Citizen Cohn (1992 TV Movie)

James Woods: Roy Marcus Cohn

Photos 

Quotes 

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Senator, I've seen enough names working for Pat McCarran. You're going to be hauling up Jew after Jew... all those European names, and with a McCarthy and a Kennedy together, it's gonna look like an Irish/Catholic-run pogrom. That will discredit everything you do, and I know, because I'm a Jew.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : But they're Communists. They betrayed the faith of the Fathers for this Socialist God of Iron. Now, that's the issue, not anti-Semitism.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : That's NOT what your opposition will say. It's very hard sometimes to control what an issue really is, and if your enemies can find a way to twist your motives, believe me, they will do it.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : If you are a friend of Americas enemies, then you're an enemy too.

• [Roy is fighting AIDS] 

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Slow down... stop... eating... me.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : [to Peter]  They tried to kill me. The bastards didn't make it, though.

  [points to the window] 

  Roy Marcus Cohn : What do you see there? You see the SUN! They have this one doctor. They PAID him to kill me. They couldn't do it themselves, the miserable cocksuckers... They got him to do it. You don't think so? My friends hate me. My enemies hate me. Now you hate me. Everybody hates me.

  Peter : [interrupting]  You knocked off your enemies a long time ago and your friends love you. You know that.

• [McCarthy and Cohn make a toast] 

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : To the birth of Jesus.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Right. Another tough Jew.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Well, to me, a Commie Jew is as disgusting as a Nazi Jew would be to you.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : "Murderer's Row"? Who said that? Who called us that? Who cares. It has a nice ring to it. Anyway, they haven't seen anything yet, have they?

• Roy Marcus Cohn : So what's the indictment, Doctor? Theoretical? Principle? Personal? Give it a name.

  Older Doctor : I don't name names.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Well, we know them already, so what's the difference?

• Senator Joseph McCarthy : What are you trying to DO to me?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : I'm trying to make a great man out of you.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Well, maybe I'm a little nearsighted. I cannot see the picture.

  Joseph N. Welch : Yes, I do believe you have betrayed a certain nearsightedness...

• [the ghost of Joseph Welch speaks to Cohn on his deathbed] 

  Joseph N. Welch : Well, how did I do, Mr. Cohn?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : The trial is over. You got McCarthy... but you didn't get me.

  Joseph N. Welch : You think you're on trial here? What would you be on trial for? And might I say, Mr. Cohn, for your sexual predilections I bear no grudge, no malice, nor for the hot, secret practices of your friends, not Mr. Hoover, not His Excellency the Cardinal. But shame, Mr. Cohn, for persecuting in public those who are no different than you.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : [denying]  I'm not gay.

  Older Doctor : Suuuure. And you're dying of mumps.

• [Roy Cohn leaves a drunk and censured Senator McCarthy] 

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : I always tried to do the right thing.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : The right thing? What a disaster! If for one day, everybody in Washington tried to do the "right thing", you'd come into both Houses of Congress, there'd be mass suicide!

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : Yeah, well, it didn't used to be that way.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Wait, are you trying to tell me something, Joe? What? What? That I caused this? I didn't invent dirty tricks.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : [chuckles]  No, no, you didn't. You kind of just made them into an art form.

• Congressman Neil Gallagher : Okay Roy, I understand. You don't want Bobby Kennedy in your bedroom uninvited, do you?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : I don't want Bobby Kennedy ANYWHERE.

• [after being paid a complement by an opponent] 

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Now I know what a pancake feels like after it's had syrup poured all over it.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : [screaming at nurse]  You're the angel of death, but you're no fucking angel!

• Roy Marcus Cohn : [to the older doctor]  You won't try to hurt me. You wanna know why? Because you're STILL afraid of me.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : There are plenty of the shelves by subversives like Dashiel Hammett, but interestingly enough not a SINGLE copy of American Legion magazine!

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Well, I would say I happen to know that Colonel Bradley had a good steak dinner that night and perhaps he was thinking about that.

  Joseph N. Welch : If Bradley was thinking of a steak, Schine must have been considering a whole haunch of beef, wouldn't he?

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Can you, uh... I got to go to court because they're gonna try to disbar me.

  Ethel Rosenberg : The hearings are over, darling, all over.

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Did I win?

  Ethel Rosenberg : No!

  Roy Marcus Cohn : [With disbelief]  No? They disbarred me?

  Ethel Rosenberg : Ooh, they did!

  Roy Marcus Cohn : [Incredulously]  Unhh?

  Ethel Rosenberg : Why were you so naughty? Why?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : Oh, I don't know!

  Ethel Rosenberg : Why? Why did you get me? Hmmm?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : I...

  Ethel Rosenberg : Because I was a woman?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : No!

  Ethel Rosenberg : Because I was a Jew?

  Roy Marcus Cohn : No! I killed you for the headlines! For the fuckin' headlines!

• Roy Marcus Cohn : We'd like you to describe the apparatus of your organization, those to whom you reported, what they told you to put in your books, others you may have seen at party meetings. And we'll expect you to testify to a certain amount of this in public session.

  Dashiell Hammett : I know what you're thinking about, but it isn't so, no how. Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't That's logic.

  Senator Joseph McCarthy : Very funny.

• Roy Marcus Cohn : Everybody starts out straight. I've never heard of anybody being BORN homosexual, have you? It's just... times goes by and... and sometimes I guess... it happens to them... without knowing it.