Memorable quotes for
Basquiat (1996) More at IMDbPro »

Rene: What's your name?
Basquiat: Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Rene: Oh my God, you sound famous already!
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Benny Dalmau: What would you do if I kissed ya?
Gina Cardinale: You're out of your mind Benny. You should take more drugs.
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Big Pink: Oh! How can I ever thank you?
Basquiat: Can I squeeze your titties?
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The Electrician: I'll be forty in July, and I'm glad I never got recognition. It gives me time to develop.
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Rene Ricard: When I speak nobody believes me, but when I write it down everybody knows it to be true.
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Rene Ricard: We're no longer collecting art; we're buying people.
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[Basquiat's first agent on his paintings]
Annina Nosei: This is the true voice of the gutter.
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Albert Milo: Good conversation is hard to find in this town.
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Albert Milo: You know, your audience isn't even born yet.
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Rene: That's $2000 and he's from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, suck my pussy, you star!
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Henry Geldzahler: He used to, Nixon used to have a room at the Waldorf Astoria, but then he moved to Saddle River, New Jersey.
Jack Milo: Saddle River's in New York.
Andy Warhol: I think it's in New Jersey.
Jack Milo: New York.
Andy Warhol: It's... it's in New Jersey.
Jack Milo: Saddle River's in New York!
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Basquiat: How long does it take to get famous?
Benny Dalmau: Four years. Six to get rich.
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Basquiat: Whoa! Warhol!
Benny Dalmau: That's Andy Warhol...
[pause]
Benny Dalmau: He's a fuckin' homo.
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Basquiat: Ah, piss paint!
Andy Warhol: Not piss paint, Jean, oxidation art!
Basquiat: Ya, I hate cleaning brushes too.
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Basquiat: I gotta get out of New York...
Andy Warhol: Hey, we could go to Pittsburgh! I kinda grew up there. They have this room with all the world's famous statues in it, so you don't even have to go to Europe any more... just go to Pittsburgh.
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Andy Warhol: I don't like beer.
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Basquiat: He says he's jealous of the moon, because you look at it. He's jealous of the sun, because it warms you. He says, "I feel you, even when I'm not feeling you. I talk to you when I'm not talking to you. I love you, even when I'm not loving you."... you know I love you, Gina.
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Basquiat: Duck-man! Can I get two ducks, man?
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[Basquiat is nailing one of his pieces to the wall]
Rene: Child, you got no respect at all... nobody taught you how to mount paintings? You know me, when it comes to a mounting, the rougher the better.
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[first lines]
Rene: Everybody wants to get on the Van Gogh boat. There's no trip so horrible that someone won't take it. The idea of the unrecognized genius slaving away in a garot is deliciously foolish one. We must credit the life of Vincent Van Gogh for really sending this myth into orbit. I mean, how many pictures did he sell, one? He couldn't give them away. He has to be the most modern artist, but everybody hated him. He was so ashamed of his life that the rest of our history will be contribution to Van Gogh's neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another like Van Gogh. In this town, one is at the mercy of the recognition factor. One's public appearance is absolute. Part of the artist's job is to get the work where I will see it. I consider myself a metaphor on the public.
Basquiat: [scrawls onto a pillar] PAY FOR SOUP BUILD A PORT SET THAT ON FIRE -SAMO
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Benny Dalmau: Famous people are usually pretty fuckin' stupid. You're too smart. You don't want to end up
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Cynthia Kruger: I just don't know if I can live with the green.
Basquiat: You want me to make it a nice shit brown?
Tom Kruger: I beg your pardon. Nobody makes fun of my wife but me.
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Rene: What is it about art anyway that we give it so much importance? Artists are respected by the poor because what they do is an honest way to get out of the slum using one's sheer self as the medium. The money earned, proof, pure and simple, of the value of that individual, the artist. The picture a mother's son does in jail hangs on her wall as proof that beauty is possible even in the most wretched. And this is a much different idea than fancier notion that art is a scam and a ripoff. But you can never explain to someone who uses God's gift to enslave, that you have used God's gift to be free.
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[last lines]
Basquiat: Benny, fuck Hawaii. Let's go to Ireland. We'll stop in every bar and have a drink.
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