erik lundegaard

Movies - Quotes posts

Saturday February 18, 2023

Most-Quoted: 'Well, Thank You, Flat Nose...'

“... That's what sustained me in my time of trouble.”

This isn't one of my most-quoted movie lines but I feel like it should be. It's from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” so it tends to get lost amid the many, many great lines there. The other night, I watched the movie for the first time in decades, and for some reason this line stood out.

It's early in the movie, Butch and Sundance are returning to their hideout at Hole-in-the-Wall pass, only to find that a member of the gang, Harvey (Ted Cassidy, 6'9“, who played Lurch on ”The Addams Family), has usurped Butch's authority. So there's a knifefight. That's one of the famous lines. “Rules? In a knife fight?”

After Butch wins a fight no one thought he could win, one of the gang members, Flat Nose (future “Police Woman” regular Charles Dierkop), goes up to him and says, almost childlike, “I was rooting for ya, Butch.” Which is when Newman says the line.

I suppose you could say it when someone professes support after the battle is over. Which ... yeah, I guess that's why we don't use it. The circumstances are too rare, and most friends aren't so two-faced. But politicians? Taking credit for, say, the results of a law that benefits their constitutents but which they fought and didn't vote for? “Well, thank you, Flat Nose. That's what sustained us in our time of trouble.”

There's something there anyway.

Posted at 09:11 AM on Saturday February 18, 2023 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Friday June 25, 2021

Wilder Napalm

What does it mean to you to direct an actor or an actress?

You cannot generalize that. That is like asking a doctor the same kind of question. “Well, there are some nice patients, there are some terrifying nudniks, there are hypochondriacs and there are some jolly ones who say, 'So I've got a 106-degree fever, I'll be all right, Doc.'” It all depends. Maybe if there is some kind of generalization possible, I would say that fifty-five percent are bores. Yes, expecially when they start digging deep into the character, because then you have to spend a week with them saying, “Yes, blah, blah, my father, my grandfather, blah.” And then I say, “For Chrissakes, learn those goddamned lines and let's get it over with.”

-- George Stevens Jr. interviewing Billy Wilder in Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age

Posted at 10:48 AM on Friday June 25, 2021 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Wednesday March 03, 2021

'Free, White and 45'

More takes on that early 20th-century catchphrase “Free, White and 21,” which I wrote about in 2009 (“Fugitive from a Chain Gang”) and revisited 10 years later (“What Price Hollywood?”). This spin is from George Cukor's “Dinner at Eight:

The character on the left is Hattie Loomis, whose carping husband, Ed, would rather go to the movies than to the titular event. She's played by Louise Closser Hale, who sadly died before the movie premiered. The character on the right is Millicent Jordan, host of the dinner, at which most everything that can go wrong does. Recognize her? Billie Burke. Six years later she played Glynda the Good Witch of the North in ”The Wizard of Oz.“ Her husband in this movie is played by Lionel Barrymore, who played one of the most horrible men in cinema, Mr. Potter from ”It's a Wonderful Life.“ He's about the only good man in ”Dinner at Eight."

For more on the history of the phrase, check out Andrew Heisel's well-researched 2015 Jezebel article.  

Posted at 08:26 AM on Wednesday March 03, 2021 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Thursday February 04, 2021

Cocoanuts Redux

The only thing soggy is the paper.

I've got most Marx Brothers movies all but memorized but not The Cocoanuts, which I only saw once or twice in my heyday with the Marx Brotherhood. Just didn't care for it. I put it with Room Service or Love Happy as the disappointments. Yes, it was a big Broadway hit and their first Hollywood movie, but it's so unevenly paced. Paramount put two directors on it and the Brothers didn't think much of either. “One of them didn't understand English,” Groucho said, “and the other one didn't understand comedy.”

Anyway I watched it the other day and it still isn't good but it has its moments. Harpo shines. The auction scene is great. Plus, of course, “Why a duck.” But I missed this great pun right before the “Why a duck?” bit. Groucho is about to auction off lots in the Florida land boom and he wants Chico to bid up the price, and he's explaining to him where the lots are. 

Groucho: This is the riverfront. And all along the river, those are all levees.
Chico: That's the Jewish neighborhood.
Groucho: [Gives him a look] Well, we'll pass over that.

As a kid in Minnesota, I probably didn't know levees or Levys (not to mention Passover), which may be why the joke never stuck. But man did I laugh the other day.

