Political drama films

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

"[to Senator Robert Kelly] Are you a God-fearing man, Senator? It's such a strange phrase. I've always thought of God as a teacher. As a bringer of light, wisdom and understanding. You see, l think what you really are afraid of is me. Me and my kind. The brotherhood of mutants. It's not so surprising, really. Mankind has always feared what it doesn't understand. Well, don't fear God, Senator, and certainly don't fear me. Not any more."

"There seems to be this embarrassment with superheroes in the culture. If you see the new X-Men movie, they all have to wear black leather because it makes them look cool and tough, because people are afraid to make the characters look like the characters."

""X-Men" is at least not a manic editing frenzy for atrophied attention spans. It's restrained and introspective for a superhero epic, and fans of the comic books may like that. Graphic novels (as they sometimes deserve to be called) take themselves as seriously as the ones without pictures, and you can tell that here when the opening scene shows Jews being forced into death camps in Poland in 1944. One could argue that the Holocaust is not appropriate subject matter for an action movie based on a comic book, but having talked to some "X-Men" fans I believe that in their minds the medium is as deep and portentous as, say, "Sophie's Choice." The Holocaust scene introduces Magneto (Ian McKellen) as a child; his mental powers twist iron gates out of shape. The narrator informs us that "evolution takes thousands and thousands of years," which is putting it mildly, and that we live in an age of great evolutionary leaps forward. Some of the X-Men develop paranormal powers which cannot be accounted for by the strictly physical mutations which form the basis of Darwinian theory; I get restless when real science is evoked in the name of pseudoscience, but, hey, that's just me. Magneto's opponent in "X-Men" is Xavier (Patrick Stewart), another mutant of the same generation. They aren't enemies so much as ideological opposites. Magneto, having seen the Holocaust, has a deep pessimism about human nature. Xavier, who runs a school for mutants in Westchester County, where it doubtless seems no stranger than the other private schools, hopes these new powers can be used for good. Bruce Davison plays the McCarthy-like senator who waves a list of "known mutants" during a congressional hearing and wants them all registered—no doubt for dire purposes. Magneto wants to counter by using a device which can convert world leaders to mutants. (The world leaders are conveniently meeting on an island near Ellis Island, so the Statue of Liberty can be a prop.) How a machine could create a desired mutation within a generation is not much explored by the movie, which also eludes the question of why you would want to invest your enemies with your powers. No matter; Xavier, who can read minds, leads his good mutants in a battle to foil Magneto, and that's the plot, or most of it."

"I started out liking this movie, while waiting for something really interesting to happen. When nothing did, I still didn't dislike it; I assume the X-Men will further develop their personalities if there is a sequel, and maybe find time to get involved in a story. No doubt fans of the comics will understand subtle allusions and fine points of behavior; they should linger in the lobby after each screening to answer questions."

"Q: How did you decide Wolverine would be the star of the piece even more so than Xavier or Magneto?"

"Q: Some fans complained Storm wasn't given her due in the first X-Men movie, and then became better over time. Did you pay attention to those concerns and how did that happen that she was given more to do in X2?"

"I was sold it by Bryan who said, ‘Mutants are like gays. They’re cast out by society for no good reason, and, as in all civil rights movements, they have to decide: Are they going to take the Xavier line — which is to somehow assimilate and stand up for yourself and be proud of what you are, but get on with everybody — or are you going to take the alternative view — which is, if necessary, use violence to stand up for your own rights. And that’s true. I’ve come across that division within the gay rights movement."

"I of course studied the comic books. In fact I think it was some of the most relaxing research I've ever had to do on a movie. Usually the kind of projects that I've been involved in I end up with heavy novels and background research. But in this case the studio just sent over a box of comic books."

"I wanted to get some of the history of the character of course, particularly with his relationship with Magneto, but also to feel how Stan Lee had got inside the mind of Xavier from the very beginning. That was valuable. But it's true, like Bryan, when we had the final draft of the shooting script that's what we worked on."

"DS: Did you find it limiting as an actor to be stuck in that chair [as Professor Xavier]?"

"PS: Bryan set out to make a serious movie. That was his intention from the very beginning. Which also happens to be very exciting and very colorful, funny and so forth. It wasn't only Xavier, but having Magneto also as an individual of substance, of great strength and power was important. And who better than Sir Ian to do that. It was a very sensible idea."

"Join the Evolution."

"Protecting Those Who Fear Them."

"The time is coming when all that we are afraid of will be all that can save us."

"Trust a few. Fear the rest."

"We're Not What You Think."

"The future is here."

"Hugh Jackman – Logan/Wolverine"

"Patrick Stewart – Processor X"

"Ian McKellen – Magneto"

"Famke Janssen – Jean Grey"

"James Marsden – Cyclops"

"Halle Berry – Storm"

"Anna Paquin – Rogue"

"Tyler Mane – Sabretooth"

"Ray Park – Toad"

"Rebecca Romijn – Mystique"

"Bruce Davison – Senator Kelly"

"Brian Peck – Hot Dog Vendor"

"His code name is Condor. In the next seventy-two hours, everyone he trusts will target him for death."

"The CIA knows him as Condor. What he knows about them has just made him a very endangered species."

"Robert Redford - Joseph Turner/The Condor"

"Faye Dunaway - Kathy Hale"

"Cliff Robertson - J. Higgins"

"Max von Sydow - G. Joubert"

"John Houseman - Wabash"

"Addison Powell - Leonard Atwood"

"Walter McGinn - Sam Barber"

"Tina Chen - Janice Chon"

"Michael Kane - S.W. Wicks"

"Don McHenry - Dr. Ferdinand Lappe"

"Michael Miller - Fowler"

"Jess Osuna - The Major"

"Dino Narizzano - Harold"

"Helen Stenborg - Mrs. Edwina Russell"

"Patrick Gorman - Martin"

"Hansford Rowe - Jennings"

"Carlin Glynn - Mae Barber"

"Hank Garrett - The Mailman"

"For reasons passing understanding, people do not relate guns to gun-related crime."

"For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being President of this country was, to a certain extent, about character. And although I've not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I have been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation - being President of this country is entirely about character. For the record, yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but the more important question is, why aren't you, Bob? Now this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question, why would a Senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? Now if you can answer that question, folks, then you're smarter than I am, because I didn't understand it until a few hours ago. America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours." You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the land of the free. I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she's to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, 'cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league. I've loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer. And I lost the other 'cause I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now. Tomorrow morning, the White House is sending a bill to Congress for its consideration. It's White House Resolution 455, an energy bill requiring a twenty percent reduction of the emission of fossil fuels over the next ten years. It is by far the most aggressive stride ever taken in the fight to reverse the effects of global warming. The other piece of legislation is the Crime Bill. As of today, it no longer exists. I'm throwing it out. I'm throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense. You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door-to-door if I have to, but I'm gonna convince Americans that I'm right, and I'm gonna get the guns. We've got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you'd better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I'll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up. My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I AM THE PRESIDENT!"

"How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can't stand Americans?"

"Why can't the most powerful man in the world have the one thing he wants most?"

"Michael Douglas - President Andrew Shepherd"

"Annette Bening - Sydney Ellen Wade"

"Martin Sheen - A. J. MacInerney"

"Michael J. Fox - Lewis Rothschild"

"Anna Deavere Smith - Robin McCall"

"David Paymer - Leon Kodak"

"Richard Dreyfuss - Senator Bob Rumson"

"Mutants. Since the discovery of their existence they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, often hatred. Across the planet, debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain or simply a new species of humanity fighting for their share of the world? Either way it is a historical fact: Sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute."

"[After ripping off and throwing his dog tags at Stryker's feet] I'll take my chances with him."

"[After stopping the X-Jet from crashing with his powers] When will these people learn how to fly?"

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

"I was piloting black-ops missions in the jungles of North Vietnam when you were suckin' on your mama's tit at Woodstock, Kelly. Don't lecture me about war. This already is a war."

"The time has come for those who are different to stand united."

"Get ready for the return of the Evolution."

"Evolution Continues."

"The ones we fear most, will be all that can save us... again."

"In this world wide conspiracy the only thing you can count on... Is the X factor."

"First, they were fighting for acceptance. Now, they're battling for survival."

"X-Men United."

""X2: X-Men United" is the kind of movie you enjoy for its moments, even though they never add up. Made for (and possibly by) those with short attention spans, it lives in the present, providing one amazing spectacle after another, and not even trying to develop a story arc. Having trained on the original "X-Men" (2000), i tried to experience the film entirely in the present, and the fact is, i had a good time. Dumb, but good."

"Like all the characters in the Marvel Comics stable, the X-Men have psychological or political problems; in the first movie they were faced with genocide, and in this one their right to privacy is violated with the Mutant Registration Act. Of course there will be audience members who believe mutants should have no rights, and so "X2" provides a valuable civics lesson. (How you register a mutant who can teleport or shape-shift is not explained.)"

"Odd, then, that Wolverine is one of the dominant characters even though his X-Acto knuckles seem pretty insignificant compared to the powers of Pyro or Cyclops. In a convention borrowed from martial arts movies, "X2" pairs characters with matching powers, so that when Wolverine has his titanic battle, it's with an enemy also equipped with blades. What would happen if Pyro and Iceman went head to head? I visualize the two of them in a pool of hot water."

"Since the earliest days of "Spider-Man," Marvel heroes have had personal problems to deal with, and there's a classic Stan Lee moment here in the scene where Iceman breaks the news to his parents that he is a mutant. The movie treats the dialogue as a coming out scene, half-seriously, as if providing inspiration for real-life parents and their children with secrets."

""X2: X-Men United" lacks a beginning, a middle and an end, and exists more as a self-renewing loop. In that it is faithful to comic books themselves, which month after month and year after year seem frozen in the same fictional universe."

"On the first film, the studio was worried about the lead character stabbing people. We were like, “Yeah, okay, but he has nine inch blades that come out of his fists. People are going to get stabbed.” You can’t do what they do in the cartoons having him open doors or be the world’s most dangerous can opener. When we started to do X2 one of the first things I said to Bryan [Singer] was we needed to see Wolverine cut loose and just go on a rampage. We also knew we want the mansion be invaded. I think it was Bryan who said the others should be out of town and it should just be Wolverine watching the mansion, then you can see him tear into those people. We made sure the soldiers he was attacking were faceless. They got masks on, so you can stay in a PG-13 relm and murder a bunch of people. That’s what my 15-year-old self wanted to see from Wolverine."

"When I first read this installment of the script, because I've been talking to fans, and if there's one thing they've said to me it was, 'You don't kick enough ass. Let's see that berserker rage!' I kind of thought about that, and I was like, 'Jeez, you're right.' When I went back to X-Men I, there really wasn't a lot there. I had a huge fight scene with Mystique, where I ended up on my back, knocked out, and there's a bit at the beginning, there wasn't a lot of that berserker rage. So, when I read the script, I thought the relationships were better, I thought it was funnier, I thought there was more action, but I still said, 'We've got to get even more action.' I kind of fought for a little bit more in the mansion scene sequence, particularly. That was a little more berserker rage there than was originally. But, apart from that, I thought the script had a great balance. I think it works for Wolverine's story. It's not like he's in the corner crying. He's at a crisis point where he's about to find out everything he's ever wanted to know, and as liberating as that would be, it's frightening as all hell. So, he's on edge. He's having these nightmares. So, it all kind of works in together with the action."

"With the movie coming out in the aftermath of the military action in Iraq, Singer was asked if the troubled times made him nervous about people's reactions to the war theme in this film. "No, not at all, because the soldiers working in this film, they're not even working in the United States. They're working up in Alberta, in a secret base. They're working for a person who's completely rogue from the government. The President of the United States is very on the fence and very concerned, justifiably about issues. There are mutants who possess incredible power and who are terribly violent and dangerous to the human society and mutant society. I view these as henchmen, and in terms of fighter airplanes getting dogged and police getting dogged, no one in that sphere is really harmed. It's not about bullying the authority. I personally have tremendous faith and support of our authorities and military ... Having shown it to friends of mine in the military, they get a kick out of the fact that these soldiers are a bunch of rogue, dirt bags that get what's coming to them. And we see that. We definitely see that. This guy, Stryker, he's operating in his own universe. He's tricking the President, he's conning the President into his operation, so it's quite the opposite if anything. He's more of a terrorist.""

"[in his journal while imprisoned] The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angkar are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive."

"We must be like the ox, and have no thought, except for the Party. And have no love, but for the Angkar. People starve, but we must not grow food. We must honor the comrade children, whose minds are not corrupted by the past."

"They brought in the whole fucking press corps. They want to sanitize the story. Bastards!"

"I can't eat eggs, someone told me they shrink with fright when you cook them."

"Anything I eat's gotta be absolutely dead. That is why I can never eat an oyster. I read somewhere that they put that lemon juice on them just to stun them. What's the difference?"

"What pisses me off is that this country has a lot of faults and a lot of strengths and we have done nothing but play to the faults. I'll tell you Sid I will be damned glad to get out of here. This thing has dragged on too long for it to end in all sweetness and light and after what the Khmer Rouge have been through I don't think they're going to be exactly affectionate toward westerners."

"[reading] Dear sir, My family and I are planning a touring vacation of southeast Asia and anticipate, uh 2 weeks in Cambodia touring the country. Would you please send tour information and brochures? Thanking you in advance, Wendal Payne. Wendal lives in Wisacky, South Carolina."

"I know Sid but what can we do? It could be a bloodbath here. Look, excuse the pun but we're either staying or we're living."

"Not Sydney Schanberg: Well, it's just too goddamn late, Alan, this country's split apart. We put this ship to sea and it breaks my heart not to help it back to a port, any port."

"Sam Waterston - Sydney Schanberg"

"Haing S. Ngor - Dith Pran"

"John Malkovich - Alan 'Al' Rockoff, Photographer"

"Julian Sands - Jon Swain"

"Craig T. Nelson - Major Reeves, Military Attache"

"Spalding Gray - United States consul"

"Bill Paterson - Dr. MacEntire"

"Athol Fugard - Dr. Sundesval"

"Graham Kennedy - Dougal"

"Patrick Malahide - Morgan"

"Nell Campbell - Beth"

"Joanna Merlin - Schanberg's Sister"

"My Dad had the right idea. He had it all worked out. He used to say to me, "Son, don't miss the wonders that surround you; because, every tree, every rock, every ant hill, every star is filled with the wonders of nature." And, he used to say to me, "Have you ever noticed how grateful you are to see daylight again after coming through a long, dark tunnel?" Well, he'd say, "Always try to see life around you, as if you'd just come out a tunnel.""

"[After reading the Declaration of Independence] Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose. [The Senate applauds] It's a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that's why it seemed like a pretty good idea for me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year. And build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days. And it seemed like a pretty good idea, getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living. Getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a - a little lookin' out for the other fella, too...That's pretty important, all that. It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all. But of course, if you've got to build a dam where that boys camp ought to be, to get some graft to pay off some political army or something, well that's a different thing. Oh no! If you think I'm going back there and tell those boys in my state and say: 'Look. Now fellas. Forget about it. Forget all this stuff I've been tellin' you about this land you live in is a lot of hooey. This isn't your country. It belongs to a lot of James Taylors.' Oh no! Not me! And anybody here that thinks I'm gonna do that, they've got another thing comin'. [He whistles loudly with his fingers in his mouth, startling Senators who are dozing or reading other materials] That's all right. I just wanted to find out if you still had faces. I'm sorry gentlemen. I-I know I'm being disrespectful to this honorable body, I know that. I- A guy like me should never be allowed to get in here in the first place. I know that! And I hate to stand here and try your patience like this, but EITHER I'M DEAD RIGHT OR I'M CRAZY."

"[His voice very hoarse, from his filibuster] There's no compromise with truth. That's all I got up on this floor to say. When was it? A year ago, it seems like....Just get up off the ground, that's all I ask. Get up there with that lady that's up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery; you'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that's what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we'd better get those boys' camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it's not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here; you just have to see them again!"

"[His voice very hoarse] I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don't know about lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for, and he fought for them once, for the only reason any man ever fights for them: Because of just one plain simple rule: Love thy neighbor. And in this world today, full of hatred, a man who knows that one rule has a great trust. You know that rule, Mr. Paine. And I loved you for it just as my father did, and you know that you fight for the lost causes harder than for any others. Yes, you even die for them, like a man we both knew, Mr. Paine. You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause, even if this room gets filled with lies like these! [takes a handful of the letters in the basket and throws them on the floor]. When the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place, somebody'll listen to me! Some--- [Faints from exhaustion]"

"I was hoping you'd be spared all this. I was hoping that you'd see the sights, absorb a lot of history, and go back to your boys. Now you've been living in a boy's world, Jeff, and for heaven's sakes, stay there! This is a man's world. It's a brutal world Jeff, and you've no place in it. You'll only get hurt. Now take my advice. Forget Taylor and what he said. Forget you ever heard of the Willet Creek Dam...I know it's tough to run head-on into facts but, well as I said, this is a man's world Jeff, and you've got to check your ideals outside the door, like you do your rubbers. I know how you feel, Jeff. Thirty years ago - I had those ideals, too. I was you. I had to make the decision you were asked to make today. And I compromised - yes! So that all these years I could stay in that Senate - and serve the people in a thousand honest ways! You've got to face facts, Jeff. I've served our state well, haven't I? We have the lowest unemployment and the highest federal grants. But, well, I've had to compromise, had to play ball. You can't count on people voting, half the time they don't vote, anyway. That's how states and empires have been built since time began. Don't you understand? Well, Jeff, you can take my word for it, that's how things are. Now I've told you all this because - well, I've grown very fond of you - about like a son - in fact, and I don't want to see you get hurt. Now, when that deficiency bill comes up in the Senate tomorrow, you stay away from it. Don't say a word. Great powers are behind it, and they'll destroy you before you can even get started. For your own sake, Jeff, and for the sake of my friendship with your father, please, don't say a word."

"H.V. Kaltenborn: [speaking on the radio] Half of official Washington is here to see democracy's finest show, the filibuster, the right to talk your head off, the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form. The least man in that chamber, once he gets and holds that floor by the rules, can hold it and talk as long as he can stand on his feet providing always, first, that he does not sit down, second, that he does not leave the chamber or stop talking. The galleries are packed. In the diplomatic gallery are the envoys of two dictator powers. They have come here to see what they can't see at home. DEMOCRACY IN ACTION."

"H.V. Kaltenborn: [Speaking on the radio] Senator Smith, has now talked for 23 hours and 16 minutes. It is the most unusual and spectacular thing in the Senate annals. One alone and simple American, holding the greatest floor in the land. What he lacked in experience, he's made up in fight. But those tired Boy Ranger legs are buckling. Bleary eyed, voice gone, he cannot go on much longer. And all official Washington is here to be in on the kill."

"Capra at his greatest!"

"Stirring - In the seeing! Precious - In the remembering!"

"Capra's Greatest Hit --- The Screen At Its Most Inspired!"

"Entertainment As Powerful As the Strength of the People! As Great As the Genius of Capra!"

"Romance, drama, laughter and heartbreak ... created out of the very heart and soil of America ... by a great director and cast!"

"James Stewart - Jefferson Smith"

"Jean Arthur - Clarissa Saunders"

"Claude Rains - Sen. Joseph Harrison Paine"

"Edward Arnold - Jim Taylor"

"Guy Kibbee - Gov. Hubert 'Happy' Hopper"

"Thomas Mitchell - Diz Moore"

"Eugene Pallette - Chick McGann"

"Beulah Bondi - Ma Smith"

"H.B. Warner - Sen. Agnew (Senate Majority Leader)"

"Harry Carey - The Vice President"

"Astrid Allwyn - Susan Paine"

"Ruth Donnelly - Emma Hopper"

"Grant Mitchell - Sen. MacPherson (Privileges and Elections Committee)"

"H.V. Kaltenborn - Himself (broadcaster)"

"Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask, there is an idea, Mr Creedy. And ideas are bulletproof!"

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! (carves the letter V in sign with his knife) The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. (laughs wheezily) Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V."

"Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquillity of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the fifth, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic, you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words; they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot!"

"Our story begins, as these stories often do, with a young, up-and-coming politician. He's a deeply religious man and a member of the Conservative Party. He's completely single-minded and has no regard for the political process. The more power he attains, the more obvious his zealotry and the more aggressive his supporters become. Eventually, his party launches a special project in the name of "national security". At first, it's believed to be a search for biological weapons and is pursued without regard to its cost. However, the true goal of this project is power, complete and total hegemonic domination. The project, however, ends violently; but the efforts of those involved are not in vain, for a new ability to wage war is born from the blood of one of the victims. Imagine a virus, the most terrifying virus you can, and then imagine that you, and you alone, have the cure. But if your ultimate goal is power, how best to use such a weapon? It's at this point in our story that along comes a spider. He is a man seemingly without a conscience, for whom the ends always justify the means, and it is he who suggests that their target should not be an enemy of the country but rather the country itself. Three targets are chosen to maximise the effect of the attack: a school, a tube station, and a water treatment plant. Several hundred die within the first few weeks. Fueled by the media, fear and panic spread quickly, fracturing and dividing the country until, at last, the true goal comes into view. Before the St Mary's crisis, no-one would have predicted the results of the election that year. No-one. And then, not long after the election, lo and behold, a miracle. Some believe it was the work of God himself, but it was a pharmaceutical company controlled by certain party members that made them all obscenely rich. A year later, several extremists are tried, found guilty, and executed, while a memorial is built to canonise their victims. But the end result, the true genius of the plan, was the fear. Fear became the ultimate tool of this government, and through it, our politician was ultimately appointed to the newly-created position of high chancellor. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Vi veri veniversum vivus vici"

"There is a face beneath this mask, but it's not me. I'm no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it, or the bones beneath them."

""Remember, remember The fifth of November The gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason Why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot." But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes, and I know that, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first-hand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them. But you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it. Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love. And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man. A man that made me remember the fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."

"Are you like a crazy person?"

"God is in the rain."

"A fake ID works a lot better than a Guy Fawkes mask."

"I worried about myself for a while. But one day I was at a market and a friend, someone I'd worked with at the BTN, got in line behind me. I was so nervous that when the cashier asked me for my money I dropped it. My friend picked it up and handed it to me. She looked me right in the eye and didn't recognise me. I guess whatever you did to me worked better than I'd ever have imagined."

"No-one will ever forget that night, and what it meant to this country. But I will never forget the man, and what he meant to me."

"I remember them arguing at night. Mum wanted to leave the country. Dad refused. He said if we ran away, they would win. Win, like it was a game."

"Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up."

"I wish I believed that was possible. But every time I've seen this world change, it's always been for the worse."

"I know there's no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don't care; I am me. My name is Valerie. I don't think I'll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography I'll ever write, and God - I'm writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985. I don't remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tuttlebrook, and she used to tell me that God was in the rain. I passed my 11th lesson into girl's grammar. It was at school that I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sara. It was her wrists. They were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't. In 2002, I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn't have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn't look at me; he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I had only told them the truth. Was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free."

"I'd always known what I wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I starred in my first film, The Salt Flats. It was the most important role in my life, not because of my career, but because that was how I met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again. We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew scarlet carsons for me in our window box, and our place always smelled of roses. Those were the best years of my life. But America's war grew worse and worse … and eventually came to London. After that, there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone."

