Joe Gillis Quotes

Finally, I located that agent of mine - the big faker. Was he out digging up a job for poor Joe Gillis? Huh. He was hard at work at Bell-Air making with the golf sticks.

Better yet, why don't you come out and see for yourself. The address is 10086 Sunset Boulevard.

I felt kind of pleased with the way I'd handled the situation. I dropped the hook and she snapped at it.

The others around the table would be actor friends. Dim figures you may still remember from the silent days. I used to think of them as your wax works.

I had ten years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then, the studio made a test. Well, they didn't like my nose - slanted, this way a little. So, I went to a doctor and had it fixed. They made more tests and they were crazy about my nose. Only, they didn't like my acting.

The plain fact was she was afraid of that world outside. Afraid it would remind her that time had passed.

Betty Schaefer: Oh, the old familiar story. You help a timid little soul cross a crowded street, she turns out to be a multimillionaire and leaves you all her money.
Joe Gillis: That's the trouble with you readers, you know all the plots

As I drove back towards town, I took inventory of my prospects. They now added up to exactly zero. Apparently, I just didn't have what it takes. And the time had come to wrap up the whole Hollywood deal and go home.

She'd sit very close to me and she'd smell of tuberoses - which is not my favorite perfume. Not by a long shot. Sometimes as we'd watch, she'd clutch my arm or my hand, forgetting she was my employer. Just becoming a fan. Excited about that actress up there on the screen. I guess I don't have to tell you who the star was. They were always her pictures. That's all she wanted to see.

And there's a great little part for Bill Demarest. One of the trainers. Old time player who got beaned. Goes out of his head sometimes.

Incredible as it may seem, there'd been some more of those urgent calls from Paramount. So, she put on about a half a pound of makeup, fixed it up with a veil, and set forth to DeMille in person.

A very simple setup. An older woman who's well-to-do. A younger man who's not doing too well.

Betty Schaefer: Don't you sometimes hate yourself?
Joe Gillis: Constantly.

Betty Schaefer: Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Gillis, but I just didn't think it was any good. I found it flat and trite.
Joe Gillis: Exactly what kind of material do you recommend? James Joyce? Dostoyevsky?
Betty Schaefer: I just think that pictures should say a little something.
Joe Gillis: Oh, one of the message kids. Just a story won't do. You'd have turned down Gone With the Wind.
Sheldrake: No, that was me. I said, "Who wants to see a Civil War picture?"

Joe Gillis: Stop crying, will you? You're getting married. That's what you wanted.
Betty Schaefer: I don't want it now.
Joe Gillis: Why not? Don't you love Artie?
Betty Schaefer: Of course I love him. I always will. I... I'm not in love with him anymore, that's all.
Joe Gillis: What happened?
Betty Schaefer: You did.

Betty Schaefer: I've been hoping to run into you.
Joe Gillis: What for? To recover that knife you stuck in my back?

Betty Schaefer: Perhaps the reason I hated "Bases Loaded" is that I knew your name. I'd always heard you had some talent.
Joe Gillis: That was last year. This year I'm trying to earn a living.

Betty Schaefer: Where have you been keeping yourself? I've got the most wonderful news for you.
Joe Gillis: I haven't been keeping myself at all, lately.

Joe Gillis: May I say that you smell really special?
Betty Schaefer: It must be my new shampoo.
Joe Gillis: That's no shampoo. It's more like freshly-laundered linen handkerchiefs, like a brand new automobile. How old are you anyway?
Betty Schaefer: Twenty-two.
Joe Gillis: Smart girl. Nothing like being twenty-two.

Betty Schaefer: Are you hungry?
Joe Gillis: Hungry? After 12 years in a Burmese jungle, I'm starving, Lady Agatha, starving for a white shoulder.
Betty Schaefer: Philip you're mad.
Joe Gillis: Thirsting for the coolness of your lips.

Betty Schaefer: So, you take plot 27A, make is glossy, make it slick?
Sheldrake: Eh-eh-eh-eh. Those are dirty words. You sound like a bunch of New York critics.

Betty Schaefer: I think you should throw out all that psychological mess - exploring the killer's sick mind.
Joe Gillis: Psychopaths sell like hotcakes!

Betty Schaefer: I'll get us a refill of this horrible liquid.
Joe Gillis: You'll be waiting for me?
Betty Schaefer: With a wildly beating heart!
Joe Gillis: Life can be beautiful.

Sheldrake: That'll be all Miss Kramer... Schaefer.
Betty Schaefer: Goodbye, Mr. Gillis.
Joe Gillis: Next time I'll write you "The Naked and the Dead".

Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.

Yes, this is Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning. That's the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspaper men.

Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.

The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.

So they were turning after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.

You don't yell at a sleepwalker - he may fall and break his neck. That's it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career.

Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad - bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.

The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis - out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion.

Then I talked to a couple of Yes men at Metro. To me, they said No.

Come think of it, the whole place seemed to have been stricken with the kind of creeping paralysis... out of beat with the rest of the world... crumbling apart in slow motion. There was a tennis court... or rather the ghost of a tennis court... with faded markings and a sagging net... And of course she had a pool. Who didn't then? Mabel Norman and John Gilbert must have swum in it ten thousand midnights ago... It was empty now. Or was it?

How could she breathe in that house full of Norma Desmonds? Around every corner, Norma Desmonds... more Norma Desmonds... and still more Norma Desmonds.

You don't yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.

After that, I drove down to headquarters. That's the way a lot of us think about Schwab's Drug Store. KInd of a combination office, coffee clutch, and waiting room. Waiting. Waiting for the gravy train.

Now back to the typewritters by way of Washington Square

I was way ahead of the finance company. I knew they'd be becoming around and I wasn't taking any chances. So I kept it across the street in a parking lot behind Rudy's shoeshine parlour. Rudy never asked any questions about your finances... he'd just look at your heels and know the score.

It was a great big white elephant of a place. The kind crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s. A neglected house gets an unhappy look. This one had it in spades. It was like that old woman in "Great Expectations". That Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world, because she'd been given the go-by.

I felt caught like the cigarette in that contraption on her finger.

I had landed myself in the driveway of some big mansion that looked run down and deserted.

Next time I'll bring my autograph album along. Or, maybe a hunk of cement and ask for your footprint.

I pegged him as slightly cuckoo, too. A stroke maybe.

She'd take me for rides in the hills above Sunset. The whole thing was upholstered in leopard skin and had one of those car phones - all gold plated.

The last week in December, the rains came. A great big package of rain. Oversized. Like everything else in California.

I just had to get out of there. I had to be with people my own age. I had to hear somebody laugh again. I thought of Artie Green. There was bound to be a New Year's shindig going on in his apartment down in Los Palmas. Writers without a job. Composers without a publisher. Actresses so young they still believe the guys in the casting office. A bunch of kids who didn't give a hoot.