MY COUSIN VINNY
Mona Lisa
Vito (Marisa Tomei):
You were gonna shoot a deer?? A poor, defenseless, doe-eyed little deer??
Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing
along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook...you put your little deer
lips to the cool clear water...BAM a fuckin bullet rips off part of your
head, your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces, you I asks
ya, would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who shot you
was wearing?
Vinny
Gambini (Joe Pesci): I
understand you played a game of pool with Lisa for $200, which she won. I'm
here to collect.
J.T.: How 'bout if I just kick your ass?
Vinny: Oh, a counter-offer. That's what we
lawyers - I'm a lawyer - we lawyers call that a counter-offer. This is a
tough decision here. Get my ass kicked or collect $200. Let me think... I
could use a good ass-kickin', I'll be very honest with you... nah, I think
I'll just go with the two hundred.
J.T.: Over my dead body.
Vinny: You like to renegotiate as you go along,
don't you? Well here's my counter-offer... do I have to kill you? What if I
were just to kick the ever loving shit out of you?
J.T.: In your dreams.
Vinny: Oh no, no... in reality. If I was to kick
the shit out of you, do I get the money?
Vinny: Sure, sure I heard of grits. I've just
never actually SEEN a grit before
Vinny: How could it take you five minutes to cook
your grits when it takes the entire grit-eating world 20 minutes?
Mr. Tipton: Um... I'm a fast cook, I guess.
Vinny: [moves from beside the jury] What? I'm sorry I was over there. Did you
just say you were a fast cook? Are we to believe that boiling water soaks
into a grit faster in your kitchen than any place on the face of the earth?
Mr. Tipton: I don't know.
Vinny: Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist
on your stove. Were these magic grits? Did you buy them from the same guy who
sold Jack his beanstalk beans?
Vinny
Gambini: It is possible that the
two utes...
Judge
Chamberlailn Haller: ...Ah, the two what? Uh... uh, what was
that word?
Vinny: Uh... what word?
Judge
Chamberlailn Haller: Two what?
Vinny: What?
Judge
Chamberlailn Haller: Uh... did you say "utes"?
Vinny: Yeah, two utes.
Judge
Chamberlailn Haller: What is a ute?
Vinny: Oh, excuse me, Your Honor... two YOUTHS.
Judge
Chamberlailn Haller: The next time you appear in my court, you
will look lawyerly. And I mean you comb your hair, and wear a suit and tie.
And that suit had better be made out of some sort of... cloth. You understand
me?
Vinny: [Vinny hears a drip in the background] Did you use the faucet?
Mona Lisa: Yeah.
Vinny: Why didn't you turn it off?
Mona Lisa: I DID turn it off!
Vinny: Well if you turned it off, why am I
listening to if?
Mona Lisa: Did it ever occur to you it could be turned
off AND drip at the same time?
Vinny: No! Because if you'd turn it off, it
wouldn't drip!
Mona Lisa: Maybe it's broken.
Vinny: Is that what you say? It's broken?
Mona Lisa: Yeah. That's it, it's broken.
Vinny: You sure?
Mona Lisa: I'm positive.
Vinny: Maybe you didn't twist it hard enough.
Mona Lisa: I twisted it just right.
Vinny: How could you be so sure?
Mona Lisa: [sighs]
You will look in the manual, you will see that this particular model faucet
requires a range of 10 to 16 foot-pounds of torque. I routinely twist the
maximum allowable torquage.
Vinny: How could you be sure you used 16
foot-pounds of torque?
Mona Lisa: Because I used a Craftsman model 1019
Laboratory Edition Signature Series torque wrench. The kind used by Caltech
high energy physicists and NASA engineers.
Vinny: Well, in that case, how can you be sure
THAT's accurate?
Mona Lisa: Because a split second before the torque
wrench was applied to the faucet handle, it had been calibrated by top
members of the state AND federal Department of Weights and Measures... to be
dead on balls accurate! Here's the certificate of validation (Tears out a magazine page
and hands it to him).
Vinny: Dead on balls accurate?
Mona Lisa: It's an industry term.
Vinny: [tossing paper away]
I guess the fucking thing is broken.
Bill: You
have to see the Gambinis in action. I mean, these people, they love to argue.
I mean, they live to argue.
Stan: My
parents argue too, it doesn't make them good lawyers.
Bill: Stan, I've seen your parents argue. Trust
me, they're amateurs.
Mona Lisa: 'Cause Chevy didn't make a 327 in '55, the
327 didn't come out till '63. And it wasn't offered in the Bel Air with a
four-barrel carb till '64. However, in 1964, the correct ignition timing
would be four degrees before top-dead-center.
Mona Lisa: The car that made these two, equal-length
tire marks had posi-traction. You can't make these marks without
posi-traction, which was not available on the '64 Buick Skylark!
Vinny: And why not? What is posi-traction?
Mona Lisa: It's a limited slip differential which
distributes power equally to both the right and left tires. The '64 Skylark
had a regular differential, which, anyone who's been stuck in the mud in
Alabama knows, you step on the gas, one tire spins, the other tire does
nothing.
[the jury members nod,
with murmurs of "yes," "that's right," etc]
Vinny: Is that it?
Mona Lisa: No, there's more! You see where the left
tire mark goes up on the curb and the right tire mark stays flat and even?
Well, the '64 Skylark had a solid rear axle, so when the left tire would go
up on the curb, the right tire would tilt out and ride along its edge. But
that didn't happen here. The tire mark stayed flat and even. This car had an
independent rear suspension. Now, in the '60's, there were only two other
cars made in America that had posi-traction, and independent rear suspension,
and enough power to make these marks. One was the Corvette, which could never
be confused with the Buick Skylark. The other had the same body length,
height, weight, wheel base, and wheel track as the '64 Skylark, and that was
the 1963 Pontiac Tempest.
Vinny: And because both cars were made by GM,
were both cars available in metallic mint green paint?
Mona Lisa: They were!
Vinny: Thank you, Ms. Vito. No more questions.
Thank you very much. (kissing her hands)
You've been a lovely, lovely witness.