The Killing Fields (1984)

Sam Waterston: Sydney Schanberg

Photos 

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Quotes 

• [last lines - at their reunion, with warm smiles] 

  Sydney Schanberg : You forgive me?

  Dith Pran : Nothing to forgive, Sydney. Nothing.

• Jon Swain : If the going gets rough, I heard our best bet's the French embassy.

  Sydney Schanberg : Who told you that?

  Jon Swain : [faint chuckle]  The British embassy.

• Al Rockoff : It bothers me that you let Pran stay in Cambodia because you wanted to win that fucking award and you knew you needed him!

  Sydney Schanberg : [Shocked]  I had no idea that...

  Al Rockoff : The fuck you didn't! The fuck you didn't!

• Sydney Schanberg : If anybody ever gets to read about this, you won't be able to look them in the face!

• Sydney Schanberg : Life isn't a '40s movie. You can't just get on a God damn plane and make the whole *world* come out right!

• TV Interviewer : How do you respond to accusations that you and other journalists underestimated the brutality of the Khmer Rouge and so share responsibility for what happened in Cambodia afterwards?

  Sydney Schanberg : We made a mistake. Maybe what we underestimated was the kind of insanity that $7 billion worth of bombing could produce.

• Sydney Schanberg : They brought in the whole fucking press corps! They want to sanitize the story? Bastards!

• Dith Pran : [after requesting from the Cambodian Army guard to allow Sydney to use the restroom]  He said there's no piss, Sydney.

  Sydney Schanberg : [disgusted]  What do you mean, "no piss"?

  Dith Pran : It means there's NO PISS, Sydney.

• Military Attache : Schanberg, you came on a boat you go back on a boat!

  Sydney Schanberg : That won't stop my story!

• Sydney Schanberg : I got a story to get to New York!

  Dith Pran : [worried]  Don't leave me!

  Sydney Schanberg : I won't leave you.

• Sydney Schanberg : [standing outside New York City's World Trade Center]  Dith Pran! P-R-A-N. He disappeared in Phnom Penh in 1975. Pran is his first name. Any information you can give... well, we're hoping for any information at all! He was last seen in '75.

• Sydney Schanberg : [On the telephone with Pran's son]  Is your mother there?... When?... Alright, I want you to get this down... no, write it down! Write it down...

  [laughing joyfully] 

  Sydney Schanberg : I've got a message from your dad!

• Sydney Schanberg : As they pondered their options in the White House, the men who decided to bomb and then to invade Cambodia concerned themselves with many things: great power conflicts and collapsing dominoes, looking tough and dangerous to the North Vietnamese, relieving pressure on the American troop withdrawal from the South. They had domestic concerns, as well, which helps explain why they kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret for as long as they could. And they may be assumed not to have ignored self-interest in their own careers. But they specifically were not concerned with, were the Cambodians themselves. Not the people, not the society, not the country. Except in the abstract as instruments of policy. Dith Pran and I tried to record and bring home here the concrete consequences of these decisions to real people - to human beings, the people left out of the Administration's plans, but, who paid the price and took the beating for them.

• [first lines] 

  Sydney Schanberg : Cambodia. To many westerners it seemed a paradise. Another world, a secret world. But the war in neighboring Vietnam burst its borders, and the fighting soon spread to neutral Cambodia. In 1973 I went to cover this side-show struggle as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times. It was there, in the war-torn country side amidst the fighting between government troops and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, that I met my guide and interpreter, Dith Pran, a man who was to change my life in a country I grew to love and pity.

• Sydney Schanberg : I got a right to go wherever I like in this sad little country. That's their law, that's our law. You impede me, you're breaking the Cooper-Church Amendment!

  Military Attache : Well, up the Cooper-Church Amendment's ass!

• Al Rockoff : I'm not feeling good.

  Sydney Schanberg : I don't want to yell. I want to be in a good mood. The plane was 3 hours late, no car. I had to take a taxi here. All I want to do is work. I got you.

  [picks up the phone to make a call] 

  Sydney Schanberg : Deux cent quatre.

  [to Rockoff] 

  Sydney Schanberg : What the fuck is that? On your head?

  Al Rockoff : It's a sanitary napkin. I had it soaked in ice.

• Sydney Schanberg : There's a rumor that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb or several bombs, on the city Neak Luong.

  Military Attache : Come on, Schanberg, that's a rumor. Now, I'm not gonna comment on a rumor.

  Sydney Schanberg : I don't understand you. I just want to know if that's the reason why my airplane was delayed!

  Military Attache : No comment.

  Sydney Schanberg : How many killed?

  [pause] 

  Sydney Schanberg : How many wounded?

  [pause] 

  Sydney Schanberg : Thank you for your cooperation, Major Reeves. When I scrape this story out, I will no doubt be quoting you in *full*.

• Dith Pran : Telex for you.

  Sydney Schanberg : You've been to the telex?

  Dith Pran : Yes.

  Sydney Schanberg : We made the front page.

  Dith Pran : Sure.

  Sydney Schanberg : We must be doing something right.

• Sydney Schanberg : What the hell is this?

  U.S. Consul : Well, listen Sydney, If you weren't down here, I wouldn't be down here. And I don't want to be down here!

• Sydney Schanberg : K.R.'s making a push for the airport road. If they cut it, the city could be lost. We hype these people up. "You'll be all right with us," we tell them. Now look at all this *fucking* mess!

• U.S. Consul : Hello, Sydney. Good night, Sydney. Listen, I can't talk with you.

  Sydney Schanberg : You can talk to me.

  U.S. Consul : The embassy is jittery. If you want any information, get it from a press officer.

• Al Rockoff : [taking Pran's passport photo]  Don't smile.

  [Pran laughs] 

  Sydney Schanberg : You're smiling.

  Al Rockoff : Very serious. You are smiling. Stop, please.

  Sydney Schanberg : Very serious.

  Al Rockoff : Very serious. Very American.

  Dith Pran : Yes.

• Sydney Schanberg : I never really gave him any choice. One time we tried to discuss leaving. I talked to him about it, but we never really discussed it. I discussed it with Swain and Rockoff. But I never discussed it with him. He stayed because I wanted him to stay. And I stayed because...