# The Goodbye Girl

The Goodbye Girl is a 1977 film about an actor who sublets an apartment which already contains a divorcée and her daughter. The three must learn to live together despite rubbing each other the wrong way.
    Directed by Herbert Ross. Written by Neil Simon.

## Elliot Garfield

* I play the guitar whenever I cannot sleep, and I meditate every morning, complete with chanting and burning incense, so if you have to walk around I'd appreciate a little tiptoeing. Also: I sleep in the nude. "Au buffo." Winter and summer, rain or snow, with the windows open. And because I may have to go to the potty or to the fridge in the middle of the night, and because I do not want to put on jammies which I do not own in the first place, unless you're looking for a quick thrill or your daughter an advanced education I'd keep my door closed.
* I will bring home anyone or anything I chose including a one-eyed Episcopalian Kangaroo if that happens to be my kinky inclination.
** after being told not to bring any female guests into the apartment
* If you were a Broadway musical, people would be humming your face.
* "It never occurred to us that William Shakespeare wrote the Wizard of Oz. However, Elliot Garfield makes a splendid Wicked Witch of the North." Tacky. Tacky. Well, if they're gonna kill me. Let 'em kill me with panache.
** reading a review of his disastrous Richard III performance
* Miss McFadden, today I begin rehearsals for my first New York play. It will be the most important day of my life. Am I nervous? No, I am not nervous. For I have meditated. I am relaxed. I am calm. I am confident. You, on the other hand, have not meditated, and therefore you are a pain in the ass.
* My careereth is over. I am making a horseth asseth of myselfeth. Mark, I'm begging you. I'm BEGGING you. You want this kind of performance? Let me play Lady Anne.
** during a rehearsal of Richard III in which his director has made him play the title character as a flamboyant homosexual
* What is it about you that makes a man with a hundred forty-seven I.Q. feel like a dribbling idiot?
* You know I liked you from the first time I met you when you answered the door. I said to myself, "This is the best half-a-face I ever saw!"
* You know I love listening to you talk. I hate living with you but your conversation is first rate.
* You're not the only one who can yell rape, you know.

## Dialogue

    Elliot Garfield: I happen to have a lease in my pocket. Are you gonna honor it or what?
    Paula McFadden: I have a daughter in my bedroom. That tops the lease in your pocket.
    Paula McFadden: I thought you said you were decent.
    Elliot Garfield: I am decent. I also happen to be naked.
    Lucy McFadden: [upon awaking at dawn to Elliot's chanting] What's that?
    Paula McFadden: Sounds like God.
    Lucy McFadden: I smell strawberries burning.
    Paula McFadden: That's incense.
    Lucy McFadden: What's incense?
    Paula McFadden: It is what I am feeling right now.
    Lucy McFadden: [after Elliot's play flops] Congratulations!
    Elliot Garfield: For what?
    Lucy McFadden: I didn't know what else to say.
    Elliot Garfield: [after hearing that his play has closed] That's okay. Now I'm free to take that other job.
    Lucy McFadden: What other job?
    Elliot Garfield: I'm looking, I'm looking!

## Taglines

* Thank you Neil Simon for making us laugh at falling in love…again.

## Cast

* Richard Dreyfuss - Elliott Garfield
* Marsha Mason - Paula McFadden
* Quinn Cummings - Lucy McFadden
* Paul Benedict - Mark
* Barbara Rhoades - Donna
* Theresa Merritt - Mrs. Crosby
* Michael Shawn - Ronnie
* Patricia Pearcy - Rhonda

## External links

* The Goodbye Girl quotes at the Internet Movie Database