Reds (1981)

Warren Beatty: John Reed

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Quotes 

• Louise Bryant : What as?

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

• John Reed : 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?

• [repeated line] 

  John Reed : You don't get to rewrite what I write.

• John Reed : Louise, I love you.

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

• John Reed : 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?

• John Reed : What did you think this thing was gonna be? A revolution by consensus where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?

  Emma Goldman : Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting a war, they died from starvation and typhus in a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights where nothing works.

• John Reed : Zinoviev, you don't think a man can be an individual and be true to the collective, or speak for his own country and speak for the International at the same time, or love his wife and still be faithful to the revolution. You don't have a "self" to give.

  Grigory Zinoviev : Would you be willing to give yourself to this revolution?

  John Reed : You separate a man from what he loves most, what you do is purge what's unique in him. And when you purge what's unique in him, you purge dissent. And when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution! Dissent IS revolution!

• Speaker - Liberal Club : What is this war about? Each man will have his own answer. I have mine. I'm ready to be called! Now, tonight we have with us the son of Margaret and the late C.J. Reed of Portland, who has witnessed this war first-hand. And I, for one, see no reason why we here at the Liberal Club shouldn't listen to what Jack Reed has to say. What would you say this war is about, Jack Reed?

  John Reed : [stands up]  Profits.

  [sits down] 

• 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.

• John Reed : You don't get to rewrite what I write! You don't get to rewrite what I write!

  Pete Van Wherry : Stubborn son-of-a-bitch. How are you gonna pay your rent?

• 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?

• John Reed : There's a foreman of a logging camp, he's trying to hire a crew. You know, and he goes down a long line of very big men and he gets to a little man in the back and he says, "Who the hell are you? What're you doing here? Don't you know that I need men who can chop down dozens of trees a day? Where the hell have you ever worked before?" And the little man says, "Well, I worked in the Sahara forest." And the foreman says, "You mean the Sahara desert." And the little man says, "Yes, sure, now!"

• 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.

• John Reed : You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with generals. I can't deal with a bureaucrat.

• John Reed : Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control.

• John Reed : All I'm saying is that this is not the right time to go to jail for birth control.

  Emma Goldman : Oh, there's a right time to go to jail for birth control?

• 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!

• John Reed : Maybe if you took yourself a little more seriously, other people would, too.

• John Reed : It's the truth. Does that mean anything around here?

  Pete Van Wherry : Well, who the hell's to say what the truth is?

• John Reed : Why do you even expect to be taken seriously if you're not writing about serious things? I don't understand that.

• John Reed : With everything that's happening in the world today, you decide to sit down and write a piece on the influence of the God damned armory show of 1913! Are people supposed to take that seriously?

• Louise Bryant : Who was it?

  John Reed : What do you want, a list?

• 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.

• John Reed : You thought, you thought, you thought. Try not to think too much, Eddie. Not when your comrades are depending on you.

• 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.

• John Reed : These people can barely speak English. They don't even want to be integrated into American life. The Foreign Language Federations aren't gonna create Bolshevism in America any more than eating borscht will.

• [repeated line] 

  John Reed : I'll be back by Christmas.

• Grigory Zinoviev : Aren't you propagandist enough to utilize what moves people most?

  John Reed : I'm propagandist enough to utilize the *truth*.

  Grigory Zinoviev : And who defines this truth? You or the party?

• John Reed : It's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted it to, but it's happening.

• John Reed : Why hasn't she answered me?

  Emma Goldman : I think she has answered you.

• John Reed : I must see my wife. It's very urgent, and I ask only for a single place on a train.

  Grigory Zinoviev : But you have a place on the train! You have a place on the train of this revolution. You have been like so many others, the best revolutionaries. One of the engineers on the locomotive of this train that pulls this revolution on the tracks of historical necessity laid out for it by the party. You can't leave us now. We can't replace you. What right do you have to leave?

  John Reed : I'm not sure.

  Grigory Zinoviev : To do what? To see your wife?

• 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?

• John Reed : [delirious]  The water plays little songs.

• John Reed : Well, I want to go home.

• 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 : 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?