FEUD: Bette and Joan
Sundays 10:00 PM on FXFEUD: Bette and Joan Season 1 Episode 1: "Pilot" Quotes
Hedda: Dateline Los Angeles: Stars of the night sky tend to keep to fixed orbits and never interfere with one another. Seems things sometimes operate that way in Hollywood, too. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, stars of equal magnitude who ruled in motion pictures in the fabulous '30s, never got to know one another. Now, in the Indian Summer of their careers, they're about to.
Feuds are never about hate. Feuds are about pain. They're about pain.
Olivia
Joan: Marty, I am an actress. I want to act. I am at the top of my game right now.
Marty: Then you're going to have to find the part yourself because the roles just aren't out there.
Joan: Guess what, Bette, I have finally found the perfect project for the two of us. It's always been my dream to work with you. Do you remember how I begged Jack Warner to put us together in Ethan Frome?
Bette: With Mr. Gary Gooper.
Joan: You do remember.
Bette: You wanted to play the pretty young servant girl and I was to play the hag of a wife. Forget it.
Joan: But this is different. These are the parts of a lifetime.
Bette: No thanks, Lucille, I've got plenty of better offers.
Joan [chuckles]: Bullshit. I know what kind of offers you're getting, exactly none because the same is true for me. They're not making women's pictures anymore, at least not the kind we used to make.
Bette: It's all cyclical. It will come back in fashion.
Joan: But we won't. If something's going to happen, we have to make it happen. No one's looking to cast women our age. But together, they wouldn't dare say no. We need each other, Bette.
Bette: So what the hell happened to her anyway, Baby Jane.
Joan: Read it. Find out. [pause] Oh, and I'm offering to you the title role.
Bette: The lead?
Joan: You can call it that.
You're too big for Broadway, Bette. Come back to Hollywood where you belong.
Bob
Bob: She just wanted better parts, Jack, a say in her own destiny.
Bette: OK. Fine, but because of her own selfishness and bullheadedness, the entire studio contract system came crashing down! The whole thing! Because of her! She's the one who put the crack in the levy, and you want me to work with her again?! Are you f*cking crazy?? Never!! Never Again!! Never!! That f*cking c*nt!!! Her unemployment is my long-simmering revenge.
Bob: You're gonna make my picture, Jack.
Jack: I'm sorry?
Bob: You're gonna make it. You need it. Television is kicking your ass, and the movies you're making? They're all bombs.
When Betty had to choose, she always chose the professional over the private.
Joan Blondell
Joan's Beau: You admire her.
Joan: I admire her talent and her craft, and I will have her respect, even if I have to kill both of us to get it.
Usually, I play the bitch, but this time, I can watch Bette do it.
Joan
Bette [sorting through costume dresses]: These are all wrong. I want her to look demented. This one. Wigs!
Wig Gal: Funny fact for you, Bette, Joan wore this one in some early 1930s MGM melodrama, and from the looks of it, it hasn't been touched since.