"I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like "collateral" and "rendition" became frightening, while things like Norsefire and the Articles of Allegiance became powerful. I remember how different became dangerous. I still don't understand it, why they hate us so much. They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I've never cried so hard in my life. It wasn't long till they came for me. It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years, I had roses and apologised to no-one. I shall die here. Every inch of me will perish. Every inch but one. An inch … it is small, and it is fragile, but it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that, whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie."

"May 23. My first batch of subjects arrived today, and I have to admit that I am very excited. This could be the dawn of a new age. Nuclear power is meaningless in a world where a virus can kill an entire population and leave its wealth intact..."

"May 27. Commander Prothero toured the lab with a priest, Father Lilliman, who I was told is here to monitor for rules and rights violations. It made me nervous, but the commander assured me there wouldn't be a problem."

"June 2. I kept wondering if these people knew how they might be helping their country if they would act any differently. They're so weak and pathetic. They never look you in the eye. I find myself hating them."

"August the 18th. Of the original four dozen, over 75 per cent are now deceased. No controllable pattern has yet emerged."

"September the 18th. There is one case that continues to give me hope. He exhibits none of the immune system pathologies the other subjects developed. I've discovered cellular anomalies in his blood that I've been unable to categorise. The mutations seem to have triggered the abnormal development of basic kinaesthesia and reflexes. The subject said he could no longer remember who he was or where he was from. Whoever he was, he is now the key to our dream and the hope that all of this will not have been in vain."

"November the 5th. It started last night, around midnight. The first explosions tore open the entire medical section. All my work, gone. I was trying to understand how it could've happened when I saw him. The man from room five. He looked at me. Not with eyes. There were no eyes. But I know he was looking at me because I felt it."

"Oh my God...what have I done?"

"So I read that the former United States is so desperate for medical supplies that they have allegedly sent several containers filled with wheat and tobacco. A gesture, they said, of goodwill. You want to know what I think? Well, you're listening to my show, so I will assume you do. I think it's high time we let the colonies know what we really think of them. I think it's payback time for a little tea party they threw for us a few hundred years ago. I say we go down to those docks tonight and dump that crap where everything from the Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica belongs. Who's with me? Who's bloody with me? Did you like that? USA; Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica. I mean, what else can you say? Here was a country that had everything, absolutely everything, and now, 20 years later, is what? The world's biggest leper colony. Why? Godlessness. Let me say that again: Godlessness. It wasn't the war they started. It wasn't the plague they created. It was judgement. No-one escapes their past. No-one escapes judgement. You think He's not up there? You think He's not watching over this country? How else can you explain it? He tested us, but we came through. We did what we had to do. Islington, Enfield. I was there. I saw it all. Immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, terrorists, disease-ridden degenerates. They had to go! Strength through unity, unity through faith! I'm a God-fearing Englishman and I am god-damn proud of it!"

"I'll tell you what I know, I'll tell you what I know, I'll tell you what I know, England prevails!"

"I'll tell you what I know. I know this is not a man. A man does not wear a mask. A man does not threaten innocent civilians. He's what every gutless, freedom-hating terrorist is: a god-damn coward!"

"There will be no negotiation, Roger. When I arrive in the morning, the Paddy will be gone. I'm looking at the tape right now, and he has no idea how to light me. My nose looks like Big fucking Ben! Listen to me, you bleeding sod. England prevails because I say it does! And so does every lazy cunt on this show, and that includes you! Find another DOP, or find yourself another job!"

"I'll tell you what I wish: I wish I'd been there. I wish I'd had the chance for a face-to-face. Just one chance, that's all I need."

"This so-called "V" and his accomplice, Evey Hammond, neo-demagogues, spouting their message of hate. A delusional and aberrant voice, delivering a terrorist's ultimatum. An ultimatum that was met with swift and surgically precise justice. And the moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen, is: "GOOD GUYS WIN, BAD GUYS LOSE, AND AS ALWAYS, ENGLAND PREVAILS!""

"My fellow Englishmen: tonight, our country, that which we stand for, and all we hold dear, faces a grave and terrible threat. This violent and unparalleled assault on our security will not go undefended. Or unpunished. Our enemy is an insidious one, seeking to divide us and destroy the very foundation of our great nation. Tonight, we must remain steadfast. We must remain determined. But most of all, we must remain united. Those caught tonight in violation of curfew will be considered in league with our enemy and prosecuted as a terrorist without leniency or exception. Tonight, I give you my most solemn vow: that justice will be swift, it will be righteous, and it will be without mercy!"

"Remember, Remember or Please to remember The fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason Why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot."

"The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him... [skipping four of the original lines] Disdaining fortune with his brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution..."

"We are oft to blame in this. 'Tis too much proved that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.'"

"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none."

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

"Conceal me what I am, and be my aid For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my intent."

"There are ideas in this film. The most pointed is V's belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence. But V has a totalitarian state to overthrow, and only a year to do it in, and we watch as he improvises a revolution."

"Brutal, audacious and very slippery, V for Vendetta is the ballsiest major studio release I've ever seen… Vendetta is as rousing, engaging and devious as only the best propaganda can be — a call to rebellion that dares to question our respect for authority and gives us a masked terrorist and his manipulated prodigy as our heroes. And unlike other political thrillers that seem content to simply wallow their dissatisfaction with the state of the world, Vendetta demands that we take personal responsibility for our actions and for the administrations that we allow to come into power... Vendetta is a thematic powderkeg... Straight up, this is as invigorating, challenging and moving a film as one can hope to expect, especially from a major studio (and the first). Don't miss the movie of the year."

"The dark and stylized V for Vendetta is visually exhilarating, provocative and disturbing. Set in a slightly futuristic world (London in 2020), Vendetta is an action thriller that also stimulates thought... Despite its disparate influences, Vendetta feels captivatingly original. The multilayered film can be appreciated strictly as an action thriller or for its deeper message about personal responsibility, political oppression and revolutionary change. One powerful theme centers on the notion that ideas live forever, their power undiminished even as those who espouse them die."

"It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity."

"An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of the Matrix trilogy."

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

"Remember, remember the 5th of November."

"FREEDOM! FOREVER!"

"Strength through unity, unity through faith!"

"England prevails."

"Ideas are bulletproof."

"Natalie Portman – Evey Hammond"

"Hugo Weaving – V"

"Stephen Rea – Eric Finch"

"Stephen Fry – Gordon Dietrich"

"John Hurt – Chancellor Adam Sutler"

"If anything happens to me or my family, an accident, an accusation, anything, then first your son will disappear, his body will never be found. Then your wife. Her body will never be found either. This is guaranteed. Then, whatever is the most dangerous thing you do in your life, it might be flying in a small plane, it might be walking to the bank, you will be killed. Do you understand what I'm saying? I want you to acknowledge that you do understand so that we're clear and there won't be any mistakes."

"I want you to take him from his hotel, drug him, put him in the front of a car, and run a truck into it at 50 mph."

"Beirut, it's great! It's like the Paris of the Middle East."

"[to Prince Nasir Al-Subaai] But what do you need a financial advisor for? Twenty years ago you had the highest GNP in the world, now you're tied with Albania. So, good job. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, followed closely by dates for which you lose five cents a pound. You know what the business world thinks of you? They think a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's exactly where you'll be in another hundred years- so on behalf of my firm, yes, I accept your money."

"Great. How much for my other kid?"

"[to Prince Nasir Al-Subaai] What are they thinking *hah*? What are they thinking? They're thinking that it's running out. It's running out, and 90% of what's left is in the Middle East. Look at the progression: Versailles, Suez, 1973, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2. This is a fight to the death. So what are THEY thinking? Great! They're thinking keep playing, keep buying yourself new toys, keep spending $50,000 a night on your hotel room, but don't invest in your infrastructure... don't build a real economy. So that when you finally wake up, they will have sucked you dry, and you will have squandered the greatest natural resource in history."

"[to lawyer Bennett Holiday] Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale, thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself, maybe get elected some two-bit, congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you. No, sir! Corruption charges! Corruption?!! Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."

"[to his father, the emir, about his brother, Prince Meshal Al-Subaai] He's barely qualified to run a brothel, much less a country!"

"[to his political followers] When a country has 5 percent of the world's population but spends 50 percent of the world's military spending, that country's persuasive power is in decline."

"Dean Whiting: [to Prince Meshal Al-Subaai] Are you a king? Can you tell me what you want?"

"Jimmy Pope: Dig six feet, find three bodies. But dig twelve feet, you find forty."

"Max Woodman: I want pig bacon!"

"Mussawi: Rumors of Bob, but never Bob."

"George Clooney — Bob Barnes"

"Matt Damon — Bryan Woodman"

"Amanda Peet - Julie Woodman"

"Christopher Plummer — Dean Whiting"

"Amr Waked - Mohammed Sheik Agiza"

"Jeffrey Wright — Bennett Holiday"

"Chris Cooper — Jimmy Pope"

"Alexander Siddig — Prince Nasir Al-Subaai"

"Tim Blake Nelson — Danny Dalton"

"Mark Strong - Mussawi"

"Why have they used every dirty method known to make sure I'm not elected County Treasurer? Well, I'll tell ya why - because they're afraid of the truth, and the truth is this. They're trying to steal your money. Yeah, I said steal. The County Commissioners rejected the low bid on the schoolhouse. Why? Well, they'll tell ya the reason is the job will be done better. The County Commissioners would have you believe that they're interested in public welfare. They're interested in welfare, sure, but it's their own."

"My friends, my friends, I have a speech here. It's a speech about what this state needs. There's no need in my telling you what this state needs. You are the state and you know what you need. You over there, look at your pants. Have they got holes in the knees? Listen to your stomach. Did you ever hear it rumble for hunger? And you, what about your crops? Did they ever rot in the field because the road was so bad you couldn't get 'em to market? And you, what about your kids? Are they growin' up ignorant as dirt, ignorant as you 'cause there's no school for 'em? [casts his speech away] Naw, I'm not gonna read you any speech. But I am gonna tell ya a story. It's a funny story so get ready to laugh....Get ready to bust your sides laughin', 'cause it's sure a funny story. It's about a hick, a hick like you, if ya please. Yeah, like you. He grew up on the dirt roads and the gully washes of a farm. He knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse. Aw, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right. He figured if he was gonna get anything done, well, he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books. He studied law, because he thought he might be able to change things some - for himself and for folks like him. Now I'm not gonna lie to ya. He didn't start off thinkin' about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was gonna do for 'em. Naw, naw, he started off thinkin' of number one. But somethin' came to him on the way. How he could do nothin' for himself without the help of the people. That's what came to him. And it also came to him with the powerful force of God's own lightning back in his home county when the school building collapsed 'cause it was built of politics' rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he'd fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that, so they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for Governor....And he swallowed it. He looked in his heart and he thought in all humility, how he'd like to try and change things. He was just a country boy who thought that even the plainest, poorest man can be Governor if his fellow citizens find he's got the stuff for the job. All those fellas in the striped pants, they saw that hick and they took him in..."

"There he is! There's your Judas Iscariot! Look at him! ...Look at him....! [Chaos] Now, shut up! Shut up, all of ya! Now listen to me, ya hicks. Yeah, you're hicks too, and they fooled you a thousand times just like they fooled me. But this time, I'm gonna fool somebody. I'm gonna stay in this race. I'm on my own and I'm out for blood. Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth! You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself! Alright, listen to me! Listen to me! I'm the hick they were gonna use to split the hick vote. Well, I'm standin' right here now on my hind legs. Even a dog can learn to do that. Are you standin' on your hind legs? Have you learned to do that much yet? Here it is! Here it is, ya hicks! Nail up anybody who stands in your way! Nail up Joe Harrison! Nail up McMurphy! And if they don't deliver, give me the hammer and I'll do it myself!"

"I have nothing to hide - I'll make a deal with the devil if it will help me carry out my program. But believe me, there are no strings attached to those deals. Do you know what good comes out of?...Out of bad. That's what good comes out of. Because you can't make it out of anything else. You didn't know that, did you?"

"I'm going to build a hospital, the biggest that money can buy, and it will belong to you. Any man, woman, or child who is sick or in pain can go through those doors and know that everything will be done for them that man can do. To heal sickness, to ease pain, free - not as a charity but as a right. And it is your right, do you hear me? It is your right. And it is your right that every child should have a complete education. That any man that produces anything can take it to market without paying toll, and no poor man's land or farm can be taxed or taken away from him. And it is the right of the people that they shall not be deprived of hope."

"I'll tell you what you are. You're scared. You sat in that big easy chair of yours for thirty years and played at being a judge. And all of a sudden, I came along and put a bat in your hand and I said, 'Go ahead, judge, start swinging,' and you did, and you had a wonderful time. But now you're scared. You don't want to get your hands dirty. You want to pick up the marbles, but you don't want to get your hands dirty. Look at my whole program, Judge. How do ya think I put that across?"

"Jack, there's something on everybody. Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption."

"You know, Judge, dirt's a funny thing. Some of it rubs off on everybody."

"They tried to ruin me but they are ruined. They tried to ruin me, because they did not like what I have done. Do you like what I have done? Remember, it is not I who have won, but you. Your will is my strength, and your need is my justice, and I shall live in your right and your will. And if any man tries to stop me from fulfilling that right and that will, I'll break him. I'll break him with my bare hands, for I have the strength of many."

"[his last words] Could have been whole world - Willie Stark. The whole world - Willie Stark. Why does he do it to me - Willie Stark? Why?"

"[in his newspaper article] As I watched him shake his big fist and listened to his words boom out across that field, I had the feeling that here was a man with a will of iron. I had the feeling that Willie Stark would neither be steered away nor scared away from his purpose. I had the feeling that in Willie Stark, Kanoma County had found that rare thing: an honest man with courage."

"Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds."

"Willie was right. He'd learned how to win. He spent a lot of money doing it. An awful lot of money. I was beginning to wonder where he got it from. There were rumors throughout the state that Willie was making deals with all kinds of people, strange deals...The second time out, it wasn't a campaign, it was a slaughter. It was Saturday night in a mining town. Yup, Willie came back like he said he would. He came back and he took me with him."

"What if it is his bribe? He swept the old gang out of office. What if they hollered like stuck pigs? He jammed through bill after bill and the people got what they wanted...He started to build the roads, schools, power dams, to change the face of the state from one end to the other. His methods? Politics is a dirty game and he played it rough and dirty. Willie's little black book was a record of sin and corruption. And me, Jack Burden, I kept the book and added up the accounts. Clown, show-off, playboy they yelled at him. Building football stadiums, fiercely proud of his son who played...He said he was building up a private army, but he was building, always building, always playing up to the crowd, letting them trample on tradition. Well, tradition needed trampling on. The crowds loved it, and Willie loved it, and so did I."

"The chips were down and Willie knew it. He was fighting for his life. He roared across the state making speech after speech and all of them adding up to the same thing. It's not me they're after, it's you. Willie hollered FOUL. Willie knew if you hollered long enough, hard enough, and loud enough, people begin to believe you. Just in case they didn't, he organized spontaneous demonstrations....In case anyone hollered back, he organized spontaneous slugging. Willie pulled every trick he ever knew - and added a few more...And always the trail led to one place, to Burden's Landing and the Judge."

"And so the eyes of the entire nation are now focused upon Governor Willie Stark. An amazing phenomenon on the American political scene. The whole state is filled with his accomplishments. Each one of them, of course, bearing his personal signature to make sure that no one will ever forget who gave them to the state. This is the way the roads used to be, but there are those who claim that they were adequate for the people's needs, that you don't need a four or six lane highway for a horse and buggy. When Stark boasts of his great school system, his critics say, 'You can't go to school and work in the fields at the same time,' and they question the benefit of these projects, charging that the need and poverty of the people is as great as before. Willie Stark has never forgotten the source of his power - the people who supported him. He still keeps his touch with these people of the backwoods, making periodic trips to such places as Kanoma City, now famous as his birthplace. For those who say that Willie Stark is a man of destiny, there are others who claim that he is a man of evil, a man who cares neither for the people or the state, but only for his own personal power and ambition. Obviously, these ambitions go far beyond the boundaries of the state. Just how far, only time will tell. Meanwhile, he is here, and from the looks of things, he is here to stay. Willie Stark - Messiah or Dictator?"

"He Might Have Been A Pretty Good Guy ... If Too Much Power ... And Women ... Hadn't Gone To his Head !"

"He thought he had the world by the tail - till it exploded in his face, with a bullet attached!"

"Broderick Crawford - Willie Stark"

"John Ireland - Jack Burden"

"Joanne Dru - Anne Stanton"

"John Derek - Tom Stark"

"Mercedes McCambridge - Sadie Burke"

"Shepperd Strudwick - Adam Stanton"

"Ralph Dumke - Tiny Duffy"

"Anne Seymour - Lucy Stark"

"Raymond Greenleaf - Judge Monte Stanton"

"A single bullet must account for the seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Specter, one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We've come to know it as the 'Magic Bullet Theory.'... That's some bullet. Anyone who's been in combat will tell you never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet this ridiculous. Yet the government says it can prove it, with some fancy physics in a nuclear laboratory. Of course they can. Theoretical physics can prove that an elephant can hang from a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense."

"This single-bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of one assassin. And once you conclude the magic bullet couldn't create all seven wounds, you must conclude there was a fourth shot and a second rifleman. And if there was a second rifleman, then by definition there had to be a conspiracy."

"We've all become Hamlets in our country, children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American Dream. He forces on us the appalling questions: Of what is our Constitution made? What are our lives worth? What is the future of a democracy where a President can be assassinated under suspicious circumstances while the machinery of legal action scarcely trembles? How many more political murders disguised as heart attacks, suicides, cancers, drug overdoses? How many plane and car crashes will occur before they are exposed for what they are?"

"'Treason doth never prosper,' wrote an English poet, 'What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.' The American public has yet to see the Zapruder film. Why? The American public has yet to see the real X-rays and photographs of the autopsy. Why? There are hundreds of documents that could help prove this conspiracy. Why are they being withheld or burned by the government? Each time my office or you the people have asked those questions, demanded crucial evidence, the answer from on high has always been 'national security.' What kind of national security do we have when we've been robbed of our leaders? What national security permits the removal of fundamental power from the hands of the American people and validates the ascendancy of an invisible government in the United States? That kind of national security, gentlemen of the jury, is when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it, you call it what it is: Fascism!"

"It may become a generational affair. Questions passed from father to son, mother to daughter. But someday, somewhere, someone may find out the damned Truth. We better. We better or we might just as well build ourselves another government like the Declaration of Independence says to when the old one ain't working - just - just a little farther out West."

"Going back to when we were children, I think most of us in this courtroom thought justice came automatically. That virtue was its own reward. That good triumphs over evil. But as we get older, we know this isn't true. Individual human beings have to create justice, and this is not easy because the truth often poses a threat to power and one often has to fight power at great risk to themselves."

"I have here some $8,000 in these letters sent to my office from all over the country - quarters, dimes, dollar bills from housewives, plumbers, car salesmen, teachers, invalids. These are people who cannot afford to send money but do. These are the ones who drive the cabs, who nurse in the hospitals, who see their kids go to Vietnam. Why? Because they care, because they want to know the truth, because they want their country back, because it still belongs to us, as long as the people have the guts to fight for what they believe in! The truth is the most important value we have because if the truth does not endure, if the government murders truth, if we cannot respect the hearts of these people, then this is not the country in which I was born and this is certainly not the country I want to die in."

"Tennyson wrote, 'Authority forgets a dying king'. This was never more true than for John F. Kennedy, whose murder was probably one the most terrible moments in the history of our country. We, the people, the jury system sitting in judgment on Clay Shaw, represent the hope of humanity against government power. In discharging your duty, in bringing the first conviction in this house of cards against Clay Shaw, 'ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' Do not forget your dying king. Show this world that this is still a government 'of the people, for the people, and by the people'. Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important. It's up to you."

"Hitler always said: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.""

"There was a civil war in this country... Kennedy provoked such hostility and hatred. His death was cheered in the South because of his support for Martin Luther King. He was moving to change things on all fronts. He was starting to end the Cold War. He made a deal with Khruschev and Russia in 1962 to end the missile crisis, and he furthered the deal when he signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He installed the Hot Line. He... described the Soviets for the first time in American history as mortals, like us, who care about their children. He seemed to have an expanding vision of the world, much like Gorbachev did in Russia in the '80s."

"People in power are afraid to ask the obvious questions. From Day 1, they accepted the cover story that Oswald did it [assassinated JFK] alone. Oswald said he was the patsy. A lot of people believed him, but not the establishment. Since that day, the media has chanted the mantra that Oswald did it alone. But the American public, which has been brainwashed with that for 28 years, has never accepted it. They smell a rat."

"The most shocking part [about the assassination of JFK] is...the sequence of the shooting, the timing,... the wounds and the autopsy. It’s all quite shocking when you...think seriously about it. It doesn’t make any sense the way they described it. That’s the most shocking part of the case. When you start to investigate Oswald, of course there are a thousand interesting things that come up. The files on Oswald were much more closely supervised by the CIA then we knew at the time and were omitted by the Warren Commission. They treated it like a routine investigation, but it was hardly so."

"We draw a line between the cover-up and the assassination. The cover-up is filled with another cast of characters. That is to say, the Warren Commission itself, who is in charge of the investigation; and the main man, Alan Dulles, the ex-chief of the CIA and one of the most powerful figures in government. He was fired by Kennedy, as were all his top officials, two years earlier. He was put in charge of the investigation and buried certain information. That’s part of the cover-up."

"As one of our interviewers... says... once you kill a sitting president in high noon in Dealey Plaza and blow his head off, you're not going to go back to normal and say, "Oh, wow! We found this whacky--this crazy lone nut who killed him." It doesn't work. It doesn't really work as a narrative for this country. What happened was much deeper than that, and there was so many inconsistencies, so many holes in the Warren Commission... The point is that you cannot remove legitimacy from government like that and get away with it, and the people knew something was wrong. They didn't know exactly what was wrong, but they sensed that something had gone astray, like anarchy has set in. Some method of control was being exerted because forces that were more powerful than one person were able to kill him, forces that were somewhat, I mean, clearly related to intelligence agencies, to possible military agencies, and these forces came to dominate American life..."

"The Story That Won't Go Away"

"He's a District Attorney. He will risk his life, the lives of his family, everything he holds dear for the one thing he holds sacred... the truth."

"Kevin Costner – Jim Garrison"

"Tommy Lee Jones – Clay Shaw/Clay Bertrand"

"Kevin Bacon – Willie O'Keefe"

"Gary Oldman – Lee Harvey Oswald"

"Michael Rooker – Bill Broussard"

"Jack Lemmon – Jack Martin"

"Laurie Metcalf – Susie Cox"

"Sissy Spacek – Liz Garrison"

"Joe Pesci – David Ferrie"

"John Candy – Dean Andrews Jr."

"Pruitt Taylor Vince – Lee Bowers"

"Jay O. Sanders – Lou Ivon"

"Walter Matthau – Senator Long"

"Sally Kirkland – Rose Cheramie"

"Donald Sutherland – Mr. X"

"Edward Asner – Guy Banister"

"Brian Doyle-Murray – Jack Ruby"

"Ray LePere – Abraham Zapruder"

"Vincent D'Onofrio – Bill Newman"

"Wayne Knight – Numa Bertel"

"Dale Dye – General Y"

"Jim Garrison – Earl Warren"

"This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts. But I am persuaded that the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors will not be shaken or altered. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television in this generous and capacious land."

