Protocol (film)

Protocol is a 1984 comedy film starring Goldie Hawn as a Washington, D.C., cocktail waitress who prevents the assassination of a visiting Arab emir and winds up a national heroine.

Directed by Herbert Ross.  Story by Charles Shyer, Nancy Meyers, and Harvey Miller.  Screenplay by Buck Henry.

• Look, the car is temporarily out of order and it'll be ready in a minute, I swear.
• No, dear, I'm not a chicken; I'm an emu.
• I'm not yelling, I'm just speaking distinctly!
• I'd like to tell everybody in America that this is absolutely the best place to come if you're ever shot in the ass.
• Oh, don't jump on the nice Mr. Vice President.
• Now, you know, I never read the—the Constitution.  This'll be fun for all of us, won't it?
• And this is the Declaration of Independence.  Can you read that?  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain [i]nalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."  We're real proud of that.
• You mean officially he's here unofficially.
• You mean you wanna tell me what you think I should say, right?
• He owes me a massage.
• You wanna know something?  That before I started to work for the government, I'd never read the Constitution?  I didn't even begin to know how things worked—I didn't.  I didn't read the newspaper, except to look at my horoscope, and I never read the Declaration of Independence; but I know they had—the ones we're talking about, the "experts"—they all read it.  They just forgot what it's about—that it's about "We the People."  And that's me; I'm "We the People", and you're "We the People", and all of us, we're all "We the People", right?  So when they sell me that ten-cent diamond, or down the river, or-or to some guy who wears a lot of medals, that means they're selling all of us, all of "We the People."  And when they—I mean, when you guys—when you spend another pile of money, and when you give away or sell all those guns and tanks and planes, and every time you invite another foreign big-shot to the White House and hug and kiss 'em and give them presents, it has a direct effect on "We the People"'s lives!
• We won!

• Okay.  Okay, now, who can we get to go talk to the girl and impress her?  Come on, let's think, there must be someone—someone who's reasonably good-natured, has a reasonably high TVQ, and absolutely nothing important to do.
• He was cursing in at least four languages.

Lou Fox:  Nice, Sunny, very nice.  Thank you very much for showing up.

Sunny Davis:  Oh, geeze, am I late?

Lou:  How come you were running like that if you didn't know you were late?

Sunny:  Exercise!

Sunny:  Well, you sure don't look like one.

Michael Ransome:  Like one what?

Sunny:  A middle-aged desk clerk.

Ransome:  No, no; that's Middle East desk chief.

Hilley:  I think she's running for office.

Hassler:  Come on.  Can you be that dumb and run for office?

[pause; Hilley looks at Hassler; Hassler looks at Hilley]

reporter:  Did you vote for the president?

Sunny:  Well, actually, I never voted.

reporters:  Never?

Sunny:  Right, never.

reporter:  Well, do you consider yourself to be a Republican or a Democrat?

Sunny:  Look, I consider myself to be just an American.

Vice President Merck:  Sunny, what are your plans?

Sunny:  I don't have any.  I mean, well, I have a job at the Safari Club and Lou—well, he's my boss and he's really a nice guy and everything, but business hasn't been so hot and I was kind of hoping for an advancement, you know, but the problem is that Lou's aunt works the cash register and his sister's the hostess so I'm just gonna have to wait around until one of 'em quits or drops dead.  I guess you know what that's like.

Vice President Merck:  [nods]  Mm hmm.

Ransome:  You always say what you think.

Sunny:  It's no big deal.  I just never understood why people—some people—don't say what they think.  Don't you say what you think?

Ransome:  Not always, no.

Sunny:  Too bad.
You know what I read the other day?  The Declaration of Independence—I mean the real one, you know, the original, the one in the archives?  Boy, those guys knew how to say what they thought.

Mrs. St. John:  Sunny, dear, are you coming?

Sunny:  Not quite, ma'am.

The Emir:  Why are you dressed like that!?

Sunny:  Because I'm an American!

• There's something funny going on in Washington.  Goldie's about to become a diplomat.

• Goldie Hawn - Sunny Davis
• Chris Sarandon - Michael Ransome
• Richard Romanus - Emir
• Andre Gregory - Nawaf Al Kabeer
• Gail Strickland - Ambassador St John
• Cliff DeYoung - Hilley
• Keith Szarabajka - Crowe
• Ed Begley, Jr. - Hassler
• James Staley - Vice President Merck
• Kenneth Mars - Lou Fox
• Jean Smart - Ella
• Maria O'Brien - Donna
• Joel Brooks - Ben
• Grainger Hines - Jerry
• Kenneth McMillan - Senator Morris

Wikipedia has an article about:

Protocol (film)

• Protocol quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• Protocol at Rotten Tomatoes