Don Baker Quotes in Butterflies Are Free (1972)

Jill: I'm auditioning for a part in a new play with a little theatre group called The Cosmic Workshop. It's about this girl who gets all hung up when she marries a homosexual. Originally he was an alcoholic, but homosexuals are very in now in movies and books and plays, so they changed it.

[pause]

Jill: Are you homosexual?

Don Baker: No, just blind.

Don Baker: Mother, you have to laugh sometime, or people will think you're a lesbian.

Mrs. Baker: [trying to make Don come home] If you insist on staying here, I will not support you.

[Don goes to the phone]

Mrs. Baker: What're you doing?

Don Baker: Calling The Chronicle. What a story! 'Florence Baker Refuses to Help the Handicapped!'

Mrs. Baker: Donnie, I'm serious.

Don Baker: Oh, well, then I'll call the New York Times.

Mrs. Baker: What are you going to do for money? The little you saved must be gone now.

Don Baker: I can always walk along the streets with a tin cup.

Mrs. Baker: Now you're embarrassing me.

Don Baker: Oh, no, I'll stay away from Saks.

Jill: Boy, I thought I was sloppy!

Don Baker: What do you mean?

Jill: Well, unless you know something I don't. Like, ashes are good for the table. Is that why you keep dropping them on there?

Don Baker: Have you moved the ashtray?

Jill: It's right here, what're ya blind?

Don Baker: Yes.

Jill: What do you mean, yes?

Don Baker: I mean, yes, I'm blind.

Don Baker: I could love you if you'd let me.

Don Baker: [phone rings] I'm fine, thank you. How are you? It's warm here. How is it in Hillsborough? Well, it's warm here too.

[picks up phone]

Don Baker: Hello, Mother.

Mrs. Baker: [on the other end] How did you know?

Don Baker: When you call, the phone doesn't ring. It says 'M is for the million things she gave me. O is for... ' I forgot what O is for.

Mrs. Baker: You seem to have forgotten a lot of things lately. How are you feeling?

Don Baker: I'm fine, thank you. How are you?

Mrs. Baker: Very well. How's the weather?

Don Baker: It's warm here. How is it in Hillsborough?

Mrs. Baker: Warm.

Don Baker: Well, it's warm here too.

Mrs. Baker: [looking around Don's apartment] Where did this furniture come from?

Don Baker: Some of it came with the apartment, the rest I picked up at a junk shop.

Mrs. Baker: Well, don't tell me which is which, let me guess.

Mrs. Baker: And what is that on your head?

Don Baker: [wearing the hat he bought with Jill] French foreign legion cap.

Mrs. Baker: Oh, have you enlisted?

Don Baker: No, I was drafted.

Don Baker: [when Jill says she's moving in with Ralph] Tell me, Jill, with Ralph, is it like the Fourth of July and like Christmas?

Jill: Not exactly. He has a kind of... strength. With him it's more like Labor Day.

Don Baker: Well hate me! Or love me! But don't leave because I'm blind... and don't stay because I'm blind.

Don Baker: Shh... i'm counting so I don't step in the picnic on the way back!

Don Baker: I don't want you talking to my friends when i'm not around.

Mrs. Baker: I'll make a note of that.

Don Baker: [sings] I knew the day you met me, I could love you if you'd let me, Though you touched my cheek and said how easy you'd forget me. You said: butterflies are free, and so are we.

Don Baker: [to mod shopkeeper, after picking out some clothes] Do you have any dirty books?

Roy Stratton: [startled] No.

Don Baker: Aww, too bad: that's the only thing they don't publish in Braille.

Jill: Is blindness hereditary?

Don Baker: I never heard that.

Jill: Can your father see?

Don Baker: I doubt it. He's been dead for six years. Up till then he didn't have any trouble though.

[Don and Mrs. Baker are arguing over his decision to support himself as a singer]

Mrs. Baker: May I ask how you arrived at this brilliant decision?

Don Baker: It was elementary, my dear mother - by the process of elimination. I made a lengthy list of all the things I couldn't do... like commercial pilot. I don't think TWA would be too thrilled to have me fly their planes... nor United... nor Pan Am. Photographer? A definite out, along with ball player and cab driver. Matador didn't strike me as too promising. I half-considered becoming an eye doctor, but that would just be a case of the blind leading the blind.