In Dinner for Schmucks, Tim (Paul Rudd) invites Barry (Steve Carell), a well-intentioned but calamitously clueless IRS agent who makes dioramas with dead mice, to his boss’s monthly “dinner for winners,” where everyone brings the biggest idiot they can find–a blind fencer, a woman who speaks to dead pets, a ventriloquist whose puppet is his wife–and surreptitiously make fun of them all night. In the day and a half between the invite and the dinner, Barry inadvertently wreaks destruction on Tim’s live-in relationship with Julie, an art curator working with a outlandishly sexual artist who’s quite the schmuck himself. Quotes are in chronological order.
Kieran: “Do you have any idea what it’s like, Tim, to be up to your elbow in a zebra’s vagina? Old life, new life, fresh life.”
Tim: “No, I don’t.”
Kieran: ” You should try it…she let me keep the afterbirth to create this piece.”
Tim: “That’s disgusting.”
(Looking at a piece of Kieran’s art where a snake is coming out of his pants)
Kieran: “What does it make you think of?”
Tim: “I guess It kind of makes me, um, think of your penis.”
Kieran: “Then you get it. Julie gets it.”
Susana, Tim’s secretary: “Why can’t you just suck it up, make fun of some idiots and stop thinking about yourself for once?”
Tim, driving and talking on the phone: “Susana, I know this is painful for you, but sometimes in life you have to do the right thing. Just lie! It’s not that hard, I’m texting a lie right now.”
(CRASH)
Barry: “In the words of John Lennon, ‘you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.'”
Tim: “…the only one.”
Barry: “The only what?”
Tim: “No, that’s the lyric. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
Barry, sarcastically: “Oh OK Tim.”
Tim: “You know, Barry, this was a very strange way to meet, but I think everything happens for a reason.”
Barry: “Wow wow, did you make that up?”
Tim: “Yeah.”
Barry: “Wow, everything happens…for a reason. I like that.”
Businessman A to Businessman B: “My girlfriend is not a hooker.”
B: “She tried to give me a BJ.”
A: “Well if she didn’t ask for money then she’s not a hooker, is she?”
B: “She asked me for money. It wasn’t that expensive, either.”
Julie: “The you I know would have just…just said no!”
Tim: “The me that you know DID say no, but the me that you don’t know had to say yes.”
Julie: “The Tim I don’t know?”
Tim: “Yes, look: there’s you and the me that you know, and we love each other and we have a wonderful life. But then there’s the me that you don’t know, and the me that you don’t know has to do things sometimes so that you and the me that you know can live in this nice apartment and eat at nice restaurants and go to Cabo for Christmas. He takes care of us.”
Barry to Julie, thinking she’s Darla: “Do not wear fishnets on New Year’s Eve–it’s too cold. When the wind blows, you gotta wear hose.”
Barry, reading a note from the artpiece: “‘For Julie, Thanks for everything, Kieran.’ Everything.”
Tim: “Yeah, she curated his show.”
Barry: “Bet that’s not all she curated.”
Tim: “I don’t know what that means, Barry.”
Barry: “Well I don’t know what ‘curated’ means.”
Barry: “Where is she?”
Tim: “Working, probably, with Kieran.”
Barry: “Where? In his bed?”
Tim: “I seriously doubt they’re working in his bed.”
Barry: “Well if they’re not working, why are they in his bed?”
Tim: “What reason could you possibly have for calling him?”
Barry: “I want to make a movie about his life. I want to make a documentary. I gain his confidence and then he starts feeling more relaxed about talking to me. He’s really opening up to me, we’re talking about his sex life. Then the top pops off and we’ve got it on tape. He’s been curated!”
Tim: “Well that sounds like a bulletproof plan.”
Barry, looking at a picture of Kieran with Nelson Mandela: “OH MY GOD! He’s friends with Morgan Freeman!”
Kieran: “There’s not a lot of monogamy in the animal kingdom. Not many animals mate for life. Penguins do. I’ve spent a lot of time around penguins, and they’re really cool. Maybe you’re a penguin, Tim, but Julie’s not a penguin. She’s a lioness. Don’t try to mate a lioness with a penguin. Have you ever seen a mammal and a bird mate? I’ve never even heard of it.”
Kieran: “Am I going to make love with Christina and Monique tonight? Hell yes! Guilty, you called me out, yep, only because it’s part of my process. There are two things in this world: wonderful, visceral, sexy sex and death. Horrible, boring death. Now I’m going to go off and have sex with these girls, before I die. If you guys want to join, that’s cool, but don’t look at me in the eye–it puts me off.”
Tim: “What?!”
Kieran: “OK you’re not into it, that’s cool. Good to see you two, thanks for visiting, glad to meet you.”
Darla: “I’m a naughty little schoolgirl!”
Barry: “You look a little old to be a schoolgirl.”
Darla: “I need to be punished. Do you want to be my schoolteacher?”
Barry: “I’m really not qualified. I work for the IRS.”
Darla: “OK! You work for the IRS, and I have been very, very bad. I cheated on my taxes and I need to be spanked, now!”
Barry: “That’s really not the way it works. You’ll probably just have to pay the difference, plus interest.”
