Daniel Day-Lewis credited as playing...
Guido Contini
- Luisa Contini: Thank you.
- Guido Contini: What for?
- Luisa Contini: Thank you for reminding me I'm not special. You don't even see what you do, do you? Even the moments I think are ours, it's just you working to get what you want.
- Stephanie: I was wondering if you think there's a limit to what you can show in a movie.
- Guido Contini: What would you like to see that I haven't already shown you?
- Guido Contini: [singing] Nothing holds together, nothing makes a bit of sense now. Impossible to grasp or understand. How can I go on to watch the whole of my existence end up being nothing that I planned?
- Guido Contini: [singing] I would like the universe to get down On it's knees And say, "Guido, whatever you please, It's okay. Even if it's impossible, we'll Arrange it." That's all that I want.
- [first lines]
- Guido Contini: You kill your film several times, mostly by talking about it. A film is a dream. You kill it writing it down, you kill it with a camera; the film might come to life for a moment or two when your actors breathe life back into it - but then it dies again, buried in film cans. Mysteriously, sometimes, in the editing room, a miracle happens when you place one image next to another so that when, finally, an audience sits in the dark, if you're lucky - very lucky - and sometimes I've been lucky - the dream flickers back to life again.
- Guido Contini: Maestro, Maestro, Maestro. Maestro Contini. How do you begin? How do you begin this thing? Page 1. Page 1. Page 1. Page - nothing.
- Guido Contini: Am I dying, Mamma? I owe you flowers, I know. I'll come to the cemetery at the weekend. You should have let me bury you in Roma, Mamma, I could visit you every week.
- Guido Contini: I need a cigarette.
- Dante: He needs a shirt and tie, Lilli.
- Guido Contini: I need a coffee and a cigarette.
- Liliane La Fleur: Answer a question, I'll give you a coffee. Answer another question, I'll give you a cigarette. And so on.
- Guido Contini: Actually and an aspirin.
- Guido Contini: [singing] I am lusting for more, Should I settle for less? I ask you, What's a good thing for, If not for taking it to excess?
- Guido Contini: [singing] Guido, Guido; Guido, Guido; Me, me, ME! I want to be Proust, Or, the Marquis de Sade, I would like to be Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, But, not have to believe in God...
- Stephanie: Could you tell the fashionable women of America who your favorite designer is this year?
- Guido Contini: I'm less interested in the wrapping than what might be inside it.
- Dinardo: Might you tell the press what the film is about?
- Guido Contini: Why? I still don't know what my last film was about.
- Leopardi: That was the problem. Nobody else did.
- Cardinal: Are you a Catholic?
- Guido Contini: Oh yes, very much so. Not as much as I would like to be, not as much as you would like me to be, I'm sure, but certainly yes, I'm trying.
- Cardinal: Try harder!
- Cardinal: You think people need to see so much sex? It's not necessary. We can all imagine.
- Guido Contini: Excuse me - but, my films are what I imagine.
- Cardinal: Then your imagination has no moral training.
- Guido Contini: How do you train the imagination?
- Cardinal: The imagination is God's garden; don't let the Devil play in it. Teach our Italian women to be wives, not whores. Don't make us look at filth and debauchery. Make us proud to be Italian.
- Guido Contini: What are you laughing about?
- Luisa Contini: Nothing. If you could see yourself. I couldn't live with it - the absurdity of being you, the effort of having to hide and lie and cheat. It's exhausting. No wonder you've got no script, you're too busy inventing your own life.
- Guido Contini: I can't believe you came.
- Luisa Contini: The jungle drums said it was an emergency.
- Guido Contini: The jungle drums exaggerated - just a tiny bit.
- Stephanie: I've seen all your movies.
- Guido Contini: Really?
- Stephanie: Like a million times. They're the only movies that tell the truth about the modern world.
- Guido Contini: And what truth is that?
- Stephanie: Death of religion. Sexual revolution.
- Guido Contini: I don't think religion is dead. And what exactly is the sexual revolution?
- Stephanie: That we can talk about later.