Midnight in Paris
From Wikiquote
Midnight in Paris is a 2011 romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. The movie explores themes of nostalgia and modernism.
Dialogue [edit]
- Paul: Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present.
- Inez: Oh, well Gil is a complete romantic. I mean he would be completely happy to live in a perpetual state of denial.
- Paul: And the name of this fallacy is golden-age thinking.
- Inez: Touche.
- Paul: The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic’s imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.
- Zelda Fitzgerald: I know, I could be one of the great writers of musical lyrics, not that I can write melodies and I try. And then I hear the songs he writes and I realize I’ll never write a great lyric and my real talent lies in drinking.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Sure does.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Greetings and salutations. You’ll forgive me, I’ve been mixing grain and grappa. Now this is a writer, Gil, yes?
- Gil: Gil Pender.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Gil Pender.
- Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway.
- Gil: Hemingway?
- Hemingway: You like my book.
- Gil: Liked? I loved, all your work.
- Hemingway: Yes, it was a good book because it was an honest book and that’s what war does to men and there’s nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully and then it’s not only noble but brave.
- Zelda Fitzgerald: Did you read my story? What’d you think?
- Hemingway: There was some fine writing in it but it was unfulfilled.
- Zelda Fitzgerald: I might have known you’d hate it.
- Hemingway: She’ll drive you crazy this woman [Zelda Fitzgerald].
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: She’s exciting and she has talent.
- Hemingway: This month it’s writing, last month it was something else. You’re a writer, you need time to write, not all this fooling around. She’s wasting you because she’s really a competitor. Don’t you agree?
- Gil: Me?
- Hemingway: Speak up for chrissake. I am asking, do you think my friend is making a tragic mistake?
- Gil: I actually don’t know the Fitzgeralds that well.
- Hemingway: You’re a writer. You make observations. You were with them all night.
- F. Scott Fizgerald: Can we not discuss my personal life in public?
- Hemingway: She’s jealous of his gift and it’s a fine gift, it’s rare. You like his work? You can speak freely.
- Hemingway: You writing?
- Gil: A novel.
- Hemingway: About what?
- Gil: It’s about a um…a man who works in a nostalgia shop.
- Hemingway: What the hell is a nostalgia shop?
- Gil: Y’know, a place where they sell old things, memorabilia. And, does that sound terrible?
- Hemingway: No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the story is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
- Gil: Can I ask you the biggest favor in the world?
- Hemingway: What is it?
- Gil: Would you read it?
- Hemingway: Your novel?
- Gil: Yah, it’s like 400 pages long and I’m just looking for an opinion.
- Hemingway: My opinion is that I hate it.
- Gil: You haven’t even read it yet.
- Hemingway: And I’ll hate it if it’s bad because I hate bad writing. If it’s good I’ll be envious and I’ll hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.
