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High Fidelity (film)

2000 film by Stephen Frears

High Fidelity is a 2000 American film about a record store owner and compulsive list maker who recounts his top five breakups, including the one in progress.

Directed by Stephen Frears. Written by D. V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, and Scott Rosenberg, based on the 1995 novel by Nick Hornby.
A comedy about fear of commitment, hating your job, falling in love and other pop favorites.

Rob Gordon

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  • It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.
  • We have one of those conversations where everything clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement.
  • I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films—these things matter. Call me shallow but it's the fuckin' truth, and by this measure I was having one of the best dates of my life.
  • What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
  • Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.
  • I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.
  • I could've wound up having sex back there. And what better way to exorcise rejection demons than to screw the person who rejected you, right? But you wouldn't be sleeping with a person, you'd be sleeping with the whole sad, single-person culture. It'd be like sleeping with Talia Shire in Rocky if you weren't Rocky.
  • It made sense to pool our collective loathing for the opposite sex, and while we were doing that, share a bed with someone at the same time. Only people of a certain disposition are sure they're going to be alone for the rest of their lives at age 26, and we were of that disposition.
  • Then I lost it. Kinda lost it all, you know. Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds.
  • I can't fire them. I hired these guys for three days a week and they just started showing up, every day. That was four years ago.
  • Jesus. I'm glad I know nothing about psychotherapy, about Jung and Freud and that lot. If I did, I'd probably be extremely frightened by now: the woman who wants to have sex in the place where she used to go for walks with her dead dad is probably very dangerous indeed.
  • Read any women's magazine and you'll find the same complaint over and over again: men are not interested in foreplay and they are hopeless in bed. They are selfish, greedy, clumsy, and unsophisticated. These complaints I can't help feeling are kind of ironic 'cause back then, all we wanted was foreplay and girls weren't interested. We were told not to even think about it. Foreplay changes from being something that boys want to do and girls don't, to something that women want and men can't be bothered with. The perfect couple, if you ask me, is the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year old b-b-b-boy.
  • People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.
  • It would be nice to think that since I was 14 times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, instincts more developed, but there seems to be an element of that afternoon in everything that's happened to me since. All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one.
  • Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breasts that I would try to touch between her legs instead. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for fifty grand instead.
  • My desert island, all-time, top-five most memorable breakups, in chronological order, are as follows: Alison Ashmore; Penny Hardwick; Jackie Alden; Charlie Nicholson; and Sarah Kendrew. Those were the ones that really hurt. [Yelling to Laura out the window] Can you see your name on that list, Laura? Maybe you'd sneak into the top ten. But there's just no room for you in the top five, sorry. Those places are reserved for the kind of humiliation and heartbreak you're just not capable of delivering.
  • Top five things I miss about Laura. One; sense of humor. Very dry, but it can also be warm and forgiving. And she's got one of the best all time laughs in the history of all time laughs, she laughs with her entire body. Two; she's got character. Or at least she had character before the Ian nightmare. She's loyal and honest, and she doesn't even take it out on people when she's having a bad day. That's character. Three; I miss her smell, and the way she tastes. It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home. [lipsyncs four, while holding up four fingers] I really dig how she walks around. It's like she doesn't care how she looks or what she projects and it's not that she doesn't care it's just, she's not affected I guess, and that gives her grace. And five; she does this thing in bed when she can't get to sleep, she kinda half moans and then rubs her feet together an equal number of times... it just kills me. Believe me, I mean, I could do a top five things about her that drive me crazy but it's just your garden variety women you know, schizo stuff and that's the kind of thing that got me here.
  • Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all, you 're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.
  • The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up is hard to do. It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don't want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway, I've started to make a tape, in my head, for Laura. Full of stuff she'd like. Full of stuff that'd make her happy. For the first time I can sorta see how that's done.
  • Some people never got over 'Nam, or the night their band opened for Nirvana. I guess I never really got over Charlie. But, the thing I learned from the whole Charlie debacle? You gotta punch your weight. See, Charlie? She was out of my class. She was too pretty. Too smart, too witty, too much.

Barry

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  • Rob, I'm telling you this for your own good, that's the worst fuckin' sweater I've ever seen, it's a Cosby sweater. A Cooooosssssssby sweataahhhh.
  • Rob. Top 5 musical crimes perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s go... Sub-question: is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins... is it better to burn out or fade awaaay?
  • Ah man, that's great. That's the fun thing about workin' in a record store - you get to play crappy pop you don't even wanna listen to.

