Best monologues in movie history

[mariacallas]

BIGFISH

Will Bloom: You know about icebergs, dad?
Senior Ed Bloom: Do I? I saw an iceberg once. They were hauling it down to Texas for drinking water. They didn't count on there being an elephant frozen inside. The wooly kind. A mammoth.
Will Bloom: Dad!
Senior Ed Bloom: What?
Will Bloom: I'm not trying to make a metaphor here.
Senior Ed Bloom: Well you shouldn't have started with a question, because people want to answer a question. You should've started with "the thing about icebergs is."
Senior Ed Bloom: They say, when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.

WALL STREET

Gordon Gecko: The point is, ladies and gentleman, is that greed - for lack of a better word - is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind. And Greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

THE BEACH

RICHARD (V.O.)
When you hit Bangkok, there's really only
one place to go. The street is busy, full
of Thai's and travelers.

Richard picks his way through the crowd, his rucksack on his
back.

He absorbs the scene as he passes boarding houses and hotels,
and the shops and stalls selling food, clothes, pirated
tapes, jewelry, travel tickets, and international phone
calls. Restaurants are filled with western travelers watching
American films or European sport.

RICHARD (V.O.)
(continuing)
The Khao San Road is a decompression
chamber between east and west. It's where

you learn to breathe car fumes and
tropical air for the very first time, or
else carefully rearrange your memories
before you catch your flight home.

Richard is approached by a young male Thai Hustler who walks
backwards in front of him while making his pitch.

HUSTLER
You need somewhere to stay?

RICHARD
I'll be OK, Thanks.

Richard politely ignores each of his subsequent offers.

HUSTLER
What do you want? Sell your passport? Buy
passport? Airline tickets? You want silk?
I'll take you to the best silk place? You
get a suit in twenty-four hours. Diamonds?
You want to come with me, you get present
for your girlfriend. Maybe no girlfriend.
You want a girl, no problem. Good time.
Boy girl fucking no problem. You want to
drink some snake blood?

At this last one Richard stops and addresses the Hustler.

RICHARD
No thanks.

Richard walks on, the hustler fading out behind him.

HUSTLER
You want designer clothes? I get you
Versache, Gucci, Armani, no problem. You
want a camera, all the best makes: Nikon,
Leica, Canon I can get you.

RICHARD (V.O.)
Yeah, it's all here: you an phone home,
meet up with strangers, split up with
your friends, watch Hollywood movies
while you sip Budweiser and eat a burger
or get some massage and green chicken
soup. You could be anywhere in the world
but you could only find it here. And what
do they want, all these people?

EXT. KHAO SAN ROAD. NIGHT./ INT. BARS AND SHOPS. NIGHT.

Various young travelers, male and female, in snapshot
exerpts, address their comments to the camera or each other.

TRAVELER 1
Where you been?

TRAVELER 2
Where you going?

TRAVELER 3
I've been there.

TRAVELER 4
It's a waste of time.

TRAVELER 1
We just got back.

TRAVELER 2
Fantastic.

TRAVELER 3
How much did it cost?

TRAVELER 5
A complete rip off.

TRAVELER 3
Too many people. There's a much better
place along the coast.

TRAVELER 4
We're going exploring. We've read this
book. It tells us all the best places to
explore.

TRAVELER 2
I know a place that everyone says is
really unspoiled.

TRAVELER 1
I heard they built a big hotel there.

TRAVELER 5
Some sort of sewage problem, apparently.

TRAVELER 1
We're going anyway: all the rooms have
got air conditioning.

RICHARD (V.O.)
But for me it's all about finding out
something about a place, and something
about yourself. And when you get off the
beaten track, that's where you find out
what there is to find out.

