City Hall
(1996)
as Kevin Calhoun
Taglines: It started with a shootout on a rainswept street and ended in a scandal that shattered New York.
A Mayor... A Deputy Mayor... A City About to Explode.
Plot: One seemingly routine morning, a little boy is shot dead in the cross fire between a drug dealer and a narcotics detective in a predominantly black New York City neighborhood. John Pappas, the idealistic mayor of the city, cleverly prevents a race riot, and everything seems to be OK. However, things get complicated again when Kevin Calhoun (John!), Pappas's loyal chief of staff, who is even more idealistic than Pappas himself, begins to wonder why the drug dealer, who just happens to be the son of the local Mafia boss, was out on the streets in the first place after receiving a sentence of five year's probation for a conviction which would normally warrant a 10 to 20-year jail term. Further complicating matters is Marybeth Cogan who represents the widow of the narcotics detective. She is trying to find out why the pension for the cop is being withheld and she brings Calhoun deeper into a scandal that makes him take a second look at what he once took for granted.
John Quotes: [Kevin] You keep looking at that thing as if it weren't kosher.
[Abe] A cut of meat is kosher. A piece of fish, savory foods, and all kinds of dang things are kosher, but a probation report is not kosher. A probation report is merely a probation report.
[Kevin] I am a good Louisiana lapsed Catholic, Abe, so just don't talk to me about kosher, just give it to me straight. What's wrong with this report?
[Abe] It's too kosher.
*pause*
[Kevin] Translate that for me.
[Abe] Uhhhhh, the virgin looks pregnant to me. --Look, see, the supervisor signed this.
[Kevin] So what?
[Abe] That's a lot of weight for a 4C. So what happened to the original little probation officer? Where is his signature?
[Mayor John Pappas] Enough about me, enough about me. What are you going to do tonight, after I'm gone?
[Kevin] Me?
[Mayor John Pappas] Yeah.
[Kevin] I don't know, I hadn't thought about it.
[Mayor John Pappas] Well, you're going to get yourself a good meal. You're going to pass up that double cheeseburger from Roy Rogers, wherever it is you go; you're going go to Dominic's, and you're going to get takeout. On me. Get a decent meal there. But before you go to Dominic's, I want you to go to Macy's and get a chair. With legs, and arms. That apartment of yours looks like something that belongs in a homeless file. Oh, then it's off to Crate and Barrel for a knife, a fork, a spoon... oh, and a glass, while you're at it.
[Kevin] Then I'll have to get a dishwasher.
[Mayor John Pappas] You don't have to wash them, just throw 'em out after you finish eating. It's on me. Get a life!
[Kevin] I've got yours; it's quite enough.
*Kevin suggests distancing themselves from a man in trouble*
[Mayor John Pappas] "Distance"! Distance is something you do to your enemies. It's a thing of the nineties, to make friends extinct. Distance... is the absence of menschkeit!
[Kevin] Translate that for me.
[Mayor John Pappas] You don't know what menschkeit means?
[Kevin] No, I don't.
[Mayor John Pappas] Menschkeit, you know... something between men... it's about honor, and character... untranslatable. That's why it's Yiddish.
[Kevin] I didn't know you'd taken up the language.
[Mayor John Pappas] Abe laid it on me.
[Kevin] Where you going?
[Marybeth] The city.
[Kevin] Thought we were in the city.
[Marybeth] Not if you're from Queens.
[Kevin[ And you're just going to wait under that plastic awning for an hour and then ride a Queens bus and then slep on the subway into Manhattan--
[Marybeth] *interrupting* Schlep! Schlep! Not slep, schlep!
[Kevin] Schlep?
[Marybeth] Get the gumbo out of your Yiddish.
*Marybeth suggests lunch at a specific diner*
[Kevin] Now, who we gonna meet in this diner?
[Marybeth] What are you talking about?
[Kevin] You surface in front of my car at the cemetery, you show just enough leg so I'd stop, and the Grand Central Parkway is the long way around. Who we gonna meet?
[Kevin] Now there's four deaths, they're all connected, and that's all I know, that much I learned--
[Mayor John Pappas] *interrupting* And that's all I want to know!
[Kevin] I'm just trying to circle the wagons here, John.
[Mayor John Pappas] Circle the wagons? What do you th-- Who do you think you are? Some gumshoe in a dime novel, loose-cannoning around the city? Consorting with known mobsters?! Kevin, for God's sakes! *long pause* You see this desk? This desk belonged to Fiorello La Guardia, "the Little Flower". He was about 5 foot tall, used to read the funny papers to his constituents' children over the radio, and was about the best goddamned mayor this city ever had. You know what La Guardia said? "Why is it, every time you can do some good, the nice people come in and mess you up?" Kevin... be nice, don't mess me up.
[Mayor John Pappas] Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment. There are no cold answers, are there? There's no simple yes or no. A man's life is not the bricks, it's the mortar, pappy, it's the stuff that lays between, the stuff... the stuff you can't see. I've known Walter my whole life. God, the man is-- he's a decent man, he's a good man.
[Kevin] This is tough stuff. This is body bag stuff. You tell me, if there's some other way.
[Mayor John Pappas] There isn't. The die's been cast; it was cast a long time ago. Go easy: give him a blindfold and have mercy. Walter Stern was a tough man, but he was fair. We give back the same, no?
*heading into a press conference*
[Kevin] You look good.
[Mayor John Pappas] Of course -- I'm the mayor.
[Kevin] If I didn't know better, I'd be bursting with admiration. I thought I'd come here and find you on your knees; instead you're ready to turn adversity into triumph.
[Mayor John Pappas] Oh, it's just a reflex, an old habit of mine. But it's still good to hear you say it... the way you say it, too. "Adversity into triumph." Good to you know still believe in me.
[Kevin] Did I say that?