Last night I was watching “The Cat Creeps” (1946). Near the beginning, a character, reading a letter aloud, says, “…my cat. My cat that creeps.” This seemed like a very awkward way of inserting the words of the title into the movie itself.
Are there other instances where an obvious attempt is made to get the title, or words in the title, into the dialogue of the film resulting in an unnatural moment? Does Bruce Willis ever say, “Looks like I picked a bad day to die hard.”?
Does Samuel L. Jackson’s “I’m (extremely upset that there are numerous deadly)…snakes on this…plane” count? I ask because *Snakes on a Plane *was the working title until the producers decided to just go for it after the leaked script went viral.
Star Trek : First contact has the line…
“And you people, you’re all … astronauts … on … some kind of star trek.”
I’d count it, especially since IIRC that line wasn’t in the script. It was added specifically because of the Internet buzz.
While it’s also poignant, stirring, and an overall lovely bit of writing, the end of the film adaptation of A River Runs Through It could almost count. It fits very, very well in the novel, but it’s a little abrupt in the film.
The shoehorning in of ‘The Union of the Two Towers’ in… well… always bugged me.
Aside from anything else, it’s not actually clear in the book which two towers are referred to- Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul, or Orthanc and Barad-dur, as claimed in the film. The LOTR trilogy also sticks chapter headings in the dialogue with varying degrees of success.
The movie Jagged Edge. While on the stand, the witnesses kept ominously describing the murder weapon as a knife that has a… jagged edge!
Oh, I hated that line!
Casablanca: ‘Everybody Comes to Rick’s.’
I seem to remember Rooster Cogburn being described to whatshername, as a Marshall with, “true grit,” in the recent release, but I don’t remember if the line was in the original.
Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
I like how Arrested Development even pointed this out when they did it. Michael says in season 3, “My family are stuck in some kind of state of arrested development.”
The narrator says, “Hey, that’s the name of the show!”
Actually, the original title was not dropped in an awkward way. I withdraw it.
For that matter, the pompous announcement of “The Fellowship of the Ring!” was pretty shoehorny.
In Mean Girls, when Janis is yelling at Cady, it’s a little awkward:
“You are a mean girl! You’re a bitch!”
In real life, I think Janis would just call her a bitch and leave it at that.
The money shot is at about 3:00, but it’s worth watching the whole thing.
True story:
I was sitting with my wife watching Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. We’re about 2/3 of the way through the movie, and people are fainting and challenging each other to duels and hiding in closets and generally going completely off the rails.
Wife: They sure are making a lot of fuss about stuff that doesn’t matter…
Me: That’s the title of the play.
Damn it! I came in here to post that. Awesome!
Hot Tub Time Machine does this well.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Family Guy lampooned this with Peter having a cutaway saying that he loves it when they say the title of the movie in the movie itself:
“I’m telling you, these drug dealers represent a Clear and Present Danger to the United States!”
“All I’m saying is, what if this is As Good as it Gets?”
And then finally:
“The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.”
Ok so that last one isn’t real, but it serves to point out how heavy handed it is when they do it in movies like we’re all talking about.
You are… The Fellowship of the Ring!