Greatest/Favorite Movie Monologues

[Shalmanese]

The Rules of Attraction

Victor: Took a charter flight on a DC-10 to London. Landed at Heathrow. Took a cab to the city center. Don’t let people lie to you: hostels are for the ugly. I’m staying in Home House, the most beautiful hotel in the world. Called a friend from school who was selling hash, but she wasn’t in. Met a couple of Brits who take me to, of all places, Camden Street. I flirt a bit at the Virgin Megastore, buy some CDs, then follow some girls with pink hair. I wandered around trying to get laid, until it started to rain, then went back to Home House. Ministry of Sound is dead, so I go to Remform - but it’s Gay Night. I find the one hetero girl in the place and we dry hump on the dance floor. We cab it back to Home House. I strip her clothes off, suck her toes, and we fuck. I hung out for four or five days. Met the world’s biggest DJ, Paul Oakenfold. Kept missing the Changing of the Guards. Wrote my mom a postcard I never sent. Bought some speed from an Italian junkie who was trying to sell me a stolen bike. Smoked a lot of hash that had too much tobacco in it. Saw the Tate. Saw Big Ben. Ate a lot of weird English food. It rained a lot, it was expensive, and I’m jonesing…
Victor: So, I split for Amsterdam. The Dutch all know English, so I didn’t have to speak any Dutch - which was a relief. I cruise the Red Light District. Visit a sex show. Visit a sex museum. Smoke a lot of hash. I meet a Dutch TV actress and we drink absinthe at a bar called Absinthe. The museums were cool, I guess. Lots of Van Goghs and the Vermeers were intense. Wandered around. Bought a lot of pastries. Ate some intense waffles. We bought some coke and I cruised the Red Light District, until I found some blonde with big tits that reminds me of Lara. I gave her a hundred guilders. In the end, she pulls me out, and I cum between her tits, even though I’m wearing a rubber. Afterward we made small-talk about AIDS, her Moroccan pimp, and herself. I wake to the sound of a wino singing. It’s 8 AM and hot as blazes. I pretend to ice-skate around Central Station, while someone plays the sax. Trade songs with a Kiwi girl…
Victor: Then split for Paris by train. Wander the Champs-Elysees. Climb the Eiffel Tower for only seven francs, because the ticket machine was broken. Got the hang of the Metro, took it everywhere. Went to a Ford model party and hooked up with a Romanian model named Karina. She chugs my cock at the Mariott Champs-Elysees, which is good. We played billiards, went shopping. I think she gave me mono. Drove a Ferrari that belonged to a member of the Saudi royal family. Made out with a Dutch model in front of the Louvre. Saw the Arc de Triomphe and almost became road-kill crossing the street…
Victor: “Oakie” invites me to Dublin, so I catch an Aer Lingus flight and stay at the Morrison. Dublin rocks like you can’t imagine. Oakenfold lets me spin some discs with him. Irish girls are as small as leprechauns. I swap hickeys with a drunk woman. After groping my abs and calling me “Mr. L.A.”, she strips for me in the bath room of the club. Sneak into the Guinness factory and steal some stout so good my dick goes hard…
Victor: I fly to Barcelona, which was a low-rent bust. Too many fat American students. Too many lame meat markets. I dropped acid at the Sagrada Familia, which was a trip to say the least. Cruise up the coast to the Museo Gala Dali, but had no more acid, which sucked. Some girl from Camden calls me on my cell, so I let her listen to the church bells in Cadaques. Canta Cruz is beautiful, but there are no girls here, just old hippies…
Victor: So, I went to Switzerland where I, ironically, couldn’t find anyone who had the time. Took the Glacier Express up the Schilthorn, which is beautiful in a way I can’t describe…
Victor: Euro Pass into Italy and ended up in Venice, where I met a hot girl who looks like Rachael Leigh Cook and speaks better English than I do. She’s living for a year on only five dollars a day. We gondola around, buy some masks. She think’s I’m a capitalist, because my hotel room costs more for one night than she’s spending her entire trip. But she doesn’t mind it so much when I pay the bills…
Victor: I ditch her and hook up with a couple who obviously want a 3-some. Too much tension there, but the doofus offers to drive me to Rome, an offer I jump at. Traffic is bad and we’re stopped for hours without moving. The wife turns out to be a freak. The guy starts to wig out on me. It’s like a Polanski film…
Victor: We stop for a while in Florence, where I see some big dome. A bomb goes off and I lose the weird couple, which is probably for the best…
Victor: Ended up in Rome, which is big and hot and dirty. It was just like L.A., but with ruins. I went to the Vatican, which was ridiculously opulent. Stood for two hours to get into the Sistine Chapel, which - now that it’s been cleaned - looks fake. I meet two under-age Italian girls who I try to talk into fucking each other while I jack off onto them. Bored, I buy them some ice cream instead. My hotel has a gym, so I work out. I bump into some guy from Camden who says he knows me, but I’m sure that he’s a fag, so I lose him. I try to fart and instead shit my pants. Back in my hotel room, I masturbate and have a pain in my groin. That night, I dream about a beautiful girl, half in water, stretching her lean body. She asks me if I like it and I tell her she can clean fish with it. I don’t know what it means, but I wake well-rested, masturbate in the shower, and check out…
Victor: I make my way back to London and hang out in Piccadilly Circus. Hmm. Palakon. I swap shirts with some upper-crusty Cambridge chick. Hers was an Agnes B., mine a Costume Nationale. She acts stuffy and prudish, but is really wild underneath it all. She barely looks at my abs, though she wants to. The next day, I drop some acid and get lost in the subway for a full day and can’t find my way out. I meet a cute girl who lets me jack off onto her as long as no cum gets onto her Paul Smith coat. We get stoned while listening to Michael Jackson records and the next morning I wake up talking to myself. I have a big bump on my head from flailing in my sleep. I get my stuff and barely make my plane back to the United States…
Victor: I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

