Favorite Movie/TV Quotes

As I SEE It

By

Thom Gossom Jr.

“Favorite Movie/TV Quotes”

Losing The Sopranos’ James Galdolfini to a sudden heart attack brought back many memories from my last “favorite series.” I watched every episode. It was the last time I’ve been a regular follower of any series. I loved it. The Sopranos broke a lot of casting, writing, and storytelling rules. But mostly I loved the words, the dialogue. Words have always been my thing. Powerful, soothing, funny, backbiting, nerve-racking, loving, or hateful, words are the essence of great story telling. In memory of The Sopranos and James Galdofini here are some of my favorite lines from some of my favorite television and film programs over the years.

The Sopranos

Uncle Junior and Tony Soprano are lurking in the basement for a private chat outside the hearing distance of the nosy eavesdropping devices planted by the FBI. Uncle Junior confides to Tony his fear of the FBI being on his tail.

“I’ve got the Feds so far up my ass, I can taste Brylcreem.”

Lonesome Dove  best TV miniseries ever

Captain Coll (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to convince Capt. Gus McCray (Robert Duvall) to drive a herd of cattle to Montana and relocate.

“Let’s do it Gus. Let’s go to Montana before the lawyers and bankers get it.”

Later, Gus delivers the eulogy for a young trail hand who dies enroute to Montana.

“Life is short. Shorter for some than others. Now let’s go on to Montana.”

Gus comments on a cap that Deats, (Danny Glover) had been wearing for the last fifteen years.

“Deats ain’t the kind of fella give up on a garment cause it gets a little wear on it."

Junebug

The wonderful Amy Adams is a hoot as the pregnant Ashley in the very funny film, Junebug. She tells her abusive and repressed husband, “God loves you just the way you are but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.”

Dog Day Afternoon

Al Pacino and John Cazale attempt to pull off the funniest bank robbery ever. With hostages inside the bank, TV cameras, cops, a crowd of supporters, and both Pacino’s male and female wives begging him to release the hostages and give up, Pacino orders a jet that will whisk him, his partner, and several of the hostages to a foreign country. Pacino consults with his partner, the slow-witted Cazale as to what foreign country he wants to go to. Cazale thinks on his choices and answers, “Wyoming.”

In the western Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, Will (Eastwood) and Ned (Freeman) are riding into town.

Knowing Will’s wife died a few years back, Ned asks, “Will, you ever go to town?”

Will answers, “Sometimes, to sell a pig or something.”

Ned gives him the look and says, “No, I mean go to town.”

Will returns the look and says, “No. Out of respect for my wife, I don’t do that anymore.” 

They ride for a few seconds and Ned finishes his thought with, 

“So what do you do, use your hand?”

(If you watch closely, you can see Clint Eastwood almost laugh.)

Other favorites

Auntie Mame

“Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving.”

The Godfather (Marlon Brando)

“I’m going to make him a deal he can’t refuse."

The Godfather Part II

Hyman Roth to Michael Corleone, “This is the life we have chosen.”

On the Waterfront

Lee J. Cobb to one of his henchmen admonishing him to get rid of all guns because the cops are hot on his tail.

“They’re dusting off the hot seat for me.”

These are some of my favorites. What are yours?

Birthday

                                                      As I SEE It

               

                                                                By

                                                   Thom Gossom Jr.

Happy Birthday to me!

Birthdays for me have always been celebratory. From my time as a curly-headed grinning youngster, to my memorable 21^st, 40^th and 50^th birthdays. They’ve always been special.

Today’s celebration is also reflective, A look back, over the journey of things seen, lessons learned, and paths crossed.

I’ve jokingly talked about the uniqueness of this birthday. I’ve said to friends, “Think about it, President Barack Obama’s Inauguration, Martin Luther King’s Holiday and my birthday all falling on the same day.” Wow!

Do I feel special? Yes I do.

A beneficiary of Dr. King’s legacy and a forerunner to President Obama’s “he’s the first African American,” to do this experience, my reflection leads me back down history’s path. True history and truth are the scorekeepers for legacies. They record who is right and who is wrong.

Dr. King more than “having a dream” ushered in changes in social and economic morality in the United States. His sermons and speeches resonate today as moral, guideposts for ethics and character.

