# Real Genius

Real Genius is a 1985 comedy about two brilliant students that head a team of young geniuses developing a laser for what they believe is a class project. When they find out that their professor intends to turn their work over to the government for use as a weapon, they decide to ruin his plans.
    Directed by Martha Coolidge and written by Neal Israel, Pat Proft, and Peter Torokvei.

## Chris Knight

* [to Mitch, as he is hanging upside down] Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself? The only thing I can't figure out is how to keep the change in my pockets. I've got it. Nudity.
* Moles and trolls, moles and trolls, work, work, work, work, work. We never see the light of day. We plan this thing for weeks and all they want to do is study. I'm disgusted. I'm sorry but it's not like me, I'm depressed. There was what, no one at the mutant hamster races, we only had one entry into the Madame Curie look-alike contest and he was disqualified later. Why do I bother?
* [to a girl at a party] Don't eat that. Don't you know that eating that can give you very large breasts? [looks down at her chest] Oh my God, I'm too late!
* Do you mind if I name my first child after you? "Dipshit Knight" has a nice ring to it.

## Dialogue

    Mrs. Taylor: Dr. Hathaway, I saw your program on radioactive isotopes last night, and I've got a question.
    Jerry Hathaway: Yes?
    Mrs. Taylor: Is that your real hair?
    Jerry Hathaway: Tell me something. Is Mitch by any chance adopted?
    Mrs. Taylor: Why, no!
    Jerry Hathaway: Amazing.
    Mrs. Taylor: Isn't it?
    Jerry Hathaway: Mitch, will you miss your friends?
    Mitch: Well, no. I think I intimidate other kids.
    Jerry Hathaway: Good boy.
    Chris Knight: You didn't touch anything, did you?
    Mitch: No.
    Chris Knight: Good. Because all of my filth is arranged in alphabetical order. This, for instance, is under 'H' for "toy."
    Mitch: What is that?
    Chris Knight: It's a penis stretcher. Do you want to try it?
    Mitch: No!
    Chris Knight: I'm kidding. It's yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility.
    Mitch: You know, um, something strange happened to me this morning...
    Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
    Mitch: No...
    Chris Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?
    Mitch: Did you know there's a guy living in our closet?
    Chris Knight: You've seen him too?
    Mitch: Who is he?
    Chris Knight: Hollyfeld.
    Mitch: Why does he keep going into our closet?
    Chris Knight: Why do you keep going into our closet?
    Mitch: To get my clothes - but that's not why he goes in there.
    Chris Knight: Of course not, he's twice your size - your clothes would never fit him.
    Mitch: Yeah...
    Chris Knight: Think before you ask these questions, Mitch. Twenty points higher than me? Thinks a big guy like that can wear his clothes?
    [Chris Knight and the recruiter enter a building. Chris is wearing springy antennas on his head.]
    Recruiter: Chris, this is my assistant, Sherry Nugil, and this is Mike Dodd, designer of our new Telcom satellite.
    Chris Knight: [as if honored] Doctor Dodd! [Casually] Telcom...Isn't that the satellite that's raining debris all over Europe?
    Dr. Dodd: [sharply] Why is that toy on your head?
    Chris Knight: [matter-of-factly] Because, if I wear it anywhere else, it chafes.
    [The recruiter and Dr. Dodd look uncertainly at one another]
    Chris Knight: I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't want you guys to think I was stuffy. You know, no fun. [Looking at Sherry Nugil] All brain, no penis. [Sherry laughs, Dodd and the recruiter look uncomfortable] I'm sorry, it was just an infantile response to authority.
    Recruiter: Yes. You are Chris Knight, aren't you? [examines Chris' "visitor" tag]
    Chris Knight: [reflectively] I hope so...I'm wearing his underwear.
    [Discussing how Knight didn't come in to the lab]
    Bodie: He said he didn't feel like it. And I said, "You'd better!" And he said, "Or what?" And I said, "Or you're gonna be in trouble." And he said, "Jam it."
    Jerry Hathaway: That's a wonderful story, Bodie. I noticed you've stopped stuttering.
    Bodie: I've been giving myself shock treatments.
    Jerry Hathaway: Up the voltage.
    Chris Knight: [about Susan] I'm sorry, but have you ever seen a body like this before in your life?
    David Decker: She happens to be my daughter.
    Chris Knight: Oh. Then I guess you have.
    Chris Knight: No seriously, listen...if there's ever anything I can do for you, or more to the point, to you, you let me know, okay?
    Susan Decker: Can you hammer a six inch spike through a board with your penis?
    Chris Knight: Not right now.
    Susan Decker: A girl's got to have her standards.
    Jerry Hathaway: I want five megawatts by mid-May. Look, I don't care if you're arrogant. I don't care if you're disrespectful. But your attitude's distracting Mitch, and that I won't have. The rules have changed. I want it by mid-May.
    Chris Knight: I think that you're just forgetting about one little detail, and that's that I am out of here. I'm gone, I'm history, I'm Casper, I'm graduating.
    Jerry Hathaway: To graduate, you need my course, dear boy. So it seems I have something to say about what you do and where you go. So from now on you and Mitch are going to spend every waking moment in the lab. You will solve my power problem, and you will solve it by my deadline.
    Chris Knight: OK, if you think that by threatening me, you can get me to be your slave, well... that's where you're right, but - and I'm only saying this because I care - there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing.
    Jerry Hathaway: I'm not kidding, Chris.
    Chris Knight: Neither am I, Jerry.
    Mitch: What are you doing?
    Chris Knight: Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"

## Taglines

* When he gets mad, he doesn't get even... he gets creative.
* MEET CHRIS KNIGHT, THE EINSTEIN OF THE '80'S. He can turn the simple into the simply amazing, and now he turns revenge into high comedy.
* It's yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility.

## Cast

* Val Kilmer - Chris Knight
* Gabriel Jarret - Mitch Taylor
* Michelle Meyrink - Jordan Cochran
* William Atherton - Prof. Jerry Hathaway
* Robert Prescott - Kent Torokvei
* Jon Gries - Lazlo Hollyfeld
* Patti D'Arbanville - Sherry Nugil
* Tommy Swerdlow - Bodie
* Mark Kamiyama - 'Ick' Ikagami
* Ed Lauter - David Decker
* Louis Giambalvo - Maj. Carnagle
* Severn Darden - Dr. Meredith
* Stacy Peralta - shuttle pilot
* Beau Billingslea - George
* Joanne Baron - Mrs. Taylor
* Sandy Martin - Mrs. Meredith
* Dean Devlin - Milton
* Yuji Okumoto - Fenton
* Deborah Foreman - Susan Decker

## External links

* Real Genius quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Real Genius at Rotten Tomatoes