David Mamet is always quotable, and I’ll agree that the whole Blake monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross is one of his most memorable, but it overshadows others of equal merit. I particularly like the one delivered by retired intelligence agent Jean-Pierre (played by the dependable Michael Lonsdale) to Robert DeNiro’s “Sam” in Ronin as they speak over a scene of samurai miniatures that the former is putting the finishing touches on:*The “47 Ronin”, do you know it? Samurai whose master was betrayed and killed by another lord. They became ronin, masterless samurai, disgraced by another man’s treachery. For three years they plotted, pretending to be thieves, mercenaries, even madmen. That l didn’t have time to do. And then one night they struck, slipping into the castle of their lord’s betrayer, killing him. [Sam: “Nice, I like that. My kind of job.”] There’s something more. All of them committed seppuku, ritual suicide, in the courtyard of the castle. [Sam:“Well, that l don’t like so much.”] But you understand it? [Sam: “What do you mean, l understand it?”] The warrior code, the delight in the battle. You understand that, yes? But also something more. You understand there is something outside yourself that has to be served. And when that need is gone, when belief has died, what are you? A man without a master."*In one short scene, Jean-Pierre sums up both the motivation of the main character (indicating that he knows that he both is and is not what he claims to be) and the theme of the film. I guess from a lot of reviews people think that this scene is boring, and studio executives pressured Frankenheimer to remove it from the script and film because it slows down the pace or somesuch, but for me it is the centerpiece of the movie.
There’s another good one in Wag The Dog, this time delivered by DeNiro’s character, a fixer who is creating an phantom war to distract from the president’s personal problems that threaten his candidacy:And if you go to war again, who is it going to be against? Your “ability to fight a Two-ocean War” against who? Sweden and Togo? Who you sitting here to Go To War Against? That time has passed. It’s passed. It’s over. The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst, perhaps, to their own governments, have blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you’ve got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert. Cause that is the war of the future, and if you’re not gearing up, to fight that war, eventually the axe will fall. And you’re gonna be out in the street. And you can call this a “drill,” or you can call it “job security,” or you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: you said, “Go to war to protect your Way of Life,” well, Chuck, this is your way of life. Isn’t it? And if there ain’t no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain’t no war but ours.

And then there’s the closing, ironic, ubercynical monologue in a press conference held by the Donald Rumsfeld-like character played by Ed O’Neill in Spartan:Terror takes many forms. I can conceive of no act of terror
greater than the unforgivable, the ultimate destruction, that of a human soul. The kidnapping of Laura Newton has revealed to us, has allowed us to confront, and will allow us to eradicate the international traffic in souls. It was brought about because of a family’s love for their daughter. A simple American act. The love of Americans
for all our daughters, who are the soul…who are the soul of this great country. We thank God.“Time to go home,” says a random man on the street dismissively. “Lucky man,” replies the exiled, limping Scott, a casualty of realpolitik more than war.
Mamet aside, personally, I like the opening monologue to Adaptation:*Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier my hair wouldn’t be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There’s something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I’m way overdue. If I stop putting things off I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn’t fat I would be happier. I wouldn’t have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that’s fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more and prove myself. What if I learned Russian or something, or took up an instrument. I could speak Chinese. I’d be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that. Just be real. Confident. Isn’t that what women are attracted to? Men don’t have to be attractive. But that’s not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it’s my brain chemistry. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I’ll still be ugly though. Nothing’s going to change that.*I sometimes think Kaufman might have tapped into my head.

