Lots of real beauties here. Love Quint’s speech from Jaws immensly (natch ) and pretty much all the other monologues mentioned. I’ll put forward one of several winners Richard E. Grant delivers in How to Get Ahead in Advertising.
Not really. The bits that aren’t Parish are just head noddings. If you see the scene as performed, the fact that anyone else was saying something is entirely forgettable.
I’d vote that if it comes across as a monologue then it’s a monologue.
Spencer Tracy’s at the end of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Matt Drayton: “Now Mr. Prentice, clearly a most reasonable man, says he has no wish to offend me but wants to know if I’m some kind of a nut. And Mrs. Prentice says that like her husband I’m a burned-out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it’s like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that’s the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue… cause I think you’re wrong, you’re as wrong as you can be. I admit that I hadn’t considered it, hadn’t even thought about it, but I know exactly how he feels about her and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you son feels for my daughter that I didn’t feel for Christina. Old- yes. Burned-out- certainly, but I can tell you the memories are still there- clear, intact, indestructible, and they’ll be there if I live to be 110. Where John made his mistake I think was in attaching so much importance to what her mother and I might think… because in the final analysis it doesn’t matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other. And if it’s half of what we felt- that’s everything. As for you two and the problems you’re going to have, they seem almost unimaginable, but you’ll have no problem with me, and I think when Christina and I and your mother have some time to work on him you’ll have no problem with your father, John. But you do know, I’m sure you know, what you’re up against. There’ll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you’ll just have to cling tight to each other and say “screw all those people”! Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you’re two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if - knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel- you didn’t get married. Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?”
Just for its cringeworthy wonderfulness, Baby to Johnny in Dirty Dancing:
Me? I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.
Obviously, just about any movie of a Shakespeare play is going to have some damn good monologuin’.
Two more recent ones I liked:
Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, explaining why he doesn’t want to work for the NSA:
Renee Zellweger’s character in Down With Love, explaining what’s been going on in the entire movie up to that point, with backstory, in one continuous monologue that leaves Ewan McGregor’s character speechless.
Well, that’s not the universally understood definition, but each to their own.
While we’re at it, the late lamented Spalding Gray’s movie monologue Swimming to Cambodia is a stunning piece of work: moving, entertaining, enlightening, funny. All delivered straight to camera.
Any of you who haven’t seen this, stick it on your Netflix picks or try to get it from Amazon - it’s kind of rare, but well worth the effort of getting it.
The sequel, Monster in a Box is very good too, but is a bit more self-indulgent, and can’t really touch the original.
This is one I came in to mention. (I’m the one who submitted it to the IMDB Memorable Quotes page.) Here it is:
This whole scene, the climax of the movie, is a dialog between Spade and Brigid, but my favorite line (maybe not quite a monologue) is a little later:
Also maybe not quite on the level of most of the other monologues here, and maybe barely a monologue, but I’ve always liked Mr. Bernstein little recollection from Citizen Kane:
Samuel Jackson as Jules in Pulp Fiction: “There’s a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man…” and so on. (I’m guessing someone already thought to mention this, but I didn’t see it when I quickly skimmed the thread).
HAL’s dying speech from 2001: " I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it…"
I opened this thread specifically to cite this scene. Here are a couple of other choice bits from the scene:
Props to screenwriter Kurt Luedtke and the uncredited polish by David Rayfiel
I’m a big fan of scenes where somebody has made their decision and is telling everybody Just How It’s Going to Be. I know these are TV, not movies, but they fit my category
In a particular episode of the old L.A. Law series (no, not the “Venus Butterfly” episode) Michael Tucker’s Stuart Markowitz character is left a large amount of money by a client. Everyone else in the law firm badgers to follow their suggestions about what to do with the money. Finally, he’s had enough and lays down the law as to what he’s going to do, end of story.
And in WKRP in Cincinnati episode 76, “Jennifer and the Will”, Pat O’Brien, playing Colonel Buchanan, has an awesome monologue as the star of a video will in which he berates all of his money-grubbing relatives and anticipates their responses. He leaves the money in jennifer’s care to stage a parade for the veterans in his old unit. Great stuff.
I can’t find it online but Walken (of course) as Sgt Toomey explaining the metal plate in his head in BILOXI BLUES.
Another Walken- his tale about catching his ex-GF (“Bitch”) with a Voodoo Priest Sorcerer Warlock … disguised as a tennis instructor on the SNL skit “Stalk Talk”,
which he also concludes by telling Julia Sweeney that he thinks about her when he masturbates.
) and pretty much all the other monologues mentioned. I’ll put forward one of several winners Richard E. Grant delivers in How to Get Ahead in Advertising.