Annually, I read from A Testament Of Hope, The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King.  The book, an inspiring work is a collection of King’s speeches on nonviolence, civil disobedience, and social policy. My favorite is The Drum Major Instinct, delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968. The lessons are “fitness over favoritism” and “servant leadership” (“he who is greatest among you shall be the servant to all”). I have been honored to perform these words from Dr. King’s works. I can think of no higher honor.

The praise for King did not come easy. The criticism and stinging arrows were scary and led to his assassination. He was mocked, “a communist,” “a socialist,” “…he hates America.” “An outside agitator.”

Obviously, they were on the wrong side of history.

I wonder about President Obama? The personal attacks on this President have been different. Hate filled. My friends who happen to be white, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, tell me of the hate filled stories about this man that are shared with them that those same “ friends” don’t feel comfortable sharing with me. My friends tell me if they defend their points of view with intelligence and fact, the conversation becomes a treatise on” treason” and “the white race.”

George W.  Bush was a bad President, most agree.  His record on the economy, United States security, international relations, and other key indicators verify that. Yet there was never the personal hate this President is subjected to. Surely, if raising taxes and the deficit were the sole issue, Ronald Reagan would no longer be praised.

At a recent football reunion, two ex-teammates were somewhat embarrassed at their own words and actions as portrayed in my book Walk-On, My Reluctant Journey to Integration at Auburn University, a look at my personal sports integration of major college football. Today, they are fine gentlemen, but back then they reacted to me out of ignorance and lack of exposure. They listened to false information designed to divide people and protect economic interests.  I’m sure today, it’s embarrassing.

In my presentations and speeches, I often get the audience to mentally travel along with me back to the days of southern sports integration. If they are old enough, I ask them to examine their own feelings of who they were at that time. I then ask if they would want their grandchildren to have known them back then. I ask whether they were on the right side or the wrong side of history.

Many choose to lower their eyes no longer willing to make eye contact, their action a telltale giveaway to their answer. I imagine it’s not a comforting feeling to know that you were wrong, because of your own ignorance and your own unwillingness or laziness in searching out the truth.

Finally and for my birthday, ask yourself this question; Thirty years from now, will you have been on the right side or the wrong side of history? Will you be able to look those who come behind you in the eye or will you lower your eyes in shame?

As I SEE It

By Thom Gossom Jr

Morning Blues!

I wake up on full go! Ready for the day’s adventure. Six decades into my existence, I still hold on to that childlike anticipation of what adventures a given day might bring. I’ve been lucky like that. Choosing professions that are fun to do on a daily basis and careers I’d do for free and have.

My wife has always been astonished that I wake up ready to talk, walk, go bike riding, and literally express idea after idea that somehow crept into my head while I’m supposed to be sleeping. Life has always been amazing to me and still is.

But then, like in the movies, things come to a screeeeching….. halt…..when I feed my addiction for reading the morning newspaper. Lord!!! What a come down!

Penn State scandal holds lessons for adults.

Local graduate killed in Afghanistan!

Man charged in fatal shooting.

And that’s just page one!

Growing up in a home where we all, Dad, Mom, and us three children religiously read the newspaper, it is a habit I have not shaken but admittedly I have gotten less dedicated to it. It’s ugly and getting uglier, a daily assault on feeling good, common sense and a day-by-day dosage of business and political propaganda. Have I mistakenly subscribed to The Enquirer?

Man injured in Nov 3 wreck dies.

6 exposed to chemicals used for meth lab in car

Dear Abby: Bride to be is feeling blue because fiancé hates orange.

Why that corporate cash pile isn’t so impressive

And take citizen journalists. Please! Never having had a journalism class in their lives but through the miracle of the Internet and the mask of anonymity, these “writers” can spit

venom and simplistic solutions at very complex situations. You disagree and you’re Un-American.

They want to take the country back. From whom? Anyway, whatever happened to those WWJD (What Would Jesus do) bracelets?

Sports? I grew up on the sports pages. Relished them. Before ESPN, newspapers were the major information source. Newspapers distinguished themselves with investigatory facts and features you couldn’t get anywhere else. Today professional ball is about contracts, lockouts and holdouts. Major college ball with its own scandals, continues to hide behind the cloak of amateurism.

Astros sold: Will move to American League in 2013

NBA owners hold conference call

Penn State Trustees hire law firm in abuse scandal.

