Andrew Sullivan has been rounding up great movie lines. I might do the same thing, except that all of my favorite lines come from one movie: "Cool Hand Luke." Here are a few:
1. "I can eat 50 eggs."
2. "I'm just standing in the rain, talking to myself."
3. "Calling it a job don't make it right."
And the sentence that became a tagline for the '60s:
4. "What we have here is failure to communicate."
The movie also has the best on-screen performance of "Plastic Jesus" I have ever heard. And bloodhounds.
Best movie ever? Yep.
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9 comments:
David, since most people don't get satire do you want to bet as to how many "Christians" will show up on this thread to let you know how you have offended them? It does go on a bit; seems like some of the verses are additions and replacements. Good, though.
Not to mention the gal in the tight blouse washing that windshield.
George Kennedy: "She doesn't know what she's doing."
Paul Newman: "She knows exactly what she's doing."
It's a very good movie, I'd put it into my top 20 ever.
It wasn't as good as Hollywood Knights, or American Graffitti, but I'd put it up by Slap Shot, Car Wash, or A Fistful of Dollars.
You missed the most important line:
"I got my mind right, boss."
Both you and Kemmick ought to put that up near your workstations.
Mala propos,
But I don't think I have room for it next to the sign I put up just for you: "Stop feeding on me."
CHL was my favorite too - I was 17 when it came out and it stuck deep. But all that religious imagery was a drag - the crosses everywhere, the Jesus thing. It went over my head at 17, but now it is just annoying. And there's a bit of this too: 25 chain gang members, all white, well spoken, clean shaven and well groomed, with nice teeth.
But it had some great lines.
The South did have at least some segregated prisons, so maybe an all-white chain gang isn't so unlikely. I liked the religious imagery; much of Newman's inner conflict has to do with trying to figure why he turned out the way he did -- or why the world turned out the way it did. To engage that topic without thinking hard about religion would have been unlikely behavior for a conscientious Southern white boy in those days.
When he sings "Plastic Jesus," he isn't being satirical. He's grasping at some thin straw of what he had been raised to believe.
I agree - Plastic Jesus is a splendid moment in cinema - splendid. Etched in stone in my memory.
I guess my mature self could have done without the constant visual reminders of what the movie was trying to say. You got it - and would have gotten it without the torn photograph or intersecting dirt roads.
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