Get on the Bus (1996)

Richard Belzer: Rick

Quotes 

• George : Let's go get something to eat, Rick, then I'll drive the bus for awhile.

  Rick : I need you to do me a favor, George.

  George : Rick, you can't drive the Spotted Owl the whole way, now.

  Rick : That's not it. If the base calls in, you tell them I got sick.

  George : Why?

  Rick : Because I'm not coming back.

  George : Shit, what the hell do you mean you're not coming back?

  Rick : I can't do it.

  George : Oh come on, stop bullshitting, you're just trying to go to Graceland.

  Rick : I'd be safer there.

  George : Meaning what, what do you think we're going to do, put you in a pot of boiling water and have you for supper?

  Rick : You already got the damn African drums in there.

  George : You know Rick, that's the epitome of cultural disrespect. I could come back at you with something anti-Semitic or I could whip your ass, which would you prefer, Rick?

  Rick : I'm sorry. Alright, George, here it is. Maybe I am a little bit prejudiced against blacks but no more than you're prejudiced against white people. You want me to stay on and prove how liberal and shit I am? I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I mean I think affirmative action has been fucked up. I think OJ was guilty, he's a cold blooded murderer who slaughtered two innocent human beings, okay. There it is.

  George : I'll bet you wish there were more white players in the NBA, too, huh? Well okay, let's just get it out in the open. I'll bet you'd like to call me a nigger or, what do you call it, a schvartze, or whatever the fuck it is. Well, I'm going to allow you to say it, go ahead.

  Rick : I never called anybody that in my life. All I'm saying is that if this bus is going to the Farrakhan march, I can't be a part of that.

  George : This is not just Farrakhan's march.

  Rick : I don't want to debate this thing. He called Judaism a gutter religion; he said Hitler was a great man. I wouldn't expect you to drive a bus to a Ku Klux Klan rally, so don't expect me to do this.

  George : So now you're comparing this to a Klan rally.

  Rick : Look George, either you're going to kick my ass, you're going to cover for me or I'm going to get fired. But no way am I getting my white ass back in that bus, so what's it going to be?

  George : Well, if you feel that way, then you shouldn't get your white ass back on that bus. I'll cover for you, Rick. See you in LA.

  Rick : Thanks, George.

• Xavier : You're on a bus - with 20 black men, how do you feel?

  Rick : Black men. White men. All the same to me. I like to think of myself as color blind.

  Xavier : Color blind. Okay, so you didn't notice, at all, that everyone on this bus is black except you. Men of African ancestry, so-called black men, decedents of slaves.

  Rick : Well, we're all brothers under the skin, right?

  Randall : Now we're brothers, just because you're on a black bus.

  Rick : Hey, look, I never wore a white sheet over my head, okay. I'm Jewish.

  Randall : God forbid we should think a Jewish person could be a bigot.

  Xavier : My parents were in the civil rights movement. They had black people at our house all the time.

  Randall : Are you getting this, Xavier? They actually had black people at their house.

• Randall : As far as I'm concerned, only two things came out of the civil rights movement anyway. One, black people got a few crumbs. And, two, condescending white people had a right to say that they struggled with us. The only difference is our struggle didn't end with the March on Washington. We're still catching hell.

  Rick : I think my people know a little bit about catching hell, alright. At least my parents did their part.

  Randall : They had a part to do what? To make a difference to appear liberal?

  Rick : Jewish people made a difference in the civil rights movement.

  Randall : As as they got what they wanted, they abandoned it.

  Rick : You know, I don't see black people marching for Jews, Hispanics, or Asians, for that matter. I mean, what do you expect white people to solve all your problems?

  Randall : Some of them aren't marching for us either. And we didn't create our problems. White people created our problems. What - do you think we asked for slavery?

  Rick : We ask for the holocaust? Six million Jews died. Doesn't mean we're going to forget Nazis, Arabs, black anti-semites.

  Randall : What a minute, do you know how many black people died in the slave trade? Over sixty million.

  Randall : I didn't kill any one of them. Nor did my parents. Don't blame us for that.

  Rick : Yeah, it's our fault. And after 400 some odd years of slavery and oppression, with feet on our necks, we're just supposed to fix everything ourselves, right.