Stranger

[nipplesup]

Woody Allen writes amazing monologues

One day about a month ago I really hit bottom. You know, I just felt that in a godless universe, I didn’t want to go on living. Now I happen to own this rifle… (coughing) …which I loaded, believe it or not, and pressed it to my forehead. And I remember thinking, at the time, I’m gonna kill myself. Then I thought …what if I’m wrong? What if there is a God? I mean, after all, nobody really knows that.
But then I thought, no. You know, maybe is not good enough. I want certainty or nothing. And I remember very clearly the clock was ticking, and I was sitting there frozen, with the gun to my head, debating whether to shoot. All of a sudden, the gun went off. I had been so tense, my finger had squeezed the trigger inadvertently, but I was perspiring so much, the gun had slid off my forehead and missed me.
And suddenly, neighbors were, were, pounding on the door, and-and I don’t know, the whole scene was just pandemonium. (stuttering) And, uh, you know, and I-I-I-I-I ran to the door. I-I-I-I didn’t know what to say. You know, I was, I was embarrassed and confused, and my-my-my mind was r-r-racing a mile a minute… …and I-I jus knew one thing. I…I-I-I-I had to get out of that house. I had to just get out in the fresh air and-and clear my head. And I remember very clearly. I walked the streets. I walked and I walked. I-I didn’t know what was going through my mind. It all seemed so violent and un-unreal to me. And I wandered for a long time on the Upper West Side, you know, an-and it must have been hours! You know, my, my feet hurt. My head was, was pounding, and, and I had to sit down. I went into a movie house. I-I didn’t know what was playing or anything. I just, I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and, and be logical, and, and put the world back into rational perspective. And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down (sighing) and, you know, the movie was a-a-a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, an-and I always u-uh, loved it. And, you know, I’m, I’m watching these people up on the screen, and I started getting hooked on…on the film, you know?
And I started to feel how can you even think of killing yourself? I mean, isn’t it so stupid? I mean, l-look at all the people up there on the screen. You know, they’re real funny, and, and what if the worst is true? What if there’s no God, and you only go around once and that’s it? Well, you know, don’t you want to be part of the experience? You know, what the hell, it-i-it’s not all a drag. And I’m thinking to myself, geez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And…you know… …after, who knows? I mean, you know, maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know, I know “maybe” is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have. And…then, I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.

[nipplesup]

“What? Over? Did you say ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! And it ain’t over now! 'Cause when the going gets tough…the tough get going! Who’s with me? Let’s go!…What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts? Huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re going to let it be the worst. ‘Oh, we’re afraid to go with you, Bluto. We might get in trouble.’ Well, just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this! Wormer? He’s a dead man. Marmalard? Dead! NIEDERMAYER…!”

[Chefguy]

[QUOTE=ianzin]
Two more good ones.

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…"
[/QUOTE]

“Look at the brain on Brad!”

“Say ‘what’ again, motherfucker!”

[ivylass]

[QUOTE=Mayo Speaks!]
No love for Jack Nicholson at the end of “A Few Good Men?”
[/QUOTE]

Jack Nicholson always give me chills in that scene. Say what you want about Sorkin’s ego, but he can write the hell out of a story. I also like Tom Cruise’s drunken rant about Should We or Should We Not Take the Advice of the Galactically Stupid.

Going with Sorkin and hijacking into TV monologues, Toby’s monologue to his newborn twins “Babies have hats” from the West Wing brings tears to my eyes every single damn time.

[SSG_Schwartz]

My favorite, from one of my favorite movies:

