10 classic movie quotes I want to go away

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on June 19, 2009

frankly

At the risk of striking a contentious note among movie lovers, there are certain famous lines of dialogue that have entered the parlance of the average American, becoming verbal autotext even among those who haven’t seen the movie. Everybody knows “Play it again, Sam” is from CASABLANCA (even though that’s not the actual line) and “I coulda been a contender” is from ON THE WATERFRONT but there are others that one just hears again and again, tick-like, both in daily conversation and referenced in other movies. And I want them to go away. If these lines actually were an homage to the movies they come from I guess I could live with them but when they just become rote rejoinders, I want to start cracking skulls. In lieu of that, I blog.

In no particular order:

clint-eastwood-make-my-day

1. “Go ahead… make my day.” Spoken through gritted teeth by Clint Eastwood in SUDDEN IMPACT (1983), the third sequel to DIRTY HARRY (1971), this line became a cherished catchphrase of American hawks. Fair enough that the Reagan administration latched onto it as a battle cry but the line’s become all too emblematic of our culture’s often misplaced rage.

hello

2. “You had me at hello.” It’s a good line, from Cameron Crowe’s JERRY MAGUIRE (1996), and I don’t mind it in its original context. It’s romantic and unique and it works a charm on the kinds of moviegoers who are charmed by this kind of thing… I’m just tired of hearing it and variations on it at every turn. But even worse than this one is…

money

3. “Show me the money!”, also from JERRY MAQUIRE. Congrats to Cameron Crowe for coming up with two lines of dialogue that have since entered the American parlance and show no signs of going out of fashion any time soon but if I never hear either of them again it’ll be too soon. As if jerks needed another catchphrase.

wizard_oz

4. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” The actual line from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) is “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” I love Dorothy’s use of that uncommon contraction and I’m not surprise that particular phrasing didn’t survive the translation into common conversation. This is another of those classic movie quotes that has been sampled ad nauseam by other films and that has to stop, effective now.

badges

5. “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” You tend to hear this quote from an older variety of movie lover but it’s still tiresome, especially because it’s another corruption. In THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948), Alfonso Bedoya’s merciless bandit Gold Hat actually says “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!” If people actually went the distance with this quote, I’d be a lot happier. But they don’t. So I’m not.

field of dreams

6. “If you build it, they will come.” Again, another misquote. In Phil Alden Robinson’s FIELD OF DREAMS (1989), Kevin Costner is compelled to build a baseball diamond in a cornfield because a disembodied voice tells him “If you build it, he will come.” This is another line that has been echoed and parodied countless times in subsequent movies, including WAYNE’S WORLD 2 (1993) and THE CABLE GUY (1996), but the real damage comes in real life, with people quoting the line in lieu of offering any real advice or actual help.

Dirty-dancing-corner

7. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” From DIRTY DANCING (1989), but you knew that. Not one of my favorite movies, so the original line doesn’t get much mileage with me either. But hearing it repeated twenty years after the fact even when circumstances don’t justify its usage? Them’s fightin’ words, baby.

Be back

8. “I’ll be back.” To get the correct reading of this famous line from James Cameron’s THE TERMINATOR (1984), it should read “I’ll be bahhhk.” You know, because Arnold Schwarzenegger is Austrian, and he talks all funny-like. Did you know that the scripted line was “I’ll come back” but Arnold’s spin on it made the remark as quintessentially American as “Don’t tread on me” or “Show me the money!” Still, hearing bad Terminator impressions just sets my teeth on edge, so people need to stop with this if they want to live.

truth

9. “You can’t handle the truth!” One of many bombastic lines from one one of my most-hated movies of 1993: Rob Reiner’s film adaptation of the play A FEW GOOD MEN. Until CRASH (2006), I thought this was Hollywood “importance” at its worst and the line still rankles… especially when spoken by anyone who isn’t Jack Nicholson.

network-1

10. “I’m mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Again, a killer line from a great movie but I find it sad that the most enduring legacy of the Paddy Chayefsky-scripted NETWORK (1976) is this line, which people just say… they say it when their sports team doesn’t win, they say it when traffic backs up on the 405, they say it line at Costco. Like “Go ahead, make my day,” it’s another slogan all too readymade for the presumed American entitlement to quick anger.

Now, I’m sure I’ve ruffled some feathers out there in movie fan land but if there’s one thing that’s anethema to a film blogger, it’s thinking something and not publishing it on the Internet. That’s the truth of it, and if you can’t handle the truth, then frankly, my dear…

18 Comments |

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18 Responses 10 classic movie quotes I want to go away

Posted By moirafinnie : June 19, 2009 2:00 pm

I wasn’t quite sure if you were objecting to the overuse of these clichéd lines, or the misquoting of them, but you made me laugh several times. My favorite candidate for oblivion among modern movie catchphrases is one that is so generic it isn’t even associated with just one movie, but with many, many bad movies:

After one of several lo-o-o-n-g car chases, gratuitous gunplay, and the hero’s best buddy being shot, Mr.Central Character runs over to the bleeding nebbish who has perhaps been mortally wounded and shouts, through angry tears:
“Don’t you die on me!”

Please, WGA members. No more. Give it a rest.

Good piece, RHS.

