Daily Dialogue — June 29, 2013

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

Before Cliff can finish his sentence, Coccotti slams him hard in the nose with his fist.

COCCOTTI: Smarts, don’t it? Gettin’ slammed in the nose fucks you all up. You got that pain shootin’ through your brain. Your eyes fill up with water. It ain’t any kind of fun. But what I have to offer you. That’s as good as it’s ever gonna get, and it won’t ever get that good again. We talked to your neighbors. They saw a Mustang, a red Mustang, Clarence’s red Mustang, parked in front of your trailer yesterday. Mr. Worley, have you seen your son?

Cliff’s defeated.

CLIFF: I’ve seen him.
COCCOTTI: Now I can’t be sure of how much of what he told you. So in 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, and I don’t just mean pimpin’, in other affairs he works for me in a courier capacity. Well, apparently, that dirty little whore found out when we’re gonna do some business, ’cause your son, the cowboy and his flame, came in the room blastin’ and didn’t stop till they were pretty sure everybody was dead.
CLIFF: What are you talkin’ about?
COCCOTTI: I’m talkin’ about a massacre. They snatched my narcotics and hightailed it outta there. Wouldda gotten away with it, but your son, fuckhead that he is, left his driver’s license in a dead guy’s hand. A whore hiding in the commode filled in all the blanks.
CLIFF: I don’t believe you.
COCCOTTI: That’s of minor importance. But what’s of major fuckin’ importance is that I believe you. Where did they go?
CLIFF: On their honeymoon.
COCCOTTI: I’m gettin’ angry askin’ the same question a second time. Where did they go?
CLIFF: They didn’t tell me.

Coccotti looks at him.

CLIFF: Now, wait a minute and listen. I haven’t seen Clarence in three years. Yesterday he shows up here with a girl, sayin’ he got married. He told me he needed some quick cash for a honeymoon, so he asked if he could borrow five hundred dollars. I wanted to help him out so I wrote out a check. We went to breakfast and that’s the last I saw of him. So help me God. They never thought to tell me where they were goin’. And I never thought to ask.

Coccotti looks at him for a long moment. He then gives Virgil a look. Virgil, quick as greased lightning, grabs Cliff’s hand and turns it palm up. He then whips out a butterfly knife and slices Cliff’s palm open and pours Chivas Regal on the wound. Cliff screams.

Coccotti puffs on a Chesterfield.

Tooth-pic Vic returns to the trailer, and reports in Italian that there’s nothing in the car.

Virgil walks into the kitchen and gets a dishtowel. Cliff holds his bleeding palm in agony. Virgil hands him the dishtowel. Cliff uses it to wrap up his hand.

COCCOTTI: Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I’m a Sicilian. And my old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from growin’ up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has seventeen pantomimes. A woman’s got twenty, but a guy’s got seventeen. And if you know ’em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors to hell. 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. Now I know you know where they are. So tell me, before I do some damage you won’t walk away from.

The awful pain in Cliff’s hand is being replaced by the awful pain in his heart. He looks deep into Coccotti’s eyes.

CLIFF: Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?
COCCOTTI: Sure.

Coccotti leans over and hands him a smoke.

CLIFF: Got a match?

Cliff reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter.

CLIFF: Oh, don’t bother. I got one. (he lights the cigarette) So you’re a Sicilian, huh?
COCCOTTI: (intensly) Uh-huh.
CLIFF: You know I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I find that shit fascinating. In fact, I don’t know if you know this or not, Sicilians were spawned by niggers.

All the men stop what they were doing and look at Cliff, except for Tooth-pic Vic who doesn’t speak English and so isn’t insulted. Coccotti can’t believe what he’s hearing.

COCCOTTI: Come again?
CLIFF: It’s a fact. Sicilians have nigger blood pumpin’ through their hearts. If you don’t believe me, look it up. You see, hundreds and hundreds of years ago the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers. Way back then, Sicilians were like the wops in northern Italy. Blond hair, blue eyes. But, once the Moors moved in there, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin’ with the Sicilian women, they changed the blood-line for ever, from blond hair and blue eyes to black hair and dark skin. I find it absolutely amazing to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. I’m just quotin’ history. It’s a fact. It’s written. Your ancestors were niggers. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandmother was fucked by a nigger, and had a half-nigger kid. That is a fact. Now tell me, am I lyin’?

Coccotti looks at him for a moment then jumps up, whips out an automatic, grabs hold of Cliff’s hair, puts the barrel to his temple, and pumps three bullets through Cliff’s head.

He pushes the body violently aside. Coccotti pauses. Unable to express his feelings and frustrated by the blood in his hands, he simply drops his weapon, and turns to his men.

COCCOTTI: I haven’t killed anybody since 1974. Goddamn his soul to burn for eternity in fuckin’ hell for makin’ me spill blood on my hands! Go to this comedian’s son’s apartment and come back with somethin’ that tells me where that asshole went so I can wipe this egg off of my face and fix this fucked-up family for good.

— True Romance (1974), written by Quentin Tarantino

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is interrogation, suggested by Def Earz. Today’s suggestion by hobbs001.

Trivia: The structure of the script was different in Quentin Tarantino’s original script. The first two parts of the movie were told in trademark Tarantino nonlinear fashion. Director Tony Scott hired ‘Roger Avery’ to change the script to linear structure for filming.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary from hobbs: “Two of the best scenes ever — never mind Interrogation — are from Tarantino. Firstly, Chris Walken interrogating Dennis Hopper in “True Romance” and, basically QT copying himself, Hans Landa interrogating the French farmer in “Inglorious Basterds”. I prefer the Walken scene but couldn’t argue with anyone who prefers Landa. As “talking heads” scenes go, these are about as good as they come.”