The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Tony Shalhoub: Freddy Riedenschneider

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Quotes 

• Reidenschneider : They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can't know the reality of what happened, or what would've happened if you hadn't-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no "what happened"? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds... our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the "Uncertainty Principle". Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy's on to something.

• Reidenschneider : The more you look, the less you really know. It's a fact, a true fact. In a way, it's the only fact there is.

• Reidenschneider : No talking out of school. What's out of school? Everything's out of school. I do the talking. You keep your trap shut. I'm an attorney. You're a barber. You don't know anything.

• Reidenschneider : I litigate. I don't capitulate.

• Reidenschneider : You say he was being blackmailed, by who? You don't know. For having an affair, with who? You don't know. Did anyone else know about it? Probably not, you don't know.

• Reidenschneider : Science. Perception. Reality. Doubt. Reasonable doubt.

• Reidenschneider : Ladies and gentlemen, members of the jury, citizens of Santa Rosa, we've just heard from the district attorney a rather lurid description of a truly despicable man.

  Ed Crane : [voice-over]  I had to hand it to him. He tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I'd lost my place in the universe. How I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be, how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old truth stuff he hadn't had the chance to trot out for Doris.

  Reidenschneider : One may at first look at these lines and see only the chaos of a work of modern art.

  Ed Crane : He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make.

  Reidenschneider : Look closely at him. This human, this barber.

  Ed Crane : That I wasn't the kind of guy to kill a guy, that I was the barber, for Christ's sake. I was just like them, an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not of murder.

  Reidenschneider : But most specifically, this is a barber's dilemma. For he is modern man.

  Ed Crane : He said I was modern man.

  Reidenschneider : He is your reflection.

  Ed Crane : And if they voted to convict me, they'd be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. And then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. Even had me going, until Frankie interrupted it.

• Reidenschneider : You're okay, pal. You're okay, she's okay, everything's gonna be hunky... And the, and the flapjacks, honey.

• Reidenschneider : Call for a Mistrial, your Honour!