Dialogue

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Barry: Ok buddy, uh, I was just tryin' to cheer us up, so go ahead. Put on some old sad bastard music, see if I care.
Rob: I don't wanna hear old sad bastard music Barry, I just want something I can ignore.
Barry: Here's the thing. I made that tape special for today. My special Monday morning tape for YOU... SPECIAL.
Rob: Well it's fuckin' Monday afternoon, you should get out of bed earlier!
Barry: Top 5 songs about death. A Laura's Dad tribute list, okay? Okay. Leader of the Pack. The guy beefs it on his motorcycle and dies, right? Dead Man's Curve. Jan & Dean.
Dick: Do you know that right after they recorded that song Jan himself crashed his car...
Barry: It was Dean you idiot...
Rob: It was Jan. It was a long time after the song.
Barry: Okay, whatever. Tell Laura I Love Her. That would bring the house down - Laura's Mom could sing it. You know what I'd want? One Step Beyond by Madness. And, uh, You Can't Always Get What You Want.
Dick: No. Immediate disqualification because of its involvement with The Big Chill.
Barry: Oh God. You're right!
Dick: Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot.
Barry: You bastard! That's so good - that should have been mine... The night Laura's daddy died. Sha na na na na na na na na! Brother what a night it really was. Mother what a night it really... angina's tough! Glory be!
Laura: I'm too tired not to be with you.
Rob: What, so if you had a bit more energy we'd stay split up, but things being as they are, with you being wiped out and all, you want to get back together? Is that it?
Laura: Yeah.
Rob: Hey, Liz.
Liz: Hi, Rob... YOU ASSHOLE!
Rob: Liking both Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel is like supporting both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Laura: No, it's really not, Rob. You know why? Because Marvin Gaye and Art Garfunkel make pop records.
Rob: Made! Made! Marvin Gaye is dead. His father shot him!
Customer: Hi, do you have the song "I Just Called To Say I Love You?" It's for my daughter's birthday.
Barry: Yea we have it.
Customer: Great great... Well, can I have it?
Barry: No, you can't.
Customer: Why not?!
Barry: Because it's sentimental tacky crap that's why. Do we look like a store that sells "I Just Called to Say I Love You"? Go to the mall!
Customer: What's your problem?!
Barry: Do you even know your daughter? There's no way she likes that song! Oh oh oh wait! Is she in a coma?
Customer: Oh, okay buddy. I didn't know it was Pick on the Middle-Aged Square Guy Day. My apologies. I'll be on my way.
Barry: [sarcastically] Buh-bye!
Customer: Screw you!
Dick: It guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope.
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No way.
Rob: What did Laura mean last night when she said, "I haven't slept with him yet." Yet! What does "yet" mean anyway? It means you're gonna do it, doesn't it? Or does it?
[Next scene]
Rob:[To Barry] Just come on. What would it mean to you, that sentence: I haven't seen Evil Dead II yet?
Barry: Well, to me it would mean that you're a liar. You've seen it twice. Once with Laura -oops- and once with me and Dick, remember? We had that conversation about the guy making Beretta shotgun ammo off-screen in the 14th century.
Rob: Right, all right. But let's just say that I hadn't seen it and I said to you, "I haven't seen Evil Dead II yet", what would you think?
Barry: I'd think that you're a cinematic idiot and I'd feel sorry for you.
Rob: All right. But from that one sentence, would you think that I was going to see it?
Barry: I'm sorry, Rob. I'm struggling here. You're asking me what would I think if you told me you hadn't seen a film that you have already seen. What am I supposed to say?
Rob: Just listen to me. If I said to you-
Barry: "I haven't seen Evil Dead II yet", yes.
Rob: Would you get the impression that I really wanted to see it?
Barry: Oh, uh, well you couldn't have been desperate to see it, otherwise you'd have already gone.
Rob: Right, I'm not gonna see that movie.
Barry:[pause] But the word "yet". Yeah, you know what? I'd get the impression that you wanted to see it otherwise you'd have said you didn't wanna go.
Rob: But in your opinion, would I definitely go?
Barry: How the hell am I supposed to know?! Probably!
Rob: Why?
Barry: Because it's a brilliant film. It's so funny, and violent, and the soundtrack kicks so much ass. I never thought I'd say this, but can I go work now?
Rob: Why'd you have to tell her about the store?
Barry: Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was classified information. I mean, I know we don't have any customers, but I thought that was a bad thing, not like a business strategy!
Rob: Just the obvious stuff.
Laura: What's the obvious stuff?
Rob: I don't know.
Laura: So it's not that obvious, then.
Rob: No.

Cast

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