MovieChat Forums > The Grifters (1991) Discussion > most repugnant line in film history

most repugnant line in film history


Don't get me wrong, I don't resent the line being in there. It's totally in context. But when Myra said "You like to go back where you've been." I thought I was going to lose my lunch.

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Lol!
In a film with a lot of great dialogue - much of it straight from Jim Thompson's 1963 novel - this acidic little gem was a stand-out. It's original to the film, too.
When you read this scene in the book; the absence of the line is striking. It almost seems like censorship, over a quarter of a century before the film was even made.

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Yes it's a good line. Roy couldn't top that one.

It shows just how low Myra was.

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she knows how to hit a nerve like noone's business. she is the shrew of the shrew in that movie. lilly knows she is not in myra's league and fears her.

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Wrong. Lilly leaps and bounds out of Myra's league.

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That line, which is from the book, also sets up the final scene where Lilly uses her charms to try to get Roy to hand over his loot. But by that time some viewers already suspect the sexual tension in the air.

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kag2-1, I'm very truly not trying to be an IMDB "troll"...but the line is not from the book.
The book's dialogue begins the same - but Roy hits Moira before she has a chance to finish the sentence. The movie filled-in the rest.
But you're right...the innuendo was definitely there - and we know (reading the book), what Moira was suggesting - even if she did get cut short.

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I stand corrected. Thanks for the clarification, rickmeister95.

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Hey kag, I've had to "stand corrected", more than once on these boards - and yours was a very easy mistake...I've made worse, beleive me.

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I wouldn't say it's repugnant, but it's definitely memorable. I recently watched The Grifters, a movie I had heard good things about but had never quite got around to seeing. And it is a great movie. A few nights after, a funny thing happened to me because of this line. A one in a thousand coincidence, but when you've been walking the Earth for fifty-plus years like me, a few of those are bound to happen along the way.

Some friends and I are rewatching the 1970s miniseries, Centennial, which was based on James Michener's novel of the same name. So, just a few nights after seeing The Grifters, I was at my friend's apartment, and we were watching "The Shepherds" episode of Centennial. There's a character, Levi, who grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Colorado in the 1840s, where he lived ever since. Now, it's forty or so years later, he's an old man, he hasn't seen his family in decades, and he decides to take a trip back east. And in the episode's last scene, two of Levi's friends have seen him off and are watching the train depart.

Now, I've gotta say, Centennial is a good miniseries, but they went a little over the top with the angle, "Colorado is the most beautiful place in the world, why would anyone ever want to live anywhere else?" -- although I'm not disputing that the state has some knock-your-eyes-out scenery, the Rockies and all that -- but characters too frequently would wax rhapsodic about it ... including the aforementioned Levi and these two buddies of his. "There's no place I'd rather be," gets repetitive.

So anyway, here these two are silently watching their friend's train roll away ... and they've both got facial expressions and such that can best be described as, "Levi's a good man, and I'm sure he knows what he's doing, but I don't understand it and I'm not even sure I approve of it." And then ...

... one of these solid, reliable, taciturn men of the Old West turns to the other and says, with a sorta puzzled tone, "Must be strange, going back to where you came from."

-- and I, with The Grifters still echoing through my head, busted out laughing. Strange, indeed! My friends looked at me like I was nuts; all I could say was, "you wouldn't get it, never mind ..."

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It's definitely one of those lines where you go, "WHAT was that????!!!!" and your hair curls a bit.

The screenwriter for this film was Donald Westlake, who also wrote the very effective THE STEPFATHER....which is a B movie, but taut and intelligent.

He was a solid, classically professional writer.
.

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I thought it was gross too. But it was also a ridiculous suggestion. I would say it was one of the most bizarre taunts ever thrown in a movie.

This film gets down into the grimy nasty parts of the human psyche more than most others that I've seen, that I can remember. "The Last Seduction" is also up there. Anyway, I was really glad when Myra f__king got it.

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