Falling Down

Falling Down is a 1993 drama film about laid-off defense worker who is enraged by a traffic jam and rampages across Los Angeles as a police sergeant searches for purpose on his retirement day.

Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Ebbe Roe Smith.

A Tale Of Urban Reality.taglines

William Foster

[While destroying merchandise in a Korean owned grocery store] You think I'm a thief? No. See, I'm not the thief, I'm not the one charging 85 cents for a STINKING SODA! YOU'RE THE THIEF! I'm just standing up for my rights as a consumer! I'm rolling prices back to 1965! What do you think of that?

Okay. Okay. I was willing to mind my own business. I was willing to respect your territory and treat you like a man, but you couldn't leave it alone, could you? You couldn't let a man sit here for 5 minutes and take a rest on your precious piece of shit hill?!

Why have you put barbed wire on a fence? Is this how you rich people amuse yourselves? You put barbed wire on the fence so innocent people like me can hurt our hands looking in, huh?

I lost my job. Actually I didn't lose it. It lost me. I'm overeducated, underskilled. Maybe it's the other way around. I forget, but I'm obsolete. I'm not economically viable. I can't even support my own kid.

I am not a vigilante. I'm just trying to get home to my daughter's birthday. If everyone will stay out of my way, then nobody will get hurt.

What the hell are you trying to do? Kill me with the golf ball? IS THAT ENOUGH, YOU GOT ALL THESE BEAUTIFUL ACRES FENCING FOR YOUR LITTLE GAME, BUT YOU OUGHT TO KILL ME WITH THE GOLF BALL!? You should have children playing here! You should have FAMILIES HAVING PICNICS! YOU SHOULD HAVE A GODDAMN PETTING ZOO!! Instead you got these stupid carts for you old men with nothing better to do!!!

I've passed the point of no return, Beth. You know when that is? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than it is to continue to the end. It's like...Do you remember when those astronauts got in trouble when they were going to the moon and something went wrong? I don't know, somebody screwed up and they had to get them back to Earth, but they had passed the point of no return. So, they had to go all the way around the moon to get back, and they were out of contact for hours. Everybody waited breathlessly to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side, and that's me. I'm on the other side of the moon now, out of contact, and everybody's just going to have to wait until I pop out.

Did you know that in certain South American countries it's still legal to kill your wife if she insults you?

I wanna know what's wrong with the street. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, I think you're just trying to justify your inflated budgets!

It's my little girl's birthday today. We were going to have a barbecue like you guys, and she was going to play outside, my wife would hold my hand, and we'd talk about grown up things. And then when it got dark, we'd all go to sleep together. We'd all sleep together in the dark. And everything will be just like it was before.

Martin Prendergast

Martin Prendergast. Downtown robbery. Let's go.
Genuine Santa Monica sand's more like it.
You mean he stole your baseball bat but he paid for the soda? Oh, this guy's discriminating.
What would a guy in a white shirt and tie be doing in gangland?
Sandra, you have a career. It's not easy to see your beauty go and that's all you got.
Now, if you go up against this guy, be careful.
Me? I'm a coward, the captain just told me.
Hey! What happens between me and my wife is nobody's business but mine, Sandra.
And she didn't make me get off the street. I happened to come home late one night, and I found her sitting in the dark staring at the wall. She had gotten into her head that I'd been killed. She thought I was a ghost and I had to chase her all over the house!
Some G.I. Joe gave an old geaser a heart attack at the Altmore Golf Course, and accosted a family right next door. He's wearing a surplus jacket, the kind you find at an Army Navy store.
Would you believe that I used to fish right out here. This very spot. Now they say "Don't eat the fish, it's poisonous." And you can't even swim in the water, it'll give you some kind of bacterial infection. So, how's that for "sick"?
Everyone has their own idea of what they think paradise is.
You know, my wife was never was cut out for motherhood. She did it all for me. Went through all that pain, lost her figure, for me. Then the kid went to sleep one night and never woke up. They called it "Infant death syndrome", but she wasn't an infant. It was very strange, cause she was 2 years old, she was a big girl. She was our baby.
Guys like you always say that. You don't know what you're gonna do until you do it. I think you knew exactly what you were going to do. You were gonna kill your wife and child! And then it would be too late to turn back. It'd be easy to turn the gun on yourself!
Is that what all this is about? You're angry because you were lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Hey, they lie to everybody. They lie to the fish! But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today. The only thing that makes you special is your daughter.
Fuck you, Captain Yardley. Fuck you very much.

Dialogue

Guy on freeway: Hey! Where do you think you're going?!

William Foster: I'm going home!

Martin Prendergast: [phone rings and Prendergast answers it] Prendergast here.

Amanda Prendergast: Hi. It's me.

Martin Prendergast: Hi.

Amanda Prendergast: [holding a photo of her deceased daughter in her hand] I wish you'd come home. Wouldn't you come home now.

Martin Prendergast: What's wrong, baby?

Amanda Prendergast: I don't know. I just...i got a little scared. And...i'd really like you to come home.

Martin Prendergast: What is it, honey?

Amanda Prendergast: Well...[starts crying] I don't know. I was just wrapping some...some glasses up and some things and I...I got...I got really scared. You're not doing this move just for me, are you? You really want to do it, don't you?

Martin Prendergast: Look. The Important thing is we're together and that's what counts.

Amanda Prendergast: [continues crying] Yeah, but you're not here.

