Charlie Chaplin Quotes in Shanghai Knights (2003)

Charlie Chaplin: [reading an invitation] "Lord Nelson Rathbone requests the pleasure of your company at a gala affair celebrating her Majesty's 50th year on the throne."

Chon Wang: Sounds good.

Roy: Yeah, it doesn't address the issue of security. They're not just gonna let me and Chon waltz into the castle.

Charlie Chaplin: All you need is a proper disguise.

Roy: I do like a good disguise...

Charlie Chaplin: I'm just lookin' out for number one.

Charlie Chaplin: Did you just take the last Chocolate?

Roy: Of course I did. You gotta look out for number one, kid.

Roy: Why did you let us out?

Charlie Chaplin: Why did you give up the seal?

Roy: Because I'm a fool.

Charlie Chaplin: I guess I'm a fool, too.

German Diplomat: [offering his hand] Mr. Chaplin! I am a great admirer of yours.

Charlie Chaplin: I'm sorry, I prefer not to shake hands with Nazis.

German Diplomat: [laughs nervously] What have you got against us, Mr. Chaplin, hm?

Charlie Chaplin: What have you got against everybody else?

Charlie Chaplin: Syd, I love this country. I owe it everything. That's why I *can* make fun of it!

Charlie Chaplin: The tramp can't talk. The minute he talks, he's dead.

[after telling an obviously made-up story of how he created the Little Tramp characters]

George Hayden: That's bullshit, and you know it.

Charlie Chaplin: But the truth is so boring, George!

[Chaplin tells Sennett he intends to leave Sennett's employ and open his own studio]

Mack Sennett: Charlie, I've been so rotten to you. I don't know if you can forgive me. I forced you to leave Butte, Montana. I made you accept a hundred and fifty per. You mentioned directing and I stuffed that down your throat too. Now tell me how else Uncle Mack can make it up to you!

Charlie Chaplin: I want to run my own show, Mack.

Mack Sennett: Don't kid yourself, Chaplin. You're not that big.

[spits on the floor, missing the spitoon]

Charlie Chaplin: That's the first time I've ever seen you miss, Mack.

Charlie Chaplin: If you want to understand me, watch my movies.

[about Hetty Kelly]

George Hayden: But you didn't even kiss her!

Charlie Chaplin: Don't you think I know that?

Douglas Fairbanks: Charles, you're a foreigner; you're still an outsider. You've never understood this country.

Charlie Chaplin: It's a good country underneath, Doug.

Douglas Fairbanks: No, it's a good country on *top*. Underneath, that's what starts showing when we're scared.

Charlie Chaplin: [noticing a pretty girl at the opposite side of a restaurant aisle] Excuse me Miss, do you always eat alone?

Edna Purviance: Only when I'm trying to make a new acquaintance. Actually I'm waiting for my girlfriend.

Charlie Chaplin: Actually I'm a motion picture director, and I'm forming a new company with Bronco Billy over there.

Edna Purviance: And you're looking for a new leading lady. Lucky me.

Charlie Chaplin: Obviously you are an actress, Miss...

Edna Purviance: Purviance. Sorry, just a secretary.

Charlie Chaplin: Don't be sorry. I'm auditioning for actresses who aren't actresses.

Edna Purviance: Well, if you're on the lookout for untalented actresses who aren't actresses, then you couldn't do better than me.

[correcting]

Edna Purviance: Worse than me.

Charlie Chaplin: [getting up after being called over by Sydney] Don't you want to know who I am?

Edna Purviance: I've no interest whatsoever in who you are

[pauses, Chaplin starts moving away]

Edna Purviance: Mr. Chaplin.

Fred Karno: [on the train; remembering Charlie's early days in the theatre] You took a tail suit out of the wardrobe, tryin' to be a gent. Trying to impress that young dancer... Hetty, wasn't that 'er name?

Charlie Chaplin: Hetty Kelly.

Fred Karno: Yeah, I could see in your eyes you fancied her.

[chuckles to himself]

Fred Karno: Hmm. Sad.

Charlie Chaplin: Yes, I know all about it, Fred. She got married. Sent me a lovely note. I brought it with me; it's in my baggage.

Fred Karno: [looking worried] Oh, Charlie, Charlie. Charlie, don't you know? Has nobody told you? She's gone. The flu epidemic after the war carried her away.

[Charlie reels, unable to speak]

Fred Karno: I thought someone must have told you, must have written. Didn't nobody?

[Charlie leaves the compartment and goes into the corridor, leaning against the wall and trying to collect himself]

Stan Laurel: [following him and fixing his tie] What do we do, Charlie?

Charlie Chaplin: [sadly] Smile.

[they exit the train and are immediately swarmed by a crowd of fans]

Paulette: Did you lose your other wives this way?

Charlie Chaplin: I think so. But you'd have to ask them.

Sydney Chaplin: Nobody wants to see a movie about Adolf fucking Hitler.

Charlie Chaplin: [shouts] I do!

[with one hand throws a chair down the aisle, again fiercely shouts]

Charlie Chaplin: I do!

