Quotes from
The Burbs (1989)
Ray Peterson: Remember what you were saying about people in the 'burbs, Art, people like Skip, people who mow their lawn for the 800th time, and then SNAP? WELL, THAT'S US. IT'S NOT THEM, THAT'S US. WE'RE the ones who are vaulting over the fences, and peeking in through people's windows. We're the ones who are THROWING GARBAGE IN THE STREET, AND LIGHTING FIRES. WE'RE THE ONES WHO ARE ACTING SUSPICIOUS AND PARANOID, ART. WE'RE THE LUNATICS. US. IT'S NOT THEM. It's us.Art Wiengartner: [after a pause] I don't know what to say... What, do you want me to move?
Ricky Butler: Green sky at morning, neighbor take warning.
Ray Peterson: Green sky at night?
Ricky Butler: Neighbor take flight?
Art: Hey, hey, hey. Who the heck ordered the blood shake? Hey, Ray, it's not Skip. It's Art. I'm just pretending to be Skip. Say, you didn't happen to see an ice pick around here, did you?
Mark Rumsfield: Hey, Ricky, get this lame-o out of your yard.
Ricky Butler: Hey, lame-o, get out of my yard.
Carol Peterson: You were up at the crack of dawn watching a dog poop.
Ray Peterson: [chanting] I'm not going to listen to this, I'm not going to hear this now.
Art: Ray! Your chanting! Ray!
[points to book]
Art: Ray look. Ray, unconscious chanting... your chanting!
Ray Peterson: [continues Chanting with fingers in ears]
Art: [chants] I want to kill everyone. Satan is good. Satan is our pal.
Art: Hey, once they get in here,
[points to Ray's head]
Art: its over pal.
Ray Peterson: No, I've never seen that, I've never seen anyone drive thier garbage out to the curb and bang the hell out of it with a stick.
Ricky Butler: Hey, Mrs. Rumsfield, no tan lines looks nice.
Mark Rumsfield: That kid next door's a meatball.
Mark Rumsfield: In Southeast Asia we'd call this kind of thing bad karma.
Mark Rumsfield: Walter. I know you're in there. That piece of scum-barking rat of yours has just taken his last dump on my lawn. I find one more- just one- and I'm gonna catch him and staple his ass shut.
Ray Peterson: Nobody knocks off an old man in my neighborhood and gets away with it.
[last lines]
Ricky Butler: God I love this street.
Mark Rumsfield: Are you completely pussy-whipped? Why don't you just take your balls out of your wifes purse... make a stand for one time in your life.
Ricky: Ya know, did you ever see the movie "The Centinal," Mr Peterson? It's about the old guy who owns the apartment which is kinda like the, uh, gateway to hell.
Ray Peterson: No, I, I didn't see that.
Ricky: Well, I was doin' some thinkin' and you know, being that their last house burned down and all, it's like maybe, somebody left the gate open.
Art: Being that their last house only... burned to the ground.
Ray Peterson: Yeah?
Art: Yeah a hideous raging inferno.
Art: The thermostat on a home furnace, is that supposed to go to 5000 degrees you think?
Dr. Werner Klopek: Come now, Mr. Peterson, you were in my basement. Surely, you looked in the furnace.
Ray Peterson: Well I-I-I-I saw your furnace, Doctor. I figured a man's furnace is his business.
Dr. Werner Klopek: You saw one of my skulls, didn't you? Oh yes, I know you did. It belonged to a neighbor of yours. The name was Knapp. We took the house from them. I offered to buy it but you know how old people are, they grow so attached to things.
Ray Peterson: Uh, you know, Dr. Kopek, I think I forgot my wallet...
[Tries to get up but is held down]
Dr. Werner Klopek: I let you keep the femur, but now, now I want my skull. Or perhaps, I might just take yours. Hans!
Art: Now they know that we know that they know that we know.
Art: I'm tellin' ya, officer, there's a body buried in that house.
Detective: The old guy, Mr. Seznick right?
Art: Yeah the old guy who's sitting here is buried in that house.
Art: Safety is my middle name.
Ray Peterson: I thought his middle name was Louis.
Mark Rumsfield: Klopek, is that Slavic?
Reuben: NO.
Mark Rumsfield: 'Bout a nine on the tension scale there, Reub.
Art: I think the message to, uh, psychos, fanatics, murderers, nutcases all over the world is, uh, "do not mess with suburbanites". Because, uh, frankly we're just not gonna take it any more. Ya know, we're not gonna be content to look after our lawns and wax our cars, paint out houses. We're out to get them, Don, we are out to get them.
Art: Smells like their cooking a god damned cat over there.
Mark Rumsfield: Art!
Bonnie Rumsfield: Your Wife is Home!
Mark Rumsfield: And your house is on fire!
Art: My wife is home?
Mark Rumsfield: What'd you say we all sit down for a little of the old face-to-face, hey What-Rube?
Mark Rumsfield: Here you are, sonny - a little something for the old sweet tooth.
Mark Rumsfield: [Pounds] Good solid walls...
[Pounds]
Mark Rumsfield: Good solid floors.
[Someone in the basement pounds in response. Rumsfield grins]
Mark Rumsfield: Oh-ho. Got somebody tied up in the ol' cellar, have yah, Rube?
Ray Peterson: Is that some sort of a transformer...?
Mark Rumsfield: It's a goddamn power company.
Steve Kuntz: Hey man, like when's the big unveiling? I got work today.
Mark Rumsfield: Hey man, piss off.
Mark Rumsfield: That really burns my ass.
Bonnie Rumsfield: What?
