The Black Dahlia (2006)

Josh Hartnett: Dwight 'Bucky' Bleichert

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Quotes 

• Emmet Linscott : What kind of name is Bleichert? Dutch?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : German.

  Emmet Linscott : Ah, a great people, the Germans. Hitler was a bit excessive. But mark my words that someday we'll regret not joining forces with him to fight the Reds.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I've been pointing my gun at a lot of people this week. I haven't had a chance to shoot anybody yet. What do you think?

  Madeleine Linscott : I think you'd rather fuck me than kill me, but you don't have the guts to do either.

• Madeleine Linscott : Imagine the headlines, "Construction Tycoon's Daughter Questioned in Dahlia Case. Footsie at Lesbian Nightclub." Get the picture?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Technicolor.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  The basic rule of homicide applied: nothing stays buried forever. Corpses. Ghosts. Nothing stays buried forever. Nothing.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Are you sure there isn't anything you haven't told me about you and Betty?

  Madeleine Linscott : Betty and I made love once, that one time last summer. I just did it to see what it would be like to do it with someone who looked like me.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  The three of us would go out on the town. Always she'd be there. Never between us; always in the middle.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I don't get modern art.

  Madeleine Linscott : I doubt modern art gets you, either. But, I do.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [holding his pistol at a corporal's head]  Adios yourself back to the halls of Tripoli, shitbird, I've got business with the lady.

• [first lines] 

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  Mr. Fire versus Mr. Ice. For everything people were making it out to be, you'd think it was our first fight. It wasn't. And it wouldn't be our last.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  The gym was packed to the rafters. A wild crowd hungry to see what was in us. I already knew what was in us. Ambition, pride, dissatisfaction at a life turned just the wrong way.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  I lost a lot of things in life... but never a fight for money. I was trading Warrants for a close-out on old bad debts. The eight grand I was going to clear was enough to maintain the old man in a good, clean rest home for three years. The late round tank job - enough to convince myself I wasn't a complete coward.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  Junior Nash was an inbred Okie shit-kicker who came west and took all us locals for easy marks just because we prefer our cowboys to look like Gene Autry. Of course, I didn't care if he was a hard man or what he thought about anything. He raped children and beat senior citizens to death. He was a coward, and I wanted to put him down.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover, upon seeing the letters "BD" carved into Kay's back]  Bobby DeWitt. Who are these men who feed on others? What do they feel when they cut their names into somebody else's life?

  [pause] 

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : It was the case that made Lee's career. He never said a word about it and I'd never asked. One of Lee's snitches fingered Bobby DeWitt, a small-time pimp with a yard-long rap, as the brains behind the job. DeWitt never spoke the entire trial, never coughing up the dough even after damning character testimony from some of his girls, including one Katherine Lake, formerly of Siox Falls, South Dakota and looking to go straight. DeWitt got ten to life in San Quentin. Lee got Kay, or maybe it was the other way around.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Was anybody threatening her?

  Sheryl Saddon : Poor Betty. Her problem wasn't too many enemies. It was too many friends.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I gathered that.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [upon seeing a stuffed dog in the hallway]  Who's this?

  Madeleine Linscott : Balto. The paper is the LA Times for August 1, 1926. Balto was bringing in the paper when daddy found out he made his first million. He wanted to consecrate the moment, so he shot him.

• Lorna Mertz : She had a tendency to...

  [pauses] 

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : ...stretch the truth?

  Lorna Mertz : No! She fuckin' lied!

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [In voiceover]  The rich live differently. I guess they get to die differently too.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Bucky, please stay.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : You stupid slut!

  Madeleine Linscott : Stay, Sugar, stay!

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Slumming, Miss Linscott?

  Madeleine Linscott : I am, now.

• Pete Lukins : Guess what I hear is right. You'll want to place this with Mickey Cohen's indie. He's got Blanchard, two to one.

  [Pete shows Bucky an envelope of cash, but Bucky ignores it] 

  Pete Lukins : That confident, huh? You done your homework?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Yeah. I've done my homework. I'm not betting on me, Pete. Blanchard's the hereo here. That's the way the story's supposed to go. I'm just the other guy.

• Kay Lake : Well, this is nice, isn't it?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : What?

  Kay Lake : You and Lee partners. It's nice. It couldn't have worked out better if you'd planned it, could it, Dwight?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Well, I could've beat him.

  Lee Blanchard : Except you didn't.

  Kay Lake : I don't know, sweetheart. Bucky was somebody back in the day. And here we all are...

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : It's nice.

  Kay Lake : It's more than nice. Might even be worth those front teeth of yours, Dwight.

  [Lee and Kay laugh, and Bucky stands up to raise his glass] 

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : A toast... to Proposition B.

  Lee Blanchard : [raising his glass]  To the Bleichert-Blanchard rematch, bigger than Louis-Schmeling.

  Kay Lake : [raising her glass]  To my - supercops!

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [raising his glass]  To us!

• Elizabeth Short's Father : All right, listen up. No reporters view the body. You photo men - finish taking your pictures now. Coroner's men - put a sheet on the body as soon as they are done. We set up a perimeter six feet back. Any reporter crosses it - arrest him. Now gentlemen, before this gets out of hand, let's put the kibosh on something. With publicity, you get confessions. With confessions, you get crazies, liars, and false leads. So, we keep some things quiet. The uh, ear to ear facial lacerations, disembowelment - you keep this information to yourselves. Not your wives, not your girlfriends, and no other officers, and I mean no... Bleichert, what the hell are you doing here? Where the hell's Blanchard?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : He's right here.