Something else that stuck this viewing: During this scene, Groucho also says to Chico, “Look, Einstein...” This was in 1929. It made me wonder about the first ironic usage of an “Einstein.” Is there an earlier recorded example? And did Einstein's friends ever use it on him when he got something wrong? “Nice going, Einstein.” 

Posted at 08:11 AM on Thursday February 04, 2021 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Friday November 16, 2018

William Goldman (1931-2018)

  • “You just keep thinkin', Butch, that's what you‘re good at.”
  • “Rules? In a knife fight?
  • “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya.” 
  • “You think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?”
  • “Who are those guys?”
  • “Follow the money.”
  • “The truth is, these aren’t very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
  • “Now don't tell me you think that all of this was the work of little Don Segretti.”
  • “You haven't got it.” 
  • “Is it safe?”
  • “Nobody knows anything.” 
  • “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
  • “No more rhymes now—and I mean it!” “Anybody got a peanut?”
  • “INCONCEIVABLE!”
  • “You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.”
  • “This is true love. You think this happens every day?”
  • “As you wish.”
Posted at 01:39 PM on Friday November 16, 2018 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Saturday September 29, 2018

Fun with Subtitles: The Mayor of Hell (1933), Cont.

OK, so last week I talked about the shitty, closed-caption transcription of the 1933 Cagney flick “The Mayor of Hell.” The characters were saying “Miss,” the transcription updated it to “Ms.” A Jewish kid called someone a “gonif,” the transcriber, gentile no doubt, went with “[INAUDIBLE].”

But this is the worst:

Where's the Fagin that runs this joint?

He's saying Fagin. As in the character from “Oliver Twist”—the corrupt man leading a group of Dickensian pickpockets. “Where's the Fagin that runs this joint.”

Look, I know how tough it is to transcribe. In the 1980s, I did it for a Taiwanese record company, which needed accompanying lyric sheets for their English and American records. I remember listening over and over to some songs and never figuring out certain words, and having to go with my best guess. 

But this? This is embarrassing. For Warner Bros. and Filmstruck. 

At the least, we're narrowing down the identity of the transcriber: progressive, gentile, not a big reader.

Posted at 02:15 AM on Saturday September 29, 2018 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Friday March 17, 2017

One of the Greatest Lines in Movie History

The shit you come across on Twitter. 

This thing somehow wound up in my feed today. It's a right-wing defense by a right-wing idiot of Donald Trump's severe and idiotic budget cut proposals. 

What do you do with that? Argue? Face palm? Move to Mexico?

On the plus side, it did make me recall one of the greatest lines in movie history—something that is truer today than when it was originally said in 1986:

Point for the arts, currently on the chopping block. 

Posted at 03:32 PM on Friday March 17, 2017 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 04, 2014

Talking Back at the Screen: The Equalizer

We get a lot of dumb lines masquerading as wisdom in “The Equalizer,” directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Olympus Has Fallen”) and written by Richard Wenk (“The Expendables 2”), which gives the movie an air of a bloody Bill Cosby action movie, if you can imagine such a beast. “You gotta be who you are in this world, no matter what,” spoken to a child prostitute, is one of those lines.

Here's another. It had me talking back at the screen. In my head, I mean. I don't talk out loud at movies. (Although I might groan occasionally.) 

Robert McCall (Denzel) is a former super-espionage agent trying to live out the rest of his life with a quiet warehouse job. It's a friendly place, and he's friendly there, and he tries to help an overweight Hispanic worker, Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis), become the security guard he always wanted to be. So he keeps him on his diet and trains him on weekends. He has him pull tires at a local park. (This exercise will come in handy later in the movie.) But Ralphie keeps giving up on himself. 

Here's the line and here's what I answered back:

Denzel: Hey, don't doubt yourself. Doubt kills.
Me: So does certainty.

I was thinking specifically of the certainty, the hubris, of the Bush adminstration, and all of the people who died as a result. They were certain it made sense to demote Richard Clarke, terrorism czar, to a deputy position, and 9/11 happened. Then they were certain it made sense to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein. They could nation-build in a matter of months—they were certain of that—and get out cleanly. And their certainy killed. It goes on killing, even after they've long left the scene.

Of course, we go to the movies for the very certainty someone like Denzel projects. That's part of the wish-fulfillment-fantasy bargain. We're fearful and doubtful. He's brave and certain, and in the end he'll save the day. It's great to see up on the screen. If only it stayed there. 

