- Lillian Corning: Well, a vacation certainly goes awfully fast, doesn't it, when you're having a good time. I want to do something, though. I'd like to give you a going away present. You may not like it, but I don't care. It's just this: You're never gonna forget me. You're gonna walk down the street of wherever you happen to be, and you're gonna see me, even when you know I'm not there. And nobody in this whole world is ever going to be as right for you as I was. For 12 days, in Paris, in the Autumn. 'Cause that's been your gift to me.
- Ram Bowen: You just picked the wrong guy for what you wanted.
- Lillian Corning: Yeah?
- Ram Bowen: Yeah. I'm not on the market.
- Lillian Corning: I wasn't shopping.
- Eddie Cook: Look. Here, nobody says, "Eddie Cook, negro musician." They say, "Eddie Cook, musician," period. And that's all I want to be.
- Connie Lampson: And that's what you are here.
- Eddie Cook: That's what I am here. Musician, period. And I don't have to prove anything else.
- Connie Lampson: Like what?
- Eddie Cook: Like: Because I'm negro I'm different. Because I'm negro I'm not different. I'm different. I'm not different. Who cares? Look, I don't have to prove either case. Can you understand that?
- Connie Lampson: There isn't a place on the face of the Earth that isn't hell for somebody. Some race, some color, some sex.
- Eddie Cook: For me, Paris is just fine.
- Connie Lampson: Things are much better than they were five years ago and they're gonna still be better next year. And not because negroes come to Paris. But because negroes stay home and with millions of white people they work to make things better for everybody everywhere in America!
- Ram Bowen: You just do anything I say, don't you?
- Lillian Corning: Well, I want to stay.
- Ram Bowen: You're a nut. Well, I ain't gettin' involved with no nut!
- Connie Lampson: What's that?
- Eddie Cook: Notre Dame.
- Connie Lampson: You didn't even look.
- Eddie Cook: Well, I didn't think they'd moved it.
- Lillian Corning: You know something? Everybody is always waiting for everybody else to take a chance, because they're so afraid. Me, I'm more afraid of not taking a chance than taking it and getting
- [thumbs down]
- Ram Bowen: Well, you can get kicked in the teeth that way.
- Lillian Corning: My brother's a dentist.
- Michel 'Gypsy' Devigne: Birds are the only free things and we put them in cages. They look so sad, so starved. People are like birds, you know, Ram? Nicole is a wren. Marie is a big, bold, shining starling. And I'm the cuckoo bird, eh?
- Connie Lampson: Is your girl friend as pretty as you are?
- Ram Bowen: Yes. She's a white girl.
- Connie Lampson: She might be hard to find. All these white girls look alike.
- Ram Bowen: If you don't like it, why don't you say so?
- Eddie Cook: I said I liked it.
- Ram Bowen: Yeah, I heard the way you said it.
- Eddie Cook: What do you want me to say? It's great? All right, you're Gershwin, you're Ravel and Debussy.
- Ram Bowen: What's wrong with that?
- Eddie Cook: Look, you're Ram Bowen. You write a piece of music, I listen to it, and that's what it says. Ram Bowen, all by itself. Now, what more than that do you want?
- Wild Man Moore: Let me look at you. You're looking great, boy, real great. Younger than me. This town agrees with you. What is it, the chicks or the wine?
- Ram Bowen: Oh, it's both, man.
- Marie Séoul: Why do you need me today? Because you feel you're wonderful - or because you feel you are worth nothing?
- Wild Man Moore: I hear you've taken the town right over. They tell me I gotta blow real loud to put you down.
- Connie Lampson: Don't you need to sleep?
- Eddie Cook: No, I - I like to walk. And I like the way you walk. And Paris is a city to walk in.
- Wild Man Moore: People's talking about your playing, Ram. Nice, real nice. Be up there one night and blow you out of the joint.
- Connie Lampson: So, you think it's all right for two girls to go out to a nightclub alone?
- Lillian Corning: Of course, this is Paris. Anything is all right.
- Eddie Cook: That sure is a cute little devil you tried to pick up in the station today, big daddy.
- Ram Bowen: Tried? Looks like I have. Come on, man, let's play. Ah, "Mood Indigo."
- Connie Lampson: I know these jazz musicians. If we go tonight, he's gonna think we're eager.
- Lillian Corning: I suppose so. You know something?
- Connie Lampson: What?
- Lillian Corning: I am eager.
- Ram Bowen: Kid, you don't want me for what you want. Now, in the States, when you got nothing to do, maybe. But in Paris, I'd just be a waste of a good vacation. There are companies that take care of tourists. You know, I'm not the Travelers Aid.
- Lillian Corning: Well, I'm not looking for any help, so you don't have to worry about me.
