A few weeks ago, I did a column on “essential” movie quotes, which was prompted by newfound awareness of a growing lack of cultural consciousness, especially among the younger generations.
My “oy vey” moment came when I realized a coworker had never heard of the film “Apocalypse Now,” much less the unforgettable line uttered by Robert Duvall:
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
I printed a little quiz, but did not provide the answers, assuming that anyone interested enough would find out for themselves. However, not everyone has ready access to the Internet, even these days, and in any case readers have been requesting answers. So here they are, citing both the movies from which they came and the actors who spoke them:
• “What do you mean, I’m funny? … Funny how? Funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?”: Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas”
• “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”: Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove”
• “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender”: Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”
• “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”: Peter Finch in “Network”
• “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night”: Bette Davis in “All About Eve”
• “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”: Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard”
• “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli”: Richard Castellano in “The Godfather”
• “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”: Gary Cooper in “The Pride of the Yankees”
• “Snap out of it!”: Cher in “Moonstruck”
• “You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.”: Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver”
• “Round up the usual suspects.”: Claude Rains in “Casablanca”
• “The stuff that dreams are made of”: Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon”
• “Say ‘hello’ to my little friend!”: Al Pacino in “Scarface”
• “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”: Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry”
• “Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”: Robert Armstrong in “King Kong”
• “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”: Vivien Leigh in “A Streetcar Named Desire”
• “We rob banks.” : Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde”
• “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”: Keir Dullea in “2001: A Space Odyssey”
• “The calla lilies are in bloom again.”: Katharine Hepburn in “Stage Door”
• “Attica! Attica!”: Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon” I also cited “What a dump!”- – noting that no one recalls the movie, but you should know the actress. I have found that readers did recall both the movie, “Beyond the Forest,” and Bette Davis’ role.
My special thanks to Adele Koci of Nutley, who also knew that the co-stars were Joseph Cotten and David Brian. Thanks, too, to the anonymous gentleman caller who wanted to make sure I wasn’t confusing Davis with Elizabeth Taylor, who parodied “What a dump!” in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
The headline on the column, “Go ahead, make my day,” was from Eastwood’s “Sudden Impact.”
In addition, scattered throughout the column were paraphrased quotes. How many of these did you catch?
• “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”: Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke”
• “You can’t handle the truth!”: Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men”
• “Life is like a box of chocolates”: Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump”
• “I’m walkin’ heah!”: Dustin Hoffman in “Midnight Cowboy”
•”Houston, we have a problem.”: Hanks in “Apollo 13”)
• “Well, nobody’s perfect.”: Joe E. Brown in “Some Like It Hot” (It was the very last line in the film.)
• “ . . . liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”: Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs”
As for, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” if you can’t ID that, you’re hopeless.
–Karen Zautyk