Denzel Washington in "The Equalizer"

Certainty, about to do some killing. 

Posted at 11:59 AM on Saturday October 04, 2014 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Wednesday May 21, 2014

A Born Liar, Now Convicted

“The idea that the [Obama] administration would be in any way 'rattled' by D’Souza’s documentary is highly unlikely. '2016' spins a cockamamie theory that President Obama is using his power to diminish America’s standing in the world in order to fulfill the aspirations of the father he never knew. It’s a derp-fest for the high-brow anti-Obama zealot who believes the president is a “Third World anti-colonial” and also demands slick production values.”

-- Simon Malloy, “The Right's Favorite Criminal: Inside the hopeless obsession with Dinesh D'Souza,” on Salon.com.

I particularly like “derp-fest.” But not as much as I like the schadenfreude of D'Souza's troubles.

Dinesh D'Souza

What Billy Martin said of both Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner can now be said of just D'Souza: a born liar, now convicted.

Posted at 01:29 PM on Wednesday May 21, 2014 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Saturday December 14, 2013

Quote of the Day

“Stefania, mother and woman, you're 53 with a life in tatters like the rest of us. Instead of acting superior and treating us with contempt, you should look at us with affection. We're all on the brink of despair, all we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little...Don't you agree?”

-- Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) in Paolo Sorrentino's “La Grand Bellezza” (“The Greaty Beauty”), which is currently playing at the Varsity Theater in the U District in Seattle.

La Grand Bellezza

Posted at 05:14 PM on Saturday December 14, 2013 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Monday October 14, 2013

Krugman Does Montoya

“I do not think that word 'compromise' means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means.”

-- Paul Krugman in his column, “The Dixiecrat Solution,” about You Know What. The rest of the piece focuses on “How does America become governable again?” Read that part, too.

For more on movie quotes and why Krugman's works, here.

Inigo Montoya

Posted at 11:28 AM on Monday October 14, 2013 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Wednesday July 17, 2013

Quote Quiz: Fill in the Blank with the Movie Title

“The film shrewdly touches contemporary nerves. Our society is pervaded by a conviction of powerlessness. ___________ makes it possible for all of us, in the darkness of the movie house, to become powerful. It plays upon our inner fantasies, not only on the criminal inside each of us but on our secret admiration for men who get what they want, whose propositions no one dares turn down.”

-- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Posted at 07:18 AM on Wednesday July 17, 2013 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Tuesday July 16, 2013

My Most-Quoted Movie Lines: ‘Most Certainly’

For a while I kept screwing it up; I kept saying “Most definitely.” Then I watched “The Insider” again and realized it was “Most Certainly.” That's how “Play It Again, Sam”s are born, I guess. Particularly in the age before VHS and DVD and Blu-Ray and streaming, and all of the options you and I have. 

The line comes at 2:25. The whole scene is great. That everyone involved, from director Michael Mann on down, could make what is essentially the taping of a “60 Minutes” segment so fascinating, making it into one of the best movies of the 1990s, says a lot about the talent involved.

Extra credit: Jeff Wigand, on Charlie Rose, talking about the exemplary job Russell Crowe did in portraying him. He calls it “surreal” and “eerie.” Most certainly.

Posted at 05:27 AM on Tuesday July 16, 2013 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Monday January 28, 2013

My Top 10 Movie Lines of 2012

I'm like Alice's Rabbit, late late late. But I have a day job, it's been a busy month, and the distributors, as usual, are slow to getting some of the more acclaimed movies to the outer reaches of the land, which is to say Seattle. Can't SIFF help with this? You'd think. At the same time, I'm earlier than last year's list. So there's that.

Someday I hope to do a piece on the ways movies in any given year complement and refute each other. I saw the big-budget musical “Les Miserables” a month after the doc “How to Survive a Plague,” and thought you could played Marius' survivor‘s-guilt lament, “Empty Tables and Empty Chairs,” from the former, over the closing credits of the latter. Meanwhile, the best counterargument to the overall torture storyline of “Zero Dark Thirty” isn’t the folks, such as me, blah blah blahing about the inefficacy or immorality of torture; it's Ken Burns' doc, “The Central Park Five,” where we realize we don't need enhanced interrogation to break people; just interrogation. ZDT tells us everyone breaks; CPF tells us the innocent always break first.