Martin Prendergast: But I will be soon, baby.

Amanda Prendergast: [continues crying] Say it. Say it.

Martin Prendergast: I'll be home soon.

Amanda Prendergast: [continues crying] No. Say it.

Martin Prendergast: I'll be home soon and I love you.

Amanda Prendergast: I love you, too.

Martin Prendergast: Feel better?

Amanda Prendergast: [continues crying] No, I don't feel better.

Martin Prendergast: [gets out a snowglobe music box playing 'London Bridge is Falling Down'] No? Okay. "London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London bridge is falling down" Come on, help me. "My Fair Lady"

Amanda Prendergast: [sings with Prendergast] My Fair Lady.

Martin Prendergast: [laughs] You're my fair lady?

Amanda Prendergast: [giggles] Yes. Bye.

Martin Prendergast: Bye-bye [hangs up the phone]

Elizabeth Tavino: [phone rings and she answers it] Hello? [no answer] Hello? [still no answer] Cut the crap, I know it's you. What do you want? It is you, isn't it?

William Foster: [on a payphone] Yeah. Yeah, it's me.

Elizabeth Tavino: You got to stop calling me.

William Foster: It's Adele's birthday.

Elizabeth Tavino: Yes, I know it's her birthday. What do you want?

William Foster: I'm coming home.

Elizabeth Tavino: What are you talking about?

William Foster: I just...I want to let you know that I'm coming home for her birthday.

Elizabeth Tavino: You're not coming here.

William Foster: Listen Beth. I got to see you.

Elizabeth Tavino: No. No you listen to me. This is my house now. I pay the rent. You don't even pay child support. You just can't walk in and out whenever you feel like.

William Foster: Don't talk like that, Beth. I have to come home. I have to bring her present.

Elizabeth Tavino: You know you can't come here.

Mexican gangbanger 1: Hey. Hey! [points that Foster is at the phonebooth] It's him! It's him, man!

William Foster: How's Adele?

Elizabeth Tavino: This isn't your home anymore.

William Foster: How is she?

Elizabeth Tavino: She's doing just fine without you.

Mexican gangbanger 2: Get out of the car!

Angie: Come on, man. It's fucking broad daylight, man! This shit ain't worth it!

Mexican gangbanger 2: Get the fuck out of the car now! [the gang start loading their weapons as Angie steps out of the car]

William Foster: And you?

Elizabeth Tavino: Don't. I'll call the police if I have to.

Mexican gangbanger 2: Go, go, go!

William Foster: I'm coming home, Beth. I'm coming home. [he hangs up, and the Mexican gang try to shoot Foster, but hits several bystanders instead, missing him].

Elizabeth Tavino: You sure you don't want something? Coffee, soda, something?

Officer Springer: No thank you, ma'am.

Elizabeth Tavino: I feel kind of stupid about this whole thing.

Officer Springer: Better safe than sorry.

Elizabeth Tavino: Yeah that's what I thought.

Officer Springer: You have a restraining order against your husband?

Elizabeth Tavino: Ex-husband. Yeah, he'd show up on the wrong day, or in the middle of the night pounding on the door, stuff like that. Thing is. He has this horrendous temper and I just didn't know if a restraining order was a good idea and if it'd do more harm than good. But the judge said we should make an example of him. So he can't come within 100 feet of us. Or is it yards? Which is it? Feet or yards?

Officer Springer: That's up to the judge.

Elizabeth Tavino: Really? I thought it was a set thing.

Officer Springer: No, it's at his discretion.

Elizabeth Tavino: That's interesting.

Officer Springer: Does he drink?

Elizabeth Tavino: [pause] Oh, I thought you meant the judge. No, I wouldn't say so.

Officer Springer: Do drugs?

Elizabeth Tavino: Oh, no.

Officer Springer: But he has a propensity for violence?

Elizabeth Tavino: Yeah, I think you can say that.

Officer Springer: Did he strike the little girl?

Elizabeth Tavino: Well, no.

Officer Springer: Did he strike you?

Elizabeth Tavino: Not exactly.

Officer Springer: Not exactly?

Elizabeth Tavino: You know, there were times when I thought he was going to. But i just didn't want until he got around to it. It's hard to explain. He could, I think.

Officer Springer: You think?

Vagrant: Hello sir. How are you today.

William Foster: I'm doing alright. How about you?

Vagrant: Me? I'm terrible.

William Foster: Sorry to hear that.

Vagrant: Yeah. I came down from Santa Barbara yesterday and this friend of mine wasn't home like I thought he was going to be and he owes me some money. So, i thought I had some money to get back home with. I'm almost out of gas. I had to sleep in my car last night. I don't suppose you have a couple of bucks you could give me. It would really help me out. If you give me your address I'll mail it back, honest.

William Foster: Let me see your driver's license.

Vagrant: What do you want to see my driver's license for?

William Foster: Well, if your from Santa Barbara it would have your address on it. I want it.

Vagrant: I don't have a driver's license.

William Foster: You mean you drove all the way from Santa Barbara without a license?

Vagrant: Are you a cop?

William Foster: Let me see your car registration. A matter of fact, let me see your car.

Vagrant: Alright, forget it. Okay, just forget it. That's a hell of a way to treat a "vet", man!

William Foster: You're an animal doctor?

Vagrant: No. I vet. A veteran. I was in Nam.

William Foster: What were you, a drummer boy? You must've been 10 years old.

