# Vision Quest (film)

Vision Quest is a 1985 film about a high school wrestler in Spokane, Washington who has trouble focusing on his training regimen when a beautiful young drifter takes up temporary residence at his home.
    Directed by Harold Becker. Written by Terry Davis and Darryl Ponicsan.

## Louden Swain

* My name's Louden, Louden Swain. Last week I turned 18. I wasn't ready for it. I haven't done anything yet. So I made this deal with myself. This is the year I make my mark.
* [about Carla] She's got all the best things I like in girls and all the best things I like in guys.
* But all I ever settled for is that we're born to live and then to die, and... we got to do it alone, each in his own way. And I guess that's why we got to love those people who deserve it like there's no tomorrow. 'Cause when you get right down to it - there isn't.

## Carla

* [to Louden] Don't you ever try that again! I choose who I'm going to be with and what I'm going to do. I'll never be with any foulmouthed kid jock who thinks a stiff cock is the height of romance. Part of being a man, asshole, is knowing what a woman wants and respecting that.
* [to Louden] First time I've ever went to a wrestling match. It wasn't what I expected. I guess I expected some macho violence trip, but it was all right, you know? Guess I just didn't understand.
* [Just before Louden is set to wrestle Shute] Hey, Louden? [Louden glances up] Kick his ass.

## Margie Epstein

* What a blast to the First Amendment! The first thing they do is shut down the press and imprison the intellectuals. I LOVED YOUR PIECE ON THE CLITORIS! I SHOWED IT TO MY MOTHER!

## Other

* Coach: [to Louden] Now, I remember the first time you walked in here and asked me to let you wrestle. You still had hay in your hair. What a surprise you turned out to be, darn near going the distance your first year.

## Dialogue

    Louden: Droppin' all the way down to 168. Gonna take on Shute.
    Kuch: SHUTE? Shute's a monster, man! A genuine teratoid! Get real! His own father has to use a livewire to keep him from fuckin' the fireplace!
    Louden: Hey, Elmo.
    Elmo: Yeah?
    Louden: What do you know about the clitoris?
    Elmo: Well, I don't know what it looks like exactly, but I kind of know where it's at... sort of.
    Elmo: [looks at Louden's book] What the fuck is this?
    Louden: What? You don't recognize it?
    Elmo: Wait a minute! This is cooze!
    Louden: Yeah, I'm thinking very seriously of becoming a gynecologist
    Elmo: A cooze doctor in outer space? Man, you're flippin' out!
    Louden: I want to be able to look inside women, find the power that they have over me.
    Margie: [after reading Louden's article about the clitoris] I'm speechless. You've broken new ground here, Louden! This is professional stuff! We're gonna' draaaggg this dinky school paper right into the twentieth century! I mean, where do you get your ideas?
    Louden: Well, I've been thinking a lot about that stuff lately.
    Margie: Oooohhh, we're gonna' make history here!
    Mr. Tanneran: Well, what do you think? Does anybody understand a word of it? Huh? Louden? This poem mean anything to you at all?
    Louden: Yeah, kind of. I figure the girl in the poem's about my age. She's feeling sad about the leaves falling from the trees, and the poet, he tells her that what she's really sad about is that she's beginning to realize she's going to die someday, too. The thing is, she's already dying.
    Mr. Tanneran: Is that a good thing to realize, or do you think maybe we'd be better off not thinking about it?
    Louden: I don't know. Nobody likes to think about it. I don't like to think about it. But if you don't, you might go through life thinking you've got plenty of time. You put off the really important stuff until later, and pretty soon, before you know it, there's no more time left, you've blown it.
    Mr. Tanneran: That's not bad, Louden. Not bad at all.
    Mr. Tanneran: I think you're dehydrated.
    Louden: No, I'm just the victim of a screwed-up nitrogen imbalance. Plus, I think I've contracted priapism.
    Mr. Tanneran: What's priapism?
    Louden: It's a disease of a constant erection. I read about it in my rare diseases book.
    [Mr. Tanneran laughs]
    Louden: It's not funny, believe me! The girl of my dreams lives under my own roof, but she thinks I'm just a kid, a dumb jock, all of which is more or less true. I'm dying, Mr. Tanneran, just like that girl in the poem... only quicker, and with a hard-on.
    Otto: If you're on some kind of ego trip, man, that's your problem. You're not a team player and you never were.
    Louden: I got a bulletin for you, Otto: wrestling is not a team sport! When you're out there on the mat with another guy who's quicker and faster than you, there's not a whole helluva' lot a team can do for you.
    Carla: I heard you fainted.
    Louden: Oh. I had kind of a temporary nitrogen imbalance, kind of a sodium depletion syndrome, maybe some general light-headedness, maybe one or two other things.
    Carla: Will you live, or what?
    Louden: I'm just trying to cut weight, you know, trying to get down to 168.
    Carla: I don't get it. Why do you want to get smaller and wrestle a small guy? Why not get bigger and wrestle a big guy?
    Louden: Big guys aren't better. 168 happens to be the toughest division in the state - maybe in the whole god damn world.
    Louden: Can 800 million Chinamen be wrong?
    Mr. Tanneran: Frequently.
    Carla: Want to know what turns me on?
    Louden: If you don't mind.
    Carla: Hands. Really big hands. The kind that when they hold you, you really feel held. Like nothing can sneak up on you.
    Louden: I was at the hotel. They told me you took the night off. I thought you were sick or something.
    Elmo: [chuckles] Of course I took the night off, dummy. Isn't this the night you wrestle Shute?
    Louden: You took the night off for that?
    Elmo: Yeah. Shaved and got a haircut and everything.
    Louden: You never took a night off to see me wrestle before. They're gonna dock you for that.
    Elmo: Hey, kid - money ain't everything.
    Louden: Yeah, it's not that big a deal, Elmo. I mean, it's six lousy minutes on the mat, if that.
    Elmo: You ever hear of Pelé?
    Louden: Yeah, he's a, a soccer player.
    Elmo: A very famous soccer player. [pause] I was in the room here one day... watchin' the Mexican channel on TV. I don't know nothin' about Pelé. I'm watchin' what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and uh, he kicks the ball in - upside down and backwards... I mean the goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pelé gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around over his head. Everybody's screaming in Spanish. I'm here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying. [pause] Yeah, that's right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species which I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute... Let me tell ya, kid - it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain't the six minutes... it's what happens in that six minutes.
    Referee: [as Louden gets a nose bleed in the final match vs. Shute] Let me take a look at you. Coach, we got a bloody nose here.
    Coach: Come here. You're doing fantastic, fantastic!
    Kuch: You're beating Shute. I'm shitting in my pants. You're killing him.
    Coach: Shut up, Kuch! Have you done everything you came to do?
    Louden: Not yet.
    Coach: Then do it, boy. You've got 27 seconds left, you're down 4 points. Forget your nose, forget about everything. You've gotta' go out there and stick him! Now go on back there and do it!
    Louden: Hey, Carla? I'd do it all again.
    Carla: So would I.

## External links

* Vision Quest quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Vision Quest at Rotten Tomatoes