Reds (film)

Reds is a 1981 film about the radical American journalist John Reed who becomes involved with the 1917 Bolshevik Russian Revolution and his hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
 * Directed by Warren Beatty. Written by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths

Jack Reed

 * All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don't you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can't you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won't get it back! More coffee? America'd be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan's money. If he loses, we'll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money?


 * Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control...


 * Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don't know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don't they? Well, what if they got organized?

Louise Bryant

 * I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed.

Eugene O'Neill

 * If you were mine, I wouldn't share you with anybody or anything. It'd be just you and me. We'd be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work.


 * Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who's one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by his party.


 * I'd like to kill you, but I can't. So you can do whatever you want to. Except not see me.


 * You dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it'll be missionary work rather than sex.

Emma Goldman

 * I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.

Others

 * Interviewee: I said, I think, that a guy who's always interested in the condition of the world and changing it either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them.


 * Interviewee: Kerensky was anxious to conduct it [World War I], produce some battalions of women who were going to go and fight.


 * Interviewee: We all have problems, don't you know?  But to take on the problem of all humanity, to save all humanity, my God, that was too big even for Jesus Christ.


 * A mujahid in Baku: They are supporting you [John Reed] for your call for a holy war of Islamic people against the western infidels.


 * Witness: [voice-over] Of course, nobody goes with the idea of dying, everybody wants to live. I don't remember his exact words, but the meaning was that grand things are ahead, worth living and worth dying for. He himself said that.

Dialogue

 * Witness 1: [voice-over] Was that in 1913 or 17? I can't remember now. Uh, I'm, uh, beginning to forget all the people that I used to know, see?
 * Witness 2: [voice-over] Do I remember Louise Bryant? Why, of course, I couldn't forget her if I tried.


 * Lee Slater Overman: Are there no decent, God-fearing Christians among the Bolsheviks?
 * Louise Bryant: Does one have to be God-fearing and Christian to be decent?


 * Louise Bryant: Would you rather I not smoke during rehearsal?
 * Eugene O'Neill: I'd rather you went up in flames than crush out your cigarette during a monologue about birth.


 * Jack Reed: Louise, I love you.
 * Louise Bryant: No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK!


 * Max Eastman: I'll walk you home.
 * Emma Goldman: Why? I won't hurt anyone.


 * John Reed: You don't get to rewrite what I write! You don't get to rewrite what I write!
 * Pete Van Wherry: Stubborn son-of-a-bitch. How are you gonna pay your rent?

Cast

 * Warren Beatty - John Silas "Jack" Reed
 * Diane Keaton - Louise Bryant
 * Edward Herrmann - Max Eastman
 * Jerzy Kosinski - Grigory Zinoviev
 * Jack Nicholson - Eugene O'Neill
 * Paul Sorvino - Louis C. Fraina
 * Maureen Stapleton - Emma Goldman
 * Nicolas Coster - Paul Trullinger
 * William Daniel - Julius Gerber
 * M. Emmet Walsh - Speaker – Liberal Club
 * Ian Wolfe - Mr. Partlow
 * Bessie Love - Mrs. Partlow
 * Max Wright - Floyd Dell
 * George Plimpton - Horace Whigham
 * Harry Ditson - Maurice Becker
 * Leigh Curran - Ida Rauh
 * Kathryn Grody - Crystal Eastman
 * Dolph Sweet - Big Bill Haywood
 * Gene Hackman - Pete Van Wherry
 * Nancy Duiguid - Jane Heap
 * Dave King - Allan L. Benson
 * Roger Sloman - Vladimir Lenin
 * Stuart Richman - Leon Trotsky
 * Oleg Kerensky - Alexander Kerensky
 * John J. Hooker - Senator Overman
 * Jan Triska - Karl Radek