Nobel Son (2007)
Actors:
Michael Battle (actor),
Rashad Chambers (actor),
Mark Charran (actor),
Greg Collins (actor),
Reid Collums (actor),
Ted Danson (actor),
Danny DeVito (actor),
Bennett Dunn (actor),
Joseph Falasca (actor),
Mark Famiglietti (actor),
Brendon Graham (actor),
Bryan Greenberg (actor),
Larry Hankin (actor),
Shawn Hatosy (actor),
Kirk Baily (actor),
Plot: Barkley Michaelson is in a deep life rut. He's struggling to finish his PhD thesis when his father, the learned Eli Michaelson, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Barkley and his mother, Sarah, a renowned forensic psychiatrist, now have the ill-fortune of living with a man-eating monster whose philandering ways have gotten less and less discrete. As if Barkley's world is not bad enough, on the eve of his father receiving the Nobel, Barkley is kidnapped and the requested ransom is the $2,000,000 in Nobel prize money. Needless to say, Eli refuses to pay it and so starts a venomous tale of familial dysfunction, lust, betrayal and ultimately revenge. In the words of Michel De Montaigne, the 16th century philosopher: "There is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead."
Keywords: airplane, airport, automated-teller-machine, award-ceremony, bag-of-money, bag-over-head, bare-chested-male, basil-plant, beating, begins-with-narration
Genres:
Comedy,
Crime,
Drama,
Thriller,
Taglines: Keep your eyes on the prize. Lust, betrayal, kidnapping... and you thought your family had problems!
Quotes:
City Hall: Crazy's just a choice, Barkley.
Eli Michaelson: If anyone in this room ever doubted my intellectual superiority, or your get fortune to be under my incomparable tutelage, you can now formally kiss my fine white ass.
Sarah Michaelson: I leave you with a question. A northern California dairy farmer murders 3 young girls, performs sexual acts with their dead bodies, then eat portions of their fleshy thighs - is the dairy farmer crazy?::Class Members: [all nod yes]::Sarah Michaelson: And let me give you a hint, this is not a question that can be answered with a yes, or a no, or a fuck yeah.
Harvey Parrish: I'm a scientist too, and my empirical observations tell me that someone's going to shoot you long before I ever fire you.
City Hall: Tomorrow I'm off to claim my Nobel Prize. Joining me will be my wife, Sarah, who I am certain has only been able to put up with my manias and eccentricities all these years because her definition of crazy is so narrow.
Barkley Michaelson: [first time trying to talk her] I wish I could offer to buy you a hamburger or something, but I don't have any money at all.::City Hall: I'm a vegetarian.::Barkley Michaelson: That's uh, that's a good thing, especially since if I ever have to eat you. Because vegetarians taste better than carrion eaters.
Eli Michaelson: I'll tell you, it's lonely at the top.::Bill Canepa: Sir?::Eli Michaelson: You're lucky you're not a genius.::Bill Canepa: If we get your son back alive, Dr. Michaelson, we're all geniuses.
Barkley Michaelson: It isn't evil to eat the dead. It's recycling. True evil is to eat a man alive.
[last lines]::Eli Michaelson: [to student] I'm free tonight. And you?
[first lines]::Barkley Michaelson: The French essayist, Michel de Montaigne, once said, "I think there is more barbarity in eating a man alive than in eating him dead." The wisdom of it. When you were a kid with an open soul, they told the world consists of good guys and bad guys. I always liked the bad guys. Scar Face over Superman.