Okay enough already! The sun is shining. It’s a new day! Forget the Oh woe is me, Divisiveness and Greed, Watch out for Iran, Drill Baby Drill, nature of today’s newspapers and media.

I’ve got positive things to do; the normal work chores of reading or writing a script, a story, prepping for an audition or television role, collaborating with a business client on a marketing project, or, assisting my alma maters with a fundraising idea.

There’s also time to enjoy my wife, call my Dad, ride my bike, call Manuel, Michael O, or Ford for a good gut-wrenching laugh. After all it’s a beautiful day and I don’t have to read the newspaper again until tomorrow morning.

I Know Too Much

I know too much!

I grew up dreary eyed, stumbling, in search of the morning newspaper, hungry for news of ball scores, won-loss records, knockouts administered by boxing heroes, and track records set by the “world’s fastest men.” Today I can take it or leave it. My flicker of a sports passion is dying a slow, agonizing but somewhat relieved death. The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat no longer get me amped up.

Why? That’s easy enough. It’s not the same.

Okay, admittedly, I’m into late-middle age and know more than I should. I know that sports have always included cheaters. I know that fat cat jock-sniffers were giving money to “amateur” players before there were even scholarships. I know that owners aren’t great sportsmen but businessmen negotiating with cities, for their last dimes. I know that heroes have always been flawed, not because they were bad people but because they are human.

Shall I continue?

I know that 24 hour around-the-clock sports news includes as much legal and crime news as it does ball scores. I know young boys today can get as excited about playing a sports video game or building a “fantasy sports league as my generation did actually organizing a game, and playing our own Super Bowl in somebody’s backyard. I recognize professional sports when I see it regardless of whether the “amateur” players are paid or not. It’s all business all the time.

Check out some headlines from the sports section of an April 2011 issue of USA TODAY.

BCS Critics want more Fiesta Type scrutiny

BCS Criticism mounts

Lockout raises draft stakes

Dodger can win under MLB control, GM told

Question: Is MLB takeover of Dodgers good or bad?

McCourt tarnishing Dodger tradition

Game-fixing probe spreads

Tree poisoning suspect back on radio

Had enough? It continues. College football spring intrasquad games are nationally televised. It’s a scrimmage for crying out loud! High schools travel for matchups with “football” schools from neighboring states, paid for by corporate sponsors.

And it’s all day, all the time, 24 and 7 brought to you by, talking heads and paid for by sponsors.

Who cares?

I do, really. I still love the game. It’s the game that gets my juices flowing. Between the lines, sixty minutes of action, the two-minute warning, fourth and goal, mano vs mano. Yes!

The talking heads I can take or leave. Former players posing as hard-core analysts, “When I played… ”

It’s nauseating.

I miss the innocence of a pickup game in the street between the up hill guys and the down hill guys. I miss the mystery of rushing to open the sports section and discovering the scores from the night before. I miss identifying with a team because the players stayed there long enough to remember them from year to year. I miss the Wide World Of Sports. I miss big college games in the middle of the season, pitting two of the nations best teams against one another and the loser not having to worry about the silly BCS.

My sports passion is dying. I miss it.

THE WAR EAGLE NATION GOT ITS DUE

As I SEE It

by

Thom Gossom Jr.

The War Eagle Nation got its due, 22-19. It could have been more. It should have been more but, after so many shoulda, woulda, coulda, almost, damn near but not quite years of great Auburn football, the 2010 version of The Auburn Tigers got er done in early 2011. In the bright lights of the Arizona desert, the boys brought home the crystal football that shines so brightly in the light of a national championship. Auburn Football is the best in the land. No doubt. No more do we have to sing that familiar litany, if only such and such would have so and soed, we would have won, but we’ll get them next year. Never again.

We won it once before. So we’ll behave like it. Coach Ralph Shug Jordan taught those of us lucky enough to be one of “Shug’s boys” to act like a champion, win or lose. He won The National Championship fifty-four years ago, before two generations of today’s Auburn Nation was born. College football’s bright lights didn’t shine as brightly then and the stakes were not quite as high.

