Sunset Blvd.
1950
Betty Schaefer: Don't you sometimes hate yourself? Joe Gillis: Constantly.
Joe Gillis: (narrating) The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big. Norma Desmond: I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.
Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!
Joe Gillis: I didn't know you were planning a comeback. Norma Desmond: I hate that word. It's a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
Max Von Mayerling: She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!
Norma Desmond: We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Joe Gillis: (sarcastically) They'll love it in Pomona. Norma Desmond: They'll love it everyplace.
Joe Gillis: Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
Norma Desmond: Don't be silly. (hands Joe a present) Norma Desmond: Here, I was going to give it to you at midnight. Joe Gillis: Norma, I can't take it, you've bought me enough. Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars. Joe Gillis: Keep it. Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, *pumping*, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want! Joe Gillis: Cut out that "us" business! Norma Desmond: What's the matter with you? Joe Gillis: What right do you have to take me for granted? Norma Desmond: What right? Do you want me to tell you? Joe Gillis: Has it ever occurred to you that I may have a life of my own? That there may be some girl I'm crazy about? Norma Desmond: Who? Some car hop, or dress extra? Joe Gillis: What I'm trying to say is that I'm all wrong for you. You want a Valentino, somebody with polo ponies, a big shot! Norma Desmond: What you're trying to say is that you don't want me to love you. Say it. Say it! (slaps him hard across the face)
(Norma threatens suicide again) Joe Gillis: Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.
Joe Gillis: (narrating) Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead.
Norma Desmond: (to newsreel camera) And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
Joe Gillis: There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.
Joe Gillis: May I say that you smell really special? Betty Schaefer: It must be my new shampoo. Joe Gillis: That's no shampoo. It's more like freshly-laundered linen handkerchiefs, like a brand new automobile.
Norma Desmond: My astrologist has read my horoscope, he's read DeMille's horoscope. Joe Gillis: Has he read the script?
Norma Desmond: There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!
(the salesman thinks Joe is a gigolo) Salesman: (whispering in Joe's ear) As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?
(after hearing that Norma Desmond has come to see DeMille) First assistant director: I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush. Cecil B. DeMille: Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn't that enough?
Norma Desmond: No-one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.
Joe Gillis: (narrating) How could she breathe in that house full of Norma Desmonds? Around every corner, Norma Desmonds... more Norma Desmonds... and still more Norma Desmonds.
Norma Desmond: (Norma thinks Joe is a funeral director) I'd like the coffin to be white, and I want it specially lined with satin. White... or pink. Maybe red! Bright flaming red! Let's make it gay!
Joe Gillis: I'm not an executive, just a writer. Norma Desmond: You are... writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! But there'll be a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!
Joe Gillis (as narrator) : You don't yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.
Joe Gillis: So they were turning after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.
First assistant director: Norma Desmond? She must be a million years old. Cecil B. DeMille: I hate to think what that makes me. I could be her father.
Joe Gillis: Tell her, Max. Do her that favor. Tell her there isn't going to be any picture, that there are no fan letters other than the ones you write. Norma Desmond: No! It's not true! Max Von Mayerling: Madame is the biggest star of them all.
Policeman: (calling on the phone) Get me the coroner's office. Who is using this line? Hedda Hopper: (in Norma's room, on the phone) Whoever this is, get off this line. This is more important.