Charlie Chaplin: [leaving a screening of one of his movies during the Depression, Chaplin and his wife are surrounded by homeless people. They ask for his autograph and he obliges them. As they leave, he sighes] I wish they'd asked me for my money.

George Hayden: My Charlie, you weren't even thirty. You was the most famous man in the world, with your own studio, named after you. Couldn't you just enjoy it?

Charlie Chaplin: I can now, but couldn't then. It meant too much.

Sydney Chaplin: [Charlie is playing the violin] Alright Sonny boy, tell your poor little brother today's problem.

Charlie Chaplin: Same as the day before, and the day before that and the day before that.

Sydney Chaplin: And the day before that, and the day before that.

Charlie Chaplin: Alright you're so creative, you work it out! The tramp buys a flower from the girl, in order for the plot to work, she has to think he's rich. That's all, except if you're aware of it, the flower girl is blind. I don't know how to make the girl mistake the tramp for a millionaire.

Charlie Chaplin: That's not what dogged me, George. It wasn't that.

Charlie Chaplin: It was... it was the knowledge that if you did what I did for a living-if you were a clown-and you had a passion to tell a particular kind of story... something... beyond... but you only had the one chance to get it right. And I never did.

Charlie Chaplin: One never does, but, uh, you know that. That's not... the problem. It's when you feel you're getting really close... but you can't make it the rest of the way. You're not good enough. You're not complete enough. And despite all your fantasies you're second rate.

George Hayden: Charlie.

Charlie Chaplin: Human. That's very hard.

Douglas Fairbanks: Say, are you two still married or what? I find it all very confusing.

Charlie Chaplin: Mmm... it's not at all confusing. You see, when everyone thought we were having an affair, we were married. Now that everyone realizes we're married, we're getting divorced.

Douglas Fairbanks: Man's a wizard with women. No question about it.

Charlie Chaplin: Nothing quite like it. The feeling of film.

J. Edgar Hoover: I sometimes wonder if you people realize the responsibility you carry. To my way of thinking, motion pictures are potentially the most influential form of communication ever invented. And there's no control over them. Your message reaches everyone, everywhere.

Mary Pickford: Message?

J. Edgar Hoover: Of course. Mr. Chaplin here reaches millions who only have to see. And when they see a mockery being made of our immigration services, I'd call that a message.

Charlie Chaplin: Yes, well, as you've already said, Mr. Hoover, motion pictures are for the people. Most of the people work for a living, and they don't make much money doing it. It gives them pleasure to see officialdom and the upper classes getting a kick up the backside. Always has, and it always will. And if that can change things, so much the better.

[to Mary Pickford, in a better pronounced, less cockney voice]

Charlie Chaplin: Bet-ter.

Mary Pickford: He's improving.

Charlie Chaplin: [after watching newsreel footage of Adolf Hitler to study Hitler's mannerisms and patterns of speech, in preparation for "The Great Dictator"] I know you... you bastard!

[first lines]

George Hayden: Ha ha ha ha ha. Come on Charlie stop messing about, we really have to get down to it now. I just hope our friendship survives the day, that's all.

Charlie Chaplin: Ha George, don't be so melodramatic.

George Hayden: Well, it's your autobiography Charlie. And as your editor I have to tell you that parts of the manuscript are pretty vague, to say the least. I mean for instance, your mother. Now when did she first lose control? We need to know those facts.

Charlie Chaplin: It's hard to say. She could be so wonderful, on good days...

Charlie Chaplin: Actress?

Paulette: You know what?

Charlie Chaplin: hum?

Paulette: I've always had that gift.

Paulette: After a man makes love to me, he just goes wild from happiness.

Charlie Chaplin: I am happy.

Paulette: Then tell me when you get sad, because I don't want to be around.

[Chaplin enters a London pub. Immediately, he is recognised]

Ted the Drunk: Well! Here's someone who's had a good war!

Working Man: Yeah, didn't see him in the bleedin' army!

Ted the Drunk: Come to stare at the animals, Charlie?

Working Man: Oh, go and sit down, Ted, and give your mouth a rest!

Charlie Chaplin: I just came in for a quiet drink. Here, have one on me.

Ted the Drunk: You have one on me, Mr. Charlie fucking Chaplin!

[he throws his drink at him, Chaplin dodges it]

Marion Davies: Nothing can happen this weekend.

Charlie Chaplin: So what are you doing next weekend?

Charlie Chaplin: Did you really believe I would stay away?

Marion Davies: No, but you should really believe I didn't want you here.

Thomas Ince: Anyhow, failure is a character builder, right Charlie?

Charlie Chaplin: I don't know, Tom. You tell me.

Charlie Chaplin: If you were starving and you had no food, would you eat your shoe?

Marion Davies: What?

Charlie Chaplin: Your shoe. Would you eat it?

Marion Davies: Um, of course I would.

Charlie Chaplin: You would?

Marion Davies: I'd have to boil it first.

Charlie Chaplin: *That's* funny.

Charlie Chaplin: [Looking at the note] Yeah, but I didn't get Thomas Ince's blood on it!