Comeuppance Quotes

I was tired of playing the nice, clean-cut cowboy in "Rawhide" (1959), I wanted something earthier. Something different from the old-fashioned Western. You know: Hero rides in, very stalwart, with white hat, man`s beating a horse, hero jumps off, punches man, schoolmarm walks down the street, sees this situation going on, slight conflict with schoolmarm, but not too much. You know schoolmarm and hero will be together in exactly 10 more reels, if you care to sit around and wait, and you know the man beast horse with eventually get comeuppance from hero this guy bushwhacks him in reel nine. But (Per un pugno di dollari (1964)) was different; it definitely had satiric overtones. The hero was an enigmatic figure, and that worked within the context of this picture. In some films, he would be ludicrous. You can`t have a cartoon in the middle of a Renoir.

Audiences like to see the bad guys get their comeuppance.

What`s most gratifying to me is Sarah Polley getting a nomination for screenplay adaptation. I was afraid she wouldn`t be recognized. I wondered if they were going to get this great piece of work. I`m very glad I did it because it`s a terribly important issue. We`ve got to face the fact that we`re living longer. This is the comeuppance of wishing for immortality. Back in the day we weren`t so obsessed about them (Oscars) in England. I didn`t know about the Academy Awards. I didn`t know what it was. I got the smell of the thing that it was terribly important but I wasn`t interested in it, but I figured maybe I could get something out of this. I told them I would go if my boyfriend and I could get a holiday in the desert. It almost feels the same today.

The thing that`s always bothered me is that, even if you have a strong female character, invariably in the third act she has to say something like, "I`m sorry, I didn`t mean to hurt you," or she has to become really vulnerable and wimpy and get her comeuppance. Even in something like Thelma & Louise (1991), where you have these two very strong characters, they have to die in the end. What`s so special about The Last Seduction (1994) is that none of that happens. Had a Hollywood studio made that film instead of an independent, it would have been very different. She definitely wouldn`t have gotten away with what she does get away with.