I’m not sure how they stack up with, say, Shakespeare’s 18th, but AFI has published their list of the top 100 quotes from U. S. movies. ["Snap out of it!" from Moonstruck?-ed. Hey, you don't know how much work went into that.]
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Moonstruck, Cher to Cage re the steak: “Eat it, it’s good for the blood.”
#14 is Shakespeare, The Tempest…did the listmakers goof? Or, is it just the line, and not the scriptwiter’s work per se, being rated?
And not a single quote from the Wilder-Lubitsch classic Ninotchka ! This is an outrage!
Ninotchka (Garbo): Why do you want to carry my bags?
Porter: : That is my business.
Ninotchka : That’s no business. That’s social injustice.
Porter : That depends on the tip.
How could they leave out?
“So shall I say it, so shall it be”
Yul Brenner in The King and I.
Only one from Animal House? Mais non!
“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
“You f****ed up. You trusted us.”
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” (and just about anything else from that speech)
“Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothin’.”
And to think that Roger was there. Many more quotes at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/quotes
I guess exercises in trivia and nostalgia like this help to distract from the fact that box office is in the doldrums and now f/x rather than dialog is the main currency of movies.
First thought:
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Buddy—Hammett, if memory serves, changed the last letter in the last word. So, if anything, it’s a misquote.
Th—that’s all, folks!
Before I read the list:
“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
Patrick, you is right–”on” to “of”.
Kyda–that was a watershed in a way, a matinee idol Nicholson wearing a big nose bandage for half the movie.
One of my top five, Buddy. Nicholson at his zenith.
14. “The stuff that dreams are made of,” “The Maltese Falcon,” 1941.
William Shakespeare (1564ñ1616), The Tempest, Act VI, Scene I, ln 158-168:
Prospero: You do look, my son, in a movíd sort,
As if you were dismayíd: be cheerful, sir:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-cappíd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Robert, it gives as good an excuse as any to have a big ole lump in the throat, don’t it. I swear Ronald Reagan–blessed be his name–used it in a speech, once upon a time. Just can’t recall. It wasn’t the Challenger speech–he used “High Flight” in that one.
I guess Challenger should be referred to as a requiem, or funerary, rather than the slightly crass “speech”.
elegy – YMMV
One they missed from True Grit:
Lucky Ned Pepper: “I call that bold talk from a one-eyed fat man”.
Rooster Cogburn: “Fill your hand, you son-of-a-bitch”.
And then there’s the classic Mel Brooks comedies of the 70′s, like Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, that are full of great lines.
And so on. Boiling it down to 100 would be tough.
Query: Is the criteria that the line is memorable on it’s own merit or that it’s memorable because of it’s place in a memorable movie or scene? “Get over it” arguably makes it on the latter scale but clearly not on the former.
Yes, that’s the one. Rick, you da word-master! But–what is YMMV?
Your Mileage May Vary
Some consider elegy to refer only to a poetic form. Thus, the Challenger speech would be elegiac in nature but not an elegy.
The “Rick Ballard Permanent Cure for Pedants” involves shotgun and shovel and cannot be performed on the internet. YMMV is just an attempt to avoid a lecture.
Snap out of it – indeed.
What have they got against westerns? Only Shane.
“This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Thanks–but surely I’m not a pedant, why I can list a thousand reasons I’m not. Let’s see….;-)
The Wild Bunch:
“It ain’t what you MEANT to do, it’s what you DID do!” (bank manager in opening scenes, to young employee)
“When ya side with a man, ya SIDE with ‘im.” (William Holden, to the Gorch brothers, IIRC)
“Who’s ‘they‘?” (Edmomd O’Brian)
These may be the top 100 movie lines (this can clearly be debated), but it is not a collection of great quotations. A great quotation shouldn’t just be memorable in the context in which it was scripted, but remain of value in other contexts. “This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error” beats “Open the pod bay doors, HAL” all hollow, especially if you do computer tech support.
When ordering a martini, the brand of gin and the percentage of vermouth are as worthy of specification as the method of preperation.
I was pleased to see a number of quotes from one of my favorite movies, Casablanca, but my personal favorite was not on the list:
Ugarte: You despise me, don’t you?
Rick: If I gave you any thought I probably would.
Buddy,
You ain’t what I’d consider a pedant. ‘Cept about Texas bureaucrats – and with good reason.
“Who are those guys?”
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
While Wild Bunch is a fave, I could never get behind Butch Cassidy &SDK. All I could see was Paul Newman and Wobert Wedfud playing dress-up-like-cowboys, and mugging cute for the camera. Sorta like Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider–self-conscious fashionista crap all the way. But, lotsa folks like ‘em, and as they say, de gustibus non est disputandum.
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli
Casablanca’s domination of the list is profound. Indeed, there are any number of other lines from that movie that might also have made it on the list, but I’m sure the list-makers did not want to skew the rankings even more profoundly in that movie’s favor. Does that make me a cynic?
Tigerhawk,
Since you teed it up, somebody’s gotta whack it!
I suspect that under that cynical shell, you’re at heart a sentimentalist.
And, to putt in Knucklehead’s drive,
I came here for the water.
Anne Bancroft, in her final role, about to appear in Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO Comedy West, which reminds me…
…I’m in pain! I’m in pain, and I’m wet!… and I’m still hysterical!
It’s good to be the king!
That’s an unconscionable omission.
It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.
I’d like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.
What’s up, Doc?
Follow the yellow brick road.
You’re tearing me apart!
There’s only two things in this world that a real man needs: a cup of coffee and a good smoke.
Yippee-ki-yay, mother****er. (I guess I understand why they didn’t put this one in)
Listen ladder-legs!
Someday they’re gonna find your hair ribbon and an axe. Nothing else. The mystery of Morgan’s Creek.
You aren’t too bright. I like that in a man.
Was that Lauren Bacall? The top all-time screen beauty?
Kathleen Turner to William Hurt in Body Heat. A personal fave.
Like ‘em tall, lank and whiskey voiced, do ya?!
Kada: I also like Hurts line: “What do you want? I’ve got it all: ugly, horny, stupid.
That’s her alright–and them cat-eyes. the 40s gals reached some sort of smoky raw something that’d sure be nice to see come back. ‘Course, Bogies are sorta rare these days, too, I guess.
Robert, that’s lazy, ugly, horny. She replies “You don’t look lazy”. Great flick.
Nope, no more Bogies. Even the cool blonds–like Bergman–had that smokey raw back then. They knew something about sex appeal in those days–both sexes.
…’swhy there’s so many boomers….