# Soapdish

Soapdish is a 1991 comedy film about an ambitious television soap actress who connives with her producer to scuttle the career of the show's long-time star, but nothing works as they plan.
    Directed by Michael Hoffman. Written by Robert Harling and Andrew Bergman.

## Rose Schwartz

* Actors don't like to play coma. They feel it limits their range.

## Edmund Edwards

* I would like to voice my strong concern about this show's spiraling decline in ratings. David, ever since you took us to the Caribbean, it's been Jamaica homeless people sucking soup, and a big wave outside that cost a hundred thousand dollars. That's depressing and it's expensive, two words I hate. You know the words I like? I like the word "peppy" and the word "cheap". Peppy and cheap.

## Dialogue

    Celeste Talbert: [accepting an award] Ohhh, there's so many people to thank. First of all, my fabulous supporting cast, who gives a new meaning to the word "support"...
    [At their table]
    Ariel Maloney: Bitch!
    David Barnes: Hag!
    Montana Moorehead: I hate her so much!
    Lori Craven: Hi. Uh, I'm Lori Craven and... I'm an actress.
    Betsy Faye Sharon: An actress! Really! How nice for you! I'm Betsy Faye Sharon and I'm a bitch. Now get out of here.
    Edmund Edwards: [about Lori] She's been through hell, and we're her family. So in this crisis, we have to support her.
    Rose Schwartz: Yeah.
    Edmund Edwards: We have to love her.
    Rose Schwartz: Mmm.
    Edmund Edwards: We have to care about her.
    Rose Schwartz: Mmm.
    Edmund Edwards: And we have to milk it for every drop of publicity we can get.
    Betsy Faye Sharon: Very, very good, Mark. And very true. I love what you're doing. I just, I think if we could try it one more time, and this time... I don't know... maybe try one without your shirt.
    Mark: Sure.
    [Removes it and reviews the script]
    Mark: "Will you be having wine with dinner?"
    Betsy Faye Sharon: [lustily] I think we've found our waiter!
    Ariel Maloney: New boy in town?
    Jeffrey Anderson: Just got off the choo-choo... you have lovely eyes.
    Ariel Maloney: They're nothing compared to my tits! You should come up and see them sometime.
    Jeffrey Anderson: Of course I can kiss her!
    Lori Craven: This is ridiculous! I can kiss who I want!
    Celeste Talbert: No! You can't! You can't kiss her!
    Jeffrey Anderson: Why because she's your niece?
    Celeste Talbert: [shouts] No, you nitwit! Because she's my daughter! And your daughter.
    Lori Craven: What?
    Jeffrey Anderson: What are you talking about?
    Celeste Talbert: We're her parents! You and I! [sobbing] We're her Mommy and her Daddy.
    Celeste Talbert: [sobbing] I got pregnant, and I was so young! And the show made me sign a paper saying I'd never mention the baby! So I went home to Iowa, and I had you, and I gave you to Grandma to raise, and I made up a twin sister Simone who died in a car wreck and said she was your actual mom. And then the show told everyone I had TB and sent my character to a sanitarium in Tierra del Fuego...
    Rose: [to herself] Now why can't I write shit like this?
    Celeste Talbert: [sobbing] And now you're back, and I've ruined three lives! Three lives! Me, America's Sweetheart! [sobbing louder] Oh, God...!
    David Barnes: [checks that the cameras are still rolling] This is fucking great!
    Lori Craven: [bursting into David's office] We need to talk. Look, I don't care WHAT Tawny Miller says. This hat makes me look like the GOD damned Tweety Bird. [to Montana] Do you mind?
    Montana Moorehead: You, you're asking me to leave?
    Lori Craven: That's right. I'm asking you to leave.
    Montana Moorehead: David...
    David Barnes: Miss Moorehead, may Miss Craven and I have a moment alone, please?
    Montana Moorehead: No problem. I'm a professional. I do things professionally. [storms out] I hate you! I hate you, you pig!
    David Barnes: She's got a lot of spirit.
    Lori Craven: She's a deranged bitch!
    David Barnes: I was under orders.
    Celeste Talbert: So - was - Hitler! Oh, no, I don't mean Hitler, I mean the other guy, the other one.
    David Barnes: Himmler.
    Celeste Talbert: No, no, no.
    David Barnes: Hess.
