Wild Bill (1995)

John Hurt: Charley Prince

Quotes 

• Charley Price : This town... I really think it's like something out of the Bible.

  James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok : What part of the Bible?

  Charley Price : The part right before God gets angry.

• Charley Price : He had found the band of jackals he needed. But as Jack McCall rode through the center of town, he experienced the terrifying certainty that a man faces when he's about to make his own name famous. He lacked both a hero's calm and a coward's resolve to survive at any price.

• Charley Price : [Voiceover about Hickock]  He fashioned himself as just an ordinary man in no way special. That was adeception. By luck or design it had fallen to him to play the hero's part, and to the end he embraced his fate.

• [last lines] 

  Charley Price : Jack McCall was hanged March 1, 1877, for the murder of James Butler Hickory, known as Wild Bill. Like a city in the Old Testament, Deadwood had become a place of prophesy and visions. Bill was 39 years old when he died. I'm proud to say I was his friend.

• Calamity Jane : I don't know why he never slept in my bed sinced he come to Deadwood. Only got interested once.

  Charley Price : The timing was just wrong. Too much had happened to him before he got here.

  Calamity Jane : I was awful attached to him.

• Charley Price : [voice over]  Deadwood was a haven for card sharks, con men, thieves, killers, roughs, drunks, pimps, and whores - along with those arbiters of disputes: whip, fist, knife and pistol.

• Charley Price : [voice over]  My name is Charles Prince, English born and educated, but for reasons of temperament, America had become my adopted home. As I much prefer to observe life in the raw, I took myself west. I was not disappointed.

• Charley Price : [voice over]  The Dakota Dance Hall was the preferred site for assignations. This was no rude crib or flimsy shack. It featured papered walls, comfortable furniture, polished spittoons, and a piano that was actually in tune.

• Charley Price : Greetings, Jack. Charles Prince, friend of Bill's. Could be that Wild Bill's made a few mistakes, here and there, over the years, but - well, it's understandable. But, past is past.

  James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok : Shut up, Charley.

  Jack McCall : Yeah, shut up, Charley.

• Charley Price : I don't think these are gentlemen we should challenge, Joe. They look a bit on the rough and boorish side, possibly even dangerous.

• Charley Price : Every time there is a death of a hero, we are all the less. It drags down morale. People get anxious, depressed, drink more, fight more, causing more killings, till the general uncertainty destroys whatever useful or good remains.

• Charley Price : What if I could persuade Wild Bill to let you go? Erase the shadow that he has cast over you. Apologize.

  James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok : Go drown in crap, Charley.

• Charley Price : Apologize for wrongs, real and imagined? Shake hands, have a drink? You'll need all the friends you can get when your eyes get worse.

  James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok : I don't apologize.

  Calamity Jane : See, he figures whatever he done, even if it wasn't perfect, was justifiable.

• Charley Price : [voice over]  The theater of Bill's life had come to demand that he walk up the center of a muddy street rather than use the boardwalk. He had discovered being Wild Bill was a profession in its own right.