"I have no technical advice or counsel to offer those of you who labor in this vineyard, the one that produces words and pictures. You will, I am sure, forgive me for not telling you that the instruments with which you work are miraculous, that your responsibility is unprecedented, or that your aspirations are frequently frustrated. It is not necessary to remind you of the fact that your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other."

"All of these things -- All of these things you know. You should also know at the outset that, in the manner of witnesses before Congressional committees, I appear here voluntarily -- by invitation; that I am an employee of the Columbia Broadcasting System; that I am neither an officer nor any longer a director of that corporation; and that these remarks are strictly of a "do-it-yourself" nature. If what I have to say is responsible, then I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Seeking neither approbation from my employers, nor news sponsors, nor acclaim from the critics of radio and television, I cannot very well be disappointed."

"Believing that potentially the commercial system of broadcasting as practiced in this country is the best and freest yet devised, I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. These instruments have been good to me beyond my due. There exists in my mind no reasonable grounds for any kind of personal complaint. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture, and our heritage."

"To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent, and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse, and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost."

"This instrument can teach; it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful."

"Stonewall Jackson, who is generally believed to have known something about weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival."

"Thank you for your patience."

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

"We're going with this story. Because the terror is right here in this room."

"No one familiar with the history of his country, can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating."

"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly…. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law."

"We will not walk in fear, one of another…. We are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular…."

"This is no time for men who oppose Sen. McCarthy's methods to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom where ever it still exists in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

"The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And who's fault is that? Not really his; he didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck."

"Funny thing, Freddie, every time you light a cigarette for me, I know you're lying."

"Referring to a line from Julius Caesar recited by Senator McCarthy: Had Senator McCarthy looked just three lines earlier he would have found this: "The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves...”"

"We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."

"Good evening. Mr. Edward R. Murrow, Educational Director of the Columbia Broadcasting System, devoted his program to an attack on the work of the United States Senate Investigating Committee, and on me personally as its chairman, and over the past four years he has made repeated attacks upon me and those fighting Communists."

"Now, ordinarily--I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow. However, in this case, I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol,a leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors."

"There's no news, boys, so go out there and make some news. Rob a bank, mug an old lady, whatever - just do something."

"Turn the phones on!"

"Might as well go down swinging."

"I'm with you today Ed, and I'm with you tomorrow."

"My cards. You lose, what happens? Five guys find themselves out of work. I'm responsible for a hell of a lot more than five god damned reporters. Let it go. McCarthy will self-destruct."

"There's a Knickerbocker game tonight, I've got front row seats. Are you interested?"

"We will not walk in fear of each other."

"In A Nation Terrorized By Its Own Government, One Man Dared to Tell The Truth"

"They Took On The Government With Nothing But The Truth"

"David Strathairn — Edward R. Murrow"

"George Clooney — Fred Friendly"

"Ray Wise — Don Hollenbeck"

"Frank Langella — William S. Paley"

"Robert Downey Jr. — Joseph Wershba"

"Murrow and his reporting staff discovered Senator McCarthy was exploiting U.S. Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Milo Radulovich. Lieutenant Radulovich’s father, John, and his sister, Mrs. Margaret Fishman, were labeled communist sympathizers; and their close association with him caused a backlash. Without a trial, Radulovich was labeled a security risk by Senator McCarthy’s committee and lost his commission in the Reserves.Murrow and his staff found Senator McCarthy’s tactics and methodology questionable and decided to interview Lieutenant Radulovich on Murrow’s news documentary television show “See It Now.” Murrow’s broadcast drew attention to Radulovich’s plight and he was reinstated into the Air Force Reserves. McCarthy was given an opportunity for a rebuttal on “See It Now.” During the March 1954 episode, McCarthy questioned Murrow’s loyalties and labeled him a Communist sympathizer as well. Murrow’s staff was placed under close scrutiny. Faced with pressure from the CBS network to let the matter rest or lose sponsors, he and his staff decided it was imperative they point out the errors in McCarthy’s claims. McCarthy’s support waned after Murrow’s broadcast."

"The issues raised in the film, where to draw the line between reporting and editorializing, and the balance of news and entertainment in the media company, are still with us today."

"In the movie, Murrow, played by David Strathairn, decides to expose the tactics of McCarthy by using senator's own words. Murrow's boss, William Paley, the legendary head of CBS, is by turn supportive and plenty worried about the impact the report will have on his network. But Paley would relent and the program aired, intensifying a public outcry against McCarthy. In late 1954, the senator was censured by his colleagues in the U.S. Senate. There is inevitably a political side to a film that looks at a period of history in which many Americans then and now believe civil liberties were threatened in the hunt for communists."

"Murrow taking on McCarthy was one of the great high points in broadcast journalism, along with Cronkite stepping out from behind his desk and talking about how Vietnam doesn't work were two moments in broadcast journalism that you could point directly to and say actually changed American policy... I don't know a reporter that doesn't want to break a big news story. It is constantly the battle between commerce and news, or keeping entertainment from pushing the news off the air... I was looking to open a debate, to have a discussion, to be able to talk about issues that I think are important. It's simply saying, as Murrow says in the film, we have to find a way to find a safe place between the protection of the individual and the protection of the state at the same time."

"I'm terrified of waking up at 65 years old, which is getting closer, and to wake up and say I didn't do the things that I was supposed to do... as a citizen... As someone who is well-known... I can help bring focus... And I try to, as a son of a journalist, when I take on those causes, to be really well informed so that they can't marginalize you or make you an idiot along the way."

""Good Night, and Good Luck" couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable or more compelling. Everything about it stands in stark opposition to the trends of the moment. Yet by sticking to events that are half a century old, it tells a story whose implications for today are inescapable. "Good Night" is a marvel of classic restraint in a hopped-up film culture. Shot in elegant black and white and featuring impeccable acting, it exists because of the lonely passion of director and co-star George Clooney... the son of a TV anchorman. That made him determined to examine in some detail the stand CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow took in 1954 against Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney had the nerve to believe that a drama of ideas could be as entertaining as "Desperate Housewives." He insisted that a fight for America's soul, a clash of values over intellectual issues like freedom of the press, had an intensity that would carry everything before it, and it does."

"On March 9, 1954, in a broadcast that has been called television’s finest hour... The show prompted more than 10,000 phone calls and 70,000 letters and telegrams — 15 to 1 in favor of Murrow. On the street, truck drivers yelled out, “Good show, Ed!” On December 2, 1954, the Senate formally reprimanded McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22 for conduct unbecoming a senator. In speaking truth to power, Murrow hastened McCarthy’s downfall and may have been pivotal in it. Good Night, and Good Luck functions on several levels. It is a cautionary tale about unrestrained political power and its use of public hysteria. It is also a tribute to the power of a dissenting media to expose and correct injustice. As such, the movie reproaches today’s journalism that embraces safety."

"I am tired of weakness! I am faced with a grave problem, and I intend to resolve it quickly and cleanly."

"Do you realize the magnitude of the scandal? The Secretary of Defense and a Soviet agent sharing the favors of a murdered whore."

"Tom is the one who saw you at Susan's. He's known about you all along, isn't that right? We do know what that means. If Commander Farrell is the man who was with Miss Atwell, then Commander Farrell is the man who killed Miss Atwell. And we know that the man who killed Miss Atwell is Yuri. Therefore, Commander Farrell is Yuri, quod erat demonstrandum."

"You have no idea what men of power can do!"

"David Brice: [to Scott, who's arrived late] Order some breakfast! It's the most important meal of the day. You should take better care of yourself."

"Susan Atwell: [as the band starts playing "D'ya think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart and two people start disco dancing] We've got a potential nausea situation building here!"

"Tom Farrell: [one of the Contras tries to follow him into the bathroom] I would rather do this myself. You can listen if you want to."

"David: [after the computer has finished regenerating the Polaroid negative] Hey, take a look at this. Somebody get Donavan down here! It's Commander Farrell."

"Schiller: [to Tom] In the Philippines when you passed that bag of underwear, Moscow was not amused! I should have acted then. But now it is no longer possible for you to remain United States. This bizarre incident has given them their Yuri, Evgeny Sergeyevich."

"Kevin Costner - Lt. Cmdr. Tom Farrell"

"Gene Hackman - Defense Secretary David Brice"

"Sean Young - Susan Atwell"

"Will Patton - Scott Pritchard"

"Howard Duff - Senator William 'Billy' Duvall"

"George Dzundza - Sam Hesselman"

"Jason Bernard - Major Donovan"

"Iman - Nina Beka"

"Fred Dalton Thompson - CIA Director Marshall"

"Leon Russom - Kevin O'Brien"

"It isn't about dedication and loyalty, it's about belief in what we do."

"Bill Sullivan: I'm sorry for not standing, my fucking feet are killing me."

"Clover Wilson: Agency first, God second."

"Richard Hayes: I remember a Senator once asked me 'when we talk about CIA why we never use the word the in front of it.' And I asked him 'do you put the word the in front of God?'"

"Clover Wilson: There wasn’t very much to say. Six years is a long time."

"Ulysses: [to Edward] Hello, I believe you know me as Ulysses. Do you know what our code name is for you... it's "Mother". Yes, they said you were the quiet type. But your silence speaks volumes, what is the saying? "Your silence is deafening?" yes that is it. You will be a great adversary Mother, hopefully for many years."

"Arch Cummings: How did the Irish poet say it, hmm? "E'er friend for today, is tomorrow's heartbreak.""

"Dr. Fredericks: Get out while you still can. While you still believe. While you still have a soul."

"Philip Allen: Why is it that people like us choose to serve for nickels a day in a profession that makes us constantly look over our shoulder to see who's watching us?"

"Thomas Wilson: [On writing] "They are right what they say about me. I was weak, a coward. I compromised myself, my honor, my family, my country. I am ashamed of myself. To my wife: I am sorry I've done this to you. To my son: I hope you'll grow to be a courageous man, a good husband, a good father. I hope whatever you decide to do you live a good full life. I hope whatever your dreams maybe come true. Your loving husband and father." -Thomas Wilson's Suicide Note"

"Edward Wilson believed in America, and he would sacrifice everything he loved to protect it."

"The true story of the birth of the CIA through the eyes of a man who never existed."

"The untold story of the most powerful covert agency in the world."

"All our dirty secrets start here after the time of Henry the third."

"Matt Damon - Edward Bell Wilson"

"Angelina Jolie - Clover/Margaret Ann Russell"

"John Turturro - Ray Brocco"

"Alec Baldwin - Sam Murach"

"Tammy Blanchard - Laura"

"Billy Crudup - Arch Cummings"

"Robert De Niro - General Bill Sullivan"

"Keir Dullea - Senator John Russell, Sr."

"Michael Gambon - Dr. Fredericks"

"Martina Gedeck - Hanna Schiller"

"William Hurt - Philip Allen"

"Timothy Hutton - Thomas Wilson"

"Lee Pace - Richard Hayes"

"Joe Pesci - Joseph Palmi"

"I am the commander in chief of the United States, and I say when we go to war!"

"[The night prior to the beginning of the U.S. Navy's military "quarantine" of Cuba] You know, last summer, I read a book, The Guns of August. I wish every man on that blockade line had read that book. It's World War I, there's thirteen million killed; it was all because the militaries of both alliances believed they were so highly attuned to one another's movements and dispositions, they could predict one another's intentions, but all their theories were based on the last war. And the world and technology had changed, and those lessons were no longer valid, but it was all they knew, so the orders went out, and couldn't be rescinded. And your man in the field, his family at home; they couldn't even tell you the reasons why their lives were being destroyed. But why couldn't they stop it? What could they have done? Here we are, fifty years later. Think if one of their ships resists the inspection, and we shoot out its rudder, and board, they shoot down one of our planes in response, so we bomb their anti-aircraft sites, and in response to that, they attack Berlin...so we invade Cuba...and they fire their missiles...and we fire ours."

"This is not a blockade. This is language. A new vocabulary, the likes of which the world has never seen! This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev!"

"Bruce Greenwood - President John F. Kennedy"

"Kevin Costner - Kenny O'Donnell"

"Stephanie Romanov - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy"

"Dylan Baker - Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara"

"Steven Culp - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy"

"Bill Smitrovich - General Max Taylor"

"Henry Strozier - Dean Rusk"

"Ed Lauter - General Marshall Carter"

"Michael Fairman - U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson"

"Len Cariou - Dean Acheson"

"Peter White - John McCone"

"Kevin Conway - General Curtis LeMay"

"Elya Baskin - Anotoly Dobrynin"

"Frank Wood - McGeorge Bundy"

"What's Washington like? Well its like Calcutta, surrounded by beggars. The only difference is the beggars in Washington wear 1500 dollar suits and they don't say please or thank you."

"If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family."

"My name is Robert. And my wife, Barbara and I are here to support our daughter Caroline. And we're here to listen."

"Hi, I'm Caroline, and I'm not sure if I'm an alcoholic. I mean, I don't really like to drink. For someone my age it's a lot easier to get drugs than it is to get alcohol. I guess I'm angry. I mean, I think I'm really angry about a lot of stuff. I'm just not sure what."

"I'm on the board of my son's school, I have fundraisers for adult literacy at my own home. I think I have a right to know if my husband is a legitimate business man."

"Not in the doll. The doll is cocaine."

"This may be your last chance to do this. Now get out of the car and shoot him in the head! Just shoot him!"

"You like baseball? We need lights for the parks, so kids can play at night. So they can be safe. So they can play baseball. So they don't become burros para los malones. Everyone likes baseball. Everyone likes parks."

"You worry about getting me what I want. I worry about myself."

"I feel like a traitor."

"They say in Latin, "In vino veritas". Wine tells the truth. Use this to write down the addresses of those bastards who killed my captains. And not where they were last week but where they are *now*, where they are this minute, and better yet, where they are going to be tomorrow. You know where they are going to be tomorrow, right?"

"When he loves me like a father, he will never tell anyone he was here. He will freely give us the name of his superiors. Then, when we get to them, they too will give us the names of their superiors. And eventually somebody will get us to Juan Obregón, and when that happens, the Tijuana Cartel will fall."

"Treatment of addiction? Addicts treat themselves. They overdose and then there's one less to worry about."

"In Mexico, law enforcement is an entrepreneurial activity."

"It sounds like they're conspiring to conspire. You know, I can feel the lies vibrating from that house."

"I have actually dreamed about this, about busting the top people, the rich people, WHITE people!"

"Why are hurricanes named after women? Because when they arrive, they're wet and wild, and when they leave they take your house and your car."

"Michael Douglas as Robert Wakefield"

"Catherine Zeta-Jones as Helena Ayala"

"Benicio del Toro as Javier Rodriguez"

"Amy Irving as Barbara Wakefield"

"Dennis Quaid as Arnie Metzger"

"Don Cheadle as Montel Gordon"

"Albert Finney as White House Chief of Staff"

"How am I supposed to fit in with these guys when you've got me setup as an outsider? You've given me a different set of rules. The answer is, I can't. I mean really, why didn't you just issue me a pink petticoat to wear around the base?"

"Suck my dick!"

"[quoting "Self-Pity" by D.H. Lawrence] I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."

"The ebb and flow of the Atlantic tides, the drift of the continents, the very position of the sun along its ecliptic. These are just a few of the things I control in my world. Is that clear?"

"60% of you will not pass this course! How do I know? Because that is an historical fact! Now for the bad news, I always like to get one quitter on the first day, and until I do, that first day does not end!"

"Sergeant Cortes, however brief your stint with this command might be, there are two words you will learn to put together: Team-Mate."

"Remember, there are no bad crews, only bad leaders."

"Lieutenant, seek life elsewhere."

"I'll never live this one down."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Hayes. If a cannibal used a knife and fork, would you call that progress too?"

"[on why she started Lt. O'Neil on the SEAL program in the first place] Truthfully, I never expected you to do so damn well! I figured you'd ring out in two weeks, bing bang it's over, and we're popular."

"Welcome to SEAL/C.R.T. selection program. You have volunteered for the most intensive military training known to man. You are all proven operators within the SpecOps community: SEALs, EOD, Army Delta, Marine Force Recon, Naval Intel community, and so on. In spite of your expertise, many of you will not successfully negotiate this program. Those that do, will experience an operational tempo that exceeds that of any other unit within the U.S. arsenal. That is all that is to be said about the special nature of the CRT training program. I now turn you over to my Command Master Chief, John James Urgayle."

"Demi Moore - Lt. Jordan O'Neil"

"Viggo Mortensen - Master Chief John James Urgayle"

"Anne Bancroft - Sen. Lillian DeHaven"

"Scott Wilson - C.O. Salem"

"Boyd Kestner - Wickwire"

"Morris Chestnut - McCool"

"David Vadim - Cortez"

"Jason Beghe - Royce"

"All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don't you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can't you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won't get it back! More coffee? America'd be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan's money. If he loses, we'll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money?"

"Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control..."

"Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don't know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don't they? Well, what if they got organized?"

"I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed."

"If you were mine, I wouldn't share you with anybody or anything. It'd be just you and me. We'd be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work."

"Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who's one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by his party."

"I'd like to kill you, but I can't. So you can do whatever you want to. Except not see me."

"You dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it'll be missionary work rather than sex."

"I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain."

"Interviewee: I said, I think, that a guy who's always interested in the condition of the world and changing it either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them."

"Interviewee: Kerensky was anxious to conduct it [World War I], produce some battalions of women who were going to go and fight."

"Interviewee: We all have problems, don't you know? But to take on the problem of all humanity, to save all humanity, my God, that was too big even for Jesus Christ."

"A mujahid in Baku: They are supporting you [John Reed] for your call for a holy war of Islamic people against the western infidels."

"Witness: [voice-over] Of course, nobody goes with the idea of dying, everybody wants to live. I don't remember his exact words, but the meaning was that grand things are ahead, worth living and worth dying for. He himself said that."

"Warren Beatty - John Silas "Jack" Reed"

"Diane Keaton - Louise Bryant"

"Edward Herrmann - Max Eastman"

"Jerzy Kosinski - Grigory Zinoviev"

"Jack Nicholson - Eugene O'Neill"

"Paul Sorvino - Louis C. Fraina"

"Maureen Stapleton - Emma Goldman"

"Nicolas Coster - Paul Trullinger"

"William Daniel - Julius Gerber"

"M. Emmet Walsh - Speaker – Liberal Club"

"Ian Wolfe - Mr. Partlow"

"Bessie Love - Mrs. Partlow"

"Max Wright - Floyd Dell"

"George Plimpton - Horace Whigham"

"Harry Ditson - Maurice Becker"

"Leigh Curran - Ida Rauh"

"Kathryn Grody - Crystal Eastman"

"Dolph Sweet - Big Bill Haywood"

"Gene Hackman - Pete Van Wherry"

"Nancy Duiguid - Jane Heap"

"Dave King - Allan L. Benson"

"Roger Sloman - Vladimir Lenin"

"Stuart Richman - Leon Trotsky"

"Oleg Kerensky - Alexander Kerensky"

"John J. Hooker - Senator Overman"

"Jan Triska - Karl Radek"

"Well, there were three of them; it was like being slapped around by a Pakistani vaudeville team."

"You know you've reached rock bottom when you're told you have character flaws by a man who hanged his predecessor in a military coup."

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the end game."

"Thats how a cold war turns into a real war and that's something you want to keep a very good eye on."

"A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We'll see.” 'The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.” The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”"

"My loyalty? For 24 years people have been trying to kill me, people who know how. Now do you think that's because my dad was a Greek soda pop maker or because I'm an American spy? Go fuck yourself, you fucking child!"

"If you imagine I'm going to drop everything and come down to London before I attend to my grandchildren who've just lost their mother, then you're mistaken. I doubt there is anyone who knows the British people more than I do, Mr. Blair, nor who has greater faith in their wisdom and judgement. And it is my belief that they will any moment reject this, this "mood" which is being stirred up by the press, in favor of a period of restrained grief and sober, private mourning. That's the way we do things in this country, quietly, with dignity. That's what the rest of the world has always admired us for."

"That woman has given her whole life in service to her people. Fifty years doing a job she never wanted! A job she watched kill her father. She's executed it with honor, dignity and, as far as I can tell, without a single blemish, and now we're all baying for her blood! All because she's struggling to lead the world in mourning for someone who... who threw everything she offered back in her face and who, for the last few years, seemed committed 24/7 to destroying everything she holds most dear!"

"You must show your strength. Reassert your authority. You sit on the most powerful throne in Europe, head of an unbroken line that goes back more than a thousand years. Do you think any of your predecessors would have dropped everything and gone up to London because a bunch of hysterics carrying candles needed help with their grief? Huh! As for that silly Mr. Blair with his Cheshire Cat grin..."

"Alastair Campbell: [to Tony Blair] They, er, sent a copy of the Queen's speech. Might want to scrape the frost off it first... Oh, I phoned them with a couple of suggestions, to make it sound like it came from a human being."

"Tradition Prepared Her. Change Will Define Her."

"Queen of a Nation, Queen of Hearts."

"Our Leaders. Ourselves."

"A Lifetime of Tradition. A World of Change."

"Helen Mirren - HM Queen Elizabeth II"

"James Cromwell - HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh"

"Alex Jennings - HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales"

"Roger Allam - Sir Robin Janvrin"

"Sylvia Syms - HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother"

"Tim McMullan - Stephen Lamport"

"Douglas Reith - Lord Airlie"

"Jake Taylor Shantos - HRH Prince William"

"Dash Barber - HRH Prince Harry"

"Michael Sheen - Tony Blair"

"Helen McCrory - Cherie Blair"

"Mark Bazeley - Alastair Campbell"

"Harry Alexander Coath - Euan Blair"

"Laurence Burg - Diana, Princess of Wales"

"Michel Gay - Dodi al Fayed"

"Principles only mean something if you stick by them when they're inconvenient."

"[closing remarks at Congressional confirmation hearing] Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. Remarkably enough, it seems that I have some explaining to do. So, let me be absolutely clear. I stand for a woman's right to choose. I stand for the elimination of the death penalty. I stand for a strong and growing armed forces because we must stomp out genocide on this planet, and I believe that that is a cause worth dying for. I stand for seeing every gun taken out of every home, period. I stand for making the selling of cigarettes to our youth a federal offense. I stand for term limits and campaign reform. And, Mr. Chairman, I stand for the separation of church and state, and the reason that I stand for that is the same reason that I believe our forefathers did. It is not there to protect religion from the grasp of government, but to protect our government from the grasp of religious fanaticism. I may be an atheist, but that does not mean I do not go to church. I do go to church. The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves, that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church."

"[after missing a shot while bowling] Well, that's what I get for my Leftist tendencies."

"[to Gov. Hathaway] You're the future of the Democratic party. And you always will be."

"I'll die before Shelly Runyon checkmates me."

"[to Gov. Hathaway] Who doesn't want a shortcut to greatness?"

"[about Rep. Reginald Webster] Well, he may not know his right from his left, but he does know the difference between right and wrong."

