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August 31, 2004
IT'S B-A-A-A-A-A-A-CK! THE 50 BEST MOVIE LINES EVER: #20-#16
So it's been almost two weeks now, but I am finally home and sitting in front of my list. I've kept you waiting (or yawning) for long enough, so here we go, on with the countdown...
20. "It's 106 miles to Chicago... we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it." -- Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) and Jake Blues (John Belushi), THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I never liked John Belushi. And as an overall film, I think The Blues Brothers is vastly overrated. But there's a collection of great lines in it. And since I said at the outset that I'd be including lines that have undeniable impact, how could I possibly skip over the line that is now uttered at the beginning of virtually every road trip anyone ever goes on?
19. "I'll be back." -- The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), THE TERMINATOR (1984)
This franchise gave me one of my personal favorite lines of all time... in T2, when the cops show up to interrupt the Connors & the T-800 Model 101 Terminator as they try to steal the arm and chip from Cyberdyne, and the kid says, "We've got company." When his mother asks how many, he says, "Uh, all of 'em, I think." Great line. One of my personal all time favorites.
But this list isn't about my favorite lines in and of themselves... it's about the lines I think were the greatest lines. And there's no way that any line from The Terminator series could possibly go here other than "I'll be back." It's become cliche, part of the lexicon, and one of the most quoted movie lines of the last 20 years. And any line that is still repeated even twenty years after debuting as a catchphrase... well, it goes on the list.
18. "This fog is getting thicker." "And Leon is getting llaaaaarrrrrger!" -- Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) and Johnny Hinshaw (Stephen Stucker), AIRPLANE (1980)
Hands down, this is one of the five funniest lines in movie history for me. Airplane is a classic, of course... and it may just show up again later in the countdown. And my absolute favorite character from the film is the goofy, flamboyant Johnny Hinshaw, played with giddy glee by the late Stephen Stucker. You know him... the little bald skinny guy who always has some utterly unrelated and festive thing to say.
In this case, as the ground crew tries to prepare for the coming emergency landing, the faux tension reaches fever pitch as the weather worsens. Lloyd Bridges frets to a fellow controller about the fog... and then Johnny ducks into the screen, grabs the roly-poly controller's beer gut and gives it a good Buddha rub and shake, looks to the screen, and utters this immortal non sequiter before prancing back off screen. Guaranteed to make me laugh out loud every time I see it. Nearly a quarter century later it still cracks me up bigger than almost any other line ever on screen.
17. "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species... I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply... until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive... is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern: a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet; you are a plague. And we... are the cure." -- Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), THE MATRIX (1999)
Okay, not only is this one of the best villian soliloquies of all time, and not only is it delivered brilliantly and perfectly by the actor given the lines in the script... but it's also an incredibly clever and accurate analogy, when you think about it. Few lines in escapist sci-fi action movies ever make me think, but this one did - and the "a ha" moment that followed, that second where the light bulb went on over my head as I realized the brilliance of the line, was one of my favorite movie experiences of all time. I still think it's just amazingly insightful - and it manages to convey the evil that is Agent Smith at the same time. And of course, Hugo Weaving delivers it with such cold, calculated coolness that it immediately becomes even greater than its words. This is by far my favorite line in one of the most original sci-fi movies in cinematic history.
16. "It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again... PUT THE FUCKIN' LOTION IN THE BASKET!" Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine), THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
This is another film that I could have filled this list with lines from... there's at least seven or eight classics. (By the way, this is called "foreshadowing," where I hint at what's to come.) This line is admittedly creepy and comes at an uncomfortable point in the film, I grant you. But it makes the list, if for no other reason than this: Tim and I use it frequently, and doing so usually collapses us into giggle fits worthy of nine year olds. (Yes, I know, the line is supposed to make the viewer fear Buffalo Bill, not laugh uncontrollably... but we can't help it.)
It's perfect for so many occasions... dealing with marketing people who are so single-mindedly intent on box-checking and "project management" that they will not listen to counsel... or in self-deprecation after one of us has made a stubborn mistake... or just because saying the line in that bizarre, frog-in-the-throat Ted Levine manner is just so damn much fun. In any circumstance, we use it regularly, and even if we're the only ones who get such a kick out of ourselves, it's funny to us, so who cares?
True story: this movie was the subject of one of the greatest pulls I have ever witnessed. This past March when Tim & his wife, the Doc and Mrs. Doc, myself, and several other family and friends were up in the Vermont ski house for the long weekend, we were sitting in front of the fire one evening, absent-mindedly flipping channels on the satellite TV while enjoying some drinks.
You know how when you're flipping channels on a satellite system, the video doesn't always come up right away... so that if you're flipping through them quickly, you don't even get images, just a black screen while the sound comes up for a second? Well, that's what we were doing... trying to get back to ESPN from whatever channel we'd flipped to during the commercial. As I held the "channel up" button down in order to get back to the sports, we heard about a half second of sound from each channel I passed. But it was only a half second - nothing intelligible, so we thought.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Tim says, "Oh! That was Silence of the Lambs - go back a couple." None of us believed him - how could he recognize it when we didn't even have a second of dialogue? But when I flipped back five channels, there it was: Anthony Hopkins teasing Jodie Foster with his offer to help her catch Buffalo Bill. How Tim managed to pull that one, I have no idea; that was a legendary example of pulling the audio needle from the DirectTV haystack.
What does this have to do with putting lotion in the basket? Very little. But I had to give Tim his props.
