There are so many great movie quotes.
Most fans would recognize the true classics right away.
“Gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
“Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Of course, there’s always my personal favorite.
“You f**ked up. You trusted us.”
The 15 quotes I posted yesterday don’t rise to that level of specialness, but they’re all interesting and they all demonstrate what made their movies interesting.
So without any further explanation, I’ll post the quote, the movie it’s from and where applicable, a better-known quote from that movie.
***
1. “I never did one thing right in my life, you know that? Not one. That takes skill.”
Movie: “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” a guilty pleasure in which Geena Davis has serious chops as an action star. The quote is from Samuel L. Jackson playing a low-rent detective.
***
2. “Zero … point … zero.”
Movie: “Animal House,” probably my favorite comedy of the last 42 years. From the scene where Dean Wormer is expelling the Deltas. Zero point zero is John Belushi’s grade-point average.
Better-known: The one mentioned above and many others.
***
3. “I want to party with you, cowboy.”
Movie: “Stripes,” one of Bill Murray’s best early films. From the scene where all the raw recruits are sitting around talking to each other.
Better-known: From the same scene, “Lighten up, Francis.”
***
4. “You dirt-eating piece of slime! You scum-sucking pig! You son of a motherless goat!”
Movie: “The Three Amigos,” hardly a great movie, but still fun to see Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase working together.
***
5. “Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free!”
Movie: “Love Actually,” which came out of nowhere in 2003 to become one of my very favorite movies of all time. Washed-up rock star Billy Mack has an unexpected hit at Christmastime.
Better-known: “Whenever I get gloomy at the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”
***
6. “If you go any faster we’re gonna travel back in time.”
Movie: “The Last Boy Scout,” another of my truly guilty pleasures, with Bruce Willis as a down on his luck detective and Damon Wayans as a washed-up NFL quarterback.
Better-known: “Head or gut?”
***
7. A good friend of mine used to say, “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Think about that for a while.”
Movie: “Bull Durham,” quite possibly the best baseball movie ever made, and to make it even better, there’s no big game to be won or lost at the end of it. Susan Sarandon says the quote above at the end of the film.
Better-known: “I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”
***
8. “Listen, no matter what she says to you, don’t answer her back. There’s a Confederate pistol in her lap under her shawl and she’ll kill you quick as look at you.”
Movie: “To Kill A Mockingbird” is one of the most underrated great movies of all time. It’s No. 116 on IMDB’s top 250 list, although the American Film Institute does rank Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) has the greatest movie hero of them all.
Better-known: “Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.”
***
9. “She can’t act. She can’t sing. She can’t dance. A triple threat.”
Movie: “Singin’ in the Rain,” a film definitely on the short list for best movie musical ever. Don and Cosmo describing fellow star Lina Lamont.
Better-known: The musical sequences overwhelm everything else in this wonderful movie.
***
10. “I don’t care how rich he is, as long as he has a yacht, his own private railroad car, and his own toothpaste.”
Movie: “Some Like it Hot,” the movie chosen by AFI as the No. 1 comedy ever.
Better-known: “Nobody’s perfect.”
***
11. “We just don’t recognize life’s most significant moments while they’re happening. Back then I thought, “Well, there’ll be other days.” I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”
Movie: “Field of Dreams,” the Moonlight Graham part of the story. Archie Graham spent one day on a major league field and never got the chance to bat.
Better-known: “If you build it, he will come.”
***
12. “Great game, Jimmy. I especially liked that move in the seventh inning when you scratched your balls for an hour.”
Movie: “A League of Their Own,” in my opinion one of the most underrated baseball movies ever. Tom Hanks won two Oscars and has had numerous other memorable roles, but his portrayal of the manager in this film is one of his best.
Better-known: “There’s no crying in baseball.”
***
13. “Boss needs to be knocked on his ass every once in a while.”
Movie: “Big,” another Tom Hanks movie, and this may have been the one where he first showed he was going to be a very special actor. The young kid who wishes he were big and wakes up to be a kid in an adult’s body.
Better-known: “I wish I were big.”
***
14. “We should mate.”
Movie: “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” The closest thing to a comedy that knows no boundaries, with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn as two completely opposite types of gym owners competing on ESPN 8 (“the Ocho”) for a world championship. Stiller is amazing.
Better-known: “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
***
15. “Don’t worry about it. They always hire bums like me for jobs like this.”
Movie: “Streets of Fire” may have been the best of Diane Lane’s early movies. She plays rock singer Ellen Aim, and Michael Pare plays Tom Cody, who is hired to rescue her when she is kidnapped by a motorcycle gang.
Better-known: The memorable stuff is in the songs Ellen Aim sings at the beginning and at the end, even if Lane is lip-synching.
***
16. “Rhapsody has two mommies.”
Movie: “Best in Show” had the not-so-surprising moment near the end when the young bride and her female trainer express their feelings after their dog has performed. One in a series of hilarious moments in a great comedy.
***
17. “One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months.“
Movie: “Forrest Gump,” when Forrest realizes what the monsoon season means in Vietnam.
Better-known: “Life is like the box of chocolates.”
+++
18. “A man can convince anyone he’s somebody else, but never himself.“
Movie: “The Usual Suspects”
Better-known: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.“
***
19. “How can you trust a man that wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can’t even trust his own pants.“
Movie: “Once Upon a Time in the West”
***
20. “No one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.“
Movie: “Sunset Boulevard,” where Norma Desmond explains why she did what she did.
Better-known: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up. “
***
21. “I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.“
Movie: “American Beauty,” one of the last great movies of the 20th century.
***
22. “We can’t all be lion tamers.”
Movie: “Lawrence of Arabia,” the epic story of T.E. Lawrence and the epic performance by Peter O’Toole.
Better-known: “I pray that I may never see the desert again. Hear me, God.”
***
23. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.“
Movie: “Blade Runner,” the most poignant scene in the movie, with replicant Rutger Hauer dying in the rain.
Better-known: ” It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?”
***
24. “Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out. But we keep a’comin’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out; they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ’cause we’re the people.“
Movie: “The Grapes of Wrath,” one of the greatest movies of Hollywood’s greatest year. The struggle of common people struggling to survive the Dust Bowl during the Greaqt Depression.
Better-known: “I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.”
***
25. “Did ya hear the one about the guy who couldn’t afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?”
Movie: “Fargo.” A truly brilliant performance by Frances McDormand for the first of her three Best Actress Oscars. She’s a sheriff in the upper Midwest.
Better-known: “You betcha.”