Best Film Speeches and Monologues
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Title Screen
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Film Title/Year and Description of Film Speech/Monologue |
Screenshots
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Altered States
(1980)
Screenwriter(s): Paddy Chayefsky (as Sidney
Aaron)
"I'm
a Man In Search of His True Self...And I'm Going to Find
the F--ker"
In a barroom scene where he was called a "wacko"
by his friend Mason Parrish (Charles Haid), abnormal psychology
Harvard university professor Dr. Eddie Jessup (William Hurt)
asserted that he was searching with various methods to find
his
"true self," after already dismissing Yoga:
What dignifies the Yogic practices is that
the belief system itself is not truly religious. There
is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual
Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth...At
least I know where the Self is. It's in our own minds.
It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion
years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our
minds.
Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear - it's
still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier
consciousnesses. There has to be. And I'm telling you, it's
in the god-damned limbic system....
I'm a man in search of his true self. How
archetypically American can you get? Everybody's looking
for their true selves. We're all trying to fulfill ourselves,
understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the
reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves.
Ever since we dispensed with God, we've got nothing but ourselves
to explain this meaningless horror of life....Well, I think
that that true self, that original self, that first self
is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate.
And I'm going to find the f--ker.
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Altered States
(1980)
Screenwriter(s): Paddy Chayefsky (as Sidney
Aaron)
"It's
Human Life That Is Real"
Jessup (William Hurt) finally admitted to his
wife Emily (Blair Brown) that he found "no final truth" in
his experimental search for the self with hallucinogenic drugs
and a sensory deprivation tank:
I can't tell you how much you mean to me.
How much I need you and the kids. I just wanted you to
know that. You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit.
I was in it, Emily! I was in that ultimate moment
of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing.
Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things
is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory.
It's human life that is real. I don't want to frighten
you, Emily, but what I'm trying to tell you is that that
moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and
growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it
from devouring me is you.
Emily responded: "Why don't you just come
back to us?" He continued:
It's too late. I don't think I can get out
of it anymore. I can't live with it. The pain is too great.
As he went down the hallway, he was again shockingly
regressed - he morphed and transformed into a proto-plasmic
half-man/half blob-lava mass of cosmic energy (changing in
color and form as he banged on the wall), and only through
Emily's intervention in his final hallucinatory trip was she
able to bring him back, as they embraced and the film concluded. |
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Caddyshack (1980)
Screenwriter(s): Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney
"It's
In the Hole!" Cinderella Story
Play clip (excerpt):
Lowly country club groundskeeper Carl Spackler
(Bill Murray) pretending to be an announcer and player, imagining
himself at Augusta in a championship Masters golf game, while
practicing teeing off on rows of planted flowers:
What an incredible Cinderella story, this
unknown comes outta nowhere to lead the pack, at Augusta.
He's on his final hole. He's about 455 yards away. He's
gonna hit about a 2-iron, I think. Oh, he got all of that!
The crowd is standing on its feet here at Augusta, the
normally reserved Augusta crowd, going wild, for this young
Cinderella. He's come outta nowhere. He's got about 350
yards left. He's gonna hit about a 5-iron, I expect, don't
you think? He's got a beautiful backswing -- that's --
oh, he got all of that one! He's gotta be pleased with
that. The crowd is just on its feet here. He's the Cinderella
boy, uh -- tears in his eyes I guess, as he lines up this
last shot, he's got about 195 yards left. And he's got
about a -- it looks like he's got about an 8-iron. This
crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta
nowhere. A former greenskeeper and now, about to become
the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac- it's in the
hole! It's in the hole!
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Caddyshack
(1980)
Screenwriter(s): Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold
Ramis, Douglas Kenney
Caddying
for The Dalai Lama
Play clip (excerpt): (short)
Play clip (excerpt): (long)
Speech-impaired, wacky Bushwood Country Club
greenskeeper Carl Spackler's (Bill Murray) recounting, to another
incredulous caddy, of how he once caddied for the Dalai Lama
in Tibet:
So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my
way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course
over there in the Himalayas...A looper, you know, a caddy,
a looper, a jock. So, I tell 'em I'm a pro jock, and who
do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth
son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald, striking.
