- Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.
- Jane Craig: No. It's awful.
- Paul Moore: [Paul and Martin emerge from an office in which Paul had just laid off Martin] Now, if there's anything I can do for you...
- Martin Klein: Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon.
- Tom Grunick: What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?
- Aaron Altman: Keep it to yourself.
- Aaron Altman: I know you care about him. I've never seen you like this about anyone, so please don't get me wrong when I tell you that Tom, while being a very nice guy, is the Devil.
- Jane Craig: This isn't friendship. You're crazy, you know that?
- Aaron Altman: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around?
- Jane Craig: God!
- Aaron Altman: Come on! Nobody is going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail! What's he gonna sound like?
- [hisses]
- Aaron Altman: No. I'm semi-serious here.
- Jane Craig: You're seriously...
- Aaron Altman: He will be attractive! He'll be nice and helpful. He'll get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation. He'll never do an evil thing! He'll never deliberately hurt a living thing... he will just bit by little bit lower our standards where they are important. Just a tiny little bit. Just coax along flash over substance. Just a tiny little bit. And he'll talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.
- Aaron Altman: Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If "needy" were a turn-on?
- Bill Rorich: This is a brutal layoff. And all because they couldn't program Wednesday nights.
- Paul Moore: You can make it less brutal by knocking a million or so off your salary... Bad joke, I'm sorry.
- Aaron: Here's a good one. They allow us to have cameras at an execution in Florida. Do you broadcast tape of the guy in the chair when they turn on the voltage?
- Martin Klein: Sure.
- Jennifer Mack: Why not?
- Ernie Merriman: Absolutely.
- George Wein: You bet.
- Aaron: Nothing like wrestling with a moral dilemma, is there?
- Aaron Altman: And if things had gone differently for me tonight, then I probably wouldn't be saying any of this. I grant you everything. But give me this: He personifies everything that you've been fighting against. And I'm in love with you. How do you like that? I buried the lede.
- Aaron Altman: I think we have the kind of friendship where if I were the devil, you'd be the only one I would tell.
- Jane Craig: So you like me, huh?
- Tom Grunick: I like you as much as I can like anyone who thinks I'm an asshole.
- Jane Craig: People called in complaining about your sweating?
- Aaron Altman: No, NICE calls, worried that I was having a heart attack.
- Aaron Altman: Six years from now, I'll be back here with my wife and two kids. And I'll see you, and one of my kids will say, "Daddy, who is that?" And I'll say it's not nice to point at single fat women.
- Aaron Altman: And in the middle of all this, I started to think about the one thing that makes me feel really good and makes immediate sense... and it's you.
- Jane Craig: Oh, Bubba.
- Aaron Altman: I'm going to stop right now. Except that I would give anything if you were two people, so that I could call up the one who's my friend and tell her about the one that I like *so much*!
- Blair Litton: Oh, you think anyone who's proud of the work we do is an ass-kisser.
- Aaron Altman: No, I think anyone who puckers up their lips and presses it against their bosses buttocks and then *smooches* is an ass-kisser.
- Blair Litton: My gosh... and for a while there I was attracted to you.
- Aaron Altman: Well, wait a minute, that changes everything!
- Martin Klein: OK. What about this? Here's a tough ethical one. Would you tell a source that you loved them? Just to get some information?
- Aaron Altman: Yes.
- George Wein: Yes.
- Ernie Merriman: Me too.
- Jennifer Mack: Sure.
- George Wein: You bet.
- Aaron Altman: Jennifer didn't know there was an alternative.
- [Playback on monitor]
- Reluctant Interviewee: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Can you use that?
- Aaron Altman: Depends on how slow a news day it is.
- [Reacting to the playback]
- Jane Craig: I can't believe you said that!
- Aaron Altman: I'm very proud of that.
- Jane Craig: No, no, no it wasn't just the speech, the same thing happened with this guy. I have passed some line, some place. I am beginning to repel people I'm trying to seduce.
- Aaron Altman: He must've been great looking...
- Jane Craig: Why do you say that?
- Aaron Altman: Because nobody invites a *bad* looking idiot up to their bedroom.
- Aaron Altman: If anything happens to me, you tell every woman I've ever gone out with I was talking about her at the end. That way they'll have to reevaluate me.