Barry: “If you are attacked, you should always play dead. People don’t want to punch something that’s dead, it’s instinctual.”
Barry: “Oh my God, it’s code. It’s code, Tim. You should watch Law and Order. Horse is heroin. Grass, marijuana. The horse likes to run around on the grass. The heroin likes to run around on the marijuana. Wine–alcohol! Like beer, or wine. Oh man, they’re planning one hell of a party.”
Barry: “If Kieran has a ranch, we can find the address from his tax return! And if he’s up there sleeping with Julie, that’s not business-related. He can’t deduct that!”
Sherman: “I’ve studied the human mind. I’ve learned how to read it and, ultimately, control it.” (drops his book, “Your Mind is My Puppet” on the desk”)
Tim, disingenuously: “Wow, this is fascinating. I can’t wait to read it.”
Sherman: “It’s $14.99, on my website, plus shipping and handling.”
Tim: “Even if I buy it here?”
Sherman: “Well it shipped from somewhere else, didn’t it? And I’ve been handling it.”
Barry: “The first night alone is always the hardest. I can sleep in there with you if you want.”
Tim: “No thank you.”
Barry: “Hey, just don’t think about the fact that you can’t sleep because then you’re sunk. Then you just start thinking, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’ Your mind starts reeling. ‘Where’s Julie?’ ‘She’s with Kieran.’ ‘Is he a better lover than I am?’ ‘Yes he is!’ Don’t think about that. Get those thoughts out of your head.”
Barry: “Switzerland! I love Switzerland; it is one of my favorite countries. I love your army knives with the toothpicks, and your cheese. Does the cheese come out of the cow with the holes?”
Mrs. Mueller: “You have been to Switzerland?”
Barry: “No, but I have a friend who drives a Volvo, and I speak a little of your language.” (makes incoherent noises)
Barry, introducing Darla to Julie: “This is Darla. She’s a naughty schoolgirl who cheats on her taxes.”
Kieran: “Have you ever just spent five months living with a herd of goats as one of them? No? That surprises me. The thing about a goat is, it never denies itself what it wants.”
Barry: “A goat’ll eat anything. A goat could probably eat a bike.”
Kieran: “A goat could eat itself, if it was driven to it. I’m just a goat that’s halfway through eating itself.”
Barry: “Well, I try to look at the bright side. I guess you could say I’m an eternal optometrist. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Unless you don’t have any water or sugar. Then you just eat the lemons! And the rind will give you diarrhea, so mama mia papa pia, baby got the diarrhea.”
Barry: “Beauty’s only skin deep. Unless there is something wrong with your bone structure, and then you can have flawless skin and still be very ugly, because your bones are just gross.
Barry, presenting his mice art: “A thousand years ago, the only people on earth were monkeys, and they said, ‘We’ll never walk erectis. We’ll never use tools. We’ll never talk.’ And then one monkey said. ‘Oh yeah? Well I’m talking right now!’ That monkey was a dreamer.
Fast forward 500 years. The Wright brothers decide to make themselves a flying machine. ‘You fools! You idiots! What’s your problem?’ everyone shouted, ‘That will never work because plywood weighs more than air!’ To which the Wright brothers responded, ‘No, it doesn’t.’ The Wright brothers were dreamers.
The earl of sandwich and Sir Francis Bacon. Had it not been for them, the BLT would merely be lettuce and tomato. They were dreamers, and sandwichmakers…Vincent Van Gogh. Everyone told him, ‘You only have one ear. You cannot be a great artist.’ And you know what he said? I can’t hear you.’ Van Gogh was a dreamer…Louis Pasteur turned cheese into medicine…Benjamin Franklin. People said, ‘You can’t fly a kite in a rainstorm,’ and Ben Franklin said, ‘Yes you can, if you have an electric kite.’
…And who might this handsome young lad be? Tim Conrad. He believes that someday he will marry the girl of his dreams, even though every time he asks, she says no and even though as we speak she is probably having sex with a handsome artist. Tim Conrad is a dreamer.”
Sherman: “Now tell us, Barry, why did your wife leave? Spit it out of your mouth. Say it. Say it, boy.”
Barry: “I lost her clitoris!”
Party guest: “You lost her clitoris?”
Barry: “She got mad because I couldn’t find it, and I said ‘It’s probably in your purse,’ because nine times out of 10 when she loses something, that’s where they end up.”
Party guest: “Barry do you even know what that is?”
Barry: “I don’t know what half the stuff in her purse is.”
Sherman: “Don’t worry Barry, I found it. It was in her purse. It was in her naughty purse.”
Party guest: “Wow. Well thank God somebody found it, right?”
Barry: “I thought I found it, under the couch. Turns out it was just an old piece of chewing gum.”
Barry: “I’m going to go lay eggs in his brain.”
Barry: “You have no secrets from me, Sherman. I know that after sex, you like to curl up in the fecal position. You cry like a little baby.”
Sherman: “Martha told you?”
Barry: “No, she did not. I know that you take a magic marker and you draw a face on your penis…You put a little hat on it, and you call it Sammy.”
Barry, to other schmucks: “These people invited us here to make fun of us. This is a contest for the biggest idiot. Which I nailed!”
