What movie did this quote come from?

The current thread dealing with the number of ways to skin a cat has caused me to think of something I know I heard in a Western but I will allow for the possibility it may have been from another genre.

Some crotchety older guy is explaining to the people trying to care for a man who has been wounded (probably shot) that he has “a hole big enough to throw a cat through.”

I did a Yahoo! search on the entire phrase and came up with some non-movie hits which all seemed to apply to gunshot wounds or problems with vehicles.

I just want to know what movie I would have heard that in and who would have been saying it about whom.

Please tell me you at least have heard the expression even if you can’t ID the movie.

My Google-fu says it was Rancho Deluxe. 'Course I could be wrong.

Found it here.

That has to be it. I’m not even looking at your link to say it had to have been Slim Pickens referring to a cow/bull that Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston shot with a Henry rifle. Now I’ll check your link.

Great work! And fast!

BTW, my search string was

“hole big enough to throw a cat through” movie

Maybe it was a Sharp’s. I’d bet on the Henry but will let Johnny L.A. settle it.

Thanks!

Outstanding. Google, you say?

By the way that’s one of the funniest Westerns I have ever seen. Modern day.

It might have been transformed from the older phrase, ‘No room to swing a cat’, earliest attribution: Richard Kephale’s Medela Pestilentiae, 1665, ‘They had not space enough (according to the vulgar saying) to swing a Cat in.’ I don’t know if it’s been adapted to a movie though, the plot sounds a little tedious.

IMDB has a quote search, but does not have this quote

Brian

Does settle the gun issue. Sharp’s and not Henry. Henry was in Silverado and others.

What’s so memorable is the romance between Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright and the gal who was Slim’s niece or something. Stanton comments on how she’s “like Bambi.”

Modifying the phrase a little got many more Yahoo! Search hits, all relating to wounds and vehicles and structures. It was the Rancho Deluxe version I was trying to remember, though. A vivid image!

Swinging cats sounds familiar, too. It would seem that not just everybody loves cats! :smiley:

Agreed. Wifey and I saw it when it came out; we already knew about Jeff Bridges, but that was the first time we ever saw Sam Waterston.

Favorite quotes:

“…fuckin’ Indian” (which was in the cricket-eating scene, right?)

and lovestruck Harry Dean Stanton: “She’s like… Bambi.”

I’ll have to give you the cricket scene. Sam and his daddy maybe?

Same deal with us on Waterston. I believe I first saw Jeff (to know it) in The Last Picture Show

The big guy ranch owner was familiar from Cool Hand Luke as the guard with all the lines about “… spends a night in the box.”

All things considered, it’s Slim’s movie, as was most every one he was ever in. I suppose he’s most famous for riding a bomb!