Reds (1981)

Diane Keaton: Louise Bryant

Photos 

Quotes 

• Louise Bryant : What as?

  John Reed : Well, it's almost Thanksgiving. You could go as a turkey.

• John Reed : Louise, I love you.

  Louise Bryant : No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK!

• Louise Bryant : Would you rather I not smoke during rehearsal?

  Eugene O'Neill : I'd rather you went up in flames than crush out your cigarette during a monologue about birth.

• [repeated line] 

  Louise Bryant : I write.

• John Reed : Freedom, Mrs. Trullinger? I'd like to know what your idea of freedom is. Having your own studio? Walk..

  Louise Bryant : I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed.

• [repeated line] 

  Louise Bryant : Taxi's waiting, Jack.

• Louise Bryant : [to Eugene O'Neill]  Are you nervous, or is that a tremor?

• Louise Bryant : I bet your mother's glad to see you back in Portland.

  John Reed : My mother's glad when I'm not in jail.

• Louise Bryant : All right, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You want me to come with you to New York?

  John Reed : Yes.

  Louise Bryant : What as? What as?

  John Reed : What do you mean, what as?

  Louise Bryant : What as? Your girlfriend?

  John Reed : What does that mean?

  Louise Bryant : What as? Your girlfriend, your mistress, your paramour, your concubine?

  John Reed : Why does it have to be as anything?

  Louise Bryant : Because I don't wanna get into some kind of emotional possessive involvement where I'm not able to... I want to know what as.

  John Reed : Well, it's nearly Thanksgiving. Why don't you come as a Turkey?

• Louise Bryant : [singing]  I don't want to play in your yard, I don't like you anymore, You'll be sorry when you see me, Sliding down our cellar door, You can't holler down our rain barrel, You can't climb our apple tree, I don't want to play in your yard, If you won't be good to me

• Louise Bryant : On the subject of decency, Senator, the Bolsheviks took power with the slogan, "an end to the war." Within six months, they made good their promise to the Russian people. Now, the present President of the United States of America went to this country in 1916, on a "no war" ticket. Within six months, he'd taken us into the war, and 115,000 young Americans didn't come back. If that's how decent, God-fearing Christians behave, give me atheists anytime.

• Louise Bryant : By the way, Senator Overman, in Russia, women have the *vote*, which is more than you can say for this country.

• John Reed : I have to go.

  Louise Bryant : You don't have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What's the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you're running one and he's running the other?

  John Reed : I've made a commitment.

  Louise Bryant : To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the international for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not? Write, Jack. You're not a politician, you're a writer. And your writing has done more for the revolution than 20 years of this infighting can do, and you know it.

• Louise Bryant : Gene, if you'd been to Russia, you'd never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.

  Eugene O'Neill : Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual's eyes shine and they start to talk to me about the Russian people.

  Louise Bryant : Wait.

  Eugene O'Neill : Something in me says, "Watch it. A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith."

  Louise Bryant : It's not like that.

  Eugene O'Neill : And I wonder why a lovely wife like Louise Reed who's just seen the brave new world is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It's almost worth being converted.

• Paul Trullinger : Louise, have you taken leave of your senses?

  Louise Bryant : Don't be a fool, Paul.

  Paul Trullinger : You think I'm a fool because I object to my wife being displayed naked in front of half the people I know.

  Louise Bryant : Yes. My God, it's a work of art in a gallery. What's the matter with you? You used to call Portland a stuffy provincial coffin for the mind.

  Paul Trullinger : It's stuffy and provincial, but it also happens to be a coffin where I earn a living.

  Louise Bryant : You can take your living and fill up teeth with it, because I can earn my own living. I have my work.

  Paul Trullinger : Oh, you consider a few articles in the 'Oregonian' and the 'Gazette' work? No, I'll tell you what your work is, Louise. That's making yourself the center of attention. It's shocking Louise Trullinger, emancipated woman of Portland.

• Louise Bryant : Mr. Whigham, are you saying you need Jack's permission to make a pass at me?

• Louise Bryant : Look at me. Oh, God! I'm like a wife. I'm like a boring, clinging, miserable little wife.

