… That you like anyway. The movie: The Professional
Mathilda (after being hit by her father): Is life always this hard, or is it just when you’re a kid?
Léon: ALways like this.
I like it because you are expecting him to give her hope, instead he gives her the harsh truth.
But the Leon quote isn’t really a non-memorable one! You want a non-memorable phrase, the line “no time for pancakes” from Patriot Games has always stuck with me, and I sometimes think of it when deciding that there isn’t time for something.
Everyone remembers “I am big - it’s the pictures that got small” from Sunset Boulevard.
But no one remembers the next line “I always knew there was something wrong with them”
One of my favorites is a throwaway line in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, spoken by Kevin Kline, playing Paden:
Whenever I’ve seen it in the theater, this fails to get the laugh it was intended to. I think a lot of people miss it.
Emmett (Scott Glenn) tells Hobart that he isn’t Baxter and that his companion Paden (Kevin Kline) isn’t Hawley.
Hobart asks Emmett if he’s Baxter, and Emmett says he isn’t. Then, instead of asking Paden if he’s Hawley, Hobart asks Paden if he’s Baxter.
Paden, whose sense of symmetry is outraged because he should’ve been asked if he was Hawley, replies that, no, he’s the only who isn’t Hawley. (instead of saying that he isn’t Baxter).
I think it goes by too quickly for a lot of people to catch it. I think that, of the ones who do catch it, they don’t think it’s particularly funny. I do like it, myself, but spelling it out in detail like this eviscerates the joke, and destroys any residual humor it might have had. But I still like it. Paden’s the one with the quirky sense of humor, which I identify with.
Thanks for posting that. I love that movie and I’ve seen it several times. Each time that scene goes by the cadence of it always mentally tripped me up but I never got the joke. It seems so obvious now. I think you’re right, it goes by too fast for most people to get.
Silly I know, but knowing this makes me happy.