Rich and Famous (1981)

Jacqueline Bisset: Liz Hamilton

Photos 

Quotes 

• Liz Hamilton : I have a quote: I find this mid-century obsession with young flesh obscene! It's like eating green cantaloupes!

• Douglas 'Doug' Blake : All the times we've been back here, I've never seen you in the kitchen.

  Liz Hamilton : I don't go in the kitchen the roaches talk about me.

• Merry Noel Blake : I'm having tables all along here, just spilling over with whatever grows this time of year. The problem with December is there are no strawberries. How am I going to create a big red area in the middle?

  Liz Hamilton : Stab one of the guests.

• Liz Hamilton : Merry, do me a favor.

  Merry Noel Blake : What?

  Liz Hamilton : Kiss me.

  Merry Noel Blake : After all these years are you trying to tell me there's something strange about you?

  Liz Hamilton : [shakes her head no]  It's New Year's Eve. I want the press of human flesh - and you're the only flesh around. Kiss me.

• Merry Noel Blake : You have the morals of a yellah dog!

  Liz Hamilton : I have great respect for the morals of yellow dogs.

  Merry Noel Blake : One came in the yard we'd kick it out!

  Liz Hamilton : They're refreshingly loyal.

  Merry Noel Blake : They'd hump a snake if it stood still!

  Liz Hamilton : I haven't tried a snake.

  Merry Noel Blake : A miracle!

  Liz Hamilton : Now I'm a slut?

  Merry Noel Blake : You said it.

  Liz Hamilton : What are you saying, Merry?

  Merry Noel Blake : How many men have you had?

  Liz Hamilton : Is that the test?

  Merry Noel Blake : How many?

  Liz Hamilton : How many before you're a slut?

  Merry Noel Blake : Three.

  Liz Hamilton : Kick me out of the yard.

• Merry Noel Blake : You have been lying!

  Liz Hamilton : I would only be lying if I let you believe it was merely scotch or gin that are making me do what I'm about to do.

  Merry Noel Blake : What are you about to do?

  Liz Hamilton : Vomit!

  [Running out of the room] 

  Merry Noel Blake : She liked my book.

• Liz Hamilton : I am sick and fucking tired of you trying to live your life through my skin!

  Merry Noel Blake : Hah! If I had your skin I'd take better care of it!

• Liz Hamilton : What are you going to do with it, get it published?

  Merry Noel Blake : I was going to ask you...

  Liz Hamilton : Go ahead, ask!

  Merry Noel Blake : I don't like your tone, Liz.

  Liz Hamilton : What is the matter with my tone? The New York review of books said I was a master of irony!

  Merry Noel Blake : Oh, drink your gin and go to sleep!

  Liz Hamilton : You want me to show the book to Jules Levi.

  Merry Noel Blake : Well, I want you to do whatever you think is right...

  Liz Hamilton : Jules Levi is the wrong man for you, Merry. Too much expensive tailoring. He's like an apple the butler polishes every day.

  Merry Noel Blake : He's the most impressive publisher in New York.

  Liz Hamilton : Let's say he's impressed.

  Merry Noel Blake : Liz, would you show the book to Jules Levi, and tell him it may not be some translation from the Russian and I haven't escaped from behind the iron curtain, but I do know what it feels like...

  Liz Hamilton : ...to have feelings! You know what it feels like to have feelings! Well, that is worth money in the pocket! But not Jules Levi's pockets! He doesn't have any pockets! Too much expensive tailoring.

• Merry Noel Blake : You, darling Aunt Liz. After whom my daughter has chosen to craft her formative years. You no doubt find it amusing her little affair with a car thief.

  Liz Hamilton : He stole a car?

  Merry Noel Blake : He's addicted to the practice.

  Merry Noel Blake : Hmmm... maybe he can get me a Mercedes...

  Liz Hamilton : I'm sure Debby would roar over that cynical humor.

• Merry Noel Blake : I don't want you to tell me any lies, Liz.

  Liz Hamilton : Don't worry. I have to get sleep before I can tell a believable lie.

• Merry Noel Blake : Liz, honey, I'm so proud of the way you turned yourself out.

  Liz Hamilton : I sound like a table leg.

  Merry Noel Blake : I mean, what do I do? I just sit here and sew like my grandmother and kiss my husband goodbye on his way to work.

  Liz Hamilton : And have tea with Rock Hudson.

  Merry Noel Blake : Oh, you know, they are just folks here. They all got problems. Same as you and me.

• Douglas 'Doug' Blake : What about the Frenchman? Are you still into him?

  Liz Hamilton : Into him? You talk, hippie talk?

  Douglas 'Doug' Blake : That's California talk. I think.

• Liz Hamilton : They ought to warn you before they let you fall I love - I mean, for the first time. You can pick the God awfullest one. And you don't recover. Not from the first. Never.

• Liz Hamilton : I got no lover. But, I've got a therapist!

• Liz Hamilton : He says when I start writing again, I'll start loving. What he said was fucking again. Excuse me, Doug, the man's a Freudian.

  Douglas 'Doug' Blake : Maybe its the other way around? When you start loving again, you'll start writing.

  Liz Hamilton : I suggested that.

  Douglas 'Doug' Blake : What'd he say?

  Liz Hamilton : He said not writing was my problem.

• Liz Hamilton : That nice fellow maybe just a neighbor to you; but, he shows up in a lot of ladies' dreams.

