Film Talk

Film Talk

(Smashwords Edition)

by Robert Cettl

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

© 2010 Robert Cettl

cover image (c) Denis Tevekov

Contents

Introduction

Drama

Action and Adventure

Westerns

Hollywood Classics

Romance and Relationships

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Horror and Thriller

War Movies

Comedy

Hollywood Flops

Erotica

Exploitation Cinema

Cult Movies

Introduction

The DVD revolution has made viewing movies an intimate and informative process even more than home video. Although many people still go the cinema to watch movies, the idea of home entertainment has effectively re-invented the movies. With DVD, more and more films are being released: not just the latest Hollywood blockbusters but films from different eras. Indeed, the entire history of filmmaking, especially American movies, is being made available on DVD. It is claimed that films can often speak to someone in a way that makes the movie become a part of them, whether for a time or even for the remainder of their life. Such is possible with a love of movies.

The love of movies is a strange and wonderful thing. It is an acknowledgement of the art and affect of the filmmaking craft but also an admission that of all contemporary art forms it is the cinema which has the potential to stay in our memory and enter our popular culture. Much about the movies is memorable, from the gossip surrounding the latest star antics to the discernable themes in a director’s work as he or she progresses from film to film to the latest display of special effects to witty dialogue that just makes one laugh or smile in sheer joyous appreciation of the art of communication. It is this latter point especially which the book you hold in your hands is designed to playfully explore.

Movies are such a part of everyday life in contemporary society. They are not only everywhere and in increasing numbers but they bring an entire historical legacy with them. Although there is undoubtedly a thrill in seeing new movies, part of the wonder of films is in the re-discovery of the unfamiliar. But with so much to choose from, it is often difficult to get information in a friendly and informative way about such a diversity of films. The previous book Film Tales: Movie Trivia in the Age of DVD sought in part to do just that – to tell stories and anecdotes about the movies in an informative and entertaining way to please those who love to know more about and share in the many pleasures of the movies.

Film Talk: Quoting the Movies in the Age of DVD is also inspired by such a love of the movies, an acknowledgement that movies do often become a part of our consciousness, our well-being and even our self-definition. And: that the movies do speak to us. Once upon a time, when silent movies segued into sound, moving pictures became known as talking pictures. Dialogue made the films hit home, embrace the human, inter-personal nature of communication. But it was not just that what people said could now be heard, but that what they said or how they said it could make an impression on the viewer – that lines of dialogue could be so memorable as to capture for the viewer / listener the movie experience.

Quoting the movies is thus what this book is all about. It takes a chapter by chapter approach to cinema and isolates a number of diverse lines from films both well known and less so. It is meant as a companion to the films, a reminder of just what role dialogue can take in the impression of a movie. It is about the fun of movie dialogue, about the emotional journey: that quoted lines can take a reader through the entire breadth of the movie-going experience and its history. No quote is too obscure, no line too inappropriate, for this book is a trip through movie quotes, a reminder of just what the scriptwriter’s craft has contributed to the art and impression of the movies.

User-friendliness is a design feature here. Part of the problem with quoting the movies out of context is that much of the movie itself can be lost. Thus, although this book selects lines which very often can stand on their own, every effort is made to contextualize each line and give an indication of the kind of film it is taken from, or who said it. Thus, the book is designed for readers who like movie quotes but may not have seen the films from which the quotes have been lifted. Many films are quoted in the course of this book and it is planned so that along with the quotes, the reader will get a sense of the way in which they were used and the evolution of the different types of movies that support them.

Classic films have their classic lines and every effort has been respectfully made to accommodate them here; but, there are many lesser known films which contain surprising, witty and memorable lines. Thus, to accommodate as much of the familiar and the unfamiliar as possible is the intent of this book. As it deals with the unfamiliar (but still memorable), the lines are in many cases expanded upon, set in some context that reveals a little something about the movie itself. Film Talk is designed as a book thus for those who not only find fun and pleasure in movie quotes but also a satisfaction and enjoyment in discovering just a little bit more about the movies, both the movies they love and the movies they are perhaps yet to see for themselves.

