Josh Neff Quotes in The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Josh Neff: Disco will never be over. It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this, that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die. Oh, for a few years - maybe many years - it'll be considered passé and ridiculous. It will be misrepresented and caricatured and sneered at, or - worse - completely ignored. People will laugh about John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, white polyester suits and platform shoes and people going like *this*

[strikes disco pose]

Josh Neff: , but we had nothing to do with those things and still loved disco. Those who didn't understand will never understand: disco was much more, and much better, than all that. Disco was too great, and too much fun, to be gone forever! It's got to come back someday. I just hope it will be in our own lifetimes.

[Des, Charlotte, Dan, and Van stare at Josh like he's crazy]

Josh Neff: ...Sorry, I've got a job interview this afternoon and I was just trying to get revved up, but... most of what I said, I, um... believe.

Jimmy: There's something deeply ingrained in human biology: women prefer bad over weak and indecisive... and unemployed

Josh Neff: I don't know about that.

Jimmy: You think they do prefer weak, indecisive, and unemployed?

[Josh describes Lady and the Tramp]

Josh Neff: [referring to Lady and the Tramp] There is something depressing about it, and it's not really about dogs. Except for some superficial bow-wow stuff at the start, the dogs all represent human types, which is where it gets into real trouble. Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy blond Cocker Spaniel with absolutely nothing on her brain. She's great-looking, but - let's be honest - incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest, is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind - an oily jailbird out for a piece of tail, or... whatever he can get.

Charlotte Pingress: Oh, come on.

Josh Neff: No, he's a self-confessed chicken thief, and all-around sleazeball. What's the function of a film of this kind? Essentially as a primer on love and marriage directed at very young people, imprinting on their little psyches the idea that smooth-talking delinquents recently escaped from the local pound are a good match for nice girls from sheltered homes. When in ten years the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house, their hormones will be racing and no one will understand why. Films like this program women to adore jerks.

Josh Neff: Take The Tortoise and the Hare. Okay, the tortoise won one race. Do you think that hare is really going to lose any more races to turtles? Not on your life.

Alice Kinnon: I like that tortoise.

Josh Neff: So do I. But if you were a betting person, would you say, "That tortoise won against the hare; in future races I'm backing him"? No. That race was almost certainly a fluke and afterwards the tortoise is still a tortoise, and the hare a hare.

Josh Neff: A lot of people like to say they won't take no for an answer. I just wanted you to know that I'm not one of them; I can be easily discouraged. I *will* take no for an answer.

Alice Kinnon: Okay. No.

Josh Neff: You don't mean that?

Alice Kinnon: No.

[Smiles]

Josh Neff: Book this clown.

Jimmy: Hey, how you been?

Alice Kinnon: Fine. How are you?

Josh Neff: [Jimmy doesn't answer] He's really depressed.

Charlotte Pingress: Oh, isn't this place great!

Josh Neff: Its fantastic! I love it.

Josh Neff: I was just starting law school when the first uptempo Philadelphia International hits broke out. Some people don't consider that disco because its good. But, I remember feeling absolutely - electrified.

Tom Platt: You feel electrified often.

Josh Neff: No, but this was different. I love the idea that there'd be all these great places for people to go dancing after the terrible social wasteland of our college years.

Tom Platt: You've been to a lot of discos?

Josh Neff: No. In fact, practically none. For me, law school wasn't easy and I haven't had much of a social life since coming to the City, either. But, I still consider myself a loyal adherent to the disco movement.

Tom Platt: It's a movement?

Josh Neff: [to Des] I couldn't believe you'd be involved in the kind of things that have been going on here and told them so. I consider you a person of some integrity, except, you know, in your relations with women.

Josh Neff: I don't think people really change that way. We can change our context, but, we can't change ourselves.

Van: The new owners couldn't make it work. They had to hire people to stand outside and pretend that they couldn't get in. Anyway, disco's over, it's dead.

Josh Neff: What do you mean?

Van: Well, people just don't go out like they used to. They're tired. Some are sick, strung out. Its not just the prosecutions and all the owners that Bernie squealed on.

Charlotte Pingress: Could part of it be related to the herpes epidemic?

Van: Maybe. I've got a friend at Casablanca Records and Tapes and she said that like two months ago the bottom dropped out of all disco record sales. Suddenly, it's - dead. Over.

Josh Neff: God, it's sad.

Des McGrath: We're getting older. We've lived through a period that's ended. It's like dying a little bit.