• Louise Bryant : I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know what my purpose is.

  John Reed : Well, tell me what you want.

  Louise Bryant : I want to stop needing you!

• Louise Bryant : Jack and I are both perfectly capable of living with our beliefs. But I think someone as romantic as you would be destroyed by them. And I don't want that to happen. It would upset Jack too much.

• Louise Bryant : He has the freedom to do the things that he wants to and so do I. And I think anyone who's afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.

  Eugene O'Neill : Are you making this up as you go along?

• Louise Bryant : I don't want to be patronized. I'm sorry if you don't believe in mutual independence and free love and respect.

  Eugene O'Neill : Don't give me a lot of parlor socialism that you learned in the Village.

• Louise Bryant : Who was it?

  John Reed : What do you want, a list?

• Louise Bryant : Gene, Jack and I, we haven't told anyone yet because we were too embarrassed. But we're married. Jack and I got married.

  Eugene O'Neill : That is embarrassing.

• Louise Bryant : Excuse me. Excuse me, now here's the thing. I'd be a God damned fool not to take you up on this offer. So, here's what I want. I want to sign my own name to my own stories and I don't want to use a double byline. I want to be responsible for my own time and my own actions. I want to be referred to as Miss Bryant, and not Mrs. Reed, and I want to keep an account of every cent we spend so that I can pay you back. Now, I assume you know that I'm not going to sleep with you, so just don't confuse the issue by bringing it up. That's it.

  John Reed : Fine.

  Louise Bryant : Good.

  Joe Volski : You like salami?

• John Reed : I'm sort of braising the cabbage. 'Cause I thought it'd be a nice change. You know that house where Rhys Williams is staying? Evidently, the banker's daughter came home in hysterics the other night, 'cause some woman streetcar conductor called her "Comrade." So after dinner, they all voted they preferred the Germans to the Bolsheviks by 10-to-1. Anyway, the social revolutionaries asked the British ambassador to please not to mention their visit, because they were already considered too far to the right. And, you know, it's the same group of people you couldn't even see a year ago, 'cause they were too far to the left. Karsavina is dancing tonight. And, oh, Manny Komroff says that Charlie Chaplin movie...

  Louise Bryant : [interupts]  Jack - thanks for bringing me here.

• Louise Bryant : Let me make it easy for you, Jack. I'm not going with you. And if you go, I'm not sure I'll be here when you get back.

  John Reed : Louise, you know, the Comintern doesn't know Edmund or Alfred from the New York Yankees. They know me. Somebody's got to go over there who's got a background.

• Government Agent : I don't suppose there's a chance of you being a Bolshevik agitator, is there?

  Louise Bryant : Why don't you just look around, and see how agitated you get?

• Louise Bryant : Boy, you've become quite the critic, haven't you, Gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I've never seen you do anything for anyone. I've never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have. But whatever Jack's motives are, how...

  Eugene O'Neill : I seem to have touched a wound.

• Louise Bryant : You're not married, are you?

  John Reed : No, I don't think I believe in marriage. Are you married?

  Louise Bryant : Marriage? How could anyone believe in marriage?

• Mrs. Partlow : Are you Paul Trullinger's wife?

  Louise Bryant : Yes. Yes, I am.

  Mrs. Partlow : Well, isn't that something? Well, he did Frank Rhodes' bridge. Oh, Mrs. Trullinger, your husband's the finest dentist in all of Portland.

  Louise Bryant : Thank you very much.

  John Reed : Really?

  Mrs. Partlow : And I think he did a plate for Uncle Grover.

• Louise Bryant : What are you working on, Gene?

  Eugene O'Neill : At the moment, Scotch.

• Louise Bryant : You look fine, are you alright now?

  John Reed : Oh God yes. Nobody needs two kidneys, the second one's just for show.

• John Reed : Do you think the American workers are gonna be led by the Russian Federations? Or an insular Italian like Louis Fraina? He has no possibility of leading a revolution in this country.

  Louise Bryant : Unlike you?

  John Reed : I'm just saying that the revolution in this country is not gonna be led by immigrants.

  Louise Bryant : Revolution? In this country? When, Jack?