Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Donald Sutherland: Flan
Photos
Quotes
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Ben : He promised you parts in "Cats"?
Ouisa Kittredge : It wasn't just that. It was fun!
Tess : You went to "Cats". You said it was an all-time low in a lifetime of theatre going.
Ouisa Kittredge : Film is a different medium.
Ben : You said, "Aeschylus did not invent theatre to have it end up a bunch of chorus kids wondering which one of them will go to kitty-cat heaven."
Ouisa Kittredge : I don't remember saying that.
Flan Kittredge : I think that was "Starlight Express".
Tess : Well, maybe they'll make a movie of "Starlight Express" and you can all be on roller skates!
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Flan Kittredge : Having a rich friend is like drowning and your friend makes lifeboats.
Ouisa : Only your friend gets very touchy if you say one word: lifeboat.
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Flan Kittredge : This is what I dreamt. I didn't dream, so much as realize this. I feel so close to the paintings. I'm not just selling, like, pieces of meat. I remembered why I loved paintings in the first place, what got me into this. I thought... dreamt... remembered... how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then, one day, he loses it. Loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting. I remembered asking my kids' second-grade teacher: 'Why are all your students geniuses? Look at the first grade - blotches of green and black. The third grade - camouflage. But your grade, the second grade, Matisses, every one. You've made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade. What is your secret?' 'I don't have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.' 'I dreamt of colour. I dreamt of our son's pink shirt. I dreamt of pinks and yellows. And the new Van Gogh the Museum of Modern Art got. And the Irises that sold for $53.5 million. And, wishing a Van Gogh was mine, I looked at my English hand-lasted shoes, and thought of Van Gogh's tragic shoes, and remembered me as I was-a painter losing a painting.'
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Flan Kittredge : Why do you stay in South Africa?
Geoffrey : One has to stay there. To educate the black workers. And we'll know we've been successful when they kill us.
Ouisa Kittredge : Oh, goodness.
Flan Kittredge : Planning the revolution that will destroy you.
Ouisa Kittredge : Putting your life on the line.
Geoffrey : We don't think of it like that. I wish you'd come and visit.
Ouisa Kittredge : Oh, would we visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor? "Oh, are you sure they're the worst off? I mean, we've come all this way. I mean, we don't want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock." You know it doesn't seem right, sitting on the East Side, talking about revolution.
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Flan Kittredge : Never bullshit a bullshitter.
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[first lines]
Flan : My God!
Ouisa : Is anything gone?
Flan : How can I look, I'm shaking!
Ouisa : I want to know if anything's gone!
Flan : Calm down.
Ouisa : We could have been killed! Oh, my God! The Kandinsky!
Flan : The Kandinsky!
Ouisa : It's gone, oh my God! Call the police!
Flan : Oh, no, there it is. Oh! The silver Victorian inkwell!
Ouisa : How can you think of that thing?
Flan : Here's the inkwell.
Ouisa : We could have been murdered!
Flan : A silver Jaguar. Why?
Ouisa : Slashed. Throat slashed.
Flan : There's the Degas.
Ouisa : To go to bed at night happy and then murdered. Would we have woken up?
Flan : We're alive.
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Flan : What kind of behavior is this?
Ouisa : Tell me Flan, how much of your life can you account for?
Flan : Are you drunk? What's the matter with you? Don't you realize how important she is? What are you unhappy about? The Cezanne sale went through, the Matisse went through, we're rich! Rich enough. Next month there's a Bonnard.
Ouisa : These are the times I could take a knife and dig out your heart! Answer me! How much of your life...
Flan : -my life can I account for? All of it!
[pause]
Flan : I am a gambler.
Ouisa : We're a terrible match.
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Flan Kittredge : I thought, dreamt, remembered how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then one day he loses it - loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting.
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[repeated line]
Flan : We could have been killed. Throats slashed!