Vagrant: I mean the Gulf, I meant to say the Gulf. Jesus! Come on! All I'm asking for is a little change I haven't eaten in 3 days. [realizing he's eating a sandwich in his hand] I mean...except for this. Fuck it! Give me some money, man! Just give me some money!

William Foster: No.

Vagrant: How much change is in your pocket? I don't care if it's a dime. Give it to me.

William Foster: I'm not giving you any money.

Vagrant: You got a cigarette?

William Foster: I don't smoke.

Vagrant: Oh, you got to give me something.

William Foster: Why don't you try to get a job?

Vagrant: Hey! This is my park, I live here! Who the fuck are you walking through my park carrying two bags?! You got two bags, I don't got any. Is that fair?! What's in those bags? [Foster grips his bag of guns tightly, seemingly intending to kill him] Give me one of those bags. I could sell those bags and eat for a week with the money. You got two of them, why do you need two of them?

William Foster: You're right. Here. [gives his briefcase to the vagrant]

Vagrant: Are you serious?

William Foster: I don't need it anymore.

Vagrant: Alright! [opens up the briefcase. Only to discover it only contains a sandwich, two carrotsticks and an apple. The vagrant throws the apple out of disappointment as Foster walks away] Son of a bitch!

William Foster: Hi. I'd like some breakfast.

Rick: We stopped serving breakfast.

William Foster: I know you stopped serving breakfast Rick, Sheila told me that you... why am I calling you by your first names? I don't even know you. I still call my boss 'Mister' even though I've been working with him for seven years, but all of a sudden I walk in here and I'm calling you Rick and Sheila like we're in some kind of AA meeting and... I don't want to be your buddy, Rick. I just want a little breakfast?

Sheila: You can call me Miss Folsom if you want.

Rick: Sheila. We stopped serving breakfast at 11:30.

[Foster looks at his watch to find it's 3 minutes past the deadline. He places his gym bag full of guns on the counter.]

William Foster: Rick, have you ever heard the expression "the customer is always right"?

Rick: [sighs] Yeah.

William Foster: Well, here I am. The customer.

Rick: [still smiling] That's not our policy. You'll have to order something from the lunch menu.

William Foster: I don't want lunch. I want breakfast.

Rick: Yeah, well hey, I'm really sorry.

William Foster: Yeah, well hey, I'm real sorry too. [pulls out a TEC-9]

Officer Springer: Ma'am, we're gonna take off now.

Elizabeth Tavino: You are? Really?

Officer Springer: It doesn't look like your husband's gonna show. What would probably happen was he came to his senses that he realize he could get into a lot of trouble if he harassed you. What I think you should do is call your lawyer and tell him about it.

Elizabeth Tavino: Well, it's one of those services. I didn't have much money.

Officer Springer: Well, call them. And tell them to call your husband's lawyer. Make it official. In the meantime, lock up. And if anything else happens, give us a call.

Martin Prendergast: [phone rings and Prendergast answers it] Yeah, Prendergast.

Amanda Prendergast: Hi, it's me. He's eating and resting comfortably now.

Martin Prendergast: Who is?

Amanda Prendergast: Mr. Peepers.

Martin Prendergast: Good.

Amanda Prendergast: Honey, I'm sorry about before. I really blew my top.

Martin Prendergast: That's okay, honey [Torres starts calling] Can you hold on just one second? [switches to Torres] Prendergast.

Sandra Torres: [at the Whammyburger] White shirt and tie.

Martin Prendergast: Sandra, could you hold on one second?

Sandra Torres: I gotta go.

Martin Prendergast: No, just one second. It's very important. [switches to Amanda]

Lydecker: Detective Torres! Excuse me! We have about 7 million people out here waiting to make a statement!

Sandra Torres: I'm on the phone!

Martin Prendergast: [to Amanda] Hon, let me call your right back.

Amanda Prendergast: What's wrong? What are you doing?

Martin Prendergast: Nothing's wrong. Not doing anything. What do you mean?

Amanda Prendergast: Well, you can come home then.

Martin Prendergast: I can't.

Amanda Prendergast: It's your last day. What are they gonna do, fire you?

Martin Prendergast: There's a lot of red tape, the sooner I get done the sooner i'll get home. I'll call you in a while, okay.

Amanda Prendergast: Wait a minute. Make a list.

Martin Prendergast: A list?

Amanda Prendergast: We need boneless chicken, skinless. Red peppers. Not green, red.

Martin Prendergast: Honey. Hold on one second. [switches to Torres] Sandra

Sandra Torres: I am tying up the phone here.

Martin Prendergast: Just listen for once in your life. Now a gang girl at the drive by said that a man in a white shirt and tie attacked her homeboys with a baseball bat. Now I think somebody's let their dog off the leash.

Sandra Torres: I think you got "last day-itis". This man was not swinging a baseball bat, he has a gym bag full of guns.

Martin Prendergast: A gym bag?

Sandra Torres: Look, you asked me to tell you what he was wearing. I gotta run. The lieutenants wants the canvass the neighborhood.

Martin Prendergast: Sandra, just one more second. Please it's important. [switches to Amanda] Hon, why don't you go to the store?

Amanda Prendergast: Why?

Martin Prendergast: It's my last day, the guys might want to have a send off or something.

Amanda Prendergast: What are they gonna do? Get some broad with tassels dangling from her tits, dancing on her desk?

Martin Prendergast: Of course not.

