Just about any scene from Newsradio involving Bill McNeil and a death joke. The first season, especially, has tons of them.
Oh, I forgot this one. Everyone should watch that scene. It’s amazingly well done and Mako was sorely missed on that show.
Even more so, the scene from Phil Hartman’s last episode of SNL when he sings “Goodbye, Farewell” to the cast, which ends with just him and Chris Farley (as motivational speaker/van dweller Matt Foley) at the front of the stage.
*Matt Foley: [ alone at Home Base, tired and beat ]
“So long.. farewell!
Hey, what am I, chopped liver?
I need.. to sleep..
In a van.. down by the.. river.”
[ Matt slowly and defeatedly takes his seat on the apron of the stage, half-asleep, as Phil Hartman sits down and wraps his arm around Matt ]
Phil Hartman: [ to audience ] You know.. I can’t imagine a more dignifed way.. to end my eight years on this program.
[ singing ]
“Good-bye.. good-bye..
Good-byeeeeeeee!”
[ spotlight centers on Phil and Matt, as camera zooms out to fade ] *
I came in to mention the John Belushi skit, but got beaten to it several times.
I suppose I should mention the parody “Amy Winehouse” from Disaster movie and her line in the credits song
On a more cheerful note…On Always Sunny, I love the scenes between Charlie and Waitress, knowing that they’re married IRL. They must have a great marriage: any tension between them, they can work through in these scenes!
I don’t know which film it was, but my wife likes to talk about a scene where Meryl Streep is playing mother of a toddler, and my wife was flabbergasted at how well Streep interacted with the child, wondering how on earth an actor could get into a role so well that the little girl treated her like she was her mommy. Only later did my wife find out that the little girl was IRL Meryl’s own daughter. If I saw that I might get a little misty eyed.
The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart is Don Johnson’s first film, about a young man discovering sex, psychedelics, and self - at the end of the 1960s.
It has been my custom to watch this film with a headful from time to time, because it neatly mirrors my experience in the late 1980s, and never fails to trip me out.
I can’t do this anymore – and not just because I let go of my VHS collection, but because Stanley Sweetheart’s first NYC apartment is inexplicably across the street from the World Trade Center under construction c. 1968 or 1969, and there are frequent shots of the construction of the first few floors. (Eg, Stanley has a girl over, and there is a terrible din outside. “They’re building something over there,” he casually explains, and we cut to a scene that looks *exactly *like someone has taken an image like this and tidied it up… just a bit.
I think these scenes were originally intended to convey a sense of awesome potential that was just beginning to be realized, with a direct analogy with the protagonist (and in special cases, the viewer.) Now they just say, “You may feel (or have felt) that life holds great things in store for you, but in reality your doom is inevitable. However optimistic you might feel, you are going to be dead before you know it, and you aren’t going to see it coming at all.”
It’s a bit of a bummer, man.
The final scene of “Remains of the Day”, retired butler Anthony Hopkins is called back to service at the re-opened Darlington Manor which has just been bought by U.S. diplomat Christopher Reeve, especially as they work to release a bird who had flown down the chimney. The whole movie is bittersweet for me anyway & that is just icing on the cake.
The children’s book does mention 9/11, and I teared up pretty heavily when reading it to my daughter.
I’ll risk being accused of hijacking- this isn’t a “scene” but a song.
Musically, I don’t much like Badfinger’s version of “Without You.” I think Nilsson’s version is much better.
And yet, knowing that two of the Badfinger members who sang that song eventually hanged themselves gives their version a terrible poignancy that I wouldn’t feel if they were alive and well today.
Every time I hear that version of the song, I think of Pete and Tom and shudder, “They weren’t kidding… this wasn’t standard pop music hyperbole. They really COULDN’T go on living.”
As are Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Mac (Rob McElhenney).
I have the same problem. I was mortified when he died and, though it’s not video footage, I find “Dear Friends” particularly hard to listen to.
I was catching up on “Castle” via Netflix, and the very first episode had Stephen Cannell in the poker game (this was a couple of months after he died). It really got me.
And then, a couple of weeks after, I watched the actual up-to-date show, where Castle was saving Cannell’s chair. Got me again. Although I think that second one was meant to. Well, it worked.
No. Way. I can’t believe I didn’t know that.
This was hard to see, and i didn’t notice it before this article, but check the upper right corner of the USA Today from Back to the Future II
The thing that strikes me most about this…and what, I swear to God, honestly makes me sadder than anything: I have no idea who most of those people are.
I am young, and in '93 I was 7 years old…but aside from the obvious and most famous people…I just couldn’t recognize any of them. And that honestly saddens me. It makes me want to apologize to someone…
Prince’s video for ‘Seven’ centered around his gorgeous soon-to-be wife Mayte; she got pregnant not long after their wedding. Their baby was born a very ill little boy who passed away and their marriage was annulled on their third anniversary.
Lately I’ve seen that video again and again and every scene she’s in I think of her/their painful loss.
If they’d been together longer or had a well child first, I think they could have made it and been another Paul and Linda.
The outtakes scene at the end of “Being There” is both funny and poignant to me, because Peter Sellers died so soon after making that movie. He was one of my favorite actors.
And he believed that tag scene cost him the Oscar.