Le retour du grand blond

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[referring to Captain Cambrai] Get ready, Captain, to scream for your mother!

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[to Captain Cambrai] I've been in Intelligence for twenty years, Captain, and I have *never* had a nervous breakdown!

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[to Perrache] Don't forget that Milan is dead... and that the murder weapon was The Tall Blond.

Perrache:
[briefing Toulouse about the new Minister] Before the Interior, he was in Agriculture. He's forty-five, has a repulsive wife and four children. Obviously, he'll stop at nothing.

Perrache:
[continuing the briefing about the Minister] He's a man who loves to hear himself talk. He's conceited as all hell and as slippery as a wet cake of soap. He has a mistress, 22 years old. We bugged her apartment two days ago; he calls her "my pretty geisha girl", she calls him her "wild bull".

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[reflectively] Her wild bull.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[referring to the Minister] There must be a way to corral that "wild bull". Start checking on his income tax.

Perrache:
He pays every penny, sir.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
But why?

Perrache:
I don't know why, but he does.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Just has to be different, that idiot; can't act like anyone else.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
The Blond's funeral is in two hours... I'd rather he were dead.

Fran?ois Perrin:
[about the Minister] He's bound to suspect something... I mean, he's not completely stupid.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Would you care to bet on that?

Perrache:
[reading from Cambrai's dossier] Gaston Cambrai was born prematurely; he weighed at birth no more than a pound and a half. Good beginning.

Fran?ois Perrin:
[to Toulouse after his faked murder by Christine] You taught me a lot, Colonel... there are plenty of revolvers that can fire blanks.

[first lines]

Narrator:
On May 26th of last year, Francois Perrin arrived at Orly Airport in Paris wearing two different colored shoes. That was the beginning of the adventure of The Tall Blond Man with One Black Show. This man, chosen at random in the crowd, was to become the central figure in a fantastic spy story. Colonel Toulouse, head oa a certain secret service agency, used him to bait a trap for his second-in-command Colonel Milan, who was too ambitious for his taste. Toulouse convinced him that Francois Perrin under the code name "The Tall Blond" was an international superspy. It was easy; observed with a magnifying glass, any man's actions can seem strange and suspicious. But The Tall Blond somehow managed to avoid all the clever traps set for him by Milan and his agents. Christine, one of Colonel Milan's most successful operatives, not only could get nothing out of him, she even ended up falling in love with him. The innocence of The Tall Blond led Colonel Milan to his death, caught in his own trap, and so Colonel Toulouse was rid of his over-ambitious colleague once and for all. Maurice LeFebvre, The Tall Blond's closest friend, was an involuntary witness of the massacre and as a result suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, Francois Perrin, alias "The Tall Blond" and as innocent as ever, flew off to Rio with a huge trunk in which was hidden Christine, the spoils of his victory in this incredible combat. And then three months later...

Le ministre:
[to Toulouse] Your colleague Milan seems to have had a bit of a mania for collecting dossiers on everyone.

Le ministre:
[to Cambrai] I'd rather not become an enemy of that Colonel Toulouse. You know, somehow... he worries me.

Perrache:
[reading the eulogy for Perrin, which he has been typing at Toulouse's dictation] No, Francois Perrin, your blood was not spilt in vain.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[rips the paper from the typewriter] I'm not asking for your opinion, just type the damn funeral oration! [reads from the paper] Francois Perrin, dead in action in a foreign land, a soldier in that shadowy army that defends the sacred and eternal liberties of France, all the free peoples of the world owe you their gratitude and admira-...

Perrache:
[wearily] Don't you think that's a bit too much?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
It's not too much! [pause, then] It's crap... but not too much.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
[telling Perrin about thw Minister] This Minister is a perfect idiot... he thinks you are James Bond, Mr. Perrin.

Fran?ois Perrin:
Me?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Or to be precise, a combination of James Bond, Mata Hari and J. Edgar Hoover.

Fran?ois Perrin:
[he's been reading a dossier on Cabrai, chuckling at first at some of the items, then becoming shocked] But what's the point of it? It's none of my business and all that!

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
I advise you to read that dossier attentively. The truths it contains are our weapons.

Fran?ois Perrin:
But what kind of truths? He wet his bed until the age of twelve! What does it prove?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
That's not the part that interests us.

[he takes the dossier and reads from it]

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
In the Army for over twelve years, he has never seen action, only administrative work. Attempted to take some part in the action in Africa; he got into Intelligence and volunteered to take part in interrogations, but during one such interview burst into tears. He went into hysterics, was hospitalized for two months and returned to office work.

Fran?ois Perrin:
So what?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Cambrai would like to pass for merciless, but as soon as blood begins to flow our hero cracks, he calls for his mommy to hold his hand, and you may rest assured, Mr. Perrin... he'll be screaming for his mother!

Fran?ois Perrin:
And what's all this about sending me on a mission? Maurice told me it'd be dangerous. [Toulouse and Perrache say nothing] Well, what about it?

Perrache:
I'm impressed; it's pretty good.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Yes, he's quite clever, our friend the captain.

Perrache:
Convinces the Minister they've got to have The Tall Blond on a mission.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
A very dangerous one.

Perrache:
Obviously; that'd be the point.

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Preferably fatal, yes.

Perrache:
The Tall Blond gets himself killed.

Fran?ois Perrin:
Huh?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
And we are back in trouble again

Fran?ois Perrin:
What do you mean, "The Tall Blond gets killed"?

Perrache:
Or they discover his corpse horribly mutilated someplace.

Fran?ois Perrin:
*My* corpse?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Cambrai rushes over to tell that half-witted Minister that I'm a killer.

Fran?ois Perrin:
But you *are* one! You *are* a killer!

Fran?ois Perrin:
I want Christine right away!

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
All right, you'll get her but in installments.

Fran?ois Perrin:
In what?

Colonel Louis, Marie, Alphonse Toulouse:
Only her ears to begin with, then perhaps her thumbs and a couple of her toes. We'll return her to you... but piece by piece!