Amanda Prendergast: Look, buster. While you've been there playing cop, i'm at home planning your retirement. It's over. The sooner you get that through your head the better. You are no longer in the law enforcement business. Now, I will at the usual time, capito?

Martin Prendergast: [switches to Torres] Sandra, are you mad at me?

Sandra Torres: No, I hate you but I'm not mad.

Lydecker: [rudely to Torres] Are you retiring as well, too?

Sandra Torres: Just don't leave without saying goodbye.

Lydecker: [rudely to Torres] Goodbye.

Martin Prendergast: If you go up against this guy...be careful.

Nick: Because I'm with you. Don't you get it? I was listening to the police scanner. I heard about the Whammyburger! Fucking fantastic! It was a bunch of niggers, wasn't it? On TV, it's always nice looking white kids. But when you go in there, it's nothing but a bunch of fucking niggers. And they'll spit on your food if you're not nice to them. I know all about it. I'm with you. We're the same, you and me. We're the same. Don't you see?

William Foster: We are not the same. I'm an American. You're a sick asshole.

Nick: Just what kind of vigilante are you?

William Foster: I am not a vigilante. I am just trying to get home to my daughter's birthday party, and if everyone will just stay out of my way then nobody will get hurt.

Nick: Fuck you! Who the fuck are you? Are you fucking with me?

William Foster: I AM JUST DISAGREEING WITH YOU!!! In America, we have the freedom of speech, the right to disagree!

Nick: Fuck you and your freedom!

Elizabeth Tavino: [phone rings and she answers it] Hello?

William Foster: [calling from the surplus store basement after just killing the Nazi] So who were you talking to a while ago?

Elizabeth Tavino: You're just trying to scare me.

William Foster: [now dressed in army fatigues] Am I succeeding?

Elizabeth Tavino: No, you're not succeeding. So you might as well just stop it. And you're not scaring me out of my own house. And you're not coming here.

William Foster: Oh, but I am. I'm on my way. You can count on that. I've passed the point of no return, Beth. You know when that is? That's the point in a journey where it's longer to go back to the beginning than it is to continue to the end. It's like...Do you remember when those astronauts got in trouble when they were going to the moon and something went wrong? I don't know, somebody screwed up and they had to get them back to Earth, but they had passed the point of no return. So, they had to go all the way around the moon to get back, and they were out of contact for hours. Everybody waited breathlessly to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side, and that's me. I'm on the other side of the moon now, out of contact, and everybody's just going to have to wait until I pop out.

Elizabeth Tavino: The police are here.

William Foster: Did you know that in certain South American countries it's still legal to kill your wife if she insults you?

Elizabeth Tavino: [frightened] They're here right now! I'm looking at one right now!

William Foster: Put them on the phone. [Elizabeth hangs up instead]

Mrs. Foster: [shows Prendergast and Torres her son's bedroom] This is his room.

Martin Prendergast: You're a very neat and tidy lady.

Mrs. Foster: Oh, he cleans his own room.

Martin Prendergast: [jokingly] Now don't make me call you a liar.

Mrs. Foster: No. If he wasn't at work, i'd be afraid to set foot in here.

Martin Prendergast: What's he been doing lately?

Mrs. Foster: Same as ever. He's building important things to protect us from the communists. He works at NoTec.

Martin Prendergast: The defense plant? "D-FENS". [to Torres] Why don't you call NoTec and see if you can get them on the line? [Torres leaves the room to call NoTec] So, what's going on with your son?

Mrs. Foster: What do you mean?

Martin Prendergast: You know exactly what I mean?

Mrs. Foster: [becomes frightened] Sometimes he sits through an entire meal without saying a word. He just keeps shoveling food in his mouth like he's some kind of a machine, I get so nervous I can't swallow. I'll sit there with the same piece of food in my mouth. I just have to spit it out on the plate, and when I do, he looks at me like he would like to kill me. Don't tell him that I said that.

Martin Prendergast: I promise, I won't.

Mrs. Foster: I try not to be a burden. I'm not just talking financial.

Martin Prendergast: Now, how could you be a burden to anyone? Now if William, or Bill--

Mrs. Foster: He likes Bill. I call him Bill too.

Martin Prendergast: If Bill said he was going home, could he have meant where his wife and daughter live?

Mrs. Foster: Ex-wife. We shouldn't be in here. [they leave Foster's old bedroom and head downstairs]

Martin Prendergast: Ex-wife, right? Elizabeth, what's her name again? Her maiden name?

Mrs. Foster: Tavino. She was part Italian, you know it goes with them.

Martin Prendergast: So where's Elizabeth now?

Mrs. Foster: I wouldn't know.

Martin Prendergast: You mean you don't know where your granddaughter lives?

Mrs. Foster: He doesn't want me to know where she is. He blames me for what happened. [Torres comes in, having just talked to NoTec on the phone]

Martin Prendergast: What's the word?

Sandra Torres: He was fired over a month ago.

Mrs. Foster: What? Well, where has he been going every day? Where has he been eating his lunch?

William Foster: What kind of doctor lives here?

The Caretaker: Plastic surgeon.

William Foster: Plastic surgery bought this? Guess I'm in the wrong racket. Are there correspondence courses in plastic surgery? I lost my job. Actually, I didn't lose it, it lost me. I'm overeducated, underskilled...Maybe it's the other way around, I forget. But, I'm obsolete. I'm not economically viable. I can't even support my own daughter. [suddenly freaks out when he thinks he hurt the caretaker's daughter] Oh, jesus. I'm so sorry, honey! I didn't mean to hurt you!

