- Brian O'Blivion: The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.
- Masha: Videodrome. What you see on that show, it's for real. It's not acting. It's snuff TV.
- Max Renn: I don't believe it.
- Masha: So, don't believe.
- Max Renn: Why do it for real? It's easier and safer to fake it.
- Masha: Because it has something that you don't have, Max. It has a philosophy. And that is what makes it dangerous.
- Barry Convex: You'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch. I just can't cope with the freaky stuff.
- Nicki Brand: Got any porno?
- Max Renn: You serious?
- Nicki Brand: Yeah. It gets me in the mood.
- [looks through casettes]
- Nicki Brand: What's this? "Videodrome"?
- Max Renn: Torture. Murder.
- Nicki Brand: Sounds great.
- Max Renn: Ain't exactly sex.
- Nicki Brand: Says who?
- Rena King: What about it, Nicki? Is it socially positive?
- Nicki Brand: Well, I think we live in overstimulated times. We crave stimulation for its own sake. We gorge ourselves on it. We always want more, whether it's tactile, emotional or sexual. And I think that's bad.
- Max Renn: Then why did you wear that dress?
- Nicki Brand: Sorry?
- Max Renn: That dress. It's very stimulating.
- [looks at Rena]
- Max Renn: And it's red. You know what Freud would've said about that dress.
- Nicki Brand: And he would've been right. I admit it. I live in a highly excited state of overstimulation.
- Max Renn: Listen, I'd really like to take you out to dinner tonight...
- [First line]
- Man's voice on television: Civic TV. The one you take to bed with you.
- Brian O'Blivion: After a while, I started hallucinating, and developed a tumor. I believe the visions caused the tumor, and not the other way around.
- Brian O'Blivion: [to Max Renn] Your reality is already HALF video hallucination. If you're not careful, it will become TOTAL hallucination. You'll have to learn to live in a very strange new world.
- Rena King: Nicki, do you think Max is a menace to society?
- Nicki Brand: He's certainly a menace to me.
- Harlan: North America's getting soft, patrón, and the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're giong to have to be pure and direct and strong, if we're going to survive them. Now, you and this cesspool you call a television station and your people who wallow around in it, your viewers who watch you do it, they're rotting us away from the inside. We intend to stop that rot.
- Max Renn: [on hearing that Brian may send a tape, rather than meet] If he does, that's going to make conversation a little difficult.
- Bianca O'Blivion: My father has not engaged in conversation for at least twenty years. The monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.
- [Max is conferring with Shinji Kuraki of Hiroshima Video, who wants to sell "Samurai Dreams", a series of artful softcore films, to his network]
- Max Renn: Well... I looked over the stills. I am interested - a little bit. How many shows you got?
- Shinji Kuraki: Thirteen, with a possibility of another six if the sales go well.
- Max Renn: You got cassettes?
- Shinji Kuraki: [he and Max chuckle] Of course!
- [he gestures to his aide, Hiro Nakamura, who opens a briefcase containing the tapes and takes out the first film]
- Max Renn: No, hold it... ah, show me the last one.
- Hiro Nakamura: [inquires in Japanese]
- Max Renn: Number 13.
- Shinji Kuraki: But Max, you won't understand anything! Everything is set up in the first two.
- Max Renn: Hey, my audience ain't gonna see the first two shows. Now, show me the last one.
- Max Renn: I want you to stay away from it! Those mondo weirdo video guys, they've got unsavory connections, they play rough. Rougher than even Nicki Brand wants to play... You know, in Brazil, Central America, those kinds of places, making underground videos is considered a subversive act. They execute people for it. In Pittsburgh, who knows?
- Brian O'Blivion: I believe that the growth in my head-this head-this one right here. I think that it is not really a tumor... not an uncontrolled, undirected little bubbling pot of flesh... but that it is in fact a new organ... a new part of the brain.
- Max Renn: What's that? You let someone cut you?
- Nicki Brand: Yeah, what do you think?
- Max Renn: Well, I don't know.
- Nicki Brand: Would you like to try a few things?
- Barry Convex: I think that you'll find a little S&M will be necessary to trigger off a good healthy dose of hallucinations.
- Max Renn: Tell me about my 'Videodrome' problem.
- Bianca O'Blivion: My father knows much more about it than I do.
- [Biana hands Max a pile of videotapes]
- Bianca O'Blivion: Listen to him.
- Barry Convex: okay we're rolling. The taping mechanism is all self-contained. You won't have to do anything now but hallucinate
- Max Renn: yea, yea, okay
- Barry Convex: I'll come back for you later. You'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch. I just can't cope with freaky stuff
- Bridey: Max, it's that time again! Time to slowly, painfully ease yourself back into consciousness. No, I'm not a dream, although I've been told I'm a vision of loveliness. I'm nothing less than your faithful girl Friday; Bridey James, here with your wake-up call of today which is Wednesday the 23rd. You got that?