Being potato-headed is all it’s cracked up to be
Posted: June 2nd, 2009 | Author: <mina.> | Filed under: visions i cants | Tags: 1952, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Howard Hawks, Monkey business | No Comments »– I’m beginning to wonder if being young is all it’s cracked up to be. We dream of youth. We remember it as a time of nightingales and valentines, and what are the facts? Maladjustement, near-idiocy, and a series of low-comedy disasters, that’s what youth is. I don’t see how anyone survives it. Now Edwina, tell me something because it’s been bothering me.
– Yes, dear?
– Why did you want a divorce?
– Oh Barnaby! It wasn’t me, it was the formula. You ought to understand that.
– Oh I understand it was the formula that brought it out.
– Brought what out?
– Some subconscious aversion to me.
– Aversion to you? I love you, you potato-head.
– How do I know there’s no buried resentment that you don’t conciously realise?
– I certainly don’t conciously realise it, and I think that’s pretty rotten of you to say that.
– Wait a minute. What about the way you kept bringing up Hank?
– Hogwash!
– Do you love him?
– Now that is ridiculous.
– You kissed him, didn’t you?
– You can’t get it out of your mind, can you?
– No, I can’t.
– Well, all right. Are you in love with this, um, whosits?
– Of course not.
– Well, you went smooching with her. On roller skates. And what was your hidden aversion or subconscious discontent, or whatever it is you want to call it, that made you go playing patty-cake with her all over town? Doing a swan dive! Acting like a…
– Well, go on.
Howard Hawks. Monkey business. Starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers. 1952
