Joe Miller quotes from Philadelphia (1993)

Joe Miller

Now, explain it to me like I'm a two-year-old.

Joe Miller

Some of these people make me sick, Philco. But a law's been broken. You remember the law, don't you?

Joe Miller

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Forget everything you've seen on television and in the movies. There's not gonna be any last minute surprise witnesses. Nobody's gonna break down on the stand with a tearful confession. You're gonna be presented with a simple fact: Andrew Beckett was fired. You'll hear two explanations for why he was fired: ours and theirs. It is up to you to sift through layer upon layer of truth until you determine for yourselves which version sounds the most true. There are certain points that I must prove to you.

Joe Miller

Point number one, Andrew Beckett was - is a brilliant lawyer, great lawyer. Point number two, Andrew Beckett, afflicted with a debilitating disease, made the understandable, the personal, the legal choice to keep the fact of his illness to himself. Point number three, his employers discovered his illness, and ladies and gentlemen, the illness I am referring to is AIDS. Point number four, they panicked. And in their panic, they did what most of us would like to do with AIDS, which is just get it, and everybody who has it, as far away from the rest of us as possible.Now, the behavior of Andrew Beckett's employers may seem reasonable to you. It does to me. After all, AIDS is a deadly, incurable disease. But no matter how you come to judge Charles Wheeler and his partners in ethical, moral, and in human terms, the fact of the matter is, when they fired Andrew Beckett because he had AIDS, they broke the law.

Joe Miller

All right. I got a question for you. Would you accept a client if you were constantly thinking, "I don't want this person to touch me. I don't want him to even breathe on me"?

Joe Miller

Your Honor, everybody in this courtroom is thinking about sexual orientation, sexual preference, whatever you want to call it. Who does what to whom and how they do it. They're looking at Andrew Beckett. They're thinking about it. They're looking at Mr. Wheeler, Miss Conine, even you, Your Honor. They're wondering about it. Trust me, I know they're looking at me and thinking about it. So let's get it out in the open. Let's get it out of the closet. Because this case is not just about AIDS, is it? So let's talk about what this case is really all about the general public's hatred, our loathing, our fear of homosexuals and how that climate of hatred and fear translated into the firing of this particular homosexual, my client, Andrew Beckett.

Joe Miller

The Federal Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against otherwise qualified handicapped persons who are able to perform the duties required by their employment. Although the ruling did not address the specific issue of HIV and AIDS discrimination...

Andrew Beckett

Subsequent decisions have held that AIDS is protected as a handicap under law, not only because of the physical limitations it imposes, but because the prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precede... which precedes the actual physical one.

Joe Miller

This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.

Andrew Beckett

What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?

Joe Miller

I don't know.

Andrew Beckett

A good start.

Joe Miller

Have you ever felt discriminated against at Wyatt Wheeler?

Anthea Burton

Well, yes.

Joe Miller

In what way?

Anthea Burton

Well, Mr. Wheeler's secretary, Lydia, said that Mr. Wheeler had a problem with my earrings.

Joe Miller

Really?

Anthea Burton

Apparently Mr. Wheeler felt that they were too..."Ethnic" is the word he used. And she told me that he said that he would like it if I wore something a little less garish, a little smaller, and more "American."

Joe Miller

What'd you say?

Anthea Burton

I said my earrings are American. They're African-American.

In this courtroom, Mr.Miller, justice is blind to matters of race, creed, color, religion, and sexual orientation.

Joe Miller

With all due respect, your honor, we don't live in this courtroom though, do we?

Joe Miller

What do you love about the law, Andrew?

Andrew Beckett

I... many things... uh... uh... What I love the most about the law?

Joe Miller

Yeah.

Andrew Beckett

It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done. That really is quite a thrill when that happens.

Andrew Beckett

Do you like opera?

Joe Miller

I'm not that familiar with opera.

Andrew Beckett

This is my favorite aria. This is Maria Callas. This is "Andrea Chenier", Umberto Giordano. This is Madeleine. She's saying how during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house, and her mother died... saving her. "Look, the place that cradled me is burning." Can you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? In come the strings, and it changes everything. The music fills with a hope, and that'll change again. Listen... listen..."I bring sorrow to those who love me." Oh, that single cello! "It was during this sorrow that love came to me." A voice filled with harmony. It says, "Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the god... that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!... I am love."

Andrew Beckett

Miguel, I'm ready.

Joe Miller

Explain this to me like I'm a six-year-old, didn't you have an obligation to tell your employers you had this deadly infectious disease?

Andrew Beckett

That's not the point. From the day they hired me to the day they fired me, I served my clients consistently, thoroughly, with absolute excellency. If they hadn't fired me that's what I've be doing today.

Joe Miller

And they don't want to fire you for having AIDS so in spite of your brilliance they make you look incompetent thus the mysterious is that what you're trying to tell me?

Andrew Beckett

Correct, I was sabotaged.

Joe Miller

Who did you get?

Andrew Beckett

What?

Joe Miller

Did you find a lawyer?

Andrew Beckett

I'm a lawyer.

You have a problem with gays, Joe.

Joe Miller

Not especially.

Yes, you do. How many gays do you know?

Joe Miller

How many do you know?

Lots.

Joe Miller

Like who?

Karen Berman, my Aunt Theresa, cousin Tommy who lives in Rochester, Eddie Meyers from the office, Stanley - the guy who's putting in our kitchen cabinets.

Joe Miller

Aunt Theresa's gay? That beautiful, sensuous, voluptuous woman is a lesbian? Since when?

Probably since she was born.

Joe Miller

All right. Well, hey, I admit it, okay? I'm prejudiced. I don't like homosexuals. There. You got me.

All right.

Joe Miller

I mean, the way these guys do that - thing, don't they get confused? "Oh, I don't know. Is that yours? Is that mine?" You know, I don't want to be in bed with anybody who's stronger than me or who has more hair on their chest than I do. Now, you can call me old-fashioned, you can call me conservative. Just call me a man. Besides, I think you have to be a man to understand how really disgusting that whole idea is anyway.

Charles Wheeler

You may tap dance around me all you wish with your innuendoes and locker room fantasies. But the truth still remains that your client worked when he wanted to work, telling us what he thought we needed to know about who he really was. Andy insisted on bending the rules and his work suffered tremendously in the long run as a result of that.

Joe Miller

Will you explain this to me like I'm a six-year-old, Mr. Wheeler, 'cause I just don't get it. Who makes these rules that you're talking about, huh? You?

Charles Wheeler

Read your Bible, Mr. Miller, Old - and the New Testament. Pretty valuable rules in there.