Nashville (1975)

Geraldine Chaplin: Opal

Photos 

Quotes 

• Opal : Let me see. Um, have you any children?

  Linnea Reese : Yes, I have two children. I have a boy and a girl.

  Opal : Oh, isn't that nice. How old are they?

  Linnea Reese : Twelve and eleven.

  Opal : Do they want to be singers like their mummy?

  Linnea Reese : Uh, well, my children are deaf. They're... They are deaf. They were born deaf.

  Opal : Oh, my God, how awful. It's so depressing.

  Linnea Reese : - Now, just a minute. That's not so. I wish you could see my boy.

  Opal : Oh, I couldn't.

  Linnea Reese : He has the most incredible personality.

  Opal : It's the sadness of it.

• Opal : Oh, you've got a Hal Phillip Walker button. No, it's Kennedy. Isn't that rather ancient? Strange. I thought that everybody in the South didn't go for Kennedy.

  Lady Pearl : It's John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he, he took the whole South except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there's a reason he didn't take Tennessee but he got 481,453 votes and the asshole got 556,577 votes...

• Opal : Good Lord, love a duck!

  Bud Hamilton : This is a choir, a black choir, from, uh, part of, from Fisk University here in town.

  Opal : Good Lord!

  Bud Hamilton : The lady singing is...

  Opal : Is she a missionary?

  Bud Hamilton : No, she's not. She's a gospel singer. She's the wife of our attorney.

  Opal : I was making a documentary in Kenya... and there was this marvelous woman who was a missionary. That's why I thought she was a missionary. And she was sensational. She was converting Kikuyus by the dozens. And she was trying to convert Maasais. Of course, they were hopeless. I mean, they have their own sort of religion, I think.

  Linnea Reese : [singing]  Do you believe in Jesus?

  Black Gospel Choir : [singing]  Yes, I do!

  Linnea Reese : [singing]  Do you believe in Jesus?

  Black Gospel Choir : [singing]  Yes, I do!

  Linnea Reese : [singing]  Do you believe in Jesus?...

  Opal : Look at that! That rhythm is fantastic. You know, it's funny, you can tell, it come down in the genes, through ages and ages and hundreds of years, but it's there! And take off those robes and one is in... in... in darkest Africa. I can just see their - naked, frenzied bodies, dancing to the beat of - Do they carry on like that in church?

  Bud Hamilton : Depends on which church you go to.

• Opal : I need something like this for my documentary. I need it. It's... It's America. Those cars smashing into each other... and all those mangled corpses...

• Opal : [In an automobile junkyard]  I'm wandering in a graveyard. The dead here have no crosses, nor tombstones, nor wreaths to sing of their past glory, but lie in rotting, decaying, rusty heaps, their innards ripped out by greedy, vulturous hands. Their vast, vacant skeletons... sadly sighing to the sky. The rust on their bodies... is the color of dried blood. Dried blood. I'm reminded of... of an elephant's secret burial ground. Yes. Cette aire de mystère. Cette essence de I'irréel. These cars are trying to communicate. O cars, are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to convey to me some secret...

  Kenny Fraiser : What... Excuse me?

  Opal : Oh, excuse me! I thought I was completely alone. How embarrassing. Oh, you're a musician!

• Opal : Have you been in Vietnam?

  Pfc. Glenn Kelly : Huh?

  [Nods] 

  Opal : Yes, you have. I can tell by your face. Was it awful?

  Pfc. Glenn Kelly : It was kinda... hot and wet.

• Opal : [speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot]  The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril... Damn it, it's got to be more... positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and... Oh, Christ, no. That's fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever...

• Opal : [speaking about the Hamiltons' country house]  This is Bergman. Pure, unadulterated Bergman. Of course, the people are all wrong for Bergman, aren't they?

• Opal : Is it possible to have few words with Mr. Tommy Brown? I'm from the BBC and I'm doing a documentary on Nashville and I...

  Tommy Brown : Where's the BBC?

  Opal : British Broadcasting Company.

  Tommy Brown : Oh, English.

• Opal : I am not the press! I'm from the BBC.

• Bud Hamilton : No, I'm not a singer. I'm a businessman. I take care of all of Dad's business.

  Opal : You're a business man?

  Bud Hamilton : Yeah.

  Opal : With that face? You can't be a businessman.

• Opal : Now wait a minute. Don't laugh. I - let me - I have a theory about political assassination. You see, I believe that people like Madame Pearl and all these people here, in this country, who carry guns, are the real assassins. Because, you see, they stimulate other people who, are perhaps innocent, and who eventually are the ones who pull the trigger.

• Opal : I'm Opal, from the BBC!

• Opal : God, I thought I was in Israel. I don't know why. Certainly not the decor, was it? Must have been dreaming. I was there for about a year on a kibbutz. I was feeling very romantic about that kind of socialism at the time. I thought I'd like to have a bash at it.