"[addressing the Congress] Thank you. Napoleon once said when asked to explain the lack of great statesmen in the world, that 'to get power, you need to display absolute pettiness. To exercise power, you need to show true greatness.' Such pettiness and such greatness are rarely found in one person. I look upon the events of the past weeks and I've never come so to grips with that quotation. So, ladies and gentlemen of this Congress, it pains my soul to tell you that you have brought blood and shame under this great dome. Your leadership has raised the stakes of hate to a level where we can no longer separate the demagogue from the truly inspired. And believe this, there are traitors among us. And I'm not talking about those of you who sided against your party leadership. I'm talking about those of you who were patriots to your party but traitors to the necessary end result: That of righteousness, the truth, the concept of making the American dream blind to gender. And you know, I am not free of blame. Right from the start, I should've come down here, pointed a finger your way - pointed a finger your way [pointing at Runyon], and asked you, 'Have you no decency, sir?' Yesterday, I met [he notices Runyon exiting] - Mr. Runyon, you may walk out on me, you may walk out on this body, but you cannot walk out on the will of the American people. Americans are a good people. They're a just people, Mr. Runyon, and they will forgive you, but they will not forget. Hate and ego have no place residing in what my good friend Laine Hanson calls the chapel of democracy."

"I should have come down here and pointed my finger your way... [points at Rep. Shelley Runyon] ... pointed my finger YOUR way, and asked "Have you no decency, sir?""

"[to President Jackson Evans] We're both sticking to our guns. The difference is, mine are loaded."

"Take a magic marker, cross out the word "objectivity". Your constituents want you for your opinions, your philosophy, for your subjectivity."

"The people of this nation can stomach quite a bit. But the one thing they can't stomach is the image of a vice president with a mouthful of cock."

"[Trying to dig up dirt on Shelly Runyon] I want something EMBARRASSING! Something sexual! Little boys, midgets, that sort of thing! Cows! I don't give a goddamn!"

"Sometimes you can assassinate a leader without firing a shot."

"Welcome To The Greatest Show On Earth"

"Joan Allen - Sen. Laine Hanson"

"Gary Oldman - Rep. Sheldon Runyon"

"Jeff Bridges - President Jackson Evans"

"Christian Slater - Rep. Reginald Webster"

"Sam Elliott - Kermit Newman"

"William Petersen - Gov. Jack Hathaway"

"Saul Rubinek - Jerry Tolliver"

"Philip Baker Hall - Oscar Billings"

"Mike Binder - Lewis Hollis"

"Robin Thomas - William Hanson"

"Mariel Hemingway - Cynthia Charlton Lee"

"Kathryn Morris - Special Agent Paige Willomina"

"This is our land --- a land of peace, and of plenty; a land of harmony and hope. This is our land: Oceania. These are our people: the workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people --- the builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying --- on the streets of our cities, and on the far-flung battlefields, fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they? [images of protesters appear; a crowd chants "Eurasia, Eurasia."] They are the dark armies --- the dark, murdering armies of Eurasia. In the barren deserts of Africa and India, in the oceans of Australasia, courage, strength, and youth are sacrificed --- sacrificed to barbarians whose only honour is atrocity. But even as we grasp at victory, there is a cancer, an evil tumour, growing, spreading in our midst. [Image of Goldstein appears] Shout. Shout! SHOUT OUT HIS NAME!"

"[First entry in his forbidden diary] April 4, 1984... I think. To the past or to the future, to an age when thought is free, from the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man --- greetings!"

"[Entry in his forbidden diary] If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them."

"Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself."

"[Reciting Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree] Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, you sold me."

"We are the dead."

"Was there ever a time when this was ordinary?"

"[Reads from Goldstein's book] "In accordance to the principles of doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact." [notices Julia is asleep] Julia? Are you awake? There is truth, and there is untruth. To be in a minority of one doesn't make you mad. Julia, my love, I understand how, but I don't understand why."

"[Entry in his forbidden diary] Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else will follow."

"Do it to her! Do it to Julia! I don’t care what you do to her, but do it to her! Tear her face off! Do it to Julia, not to me! DO IT TO JULIA! DO IT TO JULIA!!!! Not me!"

"I love you."

"We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."

"Obedience is not enough. Power is inflicting pain and humiliation; otherwise, you cannot be sure. Power is tearing human minds apart, and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Power is not a means, it is an end. In our world, there will only be triumph and self-abasement. Everything else, we shall destroy. The past is forbidden. Why? Because when we can cut man from his own past, then we can cut him from his family, his children, other men. There is no loyalty, except loyalty to the Party. There is no love, except love of Big Brother. All competing pleasures, we will destroy. If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."

"You once asked me, Winston, what was in room 101. I told you that you knew already. Everyone knows. The thing that is in room 101... is the worst thing in the world."

"The world we are preparing, Winston, is of constant victory and constant triumph. You are beginning to accept it, you'll soon welcome it, and, finally, become a part of it."

"Harold Syme: It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. You won't have seen the 10th dictionary edition yet, Smith. It's [indicates size with his thumb and index finger] that thick. The 11th edition will be [decreases size to small] that thick. The secret’s to move from translation, to direct thought, to automatic response. No need for self-discipline. Language coming from [points at his throat] here, not from [points at his temples] here."

"Tom Parsons: Keep away from me, Smith. I’m an agent of Goldstein. I didn’t know it myself. Thoughtcrime is so insidious. It just creeps up on you. My daughter found it out. Very proud of her. Very grateful I’ve been discovered before it’s too late. They won’t shoot me, will they, Smith? I know I can be very useful in a labour camp...!"

"Emmanuel Goldstein: [His finals words were recorded for the "Two Minutes Hate" before his execution...] What is freedom? Nothing the Party says is true. Nothing the Party does is good. Even the war itself isn't real. The Party wants you to believe we are at war so as to channel your aggressions away from their rightful target: the Party. Big Brother is not real. He is pure fiction created by the Party. The real rulers of the State are unknown, faceless manipulators who, because they are not known, are able to wield power without let or hindrance. People of Oceania, you are being duped. The Party doesn't serve the people — it serves itself. We are not at war with Eurasia. So, what is freedom? You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party. Open your eyes. See the evil that is happening to you. The Party drops bombs on its own citizens. It is the Party, not the Eurasians, who are our enemies. Rise up. Throw off the yoke. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, people of Oceania. [He is executed by a firing squad.]"

"George Orwell's Terrifying Vision Comes To The Screen"

"Big Brother is Watching…"

"The year of the movie. The movie of the year."

"What Orwell feared, when he wrote his novel in 1948, was that Hitlerism, Stalinism, centralism, and conformity would catch hold and turn the world into a totalitarian prison camp. It is hard, looking around the globe, to say that he was altogether wrong. Michael Radford's brilliant film of Orwell's vision does a good job of finding that line between the "future" world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote."

"This story is, of course, well known. 1984 must be one of the most widely read novels of our time. What is remarkable about the movie is how completely it satisfied my feelings about the book; the movie looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like Orwell's bleak and angry vision."

"The peculiar horror of individuality being swallowed up in some faceless social whole has been portrayed in a number of films that refer to the modern totalitarian experience, including…Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford, 1984)."

"In a cinema showing patriotic newsreel, anonymous, black-clad citizens rise from their seats in unison to praise their leader Big Brother. Later in the film, it is made clear that the government considers each individual to be no more than a 'cell' in the great organism of the state."

"It would be hard to imagine a better dramatization of Orwell's novel than this film. It does a good job of communicating the novel's substance and spirit, and it has some compelling performances. In particular, the expressive John Hurt is riveting in the lead role. However, this is such a powerful portrayal that many viewers will find the ultimate defeat of the individuals in the hands of the mega-state depressing, and some scenes of torture are graphic. It's not the most uplifting film, but certainly a very important one."

""1984" the film works because it wonderfully embodies the bleakness that was the book."

"John Hurt — Winston Smith"

"Richard Burton — O'Brien"

"Suzanna Hamilton — Julia"

"Cyril Cusack — Charrington"

"Gregor Fisher — Parsons"

"James Walker — Syme"

"David Cann — Martin"

"Anthony Benson — Jones"

"Peter Frye — Rutherford"

"Roger Lloyd-Pack — Waiter"

"Rupert Baderman — Winston as a Boy"

"Corinna Seddon — Winston's Mother"

"Martha Parsey — Winston's Sister"

"John Boswall — Emmanuel Goldstein"

"Bob Flag — Big Brother"

"This is Harvey Milk speaking- Friday, November the 18th. This is only to be played in the event of my death by assassination."

"I fully realize that someone who stands for what I stand for... an activist, a gay activist... makes themself a target for someone who is insecure, frightened, terrified, and disturbed themselves. It's a very real possibility you see because — in San Francisco... we have broken the dam of major prejudice in this country."

"I wish I had time to explain all the things that I did. Almost everything was done with an eye on the gay movement."

"Forty years old — and I haven't done a thing that I'm proud of."

"We need one of our own in office."

"I'm not the candidate. I'm part of a movement. The movement is the candidate - there is a difference. You don't see it. I do."

"How do you "teach" homosexuality? Is it like French?"

"(on his new look) I'm not gonna let those Pacific Heights biddies write me off because of a ponytail. And I like it. No more pot, no more bathhouses for me and my little poo."

"I don't think state assembly seats should be the reward for service to the Democratic Party machine. Machines run on oil and grease. They're dirty, they're dehumanizing, and they tend to be entirely unresponsive to the needs of anybody but those of their operator."

"I don't want to see another sign that says fucking "Machine" on it because this three-time "faggot loser" is running for Supervisor."

"I know you're angry! (cheers) I'm angry! Let us march the streets of San Francisco and share our anger!"

"(to Cleve) March them right up to the steps of City Hall. When things start to look really bad- the city's first gay supervisor... will come out and play peacemaker. Do it with me. (Gives Cleve the bullhorn)"

"My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve your democracy. Brothers and sisters, you must come out! Come out to your parents, come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, come out to your fellow workers. Once and for all, let's break down the myths and destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake, for their sake. For the sake of all the youngsters who have been scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene. On the Statue of Liberty it says, 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.' In the Declaration of Independence, it is written, 'All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.' So for Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Bryant, and all the bigots out there, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence! No matter how hard you try, you can never chip those words from the base of the Statue of Liberty! That is where America is! Love it or leave it!"

"This is shit. Shit and masturbation. This is just a coward's response to a dangerous threat."

"Tonight, it's become clear to everyone out there that they do know one of us, and now that they do, they can see that we are not sick. They can feel that we are not wrong. And they know that there must be, that there should be a place for us in this great country, in this world. A message of hope has been sent to all those young people, to all of those who have been afraid by this wave of hate, to all of those who have lost their homes, lost their hometowns. Tonight, we are clear that there is a place for us! My brothers and sisters, we can come home again."

"Without hope, life's not worth living. So you, and you, and you... You gotta give 'em hope."

"(after first meeting Harvey) Not interested, old man."

"What are you, some sort of street shrink?"

"Fuck that. Elections of any kind are nothing more than a fucking bourgeois affectation."

"At least now you look gay."

"Out of the bar and into the streets; Anita Bryant is coming for you!"

"(on Dan White) Is it just me or is he cute?"

"The new Mrs. Milk. I give it a week."

"Sean Penn - Harvey Milk"

"Josh Brolin - Dan White"

"James Franco - Scott Smith"

"Emile Hirsch - Cleve Jones"

"Diego Luna - Jack Lira"

"Allison Pill - Anne Kronenberg"

"His life changed history. His courage changed lives."

"Never blend in"

"Buddy, before you join the jubilation at my being beaten again, you should remember: people vote not out of love, but fear. They don't teach that at Sunday School or the Whittier Community Playhouse!"

"[to a portrait of John F. Kennedy] When they look at you, they see who they want to be. They look at me and they see what they are."

"This is about me. Why can't you understand that, you of all people? It's not the war—it's Nixon! They want to destroy Nixon! And if I expose myself even the slightest bit they'll tear my insides out. Do you want that? Do you want to see that, Buddy? It's not pretty."

"Always remember: others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."

"I believe Governor Brown has a heart, even though he believes I do not. I believe he's a good American, even though he feels I am not. I'm proud of the fact that I defended my opponent's patriotism. You gentlemen didn't report it, but I'm proud that I did that. And I would appreciate it for once, gentlemen, if you would just print what I say. For sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case, you've had a lot of fun - a lot of fun. But recognize you have a responsibility, if you're against the candidate, to give him the shaft, but if you do that, at least put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then. I think, all-in-all, I've given as good as I've taken. But as I leave you I-I want you to know—just think what you're gonna be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more [echoes] - uh, uh, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. Thank you and good day."

"[saying farewell to his staff] There are many fine careers. This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters. I remember my old man. I think that they would have called him sort of a, sort of a little man, common man. Well, he didn't consider himself that way. You know what he was? He was a streetcar motorman first. Then he was a farmer, and then he had a lemon ranch. It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it. And then he was a grocer. But he was a great man because he did his job, and every job counts, up to the hilt, regardless of what happened. Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother. But my mother was a saint. When I think of her two boys dying of tuberculosis, and seeing each of them die, and when they died. Yes, she will have no books written about her. But, she was a saint. Now, however, we look to the future. I remember something, uh, Theodore Roosevelt wrote when his first wife died in his twenties. He thought the light had gone from his life forever. But he went on and he not only became President, but as an ex-President he served his country, always in the arena, tempestuous, strong, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man."

"It took me a long time to fall in love with you, Dick. But it doesn't make you happy. You want them to love you. But they never will, Dick. No matter how many elections you win."

"Why do you think Kissinger is taping your calls? For history. His word against yours — and right now he's got the records."

"Can you imagine what this man would be like had anyone ever loved him?"

"[to John Dean] John, sooner or later, sooner, I think, you're gonna learn a lesson that's been learned by everyone who's ever gotten close to Richard Nixon. That he's the darkness reaching out for the darkness. And eventually, it's either you or him. Your grave's already been dug, John."

"He changed the world, but lost a nation."

"He had greatness within his grasp."

"Triumphant in Victory, Bitter in Defeat. He Changed the World, But Lost a Nation."

"Shattered by a dangerous web of conspiracy, betrayal and intrigue!"

"Anthony Hopkins - Richard Nixon"

"Joan Allen - Pat Nixon"

"James Woods - H. R. Haldeman"

"J. T. Walsh - John Ehrlichman"

"John Diehl - G. Gordon Liddy"

"Paul Sorvino - Henry Kissinger"

"Powers Boothe - Alexander Haig"

"Ed Harris - E. Howard Hunt"

"Bob Hoskins - J. Edgar Hoover"

"Brian Bedford - Clyde Tolson"

"Mary Steenburgen - Hannah Milhous Nixon"

"E. G. Marshall - John N. Mitchell"

"Madeline Kahn - Martha Beall Mitchell"

"David Paymer - Ron Ziegler"

"David Hyde Pierce - John Dean"

"Kevin Dunn - Charles Colson"

"Tony Goldwyn - Harold Nixon"

"Saul Rubinek - Herbert G. Klein"

"Edward Herrmann - Nelson Rockefeller"

"Whenever I have had my doubts, I remembered the construction worker in Philadelphia because he came up to me and he said "Sir I got only one criticism of that Cambodia thing; if you'd gone in earlier you might've captured the gun that killed my boy three months ago." So you're asking me do I regret going into Cambodia?... No, I don't. You know what, I wish I'd gone in sooner. And harder!"

"I don't blame anybody. I brought myself down. I gave them a sword, and they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I'd been in their place, I'd have done the same thing."

"I let them down. I let down... my friends. I let down... the country. And worst of all... I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government, but now they think: "Oh, it's all too corrupt," and the rest. Yeah... I let the American people down. And I'm gonna have to carry that burden with me, for the rest of my life... My political life is over."

"You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, tranches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist."

"You have to set up that he has an anti-democratic personality. There's a reason they call him Tricky Dick."

"The man lost twenty-one thousand Americans and a million Indochinese during his administration. He only escaped jail because of Ford's pardon. Right now, I submit it's impossible to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon. He devalued the presidency and he left the country that elected him in trauma. The American people need a conviction, pure and simple. The integrity of our political system, of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it. And, in years to come, if people look back and say that it was in this interview that Richard Nixon exonerated himself, that would be the worst crime of all."

"Well, in boxing, you know, there's always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger's face. It's that moment that he feels the impact from the champ's first jab. It's kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost's face. If he didn't know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President's first answer."

"400 million people were waiting for the truth."

"An epic battle for the truth."

"Frank Langella - Richard Nixon"

"Michael Sheen - David Frost"

"Sam Rockwell - James Reston"

"Kevin Bacon - Jack Brennan"

"Matthew Macfadyen - John Birt"

"Oliver Platt - Robert Zelnick"

"Rebecca Hall - Caroline Cushing"

"Toby Jones - Swifty Lazar"

"Andy Milder - Frank Gannon"

"Kate Jennings Grant - Diane Sawyer"

"Gabriel Jarret - Ken Khachigian"

"Jim Meskimen - Ray Price"

"Patty McCormack - Pat Nixon"

"I want you to meet the finest yes-men in Louisiana and their lovely wives."

"The three best friends the poor people have ever had are Jesus Christ, Sears & Roebuck and Earl K. Long."

"Paul Newman as Governor Earl Long"

"Lolita Davidovich as Blaze Starr"

"Jerry Hardin as Thibodeaux"

"Gailard Sartain as LaGrange"

"Jeffrey DeMunn as Eldon Tuck"

"Richard Jenkins as Picayune"

"Brandon Smith as Arvin Deeter"

"Robert Wuhl as Red Snyder"

"James Harper as Willie Rainach"

"I'm not a Christian. I'm not an atheist. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Muslim. My religion, what I believe in is called the Constitution of United States of America."

"You can lie, you can cheat, you can start a war, you can bankrupt the country, but you can't fuck the interns. They get you for that."

"[to Stephen Meyers] I really want to fuck you. That's kind of a slutty thing for me to say, huh?"

"All the reporters love you. Even the reporters that hate you still love you."

"Ryan Gosling - Stephen Meyers"

"George Clooney - Mike Morris"

"Philip Seymour Hoffman - Paul Zara"

"Paul Giamatti - Tom Duffy"

"Evan Rachel Wood - Molly Stearns"

"Marisa Tomei - Ida Horowicz"

"Jeffrey Wright - Franklin Thompson"

"Max Minghella - Ben Harpen"

"Jennifer Ehle - Cindy Morris"

"Gregory Itzin - Jack Stearns"

"Michael Mantell - Ted Pullman"

"I tried not to get into this war, and couldn't. Now I try to get out, and can't."

"It's easy to know what you are against, but quite another to know what you are for."

"The Treaty does not express the will of the people, but the fear of the people."

"Your presence here is a crime, a foreign occupation. You tell me what I'm supposed to do as a democrat. Turn the other cheek for another 700 years? Is that it?"

"Strange creatures we are, even to ourselves."

"[to Sinead, about Chris] We buried him in this chapel in the mountains. And I went down and... and I told his mother. His mother, who has cooked meals for me and her son. And when I told her she... she just looked at me. and then she went in and she put on her shoes. Then she came out and she said, "Take me to my child." And we walked for six hours and she didn't say one word. Then we got to the chapel. [sighs] And I showed her the grave. And I'd put a... cross and some flowers on it. And she turned to me and she said, "I never want to see your face again." [sighs] I've crossed the line now, Sinead."

"If we ratify this treaty, all we're changing is the accents of the powerful and the colour of the flag."

"[The IRA have just destroyed a Black-and-Tan mechanised infantry patrol] Mercenaries! That were paid to come over here to make us crawl, and to wipe us out. We've just sent a message to the British cabinet that will echo and reverberate around the world! If they bring their savagery over here, we will meet it with a savagery of our own!"

"Cillian Murphy – Damien O'Donovan"

"Pádraic Delaney – Teddy O'Donovan"

"Liam Cunningham – Dan"

"Orla Fitzgerald – Sinéad Ní Shúilleabháin"

"Laurence Barry – Micheál Ó Súilleabháin"

"Mary Murphy – Bernadette"

"Mary O'Riordan – Peggy"

"Myles Horgan – Rory"

"Martin Lucey – Congo"

"Roger Allam – Sir John Hamilton"

"John Crean – Chris Reilly"

"Damien Kearney – Finbar"

"Frank Bourke – Leo"

"Shane Casey – Kevin"

"Máirtín de Cógáin – Sean"

"William Ruane – Johnny Gogan"

"Fiona Lawton – Lily"

"Seán McGinley – Father Denis"

"Kevin O'Brien – Tim"

"If I'm going to make a fake movie, it's going to be a fake hit."

"[Explaining the lack of fanfare regarding the awarding of Mendez' Intelligence Star] If we wanted applause, we would have joined the circus."

"[To Tony Mendez] If you're going to do a $20 million Star Wars rip-off, you need somebody who's a somebody to put their name on it. Somebody respectable. With credits. Who you can trust with classified information. Who will produce a fake movie. For free."

"The movie was fake. The mission was real."

"They weren’t making a movie, they were making history."

"The most important movie of all time ... was never made."

"Based on a declassified true story."

"Ben Affleck - Tony Mendez"

"Bryan Cranston - Jack O'Donnell"

"Alan Arkin - Lester Siegel"

"John Goodman - John Chambers"

"Clea DuVall - Cora Lijek"

"Kyle Chandler - Hamilton Jordan"

"Victor Garber - Ken Taylor"

"Tate Donovan - Bob Anders"

"Michael Parks - Jack Kirby"

"Tom Lenk - Rodd"

"Christopher Stanley - Tom Ahern"

"Taylor Schilling - Christine Mendez"

"Sheila Vand - Sahar"

"Chris Messina - Malinov"

"Richard Kind - Max Klein"

"Titus Welliver - Jon Bates"

"Rory Cochrane - Lee Schatz"

"Omid Abtahi - Reza"

"Scoot McNairy - Joe Stafford"

"Kerry Bishé - Kathy Stafford"

"Bob Gunton - Cyrus Vance"

"Adrienne Barbeau - Nina"

"Fouad Hajji - Komiteh"

"The part assigned to me is to raise the flag, which, if there be no fault in the machinery, I will do, and when up, it'll be for the people to keep it up. That's my speech."

"I heard tell once of a Jeff City lawyer who had a parrot that'd wake him each morning crying out, "Today is the day the world shall end, as scripture has foretold." And one day the lawyer shot him for the sake of peace and quiet, I presume. Thus fulfilling, for the bird at least, his prophecy!"

"[to Cabinet members] As the preacher said; "I could write shorter sermons, but once I start I get too lazy to stop.""

"It was right after the Revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went. Til one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed thence. Relieved, you might say. Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn't mention Washington's portrait. And finally his lordship couldn't resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it - the picture of Washington - he had. Well what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded. [mocking British accent] "Appropriate? George Washington's likeness in a water closet?" "Yes," said Mr. Allen, "where it will do good service. The whole world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington." I love that story."

"Euclid's first common notion is this: "Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other." That's a rule of mathematical reasoning. It's true because it works; has done and will always will do. In his book, Euclid says this is "self-evident." You see, there it is, even in that two-thousand year old book of mechanical law: it is a self-evident truth of things which are equal to the same thing, are equal to each other. We begin with equality. That's the origin, isn't it? That balance—that's fairness, that's justice."

"[pounds his hand on a table as his cabinet squabbles] I can't listen to this anymore. I can't accomplish a goddamn thing of any human meaning or worth until we cure ourselves of slavery and end this pestilential war, and whether any of you or anyone else knows it, I know I need this! This amendment is that cure! We're stepped out upon the world stage now, now, with the fate of human dignity in our hands. Blood's been spilled to afford us this moment! Now! Now! Now! And you grouse so and heckle and dodge about like pettifogging Tammany Hall hucksters!"

"Do you think we choose the times into which we are born? Or do we fit the times we are born into?"

