Daily Dialogue — October 20, 2015
Vincenzo: You know, Sicilians are great liars. Best in the world. I’m Sicilian. My father was the world heavyweight of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him I learned the pantomime. There are 17 different things a guy can do to give himself away. A woman’s got 20, a guy’s got 17. 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 want to show me nothing but you’re telling me everything. I know you know where they are so tell me before I do some damage you won’t walk away from.
Clifford: Could I have one of those Chesterfields now.
Vincenzo: Sure.
Clifford: You got a match? Don’t bother I got one. You’re a Sicilian, huh? You 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: Come again.
Clifford: It’s a fact. You see Sicilians have black blood pumping through their hearts. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The Moors conquered Sicily, and the Moors are niggers. You see way back then, Sicilians were like Wops, from Northern Italy. They all had blond hair and blue eyes. But then the Moors moved in and they changed the whole country. They did so much fucking with Sicilian women, hah, that they changed the whole bloodline forever. That’s why blond 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 Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. No I’m quoting history. It’s a fact, it’s written. Your ancestors are niggers. And your great, great, great, great grandmother fucked a nigger. Yeah. And she had a half nigger kid. If that’s a fact, tell me, am I lying, cos’ you, you’re part eggplant.
Laughter.
Vincenzo: You’re a cantaloupe. Beautiful.
Vincenzo shoots Clifford.
Vincenzo: I haven’t killed anybody since 1984.
— True Romance (1993), screenplay by Quentin Tarantino
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Selflessness. Today’s suggestion is by Michael Waters.
Trivia: Quentin Tarantino considers this one of his finest written scenes. Check out his Director’s Chair interviews with Robert Rodriguez (El Ray).
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Michael Waters: “With the inevitability that Vincenzo (Christopher Walkin) will kill Clifford (Dennis Hopper) if he doesn’t give up his son, and Clifford’s refusal to do so, the scene becomes one of a final cigarette and a final insult.”