Grand Canyon (1991)
Kevin Kline: Mack
Photos
Quotes
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Davis : Mack, you ever seen a movie called "Sullivan's Travels"?
Mack : No.
Davis : That's part of your problem, you know, you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. It's a story about a man who loses his way. He's a filmmaker, like me, and he forgets for a moment just what he was set on earth to do. Fortunately he finds his way back. That can happen, Mack. Check it out.
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Mack : This is difficult stuff. Making a left turn in L.A. is one of the harder things you'll learn in life.
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Mack : [while Mack waits for his car to be serviced at a local gas station, he and tow truck driver Simon sit in the parking lot discussing his family and the Grand Canyon]
Simon : [chuckles] Man, get yourself to the Grand Canyon.
Mack : Beautiful, huh?
Simon : Eh, it's pretty, all right, but that's not the thing of it. You can sit right on the edge of it, you know? I-I did that. I did everything: I went down in it, I stayed overnight there. But the thing that got me was sitting on the edge of that big old thing. Those rocks. Yeah, those cliffs and rocks is so old. Took so long for that thing to get to look like that... and it ain't done either, you know? It happens right while you're sitting there watching it. It's happening right now while we're sitting here in this ugly town.
[Simon finishes his soda and throws the can into the dumpster across the parking lot]
Simon : [sighs] When you sit on the edge of that thing, you just realize what a joke we people are. What big heads we got thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much. Thinking our time here means diddly to those rocks. It's a split second we been here, the whole lot of us. And one of us? That's a piece of time too small to give a name.
Mack : You trying to cheer me up?
Simon : Yeah, those rocks are laughing at me, I could tell. Me and my worries, it's real humorous to that Grand Canyon. Hey, you know what I felt like? I felt like a gnat that lands on the ass of a cow that's chewing its cud next to the road that you ride by on at 70 miles an hour.
Mack : [laughs] That's small.
Simon : Yeah, it's small.
Mack : My name is Mack.
Simon : Simon.
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Mack : One morning, about three years ago, I was on my way to a meeting at the Mutual Benefit building on Wilshire, in the Miracle Mile. I love that name - the Miracle Mile. It's the building across the street from the county art museum, I was thinking about the meeting I was going to, I was worried about it, actually, I started to step off the curb, A stranger grabbed me and yanked me back as a city bus went flying by my nose, I mean, it just fiilled up the world six inches from my nose, I would have been like a wet bug stain on the bus, I wouldn't have even felt it, it would have been over so fast, I thanked this stranger, this woman in a baseball cap, but I was pretty much in a daze, When I thanked her, she said ''My pleasure,'' I didn't notice till the last moment that the cap was from the Pittsburgh Pirates, my favourite team since I was a kid. I never got over the idea that I should have thanked that woman more, talked to her a while, something. She reached out and yanked me back from the edge, literally. Changed everything for me, and for my wife and my son, and then she just wandered off down the Miracle Mile. How come she was wearing a Pirates cap? I just wondered, later on, was she for real, you know? Was that a real person or was that something else, you know, sent from somewhere else, to grab me back from that curb? I didn't wanna just let you Simon drift away like she did and never talk to you. It just didn't seem right to let it happen twice. So that's why I'm bothering you.
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Mack : When a person thinks they're about to die, nothing looks like it was worth their time.
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[first lines]
Davis : You know what your problem is? You're always talking about X. But you're thinking about Y. You gotta learn to talk about Y. Forget about X. X is gonna take care of itself.
Mack : What are you talking about?
Davis : I'm just asking you to hear yourself. Listen to what you're really saying and under what you really saying: control, control, control. When are you gonna realise nothing can be controlled? We live in chaos. It's the central issue in everyone's life. Mack, look around you. Everyone in this parking lot is struggling for control. And you know what it is they're trying to control, each and every one of 'em? Fear. They're trying to control their fear.
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Dee : You've denied me in every way you can. Everything I've wanted, you've denied me.
Mack : I've been honest all along. Even that night.
Dee : Who gives a shit? Don't you see what you do? Even now, you wanna deny me what's rightfully mine.
Mack : Which is?
Dee : To resent the hell outta you. To feel totally rejected and hated. To hate you for doing it to me. There are good men out there who are gonna treat me like I'm the very thing they want. And then you do that thing with Jane.
Mack : What?
Dee : You know, with that guy, that tow-truck guy.
Mack : What about it? What's that got to do with anything?
Dee : You don't even know, do you? You don't even know why that hurts me so much. Jane's in love. She thinks this could be the one.
Mack : Is that bad? I thought she was your friend.
Dee : She is my friend. I'm very happy for her, but it makes me feel like shit... that you're out there finding her the love of her life and I'm here like what? I'm here like shit. How do you think that's gonna make me feel?
Mack : Dee, I understand you're angry with me, but why would...?
Dee : Forget it. It doesn't have to make sense.
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Mack : He's kinda lonely, but he seems peaceful about it.
Jane : That would be nice.
Dee : Ya know, it would be great if you could sort of be down about things, but still be alright with it. Like, finally accept that fact that you're gonna feel bad most of the time and not fight it.
Mack : Of course, it would also be nice not to feel bad most of the time.
Dee : Yeah, but that's how you get yourself in trouble. By thinking how nice it'd be to be happy more.
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Mack : [singing Warren Zevon's song] Desperate man, Send lawyers, guns and money, Fuck, the shit has hit the fan...
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Simon : My father died last year - 81 years old. It's a long time for a black man to live in this town. He outlived everyone he ever knew. He saw two wives die and three of his children. He had a great ugly old face that looked like a suitcase gone a million miles - all beat up and dented and scuffed and stained. Man, he looked like he walked 80 years on that face. When I used to look at that face and see all - the pain there, all the things he'd lost, all the hurt he had, I wondered why he wanted to go on, why he just didn't lay down and give it up.
Mack : Did you figure it out?
Simon : No. Never figured out much about that guy. I asked him, though.
Mack : What'd he say?
Simon : Habit.
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Mack : Vanessa, why is it that when someone's successful in one field, they think they know about everything?
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Mack : [when he sees the gang coming on his direction] Mayday, Mayday, we're going down!
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Mack : [to another driver in a hurry] Alright, alright!
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Mack : [singing] I took a little risk...
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Simon : You can go swimmin' in the ocean every day and be perfectly cool, you know. Then one day, just one particular day, you bump into the big shark. Now, the big shark don't hate you. He's got no feelin' for you at all. You look like food to him. Hey, you don't hate a hamburger, do you? Yeah. Those boys back there, they got nothin' to lose. If you just happen to be swimmin' along and bump into 'em, well- It might not be worth worryin' about. It's like bein' in a plane crash.
Mack : Well, that's comforting. I'm glad you brought that up. There just seems to be so many ways to buy it. Particularly in this city. I'm amazed at the end of each day that anybody's alive. Then other days I think maybe people aren't so fragile. Things have always been kind of brutal, and people just keep on going.
Simon : You ever been to the Grand Canyon?
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Simon : You got a right to try to figure out what confuses you; but, seems like you're making more of this than it is. The world's a hard place, but sometimes you just get lucky.
Mack : I believe in luck.
Simon : And, of course, sometimes you don't. One thing is for sure is that if you're alive, some terrible shit's gonna happen to you, and maybe some good things too, but you can always count on the terrible. If it doesn't kill you, you're gonna be around to see it come down some other way.