Cam, Nick, Michael, Lee, Antoine, Zack, Josh and hero after hero after hero delivered us to the Promise Land of a 21st century National Championship. We’re still drinking from the cup. Cheers to those young men with hearts of champions beating inside them. They reign at the top of the greatest lists of AU football. The teams from 2004, 1993, 1983, 1972, 1957 all have to move over at the top of the pedestal called bragging rights and make a place at the peak for this group. They earned it. Along the way they’ve created new memories for former Auburn players who labored on teams that were on the wrong side of 35-0 scores and promises of wait until next year. Yep, they’re at the top. I’m getting out of the way. Moving over, fast.

This Auburn coaching staff coaches its ass off. They are one of the finest to walk a Jordan Hare sideline. First and ten with the opportunity of a lifetime, they scored and danced in the end zone, the scoreboard of opportunity flashing brilliant high definition color in television sets all over America.

The phone calls and texts began with the final kick, 00:00 on the clock and the Auburn nation became inebriated on the elixer of a championship and other worldly juices. Old teammates, cried with joy and professed to me, “I love you.” Ralph, who played basketball at Birmingham Southern College, texted “War Eagle Baby.” Terry, my Hollywood actor friend, a native of Oregon, left a voice message, “You guys are the best.” Joe, a writer from Los Angeles, a Texas grad, whose wife died of stomach cancer, last year e-mailed “So happy for you. What a great game.” An anonymous writer texted, “War Damn Eagle.”

Closer to home, my next-door neighbor, an Auburn grad, enthusiastically garbled something inaudible over the Arizona desert cell phone lines, but I got the message. My other next-door neighbor, the Alabama grad, turned off his lights while Auburn celebrated The National Championship in the desert and pretended he could sleep.

The Auburn Nation stands taller today. As football National Champions, (Can you ever say that enough?) there will be more scoring opportunities for the University. Academic growth, gifts and donations, business development, and marketing of the University will be ratcheted up. Auburn’s administration with Dr. Jay Gogue calling the plays continues to grow fiscally, academically and internationally. Athletic Director Jay Jacobs guides athletics with class.

The Auburn Nation today is larger, and more relevant on the world stage. We’re here we’re there. We’re everywhere.

Oh yeah. Did I mention we’re the college football national champions?

Let’s do it again!

Playing Hooky

As I SEE It

By

Thom Gossom, Jr.

Playing Hooky.

It’s a beautiful day outside and you can’t resist. While others e-mail away at work and a precious few take a late lunch or maybe slip away for an afternoon of shopping, I’ve always enjoyed the rare day of clearing my calendar and playing hooky at an afternoon movie.

Perhaps it’s reverting back to childhood.

It was always a special treat to visit the flashing lights of the Carver Theater in downtown Birmingham, Alabama on a Saturday afternoon and descend into a world of make believe.

In those days my friends and I would walk into that crush velvet interior, smell the aroma of freshly popped popcorn, grab a bag and a soda and rush to our seats before the lights went down.

The trailing light of the projector would split the darkness with a couple of cartoons, maybe a short film and then two feature movies, where the hero always saved the world from some dastardly creature or person.

In the days before malls, stadium seating, texting and loud ear shattering sound effects, the downtown movie theatre on a Saturday afternoon was the “it” thing for us as kids.

My Dad agrees as he remembers his childhood. “It was a treat for us to go to the movies in downtown Wetumpka, Alabama. Even though in those days we had to sit in the upstairs balcony and the whites sat downstairs. It was so rare we got to go.”

At the Carver, the audience would often chime in with the dialogue on the screen. Someone might talk back to the movie as Tarzan proceeded to escape dozens of natives by flying away on a tree vine. In the 1960’s a patron might cheer on Jim Brown as he escaped the bad white men trying to do him harm. It was fun and an escape from the reality of the day.

Luckily, as an adult it is a pleasure I’ve been able to continue. My wise wife gives me prepaid theatre tickets and a cash card for concessions as Christmas gifts, allowing me to feed my guilty pleasure at an independent theatre chain. On my day of hooky I shuffle my schedule, hop my bike and peddle down the road with anticipation and a huge grin on my face. Having put the world on hold, I slip into the theatre, turn down my cell, load up on popcorn and a soda like I did in yesteryear and without a trace of guilt slip into the darkness.

Daddy

As I SEE It

By

Thom Gossom Jr.

Daddy

From the moment I asked, his eyes lit up. I waited to ask until I was sure I wouldn’t have some business conflict on my short visit to Birmingham. I didn’t.

