Saturday, October 30, 2010

Film List - another quotations quiz

Following on from my post earlier in the week about whether - and why - there have been relatively few movie lines to emerge as lasting 'classics' in the past decade or so (which included a link to the AFI's Top 100 Film Quotations), here is a personal list of memorable quotes that I've sometimes used in teaching "film appreciation" classes here in China. [Just under half of these made it into the AFI list; I think I'd take some of these over some of theirs!]

See how many of them you can spot...
[I'll add the answers in a comment below next weekend.]


1)  “I'm gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”


2)  “I know it was you, Fredo. I know it was you.”


3)  “Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here – this is the War Room.”


4)  “Top of the world, Ma!”


5)  “Is this the end of Rico?”


6)  “Rosebud.”


7)  “So, you think you’re a rebel?”  “You could say that.”   “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”   “What have you got?”


8)  “I coulda been a contender.”


9)  “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like… Victory.”


10)  “There’s too many, Shane.”


11)  “That was amazing – the best shot I’ve ever seen.”  “The worst! I was aiming for the horse.”


12)  “Round up the usual suspects.”


13)  “Are you looking at me?”


14)  “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille.”


15)  “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”


16)  “There are times when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”


17)  “No, it wasn’t the airplanes that killed him. ’Twas Beauty killed the Beast.”


18)  “Lunch is for wimps.”


19)  “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”


20)  “Oh, my god – it’s full of stars!”


21)  “You ain’t heard nothing yet!”


22)  “Sometimes, nothing can be a real cool hand.”


23)  “In this country, first you gotta get the money; then you get the power; then you get the women.”


24)  “You’re a big man – but you’re out of shape. With me, this is a full-time job.”


25)  “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”


26)  “It’s 104 miles to Chicago; we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark – and we’re wearing sunglasses.”  “Hit it!”




The thing about this selection, you see, is that the majority of them - a good 70 or 80%, I would guess - are at least kind of familiar to most people in 'the West', certainly most people from English-speaking countries (yes, even non-film buffs; even people who don't watch films at all!), and any serious cinema enthusiast could probably name the film and/or character for getting on for half of them at least; but here in China... well, even the most 'obvious' and well-known of these lines enjoy just about zero recognition.  Even with films like The Godfather - which everyone here has seen - the great lines and the great moments just do not enter the popular culture as they do elsewhere.  Perhaps it's partly a language problem: people are often watching these classics of foreign cinema dubbed into Chinese; even those who are trying to listen in English will frequently lean heavily on Chinese subtitles; and even those who rely purely on the original English soundtrack, and have good enough English to understand it fairly well, still find it very hard to really absorb and remember things that they hear in English (absorption and retention of content from reading seems to me to be usually much better, even though overall comprehension levels might be quite poor; I wonder if that's really so, and why it might be the case).  I don't run this kind of quotations list as a 'quiz' with classes here, because everyone would score ZERO; I try to use it more as an Internet-search 'treasure hunt' kind of thing.



[Note also that I wouldn't vouch for the absolute accuracy of the wording in each of these quotes.  When we're talking about the prominence of a line in popular culture, frequent repetition outside of the original context will often introduce small changes here and there - and these changes may even occasionally be slight improvements on the original.  It's an impossible task to try to verify each of these.  Online sources are not to be relied upon: they are usually based on transcriptions by a movie-watcher, which may be flawed (often, I suspect, influenced by how the fan thinks they remember the line from previous viewings), or become subsequently corrupted in further copying.  Even supposed extracts from 'original scripts' are not all that authoritative: how do we know that these sources are the actual screenplay?  And, even if they are, will they record little changes that were - consciously or unconsciously - introduced by the actor in delivering the line on film?  No, it's a futile effort to try to find 'definitive versions' of these quotes online; I'm not even convinced about that AFI list being completely spot-on for all of them.  I think the only way to have a chance of achieving that level of 'accuracy' would be to listen to each of the film extracts - carefully, more than once, and ideally in the context of the whole of the original scene from which they come rather than the extremely abbreviated soundbite extracts you find on YouTube.  And I just don't have time for that.

So, please don't carp at supposed small inaccuracies.  In this context, I think it's enough that a line should be recognisable.]


ANSWERS now added in a comment below.

18 comments:

Hopfrog said...

I think I got about all of them, some of them going waaaay back.

Getting late so I'll just throw one at ya.

"Coffee's for closers only"

I'm sure you've seen the film. If not you can google the quote to see what its from. One of the best written films ever with a powerhouse cast.

Froog said...

Well, there are two great films about sales (I worked in sales myself for a while, so I found a special level of horrid fascination in them!) - Glengarry, Glenross and The Boiler Room. I couldn't remember which of them that line came from, but I guess your reference to a "powerhouse cast" probably doesn't mean Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, and Scott Caan!

Hopfrog said...

Rofl, excellent deduction!

Gary said...

Damn - Hopfrog's good.

Like you said, a lot of them sounded familiar, I felt I had them on the tip of my tongue. But I think I could only name like 8 or 10 of the movies.

And characters?? That's tough!

Who made the unrefusable offer - was it Don Corleone or Luca Brazzi?

Froog said...

"Is that the African swallow or the European swallow?"

You've got me there, Gary! I think it was the Don; but I'd better go and check before I post the answers next week.

