"You see, outside of Glenn I ain't never liked the company of Nazis."
Tariq has come to Doc to get help searching for his friend Glenn, who is a Nazi. Tariq says this statement to Doc for obvious reasons, as Tariq is a black man. Ironically, Tariq's group of men worked with the Nazis as they agreed that government wasn't running the way it should.
"She's out there man."
Lt. Det. "Bigfoot" calls to tell Doc that they went to Shasta's and he drags out telling Doc what they found in order to make him believe that Shasta is dead. Apparently, she isn't dead: "She's out there man."
"I'm a drug counselor. Trying to talk kids into sensible drug use."
Hope is a former drug addict who has become a drug counselor. Ironically, she doesn't counsel them to stop using, but to use a "sensible" amount.
Gentlemen from the straight world?
Directed towards Shasta, this quote sets the tone for the entire movie. In 70s LA there are two worlds: the straight world inhabited by characters like Big Foot and the doper world inhabited by characters such as Doc. Doc is forced to enter the straight world to find answers to questions that ironically aren't at all straight forward. In the process, he finds the two worlds aren't so different after all.
When you can. Unless maybe you're one of those folks who believe information is money, in which case, I could ask you something?
Doc must be one of the most laid back private investigators ever put onto screen. Here he insists he will not only work for free, at least for the time being, and with someone he's just met for the time, but he tells him he can could perhaps help him out with money, if he gives him some information. On the surface, this suggests, Doc is not the ideal detective. However, as the film progresses we will see just how well his understanding, empathetic style will serve him.
I had just gone running into a toilet stall without checking first, had my finger already down my throat, to throw up the balloon of dope I'd just score in Mexico and there Coy sat, gringo digestion, about to take a giant shit. We both let go about the same time, barf and shit all over the place, me with my face in his lap and to complicate things, he had this hard-on... Next thing we knew here came Amethyst.
The film is full of surreal moments, and this description of how Hope met her husband Coy is perhaps the most surreal of them all. It's telling that, like all similar moments in the film, it leads to the character finding a deeper understanding. Here Cory and Hope have a child, Amethyst, which leads them to give up drugs and find a more stable lifestyle for themselves.
All this strange alternative cop history and cop politics - cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good - insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they'd all been given to control...
The frustration for people like Doc is how one group of people can be given such power and control over everybody else. As this quote suggests, not all cops are necessarily bad - in fact Doc will later say good things about the police It's just the idea that they are seen as above everyone else when clearly they have the same problems and the same good and bad eggs as any other group.
Well, just to be sociable, I guess.
Doc finds it hard, if not impossible, to turn down offers of drugs. At times, like at the end of the film, it gets him into trouble, but ultimately it leads him and his mind into the places that enable him to solve the crime.
And have the lab look for traces of copper. Not the kind that goes stumbling all over the crime scene contaminating evidence - more like copper, the metal? See, gold teeth are never pure gold, dentist like to alloy it with copper.
Doc once again proves how good a private detective he is. The viewer, however, my wonder where he got this information. Did he read it? Did he ask Dr. Blatnoyd? Or did his drug taking lead him to this make the connection? Whatever his methods, they work and are certainly better than Big Foot's. In fact, there is a suggestion that Big Foot already knows, and is taking advantage of Doc's more cerebral and effective way of working.
There was an ancient superstition at the beach, something like the surfer belief that burning your board will bring awesome waves, and it went like this: Take a Zig-Zag paper and write your dearest wish, and then use it to roll a joint of the best dope you can find and smoke it all up, and your wish would be granted. Doc's was simple... just that Shasta be safe...
Sortilege often links the hippy movement and Doc in particular to a greater power such as religion and astrology. She appears to think that if the right kind of people with the right frame of mind take drugs, they will walk clearer and more virtuous path.
