if this were 1997, and you had asked me what kind of movie i wanted to write, i would have said, “the saint.” for some reason, i had a strange fascination with that film. i’m not even sure i know why, there was just something about it that i enjoyed. i remember my friend matt and i used to be able to recite pretty much the entire movie verbatim as it played. it made watching the movie at other people’s houses really difficult for them. at one point we even sat down with the movie solely intending to write out the entire script into one microsoft word file.
–“simon magus was a sorcerer… and a magician. in… in…”
–“in sumaria. and what happened to simon magus. francis?”
–“jesus’ disciples came and performed miracles. when simon magus saw the miracles he offered disciple Peter gold for the powers of god.”
those are the first lines of the movie, i still remember them, it’s pretty pathetic.
the only reason i mention this is because the movie is on the usa network today and they’re changing all the best vulgarity laden lines to crap like, “…a big russian missile where your [pipe] used to be.” Boo! You need to say “where your prick used to be” to hear that wonderful russian inflection where the ‘r’ is rolled.
the original version of the script is online, and i found it today in the hopes of following along while watching, but the problem is, it’s the original version of the script, where the female lead (elizabeth shue) dies at the end. hence, the script is inaccurate. plus, it’s stiff when compared to the actual dialogue. the script editors really worked wonders with the product they were given. let’s also not forget to thank the director for doing a wonderful job. finally, we must thank leonid vereschagin, for sending his son vadim to my overnight camp, where we became close friends and my obsession with the saint first began. vadim used to say, “dirty sock” all the time and it sounded hilarious, that’s about all i remember of him. and his little brother’s name was paul, and he looked like ivan drago.
