A character in Barcelona (1994)

Fred Boynton quotes from Barcelona (1994)

Chris Eigeman

Most-quoted character in Barcelona (1994): in 18 of its 24 quotes
Most scenes with: Marta Ferrer (12), Ted Boynton (7)

A line from Fred Boynton

"Yankee" and "gringo" are obviously pejorative, but it's the standard dictionary term that's the most insulting of all. "Estadunidense." Dense. D-E-N-S-E. It's the same spelling. Dense: thick, stupid. Every time you hear it. Estadunidense-dense-dense. It's like a direct slap in the face. It's incredible.

More lines from Fred Boynton

4 quotes
Fred Boynton

You are far weirder than someone merely into S&M. At least they have a tradition. We have some idea what S&M is about. There's movies and books about it. But so far as I know, there is nothing to explain the way you are.

Fred Boynton

My jazz rule is: If you can't dance to it, you don't want to know about it.

Fred Boynton

They're calling us pigs. That's meant to hurt!

Fred Boynton

When we were kids I borrowed some things. It was never ever theft! In each case I either told you... or was about to.

Scenes with Fred Boynton

13 scenes
Ted

Spanish girls tend to be really promiscuous.

Fred

You're such a prig.

Ted

No, I wasn't using "promiscuous" pejoratively. It's just a fact. They have completely different attitudes toward sex.

Fred

Well, I wasn't using "prig" pejoratively.

Ted

Here in Barcelona, everything was swept aside. The world was turned upside down and stayed there.

Fred

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the world was upside down before, and now it's right side up?

Woman

You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.

Fred

No.

Woman

All those people killed in shootings in America?

Fred

Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.

Montserrat

I think you are too sensitive.

Fred

Oh great, now we're too sensitive. I think it's well-known that anti-Americanism has its roots in sexual impotence, at least in Europe.

Ted

Maybe you'd like an analogy. Well, take... take these ants. In the U.S. view, a small group, or cadre, of fierce red ants have taken power and are oppressing the black ant majority. Now the stated U.S. policy is to aid those black ants opposing the red ants in hopes of restoring democracy, and to impede the red ants from assisting their red ant comrades in neighboring ant colonies.

Ramon

That is clearly the most disgusting description of U.S. policy I have ever heard. The Third World is just a lot of ants to you.

Jurgen

Those are people dying, not ants.

Ted

No, I... I don't think you understand. I was reducing everything to ant scale, the... the U.S. included. An ant White House, an ant CIA, an ant Congress, an ant Pentagon...

Ramon

Secret ant landing strips, illegally established on foreign soil.

Fred

Where are the red ants?

Ted
[pointing to an ant hill]

There.
[Fred crushes the ants]

Fred

Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and...

Ted

Really?

Fred

And one of the things that keeps popping up is about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?

Ted

The text.

Fred

OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

I think there is something fascist about a boy who immediately talks of marrying a woman he likes.

Fred

I don't think Ted is a fascist of the marrying kind.

Fred

You think wedding vows are going to change everything? God, your naivete is astounding! Didn't you see The Graduate?

Ted

You can remember The Graduate?

Fred

Yeah, I can remember a few things. Apparently you don't. The end? Katharine Ross has just married this really cool guy - tall, blond, incredibly popular, the make-out king of his fraternity in Berkeley - when this obnoxious Dustin Hoffman character shows up at the back of the church, acting like a total asshole. "Elaine! Elaine!" Does Katharine Ross tell Dustin Hoffman, "Get lost, creep. I'm a married woman"? No. She runs off with him - on a bus. That is the reality.

Ted

Who am I?

Fred

The kid with the kayak, but older and fatter, leave me alone!

Ted

This is amazing, he is going to have a complete recovery!

Fred
[At a disco, talking to Marta and Aurora about Ted, who's out on the dance floor]

He's not at all the way he seems. He might seem like a typical American, like a big unsophisticated child, but he's far more complex than that. Have you ever heard of the Marquis de Sade? Ted's a great admirer of de Sade. And a follower of Dr. Johnson. He's a complex - and in some ways dangerous - man. He has a serious romantic illusion problem. Women find him fascinating. His nickname is "Punta de Diamante" - point of a diamond. You see that odd expression on his face? Under the apparently very normal clothes he's wearing are these narrow leather straps drawn taut so that when he dances...

Aurora
[looking somewhat shocked]

What?

Fred
[as Ted leaves the dance floor and comes back to join them]

Please don't mention this. He might feel I violated a confidence.

Fred

Tonight while I was shaving - I always shave against the direction of the beard because I understood you got a closer shave that way - I started thinking about this razor commercial on TV which shows the hair follicles like this, going this way. The first of the twin blades cuts them here, then the hair snaps back, and the second blade catches them down here, giving you a closer, cleaner, possibly smoother shave, that we know. But what struck me was if the hair follicles are going in this direction and the razor is too, then they're shaving in the direction of the beard, not against it, which would mean that I've been shaving the wrong way all my life. I mean, maybe that's not so, maybe I misremembered the ad, but the point is, I could have shaved the wrong way all my life and never have known it. And then I could have taught my son to shave the wrong way without him ever knowing it either.

You have a son?

Fred

No... But I might someday. And then maybe I'll teach him to shave the wrong way.

I think maybe my English is not so good.

Other characters in Barcelona

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