"In times like this, I'm best alone."

"[last lines, from Second Inaugural speech] Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

"Trust? Oh. I'm sorry, I was under the misapprehension your chosen profession was politics. I never trusted the President, never trusted anyone, but hasn't he surprised you?"

"Nothing surprises you, Asa, therefore nothing about you is surprising. Perhaps that is why your constituents did not re-elect you to the coming term?"

"Lincoln the inveterate dawdler, Lincoln the Southerner, Lincoln the capitulating compromiser, our adversary, and leader of the Godforsaken Republican Party - our party - Abraham Lincoln has asked for our help in accomplishing the death of slavery in America. Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment."

"How can I hold that all men are created equal, when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio, proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their Maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood! You are more reptile than man, George! So low and flat, that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you!"

"I want the amendment to pass, so that the Constitution's first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition. For this amendment, for which I have worked all my life and for which countless colored men and women have fought and died and now hundreds of thousands of soldiers... No, sir, no, it seems there's very nearly nothing I won't say."

"The greatest measure of the 19th century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America."

"[to Abraham Lincoln] No one's loved as much as you, no one's ever been loved so much, by the people. You might do anything now. Don't, don't waste that power on an amendment bill that's sure of defeat."

"[to Abraham Lincoln] You think I'm ignorant of what you're up to because you haven't discussed this scheme with me as you ought to have done? When have I ever been so easily bamboozled? I believe you when you insist that amending the Constitution and abolishing slavery will end this war. And since you're sending my son into the war, woe to you if you fail to pass the amendment."

"But all that was not enough for this dictator, who now seeks to insinuate his miscegenist pollution into the Constitution itself!"

"We are once again asked - nay, commanded - to consider a proposed thirteenth amendment which, if passed, shall set at immediate liberty four million coloreds while manacling the limbs of the white race in America. If it is passed - but it shall not pass!"

"Every member of the House loyal to the Democratic Party and the constituents it serves shall oppose!"

"Daniel Day-Lewis - President Abraham Lincoln"

"Sally Field - First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln"

"David Strathairn - Secretary of State William H. Seward"

"Tommy Lee Jones - Radical Republican Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens"

"Hal Holbrook - Francis Preston Blair"

"Lee Pace - Democratic Congressman Fernando Wood"

"Peter McRobbie - Democratic Congressman George H. Pendleton"

"Bruce McGill - Secretary of War Edwin Stanton"

"Dakin Matthews- Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher"

"Jared Harris - Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant"

"James Spader - Republican Party operative William N. Bilbo"

"Tim Blake Nelson - lobbyist Richard Schell"

"John Hawkes - Republican operative Colonel Robert Latham"

"Bill Raymond - Schuyler Colfax"

"David Costabile - Republican Congressman James Ashley"

"Stephen Spinella - Radical Republican Congressman Asa Vintner Litton"

"Michael Stuhlbarg - Kentucky Democratic Congressman George Yeaman"

"Boris McGiver - Democratic Congressman, later Republican, Alexander Coffroth"

"Walton Goggins - Democratic Congressman Wells A. Hutchins"

"David Warshofsky - Democratic Congressmann William Hutton"

"Wayne Duvall - Radical Republican Senator Benjamin "Bluff Ben" Wade"

"Jackie Earle Haley - Confederate States Vice President Alexander H. Stephens"

"Gregory Itzin - John Archibald Campbell"

"S. Epatha Merkerson - Lydia Smith"

"Gloria Reuben - Elizabeth Keckley"

"Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Robert Todd Lincoln"

"Gulliver McGrath - Tad Lincoln"

"Joseph Cross - John Hay"

"Stephen Henderson - Lincoln's valet William Slade"

"They love his voice, they love his guitar, they love his ideas... they should know some of his ideas."

"Ain't Mama a beauty? Oh, a guitar beats a woman every time! You know, I never have seen a woman I could trust like this old guitar. I love my Mama guitar. She's always there waitin' for me to pick her up and hold her. Never asks me for money or goes cheatin' around when I ain't lookin'. And if she gets a little sour, why, I just give her a little twist like so, and we're right back in tune together."

"You know, ma'am, whenever a bunch of fellas like us - outcasts, hoboes, nobodies, gentlemen loafers, one-time or all-time losers, call us what you want to. Whenever we get together, we tell our funny stories. Me and Beanie and the rest of these hand-to-mouth tumbleweed boys like you see in here. [singing] If whiskey don't get us, then women must. And it looks like I'm never gonna cease my wandering."

"You know, back in my little old town of Riddle, we had a cousin named Harry. We all called him Cousin 'Hurry' because he was always runnin' someplace. Till one day he fell down a flight of steps and broke his fool neck. We put a sign on his grave says: 'He was in such a hurry, he just couldn't wait to get here.'"

"[to Marcia, as they leave Pickett for Memphis] Boy, am I glad to shake that dump. [pause] I was only kiddin', honey. You ought to know me better than to believe everything I say. Ha! [to the crowd] Bye! Bye! Good-bye and God bless you, good people!"

"Ain't nothin' in this world you can't do when you let the best side of you take over."

"Respect? Did you ever hear of anyone buying any product - beer, hair rinse, tissue - because they respect it? You gotta be loved, man. Loved....Politics is people...Senator, I'm a professional. And I have to look at the image on that screen same as I'd look at a performer on my show. And I'll have to say he'll never get over to my audience. Not to the 65 million people who welcome me into their living rooms each week. And if I wouldn't buy him, do you realize what that means? If I wouldn't buy him, the people of this country aren't ready to buy him for that big job on Pennsylvania Avenue."

"I'm not just an entertainer. I'm an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force... a force!"

"[about the writers] Here you see the lepers of the great television industry. Men without faces. Why, they even slide our paychecks under the door so they can pretend we're not here."

"[about TV] You gotta be a saint to stand off the power that little box can give you."

"Didn't you know? All mild men are vicious. They hate themselves for being mild, and they hate the windy extroverts whose violence seems to have a strange attraction for nice girls. You should know better."

"[about Lonesome Rhodes] I'll say one thing for him, he's got the courage of his ignorance."

"Andy Griffith - Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes"

"Patricia Neal - Marcia Jeffries"

"Anthony Franciosa - Joey DePalma"

"Walter Matthau - Mel "Boing Boing Boing" Miller"

"Lee Remick - Betty Lou Fleckum"

"Percy Waram - Gen. Haynesworth"

"Paul McGrath - Macey"

"Rod Brasfield - Beanie"

"Marshall Neilan - Senator Worthington "Curly" Fuller"

"Alexander Kirkland - Jim Collier"

"Howard Smith - J.B. Jeffries"

"Kay Medford - First Mrs. Rhodes"

"Cara Williams - Nurse"

"When I was a student, trying to qualify for the jobs you people will let us have, I suddenly realized that it wasn't just good jobs that were white. The only history we read was made by the white man, written by the white man. Television, cars, medicines - all invented by the white man, even football. Now the way like that, it's not hard to believe there's something inferior about being born black. I began to think this idea of inferiority was an even bigger problem for us than what the Afrikaans were doing to us. At first a black man had to believe he had as much capacity to be a doctor, a leader, as a white man."

"It's a miracle a child survives here at all. People are so desperate for anything they'll beat a kid bloody if they thought he had five Rand. But if you do run fast enough, if you do survive, you grew up in these streets, these houses. Your parents try, but in the end, you only get the education the white man will give you. Then you go to the city to work or shop, and you see their streets, their cars, their houses, and you begin to feel there is something not quite right about yourself. About your humanity. Something to do with your blackness because no matter how smart or dumb a white child is he is born to that world. And you, a black child, smart or dumb you are born into this. And smart or dumb you die in it."

"I just expect to be treated like you expect to be treated. Come on, what are you so afraid of? Once you try you see there's nothing to fear. We're just as weak and human as you are."

"We are going to change South Africa. What we've got to decide is the best way to do that. And as angry as we have the right to be, let us remember that we are in the struggle to kill the idea that one kind of man is superior to another kind of man. And killing that idea is not dependent on the white man. We must stop looking to him to give us something. We have to fill the black community with our own pride. We have to teach our black children black history, tell them about our black heroes, our black culture, so that they don't face the white man believing they are inferior. Then we'll stand up to him in anyway he chooses. Conflict, if he likes. But with an open hand, too, to say we can all build a South Africa worth living in - a South Africa for equals, black or white, a South Africa as beautiful as this land is, as beautiful as we are."

"My lord, blacks are not unaware of the hardships they endure or what the government is doing to them. we want them to stop accepting these hardships - to confront them. People must not just give in to the hardship of life, they must find a way, even in these environments, to - to develop hope - hope for themselves, hope for this country. now I think that is what black consciousness is all about. Not without any reference to the white man. To try to build up a sense of our own humanity - our legitimate place in the world."

"You can beat or jail me or even kill me, but I am not going to be what you want me to be!"

"Kevin Kline — Donald Woods"

"Denzel Washington — Steve Biko"

"Penelope Wilton — Wendy Woods"

"Kevin McNally — Ken"

"John Thaw — Jimmy Kruger"

"John Hargreaves — Bruce Haigh"

"And they said we were dead. Next stop: the White House!"

"[While watching one of Barack Obama's speeches] If he heals a sick baby, we're really fucked."

"When my grandfather found out that the Japanese had surrendered, he was lost. He didn't know what to do with himself. He came home, dropped dead the very next day. Fought his war, then he died. And my dad, when he retired from the Navy, he fell into a sense of despair for the rest of his life. I'm never gonna quit, Steve. I can't. I don't know how to just fade away."

"You're one of the leaders of the party now, Sarah. Don't get co-opted by Limbaugh and the other extremists. They'll destroy the party if you let them."

"I am raising millions of dollars for this campaign; hundreds of thousands of people are coming to see me speak! Not John McCain, God bless him, they are coming to see me! So, if I am single-handedly carrying this "campaign"... I'm gonna do what I want!"

"I'm trying to trust you people, but you're making it really hard for me!"

"I AM RUINED IN ALASKA! [hurls flip phone]"

"There are unknowns with Palin, and ah, certainly it could go bad. But if it were me, I'd rather lose by ten points going for the win than lose by one point and look back and say "Goddamn, we should have gone for the win"."

"Governor, this country has just elected the first African-American President in the history of its existence, and it is the concession speech that will legitimize his succession as Commander-in-Chief. It is a serious and solemn tradition, and John McCain, and only John McCain, will be giving the speech. This is how it has been done in every presidential election since the dawn of the Republic, and you, Sarah Palin, will not change the importance of this proud American tradition!"

"Julianne Moore - Sarah Palin"

"Woody Harrelson - Steve Schmidt"

"Ed Harris - John McCain"

"Sarah Paulson - Nicolle Wallace"

"Peter MacNicol - Rick Davis"

"Jamey Sheridan - Mark Salter"

"Ron Livingston - Mark Wallace"

"David Barry Gray - Todd Palin"

"Larry Sullivan - Chris Edwards"

"Melissa Farman - Bristol Palin"

"Kevin Bigley - Track Palin"

"Brian d'Arcy James - Ted Frank"

"Bruce Altman - Fred Davis"

"Colby French - Tucker Eskew"

"John Rothman - Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr."

"Sandy Bainum - Cindy McCain"

"Tiffany Thornton - Meghan McCain"

"Alex Hyde-White - Lindsey Graham"

"Justin Gaston - Levi Johnston"

"Austin Pendleton - Joe Lieberman"

"[about Mengele] He was the chief doctor of Auschwitz, who killed 2.5 million people, experimented with children - Jewish and non-Jewish - using twins mostly, injecting blue dyes into their eyes to make them acceptable Aryans... amputating limbs and organs from thousands without anesthetics."

"You're not a guard now, madame! You are a prisoner! I may leave here today empty handed. But you... are not going anywhere."

"Not Mozart. Not Picasso. Not a genius who would enrich the world. But a lonely little boy with a domineering father, a customs officer who was 52 when he was born. And an affectionate doting mother who was 29. The father died when he was 65 when the boy was nearly 14... Adolf Hitler."

"You know, there was a nurse here, an angel of mercy called Miss Hannah, who actually gives me cigarettes. You know what she said to me the other day? She said, "Mr. Lieberman, if you can escape Buchenwald, and you can escape those bullets, then a few cigarettes will not hurt you." (burns the list of Mengele's clones) Isn't that a nice thing to say?"

"Do you know what I saw on the television in my motel room at one o'clock this morning? Films of Hitler! They are showing films about the war! The movement! People are fascinated! The time is ripe! Adolf Hitler is alive! [Takes photo album and places it on his lap] This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs. [laughs] We were in a Biblical frame of mind on the twenty-third of May 1943, at the Berghof. He had denied himself children because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of so godlike a father! But when he heard what was theoretically possible, that I could create one day not his son, not even a carbon-copy but another original, he was thrilled by the idea! The right Hitler for the right future! A Hitler tailor-made for the 1980s, the 1990s, 2000!"

"He betrayed me, he betrayed you, he betrayed the Aryan race!"

"Mrs. Doring: [about Mengele] Would you like me to tell you who really killed him? God. To set free a stupid little farm girl after twenty-two years of unhappiness. Do Nazis answer prayers Herr Lieberman? No, that is God's business and I have thanked Him every night since He pushed Emil under that car. He could have done it sooner, but I thank Him anyway."

"Gregory Peck - Dr. Josef Mengele"

"Laurence Olivier - Ezra Lieberman"

"James Mason - Eduard Seibert"

"Lilli Palmer - Esther Lieberman"

"Uta Hagen - Frieda Maloney"

"Steve Guttenberg - Barry Kohler"

"Denholm Elliott - Sidney Beynon"

"Rosemary Harris - Frau Doring"

"John Dehner - Henry Wheelock"

"John Rubinstein - David Bennett"

"Anne Meara - Mrs. Curry"

"Bruno Ganz as Dr. Bruckner"

"Walter Gotell as Mundt"

"David Hurst as Strasser"

"Wolfgang Preiss as Lofquist"

"Michael Gough as Mr. Harrington"

"Joachim Hansen as Fassler"

"Sky du Mont as Hessen"

"[to his captors] I hope you all get anal herpes!"

"Left-wing, Colonel? Eh, maybe. But I'm not a Communist. And you guys never seem to be able to tell the difference!"

"Is that why you're here, Colonel? Some kind of post-Vietnam experience like you need a rerun or something? You pour a hundred twenty million bucks into this place, you turn it into a military zone, so what, so you can have chopper parades in the sky?"

"You let them close down the universities, you let them wipe out the best minds in the countries, you let them kill whoever they want, you let them wipe out the Catholic Church, you let them do it all because they aren't Commies! And that, Colonel, is bull shit!"

"You gotta get close to get the truth. You get too close, you die."

"[about the government in El Salvador] A pathological killer on the right, God-knows-what on the left, and a gutless middle."

"James Woods - Richard Boyle"

"Jim Belushi - Doctor Rock"

"Michael Murphy - Ambassador Thomas Kelly"

"John Savage - John Cassady"

"Elpidia Carrillo - María"

"Cindy Gibb - Cathy Moore"

"Tony Plana - Major Maximiliano 'Max' Casanova"

"Colby Chester - Jack Morgan- State Department Analyst"

"Will MacMillan - Colonel Bentley Hyde Sr."

"Rome is burning, son. And the problem is not with the people that started this; they're past irredeemable. The problem is with us, all of us, who do nothing. Who just fiddle. Who try to maneuver around the edges of the flame. And I'll tell you something - there are people out there, day to day, who are fighting to make things better."

"The decisions you make now, bud, can't be changed but with years and years of hard work to redo it... And in those years you become something different. Everybody does as the time passes. You get married, you get into debt... But you're never gonna be the same person you are right now. And promise and potential... It's very fickle, and it just might not be there anymore."

"I'm still here, Todd, because I'm a selfish man. I'm selfish for the rare times when you know you have someone in your class that has rare gifts to go on and do big things on a big scale. I realized my gifts aren't my theories but my ability to recognize great potential in others and maybe give them a little shove when they need it."

"You're good with words, Todd. But you know what would make them even better? If they had a heartbeat."

"We walk, and Afghanistan reverts back to the Taliban. Only now the Taliban has metastasized into something infinitely more vicious and potent because they're now 2-0 versus superpowers. They butcher the people who helped us, who voted and were stupid enough to put their faith in our word. So call it not only the end of hope for tens of millions of Afghans, but the end of American credibility, the end of America as a force for righteousness in the world. And when we're forced to go back in a couple years, and please quote me on this, we'll be squared off against a shattered Iraq, a hopeless Afghanistan, and a nuclear Iran. How many troops are we going to need then? I guarantee you'll be adding some zeros."

"In a sense we're both on the same team. We're teammates. We're both have a responsibility. You've already sold the war. Now I'm asking you to help me sell the solution."

"We're fighting a brand of evil that thinks the last 1,300 years of human progress is heresy punishable by violent death."

"If you don't STAND for something, you might FALL for anything"

"What do you stand for? What do you fight for? What do you live for?"

"Robert Redford - Professor Stephen Malley"

"Meryl Streep - Janine Roth"

"Tom Cruise - Senator Jasper Irving (R-IL)"

"Michael Peña - Ernest Rodriguez"

"Andrew Garfield - Todd Hayes"

"Derek Luke - Arian Finch"

"Peter Berg - Lt. Col. Falco"

"Kevin Dunn - ANX Editor"

"[first words by older self in original timeline] The future: a dark, desolate world. A world of war, suffering, loss on both sides. Mutants, and the humans who dared to help them, fighting an enemy we cannot defeat. Are we destined down this path, destined to destroy ourselves like so many species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to change ourselves... change our fate? Is the future truly set?"

"[last words by younger self in revised timeline] The past: a new and uncertain world. A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a ripple in the river of time. Enough ripples, and you change the tide... for the future is never truly set."

"His past. Our future."

"Every hero, every power will unite."

"The future begins."

"It doesn't matter what others think. You know what you did."

"Everyone will hate me, but at least I'll lose."

"We need to get off this merry-go-round sir. The next mistake our countries make could be the last one. We need to have the conversation our governments can't."

"Well, the boss isn't always right. But, he's always the boss."

"What's the next move when you don't know what the game is?"

"Would it help?"

"Agent Williams: We are engaged in a war. This war does not for the moment involve men at arms; it involves information. You will be collecting information. You will be gathering intelligence about the enemy. The intelligence you gather could give us the upper hand in a full thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, or it could prevent one. For public purposes, as far as your wife or mother or sweetheart or the good lord above, your mission does not exist. if it does not exist, you do not exist. You cannot be shot down. You cannot be captured."

"In a world on the brink the difference between war and peace was one honest man."

"In the shadow of war, one man showed the world what we stand for."

"Tom Hanks - James B. Donovan"

"Mark Rylance - Rudolf Abel"

"Scott Shepherd - Hoffman"

"Amy Ryan - Mary McKenna Donovan"

"Sebastian Koch - Wolfgang Vogel"

"Alan Alda - Thomas Watters"

"Austin Stowell - Francis Gary Powers"

"Billy Magnussen - Doug Forrester"

"Eve Hewson - Carol Donovan"

"Jillian Lebling - Peggy Donovan"

"Noah Schnapp - Roger Donovan"

"Jesse Plemons - Murphy"

"Michael Gaston - Williams"

"Peter McRobbie - Allen Dulles"

"Domenick Lombardozzi - Agent Blasco"

"Will Rogers - Frederic Pryor"

"Dakin Matthews - Judge Mortimer W. Byers"

"Stephen Kunken - William Tompkins"

"Joshua Harto - Bates"

"Mark Zak - Soviet Judge"

"Edward James Hyland - Chief Justice Earl Warren"

"Mikhail Gorevoy - Ivan Alexandrovich Schischkin"

"Just an earthen pot! But a rare piece of India's artistic tribal heritage.... I thought about the responsibility that...that education should bring. I thought about why despite of booming economy....and an industrial growth rate rivaling any other in the world....why are we still a poor country? Why are our villagers, our downtrodden, our rural areas, our tribals....all not getting even a single piece of this growth? And then I realized that this pot, has the potential to change all that."

"If my husband can be a Maoist, so can your father!... They are spread across all over India so you have to run away Vikram."

"The most relevant film of our times... considering what is happening in the country."

"First they nearly stopped him from making his film. Then they tried to prevent him from screening it. When he took his exquisite and excruciating creation literally to the streets and to the campuses, showing it directly to target audiences, again he was heckled and blocked. I thought to myself, whether we love or hate the film, we cannot allow this in India. In my own university, JNU, another Leftist bastion, it was blocked by the Dean of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, in whose auditorium it was originally to be screened. Instead, the students arranged an outdoor screening, which was attended by over five thousand. The film had a rousing, almost delirious reception. When I saw it, I was moved, disturbed, provoked. It was one of the most original and unusual movies I had encountered in a long time...There is, besides, “a mindset in Bollywood that doesn't let Indic ideas flourish.”"

"“Gripping, newsy account of a filmmaker's encounter with radicalism in urban India”"

"Urban Naxals drags you into the hard, brutal and fanatical world thriving beneath the dark shadows of liberalism, free speech and tolerance. Vivek Agnihotri brings the art of storytelling and the craft of filmmaking to breathe life into an ugly phenomenon that has been setting a dangerous national agenda. This is a gripping and disturbing book that constricts your conscience and lingers within long after you’ve finished reading it."

"“Urban Naxals is a daring, if unconventional, analysis at how the far left has captured our educational institutions to produce a generation of brain-washed nihilists to wage war on the masses. Urban Naxals is at once irreverent and introspective, moving and hard-hitting. Urban Naxals will leave you shaken and ask you to join the conversation we, as a nation, ought to be having before it is too late.”"

"Budda in a Traffic Jam hits hard at the intellectual dishonesty of faculty operating in a system that compromises excellence to promote mediocrity."

"Vivek Agnihotri brings us an untouched issue of the hidden war going on in the country...."

"... thought-provoking. An idealistic drama, it motivates and instigates the audience for a revolution."

"This film has been made out of that anger and frustration. This film speaks of the freedom that India needs in 2016, it speaks of that revolution. Only one revolution has been spoken of in this country, never the other. The other revolution will only come from Indianness, from innovation, from creating capital, from creating wealth, it will come when you will send money to your home. No one can starve and revolt. There are some people who want a section of people to starve, so that the other revolution comes and their political shops keep running."

"This is the reason why this film has been made. This film doesn’t agree with a certain thought process. Unfortunately, in India, all the literature festivals, film festivals are run by people with a fixed mindset and a fixed narrative, they are not run by people who love the country, their contribution to India’s capital is zero but to India’s chaos is hundred percent. They won’t let this film show there. That’s why we are here. To show you directly, like the film says, “without the middlemen”."

"Slowly but steadily, the film started finding its cult. This is the victory of Buddha. Today, at the end of the year, Huffington Post has released a list of the ten best films of the year and they have rated Buddha In A Traffic Jam as the second best, only after Dangal. Many other prominent listings have rated the film among the three best films of the year. Huffington Post writes in honour of our film, of course after watching it and understanding it: ‘Buddha in a Traffic Jam is a powerful film about morality, corruption, and social injustice that forces us to think about things which we don’t usually pay heed to. The film was panned by the Indian left-wing lobby at the time of its release. The issue at the heart of Buddha in a Traffic Jam is the Naxalite crisis. But the film dares to show us a different side to the Naxalite movement – not as a struggle in the jungle but driven according to a sophisticated business model designed by high-thinking masterminds. Directed by Vivek Agnihotri, Buddha in a Traffic Jam is well-researched and extremely well made. It is a real pity that the film was unjustly censured for leaning towards the right at the time of its release when in actuality it is equally critical of both the extremes. Here is an important film that hopefully will find a cult following in times to come.’"