• Liz Hamilton : He's like an apple the butler polishes every day.

• Liz Hamilton : I'm not sure its an exclusively feminine instinct, but, I need a lot of warmth.

• Liz Hamilton : What is wrong with learning to balance balls on your nose for eight months in the afternoon? Maybe I should learn to balance balls on my nose. Balls! I should!

• Liz Hamilton : I really don't understand why the interview.

  Chris Adams : Why?

  Liz Hamilton : Yeah. Why me? Why the 'Stone"? Why me for the 'Stone"?

• Liz Hamilton : It's funny. When they said someone from 'Stone' was coming over, I imagined a satin jumpsuit and two coke spoons coming out your nose.

• Liz Hamilton : Perhaps you could break through the language barrier and let me know what this is all about.

  Chris Adams : There's a language barrier?

  Liz Hamilton : I always thought this was a joke, you know, about your publication. The utterances of those who can't speak, written by those who cannot write, for those who cannot read.

• Liz Hamilton : There's only room here for me and the ghost of Dorothy Parker.

• Chris Adams : Are you okay?

  Liz Hamilton : Do I sound okay?

• Chris Adams : You know what you need?

  Liz Hamilton : Do you know what I need?

  Chris Adams : You need to relax.

  Liz Hamilton : What do you mean?

  Chris Adams : Relax. Relax means relax.

  Liz Hamilton : Do you mean I need someone to relax me? You think I need someone to relax me? To come over here and relax me?

  Chris Adams : I didn't mention someone, no.

  Liz Hamilton : Well, were you going to do it?

  Chris Adams : Do what?

  Liz Hamilton : There's an arrogance about men sometimes.

• Ginger Trinidad : You de mudder?

  Liz Hamilton : No, she's de mudder, I'm de aunt.

• Debby - Age 18 : It was in 'Time' magazine! He robbed some liquor stores or something; but, it was politically motivated.

  Liz Hamilton : Oh, well, apart from a few minor details, I don't know what your mother could possibly have against him.

  Debby - Age 18 : Because we're making it, that's what. She's got some weird idea I should save myself for some astronaut or something.

• Liz Hamilton : I'm not ready to concede that the young are sexually arrogant. Though, and this is important, I have recently been lead to believe that they might have something to be arrogant about. Namely - endurance and bodies. My old friend, Bessie Smith, whose records share many an afternoon with me in Paris, said - she liked it when her Daddy took her for a buggy ride. What I like about you is - you never stall. How about you kid?

• Liz Hamilton : My problem is I'm truly an old fashioned girl. I like men who talk. I *love* to talk. There's a whole generation crowding up behind us of people who want to talk with their bodies. Now everyone is so muscular and chic. With tits spilling out all over the place. And soft fashions. We've got a generation of beauties. They're more beautiful than the Greeks. But, what happened to the articulate guy? Nobody wants to talk anymore.

  Chris Adams : Well, you don't have to be hard on me. I'm just listening.

  Liz Hamilton : Just listening is an obscenely intimate act.

• Liz Hamilton : It is the young men who are the most arrogant. When it comes to arrogance, in sexual matters, they assume that everyone is falling down over them.

• Chris Adams : I'll agree with your point. A way to approach a woman - is through the ears. Ears, you know, they're little emblems of sexuality.

  Liz Hamilton : I'm listening to you through emblems of sexuality?

• Liz Hamilton : Listen, Sonny, if I want to get some movement in bed, I'll check into a motel and drop a quarter into the vibrating mattress.

• Liz Hamilton : Why not with girls your own age?

  Chris Adams : They're always watching for their own orgasm.

  Liz Hamilton : Well, what should they be watching for? Your orgasm?

  Chris Adams : *Our* orgasm.

• Liz Hamilton : Does sex confuse you?

  Chris Adams : [kisses Liz's nose]  No.

  Liz Hamilton : I don't mean how to do it, but, that can be enormously confusing at times. I just mean that the question of sex.

• Chris Adams : Did you ever think that what makes sex so exciting is that it's so frightening?

  Liz Hamilton : Is that what you think? Do I frighten you?

  Chris Adams : It's like T.S. Eliot, he made this crack about D.H. Lawrence. He said Lawrence was looking for an intimacy that was impossible between a man and a woman. Well, I say, bullshit, T.S. Eliot. You see, Eliot was just scared and there was Lawrence like some sexual test pilot ready to take the dive. You understand?

  Liz Hamilton : You intellectuals are too much for me.

• Liz Hamilton : I'm not immune to the attractions of a man and a yard.

• Liz Hamilton : Is that what you think marriage is? Surrender?

• Merry Noel Blake : What do you feel?

  Liz Hamilton : I don't want anyone around watching my thighs grow old.

• Liz Hamilton : All my life I've wanted men to find something mysterious and seductive in my work. It's poetry.

  Merry Noel Blake : Me too.

  Liz Hamilton : Now, let them find the poetry in my body. Forget the books.

• Liz Hamilton : You know what we should do?

  Merry Noel Blake : What?

  Liz Hamilton : Take a year off. Sail around the Greek islands. Only sleep with guys who can't pronounce our names. All Greeks.

• Liz Hamilton : If you have any more petty disgusting revelations, keep them for your girlie diaries or your novels. They sound about alike.

• Liz Hamilton : Jules Levi's interested in something called 'serious art'. Serious art! Ask him and he'll tell you. There are only two markets for serious art in this country: homosexuals and Jews.