I, too, liked the opening monologue from Patton. when we would play chess, my friend put on Jerry Goldsmith’s film score for Patton (it seemed appropriate), and the album opened with the monolog, so I had it memorized in a short time. I was surprised years later when I heard a recording of an actual speech by Patton and recognized many phrases from the George C. Scott opening. Evidently the speech wasn’t a verbatim Patton speech, but used elements he actually said.
For other opening monologues, I think the one by Cate Blanchett as Galadriel for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings does a great job in setting up the situation. And, on the extended cut, it’s followed by a second opening monologue by Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins discoursing on Hobbits
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help — and if you can find them — maybe you can hire The A-Team.
Also, considering that the third film version of Dune is just out, I have to admit that I liked Virginia Madsen doing the opening narration as Princess Irulan to David Lynch’s 1984 edition
It’s better than the gravelly-voiced guy doing the introduction to the “Alan Smithee” TV cut
“I am not a bum. I’m a jerk. I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beautiful woman. Now I only have two things: my friends, and… uh… my thermos. Huh? My story? Okay. It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child.”
"Saigon, shit. I’m still only in Saigon. Every time I think I’m going to 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’ve been 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 look around the walls move in a little tighter.
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. "
Fight Club. The opening monologue is long and broken up but starts with…
"With a gun barrel between your teeth you only speak in vowels."
My favorite part that I often quote is
“If I did have a tumor, I’d name it Marla..”
Trainspotting for me, to the tune of “Lust for Life”, by Iggy Pop:
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disk players and electric tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fix-interest mortgage repaiments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are in that Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that coach watching spirit crushing game shows stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home nothing more than an embarrasment to the selfish fucked up brats that you’ve spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.
But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you got heroin.
For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Russian project to the perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the Arctic peaks of the Zhokhov Islands. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place no one could say…
My name is Max. My world is fire and blood. Once, I was a cop. A road warrior searching for a righteous cause. As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy… me… or everyone else.
Here they come again… worming their way into the black matter of my brain. I tell myself, they cannot touch me. They are long dead.
I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers, haunted by those I could not protect. So I exist in this wasteland, a man reduced to a single instinct: survive.
One of my favorites is the prologue to Blood Simple, spoken by M. Emmet Walsh over shots of desolate Texas landscapes. “Down here, you’re on your own.”
If sailor tales and sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands and maroons
And buccaneers and buried gold,
And all the old romance retold
Exactly in the ancient way
Can please as me they pleased of old
The wiser youngsters of today… So be it! Ar-har! And fall on!
