Baby Fish Mouth.

Obituary I was very sorry to hear about the death of Bruno Kirby one of my favourite actors who hadn't seen recently and wondered why but who appeared in many of my favourite films through the eighties and nineties. I'm thinking particularly of City Slickers where his character Ed, gave the following speech about what his best and worst day ever was:

"Ed: I'm 14 and my mother and father are fighting again...y'know, because she caught him again. Caught him?...This time the girl drove by the house to pick him up. And I finally realized, he wasn't just cheating on my mother, he was cheating us. So I told him, I said, "You're bad to us. We don't love you. I'll take care of my mother and my sister. We don't need you any more." And he made like he was gonna hit me, but I didn't budge. And he turned around and he left. He never bothered us again. Well I took care of my mother and my sister from that day on. That's my best day.

Phil: W-What was you're worst day?

Ed: Same day."

Which I remembered when I had to do much the same thing in an acting class, and although mine was a obviously a different day, I learnt from the fact that you should just tease the information out. Although I never got to say 'same day'. I know the speech is there on the page, the work of Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel (no really), but in Kirby's hands it became one of the highlights of what is an extraordinarily underated film. Which I suppose was his fortay -- creating these moments that would in retrospect be the most memorable. He's almost unrecognisable too in Good Morning, Vietnam but his job's even harder because he has to make the gagging of Cronauer seem possible and viable. But of course my favourite performance from him is in When Harry Met Sally where he manages to be Billy Crystal's straightman but again brilliantly sympathetic and managed to score some of the best lines. Spot the number of times director Rob Reiner cuts out of scenes on his punchlines -- particularly:

"You made a woman meow?"

Bye Bruno. More great quotes appearing at Metafilter.