Drama

All cinematic genres technically qualify as Drama, but what is usually associated with the description drama is that blend of human interaction and inter-personal relationships that has a bearing on the everyday. Such drama usually encompasses emotions and ideas that are not overrun by visual devices but which seek to depict a recognizable means of natural human expression. The films are often dialogue-heavy as human communication and the many difficulties and pleasures associated with it are the mainstream of the genre – it is as if the very nature of what it is to be a human being, alive with intellect and emotion, is under examination here.

For that reason, drama is perhaps the most ready supplier of quotable material in the movies. The quotes in this section reflect the sheer diversity of ideas that can emerge and be examined in the course of a film, from emotional matters to pithy comments all the way even to sexual frankness. It is once again when looking through quotes from dramatic vehicles that we are reminded of the joy in communication, for it is not that these lines go over the viewer’s head as they watch, though they may, but that the cumulative imprint of them is left on the viewer for possible later reflection after the film is over. In that way, the movies can become a real part of the viewer.

Don't you think that everyone looks back on their childhood with a certain amount of bitterness and regret? It doesn't have to ruin your life!

(Katherine Hepburn implores in On Golden Pond)

There is only one freedom of any importance, freedom of the mind.

(before the tragedy of Alzheimer’s Disease befalls Iris)

Outrage and disgust were factors behind the adaptation of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill. Although ostensibly a courtroom drama like so much of Grisham’s work, this film sought to delve into the topic of justifiable vengeance. It concerned a man who is driven to vigilante action when his daughter is horrendously raped, urinated upon and left for dead. The villain was, however, stereotyped and unrepentant – the kind of humanity that it is easier to want to see removed, as demonstrated in his comment about whether he would rape young children: if they’re old enough to crawl, they’re in the right position.

You can’t handle the truth.

(Jack Nicholson beams in A Few Good Men)

I understand you're a man who knows how to get things.

(the beginning of a beautiful friendship in The Shawshank Redemption)

The musical drama Chicago won numerous awards and acclaim as one of the best of all recent musicals. It’s story of jazz low-lifes and entertainers in the Windy City cut a seedy look at stylized urban morality and featured its fair share of innuendo, as in this notorious and sly line: I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently. Part of the thrill of this film was the stylized dialogue and its undertones of moral suggestiveness… and, of course, all that jazz.

You work so hard not to be seen as a sex object. Before long, you're not seen at all.

(laments in The Life of David Gale)

Have you ever let a romantic moment make you do something that you knew was stupid?

(Helen Hunt asks a question we all one day ponder in As Good as it Gets)

One of the most remarkable dramas of recent times was Magnolia, from director Paul Thomas Anderson who had previously won over critics and audiences with Boogie Nights. Magnolia was a multi-character film which explored the inter-connectedness between human beings and played with notions of the fatalism which underpins such contacts. Of the film’s many convolutions, the narrator put it succinctly as: (t)here are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and nobody knows; and we generally say, ‘Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it.’

I always thought it'd be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

(and so is inspired The Talented Mr. Ripley)

Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.

(advice for the lovelorn in Reality Bites)

Dialogue from the Movies

Drama need not be solemn. Indeed it can be quite comedic, because although what is comedic is certainly not solemn it can still in fact remain quite serious. For instance, a comical exchange can reveal quite a dramatic under-text of both dissatisfaction and longing beneath the surface of spoken words. This is the case in this exchange from the romantic comedy drama Love Actually in which two young men, Colin (Kris Marshall) and Tony (Abdul Salis) discuss the need for love amidst loneliness:

Colin: I have just worked out why I can never find true love.

Tony: Why's that?

Colin: English girls. They're stuck up, you see. And I am primarily attractive to girls who are... y'know, cooler. Game for a laugh. Like American girls. So I should just go to America. I'd get a girlfriend there instantly. What do you think?

