- [first lines]
- Rob: 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?
- Rob: 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.
- [holds up three fingers]
- Rob: Three;
- [long pause, hesitantly]
- Rob: 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.
- [shakes his head, recollecting, then looks back and lip synchs 'four' while holds up four fingers]
- Rob: 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.
- Rob: Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead.
- Rob: ...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.
- Rob: 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.
- [last lines]
- Rob: The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to 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 likes. Full of stuff that make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.
- Rob: That other girl, or other women, whatever... I mean, I was thinking that they're just fantasies. You know? And they always seem really great because there's never any problems. And if there are, they're cute problems like, you know, we bought each other the same Christmas present, or she wants to go see a movie that I've already seen, you know? And then I come home, and you and I have real problems... and you don't even want to see the movie I want to see, period. There's no lingerie and...
- Laura: I have lingerie!
- Rob: Yes, you do. You have great lingerie, but you also have the cotton underwear that's been washed a thousand times, and it's hanging on the thing and, and they have it too! It's just I don't have to see it because it's not in the fantasy. Do you understand? I'm tired of the fantasy because it doesn't really exist. And there are never really any surprises, and it never really...
- Laura: Delivers?
- Rob: Delivers. Right. And I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of everything else, for that matter. But I don't ever seem to get tired of you.
- Rob: So, what am I gonna do now? Just keep jumping from rock to rock, for the rest of my life, until they're not any rocks left? 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.
- Dick: I 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 fucking way.
- Rob: Yep. Let me tell ya how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in just 25 moods. And, if I want to find the song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the Fall of 1983 pile - but, didn't give it to them for personal reasons.
- Dick: That sounds...
- Rob: Comforting.
- Dick: Yes.
- Rob: It is.
- Rob: 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.
- Louis: I don't have that record... I'll buy it for forty.
- Rob: Sold.
- Louis: Now why would you sell it to me and not to him?
- Barry: Because you're not a geek, Louis.
- Louis: You guys are snobs.
- Dick: No, we're not.
- Louis: Yeah, seriously, you're totally elitist. You feel like the unappreciated scholars, so you shit onto people who know lesser than you.
- Rob, Barry, Dick: No!
- Louis: Which is everybody...
- Rob, Barry, Dick: Yeah...
- Louis: That's so sad.
- Barry: I wanna date a musician.
- Rob Gordon: I wanna live with a musician. She'd write songs at home and ask me what I thought of them, and maybe even include one of our little private jokes in the liner notes.
- Barry: Maybe a little picture of me in the liner notes.
- Dick: Just in the background somewhere.
- Rob Gordon: I will now sell five copies of "The Three EPs" by The Beta Band.
- Dick: Go for it.
- [Rob plays the record]
- Beta Band Customer: Who is this?
- Rob Gordon: The Beta Band.
- Beta Band Customer: It's good.
- Rob Gordon: I know.
- Rob: She didn't make me miserable, or anxious, or ill at ease. You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular either. It was just good. But really good.
- Rob: It made sense to pool our collective loathing for the opposite sex, and while we were at it, you get to share a bed with somebody at the same time. We were frightened of being left alone for the rest of our lives. Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26, and we were of that disposition.
- Rob: John Dillinger was killed behind that theater in a hale of FBI gunfire. And do you know who tipped them off? His fucking girlfriend. All he wanted to do was go to the movies.
- Dick: Marie de Salle's playing. You remember I told you about her. I like her. She's kind of Sheryl Crow-ish crossed with a post-Partridge Family pre-L.A. Law Susan Dey kind of thing, but, you know, uh, black.
- Laura: Listen, Rob, would you have sex with me? Because I want to feel something else than this. It either that, or I go home and put my hand in the fire. Unless you want to stub cigarettes out on my arm.
- Rob: No. I only have a few left, I've been saving them for later.
- Laura: Right. It'll have to be sex, then.
- Rob: Right. Right.
- Laura: I knew there was a reason I wore a skirt today.
- Barry: Top 5 songs about death. A Laura's Dad tribute list, okay? Okay. Leader of the Pack. The guy fuckin' 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 fuckin' 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!
- Barry's 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.
- Barry's Customer: Great, Great, can I have it?
- Barry: No, no, you can't.
- Barry's Customer: Why not?
- Barry: Well, it's sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells I Just Called to Say I Love You? Go to the mall.
- Barry's Customer: What's your problem?
- Barry: Do you even know your daughter? There's no way she likes that song. Oh... d'oh... is she in a coma...?
- Rob: 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.
- Penny Hardwick: I... I was crazy about you. I wanted to sleep with you, one day, but not when I was 16. When you broke up with me - YOU broke up with ME - because I was, to use your charming expression, "tight," I cried, and I cried, and I hated you, and when that little shitbag asked me out and I was too tired to fight him off, it wasn't rape, because I said "OK," but it wasn't far off! Do you know I couldn't have sex until after college because I hated it so much? That's when you're supposed to have sex, Rob - in college! And now you want to have a little chat about rejection, well fuck you, Rob!
- [gets up and leaves]
- Rob: [stunned silence, seemingly chastised] God, she's right. I broke up with her, I rejected her... that's ANOTHER one I don't have to worry about. I should have done this years ago!
- Barry: Rob, top five musical crimes perpetuated 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 away?
- Rob: I want more, I wanna see the others on the big top-five. I want to see Penny and Charlie and Sarah, all of them. You know? Just see 'em and talk to 'em. You know, like a Bruce Springsteen song.
- Bruce Springsteen: You call, you ask them how they are and see if they've forgiven you.
- Rob: Yeah, and then I feel good. And they feel good.
