The Company Man
James Garner, playing Naval officer stationed in England:
“You America haters bore me to tears, Miss Barham. I’ve dealt with Europeans all my life. I know all about us parvenus from the States who come over here and race around your old Cathedral towns with our cameras too loud, we think we can buy anything with a Hershey bar. I’ve had Germans and Italians tell me how politically ingenuous we are – and perhaps so.
“But we haven’t managed a Hitler or a Mussolini yet.
“I’ve had Frenchmen call me a savage because I took half an hour for lunch. Hell, Miss Barham, the only reason the French take two hours for lunch is because the service is lousy. The most tedious lot are you British. We crass Americans didn’t introduce war to your little Island.
“This war, Miss, Barham, to which we Americans are so insensitive, is the result of 2,000 years of European greed, barbarism, superstition, and stupidity.
“Don’t blame it on our Coca-cola bottles. Europe was going brothel long before we came to town.”
(Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky from the novel by Wm. Bradford Huie, The Americanization of Emily.
Jack Engelhard wrote the novel Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Read his latest novel about a Jewish pro-Zionist film-maker who is being forced to produce an anti-Israel/anti-Semitic movie to pay off his gambling debts. Will he or won’t he? Read Compulsive: A Novel here.
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