Great Movie Dialogue

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Houdini

Well-Known Member
Aug 15, 2014
295
1,418
USA
Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Network written by Paddy Chayefsky with Howard Beale played by Peter Finch

Houdini in Omaha
 

Grandpa

Well-Known Member
Mar 2, 2014
9,724
53,642
Colorado
To Have And Have Not has a metric ton of great dialogue. But probably the best known part:

Slim: You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing.
Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?
You just put your lips together and..... blow.
 

Steffen

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Aug 9, 2015
2,233
12,800
Anything spoken by Clint Eastwood to a bad-guy in a movie. But my absolute favourite has to be this scene in Unforgiven. Please give us one more Western Clint. I know you've got it in you.

"That's right. I killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walked or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill. For what you done to Ned."

 
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GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
"I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
- FRENCH SOLDIER (John Cleese) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
 

osnafrank

Well-Known Member
Jan 24, 2017
7,121
50,822
47
Germany
Goodfellas

Tommy DeVito: “No, no, I don’t know, you said it. How do I know? You said I’m funny. How the fu** am I funny, what the **** is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what’s funny!”

Henry Hill: “Get the **** out of here, Tommy

“Ya motherf***** I almost had him, I almost had him. Ya stuttering prick ya. Frankie, was he shaking? I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning



The Dark Knight

"Why so Serious ?"

When the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, Im not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.






 
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Zone D Dad

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Apr 17, 2017
359
1,829
Chicago Suburbs
From Whit Sitillman's Barcelona

Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and...

Ted: Really?

Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?

Ted: The text.

Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.
 
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Grandpa

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Mar 2, 2014
9,724
53,642
Colorado
The Princess Bride was a fest of dialogue all the way through. But here's one:

Count Rugen: Are you coming down into the pit? Wesley's got his strength back. I'm starting him on the machine tonight.

Prince Humperdinck: Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan... my wedding to arrange... my wife to murder... and Guilder to frame for it.

I'm swamped.

Count Rugen: (sympathetically) Get some rest.

If you haven't got your health... then you haven't got anything.
 

Senor_Biggles

Well-Known Member
Sep 13, 2015
188
878
51
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the case for Miller’s Crossing:




Verna: Shouldn't you be doing your job?

Tom': Intimidating helpless women is my job.

Verna: Then go find one, and intimidate her.





Verna: What you doing?

Tom: Walking...

Verna: Don't let on any more than you have to.

Tom: ...in the rain.







Eddie Dane: How'd you get the fat lip?

Tom: Old war wound. Acts up around morons.







Tom: [on finding someone sitting in the dark in his apartment] Hello Bernie

Bernie: Hey Tom. How'd you know it was me?

Tom: You're the only one I know who'd knock and then break in.

Bernie: Your other friends wouldn't break in, huh?

Tom: My other friends want to kill me so they wouldn't've knocked.





Tom: All in all not a bad guy - if looks, brains and personality don't count.

Verna: You better hope they don't.





Leo: You hear about Rug?

Tom: Yeah, RIP.

Leo: They took his hair, Tommy. Jesus, that's strange, why would they do that?

Tom: Maybe it was injuns.







Bernie: Look in your heart! Look in your heart!

Tom: What heart?
 

Zone D Dad

Well-Known Member
Apr 17, 2017
359
1,829
Chicago Suburbs
My two favorite screenwriters when it comes to dialogue is pretty obvious - David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino. Consider this gem from Pulp Fiction. I could do this all day...

Jody: [to Vincent] What's he looking for?

Vincent: I dunno. Some book.

Jody: [to Lance] What're you looking for? Lance: A little black medical book!

Jody: What're you looking for?

Lance: A little black ****in' medical book! It's like a textbook they give to nurses.

Jody: I never saw no medical book.

Lance: Trust me, I have one.

Jody: Well, if it's so important, why don't you keep it with the shot?
 
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