The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie
"Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man, not an attorney"; "Give me $50 worth"; "I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor"
In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 01:08:19Read transcript
- Nominees read aloud: Michael's 'I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy' speech about having sold out Arthur for 80 grand; Arthur's 'you're a bag man, not an attorney'; Michael's 'There is no play here. There is no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor'; the $50 cab line mentioned before; and Arthur's 'I am Shiva the god of death'.
- One pick is 'you live a very rich and interesting life', for the way the line comes out of Arthur while he is slipping, a man with baguettes who does not know what he is doing, imagined as Nicki Minaj saying it to Peter Rosenberg; another finds the last line simply perfect, the line identified earlier as the last line of the movie, 'Give me $50 worth' in the cab.
- Asked for that line in a Denzel voice, the answer is again 'Absolutely not'. — Justin Charity
- The retort is to democratize Denzel, since everyone can do Denzel; the third pick holds that the killer line is still 'I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor', a moment everybody comes to at some point in their lives.