of major fucking importance is that I believe you. Where did they go?
Clifford Worley: On their honeymoon.
Vincenzo Coccotti: I get angry asking the same question a second time. Where did they go?
Clifford Worley: They didn’t tell me. Now you just wait a minute and listen to me. I haven’t seen Clarence in three years, he shows up yesterday with a young girl saying that he got married. He asked for a…some quick a cash to go on a honeymoon. He asked me if he could borrow five hundred dollars. I felt like helping him so I wrote him out a check. We went to breakfast in the morning and that’s the last I saw of him. So help me God. They never thought to tell me where they were going and I never thought to ask.
Vincenzo Coccotti: You know Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I’m Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away. A guy’s got seventeen pantomimes. A woman’s got twenty, but a guy’s got seventeen… but, if you know them, like you know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell. Now, what we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don’t wanna show me nothin’, but you’re tellin me everything. I know you know where they are, so tell me before I do some damage you won’t walk away from.
Clifford Worley: Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?
Vincenzo Coccotti: Sure.
Clifford Worley: You got a match? No wait, no don’t bother, I’ve got one. You’re Sicilian, huh?
Vincenzo Coccotti: Yeah, Sicilian.
Clifford Worley: Ya know, I read a lot. Especially about things… about history. I find that shit fascinating. Here’s a fact I don’t know whether you know or not. Sicilians were spawned by niggers.
Vincenzo Coccotti: [He does a double take] Come again?
Clifford Worley: It’s a fact. Yeah. You see, uh, Sicilians have, uh, black blood pumpin’ through their hearts. Hey, no, if eh, if eh, if you don’t believe me, uh, you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, uh, you see, uh, the Moors conquered Sicily. And the Moors are niggers.
Vincenzo Coccotti: Yes…
Clifford Worley: So you see, way back then, uh, Sicilians were like, uh, wops from Northern Italy. Ah, they all had blonde hair and blue eyes, but, uh, well, then the Moors moved in there, and uh, well, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin’ with Sicilian women, huh? That they changed the whole bloodline forever. That’s why blonde hair and blue eyes became black hair and dark skin. You know, it’s absolutely amazing to me to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, that, uh, that Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. Now this…
Coccotti busts out laughing.

Clifford Worley: No, I’m, no, I’m quoting… history. It’s written. It’s a fact, it’s written.
Vincenzo Coccotti: [laughing] I love this guy.
Clifford Worley: Your ancestors are niggers. Uh-huh.

Starts laughing, too.

Clifford Worley: Hey. Yeah. And, and your great-great-great-great grandmother fucked a nigger, ho, ho, yeah, and she had a half-nigger kid… now, if that’s a fact, tell me, am I lying? ’Cause you, you’re part eggplant.

All laugh.

Vincenzo Coccotti: Ohhh!
Clifford Worley: Huh? Hey! Hey! Hey!

Motioning with his hand three times.

Vincenzo Coccotti: You’re a cantaloupe. [kisses Clifford] You’re beautiful. [shoots Cliff in the face]
I haven’t killed anybody since 1984. Go over to this comedian’s son’s apartment, come back with something that tells me where that asshole went, so I can wipe this egg off my face and finish this fucked-up family for good.

— True Romance (1993), written by Quentin Tarantino

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Interrogation. Today’s suggestion by James Schramm.

Trivia: Following the “eggplant scene”, Dennis Hopper was concerned about being “shot” by Christopher Walken with the prop gun so close against his head for fear of being burned by the barrel. Director Tony Scott assured him the gun was 100% safe, and even tested it by having the prop man fire it against his (Scott’s) own forehead. But upon firing the prop gun the barrel extended about a third of an inch and Scott ended up on the floor with blood pouring from the wound.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by James: “Tarantino considers this scene one of the best he’s ever written. Memorable interrogation and dialogue.”

If you have a suggestion for this week’s theme, please post to comments — and thanks!

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