- [first lines]
- John Ptak: There is nothing like going to a theater, a communal atmosphere, watching something that is bigger than life.
- Robin Blaetz: It's dark, you don't look at anybody...
- John Ptak: And then the movie started, and it was really, really magical.
- Robert Rosen: Somebody says, "Why would you" save movies?" Well, I'd ask those people back, "Why do you save your family pictures?" As a society, we want to do the same thing. We want to say who were we, where are we now and what do we want people in the future to think about us? It's our family album.
- Stephen Peck: I was the last person that I ever would have thought would have gone to war. War scared me when I was young. After I came back from Vietnam, I gave away my uniforms, I really put the whole thing behind me. I just thought I could shut the door and move on with my life. I don't guess I spoke with another veteran or about my experience for eight or nine years. By chance I was put in touch with a guy who worked with veterans and he invited me to a screening of The Deer Hunter. Really discovered that the issues that they were dealing with in that film, how frightened those guys were once they got over there. They went over there with such enthusiasm and such honest, just sincere patriotism and discovered themselves just in this chaotic world. It really, to me, emotionally hit home. How that stays with you. Once you've been through that.
- [cries]
- Stephen Peck: It's... it's like something that, um... A human shouldn't have to experience. That... that loss of control. That having, really having to give up on life, because you don't know that you're gonna be alive in an hour... in a day... And that's, it's just something that doesn't... That doesn't go away. It's a good thing that films like Deer Hunter were made because it's an honest representation of the emotion of war, and I think people need to know that. We should not go to war easily because the impact on people's lives is permanent.
- [last lines]
- Robin Blaetz: It is absolutely imperative that we save the art form of the 20th century. How can we not?
- Humphrey Bogart: [from Casablanca] Here's lookin' at you kid.
- Mick LaSalle: Every movie that is popular - *every* movie that is popular, captures something of the ideas that were alive at the time. And very often the ideas that they capture, and that make them so acceptable to the public, are lies.