• Kay Lake : [after Bucky enters behind her]  Hello, Dwight.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : How'd you know it was me?

  Kay Lake : Lee stomps.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Let's change the subject.

  Sheryl Saddon : All right. How about the world of high finance?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : How about the movies? You girls are all trying to break in, right?

  Sheryl Saddon : [showing off her Egyptian costume]  Darling, I'm in.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Congratulations. How about Betty?

  Sheryl Saddon : Maybe once. Maybe not at all. She came around last Christmas, bragging about getting her big break. Guess after all those screen tests, she finally got a part. But, she had a tendency to...

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Stretch the truth?

  Sheryl Saddon : No. She fucking lied.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  Losing the first Bleichert-Blanchard fight got me local celebrity Warrants and close to nine grand in cash. Winning the rematch got me a sprained wrist, two dislocated knuckles, and the rest of the day off.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : You're here for a drug deal with Morrie Friedman. I know that.

  Bobby DeWitt : Look, I'm just looking for a place to take a piss.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Lee Blanchard's here. Did you know that?

  Bobby DeWitt : Blanchard? Man oh Manischewitz, I ain't seen Blanchard since my fucking trial.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Yeah, but he's been on your mind. And you've been on his mind. I'm thinking that you let word out there knowing he'd come down here.

  Bobby DeWitt : Look, maybe I flapped my trap at trial. Maybe I was thinking revenge, maybe talking trash to my cellies, but all I know is what I read in the papers, and when that fucker killed them niggers...

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Finish up.

  Bobby DeWitt : I don't know what his version is.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : What's your version?

  Bobby DeWitt : Sir, all this between me and Blanchard is that I fucked this big-tittied Dakota cunt named Kay Lake.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Fire and ice.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : What do you think of all this, Miss Lake?

  Kay Lake : Well, for civic reasons, I hope the LAPD is ridiculed for perpetrating this farce. For personal reasons, I hope Lee wins. And, for esthetic reasons, I hope you both look good with your shirts off.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  Warrants was a local celebrity as a cop. Warrants was chasing real criminals not rousting winos and wienie waggers in front of some Midnight Mission.

• Kay Lake : Is Lee working late? What's wrong?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : He's all bent out of shape on this dead girl. He's going a little squirrelly. Benzedrine, I think.

• Kay Lake : What about you?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : What about me?

  Kay Lake : What's going to happen to us, Dwight?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : The three of us, I don't know.

  Kay Lake : No, us. Just the two of us.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Us. Kay, there is no two of us.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Was that soldier her boyfriend, Mr. Short?

  Elizabeth Short's Father : Boyfriend? They were all her boyfriends. As long as they wore a uniform. See, Betty believed in quantity before quality.

  Lee Blanchard : You calling your own daughter a tramp?

  Elizabeth Short's Father : I got five daughters. One rotten apple ain't so bad.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Did you read the papers? She's being played up as the hottest number since the atom bomb.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Don't fucking lie to me. She's 15 fucking years old. Come clean or I'll slap a contributing beef on you and you'll spend the next five years serving raisinjack to bull dykes in Tehachapi.

• Sheryl Saddon : Her and Lorna Mertz - I mean I don't want to tell any tales out of school; but, I do remember them being up on Hollywood Boulevard speaking to this older woman. She, she was wearing a man's suit and had a man's - short haircut. But it was - just that once.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Miss Saddon, are you saying they were talking to a lesbian?

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  She wasn't the first Dahlia wanna-be I'd seen; but, she was the best. Was she the les that Betty and Lorna knew? Or was she just some rich bitch with a taste for the low life?

• Emmet Linscott : Mother. Are you feeling well? Would you like to contribute to the conversation?

  Ramona Linscott : Did you know, Mr. Bleichert, that Ramona Boulevard is named after me?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I didn't.

  Ramona Linscott : When Emmett married me, for my father's money, he promised my family that he would use his influence with the City Zoning Board to have a street named after me. But all he could manage was a dead-end block in a red-light district in Lincoln Heights. Are you familiar with the neighborhood, Mr. Bleichert?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I grew up there.

  Ramona Linscott : Yes, well, then you'll know that Mexican prostitutes expose themselves in windows. I hear many of them know Mr. Linscott by name.

  Emmet Linscott : That's enough!

  Ramona Linscott : I will sing for my supper when Mayor Bowron comes to dinner; but, not for Madeleine's male whores.

• Madeleine Linscott : Smile at me. Look soft and sweet.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I picked up Lorna Mertz yesterday. She had a copy of a stag film, her and Betty Short playing les. Pretty spooky stuff.

  Madeleine Linscott : Did she mention me?

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  The ghosts of their past had forced them to choose love over passion. The veneer of a fairy tale, only a band-aid to cover a fractured life. I didn't believe in fairy tales.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : [voiceover]  Jew-boy D.A.s with hard-ons for fighters. Transfers, promotions. Back then, I told myself that I didn't care.

• Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Where's your sketch pad?

  Kay Lake : I was never any good. Ended up with a master's in history.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : Education's an expensive habit.

  Kay Lake : Lee paid for it.

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : He shouldn't have quit fighting.

  Kay Lake : I asked him to. Besides, police work gives him a sense of order. Do you have a girlfriend, Dwight?

  Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert : I'm saving myself for Rita Hayworth.