The Rockford Files: Godfather Knows Best (1996 TV Movie)

James Garner: Jim Rockford

Quotes 

• Evelyn 'Angel' Martin : Hey, hey, hey, Jimmy!

  Jim Rockford : Yeah, well, here he is. What are you doing here?

  [after trying to avoid being seen by Angel] 

  Evelyn 'Angel' Martin : Buying some flowers, light bulbs, Johnny Mop, drag. You ain't working.

  Jim Rockford : Ah, I figured I outta see Beth Van Zandt's movie The Breif; they adapted it from her novel.

  Evelyn 'Angel' Martin : Oh, any good?

  Jim Rockford : Well, The Breif, The Firm, when are one of these ex lawyers going to write a book called The Fee?

  Old Homeless Woman : Spare change?

  [a homeless woman asks Angel] 

  Evelyn 'Angel' Martin : No thanks, I'm fine.

  [blowing her off] 

• Jim Rockford : Scotty, is there anything I can do for you?

  Scotty Becker : Yeah, quit looking down on me for starters; not everybody can march to your Republican drum.

  Jim Rockford : I don't vote any ticket. And I never lectured you in that way.

• Jim Rockford : You have to promise me you'll use this to clean up and get a job.

  [counting out some big money in front of Scotty] 

  Scotty Becker : So there's strings attached to this Mother Teresa moolah, huh?

  Jim Rockford : As it applies to you, if Mother Teresa met a nut like you, she'd go out and buy herself a BMW.

  Scotty Becker : You people love to demonize us homeless.

  Jim Rockford : You people? Say, I'm your Godfather. And as far as being homeless, yeah, I have a little problem with that term in your case; maybe it's because I remember the eighteenth what trailer your dad co-signed for. What was that? The Travelin' Jack Kerouac museum? Of course that was long before the kayaks.

  Scotty Becker : Come on, Jim, that wasn't my fault, that could have been huge. I just couldn't get the rights to the Jim Kerouac estate.

  Jim Rockford : Yeah, well, some Republicans might have nailed that down before they bought the trailer. Oh, yeah, and then there was the tragedy with the trailer hitch; a design flaw, wasn't it?

• Jim Rockford : You want my advice, as his godfather - damn, I'm getting tired of hearing that?

  Lt. Dennis Becker : Yes, I want your advice.

  Jim Rockford : It's not so much that you wreen't there, it's the way you over-compensated because you weren't.

  Lt. Dennis Becker : What? We spoiled him? We held him to a very tough standard.

  Jim Rockford : Oh, please, Dennis, he got D's all through college, and what did you do? You bought him a more powerful computer.

  Lt. Dennis Becker : But you need memory to compete in the academic race at all!

  Jim Rockford : But is he? Is he in the 'academic race' at all?

  Lt. Dennis Becker : Well, he's not officially taking classes.

  Jim Rockford : Oh, Officially! I forgot; you can earn college credits sleeping in the city flower beds and urinating in a parking structure.

  Lt. Dennis Becker : All right! All right! He flunked out!

  Jim Rockford : You shouldn't have been contributing one thin dime all those years to his shenanigans all those years he was goofing along with C's and D's.

  Lt. Dennis Becker : That's what Peg said.

  [suddenly struck by reality] 

• Scotty Becker : Dad, Jim, you're hardwired to this dualism thing. Mom, you too. Good, bad, pain, pleasure, it's all one; are not this prison and Temple equally conducive to sitting and meditating?

  [after getting out of jail, still dressed like a Buddhist monk] 

  Jim Rockford : You might find sitting a bit mroe painful in prison...