- Aaron Altman: [on the air] 120 people were reported injured, at least 22 people died.
- [someone shots "commercial", now Aaron's off the air]
- Aaron Altman: I wish I were one of them.
- [Watching Aaron's flop sweat attack]
- News Producer: This is more than Nixon ever sweated.
- Aaron Altman: I think I better be alone for awhile.
- Ernie Merriman: I understand. I'll go with you.
- Aaron Altman: Thanks.
- [On Aaron's sweating incident on the air]
- Jane Craig: [on phone] It wasn't UNPRECEDENTED, was it?
- Tom Grunick: [on phone] Not unless you count "Singin' In the Rain".
- Tom Grunick: You're an *amazing* woman - what a *feeling* having you inside my head!
- Jane Craig: [smiling] Yeah - it was - an unusual place to be.
- Tom Grunick: It's like - indescribable - you knew *just* when to feed me the next line, you knew the m... second before I needed it. There was like, a *rhythm* we got into - it was like - *great sex*!
- [he pulls her toward him while she laughs]
- Jane Craig: [handing the phone to Aaron Altman so he can speak with Tom Grunick] Don't say anything about anything.
- Aaron Altman: Can you name all the members of the cabinet?
- Tom Grunick: OK, let's drop it.
- Aaron Altman: What?
- Tom Grunick: I mean, I am not gonna take a test for you. I mean, if that came up in conversation...
- Aaron Altman: We're conversing. 'Oh no, the names of the cabinet have slipped my mind. Say, do you know them?' OK, don't name them for me. Just tell me if you know.
- Tom Grunick: Yes, Aaron, I know the names of the cabinet.
- Aaron Altman: OK. All 12?
- Tom Grunick: Yes!
- Aaron Altman: There's only 10.
- Tom Grunick: You're feeling good, aren't you?
- Aaron Altman: I'm starting to, yeah. Hey, we may do capitals of the states next.
- Tom Grunick: 50, right?
- Young Jane: Dad, you want me to choose my words so carefully, then you throw a word like 'obsessive' at me. Now, unless I'm wrong, please correct me if I am. But obsession is practically a psychiatric term concerning people who don't have anything else but the object of their own obsession, who can't stop and do anything else. Well, here I am stopping to tell you this, OK, so would you please try and be a little bit more precise instead of calling a person something like 'obsessive'? Good night.
- Tom Grunick: I'm going to miss you. You're a prick in a - great way. You know what I mean.
- Aaron Altman: No, I liked how that made me *sound*.
- Tom Grunick: I would really - a lot - appreciate it if...
- Jane Craig: "Really - a lot - appreciate it"?
- Jane Craig: It's amazing. You commit this incredible breach of - ethics and then you act as if I'm nit - I'm giving you a hard time about nothing!
- Jane Craig: Just what do you want from me anyway, permission to be a fake? Stop whining. Do something about it!
- Tom Granick: You keep on thinking I'm somebody who lacks confidence. That's not it. I know I can talk well enough and I'm not bad at making contact with people, but I don't like the feeling that I'm pretending to be a reporter. And half the time I don't get the news that I'm talking about. It's not that I'm down on myself. Trust me. I stink.
- Aaron Altman: Hi, Elli. Remember me? I've been to your house...
- Ernie Merriman: And Aaron was on that 14-day rafting trip we took.
- Elli: Oh, yeah...
- Aaron: It was raining... I had a hood on...
- Elli: Oh, yeah!
- [Aaron smiles and walks away]
- Aaron: She remembers me!
- Aaron Altman: Can you believe it? I just risked my life for a network that tests my face with focus groups.
- [Jane Laughs]
- Aaron Altman: I don't feel good.
- Aaron Altman: The pointers were great, I'll study the tape.
- Tom Grunick: Just remember that you're not just reading the news, you're narrating it. Everybody has to sell a little. You're selling them this idea of you, you know, you're sort of saying, trust me I'm, um, credible. So when you feel yourself just reading, stop! Start selling a little.
- Jane Craig: So, you're not well educated, you have almost no experience... and you can't write.
- Tom Grunick: Yeah, and I'm... and I'm making a fortune.
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