Posted By skizzzziks : June 19, 2009 3:46 pm

Wow, funny you should mention that one, moirafinnie. Last weekend I was at the movies sitting through those commercials they make you watch before the coming attractions begin, and there was an ad for a new medical drama starring Jada Pinkett Smith as a nurse in which she actually yells “Don’t you die on me!” I looked at my partner in disbelief and said “Did she actually just say that?” Just from that one line you know the show’s gonna be a turd.

Posted By cadavra : June 19, 2009 4:13 pm

A variation on that is “Time to die!”, spoken by the muscle heavy just as he is about to (he thinks) kill the hero. Can’t even bear it in BLADE RUNNER anymore.

Another endlessly regurgitated line: “Forget it, Jake, it’s __________.”

Posted By Arlinda : June 19, 2009 7:46 pm

There is an additional quote from “Casablanca,” the closing line. “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship” or something like it.

There’s also Scarface’s “Meet my lil friend.”

Most of the dialogue in today’s films is so abysmal, vapid, idiotic and dull that there are no memorable quotes. We rely on the old ones because there are no new ones worth remembering.

Posted By Jenni : June 19, 2009 10:26 pm

Awww, I like the stinkin’ badges line!

Posted By Dave : June 20, 2009 3:03 am

@Arlinda

The Scarface line is “Say hello to my little friend!” (overused but still awesome)

Posted By Stacia : June 20, 2009 3:17 am

Ah, Arlinda, I was just saying “Say hello to my lil frien!” today myself, but I haven’t seen “Scarface” — I’ve only seen Tore on “Mythbusters” and Wesley Snipes in “Demolition Man” use the quote, and it’s funny in both instances, so I like it. (And it looks like I won’t see “Scarface” any time soon, my local store doesn’t have it and now Netflix has told me they won’t carry it any more. Hmph.)

I have a lot of film quotes I like to use, and about half of them end up being unintentional corruptions, which I don’t realize until I re-watch the film years later. I’m bad about that.

Posted By Patricia : June 20, 2009 9:47 am

Aw, somebody needs a hug!

Something may be moving or funny or endearing until it’s overdone.

Every morning when my teenagers stir in their caverns I greet them with “It’s alive” (Frankenstein). I’ve been doing it for years and I can tell by the looks they give me that it’s not overdone yet. (Ha!)

Posted By Richard Harland Smith : June 20, 2009 10:45 am

“It’s alive!” can never be overdone.

Posted By Lance Tooks : June 20, 2009 1:55 pm

Those 2 Jerry MacGuire quotes are admittedly awful,
but you left out the film’s most heinous and cloying quote of them all…
let’s try saying it together without choking on the words…
“you complete me”

Those three words are why I put a ScareCrowe on my lawn.

Posted By Richard Harland Smith : June 20, 2009 2:49 pm

Yeah, Lance, that is awful!

Posted By Jenni : June 20, 2009 5:20 pm

There is one quote that I hear Mon.-Fri. in the afternoons. It’s on a local radio show’s intro, which is full of politicians’ soundbites, and 1 movie line. President Obama is heard saying something about something he wants to save, and then is heard the voice of Roy Scheider from Jaws, replying, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Like Patricia, my father-in-law likes to use movie quotes. Actually, he uses quotes from scripts he had to memorize when he was a part of community theatre, he was often in musicals. Two of his faves are from Music Man, and he loves to call the grandkids, when they’re running around “Ya wild kids, ya”, and “Watch your phraseology!”, both attributed to the Mayor Shin character.

Posted By Nick : June 21, 2009 7:55 am

OK, here’s one that has been used in so many films in one form or another, that I can’t single out one title:

“Sounds crazy, but it just might work”

And, of course, it always does!

Posted By dje : June 21, 2009 10:32 am

i hold in high regard your #’s 9 and 10. we are in unison in the dig at ‘crash’ out of nowhere. but PLEASE understand that there are so many great moments where both of your last 2 picks can be used!
i also argue for the ‘stinking badges’ line because you can replaces the ‘badges’ for anything. like this:

‘(BLANK)we dont need no stinking (BLANK)!!!’ timeless. sorry it’s used too often.
good list.

Posted By PaintedBull : June 21, 2009 2:00 pm

I think that although the actual is from the Treasure of Sierra Madre…I think the line: “Badges, we don’t need no stinkin’ badges” is actually people quoting the line that was in the Mel Brooks’ movie Blazing Saddles, as that is what the bandits say to Hedy Lamar (…that’s Hedley…)

Posted By sjacct : June 22, 2009 9:13 am

#8a should be “Hasta la vista, baby”

Posted By Richard Harland Smith : June 22, 2009 10:41 am

You may be right, PaintedBull; it’s funny how convuluted the pedigree of certain classic movie lines has become in our postmodern world. A while back, I quoted “This is the guy behind the guy behind the guy” to a friend and he said “Great movie” and I said “It was pretty good” and the more we talked about it the more we realized we were talking about two different movies. I was quoting THINGS CHANGE and he was quoting SWINGERS, which uses the line too, I guess (never saw it).

Posted By Al Lowe : June 22, 2009 11:56 am

It is too bad that they didn’t hire Alfonso Bedoya for a cameo back in the 50s when they were making movies about Hollywood and the movie world.

I can see it now:

DIRECTOR: Someone see if (supporting actor) Alfonso would like to wear a badge in this scene.

An assistant approaches Bedoya only to hear a loud, angry rejoinder from the actor.

BEDOYA: Badges! We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to wear no stinking badges.

The weary director shrugs.

DIRECTOR: I guess Alfonso doesn’t like badges.

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