"On the release day, some three hundred troll handles were opened with zero followers to troll the film. This was led by Arvind Kejriwal’s fans and the group of trolls was led by the queens of trolls – @Rajyashree and Swati Chaturvedi @Bainjal, who later wrote a book on trolls. The best part is that none of them had seen the film. Like they share articles without reading them only on the basis of the headline, they started writing pre-determined reviews and comments. One anonymous guy/girl with the handle @GabbbarSingh trolled the film and called it a shitty film. Reading the comments, I knew that he/she had not seen the film so I deliberately asked which chapter he/she hated the most, which was never replied to. This person had not seen the film but was either paid or motivated to write against the film, otherwise, how can anybody be so stupid?"

"I can guarantee no other small film in recent times has received so much of appreciation, support and fan following like Buddha in a Traffic Jam."

"We started getting invitations from Oxford and Cambridge, Australia, Singapore and many American universities and associations. Random people started exposing the lies of people like Raja Sen and Sekhri. Slowly, an army of thousands of Buddha believers started protecting the film from Urban Naxals and started promoting it through unconventional channels. The film found its market, its audience and created an ecosystem. The film got sold to all major digital platforms. It got over a million organic views on YouTube in no time. This is the victory of Buddha."

"The Leftists, liberals and intellectuals and their sympathizers had panned the film as my fantasy. Journalist Saba Naqvi, in a TV debate, even went to the extent of saying that I oppose Naxals because I have no intellect and radical activists like Kavita Krishnan and Shehla Rashid called the film my fantasy. But once the film started getting ground support, their own organizations, forums started inviting me to their seminars, conventions as the main speaker. The doors of literature festivals opened up for me. Academic forums started inviting me to present my views on Urban Naxalism and Intellectual Terrorism. Since the release of the film, I have been travelling the length and breadth of the country for almost 15-20 days a month to give lectures at various prestigious forums."

"This is when I received an email from the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI), India’s number one film festival, then chaired by Shyam Benegal, that Buddha In A Traffic Jam was officially selected in the India Gold category which features five or six best films of the year."

"I decided to at least show the rough cut to as many studios as I could. I met Siddharth Roy Kapur, MD of UTV, who instantly agreed to do a screening. Very strangely, he didn’t come for the screening and instead sent a creative director who had just joined, and a young girl who had no idea of Indian politics. They loved the film and told me that this was one of the finest films they had seen in a long time and it should get a well-planned release. I wasted a lot of time with them and in the end, was told that ‘as a policy, we can’t be associated with a film of this kind’."

"It’s really strange but true that the films which win national awards or are selected by MAMI and other international film festivals, which deserve to be celebrated by the country and the studios, go through spine-breaking struggle, agony, humiliation, and hopelessness. Studios, producers, actors, and the entire film fraternity should invest in them and showcase them to a large audience to promote good cinema and develop audience taste for them to be able to make better films. We have invested large sums, time, and emotions in dumb cinema and by and by the audience has stopped appreciating any movie which has logic or reality. The industry makes you feel as if you have committed a cardinal crime by making such a film. This is the reason that in a social function you can identify the makers of such films with droopy shoulders, under confident body language, standing alone in a corner, and getting drunk, whereas the maker of a mindless comedy loaded with double entendres would be surrounded by top stars, producers, and media. We are a defective film industry."

"The first screening of the film at MAMI was attended mostly by film industry colleagues. A lot of them came to check it out as they just couldn’t believe that my film was in MAMI."

"While watching the screening with the students, I am thinking about the people who are against this film. Why were some faculty members not letting it screen? Who are this faculty? I am amazed at their political power. Are they running these institutes at their whims? Are these educational institutions or political madrasas? Is the faculty Taliban and are the students jihadis? Why is it that the Barkha Dutts of the world did not even bother to cover this historic moment? Or have they taken an oath to cover only the anti-national news?"

"We are flooded with requests from top institutes to screen the film. Naireeta informs me that if we do two institutes a day, we will be able to finish all requests only in three months. We try to organize ourselves and select institutes which are on main trunk routes, easy to fly to and are politically relevant to our film’s theme. We have to drop places like Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, Roorkee, Dehradun, Agra, Nagpur etc. We have to cover approximately forty institutes or universities in the next forty days. Everyone thinks it’s a logistical nightmare. I wonder how politicians manage to give five to six speeches a day in scorching heat. Modi’s politics aside, one can always be inspired by his relentless campaigning. We lock our schedule."

"‘Whereas, we have a screening every weekend. Just a few days ago, Aligarh was shown because it’s a film supported by the Leftists. But I know unofficially that the film secretary who is a Leftist got scared when he realized that the OAT will be jam-packed. When we protested, the Dean gave us permission for SAC (600 capacity). When more students signed up for the screening, they changed it at the last minute and finally, they gave permission for ICSR hall (capacity 300). Last night we put up posters of the movie but Leftists removed them overnight. Now the problem is that there are too many students, at least 800, who want to see the film, but the capacity is only 300.’"

"The film started getting invitations from film festivals. We won the Best Original Screenplay award at the Madrid Film Festival. The response was overwhelming. I had heard about ‘standing ovations’ but never received one. The response was way beyond ‘standing ovation’. It was the connection. Instead of clapping and taking selfies, people engaged in discussions about Naxalism and other related politics. Almost every time, the discussions became intense with the audience getting into arguments with each other. The film was evoking a definite response. It was stimulating and engaging the audience."

"‘We were alone. We tried to show it in some universities but unfortunately there also the faculty was hand in glove with a lot of anti-national activities and they also rejected our film. Then some students said we want to show this film outside on the street. On 18th March, in JNU, some five thousand students watched this film sitting on the ground, on the street actually, on trees, on terraces and on rooftops. Since then we have not stopped for a moment. This is the first time in the history of world cinema that a film has been shown to so many students and people before the release. Does any manufacturer go out sampling his product, free, before the formal launch of the product? People are generally scared…What happens if my film gets badmouthed, what if people criticize it on social media, then I am doomed. The biggest of the stars will never do that. Second thing, any filmmaker worth his salt will never allow his film to be screened in halls, auditoriums, in amphitheatres, outdoors on streets with thousands of mobile phones ready for piracy. We’ve had screenings with bad sound systems, we’ve shown it right on the wall of a university because there was a lot of wind and the screen was flying like a kite. We have shown this film in places where one channel had conked off."

"Why are we doing this? Why are we showing this film to whoever that invites us? In every institute, university? Because it’s not about the box office, trust me, I am not lying, the mathematics is not on our side. Even if every single person watches this film, this film cannot make the kind of money big films make. Then why are we doing this? The purpose to show this film is to make people realize, to make young students realize that the time has come to work in the direction of innovation. You have to work in a direction where this country can be an innovation hub of the world and that must happen now because we have a golden opportunity."

"The attempts to cancel our screenings have reached a figure where now I feel there is a conspiracy behind this pattern. Verbal attacks, ridicule, heckling, resistance, sabotage have been the attractions of this journey."

"Two Indias. One Revolution."

"Here's my case, it's all I've got. Thirty-two years of service, thirty-two years of heroism as a United States Marine, regardless of what you decide here, Colonel Childers' career as a Marine is over. He will never again command men in combat. The Ambassador and his family are alive today because of him, and I know how the Ambassador feels because Colonel Childers saved my life too. I am alive today only because of him! I'm alive today and I have a son, because of the heroism of Colonel Childers. To ask this man to risk his life for his country, to ask this man to watch his Marines die in his arms and call it murder when he's defending himself, to call it murder for firing back when being fired upon, to call it murder for saving the lives of his countrymen under the most extreme of circumstances, that's... my fellow Marines... that's hanging him out to dry... and it's worse than leaving him wounded on a battlefield. That is something you do not do if you are a United States Marine, and it is something I pray to God you won't do here either."

"Colonel Terry Childers is a decorated war hero, a trusted leader of American Marines, and I wish that was all there was to it. Unfortunately, there are 83 dead Yemeni citizens, many of them women and children. Colonel Hodges would have you believe that this crowd was armed. He would also have you believe that there is a videotape proving this to be true. There is no tape exonerating Colonel Childers. There is no evidence exonerating Colonel Childers. Is Colonel Childers a man capable of killing defenseless, unarmed people? Is he capable of ordering the execution of innocent men and women? Is he capable of executing P.O.W.s with his own hand? Unfortunately, we have shown that he is. You have heard the sad testimony of Colonel Cao, who witnessed Colonel Childers' barbarism firsthand. You've even heard Colonel Childers' own admission that his desire was to "waste" them, regardless of who they were. Now, we are faced with the difficult prospect of convicting one of our own. None of us wants to do this, but you've heard the facts, and it is unavoidable. Colonel Terry Childers ordered the senseless slaughter of a peaceful crowd! Now, as Marines, we do not get the luxury of covering up our mistakes. We must air them, thereby ensuring that they never happen again."

"[Hello. Ragini, this issue was long forgotten. All the debates have been done. So why dig up old graves now?] Old graves... Asking questions about the death of the 2nd Prime Minister of Independent India, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shashtri...and demanding the truth is digging up old graves for you? Not for me."

"I just want the truth to be out there. Don't we have any right to the truth?"

"Who Killed Shastri?"

"Naseeruddin Shah as PKR Natrajan"

"Mithun Chakraborty as Shyam Sunder Tripathi"

"Shweta Basu Prasad as Raagini Phule"

"Mandira Bedi as Indira Joseph Roy"

"Pallavi Joshi as Aiysha Ali Shah"

"Rajesh Sharma as Omkar Kashyap"

"Vinay Pathak as Mukhtar"

"Pankaj Tripathi as Gangaram Jha"

"Vishwa Mohan Badola as Justice Kurian Abraham"

"Prakash Belawadi as GK Anantha Suresh"

"Achint Kaur as Mrs. Natarajan"

"Yusuf Hussain"

"Prashant Gupta as Vivendra Pratap Singh Rana"

"Ankur Rathee as Imran Qureshi"

"Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Bal Thackeray"

"We're late. We've been late on everything."

"I spent my entire academic career studying the Great Depression. The depression may have started because of a stock market crash, but what hit the general economy was a disruption of credit. Average citizens unable to borrow money, to do anything. To buy a home, start a business, stock their shelves. Credit has the ability to build a modern economy, but lack of credit has the ability to destroy it, swiftly and absolutely. If we do not act, boldly and immediately, we will replay the depression of the 1930s, only this time it will be... far, far worse. We don't do this now, we won't have an economy on Monday."

"I don't really understand why there needs to be so much tension about this. The country is facing the worst economy since the Great Depression. If the financial system collapses, it will take every one of you down."

"[on the housing crisis] You know, people act like we're crack dealers. Nobody put a gun to anybody's head and said, "Hey, nimrod, buy a house you can't afford, and you know what? While you're at it, put a line of credit on that baby and buy yourself a boat.""

"I've seen this before: CEOs panic and they sell out cheap. Right now, the Street's running around with its hair on fire, but the storm always passes. We stand strong, and on the other side, we'll eat Goldman's lunch."

"Jim Wilkinson: (watching Paulson's conversation with John McCain) He's not... threatening the Republican Presidential nominee, is he?"

"Nancy Pelosi: (when Paulson kneels down in front of her) Hank, I didn't know you were Catholic."

"Michele Davis: They almost bring down the U.S. economy as we know it, but we can't put restrictions on how they spend the $125 billion we're giving them because... they might not take it?"

"Timothy Geithner: I'm on the Street, Hank, and people are just going about their business. They have no idea the whole thing is about to fall down."

"Congressman Barney Frank: (reviewing the first draft of TARP) It's all for the banks. You don't want a penny for the average Joe that's about to lose his house?"

"William Hurt - Henry Paulson, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury"

"Paul Giamatti - Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve"

"Billy Crudup - Timothy Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve"

"Topher Grace - Jim Wilkinson, U.S. Treasury Chief of Staff"

"Ayad Akhtar - Neel Kashkari, Assistant Secretary for International Economics and Development"

"Cynthia Nixon - Michele Davis, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs"

"Peter Hermann - Christopher Cox, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission"

"Joey Slotnick - Dan Jester"

"Edward Asner - Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway"

"James Woods - Richard "Dick" Fuld, CEO, Lehman Brothers"

"John Heard - Joe Gregory, COO, Lehman Brothers"

"Amy Carlson - Erin Callan, CFO, Lehman Brothers"

"Bill Pullman - Jamie Dimon, CEO, JP Morgan Chase"

"Evan Handler - Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs"

"Tony Shalhoub - John Mack, CEO, Morgan Stanley"

"Matthew Modine - John Thain, CEO, Merrill Lynch"

"Ajay Mehta - Vikram Pandit, CEO, Citibank"

"Kathy Baker - Wendy Paulson"

"Laila Robins - Christine Lagarde, French Finance Minister"

"Margin Call (2011)"

"Game Change (2012)"

"The Big Short (2015)"

"This film is dedicated to all the persecuted minorities in the world."

"This is the exact description in Shamsu'd-Din Muhammad Araqi's biography Tohfatul Ahbab."

"You are studying in India's topmost university but you don't know who Araqi is?"

"His sole intention was to destroy to the temples and shrines of infidels. To put an end to their traditions and rituals."

"In this independent India, in this democratic India, in this secular India: they were once again ousted with swords and guns."

"Do you know what this means? Raliv means Convert! Chaliv means leave! Galiv means Die! Convert! Leave! or Die !"

"This was their seventh exodus. And this wasn't an ordinary exodus. This time it was a genocide. And the story doesn't end here. They faced yet another genocide. And neither Araqi nor the Terrorists nor the State were responsible for it. But you and I were responsible for it. .... When we decided to remove them from our hearts and minds. And this was the real genocide."

"If we haven't read about it, it's not part of our history. If we haven't seen it, it hasn't happened. So there was no real genocide in Kashmir. If anyone tries to tell the truth, you say, 'don't preach!'."

"They didn't just kill Kashmiri Pandits in the year 1990. They killed all moderate Muslims as well."

"He wrote, “A lot of people are wondering if my Twitter account is suspended. No, it’s not. I have deactivated it. Here is why: Since I started the campaign of #TheKashmirFiles, Twitter shadowbanned me. My followers dropped drastically and most of my followers couldn’t see any of my tweets. On top of that, my DM was filled with vulgar and threatening messages (by you know who). It’s not that I can’t handle such elements, but it seemed there were many Pakistani & Chinese bots. However tough you may be, it’s mentally testing to be surrounded by such intense hate and threats for your family. For what? Making an honest film on the pain and sufferings of our Kashmiri brothers & sisters? Is that why they are rattled that the truth may come out? The ugly world of social media has given the power to a lot of evil elements. And our silence gives them hope to succeed. TheKashmirFiles breaks that silence. Loud and clear.”"

"The filmmaker further added, “I have always spoken against India’s enemies. #The KashmirFiles is an attempt to expose inhuman terrorism that has destroyed India’s most sacred land of Shiva & Saraswati. And now religious terrorism is making inroads in mainland India. That’s why they want people to like me silenced. I always speak for those who can’t be heard. I have been exposing many untruths and fake narratives by anti-India Urban Naxals. They want to silence me. But I know very well that silence helps tragic events like Kashmir Genocide. They must know that I can’t be silenced. I thank all my followers and fans for your love and support. Love. Always.”"

"For instance, (the examining committee) had issues with the word ‘Islamic terrorist’. More than two dozen cuts were issued in all. However, I argued and showed them the documents and proof to support my point. Eventually, they allowed the film without these cuts. How can they dispute the facts after all?"

"OpIndia spoke with Vivek Agnihotri regarding Intezar Hussain Sayed’s initial allegation that the film offended religious feelings. Agnihotri, in an interview with OpIndia, said he was determined to portray the genocide of Kashmiri Hindus on-screen through The Kashmir Files., “I can prove in any court or any platform of their choice that every frame, every word in my film is truth. Nothing but the truth.” On the news of a PIL being filed against the film, he had said, “They can create as many hurdles as they want but I can’t be silenced.”"

"Speaking on the question of why he chose not to go with the OTT platform and release it exclusively in theatres, Vivek said he was not willing to give up his Intellectual Property(IP) and strike comprises that deals with the OTT platforms normally entailed. He highlighted an incident on how he was bluntly asked by an OTT executive to remove the reference to ‘Islamic Terrorism’ from his movie. Vivek said he was taken aback when the executive openly asked him whether any specific adjective was used for terrorism which is talked about in the film. According to Vivek, the executive asserted, “We have a global policy that we do not use the term ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in any of our films. I hope you are not using that.”"

"Calling out the 'genocide deniers', Vivek wrote, "I am not the first person to call it Genocide. But systematically books and literature like this were taken off libraries and a lie was created about ‘exodus’. This was indeed the GENOCIDE. Any GENOCIDE DENIER is either a part of terror business or naive. #RightToJustice" In another tweet, Vivek clapped back at former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah. Sharing a picture of a man, he wrote, "Whenever any Genocide Denier tries to divert by arguing on numbers of dead people, show him this report from 1989 and ask “how many numbers would you give Ramesh Kumar?" "Btw, @OmarAbdullah’s father and son of Shri Sheikh Abdullah was the chief minister at that time," he added."

"The filmmaker recently shared a shocking video of a maulvi saying that The Kashmir Files should be banned. Sharing the video on his Twitter, Vivek also shared that this is how ‘Kashmiri Hindus were removed from the valley’. He tweeted in Hindi, “Maulvi Sahib of Rajouri says: “This film should be closed… Humne 800 saal tum pe hukumat ki you want to erase our mark in 70 years rule…” Friends, in the same way, the name and the existence of Kashmiri Hindus were erased from Kashmir.”"

"Dear @Wikipedia, You forgot to add ‘Islamophobia… propaganda… sanghi… bigot… etc’. You are failing your Secular credentials. Hurry, edit more."

"Pallavi [Joshi] and I decided to do separate research. Whatever we know about Kashmir is through the politicians, but have no idea about the reality. We decided to interview more than 700 victims of the Kashmir Genocide from all across the world. We listened to and recorded their stories for two years. We had swollen eyes every time we heard a story. I was not crying because someone was killed. I was crying on myself. It was self-pity – I thought to myself how it is even possible that so many people were killed, women were raped, their breasts were cut, and no one talks about it. Pallavi and I decided to not get into politics, and tell a human story that was never heard."

"When didn’t even know if we’ll be making a film, or documentary, or a series. There came a time when I thought if nothing will happen, I’ll release it on my social media platforms. We divided our research work, but during the process, we couldn’t help and cried our eyes out. Almost every victim told us that this is the first time someone is asking them about their sufferings. They don’t even discuss it in their family as they don’t want to let their kids know their stories. It’s a terrible feeling to hear all of it. There is a dialogue where someone asks – "Why didn’t they speak up?" and Mithun Chakraborty replies – "Toote hue log bolte nahi, unhe suna jaata hai" [Broken people cannot talk, you make an effort to listen to them]. That is my message."

"It doesn’t scare me but I am concerned. The media has to follow the rules else their careers will be destroyed. We suffer from a colonial mindset. They can kill me but cannot break me."

"The real harm comes when someone starts targeting and stalking you. This is where the threat begins. I faced this thing last year also when they shot fatwas against me in Kashmir. They said, ‘We will never let you enter Kashmir. We will ensure this film never gets released’. When I was in the US to give speeches in top universities, I was heckled by Kashmiri Muslims or Pakistani boys. I understand all these things, but stalking is really scary because it’s about your young teenage daughter. These days she is on Instagram, so it’s very easy to find and connect."

"It doesn’t! I was making commercial films and was there in the entire Bollywood club. I was also a part of nepotism domination, and other dirty politics. I have seen the underbelly of Bollywood very well. There are two kinds of films you can make, one is a sweet story which people want to hear and the second one is a film that only you can tell. These are discomforting subjects which will make people uncomfortable. It wasn't an unprompted decision, I wanted to do it. It was a mature decision of my life. I knew there would be opposition, but what pains me is this is from the same Bollywood that talks about respecting independent filmmakers. Who can be more independent than me? Nobody! I love certain actors like Rajkummar Rao, Taapsee Pannu, but when they make a film and say it’s an independent one, it’s not! It’s supported and financed by big studios. They are doing the same thing and just naming it differently. While Bollywood media call them independent filmmakers, I am the only genuine independent filmmaker here in India. I do my research from all around the world, I put my money, and face struggles for the film distribution, so this is a journey of an isolated filmmaker. I do my own marketing. But Bollywood doesn’t recognise us and in fact, they boycott and isolate us. That’s painful."

"You tell me which is the most discussed issue in India than Kashmir? It's the most discussed theme in the world and in 1990, 5 lakh people were forced to leave their motherland and people who came from outside killed 4000 Kashmiri Hindus, committed genocide. Who are these people? They came from Iran and Iraq for refuge and these Kashmiri Hindus gave them refuge. Today they have thrown them out. What can be a more interesting story than this? If the youngsters are not told about this story, believe me, it’s going to happen next to you, at your doorstep. This film is dedicated to all the minorities and the persecuted people of the world, whether they are Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Dalits or anyone else. This is to tell people what happens when there is an absence of humanity or when we are indifferent to humanity."

"But, let’s not get confused between the majority and minority because the majority in one place can be a minority in another place. 4000 people were killed, women were raped, why don’t female journalists and Me Too groups talk about it? So many Dalits were killed. Why do these politically activated Dalit groups don’t talk about it? You see the hypocrisy."

"They are more interested in Delhi politics than their own people. Everyone has made a film that was sympathetic to terrorists. Do they try to portray why they are killing people? Who cares about why they are killing? Nobody has a right to kill anyone. So many women were cut alive on saw machines, somebody has to make a movie on that. When I am doing it, the entire Bollywood and politically charged media are standing against me. I have been isolated as if I have committed a crime in my own country."

"I was in Delhi recently with a journalist who showed me this. He said, ‘I just type 'The Kashmir Files’ NDTV, and see what has come up’. They made a page for us and it only had four lines. It was the description of the film that said, ‘It’s a propaganda film.’ Nobody in the film, besides me, has seen the film, so how can they call it a propaganda film? They are the ones doing propaganda against the film. Later OpIndia did an expose piece on them and they had to delete the word propaganda. If they are true journalists then they don’t have to delete it. This means it was fake journalism. Similarly, Anupama Chopra’s ‘Film Companion’, on which I made a video that has now gone viral. I don’t have anything against anybody, but if someone is going to attack my film, I am capable enough to defend my own baby."

"Film Companion did a vicious thing by using the keyword ‘The Kashmir Files’ to grab eyeballs. They had to acknowledge the trailer release because it went viral and then they released a 3-year-old review of ‘The Tashkent Filles’. It said ‘it’s a third-grade film of third-grade politics.’ ‘The Tashkent Files’ did 100s in business and was the biggest hit of 2019, it won two National Awards and was included in universities as a case study. If you go out and ask any Indian, 'Have you seen ‘The Tashkent Files’?' they get emotional. And, these people are calling it a third-grade film? The reviewer has written, ‘I was more interested in eating burger and fries’. What kind of journalism is this? I had to come out and attack these people and defend my film."

