Kevin's Watch

....Or Bits of Dialogue [from films of course].

We all have them; those lines or exchanges in films that we could watch and listen to over and over and they never fail to send a frisson of pleasure up our spine. Dialogue that makes the film worth watching just for those few seconds alone. Here's some of mine.

Rorsarch from Watchmen whirls round on the cons who are all out to kill him having just thrown boiling fat over the head of one of their number; "You guys just don't get it do you; I'm not locked in here with you - your locked in here with me!"

Later in the same film he faces pretty certain death and is remains unfazed. "Have lived my life without compromise and leave it without complaint or regret".

Small girl has just been backhanded by her father and thrown into the corridor outside her tenement flat. She sits with her legs hanging over the balcony and is passed by the oddball assasin Leon who doesn't know her but stops to look at her as he passes. "Does life get better as you get older or is it always this way?" she asks. Leon regards her mutely for a moment and then replies without emotion, "Always this way."

"There are two kinds of people in this world...." [Those who love The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and those who don't. Of the latter I will not speak.]

"Lets go to work" Joe Capet in Resevoir Dogs

There was a great line where a robber facing death by the mob remained unmoved replying. "I've lived; I know what it is to dance in a Paris nightclub with a thousand dollar a night hooker" [I was going to adjust for inflation [this is an oldish film - don't know what $1000 dollers buys these days in the hooker line but I'm guessing not the kind that you dance in Paris night clubs with - couldn't seem to do it and keep the 'poetry' of the line together]. Can't remember the film though.

Thats enough for now; have enjoyed posting these just for the pleasure of remembering the lines. Give it a go.

Too many to list.

Pretty much every line from Buckaroo Banzai and Big Trouble in Little China is golden.


"I don't deserve this...to die like this. I was building a house." Dunno why, but that line from Gene Hackman in Unforgiven has stuck with me for years. The line's sort of "meh", but his delivery is amazing.

"Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suiza when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum." From Naked Lunch. Again, it's Peter Weller's delivery that gives this bizarre speech life.

Love that - reminds me of the cousin in Clerks who died "Trying to suck his own dick. They found him on his bed with his legs over his head and his balls resting on his lips!"

Chinatown

Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) talking to Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway)

"LA is a small town. People talk. I'm just trying to make a living.
I don't wanna become a local joke."


Collateral

Max (Jamie Foxx) talking to Vincent (Tom Cruise)

"First time in LA?"

"No."
"Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave."
"Too sprawled out. Disconnected. You know!"
"- That's me. You like it?"

"It's my home."

"Seventeen million people. This was a country it'd be the
fifth largest economy in the world, and nobody knows each other."

Apocalypse Now

Kurtz; "The Horror!"

Arnie in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,
when he lifts the arsenal coffin, "Ah...ow, me back!".

Frances McDormand in Fargo, watching William H. Macy drive away: "Oh, for Pete's sake! He's fleeing the interview!"

From Young Frankenstein:
"Blucher!" "Neighhhhh!"

"Oh, you men are all alike. Seven or eight quick ones and then you're out with the boys to boast and brag."

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Igor, help me with the bags.
Igor: [Imitating Groucho Marx] Soitenly. You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the toiben.

(If I started in on Monty Python, we'd be here all weekend... )

Miracle Max: "Have fun storming the castle!"
Valerie (his wife): "Think it'll work?"
Miracle Max: "It would take a miracle."

Gladiator [ ];

Maximus [Russel Crowe] to his legionaires before battle; Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be and it will be so. If you find yourself alone, riding in the green feilds with the sun on your face, do not be troubled for you are in Elysium and you're already dead.

"My hat was in that car...."

Dan Ackroyd in the underrated Dragnet.

[In his slow southern drawl, the nasty bastard prison governer in the classic Cool Hand Luke while the other guy in the silver shades with the sotgun looks on]

"What we got here is a failure to communicate."

Charles Durning as 'The Govenor' in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas [prior to the 'dance a little side-step' song]

"I was sayin' just this morning at the weekly prayer breakfast in this historic capital, that it behooves both the Jews and the Ayrabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner!"

Way too many to put in one post, but here goes.

Rick (in Casablanca): ""Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship"

Harry Lime (in The Third Man): "Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

The President (in Dr Strangelove): "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

From the Rocky Horror Picture Show:
Riff Raff: "Hello."
Brad: "Hi! My name is Brad Majors, and this is my fiancee, Janet Weiss. I wonder if you'd mind helping us. You see, our car broke down a few miles up the road. Do you have a phone we might use?"
Riff Raff: "You're wet."
Janet: "Yes, it's raining."

From Cool Hand Luke:
Luke: "I can eat fifty eggs."
Dragline: "Nobody can eat fifty eggs."
Society Red: "You just said he could eat anything."
Dragline: "Did you ever eat fifty eggs?"
Luke: "Nobody ever eat fifty eggs."
Prisoner: "Hey, Babalugats. We got a bet here."
Dragline: "My boy says he can eat fifty eggs, he can eat fifty eggs."
Loudmouth Steve: "Yeah, but in how long?"
Luke: "A hour."
Society Red: "Well, I believe I'll take part of that wager."

From Airplane:
Rumack: "You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital."
Elaine Dickinson: "A hospital? What is it?"
Rumack: "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

And many, many more.

Oh gods, Airplane is almost as good as Monty Python for memorable lines:

"I *am* serious. And don't call me Shirley."
"Check the radar range!"
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up heroin..."
"Now the sh*t's really gonna hit the fan..."
And from Wally and the Beaver's mother: "Oh, stewardess! I speak jive!"

aliantha wrote:And from Wally and the Beaver's mother: "Oh, stewardess! I speak jive!"

I love the way that the subtitles say "Golly!" every time they say "Shiiiitttt!"

I'm sure Airplane or one of the sequels is where the line "Screw Christmas - We're all gonna die!" comes from - but I can't find it nohow.

"A repo man is always intense."

"You are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence."

"Laugh it up, fuzzball."

Truman Show:

Mike Michaelson: Christof, let me ask you, why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now?

Christof: We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that.


Sylvia: He's not a performer, he's a prisoner. Look at him, look at what you've done to him!

Christof: He could leave at any time. If his was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there's no way we could prevent him. I think what distresses you, really, caller, is that ultimately Truman prefers his cell, as you call it.

Adaptation:

John Laroche: Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way.

Blazing Saddles:

What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.

Mongo only pawn... in game of life.

+JMJ+

For some reason, posts keep getting pruned from this thread, and I can only assume that the reason (aside from OT posts) is that quote sources aren't being cited. And so …


Predator:
I ain't got time to bleed. - Blain Cooper


They Live:
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass … and I'm all out of bubblegum. - John Nada

"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?"