Mark Rumsfield: That old fart. He's got the best lawn on the block. And you know why? Because he trains his dog to crap in my yard.
Art: Garbies. Wait. What are you doing?
Garbageman: Emptying garbage.
Art: Into the garbage truck? Are you out of your mind?
Mark Rumsfield: Please Carol let him come out.
Carol Peterson: He can't come out until he resembles the man I married.
Art: Carol we don't have that kind of time.
Ray Peterson: I'm going to go do something productive. I'm gonna go watch television.
Ricky Butler: Hey, Mr. Rumsfield. You guys managed to knock out the power on the entire block. Maybe the whole south end of town.
Mark Rumsfield: Ricky, SHUT UP.
Ray Peterson: Night vision goggles? What's next, we bug their phones?
Mark Rumsfield: That can be arranged.
Ray Peterson: I've been blown up, take me to the hospital.
[Lays on a gurney]
Ray Peterson: Take me to a hospital, I'm sick. What...?
[Jumps up, throws the gurney in back of an ambulance than jumps on top of it]
Carol Peterson: Honey? I'll just find out what hospital they're taking you to and then I'll... Follow right along. Okay?
Ray Peterson: [Laying face down on the gurney] Okay, honey.
Art Wiengartner: I can see the news report now - they were a quiet family, kept pretty much to themselves. No one ever would have suspected them of foul play.
Mr. Rumsfield: Affirmative. That garbage is going nowhere. I say we wait till first light. Scope me.
Garbageman: The question here is garbage. Who picks up this mess?
Mr. Rumsfield: Who picks up this mess? Well you're going to pick up this mess, because YOU are a garbage man.
Ray Peterson: You wanna take that out of your pocket? You wanna not steal that from Walter's house?
Mr. Rumsfield: One thing about these old guys - they never leave the house without their hair.
Art Wiengartner: If I had been on that plane it WOULD have crashed.
Art Wiengartner: I'm telling you these people are Satanists. As I sit here, they are satanists. Look, look, the world is full of these kind of things - black masses, mutilations. Mutilations. The incubus, the succubus - I'm tellin' you, Walter was a human sacrifice.
Ray Peterson: [mumbling] aw, oh I should have gone to the lake, I shoulda listened to Carol...
Art Wiengartner: Listen to your wife? Who listens to their wife? Listen, you gotta listen to me.
Art Wiengartner: Ray, do you want 'em to take your family, tear their livers out and make some kind of satanic pâté?
[loud gunshots are heard]
Ray: Art's got a gun
[Art and Ricky are sitting on the porch when Ray comes out]
Art: He comes over here to smoke cigars, his wife won't let him, he doesnt know i know that... Hiya Ray! How ya doing bud?
Mark Rumsfield: Rumsfield's the name. Don't believe I caught yours, sonny?
Hans Klopek: H-H-Hans.
Mark Rumsfield: Oh-ho! Hans! A fine Christian name. Hans Christian Anderson! What are you, Catholic?
[looking at photo]
Mark Rumsfield: Oh, pretty girl! Friend of yours?
Hans Klopek: No, it came with the frame.
Mark Rumsfield: [mocking] It came wit da frame?
Carol Peterson: Where are you going?
Ray Peterson: I can't walk anywhere without you asking me where I'm going - I'm going to Paris, France, okay? I'm going to Banff, Canada, alright? That's where I'm going.
Carol Peterson: Are you taking the dog?
Ray Peterson: Yeah, yeah, I'm taking the dog for a walk.
Art Wiengartner: Ray. Ray.
Ray Peterson: I'm only trying to take a nap! I'm only laying here with my eyes closed trying to get some goddamn sleep!
Art: Rumsfield and I, we flushed them out. We wrote a note, we slipped it under the door, we rang the bell and then we ran.
Ray Peterson: You did that?
Art: Yeah.
Ray Peterson: [Jumps up] OH GEEZ! STUPID IDI - I can't believe you - -
[Crushes a beer can]
Art: All I did was write, "I know what you've done". That's all. I didn't sign it.
Ray Peterson: OH! I can't belie - YOU STUPID... GOD!
Art: You gotta goose these people every once in a while. You gotta give them a little shot, give them a little whack, let them know that you're there.
Ray Peterson: No, Art, see, they're gonna think that I did it. Yeah, they are...
Art Wiengartner: Why?
Ray Peterson: Well the old guy... He saw me write a note and put it under Walter's door SO NOW THEY'RE GONNA THINK THAT I DID IT!
Art Wiengartner: ...You wrote a note?
Art Wiengartner: [finds a femur bone] Ray, there's no doubt anymore. This is real. Our neighbors are murdering people. They're chopping them up. They're burying them in their backyard. Ray.....This is Walter.
[They both scream]
Nooooooooooooooo! Aaaaaaaagh!
Mark Rumsfield: What have you got in the cellar, HERR Klopek!
Art Wiengartner: [Ray is trying to jimmy the door open with a store credit card] Where did you learn to do that?
Ray Peterson: I *don't* know how to do this.
[the credit card breaks]
Art Wiengartner: That's a shit store anyway.
Art Wiengartner: Go ahead, tell him, Ray. We got the goods on them, don't we? You know, some day they're going to dig up the back of that yard and they're gonna find the rest of that skeleton to go with that femur. Oh it might not be Walter but it's gonna be some...
Ray Peterson: Shut up. SHUT UP, ART, SHUT UP! God, you don't know when to quit, do you? Look at me! I'm a shell of a man because of you, Art!
Reuben: Mind your own business! MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!
Ray Peterson: OKAY!
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