Life (I) (1999)

Nick Cassavetes: Sgt. Dillard

Quotes 

• Sergeant Dillard : Welcome to Mississippi. Here you will be provided with ample opportunity to repay your debt to society through the rigours of hard labour. We got fields need clearin', roads need buildin', and ditches need diggin'. You will eat only what you can grow. Your crop don't come in, you go hungry. This here is Camp 8; Camp 8 is for incorrigibles. So whatever you done to get here, believe me, I'm not impressed; I've seen it all before. We ain't go no fences here at Camp 8, we don't need no fences. We got us the gun line.

  Hoppin' Bob : Tell 'em about the gun line, boss.

  Sergeant Dillard : This is the gun line. It runs from shack to shack, clear around the yard. You are now inside the gun line. You step outside the gun line without my permission, you will be shot. You trip and fall over the gun, you will be shot. You spit, you pee, you so much as stick your johnson over the gun line, you will be shot.

  [to Ray] 

  Sergeant Dillard : And you, Slick, don't try to run, don't try to run, don't try to escape, or one of my trustees will put a bullet in your head. You prisoners are now the property of the State of Mississippi, which is to say I own your ass.

• Sergeant Dillard : Gibson, Banks, get your sorry asses over here. Every mornin' I wake up prayin' that the two of you have died in their sleep, and every mornin' you disappoint me.

  Rayford Gibson : Sorry, boss.

  Sergeant Dillard : You two got 15 minutes to clear out your lockers. The both of you have been transferred to the superintendent's mansion. And l, for one, won't miss you.

  [looks at them sadly for a moment, then leaves] 

• Sergeant Dillard : [Claude won't dig, and complains that it's too hot]  You tell that lazy jigaboo the State of Mississippi ain't interested in his meteorological assessments!

  Hoppin' Bob : Listen up, jigaboo! State of Mississippi ain't interested in your, your, uh-"metacological assessments"!

  Sergeant Dillard : You tell him the State of Mississippi is only interested in getting this here ditch cleared by sundown.

  Hoppin' Bob : State of Mississippi wants this here ditch cleared by sundown. You got that, boy?

• [Claude is punished by standing on a crate of bottles] 

  Sergeant Dillard : You comfortable?

  Claude Banks : As a pair of fur-lined bedroom slippers.

  Sergeant Dillard : That's very amusin'. We'll see how them slippers feel after about 10 hours.

  Sergeant Dillard : I need a volunteer! Gibson, stand up. I'll make you a trusty right now. If that pie-eatin' bastard step off them bottles, if so much as one toe hits that dirt, I want you to shoot him in his ass! I want you to kill him. I want you to shoot him dead. You do that, I swear to God, you're a free man. I'll walk you out the gate myself. What do you say?

  [pause] 

  Rayford Gibson : I got to be honest with you, boss: you don't wanna give me that gun, 'cause I'd probably shoot you with it.

  Sergeant Dillard : That was the wrong answer, boy.

  [cut to Ray next to Claude on a crate]