The British Cowboy said...

Froog.

You know I generally respect your opinions on movies. Stress on generally.

But Boiler Room? For the love of God it is WOEFUL. Just shockingly aweful. Yes people can take liberties, but trust me, I worked in that business, and knew a lot of people in the high pressure end and it is fucking laughable. If you are pitching a phoney pharmaceutical stock, who would be the LAST people you would pitch to? Maybe people from the industry that might be able to see through the bs?

Vin Diesel is as wooden as ever. I felt bad for Ribisi, because he actually seems talented, though needs a better agent.

Froog said...

It's not about the situation or the believability, it's about the psychology of sales.

VD is good as a guy with a ridiculous sense of self-belief and balls of steel.


And, as far as I recall, they were just pitching random leads they'd bought from somewhere (just like I did in that job I don't like to talk about any more...).

The British Cowboy said...

Dude. I did telephone sales for 8 years. It has the psychology totally wrong.

Mentioning it in the same sentence as GGRis blasphemy.

Froog said...

You're not old enough to have done telesales for 8 years!! You don't look old enough...

It's been ages since I saw it, but it left a favourable impression at the time (which was while, or very shortly after, I was doing the telesales job). My recollection is that it was exactly how you pitch dodgy stuff to random leads. Maybe you were lucky enough not to have that kind of telesales job.

Froog said...

GGGR doesn't have "Don't pitch the bitch!"

For that alone, Boiler Room is worth a look.

And you've rather discredited your Ebert-iness by raving so about the asinine Old School!

The British Cowboy said...

Don't pitch the bitch is the one good/accurate line. The rest is garbage. Worse than garbage in fact.

The British Cowboy said...

Thought this might appeal to you...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/27/the-united-states-of-movi_n_774741.html

Froog said...

Ha, thanks, Cowboy - that's pretty funny.

Jesus Camp - WTF is that? Never heard of it!

The British Cowboy said...

Jesus Camp is awesome. It's a documentary on kids going to fundamentalist camps in the US - incredibly scary.

Froog said...

ANSWERS:


1) “I'm gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather, 1972


2) “I know it was you, Fredo. I know it was you.”
Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in The Godfather: Part II, 1974


3) “Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here – this is the War Room.”
President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) in Dr Strangelove, 1964

4) “Top of the world, Ma!”
Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett (James Cagney) in White Heat, 1949

5) “Is this the end of Rico?”
Rico (Edward G. Robinson) in Little Caesar, 1931

6) “Rosebud.”
Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) in Citizen Kane, 1941

7) “So, you think you’re a rebel?” “You could say that.” “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” “What have you got?”
Mildred (Peggy Maley) and Johnny Strabling (Marlon Brando) in The Wild One, 1953

8) “I coulda been a contender.”
(Marlon Brando) In On The Waterfront,1954

9) “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like… Victory.”
Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) in Apocalypse Now, 1979

10) “There’s too many, Shane.”
Joey Starrett (Brandon De Wilde) in Shane, 1953

11) “That was amazing – the best shot I’ve ever seen.” “The worst! I was aiming for the horse.”
Chico "The Kid" (Horst Bucholz) and Britt (James Coburn) in The Magnificent Seven, 1960

12) “Round up the usual suspects.”
Cpt. Louis Renault (Claude Rains) in Casablanca, 1942

13) “Are you looking at me?”
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver, 1976

14) “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille.”
Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard, 1950
[One of those that is universally misremember/misquoted. Apparently in the movie, she apostrophises Mr DeMille at the beginning of the sentence, not the end.]

15) “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicolson) in The Shining, 1980

16) “There are times when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in High Noon, 1952

17) “No, it wasn’t the airplanes that killed him. ’Twas Beauty killed the Beast.”
Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) in King Kong [last line], 1933

18) “Lunch is for wimps.”
Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Wall Street, 1987

19) “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psycho, 1960

20) “Oh, my god – it’s full of stars!”
Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) in 2010, 1984
[The line occurred in the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but not in the film itself. However, a recording of the line - astronaut Bowman's last words upon entering the Stargate - is played in the sequel.]

21) “You ain’t heard nothing yet!”
Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson) in The Jazz Singer, 1927

22) “Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.”
Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) in Cool Hand Luke1967

23) “In this country, first you gotta get the money; then you get the power; then you get the women.”
Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Scarface, 1983

24) “You’re a big man – but you’re out of shape. With me, this is a full-time job.”
Jack Carter (Michael Caine) in Get Carter, 1971
[the original, NOT the remake!]

25) “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”
Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) in The Italian Job, 1969
[the original, NOT the remake!]

26) “It’s 104 miles to Chicago; we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark – and we’re wearing sunglasses.” “Hit it!”
Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) and his "brother" Jake (John Belushi) in The Blues Brothers, 1980

Froog said...

Oops - missed out the name of Brando's character in On The Waterfront. It was Terry Malloy.

Tony said...

Forgetting the characters' names (which in many cases I had done), there were 52 questions and I am immensely gratified to discover that I could answer 42 of them.

Thank you so much for setting a challenge appropriate to my generation and failing powers of short-term recall.

Froog said...

Congratulations, Tony.

I think the second half of my quiz veers a little more away from the 'classics', but I'm sure you'll again do pretty well.

Thanks for looking in.