- Ram Bowen: I'll tell you the truth, honey. I worry about me, not you.
- Lillian Corning: Honestly, you're in no danger from me.
- Ram Bowen: That phrase does not exist coming from a female, especially a female on a two-week vacation. It's like a job I had when I was a kid in camp. Boy, the dames just came up like sharks.
- Ram Bowen: What do you do with yourself? Back home, I mean.
- Lillian Corning: Small town, small job, small life.
- Eddie Cook: Look at it. And not just what you see, but the way the place makes you feel. I'll never forget the first day I walked down Avenue Champs-Élysées. Just like that, I knew I was here to stay.
- Connie Lampson: How long have you been away from home?
- Eddie Cook: Five years.
- Connie Lampson: You've never wanted to go back?
- Eddie Cook: No! You stick around Paris for a while and stretch a bit. Sit down for lunch somewhere without getting clubbed for it and you'll wake up one day, look across the ocean and you'll say, "Who needs it?" Who needs it.
- Eddie Cook: You know, if I had a teacher like you when I went to school, boy, I would've learned something.
- Connie Lampson: I think you've learned enough.
- Eddie Cook: Not in school.
- Lillian Corning: I can always eat. You wouldn't know it, but I eat like a horse.
- Ram Bowen: I'd know it.
- Lillian Corning: It shows?
- Ram Bowen: Not in public.
- Lillian Corning: Not in private, either.
- Ram Bowen: It's all right. I like a girl with a little, eh...
- Lillian Corning: A little what?
- [laughs]
- Marie Séoul: For you, lunch and dinner with the same woman, that's unusual. How long is she here for?
- Ram Bowen: I don't know. Couple of days. I don't dig this. What're you trying to do, tie me up?
- Marie Séoul: I'm trying to keep you untied.
- Connie Lampson: We do need our roots, don't we? And where our roots are, our home is. Wouldn't you say?
- Eddie Cook: I would say that you're one of them socially conscious chicks, right?
- Connie Lampson: Home, to me, is home. And my family is my family. And whatever problems they've got, I've got them, too.
- Eddie Cook: Of all the beautiful girls who come to Paris every year, I get a swinger for the cause.
- Ram Bowen: You like this all the time?
- Lillian Corning: Like what?
- Ram Bowen: I don't know. In my league, the guy usually makes the pitch. You not only pitch, you pick up the bat and hit for one. You come on like this with all the guys?
- Lillian Corning: No. Only with the special ones.
- Lillian Corning: What's Paris Blues?
- Ram Bowen: Hey, you'd better get dressed.
- Lillian Corning: Do you write music, too?
- Ram Bowen: Honey, I live music. Morning, noon, the whole night. Everything else is just icing on the cake. You dig?
- Lillian Corning: I dig.
- Marie Séoul: [singing] Smokin', drinkin', Never thinkin' of tomorrow, Nonchalant, Dancing, dining, Diamonds shining, With some man in a restaurant...
- Lillian Corning: It's such a crazy life.
- Eddie Cook: Yeah, well, that's because you're one of the day people. We are the night people and it's a whole different world.
- Ram Bowen: If you keep on this way...
- Michel 'Gypsy' Devigne: It's my way. I'm lucky. If I die, I'll be buried by friends.
- Lillian Corning: You'd think he'd be exhausted after working all night.
- Eddie Cook: Not him. I've seen him go like this for a week. Ten days, just balling it up. And then.
- [collapses]
- Lillian Corning: There's not much time.
- Ram Bowen: There's time enough.
- Lillian Corning: Friday is so close.
- Ram Bowen: We got time for a cup of coffee?
- Lillian Corning: It's just that all these mornings I've watched you sleeping and I've cleaned the apartment and I've made coffee, and I haven't done that for a man in a long time.
- Ram Bowen: What do you want to do, wrap me up and take me home? How are you gonna declare me at Customs? A souvenir of Paris?
- Michel 'Gypsy' Devigne: Many people fear birds. They think of them as a snake that fly. But I - I have always loved the birds. Their songs, their flying. When I was a little boy, I was sure I could fly. Do you know that many children have this? Like, a memory of flying. Many children get killed trying to fly. Did you know that? I tried once. From a high hill. Very painful. Now, I don't try to fly anymore, except in the music.
- Lillian Corning: What did we come to Paris for? To be run out of town by two kooks just because we got our feelings hurt?
- Eddie Cook: Connie, you know, every time, I could belt you for reminding me of all the things I've tried five years to forget.
- Eddie Cook: You're interested in a cause. I'm not interested in a cause. I'm only interested in us.
- Connie Lampson: You're not interested in us. You're interested in you.
- Ram Bowen: Don't take it, Michel.
- Michel 'Gypsy' Devigne: Why? I'm taking a little fix. What's so bad?