Homicide

HOMICIDE (1991)

"Homicide."

"What?"

"Homicide. y'know, it's, you know...."

"What?"

"Y'know. A movie. It's a movie."

"It's a movie."

"That's right."

"What about it?"

"It's a...... It's a movie."

"You fuckin' said that. What about it?"

"It's written and directed by Mamet. By David Mamet. That guy who writes..... who writes like we talk. Only better. Glengarry Glen Ross. Like we talk. We talk like that. Only he's better."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. The way he writes..... it's like, we're talking, but we're also fighting. Or fucking."

"Or fucking fighting."

"Right. Only better. So the way he writes..... it sounds like the way we, the way people, people like us, you know, the way we start and stop, and fuck with each other. You know."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, the way we...... You know. Like that! Just like that! You're fucking with me!"

"I'm fucking with you?"

"Fuck you! You're fucking fucking with me! That's what I'm, see, that's what I'm, just like that, that's it."

"What makes you think I'm fucking with you?"

"Fuck you! Anyway, the movie......"

"Homicide."

"What, did we mention another movie? Yes, Homicide. What movie you think I've been trying to fucking talk about while you've been fucking with me. Homicide. Right."

"....."

"Jesus, are you going to talk about the movie?"

"You know what movie I'm talking about?"

"Fuck, yes! Can we get on with it? Can we just, can't we fucking get on with it before we die of fucking old age. Let's just get on with it. Go on."

"But you know....."

"Yes, I fucking know! Homicide! Homicide! Homicide! Now tell me about Homicide before I fucking kill you!"

"Okay. Okay."

"....."

"Well, it's not good."

"It's not."

"No. It's okay, I guess, in spots. In some spots, it's great."

"But, overall...."

"It's not good. No. In some spots, Jesus, but not good, no. You know when they take the fuckin' holiday fruitcake they can't sell for five bucks and they put in some fancy-ass red and green tin can with a laminated card and they mail it out with a special package for twenty-five fucking bucks, and nobody eats it."

"Because it's fruitcake."

"That's right, it's just fucking fruitcake. People buy it and sell it because it's looks like something special, like it really means something, but it's just fucking fruitcake. Nobody eats that shit."

"They just send it."

"That's right. They just keep it 'til next year and resend it. Twenty fruitcakes in the whole world, just going around and around like fucking Soviet cosmonauts."

"And Homicide's like that."

"It's like that. Like fucking holiday fruitcake. It's just the same old crap. Joe Mantegna's this cop, he's this cop and he's a Jew, but he likes being a cop, well, you know, about as much as he could, and he hates being a Jew."

"Hates it."

"Sure. He hates being a Jew. Because of everything that everyone expects a Jew to act like. You know, all racial."

"Stereotypical. A Jew."

"Sure. And so Mantegna gets stuck with a case that may be a hate crime against an old Jewish woman, and he doesn't want it because he's trying to bust this crook, this guy, it's a big bust, big thing to get this guy, but he's off the case, he's on the Jew thing, and he hates it, because he's off the big thing, and on the Jew thing. And he hates being a Jew."

"Uh huh."

"So then he gets brow-beaten by a lot of other Jews for being skeptical about their insistence that it's a hate crime and not just an attack on an old woman who owns a store in a bad neighborhood. And, of course, everyone on the force is giving him grief, telling him to write it off, but he can't, because the other Jews keep making him feel bad. 'You, you're a Jew, you don't even read Hebrew. Who are you? Who are you if you can't even read Hebrew? You, a Jew, who can't read Hebrew.' and you keep expecting him to say, 'for Christ's sake, lay off, will you, I'm Joe Mantegna. I'm Italian. I'm an Italian actor. I'm an Italian actor playing a Jew. I'm playing a Jew because I'm an actor, but I'm Italian, all right?'"

"So he never says that."

"Well, if he did, they never put it in the movie. Instead, he just keeps acting."

"That Joe Mantegna."

"Yeah. He keeps acting like a cop who hates being a Jew, and he stays on the case because he's being browbeaten."

"So? This doesn't sound so bad. This is no 'Lethal Weapon'."

"It's no 'Lethal Weapon', sure, but it's no 'Serpico', it's no--- you remember those socially aware movies of the 50's, the ones that got everyone blackballed."

"Those----"

"You know, a guy pretends to be a Jew to investigate racism in society, and, boom, society's racist. Big surprise."

"Oh yeah, what was that one called?"

"Don't know, never saw it. My point-- my fucking point--- is that even though you don't know what's anyone's going to say, which keeps it fresh, you totally know at every point what's going to happen, which makes it stale. The worst thing is going to happen. Joe Mantegna gets in touch with his Jewishness but then all the other cops treat him like shit, and then the cabal of old freedom-fighting Jews want him to give them some evidence, and he can't because he's a cop, he's a Jew and a cop, and because he realizes he's both, because he tries to be both, he loses it all. He loses everything. It's just the worst thing that could happen, and it just happens."

"It happens because he tries to be both a Jew and a cop?"

"It happens because David Mamet is a mediocre moviemaker. David Mamet thinks that because his language is fucking beatiful, no one is paying attention to how he's stacking the deck. He's stacking--, you can't stack the deck, and then complain that everyone playing cards is a lousy player. But he stacks the deck against society, and Joe Mantegna, and then when the game goes lousy, he expects us to shake our head against how screwed society is, and how screwed Joe Mantegna is. But it's David Mamet that's walking home with all the money. He's the one that dealt the hand so that no one had any choice. And we can't look at society, or cops, and go "oh, yeah, just like in Homicide," because no one had any choice."

"Because David Mamet stacked the deck."

"He stacked the deck. And all we got was Joe Mantegna and the rest of the cast doing a great job with some great dialogue selling us...."

"Fruitcake."

"Fucking fruitcake. Holiday fruitcake. When you want to convince someone you mean well, but you really can't be bothered to do anything that would take too much effort, you give them fruitcake."

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