A diner scene from Diner, the greatest movie of, well, ever. Notice the avalanche of future stars and that doesn’t include Ellen Barkin. From left: Tim Daly, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Steve Gutenberg,
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There are great movies and greater movies but there is only one greatest movie. That would be Barry Levinson’s 1982 flick, Diner.
In addition to being smart, funny, poignant and true, and exceedingly well acted by a troupe of young actors-on-the-cusp, Diner contains a vault of dialog that can be recited by its fans as if they’re Shakespeare quoting Shakespeare.
There is one 13-line snippet of conversation that stands above the rest, that rises above the mountain of funny and ironic Diner wisdom like Everest lording over the Himalayas. This snippet basically describes the whole of the human condition. My wife and I quote it whenever we’re feeling especially perplexed, a condition we find our OG selves in, you know, most of the time.
Setting it up:
Mckey Rourke and Kevin Bacon are cruising down a pastoral two-lane in a wealthy exurb of Baltimore, circa 1959. They spot a young lady all decked out in horse-riding duds, taking a gallop in an endless pasture. Rourke needs to meet this woman.
He pulls the car over. She stops, all full of her condescending self. She’s a wealthy trust-funder. He cuts women’s hair downtown. Everyone knows how this will go. Everyone but Rourke.
“What’s your name?” he asks the lass.
“Jane Chisholm—as in the Chisholm Trail,” she says, and rides off.
Rourke throws up his hands and utters the words that (author Nick) Hornby, to this day, uses as an all-purpose response to life’s absurdities: “What (flippin’) Chisholm Trail?” And (Bacon) responds with the line that, for Diner-lovers, best captures male befuddlement over women and the world:
“You ever get the feelin’ there’s something goin’ on we don’t know about?’’
I cannot tell you how many times across the decades I’ve used that line.
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