The Caretaker: No, no. It's your hand. You cut your hand.

William Foster: Oh, right. It's my hand. [sits down and bandages his hand]

The Caretaker: Please take me with you.

Caretaker's wife: No!

The Caretaker: They won't do anything as long as I'm with you. Just, please, let them go.

William Foster: What do you think? You think I wanna hurt your family? I have a family of my own. You don't believe me?

Caretaker's wife: We believe you.

William Foster: That's where I'm going. I'm going home to see my family. It's my little girl's birthday today. We were going to have a barbecue like you guys, and she was going to play outside, my wife would hold my hand, and we'd talk about grown up things. And then when it got dark, we'd all go to sleep together. We'd all sleep together in the dark. And everything will be just like it was before. [Foster starts crying]

Martin Prendergast: No answer from Elizabeth. Did you send the cavalry?

Sandra Torres: No, pacific division are pricks. They say they can't justify sending units to the same address 3 times in one day to comfort "some hysterical woman". What do you want to do?

Martin Prendergast: Go to Venice. [phone rings] Get that, will you?

Sandra Torres: Torres

Amanda Prendergast: Who the fuck is this?

Sandra Torres: Shit, it's your wife.

Martin Prendergast: Hon.

Amanda Prendergast: Yeah, "hon", i know who that was! Listen, Mr. Peepers just scratched the shit out of me and I'm bleeding like a stuck pig!

Martin Prendergast: Listen, honey. Something important has come up, alright?

Amanda Prendergast: What am I, dog vomit? Your wife tells you she's bleeding to death and you say something important has come up? When are you coming home?

Martin Prendergast: I don't know.

Amanda Prendergast: Don't tell me you don't know...I WANNA KNOW WHEN THE HELL YOU'RE COMING HOME NOW!!!!

Martin Prendergast: Amanda, shut up! You hear me? Shut up! Now, I'll get home when I'm finished, not a second before. Is that clear? Is that clear?

Amanda Prendergast: Well, you don't have to bite my head off.

Martin Prendergast: And you have dinner ready and waiting for me, okay? And Amanda...you leave the skin on the chicken.

Amanda Prendergast: Okay, okay.

Martin Prendergast: Goodbye. [hangs up]

Amanda Prendergast: [nervously] shit.

Martin Prendergast: Alright. Take the back. [Torres runs to the back of Foster's house, Prendergast realizes he doesn't have his gun in his holster as he had given it away for retirement earlier]

Sandra Torres: Police! [A gunshot is heard and Prendergast frantically enters the house, searches the place and goes out back]

Martin Prendergast: Sandra! [she has been shot in the stomach by Foster and is lying on the grass bleeding] You okay?

Sandra Torres: Yeah, i'm alright.

Martin Prendergast: [to a neighbor] Get an ambulance! Call 911, get an ambulance! Tell them an officer has been shot! GO GO GO!!! [Prendergast picks up Torres' gun]

Sandra Torres: Be careful [Prendergast chases Foster to the pier] Go get the bastard! He's still dressed like G.I. Joe!

Martin Prendergast: What were you going to do?

William Foster: I don't know, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Martin Prendergast: Guys like you always say that. You don't know what you're gonna do until you do it. I think you knew exactly what you were going to do. You were gonna kill your wife and child!

William Foster: No

Martin Prendergast: Yeah, and then it would be too late to turn back. It'd be easy to turn the gun on yourself! Now let's go meet some nice policemen. They're good guys. Come on, let's go.

William Foster: I'm the bad guy?

Martin Prendergast: Yeah.

William Foster: How did that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles?

Martin Prendergast: Yeah.

William Foster: I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they gave it to the plastic surgeons. They lied to me.

Martin Prendergast: Is that what all this is about? You're angry because you were lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner's drying out in the oven? Hey! They lie to everybody, they lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today. The only thing that makes you special, is your daughter. Now let's go. Let's go!

William Foster: [accepting that Prendergast is right] It sure was hot today, wasn't it? You know, I got a gun. In my pocket. [turns around to face Prendergast] I got lots of guns.

Martin Prendergast: Stay there. Don't move.

William Foster: Wanna draw?

Martin Prendergast: Let's not. Let's call it a day.

William Foster: Oh, come on. It's perfect. A showdown between the sheriff and the bad guy? It's beautiful. On three.

Martin Prendergast: This doesn't have to be the end, Bill. You have a choice. My daughter is dead. I don't have a choice. You have a choice.

William Foster: No, you have two choices. I can kill you, or you can kill me and my daughter can get the insurance. One.

Martin Prendergast: Don't you want to see her grow up?

William Foster: Behind bars? Two.

Martin Prendergast: Don't do this. Please. LET'S GO!

William Foster: Three (Foster pulls out a water pistol from his pocket, and Prendergast shoots Foster in the chest) I would've got you. (Foster falls off the railing and into the water below. Prendergast looks over the railing at Foster floating dead in the water, feeling bad that he just killed him)

Reporter: What cooperation was there between Pacific Division and Downtown?

Captain Yardley: Not to denegrate the Venice police department, but it was one of our fellows that put this thing together. Prendergast. This is Sergeant Prendergast. [Prendergast shakes Yardley's hand in front of reporters] Damn fine work.