 

[-|Twiztd|-]

I was just thinking about that Big Fish quote last night:

 

[alasdairm]

a monologue is one person talking

alasdair

 

[junksick]

From Apocalypse Now

Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Also from the same movie:

Willard: Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon.... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission.... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

 

[alasdairm]

surely the best bit of that last one:

It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another.

alasdair

 

[Insanity Overdose]

Mr. Brown: O.K., let me tell you what Like a Virgin's about. It's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck machine, I'm talking morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.
Mr. Blue: How many dicks is that?
Mr. White: A lot.
Mr. Brown: Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherfucker and it's like, whoa baby, I mean this cat is like Charles Bronson in the Great Escape, he's digging tunnels. Now, she's gettin' the serious dick action and she's feeling something she ain't felt since forever. Pain. Pain. It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her, you know her pussy should be Bubble Yum by now, but when this cat fucks her it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see the pain is reminding a fuck machine what it once was like to be a virgin. Hence, "Like a virgin."

Reservoir Dogs

 

[Insanity Overdose]

Marsellus: You see, this profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't.

Pulp Fiction

 

[Pleonastic]

Pulp fiction is full of great monologues. That one above deserves to be quoted in full:

I think you are gonna find, when this shit is over... I think you're gonna find yourself one smilin' motherfucker. The thing is Butch, right now, you've got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don't last. And your days are just about over. Now that's a hard motherfuckin' fact of life. But it's a fact of life your ass is gonna hafta get realistic about. See this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't. Besides Butch, how many fights you think you got left in you anyway? Two? Boxers don't have an "old timer's day." You came close, but you never made it, and if you were gonna make it, you woulda made it before now.

Also the Captain Koons monologue:

Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your Daddy's. We were in that Hanoi pit-of-hell over five years together. Hopefully, you'll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Daddy were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me, who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talkin' right now to my son, Jim. But the way it worked out is I'm talkin' to you, Butch. I got somethin' for you.

This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-granddaddy. It was bought during the First World War in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was bought by Privat Ernie Coolidge the day he set sail for France. It was your great-granddaddy's war watch, made by the first company to ever make wristwatches. You see, up until then, people just carried pocketwatches. Your great-granddaddy wore that watch every day he was in the war. Then when he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the watch off his wrist and put it an ol' coffee can. And in that can it stayed 'til your grandfather Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight again, this time against the Japanese.

This time they called it World War Two. Your great-granddaddy gave it to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane's luck wasn't as good as his dad's. Your granddad was a Marine and he was killed at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death and he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leavin' that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your 22-year-old grandfather asked a crewman on an Air Corps transport plane named Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he had never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, your grandfather was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad's gold watch. This watch.

This watch was on your Daddy's wrist when his plane was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured and put in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Now he knew if the gooks ever saw the watch it'd be confiscated. Taken away. The way your Daddy looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slopeheads were gonna put their greasy yella hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something; his ass. Five long years he wore this watch, up his ass. Then, just before he died of amoebic dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

 

[onetwothreefour]

Originally posted by Pounding_Grooves
Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this, it's just, uh, you know, its going to haunt me the rest of my life. I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right? Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the town. Come on. It'll be fun. Come on. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30, and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train. Alright, alright. Think of it like this. Um, uh, jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life, and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me, y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then to now, uh, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband, to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.

From
"Before Sunrise".

i'm a sucker for a romance, but that's a real favourite of mine. so perfect

 

[lostpunk5545]

Is there a movie around of Grapes of Wrath?

I've only read the book...

 

[michael]

there is a 1940 version directed by john ford with henry fonda as tom joad, and a 1991 tv version with gary sinise. don't let that dissuade you, because it's a stage adaptation and is really quite good - the original movie changed the ending a little bit because of censorship reasons.

 

[onetwothreefour]

i hated ford's version (although i was in first year, so maybe that's why) of the grapes of wrath

 

[Spider Rob]

CRASH
I believe in the soul, the cock,
the pussy, the small of a woman's
back, the hanging curve ball,
high fiber, good scotch, long
foreplay, show tunes, and that
the novels of Thomas Pynchon are
self-indulgent, overrated crap.
(beat)
I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone, I believe that there
oughtta be a constitutional
amendment outlawing astro-turf
and the designated hitter, I
believe in the "sweet spot", voting
every election, soft core
pornography, chocolate chip
cookies, opening your presents on
Christmas morning rather than
Christmas eve, and I believe in
long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses
that last for 7 days.

