Barcelona (1994)

Chris Eigeman: Fred Boynton

Photos 

Quotes 

• Fred : Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and...

  Ted : Really?

  Fred : And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?

  Ted : The text.

  Fred : OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

• Fred : You are far weirder than someone merely into S&M. At least they have a tradition. We have some idea what S&M is about. There's movies and books about it. But so far as I know, there is nothing to explain the way you are.

• Woman (Shootings in America) : You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.

  Fred : No.

  Woman (Shootings in America) : All those people killed in shootings in America?

  Fred : Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.

• Fred : You think wedding vows are going to change everything? God, your naivete is astounding! Didn't you see "The Graduate"?

  Ted : You can remember "The Graduate"?

  Fred : Yeah, I can remember a few things. Apparently you don't. The end? Katharine Ross has just married this really cool guy - tall, blond, incredibly popular, the make-out king of his fraternity in Berkeley - when this obnoxious Dustin Hoffman character shows up at the back of the church, acting like a total asshole. "Elaine! Elaine!" Does Katharine Ross tell Dustin Hoffman, "Get lost, creep. I'm a married woman"? No. She runs off with him - on a bus. That is the reality.

• Fred : My jazz rule is: If you can't dance to it, you don't want to know about it.

• Fred : "Yankee" and "gringo" are obviously pejorative, but it's the standard dictionary term that's the most insulting of all. "Estadunidense." Dense. D-E-N-S-E. It's the same spelling. Dense: thick, stupid. Every time you hear it. Estadunidense-dense-dense. It's like a direct slap in the face. It's incredible.

  Montserrat : I think you are too sensitive.

  Fred : Oh great, now we're too sensitive.

• Marta : I think there is something fascist about a boy who immediately talks of marrying a woman he likes.

  Fred : I don't think Ted is a fascist of the marrying kind.

• Ted Boynton : There's a lot of anti-NATO feeling here.

  Fred : Anti what?

  Ted Boynton : Anti-NATO.

  Fred : Anti-NATO?

  Ted Boynton : Yeah. Well, actually here it's OTAN.

  Fred : They're against OTAN? What are they for? Soviet troops racing across Europe, eating all the croissants?

• Fred : Tonight while I was shaving - I always shave against the direction of the beard because I understood you got a closer shave that way - I started thinking about this razor commercial on TV which shows the hair follicles like this, going this way. The first of the twin blades cuts them here, then the hair snaps back, and the second blade catches them down here, giving you a closer, cleaner, possibly smoother shave, that we know. But what struck me was if the hair follicles are going in this direction and the razor is too, then they're shaving in the direction of the beard, not against it, which would mean that I've been shaving the wrong way all my life. I mean, maybe that's not so, maybe I misremembered the ad, but the point is, I could have shaved the wrong way all my life and never have known it. And then I could have taught my son to shave the wrong way without him ever knowing it either.

  Marta : You have a son?

  Fred : No... But I might someday. And then maybe I'll teach him to shave the wrong way.

  Marta : I think maybe my English is not so good.

• Ted : Spanish girls tend to be really promiscuous.

  Fred : You're such a prig.

  Ted : No, I wasn't using "promiscuous" pejoratively. It's just a fact. They have completely different attitudes toward sex.

  Fred : Well, I wasn't using "prig" pejoratively.

• Marta : You seem very intelligent for an American.

  Fred : Well, I'm not.

• Ted : Here in Barcelona, everything was swept aside. The world was turned upside down and stayed there.

  Fred : Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the world was upside down before, and now it's right side up?

• Fred : I think it's well-known that anti-Americanism has its roots in sexual impotence, at least in Europe.

• Ted : Maybe you'd like an analogy. Well, take... take these ants. In the U.S. view, a small group, or cadre, of fierce red ants have taken power and are oppressing the black ant majority. Now the stated U.S. policy is to aid those black ants opposing the red ants in hopes of restoring democracy, and to impede the red ants from assisting their red ant comrades in neighboring ant colonies.

  Ramon : That is clearly the most disgusting description of U.S. policy I have ever heard. The Third World is just a lot of ants to you.

  Jurgen : Those are people dying, not ants.