So here we go. Here's to the screenwriters who write the words. Here's to the actors who say them.

10. “The story is in the ice somehow.”
— Photographer James Balog in the documentary “Chasing Ice.”

The story James Balog winds up telling, or showing, is time-lapse photography of the destruction of beauty. We watch glaciers melt away in a matter of months. It's like watching La Sagrada Familia or the Louvre or Marion Cotillard melt away. The story he tells is a kind of horror story, and it's ours, and it's ongoing. See it. Or at least be aware of it.

Melting ice in "Chasing Ice"

9. “Thank you, Vishnu, for introducing me to Christ”
— Pi Patel, age 5, in Ang Lee's “Life of Pi.” Screenplay by David Magee. From the novel by Yann Martel.

“Life of Pi” seems to be about a boy and a tiger, as “Django Unchained” seems to be about an ex-slave bounty hunter; but both movies are ultimately about storytelling. This is the first of Pi's stories: young, curious and Hindu, and coming across Christianity and other religions. The story of Jesus confuses him at first. A story of self-sacrifice? By a god? But God? What's the point of that? In a way, young Pi is like most moviegoers. He wants wish-fulfillment fantasy. He wants the strong to be strong and smite the evil and foolish. Eventually he comes to understand Jesus on a deeper level.

Life of Pi - message

8. “I liked being watched. I liked turning them on. I liked getting them all worked up. But then I'd just get bored.”
—Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) in Jacques Audiard's “Rust and Bone.” Screenplay by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain. Based on a story by Craig Davidson.

Stephanie and Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) don't exactly meet cute. She's on the floor of a disco with a bloody nose. He's the bouncer who bruises his knuckles taking the guy out. He looks at her legs driving her home. He ices his knuckles at her place. By the time of the above admission, she's lost her legs (that's why the past tense) and his knuckles have another rendezvous with ice. But it's the stark admission of it. The honesty of it. We don't get that in many movies. It's a good reminder to men, too. Your interest is assumed; what else have you got?

Marion Cotillard in "Rust and Bone" (2012)

7. Lori: I know I’m not a talking teddy bear but at least you didn’t have to make a wish to get me. John: How do you know?
— Lori (Mila Kunis) and John (Mark Wahlberg) in Ted. Screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.

I would‘ve liked this movie a lot more if it hadn’t steeped itself in the worst pop-cultural crap, but asking Seth MacFarlane not to do that is like asking Steven Spielberg to end a movie abruptly or Quentin Tarantino to tone down the gunplay. MacFarlane's humor will always be hit or miss to me. But the above line? A bouquet of roses in a junkyard.

Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg in "Ted"

6. “How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentlemen from Ohio, proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their maker with dim wit impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins instead of hot, red blood. You are more reptile than man, George. So low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.”
— Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) in Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln.” Screenplay by Tony Kushner, based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

For all the great dialogue in “Lincoln,” the revelatory moments, it's the insults, the eru-fucking-dite insults that stand out. We think we‘re bad motherfuckers in the 21st century when it comes to trash talk. We actually owe the 19th century an apology for how far we’ve slipped.

Tommy Lee Jones in "Lincoln"

5. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
— Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd) to Charlie (Logan Lerman), and Charlie to Sam (Emma Watson) in Stephen Chbosky's “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Screenplay be Stephen Chbosky. Based on his novel.

Dr. Phil would go out of business if everyone tattooed this quote somewhere on their body or mind. That wouldn't be a bad thing. Either thing.

Emma Watson in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (2012)

4. “Remember in the sixties when girls wore short skirts? Wasn’t that great?”
— Paul Simon remembering a convesation with South African artist General M.D. Shirinda in the documentary “Under African Skies.”

Shiranda wrote the song that Simon would adapt into “I Know What I Know.” At this point in the story of the making of “Graceland,” and its subsequent controversy, Simon worries that the album isn't political enough; that it isn't evoking the reality of South Africaenough. So he asks Shiranda what his song is really about. This is his answer. Shiranda's right, too. It was great.

Paul Simon in "Under African Skies"

3. “It sort of felt like reaching the Wizard of Oz. It's like you’ve got to the center of the whole system and there’s just this schmuck behind a curtain.”
— ACT-UP activist Mark Harrington in the documentary “How to Survive a Plague.”