So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver.
He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama --
long, into a ten-thousand foot crevice, right at the base
of this glacier. And do you know what the Lama says?...
Gunga galunga... gunga -- gunga galunga. So we finish 18,
and he's gonna stiff me. And I say: 'Hey, Lama! Hey, how
about a little somethin', you know, for the effort, you
know.' And he says: 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money,
but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total
consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
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The Dalai Lama Tale
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9 to 5
(1980) (aka Nine to Five)
Screenwriter(s): Colin Higgins, Patricia Resnick
Threatening
Words Toward a Chauvinistic Office Boss
Doralee's (Dolly Parton) threatening words to
her chauvinistic office boss Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman)
about her compromised reputation and his bragging about their
having an affair:
Well, that explains it. That's why these
people treat me like some dime store floozy...They think
I'm screwin' the boss...And you just love it, don't you?
It gives you some sort of cheap thrill like knockin' over
pencils and pickin' up papers...Get your scummy hands off
of me. Look, I've been straight with you from the first
day I got here. And I put up with all your pinchin' and
starin' and chasin' me around the desk 'cause I need this
job, but this is the last straw...Look, I got a gun out
there in my purse, and up until now, I've been forgivin'
and forgettin' because of the way I was brought up. But
I'll tell you one thing: if you ever say another word about
me or make another indecent proposal, I'm gonna get that
gun of mine and I'm gonna change you from a rooster to
a hen with one shot! Don't think I can't do it.
His one word response after she left his office: "S--t!" |
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The
Shining (1980)
Screenwriter(s): Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
"You're
Distracting Me"
Jack Torrance's (Jack Nicholson) foul-mouthed,
annoyed reaction to wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) invading his
personal space while writing on his typewriter:
Wendy, let me explain something to you.
Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking
my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then
take me time to get back to where I was. Understand?...I'm
gonna make a new rule. Whenever I'm in here, and you hear
me typing, whether you don't hear me typing, whatever the
f--k you hear me doing in here, when I'm in here, that
means that I am working. That means don't come in. Now
do you think you can handle that?...Why don't you start
right now and get the f--k out of here?
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The
Shining (1980)
Screenwriter(s): Stanley Kubrick, Diane
Johnson
"I'm
Not Gonna Hurt Ya"
Play clip (excerpt):
Jack's infamous giggling, murderous reaction
to Wendy swinging at him with a bat on the stairwell:
...I'm not gonna hurt ya...Wendy...darling,
'light of my life'. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let
me finish my sentence. I said, 'I'm not gonna hurt ya.
I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em
right the f--k in!'
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Star
Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Screenwriter(s): Leigh Brackett,
Lawrence Kasdan
"My
Ally is the Force"
Jedi Master Yoda (voice of Frank Oz) responded
to young Jedi trainee Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) claim
that his submerged X-wing fighter ship was too large to levitate
with the Force:
Yoda: "Use the force. Yes. Now, the
stone...Feel it. Concentrate!.."
Luke: "Oh, no. We'll never get it out now."
Yoda: "So certain are you. (sighs) Always with you it
cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?"
Luke: "Master, moving stones around is one thing. This
is totally different."
Yoda: "No! No different! Only different in your mind.
You must unlearn what you have learned."
Luke: "All right, I'll give it a try."
Yoda: "No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."
Luke: (failing) "I can't. It's too big."
Yoda: "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my
size, do you? Hmm? Hmph! And well you should not, for my ally
is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it,
makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous
beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the
Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock,
everywhere! Yes, even between the land and the ship."
Luke: "You want the impossible."
Yoda: (He levitated the ship and set it on dry land)
Mmm.
Luke: "I don't, I don't believe it."
Yoda:
"That is why you fail."
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