  Ted : No, I... I don't think you understand. I was reducing everything to ant scale, the... the U.S. included. An ant White House, an ant CIA, an ant Congress, an ant Pentagon...

  Ramon : Secret ant landing strips, illegally established on foreign soil.

  Fred : Where are the red ants?

  Ted : [pointing to an ant hill]  There.

  [Fred crushes the ants] 

• Fred : They're calling us pigs. That's meant to hurt!

• [last lines] 

  Ted Boynton : You see, that's one of the great things about getting involved with someone from another country. You can't take it personally. What's really terrific is that when we act in ways which might objectively be considered asshole-ish or incredibly annoying... they don't get upset at all. They don't take it personally. They just assume it's some national characteristic.

  Fred : Cosa de gringos.

  Ted Boynton : Yeah.

  Dickie Taylor : Fantastic.

  Ted Boynton , Fred : [both together]  Yeah.

• Fred : [At a disco, talking to Marta and Aurora about Ted, who's out on the dance floor]  He's not at all the way he seems. He might seem like a typical American, like a big unsophisticated child, but he's far more complex than that. Have you ever heard of the Marquis de Sade? Ted's a great admirer of de Sade. And a follower of Dr. Johnson. He's a complex - and in some ways dangerous - man. He has a serious romantic illusion problem. Women find him fascinating. His nickname is "Punta de Diamante" - point of a diamond. You see that odd expression on his face? Under the apparently very normal clothes he's wearing are these narrow leather straps drawn taut so that when he dances...

  Aurora Boval : [looking somewhat shocked]  What?

  Fred : [as Ted leaves the dance floor and comes back to join them]  Please don't mention this. He might feel I violated a confidence.

• Fred : Are you sure you don't want to go?

  Ted : No.

  Fred : Good.

• Fred : When we were kids I borrowed some things. It was never ever theft! In each case I either told you... or was about to.

• Ted : Who am I?

  Fred : The kid with the kayak, but older and fatter, leave me alone!

  Ted : This is amazing, he is going to have a complete recovery!

• Fred : The things they say about us. I know we're not to take it seriously, but after a while, it really hurts.

  Ted Boynton : I don't believe you! Just once I'd like to go out with a girl not convinced I'm encased in black leather underwear.

  Fred : That bothers you?

  Ted Boynton : The exact same story over and over again?

  Fred : Well, it's not exactly the same. I always vary it a little.

  Ted Boynton : Great! It wasn't even Aurora, but this terrific friend of hers from the trade fair. She's never met you but was still full of your stupid stories.

  Fred : Frankly, I don't care for your tone. You should get down on your knees and thank God that you have a cousin who makes up interesting stories about you. I'm the best P.R. guy you're ever going to have. Do you think any even mildly cool trade fair girl would give you the time of day if she knew the pathetic Bible-dancing goody-goody you really are? You're far weirder than someone merely into S&M. At least they have a tradition. We have some idea of what S&M is about - there's movies and books about it, but so far as I know, there is nothing to explain the way you are.

• Ted Boynton : You know what Dr. Johnson said?

  Fred : No.

  Ted Boynton : That guests, like fish, begin to stink on the third day.

  Fred : Yeah, that sounds about right. Actually, I think you'll find that I begin to stink on the first day.

• Marta : He was talking about the AFL-CIA and the American labor unions. He described how, after World War II, representatives of the American labor union, the AFL-CIA, were sent to Europe to crush progressive unionism.

  Ted : How'd they do that?

  Marta : With sacks of money and the anti-Communist tactics of your senator Joey McCarthy.

  Fred : The AFL-CIA?

  Marta : America's largest union, terribly right wing and facha. You have not heard of it? It's amazing the things Americans don't know about their own country.

• Fred : [after being called 'facha' while wearing a military uniform]  What does facha mean?

  Ted : It's slang for fascist.

  Fred : Fascist?

  Ted : Come on. Don't worry, they call everyone that. I mean you comb your hair, you wear a coat and tie, you're facha. A military uniform? Definitely facha.

  Fred : Well, so, facha is something good, then. Because if they were referring to the political movement Benito Mussolini led, I'd be really offended. Men wearing this uniform died ridding Europe of fascism.