Rear Window (1998 TV Movie)

Robert Forster: Detective Charlie Moore

Quotes 

• Charlie : Do you remember anything about what happened?

  Jason : Well, I remember leaving my office Friday afternoon. I was driving up to the country to have dinner with a client. After that, I'm a total blank until I woke up in ICU.

  Charlie : So, you're missing a whole week.

  Jason : If you come across it, I'd like to have it back again.

• Charlie : Did they tell you the first person on the scene was a guy who was a medic in Vietnam?

  Jason : Yeah. I was lying there on the pavement. My neck was broken; I wasn't breathing and this guy came along and he literally took a Swiss army knife and dug a hole in my throat and stuck a straw in it and saved my life.

  Charlie : Lucky he happened by.

  Jason : Sometimes I wish he'd been running five minutes late that night.

  [uncomfortable pause] 

  Jason : Was it my fault?

  Charlie : We're not sure yet.

  Jason : It's been three weeks.

  Charlie : It's been four. You're missing one, remember? We have no witnesses to the actual crash; the other driver's blood alcohol level was slightly elevated and judging from impact, you were both doing the obligatory ten miles an hour over the speed limit.

  Jason : What's the other driver have to say?

  Charlie : They didn't tell you? She died at the scene.

• Charlie : Run that by me again.

  Jason : So, he makes bail, he comes home and he tell her he's gonna leave her for another woman. She threatens to testify against him and ruin his life. They have a drag-out fight and this time, he kills her.

  Claudia : So what do you think?

  Charlie : Aside from no body, no witnesses, no evidence whatsoever that a crime was committed... as crackpot theories go, very plausible.

  Jason : Are you cynical, Charlie, or just apathetic?

  Charlie : Did you see this murder?

  Jason : I heard it.

  Charlie : You heard them fighting, which married couples do from time to time.

  Jason : I heard her scream and then I heard him banging and sawing away all night in his studio.

  Charlie : Residential zoning violation and not very neighborly, but hardly a capital crime.

  Jason : He was covering up a murder!

  Charlie : Look, I hate to be cynical, but you're lying in bed, you can't sleep, you're looking at the ceiling, you start to imagine things.

  Jason : I didn't imagine this.

  Charlie : Alison, did you hear a scream?

  Alison : Well, I was downstairs.

  Jason : Alison, are you telling me you didn't hear Mrs. Thorpe scream?

  Alison : No, I didn't. I'm sorry. I might have been in the laundry room. I have a monitor in there so I can hear Jason, but I can't really hear anything from outside.

  Charlie : All right, no corroboration on the blood-curdling scream. Yet... I'll canvas the neighbors.

  Jason : [flatly]  Great.

  Charlie : [looking at the camera]  Too bad that wasn't going last night. We could have gone to the videotape.

  [to Jason] 

  Charlie : You mind me asking, what kind of medication are you on?

  Jason : You name it...

  Charlie : Alison, help me out here. He on anything which would affect his judgment or perception?

  Alison : Sleeping pills and valium.

• Claudia : How's jury selection going?

  Charlie : Well, I got to tell you. This is a pretty thin case. No confession, no corpse, maybe no crime.

  Claudia : What about the sister?

  Charlie : Oh, she confessed, all right.

  Claudia : She did?

  Charlie : To being the missing woman's sister and having an affair with her brother-in-law, which may be a crime in some states, but not here.

  Jason : But she didn't confess to murder?

  Charlie : Why would she confess to murder? If she does that, it's all over. Why does anyone ever confess to murder? There's no upside. Nah. Killers only give it up on television to better-looking cops than me.

  Jason : But she was murdered. There is no doubt about that.

  Charlie : Plenty of doubt about that.

  Claudia : What about the perfume, the jewelry?

  Charlie : Cornerstone of my case.

  Jason : So what's gonna happen? Are they just gonna walk?

  Charlie : Oh, they're not gonna walk, exactly. No, we've got her for impersonating her sister. She kited some checks. Uh, the fraud charges may stick.

  Jason : Big deal.

  Charlie : And we've got him for assaulting Alison, attempted murder on you. No, these guys are gonna do some time. But for the murder of Ilene Thorpe? I don't think so.

• Jason : I don't understand why you can't find the bronze, 'cause, you know, you find the bronze, you're gonna find her. I'm convinced of it. I think that he stuffed her body inside it, he sanded it, he painted it, and shipped it out right under our noses.

  Charlie : Jimmy Hoffa in the Meadowlands.

  Jason : Probably where he got the idea.

  Charlie : Jimmy Hoffa was never found, let me remind you.