“Do you want to go to the country,” I quizzed?

“The country” he repeated?

“Yes, where you grew up.” I said.

From that second on, I knew I’d brightened his day.

My Dad is from Elmore County, Alabama and he loves to tell my siblings and me about it. He grew up there sharecropping with his Dad and his eleven brothers and sisters. When he turned eighteen he followed his older brother Sonny into the army to better his life. After the Army he moved to “the big city” of Birmingham, and he and his brothers who had all gone to the service, briefly attended school on the G.I. Bill and took jobs cutting trees for the City. They took half of every check they received and put their younger sisters through college.

He never moved back to “the country,” but he and his one remaining brother love to go back and visit the old home site, (the house is no longer there), the theatre in the city of Wetumpka where they had to enter through the back door and the cemetery where his parents are buried.

Our one-hundred-mile trip began with our breakfast staple of sausage and biscuits at the Hardees on Birmingham’s Airport Highway. Daddy likes to buy and I let him. He always speaks to the other retired men who share breakfast and morning talk over coffee. We choose a table near the window and talk or rather he talks and I listen. Oftentimes he tells me the same stories he’s told me before, sometimes only moments before.

Breakfast done we head south on I-65 and exit on the Wetumpka/Prattville exit which Daddy insists is the wrong exit until we pass the white country church, Mt Zion Baptist Church, with the cemetery behind it and I say, “That looks like the church. I remember the last time you brought me here when I was little.”

His budding funk gives way to a big smile when he realizes it is the church and I’ve found it despite his pouting over his thinking I’d taken the wrong exit. We turn behind the church and the stories start to tumble from his memory.

First it’s his parent’s graves, my grandparents. His Dad, George “Papa” Gossom, he remembers fondly, but Papa squandered the reputation and fortune in land his own father had left behind. I vaguely remember Papa as an older man living in a small shack in Birmingham, when I was a child.

I never knew my grandmother, Mabel Gossom, whose grave lies next to Papa’s. She died at age 48. My Dad says she died from bearing thirteen children, one of whom was stillborn. Daddy loved her dearly, I can tell.

Daddy points out the many people whose names are represented in the cemetery. He smiles at one belonging to a woman that he says is the first girl he ever kissed. I smile. He likes sharing with me.

We head down the five miles of road with speeding cars that lead into Wetumpka. He points out the site of the old house.

“Boy we used to walk this road to go to the movies and get a piece of hard candy for a nickel,” he tells me. “On Saturdays there would be mules, and wagons and people walking, all heading into town.”

At the movie theatre in Wetumpka his thoughts deepen. “The black people had to go in through the back door and sit upstairs,” he says pointing at the door. “You bought your ticket around front but then walked to the back. Going to the movies for us was a rare treat.”

We talk about his eight and a half decades in Alabama and the things he’s seen. One story, involves a trip as an adult to Atlanta to see the Atlanta Braves baseball team play what was at the time his favorite team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. “There was a bus full of us and the bus driver stopped to get gas. Many of us had to use the restroom. We couldn’t. Black people couldn’t use the restroom. So everyone who had to go, men, women and children had to go into the woods. His voice turned angry, “They made the women use the bathroom in the woods.”

The accompanying silence takes us both back to the absurdity and dehumanization of that time.

We visit the Wetumpka museum. The helpful elderly white woman there tells us there is a black museum but we were welcome to visit this the city museum. We start to browse when she pulls out a huge book with notables of Wetumpka and Elmore County and there he is, in black and white my great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Gossom.

I’d always heard from my Dad about my great grandfather and the community Gossom Switch that was named after him. In the 1960’s we discovered my great grandfather had purchased 1,000 acres of land in 1909 in Elmore for $1000.00. I had heard stories about his owning a cotton gin and a dance hall. I’d heard about Gossom Switch, but to read about him in a museum is quite a treat. Daddy grins as the woman reads aloud all of great granddaddy’s accomplishments. He is described as “a notable citizen, and a man of means willing to help all the citizens of his time both black and white.”

There are more cherished stories, and beloved memories. Many are repeats from before but neither of us seems to mind. As father and son, we relive the lives of my Great Granddaddy Thomas Jefferson Gossom, my Grandfather George Gossom, my dad Tom Gossom and mine as Thomas Gossom, Jr.

It’s a day I’ll never forget.