Scott Joplin (1977)

Art Carney: John Stark

Quotes 

• Scott Joplin : You failed me!

  John Stark : Scott, I know how you feel. You were overpowered by the extravagance of sound, the sheer weight of volume. Your music wasn't meant to compete at that level. It was just never heard.

  Scott Joplin : Well, it will be heard! If volume is what they want, volume is what they'll get!

  John Stark : What are you talking about?

  Scott Joplin : I'm going to write an opera.

  John Stark : An opera?

  Scott Joplin : An opera in ragtime. A ragtime opera.

  John Stark : Why?

  Scott Joplin : Because it is right! Because it is their music.

• John Stark : So, he began his career playing for the clientele of the world's oldest libertine institution. The bordello.

• John Stark : Funny where talent comes from. And I've been dealing with talent all my life and I still don't understand it.

• John Stark : We used to call those piano players "professors." I guess they got their degrees in life.

• John Stark : Now, your music, you can play it, you can dance to it, you can listen to it. Can you write it? Can you put it down on paper? Now, most of you people can't. You can improvise. But you can't put it down.

  Scott Joplin : Oh, I can write it.

• John Stark : It's that inner syncopation. Not a minstrel. Freer. Vital but disciplined. Good thing, discipline. Necessary for any artist.

• John Stark : Now don't indulge in over-dazzling visions of ease and splendor. Musical compositions do not shed bank notes like feathers.

• John Stark : Selling songs is like farming, Mr. Joplin. It takes seed, manure, rain to get a crop. Lots o' manure. You gotta spread it around.

• John Stark : As for Mr., Joplin, I should say that his temperament is high, that he touches the ground and the highest places. That his geese are all swans. That Mississippi water tastes like honeydew.

• John Stark : You *have* changed, I feel it. It's your virility reasserting itself.

• John Stark : You are a genius. Truly a great American composer. Your music is born to this sod and soil.

• Scott Joplin : Here I is. Gotta get a pair o' overalls I'll work it out. Ain't gonna run off, no talk 'bout that, 'cause I's a good workin' nigger.

  John Stark : Oh, to be a black piano player in a brothel in the United States of America who could have a care? Playin' for pimps, prostitutes and alcoholics.

  Scott Joplin : Man's only in this world once.

  John Stark : If he doesn't die of whiskey or syphilis before he's 40!

• John Stark : Ragtime is not coon music.

• John Stark : Scott, I'm goin' to New York. Go with me. There's a new musical theater there.

  Scott Joplin : Vaudeville! Jigtime piano!

  John Stark : You haven't even looked it over!

  Scott Joplin : They may talk of dandy niggers, but they never see this coon a-promenadin' Broadway on a Sunday afternoon. Do I genuflect or kneel?