The Usual Suspects
written by Christopher McQuarrie

Verbal Kint: He’s supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody ever believed he was real. Nobody ever knew him or saw anybody that ever worked directly for him. But to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew; that was his power. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
One story the guys told me, the story I believe, was from his days in Turkey. There was a gang of Hungarians that wanted their own mob. They realized that to be in power, you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t. After a while, they come into power and then they come after Soze. He was small-time then, just running dope, they say. (We see all of this in flashback) They come to his home in the afternoon, looking for his business. They find his wife and kids in the house and decide to wait for Soze. He comes home to find his wife raped and children screaming. The Hungarians knew Soze was tough, not to be trifled with, so they let him know they meant business.
(Flashback: Hungarian cuts one of the children’s throats)
They tell him they want his territory, all his business. Soze looks over the faces of his family. Then he showed these men of will what will really was.
(Soze shoots two Hungarians, then shoots his children and his wife as the last Hungarian watches in surprised horror)
He tells him he would rather see his family dead than live another day after this. He lets the last Hungarian go, waits until his wife and kids are in the ground, and then he goes after the rest of the mob. He kills their kids. He kills their wives. He kills their parents and their parents’ friends. He burns down the houses they live in, the stores they work in. He kills people that owe them money. And like that, he’s gone. Underground. Nobody’s ever seen him since. He becomes a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night. “Rat on your pop and Keyser Soze will get you.” But no one ever really believes.
(We see a shadow-encased figure of Keyser Soze walking towards the camera in front of a huge tower of flame as Verbal speaks about the process of revenge.)

SSG Schwartz

[JpnDude]

Another one from Alec Baldwin (besides the Glengarry Glen Ross scene):

From Malice:

I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn’t miscarry or that their daughter doesn’t bleed to death or that their mother doesn’t suffer acute neural trama from postoperative shock, who do you think they’re praying to? Now, go ahead and read your Bible, Dennis, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you’re looking for God, he was in operating room number two on November 17, and he doesn’t like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.

[Boulter_s_Canary]

[QUOTE=Bayard]
Jimmy Stewart’s little monologue in Harvey that includes the great line, “…because no one brings anything small into a bar.”

[/QUOTE]

The taxi driver has a pretty good speech, too: -

*I’ve been driving this route for 15 years. I’ve brought 'em out here to get that stuff, and I’ve drove ‘em home after they had it. It changes them… On the way out here, they sit back and enjoy the ride. They talk to me; sometimes we stop and watch the sunsets, and look at the birds flyin’. Sometimes we stop and watch the birds when there ain’t no birds. And look at the sunsets when its raining. We have a swell time. And I always get a big tip. But afterwards, oh oh… They crab, crab, crab. They yell at me. Watch the lights. Watch the brakes, Watch the intersections. They scream at me to hurry. They got no faith in me, or my buggy. Yet, it’s the same cab, the same driver. and we’re going back over the very same road. It’s no fun. And no tips… After this he’ll be a perfectly normal human being. And you know what stinkers they are! *

[Zebra]

Just saw this over the weekend.

Phoebe Cates explains how she found out there wasn’t a Santa Clause in Gremilns.

[BobLibDem]

Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now:

We’d 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 say. 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 me because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men – trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts who have families, who have children, who are filled with love - that they had the strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then 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.

[kingpengvin]

[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now:
[/QUOTE]

I’ll top that.. Kilgore with one of teh greatest exit lines ever (Until Coppola screwed it in Redux)

"You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end… "
also for the fun of it
“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya punk?”
The best is still Quint in Jaws… “I’ll never wear a life jacket again”
Best performance of the lot..

[drm]

[QUOTE=SSG Schwartz]
My favorite, from one of my favorite movies:

The Usual Suspects
written by Christopher McQuarrie

SSG Schwartz
[/QUOTE]

You missed the best part, but it is separated by some Kujan dialogue…

Kujan: Do you believe in him Verbal?

Verbal: Keaton always said, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.” Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.

[BobLibDem]

[QUOTE=kingpengvin]
(Until Coppola screwed it in Redux)
[/QUOTE]

I agree. The surfboard stealing scene and the colonel demanding its return from the helicopter I thought cheapened the character and made him cartoonish. Leaving with the line quoted was a far better exit.

[flurb]

[QUOTE=What Exit?]

Now some from the Untouchables:
[/QUOTE]

You can’t do monologues from the Untouchables without:

[QUOTE=Capone]
A man becomes preeminent, he’s expected to have enthusiasms. … What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? … Baseball! A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Teamwork. … Looks, throws, catches, hustles.Part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don’t field … what is he? You follow me? No one. Sunny day, the stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? I’m goin’ out there for myself. But … I get nowhere unless the team wins.

[/QUOTE]

Followed by Capone whacking one of his lieutenants repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat, leaving him lying on the table in a slowly expanding pool of blood.

[Rebo]

Humphrey Bogart as Capt. Queeg - 1954’s The Caine Mutiny.

“Ahh, but the strawberries that’s… that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with… geometric logic… that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…”

I love that movie.

[Foxy40]

[QUOTE=Ignatz]
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?”
[/QUOTE]

Yes Yes Yes. This one got my vote also. Thanks for not making me find it.