    Rose Schwartz: Eichmann.
    David Barnes: Eichmann.
    Celeste Talbert: I never said I was the best mother in the world. Give me a little credit, will you, credit for being someone who tried... to love you the only way she knew how?
    Lori Craven: I know that speech.
    Celeste Talbert: You do?
    Lori Craven: Yeah, it was the, uh, the Thanksgiving show, when Maggie meets Bolt's blind nephew.
    [Reading unrehearsed lines off the TelePrompTer]
    Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Dr. Randall, what a surprise! Are you having lunch here?
    Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] I will if it's that sample. Huh... I wish it was that simple.
    Edmund Edwards: [offstage] This guy never heard of contact lenses?
    Jeffrey Anderson: The test results have come back.
    Celeste Talbert: And?
    Jeffrey Anderson: And I'm afraid the results are very disturbing. It seems that Angelique has a rare case of brake fluid... [pause] Bran... fluid. Bran flavor.
    Burton White: What the hell?
    David Barnes: [offstage] Brain fever!
    Edmund Edwards: [offstage, loudly] Say it!
    Celeste Talbert: Brain fever!
    Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Yes. Brain fever. Or what we call in Austria... [they both goggle at the word] Kopfgeschlagen. At the current rate of inflation, her brain will laterally explore the...
    Celeste Talbert: Literally explode?
    Jeffrey Anderson: Exactly, within the next three houses.
    Celeste Talbert: Hours?
    Jeffrey Anderson: Yes, will literally explode within next three hours. I would suggest leaving the restraint.
    Celeste Talbert: Restaurant?
    Jeffrey Anderson: Restaurant, yes.
    Celeste Talbert: Her brain will actually explode?
    Jeffrey Anderson: Yes, yes, I've, um, seen it happen. It's a dreadful, dreadful thug. Thing.
    [Jeffrey is about to prepare the brain transplant]
    Lori Craven: MOTHER!
    [Celeste sits up]
    Lori Craven: No, I can't let you do this!
    Burton White: [off stage] She spoke?
    Jeffrey Anderson: She spoke!
    Montana Moorehead: Sudden speech, the last stages of brain fever! She can blow up any moment!
    Lori Craven: I can always speak! Mother...
    Montana Moorehead: She's MY mother!
    Celeste Talbert: MONTANA, SHUT UP!
    Montana Moorehead: [as Lori, Celeste, And Jeffrey kiss and make up] WAIT! Wait! But I'm carrying his child!
    Jeffrey Anderson: I didn't sleep with her! Will somebody please believe me?!
    Edmund Edwards: [offstage, delighted] This is what I meant. This is what I told them to do. This is soap opera!
    [Ariel and Rose enter as doctors]
    Jeffrey Anderson: Doctor!
    Ariel Maloney: A second opinion... this is Dr. Frans Blau of the sex change clinic in Bethesda, Maryland.
    Rose Schwartz: [German accent] Thank you. Dr. Randall, after extensive investigation, I've come to the conclusion that it's virtually impossible for you to have impregnated your nurse, Montana Moorehead. Because before she came to our little clinic, she was... Milton Moorehead of Syosset, Long Island.
    [Rose opens the high school yearbook showing Montana's teenage boy photo]
    Rose Schwartz: [normal voice] Hello.
    Montana Moorehead: [shouts and runs off] NO! NO! NO!
    Edmund Edwards: [offstage] She's a boy!
    [long, incredulous pause]
    David Barnes: Yeah, well we knew that. [starts gagging]
    Edmund Edwards: Are you okay?
    David Barnes: [weak voice] I'm fine. I'm just going to go congratulate the others.

## Taglines

* All that glitter... All that glamour... All that dirt.
* A Deliciously Malicious Comedy.

## Cast

* Sally Field - Celeste Talbert / "Maggie"
* Kevin Kline - Jeffrey Anderson / "Dr. Rod Randall"
* Robert Downey, Jr. - David Seton Barnes
* Cathy Moriarty - Montana Moorehead / "Nurse Nan"
* Elisabeth Shue - Lori Craven / "Angelique"
* Whoopi Goldberg - Rose Schwartz
* Carrie Fisher - Betsy Faye Sharon
* Garry Marshall - Edmund Edwards
* Teri Hatcher - Ariel Maloney / "Dr. Monica Demonico"
* Kathy Najimy - Tawny Miller
* Paul Johansson - Blair Brennan / "Bolt"
* Sheila Kelley - Fran

## External links

* Soapdish quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Soapdish at Rotten Tomatoes