Amber Atkins Quotes in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Amber Atkins: My mom never hid the fact that my dad chose his career over us. What was it she always said?

Loretta: Once a carnie, always a carnie.

Amber Atkins: Mom still cries every time she sees a tilt-a-whirl or a fat lady in a tube top.

Amber Atkins: Loretta, never have kids.

Loretta: Oh, honey, God bless ya for thinking I still could.

Amber Atkins: [as Annette is being driven away in an ambulance] Mom! I'll be right behind you in the hearse!

Loretta: Don't let that worry you Annette!

Amber Atkins: Yah, my ma's clothes all melted onto mine forming, like, this big polyester meteor in our closet, y'know? But, in some kinda weird miracle, our neighbor boy, Kenny Hanson, found my tap costume on the roof o' their trailer while he was settin' coon traps for his dad. Here's the weird part: it was still on the hanger.

[Amber is being filmed in her bedroom in her trailer. Annette is heard coughing]

Amber Atkins: That's my mom.

Annette Atkins: [from outside] Hey, Amber, did ya get my smokes?

Amber Atkins: Oh, yah, I'll get 'em in a sec.

Annette Atkins: [walks in and sees the camera crew] Aw, shit.

Amber Atkins: Oh, they're from Los Angeles. They wanted to see my room and film me for their movie.

Annette Atkins: Yah, well, if they ask you to take your top off, get the money first.

[she leaves the room]

Annette Atkins: And go get my smokes!

Amber Atkins: [Running onto the scene of her and her mom's blown up trailer home] Mom? MOM?

Fireman: Whoa, whoa, whoa... you family?

Loretta: No, she's just yelling, "Mom, mom," because she has Tourettes! She's Annette's kid dipshit.

Loretta: What is wrong with you?

Amber Atkins: I don't know. I just didn't wanna win like this.

Loretta: You stop right there. You are a good person. Good things happen to good people.

Amber Atkins: Really?

Loretta: No. It's pure bullshit, sweetie. You're lucky as hell, so you might as well enjoy it.

Amber Atkins: Okay.

Loretta: Do you guys want some shots? I'm buyin'!

Amber Atkins: [shaken after seeing her mom in the hospital] Ummm. I'm quitting the pagent.

Loretta: [grabbing and shaking Amber] You're WHAT?

Amber Atkins: I'm quitting the...

Loretta: I heard you! I was just trying to get you to change your mind. Amber, the woman clung to your tap shoes while she was flying through the air like a goddamn lawn dart!

Annette Atkins: I wish my mom was here.

Loretta: You can wave Hi, Annette you hear that?

[Amber waves at the camera]

Amber Atkins: Hi, Monkey.

[Annette waves up to the TV]

Loretta: I got some

[she starts laughing]

Amber Atkins: [Annette laughs again and sticks her thumb up at the TV]

Iris Clark: Amber, I'm sorry, I really am, but you know the rules. All talent costumes have to be OK'd by Gladys before the pageant.

Amber Atkins: But doesn't someone taking your costume so you can't complete overrule that rule?

Iris Clark: Amber, I'm sorry, I don't make up the rules.

Amber Atkins: Oh! This... This is bullshit!

Iris Clark: Amber Atkins, that is not American Teen Princess language!

Amber Atkins: Good, cos this isn't an American Teen Princess Pageant! This is... This is... This is Nazi Germany!

[she storms off]

Iris Clark: [to the camera] Where do they get this stuff?

[the documentary crew are filming the reigning local pageant winner, a hospitalized anorexic girl. Amber is doing her hair]

Becky Ann Leeman: [entering with a box of chocolates] What? Oh my God, lights, camera and me without a stitch of makeup on! What are you guys doing here?

Amber Atkins: What are you doing here?

Becky Ann Leeman: Oh, Amber, like you're the only one who visits Mary.

Mary Johanson: Who are you?

Becky Ann Leeman: Who are you? Oh, Mary, you kill me!

[to the camera]

Becky Ann Leeman: She always says that, it's a little game we play, every week, same dippy little look on her face, "Who are you? Who are you?" Just like that. It's me, Becky. Mmmm, and I brought your favourites.

[she gives her the box of chocolates]

Amber Atkins: Real nice, Becky, she's anorexic.

Becky Ann Leeman: [covering Mary's ears] She's skinny, Amber, not deaf.

Cop #1: Oh yah, hell of a way to go there. After some thorough investigating we determined that the Curry girl must have been smoking and driving.

[cut to Amber working in the funeral home]

Amber Atkins: Well yah, Tammy liked to drive her dad's thresher, but I mean... I mean she said the heavy vibration helped her think. But I know for a fact Tammy only smoked AFTER a good drive. You ask me, or anyone who isn't scared to talk about it, Tammy was murdered. Oh God, I bet Diane Sawyer never had to deal with crap like this.