Martin Prendergast: Fuck you, Captain Yardley. Fuck you very much.

Captain Yardley: You're welcome.

Martin Prendergast: [to Torres on a stretcher for her gunshot wound in the stomach] You still here?

Sandra Torres: [jokingly] Afraid so.

EMT: We've stabilized her, we're taking her in now. She'll be alright.

Martin Prendergast: I'll see you at the hospital. [Torres gets taken in the ambulance. Prendergast approaches Elizabeth on the front porch to check if she and Adele are okay] How are you doing?

Elizabeth Tavino: I haven't told her yet. Oh shit. [notices a bunch of families with kids with birthday presents] It's her birthday. What should I do?

Martin Prendergast: Tell her tomorrow. Let her have her little party. [Elizabeth leaves] What's your name, darling?

Adele Foster: Adele.

Martin Prendergast: [sits down on the front porch next to Adele] Adele? That's a nice name. If I had a little girl, i'd want her to be named Adele.

Adele Foster: What's yours?

Martin Prendergast: Mine? My name is "Mud".

Adele Foster: No, you're name's not "Mud"

Martin Prendergast: Well, it will be when my wife finds out that...i'm still a cop.

About Falling Down

Falling Down first came to me through a news item that happened on the L.A. freeway system, where there was a big rude trucker who suddenly started to ram people and shove them off the road as he was driving. And I just became fascinated with, what was the mental process of this guy and what made him snap? And how did he end up getting there, crossing this line? I had a fantasy where this guy is in a huge truck and all of these people are getting in his way trying to cut him off and he’s not getting to where he wants to go. And suddenly, he decided, “I don’t have to take it. I’m in a huge truck.” so he snapped and started shoving these people off. The idea fascinated me that where do you cross the line when all of a sudden, the rules don’t apply. And that was the origin of it. When it came time to pick what William Foster was doing for a living, I came up with that he worked at a defense plant, because reading about defense workers who had been laid off, because the United States was downsizing their defense programs, because the USSR had recently gone kaput, and that threat was no longer there, and the irony of that interested me, that here’s a guy who is protecting America, who was creating things that protected America, and he was essentially fired for doing too good of a job. Of course, now all of that is gone, the world has flipped around, we have a whole different set of rules and fears. William Foster was a guy who played by the rules all of the time and was punished for it, in his mind. - Ebbe Roe Smith.
When I created this character of William Foster, it sort of happened backwards, in that the point that the guy broke is where it started. As a script, and as an idea, and as a concept. So I had to work backwards to from there to create the character who drove up to this point and then snapped. Then once you had that, it was a process of just looking at the city and deciding what pissed me off about it, and putting this guy through these things and expressing them that way. The thing about the things which annoyed Foster in this movie are, they're normal things. Here's a guy who's not annoyed because his wife was killed by someone, he's speaking for every man as he goes through this day. And they're little normal things which annoy people which come up against him, and which also annoyed me. And that's what I sought out when I thought about the path that he takes. And I got out a map a lot, and checked it out and tried to work out this pathway that he took from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica where he would pop up here and there. And I tried to construct the script around those areas, which came up. Los Angeles is a melting pot. It's a place where cultures come up against each other. Money cultures, against poor cultures, class, race, they're all living right next to each other, and they have a tendency to rub up each other at various times. And with the car culture, you're able to go from one segment of this society to another in a flash. Now, a lot of the times you're going to miss it because you're in a car. What happens to Foster is that he gets out of the car, and all of a sudden he's confronted with it because of the ground. He's moving through it. He's become part of it at that point. - Ebbe Roe Smith
For me, a really interesting part of the film was the mystery aspect. On one level, it was a straight out, mystery, a crime solving. And weaving the elements of Prendergast trying to solve this crime with what was happening, was one of the most fascinating things to me about it, and took it away from the pure societal commentary that was going on. The thing about the Prendergast character that i've always loved is he's a cop who can't stop being a policeman. He has a mystery, and he has to solve it. And it doesn't matter if it's his last day, it doesn't matter if everyone doesn't believe in him, he just can't give it up. In a very quiet focused way. You know, he does rebel against the forces that are coming at him in the police department, their attitude that he's a coward and his choice of not being on the street. But, I think it’s more than that, I think it’s a deeper thing in his character, is that he just can't stop. He can't stop a mystery because he is who he is, he's a policeman. So, i don't think that his motivation comes from a rebellion against the authority of the police department. It's a motivation that comes from deep within him, that is deeper than a rebellion against the forces coming at him. Although, I suppose there is a certain aspect of that to it. But more importantly, it's the simple character of the detective who can't stop searching out a crime. - Ebbe Roe Smith
To me, one of the most compelling things about Falling Down when I read it, was that Ebbe Roe Smith had created these two characters: William Foster (Michael Douglas) and Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall). And they're on this parallel course and do not meet til the last second of the movie. But to me, they were two sides of a coin, or more importantly two sides of our own psyche, in the sense that Foster is the part of us that fantasizes about walking out of our car in a traffic jam, about pulling out a gun if you don't get things you want, about righting some wrong on the street because we feel that we're justified. And Prendergast is the part of us that must find compassion, find forgiveness, mush through, shlog through this life trying to keep a sense of humor. There's a reason why these two men are in this story together, it's not just bad guy/good guy. It's an examination of our own spirit. The reason I decided to do Falling Down was because I thought it worked on so many levels. I thought, it was an psychological thriller on one level, almost like an old fashioned Western. You have a bad guy tearing up the town, and “will the old sheriff put on his guns and his badge and go find him.” I also thought it was a moral tale, a parable about these two men's lives during these eight hours. So it had that mythic fable feeling to it, which i love in movies. And then of course it had the political, social, economic layers all woven through it with a dark absurdist comedy, which I think life is really like. - Joel Schumacher
