Fritz Lang's "M" as John Mulaney quotes
“And I was like nah, nah, nah, sister, you’re not takin’ me to no secondary location!”
M is a 1931 German Expressionist thriller directed by Fritz Lang, who is most famous for directing Metropolis, that silent film with the robot lady. M basically invented the true crime film genre — it was based on a real series of child murders in Düsseldorf and explored the moral panic that followed.
You can rent it on Amazon Prime, or you can stream it on YouTube with subtitles if you’re not a chump. But, if you don’t have two hours to sit with a black-and-white German film from the ‘30s, you don’t have to. Every plot beat can be summed up with a quote from everyone’s favorite comedian and noted crime media fan John Mulaney.
“There are no children in the eyes of the New York Post. Either you’re a tot, or you’re dead and you’re an angel.”
“Something happened there. You hope it was a miracle. But it probably wasn’t. Probably something worse.”
“You’ll walk by the newsstand, and then you’ll see the headline, like, BEAUTY SLAIN. And then you look at the photo and you’re like, ‘Mmm...how about BODY FOUND?’”
“The greatest assembly of them all, once a year, Stranger Danger.…You are gathered together as a school, and you are told never to talk to an adult you don’t know, and you are told this by an adult you don’t know.”
“Sometimes babies will point at me, and I don’t care for that shit at all.”
“What was a murder investigation like in 1935? ‘Detective, we found a pool of the killer’s blood!’ “Hmm, gross. Mop it up. Now, back to my hunch…’”
“He’s like, ‘You mean this guy got off on little girls with pigtails?’ and you’re like, ‘Yeah, Ice, he’s a pedophile. You work in the sex crimes division. You’re gonna have to get used to that.’”
“He looks out over a sea of drunk white children screaming FUCK DA POLICE in his face, and he’s almost impressed! And then he leans into his radio and says, Get the paddy wagon.”
“Yeah, something most definitely did happen. That's why the murder police are here, with a photograph of her, talking about her in the past tense! There’s been an incident!”
“I am very small, and I have no money, so you can imagine the kind of stress I am under.”
“And I was like nah, nah, nah, sister, you’re not takin’ me to no secondary location!”
“And I said no. You know, like a liar.”
“But the way it came off was that he definitely killed that little girl!”
“She was a different kind of lawyer with us when we were kids. My mom was more like Nancy Grace. She would just make wild accusations all day long and wait for something to stick. My mom would blame me for things that happened on the news.”
“I’m so horny and angry all the time, and I have no outlet for it.”
“That’s it, that’s the story. But how fucked up is that? It’s crazy, right?”