Amber Atkins: Oh yeah. Guys get out of Mount Rose all the time on hockey scholarships... or prison.

Amber Atkins: [crying after her tap costume disappears] I just wanted to compete.

Lisa Swenson: I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe she said...

[thinks for a moment than takes her jacket off]

Lisa Swenson: Amber, here, my jacket, take it, cos you know I know I got my costume OK'd a month ago before the pageant, you can wear it! Come on, put it on, here...

Michelle Johnson: Oh wow... Lisa, I don't think you should do this.

Leslie Miller: They're never gonna let you perform naked. I asked.

Lisa Swenson: Shut up, you guys.

Amber Atkins: No...

Lisa Swenson: Amber, I'm not gonna to win. OK? And let's be honest our family only needs one Liza and and Peter's got much better legs than me

Amber Atkins: Your parents'll kill ya.

Lisa Swenson: Come on, I love 'em... And you know that they only had me cos Peter needed that kidney.

Amber Atkins: I don't eat shellfish. Mom always says, "Don't ever eat nothin' that can carry its house around with it. Who knows the last time it's been cleaned." She should know.

Terry Macey: And you are...

Amber Atkins: Mount Rose American Teen Princess.

Terry Macey: Funny, you don't look dead!

Lars Larson: Amber, I need Stella now. The family's steaming like a cowpie in July. Said she doesn't look nothing like the picture they gave you.

Amber Atkins: Sorry, I just thought she might not want to meet her maker looking like a cheap whore.

Lars Larson: Well, this cheap whore is that family's loving mother.

Lars Larson: Amber!

Amber Atkins: [while working on Brett's corpse] If it's another stray bullet to the head, I'm gonna need more caps.

Lars Larson: You have to go home. There's some kind of emergency at the trailer park.

Amber Atkins: Relax, that's my ma's code for bring home milk and a carton of Lucky's.

Lars Larson: No, Loretta called; there's been a fire!

[during the pageant interview]

Harold Vilmes: Are you Amber Atkins?

Amber Atkins: [smiling] Yes, yes I am. Thank you. Hello.

Harold Vilmes: [checking his clipboard] Name and spell all the United States in alphabetical order.

Amber Atkins: Seriously?

Amber Atkins: Hi. I'm Amber Atkins, and I'm signing up cause uh my two favorite people in the whole world competed in pageants: my mom and Diane Sawyer... Course, I hope I end up a little more like Diane Sawyer than my mom.

Annette Atkins: [Annette thinks Amber is pregnant] Honey, honey, come talk to Mommy. I promise, whatever it is, I won't be mad.

Amber Atkins: Okay, I'm quitting the pageant.

Annette Atkins: [grabs Amber by the shirt and begins hitting her with a beer can] What?

[to the documentary crew]

Annette Atkins: Oh, could you excuse us for a moment? Loretta, take the guys outside, please. Now, sit your skinny little ass down!

Loretta: [referencing a pageant dress] Your ma did want you to have this, though, since your other one got toasted an all.

Amber Atkins: Oh, my God! It's just like Diane Sawyer's!

Loretta: Yah?

Amber Atkins: Oh! Of course it's not a size 10. Diane was little hippy then.

Loretta: Not our girl.

Amber Atkins: Oh, no.

Female Reporter #2: Amber, how do you feel?

Amber Atkins: Well, I feel like I need to take a shower.

[everyone laughs]

Female Reporter #2: Honey, is this the best day of your life?

Amber Atkins: Yeah... I wish my mom was here, though.

Loretta: You can wave hi, say hi to her!

Amber Atkins: Hi mom!

Loretta: Hey!

[they both wave to the camera]

Annette Atkins: [sitting in her hospital room] Hi, monkey!

Loretta: I got some!

Brett Clemmens: [Becky has noticed Brett gawping at Amber, who's working in the cafeteria, so she's dropped her lunch tray in the basin, splattering Amber] Oh man... you got some lutefisk in your hair.

Amber Atkins: [cheerfully] Then it must be Wednesday.

[cutaway to Mount Rose American Teen Princess 1945, doing her librarian job]

Iona Hildebrandt: Lutefisk is codfish that's been salted and soaked in lye for a week or so. It's best with lots of butter.

Amber Atkins: [being startled by the documentary crew] Oh, my God! Jesus Christ on a cross! Look, number one rule in a funeral home: never sneak up on the living. You never know who might have an enbalming needle or a skull saw in their hand. Mr. Larson's son learned the hard way. He's buried next to my grandpa.