It's about a man who wakes up one morning, and the America that he has been sold. He doesn't know who he is anymore. Because he's suddenly in a city where it's a multicultural, multilingual world, and he doesn't fit in, in his mind, because he's an unbalanced person to begin with. Because, many people of all races, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, many times in our lifetime we feel we're strangers in a strange land. But we don't wind up pulling guns. To me, William Foster always represented the man who does walk into McDonald's and shoots up people, but all the neighbors say he was so nice, he was so quiet. Cause it's never really Jeffrey Dahmer, it's never the monster. It's really the guy next door. - Joel Schumacher
William Foster is clearly out of control before the movie starts. It's something i'm surprised the audience has not picked up on more. You've been hearing all this controversy about the social responsibility of this film. This man is nuts. He is out of his mind. Not anybody I know stops his car on a freeway in traffic and walks away from his car. The writer, Ebbe Roe Smith, purposely had that opening scene to establish a red light. This man has lost it. And so the movie is actually a spiral of decline from that moment, so he is gone when the movie starts, from other circumstances, some of which we find out, some we will never know. One of the things that people are enjoying about this movie is the enjoyment of watching a man not responsible for his actions because he's unable to be responsible for his actions. You pay a consequence for that as we find out in the movie. I think for the normal person having a sense of guilt is being aware, but guilt is a human feeling. Animals don't have guilt. Guilt is something that we have created as human beings, animals don't know anything about guilt. But it has to do with our brains, thinking if we are responsible. Again, Foster has no sense of anything except the present moment at this time. He has broken a couple of wires in his head and only deals with what is going on at that moment, so he doesn't have a sense of guilt, or really a sense of, as he says in the climax “I'm the bad guy?” He doesn't have a sense of responsibility. - Michael Douglas
I feel that Falling Down is imitating the 6:00 news. And unfortunately, it's mild. Because it is one man's deterioration in an 8 hour period. And unfortunately when you turn on the news, you see many stories of violence, all violence is horrific and destructive to our society. And, in Falling Down, I tried to show that acting out one's violence, even though it may seem justified in certain situations, and even humorous, is not an option. It doesn't work. What I tried most importantly to do, was to put a face and a soul into that 6:00 news story. Where you see a seemingly ordinary hard working family man who snaps right in front of you. And he creates a terrible act of violence against his own family, against his co-workers, against random people in the street. And then you always see the neighbors standing around saying “I don't understand how this happened because he was such a nice guy.” And I think in those moments, unlike serial killers where we look at them and we realize that we're seeing somebody that's so insane, I think when the 6:00 news story is about one of those people, those seemingly ordinary people who snaps, that we all look to ourselves and say “That's one of us. That's someone just like you and me who couldn't take it any longer.” And that's what I feel Falling Down is really about. - Joel Schumacher
I've always thought, thematically, this film is about where the extra ordinary meets the ordinary. And it's a familiar theme in literature and in film. A lot of times it's where the ordinary man meets an extra ordinary circumstance and has to deal with it. In this case, it's flipped around. It's where an extra ordinary man is meeting up with an ordinary circumstance, which is the climate that he's walking through, the city. And what makes him extra ordinary is his fearlessness, he's crossed a line and no longer fears the consequences of his actions. And I've always thought that, in a way, this is a kind of superpower that a person could have. A person who is not afraid to die has a superpower, and they're really hard to stop. And that is something that we're experiencing today. And also that's what the theme was of William Foster. I didn't do a lot of research for the character, because he's myself written large. So, it was a matter of projecting myself into this position of a person who feels that they've done everything right, and yet they're getting shafted. And add to this tendency to violence, which is something which has been kept tamped down for most of his life, it's only come out dribs and drabs here and there. - Ebbe Roe Smith
I feel that the characters in the film that William Foster encounters were not specifically chosen to in any way criticize or cartoon the people. In a movie like this, it could've gone on for 50 hours, and there could've been all kinds of incidents (gas station, bus stop, train). What the writer Ebbe Roe Smith chose were things that we felt were typical to an ordinary day in LA. And I think that they represent frustrations, ordinary frustrations. Not complex unusual extraordinary ones. But simple everyday ones that we all have to deal with in a healthy way. And Foster is incapable of dealing with them. I mean, in the Korean grocery store, he could've easily just paid for the soda and walked out, but he can't because his psyche is evaporating. I think Foster is in a sense a dinosaur. Because the fact that he can't deal with the rules, the multicultural society, the injustices and problems if everyday life, don't make him right and them wrong. Also, they're not going to change for him, just as they're not going to change for us. Perhaps in the voting booth, our vote counts. But in day to day situations our vote doesn't count. When they tell you that they stopped serving breakfast at 11:30, and you still want your breakfast, your vote doesn't count. Now, it would be nice to pull out a machine gun, and get your breakfast. But we don't do that. The reason we don't do that is because, as wish fulfilling as that moment is, like Foster, we would cross a line. And once you cross that line, there's no going back. - Joel Schumacher