 

[Benefit]

You know dicks have drive and clarity of vision. But they're not clever. They smell pussy and they want a piece of the action. And you thought you smelled some good old pussy and have brought your two little mincy faggot balls along for a good old time. But you've got your panties muddled up. There's no pussy here. Just a dose that will make you wish you were born a woman. You're like a prick. You're having second thoughts. You're shrinking. And your two little balls are shrinking with you. And the fact that you've got Replica written down the side of your gun; and the fact that I've got Desert Eagle .50 written on the side of mine, should precipitate your balls into shrinking along with your presence. Now... fuck off.

Bullet-Tooth Tony, Snatch

 

[AmorRoark]

Is there a movie around of Grapes of Wrath?

I've only read the book...

Yes, there's an excellent version of the Grapes of Wrath in film form.


This shit is what I'm talking about.. classic cinema is DYING.

 

[Sideways_Falling]

TWELVE MONKEYS

JEFFREY "Okay, Billings. Five thousand. That's enough. Five thousand dollars. I'll give him the Deluxe Mental Hospital Tour."

As BILLINGS walks away chuckling, JEFFREY turns to COLE.

JEFFREY "Kid around, kid around. It makes them feel good, we're all pals. We're prisoners, they're the guards, but it's all in good fun, you see?"

COLE nods and JEFFREY indicates card tables where PATIENTS are playing cards, checkers, chess, or working on jig saw puzzles.

JEFFREY "Here's the games. Games vegitize you. If you play the games, you're voluntarily taking a tranquilizer."

COLE sees a partially completed puzzle of the well-known painting, THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, depicting a serene world of animals in harmony.

JEFFREY "What'd they give you? Thorazine? How much? Learn your drugs -- know your doses."

COLE "I need to make a telephone call."

JEFFREY "A telephone call? That's communication with the outside world! Doctor's discretion. Hey, if alla these nuts could just make phone calls, it could spread. Insanity oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all those poor sane people, infecting them! Whackos everywhere! A plague of madness. (suddenly sly and confidential) In fact, very few of us here are actually mentally ill. I'm not saying you're not mentally ill, for all I know you're crazy as a loon. But that's not why you're here. Why you're here is because of the system, because of the economy. (indicating the TV) There's the TV. It's all right there. Commercials. We are not productive anymore, they don't need us to make things anymore, it's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers. Okay, buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, you know what? You're mentally ill! That's a fact! If you don't buy things...toilet paper, new cars, computerized blenders, electrically operated sexual devices... (getting hysterical) SCREWDRIVERS WITH MINIATURE BUILT-IN RADAR DEVICES, STEREO SYSTEMS WITH BRAIN IMPLANTED HEADPHONES, VOICE-ACTIVATED COMPUTERS, AND..."

A woman orderly, TERRY, turns from the feeble PATIENT she's helping.

TERRY "Take it easy, Jeffrey. Be calm."

 

[onetwothreefour]

Originally posted by AmorRoark
This shit is what I'm talking about.. classic cinema is DYING.

classic cinema is alive and well in all of europe

 

[drEaMtiMe*@#]

There's no point to any of this. It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle... and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.

Reality Bites


i like this one too:

Originally posted by dbighead2
Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?

[Will nods]

Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Good Will Hunting

 

[Soundtrack]

There are some great ones from Magnolia...Tom Cruise's "tame the cunt" and Jason Robards ' death-bed speeches come to mind

 

[mariacallas]

From the Village:

Ivy Walker: When we are married, will you dance with me? I find dancing very agreeable. Why can you not say what is in your head?
Lucius Hunt: Why can you not stop saying what is in yours? Why must you lead, when I want to lead? If I want to dance I will ask you to dance. If I want to speak I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak further. Why? What good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come from my saying that I sometimes cannot think clearly or do my work properly? What gain can rise of my telling you the only time I feel fear as others do is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker. I fear for your safety before all others. And yes, I will dance with you on our wedding night

Ivy Walker: I know why you denied my sister. When I was younger, you used to hold my arm when I walked. Then suddenly you stopped. One day, I even tripped in your presence and nearly fell. I was faking, of course, but still you did not hold me. Sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others will not know we want to do them.

Captain Correlis Mandolin

Iannis: When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is! Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

Equilibrium

Father: Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great.