"Take the example of the reaction of most Indian intellectuals to the movie The Kashmir Files and the massive response of ordinary people. If the first aspect demonstrates anything, it lays bare the absolute barrenness of Indian intellectual landscape. I have not read a single reflection or review that even minimally tries to understand what people are responding to when they respond to the movie. Like everything else, this too is another occasion for moralising lectures about communalism, posturing against the imputed hatred the movie apparently propagates combined with expressions of pseudo-horror about an allegedly partial portrayal. Very few things can move the entire population like this movie did and I am still thinking about it. And perhaps will also write on the movie. Tragedies or violence are not new, especially when they are in the news every day. So, it cannot be that the overwhelming response of people had only to do with the horrors faced by the Pandits in Kashmir or the treachery of our ruling classes (politicians, intellectuals, and media). Shortly after the movie came out, I saw it in Belgium, I remember telling my daughter that this movie would enter the national consciousness of India."

"Writer and director Vivek Agnihotri deserves a lot of credit for having the will to fight for years to be able to make this film. There were reports that he could have made a deal with Netflix if he had agreed to not mention Islamic terrorism, which would be akin to making a movie about the Holocaust that doesn’t mention the Nazis. Good for him and his team for not caving to such a cowardly and ridiculous demand."

"this is Anupam Kher’s finest contribution to cinema yet. PN Pandit isn’t just one person. It is all of us. It is the mirror of our misfortunes, shards of the glass that still haven’t come off from skin. It is pain in its rawest form because it is a movie that’s been closest to the truth, unlike any other from the past. None of the deaths were fictional, none of the tragedies coincidental, none of the wounds exaggerated or underrepresented."

"“When one feels, they have hit rock-bottom and can only rise from here, they invent ways to hit newer lows. A pity they choose to hurt the sentiments of Kashmiri Pandits again. Kashmir Files is an eye-opener and probably just the tip of the iceberg"

"It is not easy to write about movies or books which bare one’s bottled-up horrors and agony. But then, that is the strength of Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’. It has made me, a displaced Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu), to own it, to call it my story. And that is no small feat."

"In this plea, it is said, “The film will not only hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslim community but also ignite emotions and inflame members of the Hindu community with a clear possibility of triggering violence in all parts of India.” It further said, “his movie, as can be seen from the trailer released, has scenes which hurt the religious feelings of the people of India, more particularly the Muslim community and has a very potent mixture of inflammatory scenes which are bound to cause communal violence in the prevailing circumstances in the country.” The plea also mentions, “The dialogues as can be seen in the trailer are discriminatory, defamatory and against the principles of the Constitution of India. The dialogues are violative of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 15 of the Constitution of India, being inflammatory in nature.”"

"The film is too hot to handle for our political class, even if some of them might support it tacitly. That is because it pulls no punches. There is no varnishing or airbrushing of brutal realities. Names are named, whether it is meddling neighbouring powers, religious, ethnic, or caste communities, dead or living politicians, even individuals and real persons. Religious identities or ideologies are not elided, evaded, or avoided. Disturbing visuals, distressing slogans — it’s all there and in your face in this movie."

"She wrote, “My father’s sister, Girija Tickoo, was a librarian at a University who had gone to collect her paycheck, on her way back the bus she was travelling from was stopped and what happened next still leaves me in shivers, tears, and nausea. My bua was then thrown into a taxi, with five men (one of them being her colleague), who tortured her, raped her, and then brutally murdered her by cutting her alive with a carpenter saw. Imagine being the brother who had to recognize his Babli, who wasn’t at fault in this gruesome battle of total hypocrisy.” Raina said she had never heard anyone speaking about the incident. “My father tells me every brother lived in such shame and anger that nothing had been done to receive justice for my Babli Bua,” she added. Urging everyone to watch the movie, Raina said, “This is my plea to ALL of you to watch the Kashmir Files and take your friends and family with you.”"

"“Instead of engaging in healthy debates based on facts and truths, this entire ecosystem has launched a full-fledged campaign to discredit the film. An individual has shown the courage to expose the truth, but this ecosystem is hell-bent on shaming his efforts. They also do not want to understand or allow others to do the same. They do not want to accept the truth, nor do they want the truth to be revealed in front of the world. The type of campaign that has been launched against the movie in the last few days is astounding”,"

"“My intention is not to advocate for a specific film, all I want to say is that it is critical to present the facts in their entirety to the world. There can be varied aspects to it. Some will see one aspect while someone else might see it from a different perspective. The people who feel that this movie is not up to the mark, are free to make another movie… who is stopping them,” Modi further added."

"“Through such films, people come to know about the truth and understand who was responsible for any incidents in the past. Who exploited or who did the correct thing, films like these try to project,” asserted PM Modi as he lauded the filmmakers’ efforts to bring to light the harsh reality that had been buried for years."

"PM Modi added that more good films should have been made narrating the thoughts and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi so that the world can know more and more about him. “People make tall claims like freedom of speech and expression, but have you seen any movie made on the Emergency of 1975. Why? Because there has been a constant effort to suppress the truth."

""The entire Jamaat (group) that raised the flag of freedom of expression has been furious for 5-6 days. Instead of reviewing the film on the basis of facts and art, there's a campaign to discredit the film," he said. The movie, directed and written by Vivek Agnihotri, depicts the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the state after systematic killings of people from the community by Pakistan-back terrorists. PM Modi added that his concern is that the truth should be brought out in a proper manner. "My concern is not just the film. I believe that it is beneficial for the nation to bring out the truth in the right way. It can have many aspects. Some see one thing, others see something else," he said. He then attacked the movie's critics, alleging that the negative reactions to the films are coming from those who deliberately tried to hide "the truth" for many years. "Those who think that this film is not right should make their own film. Who's stopping them? But they are surprised that the truth that they kept hidden for so many years is not coming out. Those who live for the truth have a responsibility to stand with the truth at such a time," PM Modi said."

"'Today, met #TheKashmirFiles team. The truth of the sacrifice, unbearable pain and struggle of Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to leave their home in their own country has come to the notice of the whole world through this film, which is a very commendable effort,' he tweeted in Hindi."

"Those who have any problem with the censor-cleared Kashmir Files, are free to boycott it or make another film to refute it. Fine. However, I have worked in Kashmir in very sensitive and responsible positions since the early 1990s--I know the truth is more scary than what is shown"

"Spielberg, a jew, made Schindler's List. Polanski, a jew, made Pianist. Kramer, a jew, made Nuremberg. They had a moral duty to not water down the crimes against their community and they didn't. Vivek Agnihotri has made what Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a Kashmiri Hindu, should have."

"I worked at the CRPF Control Room in Delhi during the genocide and expulsion of Kashmiri Pandits. We recorded everything but the govt did nothing."

"The film is about true and real events surrounding the 1990 ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir and today over 400,000 Kashmir Pandits remain in exile after 32 years.”“Terrorism in all its forms, no matter what its source, should be exposed and opposed. This attempt at selective censorship would amount to one further attack on the freedom of New Zealanders and people worldwide.”"

"Peters added in a Facebook post, ‘To censor this film is tantamount to censoring information or images from the March 15th atrocities in New Zealand, or for that matter removing from public knowledge all images of the attack on 9/11’."

"Watched The Kashmiri Files today. If the story was 100% true, no exaggeration, no half truth--- then it is really a sad story & Kashmiri Pandit must get back their right to live in Kashmir. I don't understand why no film was made on the exodus of Bengali Hindus from Bangladesh."

"The Indian High Commissioner to New Zealand has objected to this move, saying that “an unnecessary controversy has been created in New Zealand during the weekend regarding the film and its planned release.”... “There are concerning reports that the Office of the Chief Censor is under tremendous political pressure,” he added.. The letter to the chief censor emphasizes, “We all believe in the fundamental principle of freedom of expression. If there were no freedom of expression, the human kind would have not seen films and books on wars, holocaust, political conflicts and other tragic historical events”."

"“Those uncomfortable yet courageous conversations would also need to find a place in our society to enable the persecuted to have a voice,” said Vinod Kumar, President of HCNZ. “We request all communities to respect each other’s right to have their plights being shared. We request everyone to remain calm and allow those who do want to watch the film do so peacefully and safely once the decision is made by the Chief Censor,” added Vinod Kumar, President of HCNZ."

"Kashmiri Files KILLED BOLLYWOOD. The MONSTROUS SUCCESS of KF (Kashmir Files) will permanently change BOLLYWOOD in the following ways: 1. It will start making a lot of serious films on serious issues. 2. It will start focusing on content and not on stars, budgets and extravaganza. 3. It will start making films with actors rather than stars. 4. It will henceforth not depend on songs to make a hit film. 5. It will finally show its face with pride to world cinema instead of being apologetic about the Indian audience. 6. Its top 6 or 7 production houses and makers will cease to be at the top and will lose their control because Kashmir Files has proved that anyone can come out of anywhere to sit at the top which is the ultimate democratisation of cinema. 7. More than anything else it will start taking the audience seriously and not anymore presume them to be mindless dumbos who will only see masala films .” “I want to sum up by saying that Bollywood will be permanently divided into 2 eras as pre #KashmiriFiles Bollywood and post #KashmiriFiles Bollywood. I want to touch the feet of @Vivekagnihotri and the entire team of #KashmiriFiles for BREAKING the foundations of BOLLYWOOD so as to BUILD A BRAND NEW BOLLYWOOD.”"

"“For the first time in my entire career, I am reviewing a film”. Ram also said, "Kashmir Files released and broke every rule in the book. It doesn't have stars. There is no intention in the director to impress the audience which is what every filmmaker will be trying to do. He wants to impress." He added that from now onwards when any director or filmmaker plans any new film 'they can't help but study and refer back to Kashmir Files'. At the end of the video, he concluded, "I hate Kashmir Files because it destroyed whatever I learned, whatever I thought was right and whatever I thought was in at multiple times. I can't go back and I can't reinvent myself and can't rethink now, 'Oh, this is how it should be made'. No, can't. So I hate Kashmir Files whether it is the director or acting style or it is the way the screenplay was made...I hate all of them because you guys made me and all of the filmmakers I would say lose our identity...I hate all the people associated with Kasmir files but I love Vivek Agnihotri for making this happen." Sharing his review on Twitter, he wrote, “Don’t take at face value that mainstream Bollywood, Tollywood, etc are ignoring the mega success of #kashmirifiles. The reality is they are taking it more seriously than the audiences, but their silence is because they are s*** scared. Watch my review.” He also added, ".@vivekagnihotri single-handedly (footedly) kicked on the following myths a**** 1. Only big stars can get people into theatres, 2. Only mega budgets can get people into theatres, 3. Only #KapilSharmaShow can get people into theatres, 4. Only super hit songs can get people into theatres.""

"The fact that Pallavi Joshi and Vivek Agnihotri spent 4 years to make the film, with such extensive detailed research of close to 700 hard-hitting interviews that are testimonials from first-generation victims of the genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits community in the 1990s is in itself not a small feat... I am not a history major in my formal education. But I have studied history like any other student as a module. After watching The Kashmir Files, it shakes my soul today that history books, academics alike have skipped pressing on the excruciating and extensive details of the plight of Kashmiri Pandits in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Mind you, this film tells you nothing new. But tells you and reminds you and forces you to think why we can’t look at history in the eye without any shame. Makes you angry again as to why a Yasin Malik and Syed Ali Shah Geelani were allowed to get tacit support from politicians and intellectuals like Arundhati Roy and many more. Why those intellectuals who constantly bat for the ‘azadi’ of Kashmir and call it ‘fundamentally a call for justice’ don’t see the other side of the rightful occupants of the land being forced into mass departure when that is their land and that is their country their home. ... These are stories that need to be told and for many soft separatists, it may be a hard pill to swallow. Think about it for a second if there have been such brutal atrocities that the Kashmiri Hindus have gone through would you not keep your political leanings aside for the sake of humanity and hope for some closure for the first generation victims in their right to justice?"

"This is literally my own story... My grandmother died, waiting to return to her home, her land, her Panun Kashmir (my Kashmir). This film has been like a punch in the gut for me. It’s been much worse for my parents."

"“We requested the current dispensation that a recent film which has showcased atrocities on our Kashmiri Pandit brothers should be taken down. It has shown only one side of the story and would hence create rifts in society. While my full statements weren’t shown in the video, I was misquoted by some people. I did not mean to offend any particular caste or religion.” In an issued video message he stated, “Although if my comments have hurt someone then I duly apologise. I was not referring to any particular religion.” However, he stood by his stance that the films like ‘The Kashmir Files’ should not be released. Being an excellently received film across the globe, the film has resonated with people with its honest and truthful portrayal of the Kashmiri Hindu Genocide in 1990. The film has collected over Rs 220 crore until Saturday. While addressing a gathering at a mosque in Jammu, in an enraged tone, said Maulvi Farooq was heard stating, “Don’t you agree that the movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ should be banned? There should be restrictions on this movie. We(Muslims) are peace-loving people, we intend to keep the country peaceful.” He went further targeting, “We have ruled this country for 800 years, however, you (Hindus) came to power just 70 years ago. You want to target us. The reality is you will face death and consequences, but you cannot do anything to Kalma-chanting Muslims.”"

"The movie is creating hatred within the country. This film should be banned immediately."

"Pawar asserted "Such a film should not have been cleared for screening. But it is given tax concessions and those responsible for keeping the country united are encouraging people to watch the film that stokes anger among people.""

"At around 10.55 minutes into the interview, Karan Johar said, “The Kashmir Files is not made on the budget like a lot of other movies. But it is probably going to be cost-to-profit the biggest hit of Indian cinema. I read on Box Office India and they said that such a movement hasn’t happened since Jai Santoshi Maa, since 1975,” said Karan. Karan Johar went on to praise the makers for connecting with the masses. He added, “You have got to acknowledge there is something that is connecting with this nation and academically, you have to watch it. You have to watch it to absorb, to learn from it that look, there is this movement that has happened. It’s no longer a film, it’s a movement.”"

"The Kashmir Files became a sensation as people realized that the terrible events of Kashmir from the 1990s have been hidden from the general public... The Kashmir Files exposes layers of deceit within the ecosystem of Bharatiya media, academic, and power establishments. An artistic creation becomes extraordinary if it takes the viewer from the immediate story to the dhvani of the universal. The movie is a story not just of Kashmir, but of our times, where deceit and hypocrisy lie just one layer below professions of justice and equality."

"I honestly think it is one of the best films, maybe even the very best film, I have ever seen."

"Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared the Singapore government’s statement on social media, writing: “Film promoted by India’s ruling party, Kashmir Files, banned in Singapore.”"

"“The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the ongoing conflict in Kashmir”. “These representations have the potential to cause enmity between different communities, and disrupt social cohesion and religious harmony in our multiracial and multi-religious society.”"

"Singapore banning The Kashmir Files shows that the truth remains a threat to those who deny the genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus by jihadis. Director @vivekagnihotri is quite correct to refer to Singapore as the "most regressive censor in the world." The truth cannot be banned."

"My name is Deeksha Ganju and I am the daughter of late Shri B.K. Ganju whose gruesome killing was highlighted in the movie.... We decided to bury this pain in our heart... but after 32 years, this movie forced us to re-live the pain..."

"What these people don’t realise is that what they are doing is very harmful. In fact, films like Kerala Story and Gadar 2, I haven’t seen them but I know what they are about, it’s disturbing that films like Kashmir Files are so massively popular…"

"To an extent, The Kashmir Files, a recent film by Vivek Agnihotri, has tried to reset the Kashmiri Hindu narrative, and that is why so many are rattled by it. Many prominent Kashmiri voices, politicians, intellectuals, writers and poets—all those who stayed silent even as the Kashmiri Hindu genocide unfolded right before their eyes—called for a ban on the film. To them I ask—can there be reconciliation without remembrance? Crime without comeuppance? Can there be death without deliverance? Can there be justice without Nuremberg? Why do they want to hide the truth about the Nadimarg massacre that the film truthfully depicts, where terrorist Zia Mustafa lined up 23 unsuspecting Kashmiri Hindus and shot them point blank, and as he was escaping, he heard a baby cry and his comrade goaded ‘ye karnawun chupe’ and then the baby became the 24th victim. Why do they want to hide this? Why do they want to hide the truth about Girija Tickoo, who was raped and cleaved in two by a mechanical saw while she was still alive? Why do they want to hide the truth about B.K. Ganjoo, who hid inside a rice barrel when jihadis came looking for him after his Muslim neighbour informed on him? Ganjoo was shot dead. Rice laced with his blood was fed to his wife. Why do they want to hide the truth about slogans raised from mosques on 19 January 1990—“Ralive, Tsalive, Galive [convert, run or die]; ‘Death to kafirs’; Pandits go but leave your women behind’; Nizam-e-Mustafa!’ Why do they want to hide all this? And what is this other side of the genocide that they demand should also be shown? Yasin Malik, the assassin of Squadron leader Khanna, loved dum aloo? Bitta Karate, the killer of Kashmiri Hindus, was the son of a shawl weaver? Zia Mustafa, the perpetrator of the Nadimarg massacre, was a compounder at a hospital? I will tell you why they want this truth to be hidden. Because they realise that The Kashmir Files is not just a film, it is a Proustian collection of memories. Of Girija. Of Ganjoo. Of Dinanath. Of tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus who were betrayed by their own friends. But they forget. They might have taken away from the Kashmiri Hindus their home, but they can never take away from them their words. For their entrapment in a film may fool us into believing they have a physical form, a form that can be destroyed when the film is destroyed. But the words existed much before their prisons did. Words never die. They always survive. In times of terror, we wrap them and hide them like our ancestors did, and it may take 30 or 300 or 3,000 years for them to be uttered again—but uttered again they will be. And when they are, their words will echo in the valleys of violence where people only know how to light Molotov these words will make them light diyas again."

"I work at the Pentagon, Sergeant, so I'll admit I'm a little slow on the uptake, otherwise I'd say that you just threatened me. Did you just threaten me, soldier? Because if you did, let me respond to you... [turns off tape recorder] Let me respond to you this way. I'm an officer, and therefore, by proclamation, a gentleman, but don't abuse that, son. Don't get in my crosshairs, because I'll have no compunction whatsoever about getting up to my neck in yo' ass. Do you understand me?"

"Sir, if you get a hangfire on your weapon, what do you do? You wait, with your weapon pointed in a safe direction, 'cause sometimes the primer bursts, and if you open the chamber it blows up in your face. Leave this round in the chamber, sir."

"[to Monfriez, after she's been shot in the abdomen] I gave birth to a nine-pound baby, asshole. I think I can handle it."

"[in letter to loved ones] Dear Mom and Dad, well, this is it - the big push. Looks like it's gonna really happen. And I'm afraid, not of being hurt or killed, well, kind of, but not much. My only regret will be to never see you two again and that I'll never see Anne Marie grow up. But I know she's in good hands, the best. What I'm really afraid of is that I might let my people down, my crew. These people depend on me. They put their lives in my hands. I just can't fail 'em. Now, I know if you get this letter, it means I'm dead. I only hope that I've made you proud, that I did my job, and I didn't let down my country, my crew, my fellow soldiers. I love you guys. Never stop telling Anne Marie how much I love her. Your daughter, Karen."

"Specialist Ilario: It's not the doing shit that gets to you. It's the consequences. Imagine a life without consequences."

"In wartime, the first casualty is always truth."

"A medal for honor. A search for justice. A battle for truth."

"Denzel Washington - Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling"

"Meg Ryan - Captain Karen Emma Walden"

"Lou Diamond Phillips - Staff Sergeant John Monfriez"

"Matt Damon - Specialist Andrew Ilario"

"Bronson Pinchot - Bruno, a White House aide"

"Seth Gilliam - Sergeant Steven Altameyer"

"Regina Taylor - Meredith Serling"

"Michael Moriarty - Brigadier General Hershberg"

"Željko Ivanek - Captain Ben Banacek"

"Scott Glenn - Tony Gartner"

"Tim Guinee - Warrant Officer One A. Rady"

"Tim Ransom - Captain Boylar"

"Sean Astin - Sergeant Patella"

"Ned Vaughn - First Lieutenant Chelli"

"Sean Patrick Thomas - Sergeant Thompson"

"Manny Pérez - Jenkins"

"Ken Jenkins - Joel Walden"

"Kathleen Widdoes - Geraldine Walden"

"REICHSMINISTER: Dr. Furtwängler, I want to apologise personally for this power failure. I was so enjoying the performance. In times like these we need spiritual nourishment. A bomb explodes nearby. But I welcome this unexpected opportunity of talking to you. When you came on to the platform tonight, I thought you weren't well. You looked tired, (a warning) Get away from this bombing. Away from the war. Yes, you look tired...(a crooked smile) Even in this light. [bombing related power failure had just interrupted concert conducted by Furtwangler]"

"A MAN'S VOICE: Look at them. Men, women, kids. Boy, did they love him. You see, Steve, Adolf Hitler touched something deep, real deep and savage and barbaric, and it won't just go away overnight. It's got to be rooted out. You know what I think? I think they were all Nazis. And let's face it, their leaders, those bastards now on trial in Nuremberg, couldn't have done it alone...."

"WALLACE (U.S. Army four star general): He's as big as Toscanini, maybe even bigger. In this neck of the woods, he's probably Bob Hope and Betty Grable rolled into one."

"STEVE: Jeez, and I never heard of him...."

"WALLACE: Well, they say here that when you went on a case, you stayed on it. (looks up at Steve.) Now we can't take every Nazi in this country to trial, although I would like to; it's an impossibility. So we're going for the big boys in industry, education, law, culture."

"STEVE (U.S. Army major): Like this bandleader."

"WALLACE: (a smile) Well, he's more than just a bandleader, Steve. He's a great conductor, a gifted artist. But we believe that he sold himself to the devil. Your number one priority from this moment on is to connect him to the Nazi Party. Don't be impressed by him. I want the folks back home to understand why we fought this war..."

"WALLACE: Stay put, Steve. There is some other stuff that I'd like for you to see here. Background."

"ON THE SCREEN: a Berlin sequence. Bombs falling. Ruins, a city devastated, empty. Flags of the four allied nations. Posters of Truman, Stalin, Churchill."

"ARCHIVE FILM VOICE [U.S.Military education film] : That is the hand that dropped the bombs on defenceless Rotterdam, Brussels, Belgrade. That is the hand that destroyed the cities, villages and homes of Russia. That is the hand that held the whip over the Polish, Yugoslav, French and Norwegian slaves. That is the hand that took their food."

"ON THE SCREEN: SHOTS of camp survivors. Then SHOTS of emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves."

"ARCHIVE FILM: Sanitary conditions were so appalling that heavy equipment had to be brought in to speed the work of cleaning up [thousands of corpses]..."

"ON THE SCREEN: piles of cadavers being bulldozed..."

"INT. MAJOR STEVE ARNOLD'S BEDROOM (I945) - NIGHT Steve having a nightmare, twisting, turning, moaning. He wakes with a cry. He is sweating. He turns on the light, looks at a clock, reaches for a cigarette, lights it. He smokes. He stares at the ceiling."

"AMERICAN RADIO VOICE: Remember, men, no fraternisation. In a German town, if you bow to a pretty girl or pat a blond child, you bow to all that Hitler stood for. You bow to his reign of blood. You caress the ideology that meant death and destruction. You never know who was a member of the Nazi Party..."

"DYMSHITZ [Russian Colonel]: Let Furtwängler go. Please."