Tony: I think it's crap, Colin.

Colin: No, that's where you're wrong. American girls would seriously dig me with my cute British accent.

Tony: You don't have a cute British accent

Colin: [excitedly] Yes I do! I'm going to America.

Tony: Colin, you're a lonely, ugly arsehole. You must accept it.

Colin: Never. I am Colin, god of sex. I'm just on the wrong continent, that's all.

How come we only ask ourselves the really big questions when something bad happens?

(Mark Wahlberg reflects in I Heart Huckabees)

The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

(Sean Connery offers romantic advice in Finding Forrester)

In the hit film Dead Poets Society, by Australian director Peter Weir, Robin Williams plays an individualistic teacher who tries his might to encourage, through English literature, his students to think for themselves: (b)oys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Don't be resigned to that. Break out! Sadly, the environs of an all-male private school works against this to encourage conformity and obedience and his students must face the realities of life in an institution.

Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.

(Robin Williams reckons in Good Will Hunting)

It's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.

(irony and social justice in Texas in Lone Star)

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street was amongst the most popular of 1980s films, a movie which took the spotlight to yuppie consumerism and exposed it as such as this from Michael Douglas: (t)he point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."

You know the most interesting thing about doing something terrible? After a few days, you can't even remember it.

(psychopath Tom Ripley – John Malkovich – in Ripley’s Game)

A man with no ethics is a free man.

(Nick Nolte in U-Turn)

In the film Taps, a military academy is set for closure. When this prospect hits the students, a number of them take matters into their own hands and take weapons and soon barricade the school. They run into real soldiers and a showdown ensues, to which the adult officer says: You're not a soldier! I'm a soldier, with the career goal of all soldiers - staying alive in situations where it ain't all that easy to do! You're a death-lover. Some sorry son of a bitch has got you convinced that dying for a cause is oh, so romantic. Well, that's the worst kind of all the kinds of bullshit there is!

It's perverse, isn't it? People spend years developing their minds and educating themselves, but in the end, they just want to shut them off.

(age, wisdom and experience in 13 Conversations About One Thing)

You can fuck me in the ass. You can cum on my face. Just keep it out of my hair. I just washed it.

(prostitute Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas)

When Filmmakers Speak Out

Director Terry Gilliam was noted for directing his share of flops. Indeed he has a reputation within the American studio system as a man who regularly bucks that same system. He has remained an independent, doing his films his way, but with such staunch vision that Hollywood has accepted him. Nevertheless, he has mixed feelings about the Hollywood experience, admitting that: (t)here’s a weird thing happening in America. It’s all about immediate reaction and immediate gratification. It’s the infantilization of America. It’s like feeding babies. You put something in front of them; they see it and grab for it. Put something else in front of them, they grab for that. What seems to be happening in America is that each time they grab, they get disappointed….the view of the world just gets smaller and smaller in America and its processed in Hollywood, which is dictating everything… the choices start closing in because only certain kinds of films are going to be made because we need our big blockbusters.

Don't admire people too much, they might disappoint you.

(Donald Sutherland offers some advice in Ordinary People)

Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them.

(the golfing lore of Kevin Costner in Tin Cup)

Although author Stephen King is best known for horror stories, the adaptation that became The Shawshank Redemption emerged as one of the most acclaimed of prison films, thanks in part to its personal touch, evident in such lines as this, when one prisoner misses his escaped associate: I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

(Ricky Jay proffers in The Spanish Prisoner)

When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.

(President Nixon talks to a portrait of President Kennedy in Oliver Stone’s Nixon)

The comedy drama State and Main revived interest in films about films. Its clever and sardonic humour was considered a delight by many who saw it. Indeed, people were taken in by the sly sarcasm of such lines as: (i)t's the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat's supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why'd you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears? Of course, the film’s writer-director David Mamet was also an award winning playwright noted for his tough, stylized dialogue, so such praise was not surprising.

I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.

(Julia