I think, it may be hard for people to remember or maybe they were too young, but the temperature in Los Angeles at that time, you know, the riots broke out right in the middle of shooting. The tension, the racial tension in the streets and the economic tension, you know, Bush Sr. was the president, we were in a recession, there was bad stuff really going down, bad stuff legally, a real "Fuck you!" to a lot of people in the United States, especially the ones who couldn't fight for themselves. And I think you can see the anger brewing and then when the Rodney King verdict went down, we were on all the streets of L.A. obviously making Falling Down, and when you make a movie on the streets of any city, you have local police that protect you and help you. And movie police are great. They've seen it all, they've done it all, and they're so helpful, you can't make a movie without them because you're really in the way of every city when you're making a movie there. They told us weeks before the verdict that if it went down, so that the cops got away with it, there was going to be blood in the streets. And all of the black church leaders were begging for some kind of compassion because they said there was going to be blood in the streets, and when that verdict came down, and you saw what happened, and you know, there was a city in flames. It was, you know, rioting, and looting, and insanity going on in the city. And we knew it was going to happen. In fact, the cops got us home the minute that verdict went home, we stopped shooting. We were supposed to be in Inglewood, which was right in the heart of where the riots were happening. It would have been very hard to get a movie company out of there. But then we went right back two days later, we went right back on those streets, and shot, and people were great to us. A lot of the people you see in all the scenes in the movie are the people in that neighborhood that we were shooting in at the time, because I didn't want the street scenes to seem inauthentic, so we used a lot of the local people. We were supposed to be in Inglewood shooting the Whammy Burger scene, but the cops told us not to go there cause they knew what was going to happen if the verdict came down, so we were on the Warner Bros back lot doing close ups of Michael, and then the riots broke out. And of course, you know, everyone on the crew had spouses at work, had children in school, so they got us out and they told everybody to go home immediately. And I raced home over in Mulholland and then saw it on TV because I live in Bel-Air so by the time I got to Bel-Air the city of LA was on fire. And yeah it was an amazing thing to watch, you could see the hate and the venom and the outrage of the unfairness of the people who were rioting, you could see the unfairness of their life on the planet and in this city and how it was all coming out in this moment. Do I think they were all right to do that? No. But do I understand where it came from? Sure. Absolutely. - Joel Schumacher
The LA Times did 7 pieces against Falling Down. They were so outraged by this movie. They actually had someone walk that route across Los Angeles, and nothing happened to them. I loved all that, that was great. That actually made the movie a success, the outrage. They had defense workers picketing saying they weren't like that. There were doors that were closed to me that certainly flew open after Falling Down, and still do. There were a lot of people that looked at me as a much more serious filmmaker. I had made a lot of movies up to that point with very young cast, a lot of them unknown. And even though i'm very proud of those movies, and those casts, and even though I think they're about something, a lot of times when you make movies with young people, they're not taking it seriously. You know, there are people that have a lot of respect for the film. And that means a lot to me. But, I didn't do it for those reasons. It also made a lot of trouble. It's amazing to be talking about it after so many years, that it still has weight. But I think all of that credit belongs to Ebbe Roe Smith. I had one of the greatest casts in the world, they did a brilliant job, all that credit belongs to them. Andrzej Bartkowiak did a great job shooting it. Barbara Ling did a great job bringing Los Angeles to life, she was our production designer. Marlene Stewart was our costume designer. And even thought in a contemporary film those jobs seem invisible, they're there and they did it. But it's Ebbe Roe Smith's writing. When he created this character, it hit a nerve in him, it hit a nerve in all of us who made it. And it obviously hit a nerve in the audience, even the people that were outraged by the movie, there's no bigger nerve hitting than outrage. Ebbe was a first time writer, and he's an actor. And I think that one of the reasons Falling Down hit a nerve with me when I read it, with everyone who read it. And all the wonderful cast that came to do it, but ultimately the public, and a lot of the press which was positive and negative, but I think the reason Falling Down still resonates is because of Ebbe Roe Smith's wonderful script. - Joel Schumacher
Falling Down, I think, if anything it's about, maybe, the point of views, and the problem that strife in society happens when you're unable to appreciate the point of view of another person. You're unable to put yourself in their shoes. You lock yourself off away from that. And people start wars over it. I think it’s a lot of that. Compromising is the secret to a society, and when people start to shut themselves off from it, then there's only one place that energy can go, and it's into a negative space, into a negative area. And it hardens opinion, and nothing is done. Nothing is pushed forward. The walls are built up, and there's no place for that energy to go but to a bad place. - Ebbe Roe Smith

Cast

Michael Douglas - William Foster
Robert Duvall - Sgt. Martin Prendergast
Barbara Hershey - Elizabeth Tavino
Rachel Ticotin - Det. Sandra Torres
Tuesday Weld - Amanda Prendergast
Frederic Forrest - Nick, the army surplus store owner
Lois Smith - William Foster's mother
Joey Hope Singer - Adele Foster-Tavino
Michael Paul Chan - Mr. Lee, the convenience store owner
Raymond J. Barry - Capt. William Yardley
D. W. Moffett - Det. Lydecker
Steve Park - Detective Brian
Karina Arroyave - Angie
Brent Hinkley - Rick
Dedee Pfeiffer - Sheila Folsom

External links

Wikipedia

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Falling Down

Falling Down quotes at the Internet Movie Database
Falling Down at Allmovie
Falling Down at Rotten Tomatoes
Falling Down at Metacritic