I immediately flashed to “All the President's Men”: Deep Throat telling Bob Woodward of the Nixon White House, “These are not very bright guys ... and things got out of hand.” That's still one of my most-quoted movie lines. Harrington is talking about meeting up with the scientists and bureaucrats of government agencies that allow or don't allow the rest of us to use this or that drug. “Schmuck Behind a Curtain” could be the title of any number of books or movies. It explains the world.

Mark Harrington in "How to Survive a Plague" (2012)

2.  “I was a terrible father. [Pause] It's a bullshit business. It's like coal mining: You come home to your wife and kids, you can't wash it off.”
— Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) in Ben Affleck's Argo. Screenplay by Chris Terrio. Based on an article by Joshuah Bearman and a book by Tony Mendez.

This is before the trip to Iran to rescue the hostages. Siegel and Mendez are just talking matter-of-factly on some steps in Los Angeles during magic hour. They‘ve got fast food. They’re opening up. Why not? Life is short. It's a great line reading by Arkin. There's disappointment in his voice but not much. It's a mea culpa without too much culpa. By this point in his life he recognizes the ways of the world, and of men, and of himself. He's past fooling. He's describing Hollywood but he could be describing any business. They‘re all like that. That’s why it resonates. We all carry that bullshit home. It infects everything. None of us can wash it off.

Alan Arkin and Ben Affleck in "Argo"

1. Loki: You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel. German man (rising): Not to men like you. Loki: There are no men like me. German man: There are always men like you.
— Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and German man (Kenneth Tigar) in The Avengers. Screenplay by Joss Whedon.

For all the CGI and Jack Kirbyesque action sequences, it's Whedon's words in “The Avengers” that won me over. “I have an army.”/“We have a Hulk.” But this is the most poignant point in the movie. I'd always liked the line of Loki's from the trailer about how human beings were made to be ruled. I wanted to see what they did with that. This is what they did. During the above exchange, Loki is amused because he knows himself to be a god, not a man, but the man reduces him with a few words. With a turn of a phrase, he suggests Loki isn't above men but below them, because there is no one so low as he who forces others to kneel. It's an Ozymandias moment, really. It's Ozymandias reduced by words rather than time.

Loki and the old German man in "The Avengers"

You?

Posted at 07:11 AM on Monday January 28, 2013 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Friday October 26, 2012

My Most-Quoted Movie Lines: 'She's a drag, a well-known drag...'

A Hard Day's Night

A few years ago I wrote a piece, in five parts, on the movie lines I quote the most. These were not the institutionalized, AFI-approved movie lines everyone knows: “Here's looking at you, kid”; “May the Force be with you”; “Plastics.” Those lines have no real cache in conversation. Everyone knows if you quote “Star Wars” you go with one of the lesser-known lines appropriate to a particular situation. Say you're overruled as to evening plans: “But I was going into Tosche Station ...” You're arguing with your wife: “Look, your worshipfulness...” A good movie quote is like a password to a club. It's a search for the like-minded.

The original plan was to write a follow-up piece, with five new lines I quote, but then I realized: Wait, I have a blog. I can just make it a regular deal.

So here it is. A regular deal. 

The first line, for no reason other than I used it the other day, is from George Harrison in “A Hard Day's Night.”

She's a drag, a well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things.

You really lay on the Liverpudlian when you say it, too, in the manner of Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzmann and Justin Long in “Walk Hard.” (About Jack Black's Liverpudlian, the less said the better.)

I guess I say this a lot because I often say things are a drag and the rest just follows. When I was younger, the notion of something being a well-known drag cracked me up. Now I know the world is mostly made up of well-known drags.

Here's the scene. George says the line at 3:15:

(Damn, that secretary is hot. I'd forgotten that.)

The whole scene is full of quotable lines:

  • “You don't see many of these nowadays, do you?”
  • “Oh, by all means, I'd be quite prepared for that eventuality.”
  • “Well, I'll have a bash.”
  • “And who's this Susan when she's at home?”

It's a brilliant scene. Watching it again, I suddenly flashed back to the first time I saw it, in the 1970s at the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis. I remember being incensed that this guy 1) had no idea who George was; 2) thought his TV personality, Susan, that posh bird, was hipper than one of the Beatles; and 3) thought he and his crowd could manipulate us in the manner talked about. I thought my interests, my buying patterns, my loves and fears, all sprang up organically. I didn't see the manipulation. Now I see nothing but. I know. It's a drag, a well-known drag.

Posted at 08:10 AM on Friday October 26, 2012 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  
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