- Bruce Springsteen: They'd feel good, maybe. But you feel better.
- Rob: I'd feel clean and calm.
- Bruce Springsteen: That's what you're looking for, you know, get ready to start again. It'd be good for you.
- Rob: Great, even.
- Bruce Springsteen: Give that big final good luck and goodbye to your all time top-five and just move on down the road.
- Rob: Good luck, Goodbye. Thanks, Boss.
- Barry: Hey, it's half past a monkey's ass, let's go.
- Dick: Oh, I can't meet you guys at the club tonight.
- Barry: Why?
- [Dick smiles]
- Barry: Who are you going to see?
- Dick: [grins bashfully] Nobody.
- Barry: Rob! Loooky-looky! Dick, are you gettin' some?
- [Dick pauses]
- Barry: Oh-ho-ho! Un-fucking-believable! Dick's got a hot date! How did this happen, Dick? What rational explanation can there possibly be? What's her name?
- Dick: Anaugh.
- Barry: Anna? Anaconda?
- Dick: Anaugh Moss.
- Barry: [laughing] Anna M-ha-ha-oss? Is she all green and fuzzy and mossy? And you met this bruiser where exactly? The home for the mentally challenged or the blind or the bus station?
- Dick: Um, here. She asked me about the new Green Day album, and I told her...
- Barry: Oh, man, finally! *Anna!* That's great, Dick! Really! Smoke that ass!
- Rob: I own this store called Champions Vinyl. It's located in a neighborhood that attracts the bare minimum of window shoppers. I get by because of the people who make a special effort to shop here - mostly young men - who spend all their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and original, not rereleased - underlined - Frank Zappa albums. Fetish properties are not unlike porn. I'd feel guilty taking their money, if I wasn't... well... kinda one of them.
- [Rob turns off Barry's tape]
- 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 for *you*... special.
- Rob: Well, it's fuckin' Monday afternoon! You should get out of bed earlier!
- Rob: 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.
- Rob Gordon: Hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I've read books like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography "Cash" by Johnny Cash.
- [while Marie de Salle is singing "Baby I Love Your Way"]
- Rob Gordon: I used to hate this song.
- Barry, Dick: Yeah.
- Rob Gordon: Now I kinda like it.
- Barry, Dick: Yeah.
- Barry: Oh, "The Killing Moon" EP - it's almost impossible to find - especially on CD. Yet another cool trick they played on all the dumbasses who got rid of their turntables. But, every other Echo and the Bunnymen album...
- Barry's Customer: Yeah, I have all the other ones.
- Barry: Oh, you do? Well, how about the Jesus and Mary Chain?
- Barry's Customer: They always seemed...
- Barry: They always seemed what? They always seemed really great is what they always seemed. They picked up where your precious Echo left off and you're sitting around complaining about no more Echo albums. I can't believe you don't own this fucking record.
- [tosses the record to the customer and walks away]
- Barry: That's insane! Jesus!
- Laura: [Reading] Top Five Dream Jobs.
- Rob: Hey, that's private.
- Laura: Number One: Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. 1976-1979. Get to meet the Clash, Chrissie Hydne, Sex Pistols, David Byrne. Get tons of free records. Number Two: Producer. Atlantic Records. 1964-1971. Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke...
- Laura, Rob: More free records...
- Laura: And a shitload of money.
- Rob: Yeah.
- Laura: Number Three: Any kind of musician.
- Rob: Besides classical or rap.
- Laura: Settle for being one of the Memphis Horns or something. Not asking to be Jaggar or Hendricks or Otis Redding. Number Four: Film Director.
- Rob: Any kind except German or silent.
- Laura: And Number Five: we have architect.
- Rob: Yeah.
- Laura: Seven years training.
- Rob: I'm not sure I even want to be an architect.
- Laura: So you've got a list here of five things you'd do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object.
- Rob: Yeah.
- Barry: [performing at the record release party] Rob, thank you for the enthusiastic intro; but, we're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of being called Kathleen Turner Overdrive; however, this evening we will be: Barry Jive and the Uptown Five.
- [singing]
- Barry: I've been really tryin', baby, To hold onto this feeling for so long, And if you feel like I feel, sugar, Then, c'mon, oh, c'mon, Woo! Let's get it on, Let's get it on...
- Rob: I was jealous of other men in her design department. I became convinced that she was going to leave me for one of them. Then she left me for one of them.
- Barry: You don't have it? That is perverse! Don't tell anybody you don't own fucking "Blonde on Blonde". It's gonna be okay.
- [Rob has just placed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a top five list]
- Barry: Oh, that's not obvious enough Rob. How about the Beatles? Or fucking... fucking Beethoven? Side one, Track one of the Fifth Symphony... How can someone with no interest in music own a record store?
- Laura: All I'm saying is, you have to allow for things to happen to people, but most of all to yourself. And you don't Bob, so what's the use?
- Rob Gordon: [Rob's mother starts to cry after Rob tells her over the phone that he and Laura have broken up] I'm okay if that's what's upsetting you...
- Rob's Mom: That is NOT what's upsetting me!
- Rob Gordon: [Sharply] Well it fuckin' should be, shouldn't it?
- Rob: [Discussing his break-up with Laura while on the phone with his mom] Laura didn't even want to get married. That's not what happens now.
- Rob's Mom: [exasperated] Oh, I don't know what happens now, except you meet a girl, you move in, she goes! You meet a girl, you move in, SHE GOES!
- Rob: Aw, SHUT UP, MOM!
- [Slams the phone receiver down, then muttering]
- Rob: God damn, that's some cold shit!