"STEVE[American Colonel]: I have a duty."

"DYMSHITZ: (flaring) Duty? I am sorry, duty? Duty f***ing duty. Trouble is, you Americans want everybody to live like you. We liberated Berlin, Major Steve, not you. Our duty also is to bring back the best of German culture."

"STEVE: I'm gonna get that f***ing bandleader, Colonel. No deal. No f***ing deal."

"ARCHIVES [U.S.Military education film]: You'll see ruins, you'll see flowers, you'll see some mighty pretty scenery, don't let it fool you. You are in enemy country. The Nazi party may be gone, but Nazi thinking, Nazi training and Nazi trickery remain. Somewhere in this Germany are two million ex-Nazi officials. Out of power but still in there and thinking, thinking about next time. Remember that only yesterday every business, every profession was part of Hitler's system. Practically every German was part of the Nazi network. They believed they were born to be masters...."

"EMMI [secretary]: When he made his decision, he couldn't have known everything. Especially not the way people like you do, who've returned from exile and feel that you have a right to pass judgement. Because you are blameless, you think you know best who is a sinner and who deserves forgiveness. But you have no idea how people lived here..."

"FURTWÄNGLER: I have always tried to analyse myself carefully and closely. In staying here, I believed I walked a tightrope between exile and the gallows. You seem to be blaming me for not having allowed myself to be hanged..."

"FURTWÄNGLER I didn't directly oppose the Party because I told myself, that was not my job. If I had taken any active part in politics I could not have remained here..."

"FURTWÄNGLER: What kind of a world do you want, Major? What kind of world are you going to make? Do you honestly believe that the only reality is the material world, so you will be left nothing, nothing but feculence... more foul-smelling than that which pervades your nights...How was I to understand, how was I to know what they were capable of? No one knew. No one knew. ..."

"STEVE'S VOICE: We handed Wilhelm Furtwängler over to the civil authorities and he was charged with serving the Nazi regime, with uttering anti-Semitic slurs, performing at an official Nazi Party function and with being a Prussian Privy Councillor. Dr. Furtwängler was acquitted. I didn't nail him. But I sure winged him. And I know I did the right thing.... Furtwängler resumed his career but he was never allowed to conduct in the United States. He died in 1954."

"Uncovering the truth that was kept hidden."

"Just come back, you're not safe Shalini. Please come back."

"The Kerala Story draws the attention of the entire nation to the conspiracy like love jihad. The entire society must be made aware of this distortion. A commendable and brave effort has been made in this regard by the film’s producer, director, and entire team."

"The scenes involving rape, beheading, chopping of hands, and violence against women make it an 'Adults Only' film. It's a film against 'Love Jihad.' Many dialogues relate to religion and leave the audience in laughs and thought-provoking moments. ... 'The Kerala Story' deserves a watch by all those who liked 'The Kashmir Files'. It's made in a bold and uncompromising manner..."

"The fact that both the Kerala story and Kashmir Files are blockbusters speaks volumes about the people of this country and not the makers and those in power promoting it. These films are getting this reception because they validate the prejudice and hate that exists within."

"This film is lies. This film is made to divide us. We have lived together for many years... Narendra Modi [the prime minister of India] has endorsed this film... An extremist has endorsed this film. We will not allow it."

"Politician Jitendra Awhad, member of the Nationalist Congress Party, stated that The Kerala Story is not based on facts, is right to be banned from screens, and went as far as to say that the producer should be "hanged in public." A shocking assertion (and the death of irony), considering that the film is being accused of inciting hatred and violence."

"West Bengal govt has decided to ban the movie 'The Kerala Story'. This is to avoid any incident of hatred and violence, and to maintain peace in the state: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee"

"West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee called ‘The Kerala Story’ a distorted movie and declared a state-wide ban of the same. Her statement read, “This (ban) is to avoid any incident of hatred and violence, and to maintain peace in the state. Why did they make The Kashmir Files? To humiliate one section... What is The Kerala Story? If they can prepare The Kashmir Files to condemn the Kashmiri people... now they are defaming Kerala. Next, they will make ‘The Bengal Files’.”"

"Speaking about 'The Kerala Story' controversy, the actor told ANI, "They are the same faces who are opposing such films and they can be seen everywhere. Be it CAA protest or Shaheen Bagh protest or JNU protest. They were the same faces who criticised 'The Kashmir Files'. I don't know their motive and neither believe in paying attention towards them. In fact, they have become redundant." Further talking about the film, he added, "Again I would say they are the same faces. I have not seen the film but I am happy that people are making films which are close to reality. And those who feel it is a propaganda are free to make movies dealing with the subject they find perfect. No one is stopping them. ""

"The Kerala Story: A gut-wrenching recreation of an inconvenient truth.. The film has either met with complete silence from the mainstream Bollywood fraternity.. A large portion of the media is lambasting this film for being malicious propaganda. This is eerily similar to how these people were reacting to The Kashmir Files, a film that documented the plight of the Kashmiri Hindus. While they are targeting the extravagant figure of 32000 girls being poached out of Kerala and sent to ISIS as recruits by the director to discredit the film, I was more concerned with the statement and the accounts that were shared at the end of the film. Even if a single forced or coerced conversion has happened, it is a matter that should have been dealt with sternly. It is also a fact that news of forced conversions is not new in this part of the country and hence to shrug the film off as mere propaganda is bizarre."

"THE RELEASE OF THE FILM The Kerala Story has raised as shrill a debate as the one over The Kashmir Files and again demonstrated that the freedom of speech argument can cut both ways, testing the capacity of partisans to accept differing points of view. If in the past films that provoked rightwing ire saw public declarations of going to the theatres in solidarity—the same set is slamming The Kerala Story as propaganda and calumny. Social media and even mainstream media are bubbling over with outrage on the one hand and a sense of vindication on the other.... But The Kerala Story, irrespective of how it is regarded, brings to the fore a much-needed conversation that, despite its rau­cous notes, might bring about a better recognition of schisms and the sources of discord in society."

"The film has been cleared to be screened. We have had problems too and due to our repeated interventions, they have been able to take their people in the right direction. The Idukki diocese did the right thing to screen the film among the youth."

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an election rally in Karnataka last week: “The movie ‘The Kerala Story’ is trying to expose the consequences of terrorism in a society, especially in a state like Kerala which is beautiful land of hardworking and talented people. The Congress party is now trying to ban the film and support the terror elements.”"

"“There was a lot of discussion about The Kerala Story, which discusses ploys to make the country hollow from within. They say the movie is based on the terrorist plots in just one state…such a beautiful state where people are hard working and talented. The Kerala Story has exposed the terror conspiracies. But look at the misfortune of the country. The Congress today is standing with such terror elements that have destroyed the nation. The Congress has a backdoor understanding with them. People of the state should be wary of the Congress…It has surrendered in front of terrorists to appease its vote bank,” Modi said."

"Despite promising an authentic and unbiased portrayal, the film faces opposition. It demands a ban from some political leaders and journalists who claim that it spreads misinformation and are fearful of angering Muslims. Congress leader and opposition leader in Kerala Assembly VD Satheesan demanded a ban on the movie when its teaser was released in November 2022, calling it a clear case of misinformation."

"Sir / Madam: Mcine will be destroyed tomorrow as we are planting some bombs in your bloody cinema, you want to see the cinema, ok tomorrow you will see a very good cinema. Mark our words, Tomorrow Friday. Planting Bombs for The Kerala Story in Mcine."

"“The messages are becoming more intimidating and threatening and when staff were approached personally, we decided enough was enough,” the spokesman said... messages via email and social media are "just on the edge", but are experienced as intimidating. According to him, it was said, among other things, "we wouldn't want any hassle or violence at your doorstep, would we?"... After the film was shown in Utrecht, the Utrecht faction of the political party Denk aan asked the college to ensure that no more "hate-mongering and provocative films" are shown in Utrecht cinemas in the future... LAB-1 shows Indian films almost every week and wanted to show the film despite all the fuss. "We do this because of the international character of our audience." The cinema says it will now remove the film from its programming for safety reasons. We stand for a cultural diversity in which we are guided by artistic and creative expression. "Art and culture sometimes lead to controversial dilemmas. That is also part of culture and should be a reason for dialogue and discussion. Not for threats and intimidation.""

"KCBC spokesperson Father Jacob Palackappilly said, “The film exposes the atrocities committed by the Islamic State. It cannot be so evaluated on the lines of communalism.”"

"“The Producers Guild of India is distressed by, and would like to record its strong objection to, state-enforced bans on ‘The Kerala Story.’ As emphasized by us on several occasions in the past, film releases are regulated by CBFC [Central Board of Film Certification] and any film that complies with this statutory requirement should face no further hurdles in having the paying public decide on its fate,” the Guild said in a statement shared with Variety. “Of course, the audience can choose to watch or ignore any film but that is a choice that should be theirs to make, not one that is imposed on them by any party other than CBFC. We call upon all the relevant authorities to urgently address this all-too-frequent phenomenon of films being denied their right to unfettered, nation-wide exhibition despite having duly complied with regulatory requirements,” the Guild added."

"The strategy of the Sangh Parivar administration led by Modi is to create division within secular society by screening the film ‘The Kerala Story’, which is a collection of untruth. Understanding that the politics of division cannot be used in Kerala, Sangh Pariwar using Doordarshan, a central government institution, for political gain cannot be accepted.” He further called the move “a flagrant violation of the election code of conduct.”"

"What these people don’t realise is that what they are doing is very harmful. In fact, films like Kerala Story and Gadar 2, I haven’t seen them but I know what they are about, it’s disturbing that films like Kashmir Files are so massively popular…"

"I would just like to request both of them to go and see the film, and after seeing the film if they still want to make the same comment that will be their right. In any case, I feel that if I have the right to make a film everybody who doesn't agree with the film has the equal right to criticize it. That right can't be taken away from anybody. In the democratic world that we live in, we shouldn't take dissent or disagreement, or criticism as opposition that needs to be shut down. I think we need to have enough openness within ourselves to say, 'Ok, you see the film and talk to me'. I have happy to sit across the table and discuss various aspects of the film that you may agree or disagree with and that is the sign of a healthy democracy... So, I am perfectly ok with their criticism. I just want them to see the film and then criticise. That's all... This conversation will continue and now this particular subject cannot be brushed under the carpet in this country and this will remain in our nation's consciousness. So, in that sense, the film has done pretty well and from the creative point of view and as well from a point of a producer, it's been an extremely satisfying journey."

"The theatre owners are getting threats from the police and the administration that if they open the booking station, the theatres will not be safe. Theatre owners are not able to run the film... I am shocked at the people who claim to be the champions of democracy. Both the states are behaving in an undemocratic way and it’s shameful to stop the film’s screening after a Supreme Court order."

"Producer Vipul Shah said that the movie is about three women but presents the story of thousands of women. "There were a lot of talks when we mentioned about 32,000 victims. There are 26 victims here and one of them said that their institution has 7,000 such victims. Our film tells the story of three women. The story of three women is presenting the story of thousands of women. There were attempts to malign the film. The fight of these women should not be weakened and there should be no justice with them," he said. He added, "This is the time we need to talk about what's really happening with these girls, they should be our priority. Today we are very happy that the nation is talking about this subject.""

"At certain points, the film feels more like a tutorial of radicalization than entertainment for the audience. It also goes to extremes to make its point, and that could be quite unsettling for audiences belonging to various communities in our country. After watching ‘The Kerala Story,’ you may be left with several questions about the current state of the country. This thought-provoking film is disturbing and surely manages to leave an impact."

"Two Keralas exist inside Kerala. One which is like a picture, postcard, backwaters, beautiful landscape, Kalaripayattu, dance, martial arts. The other Kerala - the northern part of Kerala - Malappuram, Kasaragod, Kozhikode which connects to south Karnataka including Mangaluru, is a terror-network hub."

"Let me put the facts straight - we never apologize for our film THE KERALA STORY. We never cut a single shot from the film. And, we did not do that because we stood by every word spoken and every scene shown in the film. We submitted more than 3-hours of testimonies and more than 200-pages of written documents to CBFC and they gave us A certification without any cut in the film. Even the honorable Supreme Court did not inflict a single cut on our film, in spite of having more than 20 petitions against us, from different parts of the country. Honorable SC requested us to change one of the disclaimers before the film, for the convenience of the release of the film. We did that. Most importantly here, the honorable supreme court did not ask to cut even a single shot of the film. That is the vindication of our work - 10-years long on-ground research and hence the film."

"It has indeed been an arduous battle to take the film to the theatres. Finding funds for The Kerala Story was difficult. But once Vipul Shahji took it over the journey was pretty smooth and I didn't find any kind of difficulties in the release of the film. During the process, the only difficult parts were shooting permissions and extreme weather."

"I have enough research material with me. Hundreds of hours of video testimonies, hundreds of pages of documents. Again it was not difficult to zero in on the story. In 2018 I had shot a documentary on the same subject and that got the Best Film Award in London International Film Festival. The Kerala Story started taking shape from there."

"I started working on the subject much before The Kashmir Files. And, I don't find any reason of bringing The Kashmir Files up when you talk about my film. The comparison is just stupidity. You agree or disagree with it, but The Kashmir Files has shaken the minds of India and shown the power of cinema. My film belongs to a different genre... it has a completely different narrative."

"Seven years, hundreds of hours of video testimony and hundreds of pages of documents and information collected from all over the world. That speaks for itself, doesn’t it?"

"It should be. That's what is cinema is all about. Most of our seniors didn’t do justice to cinema and the country. They thought that the crores of poor, exploited, denied have-nots are stupids so they sold them cheap dreams, cheap romance, cheap violence, cheap ideas. The role of cinema is to awaken the generations through entertainment and help to build nation. Indian cinema must celebrate India. We filmmakers must celebrate our thousands of years old Indian history and ethos."

"The neighboring state of Tamil Nadu has not banned the film, but the state’s multiplex owners’ association withdrew the film from cinemas. In West Bengal, the film was banned on the orders of Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister."

"In the midst of all this, renowned filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has come out in support of The Kerala Story while criticising Bollywood for its “death-like silence on the shattering success of the film.” RGV also said the film will haunt Bollywood like a “mysterious fog in every story discussion room and corporate house.” “We are so comfortable in telling lies to both others and ourselves that when someone goes ahead and shows the truth we get SHOCKED… That explains the DEATH like SILENCE of BOLLYWOOD on the SHATTERING SUCCESS of #KeralaStory,” the filmmaker said in the first tweet of a series. “The #KeralaStory is like a BEAUTIFUL GHOSTLY MIRROR showing the DEAD face of Main stream BOLLYWOOD to itself in all its UGLINESS.”"

"The Kerala Story' on the silver screen in Eindhoven is like the healthy eye of Salman Rushdie, who continues to study the world."

"Surrounded by controversies for several reasons, ‘The Kerala Story’ has managed to pull audiences to the theatres. The film is also being opposed and has been banned in some states due to appeasement. Setting aside all the controversies, I have a question — Do Vipul Shah and Sudipto Sen have ‘freedom of expression’ or not?"

"The decision by @DDNational to broadcast the film 'Kerala Story', which incites polarisation, is highly condemnable. The national news broadcaster should not become a propaganda machine of the BJP-RSS combine and withdraw from screening a film that only seeks to exacerbate communal tensions ahead of the general elections. Kerala will remain steadfast in opposing such malicious attempts to sow hatred."

"The movie’s screening is not against Muslims … In recent years, we have rescued many women from the traps of love jihad."

"As part of their work during the catechism classes, ‘The Kerala Story’ was screened for them just to understand the theme of the film, that there are people who are getting into unnecessary love affairs and finally they end up in disappointment. To conscientize them and make them aware, the Church has done this... I do not know if there is anybody who is having a vested interest in this – either political parties or any other communities. Anyway, the Church is not a party to any of these groups or political parties, but we have a very clear intention to educate our children and also to conscientize our people who come to the Church. This is the only intention we had in the matter... Therefore, our teenagers and youngsters should understand that we need protection against exploitation, especially in this regard, against failed and forced love affairs which are leading them into any kind of problems. That was the intention of the Eparchy of Idukki, the catechism department, when they have given this particular theme for the study on this matter."

"Protesters like Shakeel Afsar should be campaigning against Islamist extremism, not against films highlighting the crimes committed in its name. The Kerala Story is a powerful film with a powerful message. Those who want to watch it must be free to do so."

"Defending the ban imposed on the controversial movie "The Kerala Story", the State of West Bengal told the Supreme Court in its affidavit that the film is based on “manipulated facts and contains hate speech in multiple scenes that may hurt communal sentiments and cause disharmony between the communities”."

"The whole world should see his movie, which may NOT be censored but should be promoted!"

"Don’t worry. Burn them all (the witnesses)."

"But they are Rajput and we are Yadav"

"Kahmir has seen a lot of torment. We will not leave it in this condition."

"We will abrogate Article 370."

"How can you even say that? Do you not consider PoK and Aksai Chin as a part of India? How can you even say that?"

"All of Kashmir, was, is and will forever be a part of India."

"How can you even say that? We will lay down our lives for it."

"[In Arabic] Curse Me? Curse Me Now!"

"[On Abu Rajal] If we had him... we would never let him go!"

"Jon Hamm - Mason Skiles"

"Rosamund Pike - Sandy Crowder"

"Khalid Benchagra - Nadim"

"Yoav Sadian Rosenberg - teenaged Karim"

"Idir Chender - adult aged Karim"

"Leïla Bekhti - Nadia Skiles"

"Kate Fleetwood - Alice Riley"

"Mark Pellegrino - Cal Riley"

"Colin Stinton - Mr. Jones"

"Hichame Ouraqa - Abu Rajal (as Hicham Ouraqa)"

"Ian Porter - Jerry"

"Nick Holder - Dennis"

"Neal Huff - Ernie"

"Shea Whigham - Gary Ruzak"

"Douglas Hodge - Sully"

"Dean Norris - Donald Gaines"

"Larry Pine - Frank Whalen"

"Jonny Coyne - Bernard Teppler"

"Ahmed Said Arif - Bashir"

"Ben Benaffan - Rami"

"Mohamed Zouaoui - Fahmy"

"Abdellah Chakiri - Hussein"

"Alon Moni Aboutboul - Roni Niv"

"Nicholas Woodeson - Herzberg"

"The Americans want to keep their secrets. The Israelis want to raise the stakes. He only wants to save a life."

"From the writer of the Bourne trilogy."

"Truth shall always prevail."

"Deputy Solicitor General of India OM Shalina told the Kerala High Court that the name Janaki, being another name for goddess Sita, could hurt religious sentiments. However, Justice N Nagaresh disagreed, stating, “She is the victim? If the rapist’s name was Ram, Krishna or Janaki, then it would have been understandable. Here she is the heroine, who is fighting for justice.”"

"The judge strongly asserted that it is not for the censor board to dictate the creative choices of filmmakers, including the names of characters. “What is wrong with the name Janaki? How is this an insult to religion? This is the freedom of the artist,” Justice Nagaresh asked pointedly."

"You know, about a year ago, my private cook Mrs. Wright, who you know was driving from here down to the ranch in Texas. So I asked her if she would mind bringing my dog, Little Beagle Johnson, with her in order that he could be there when I got home. Mrs. Wright respectfully declined. She said it is hard enough for a black woman driving through the South without having a dog to worry about. Finding a place to eat, to sleep, to use the restroom. The personal cook of the vice president of the United States has to drive through towns without stopping , then squat to pee by the side of the road. Hundred years ago, she would've been a slave. Hundred years from now, hell, she might be... president. But today, we live in a time of too much uncertainty. Where can she eat? Where can she sleep? Can she vote? And if she does, will she be harassed for casting that vote? Can she attend school? If so, which school? Can she travel the cities and towns of this land without fearing for her safety? What rights that belong to the men in this room should not be afforded to her?"

"I have zero intention of running for President."

"Woody Harrelson - Lyndon B. Johnson"

"Jennifer Jason Leigh - Lady Bird Johnson"

"Michael Stahl-David - Robert F. Kennedy"

"Richard Jenkins - Senator Richard Russell"

"Bill Pullman - Senator Ralph Yarborough"

"Jeffrey Donovan - John F. Kennedy"

"Kim Allen - Jacqueline Kennedy"

"Brent Bailey - Ted Sorensen"

"John Burke - John Connally"

"John Ellison Conlee - George Reedy"

"Oliver Edwin - Bill Moyers"

"Darrel Guilbeau - Jack Valenti"

"Gary Grubbs - Senator Everett Dirksen"

"C. Thomas Howell - Walter Jenkins"

"Wallace Langham - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."

"Kate Butler - Juanita Roberts"

"Doug McKeon - Hubert Humphrey"

"Michael Mosley - Kenneth O'Donnell"

"Tim Ransom - Larry O'Brien"

"Rich Sommer - Pierre Salinger"

"Brian Stepanek - Rufus Youngblood"

"The petition to stop the film was filed just three or four days ago, and it’s already being heard. But the petition I filed nearly three years ago, seeking justice for my father’s murder, remains unresolved. There were over 150 witnesses in the case, and 15–16 have not even appeared in court. No fast-track court was set up. Despite ample evidence, not one of the accused has been punished. When someone tries to show the truth through a film, the entire system seems to rise against it. Organisations like Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and leaders like Maulana Madani demand a ban, and in just three days, the film gets stayed. How efficient that is! But the same urgency is not shown in punishing murderers. This makes us question the system. My father was brutally murdered, and justice has yet to be delivered. When a film is made to awaken the nation about communalism and jihadist ideology, it is being suppressed. Why? What kind of mindset is this? The truth of how terrorists conspired to murder my father is out in the open, yet some organisations seem to side with these anti-national elements. What sympathy do they have for terrorists?"

"The NIA filed a chargesheet within six months against Kanhaiya Lal’s murderers. But tragically, these enemies of humanity haven’t been given the death sentence even after three years. On the other hand, a stay order on the film The Udaipur Files was issued in just three hours-without even watching the film-and the copy of that order wasn’t made available to the concerned parties for 21 hours. What does that tell you? What’s wrong with the film? Did the murder not happen? Will Kanhaiya Lal’s son ever get justice? Will he be able to grow his hair back or walk with dignity on his bare feet? Will the murderers ever be hanged? Will Kanhaiya Lal’s ashes ever be immersed with the peace they deserve?"

"Jinnah, my brother. Indian Muslims are all converts. Weren't we all Hindus in the beginning? Our DNA is the same."

"No, Mr. Gandhi... Hindus and Muslims are not one. You believe in the Vedas, and we believe in the Koran. You believe in millions of Gods. We believe only in Allah."

"No matter how many FIRs are filed, I will ensure this film reaches the people. I am as much Bengali as anyone else, and I will fight for this truth to be known."

"Vivek Agnihotri is doing drama. As a filmmaker, what he makes is politically motivated and intended to divide people. Why hasn’t he made The Gujarat Files, highlighting the riots and the story of Bilkis Bano? Why no UP Files, MP Files or Manipur Files? He has come to Bengal only to serve the BJP’s agenda and malign the state. He should be declared persona non grata and evicted from Bengal. That’s not being done only because this is a democratic state."

"The film is not being allowed to release in the State of West Bengal. Though not officially banned, the film has been subjected to indirect restrictions that have denied the public its rightful opportunity to view it. The producers and distributors are facing intimidation and obstacles, while the State Government has failed to ensure the basic safety and law and order environment necessary for the free and fair release of the film (sic)."