Comments on Mystery Man on Film: 25 Classic Monologues in Cinema

The Devil in Denim, by Carson Mells:BOBBY BIRDMe a...

2009-01-12T21:13:00.000-05:00

The Devil in Denim, by Carson Mells:

BOBBY BIRD
Me and my new friend Rodney Buckinghorse had just been let out of a dryin' out clinic in Fresno and were fighting ourselves with sugar, each of us with our own pie. I was telling old Rodney that as far as Rock was concerned we were in a pussy period.

RODNEY BUCKINGHORSE
What's a Pussy Period?

BOBBY BIRD
Pussy Period is where music sounds like it's being made by a guy who was breast fed till the age of 12 playing a $20,000 guitar with mittens on while the sound engineer squeezes his balls with one hand and cools them with a Chinese fan with the other.

RODNEY BUCKINGHORSE
What do you think Rock 'n' Roll should sound like?

BOBBY BIRD
I think Rock 'n' Roll should sound like a wad of jagged of steel rolling down the highway spitting hot glass on the broken rocks. And at the centre of this, the nucleus to this, is the softest woman the world has ever seen, open motherly arms and just a whiff of sex. And then what does this fucking genius do? This awesome Indian with a feather in his hair to tell you Yes I am a native American and Yes fuck you for taking my land? He turns over his napkin and makes a perfect drawing of exactly what I'm talking about. Then outside guy just peels off his shirt like we're going swimming and shows me his tattoo, tells me: 'I know Rock 'n' Roll, also.'

So what do yo do after that? Your first night back in society after 48 days straight talking about your feelings, three point five pounds of cherry pie in your gut. I tell you what you do: you take that drawing to the first tattoo artist you see even if he does look like some Alfred E. Newman nightmare and you tell him 'Put this shit smack dab in the middle of my chest.'

And what does he do? He fucks it up.

Then what do you do after that? Well two months later you meet a decent tattoo artist living out of the back of his van and you trade him two cases of Bud to turn it into a spider. And there you are, walking around a spider on your chest, everyone thinking, 'Wow, that guy really digs spiders.'

Hey,How about the monologue from 25th Hour, Norton...

2009-01-12T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hey,
How about the monologue from 25th Hour, Norton delivers one of the most scathing reviews of NY citizens and humanity, pulling no punches, here it is:

No, Fuck You
written by David Benioff, from his novel

(Monty walks into the bathroom. He looks in the mirror. In the bottom corner, someone's written Fuck You!)
Monty: Yeah, fuck you, too.
Monty's Reflection: Fuck me? Fuck you! Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it.
Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back.
Fuck squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job!
Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores and stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35.
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English?
Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from!
Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds!
Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gecko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Imclone! Adelphia! Worldcom!
Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, because they make the Puerto Ricans look good.
Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, and their St. Anthony medallions. Swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos.
Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermés scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart!
Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take fives steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on!
Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!
Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin Otisville, Jay!
Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Alqueda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fueled fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal, Irish ass!
Fuck Jacob Elinski, whining malcontent.
Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass.
Fuck Naturel Rivera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking bitch.
Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar. Sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers.
Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue. From the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it. Let the fires rage. Let it burn to fuckin ash then let the waters rise and submerge this whole, rat-infested place.
Monty: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and then you threw it away, you dumb fuck!
(He takes a breath and tries to rub away the words.)

I can't help but mention two of my favorites which...

2009-01-12T14:53:00.000-05:00

I can't help but mention two of my favorites which aren't included here. Ben Johnson's extended reflection while sitting on a log in "The Last Picture Show" (which won him an Oscar.) Also Klattu's speech to the crowd at the end of the original "Day The Earth Stood Still." (...reduce the earth to a burned out cinder.")

Hey guys,I truly apologize for my delay in respond...

2008-12-30T11:01:00.000-05:00

Hey guys,

I truly apologize for my delay in responding to the comments. I’ve been traveling so much this holiday, that I wrote a bunch of articles in advance and scheduled them to be published while I was gone.

Purpletrex – Those are great. Loved the one from Brazil. That was hilarious.

JJ – You should be. Hehehe…

Christian – That’s great. I hadn’t seen that film.

JustBill – I have seen Button and will write an article. I plan to see it twice first. I imagine your complaints would stem from the episodic nature of the narrative and the passive protag? Am I wrong? Basically, the same debates over “Button” will be very similar to the ones that have raged in the past over “Forest Gump.”

Purpletrex – I gotta say, I didn’t hate “Button.”

Deaf – I did, too.

Crumbs – Yeah, that’s classic. Thanks for sharing that.

Dom – I’ve written very few monologues.

I love a good monologue. Some great examples here....

2008-12-30T08:29:00.000-05:00

I love a good monologue. Some great examples here. Call me a sap but the Robin Williams/GWH monologue damn near made me drop a tear.

My latest spec has a monolougue. I now feel the need to go back and rewrite it completely...

Dom.

It shames me to say it, but I did one exactly li...

2008-12-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

It shames me to say it, but I did one *exactly* like that Chasing Amy one to a girl once. I was nuts about her, but it's still an embarrassing, cringeworthy memory.

Greatest monologue written in the History of Man (at least today, considering how infatuated everyone is with politics):

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Amazingly relevant, 400 years on.

and yea, some of these monologues are just freakin...

2008-12-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

and yea, some of these monologues are just freakin' great.

I can't believe how long the JAWS monologue is, though.

pfftt to JustBill. I thought Benjamin Button was ...

2008-12-29T10:47:00.000-05:00

pfftt to JustBill. I thought Benjamin Button was a moving, touching film.

Pretty much this review:http://www.villagevoice.co...

2008-12-28T14:27:00.000-05:00

Pretty much this review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-12-24/film/benjamin-button-features-pitt-and-blanchett-in-orgy-of-excess/

Sums up my thoughts on "Benjamin Button."

Visually, the movie is great, but I found it hard to connect with the titular character. Benjamin seemed to me, to be almost devoid of a personality. Cate Blanchette was, as usual awesome, aside from that she was unable to master a New Orleans accent (nobody in Hollywood can seem to do it either).

To me, the best performance can from Taraji P. Henson, as the caretaker that takes in Benjamin, followed closely by Tilda Swinton.

"Button" is a good movie, but surely is no Forrest Gump.

*Fun Fact! Eric Roth, the writer of Gump and Button, just lost all of his money via the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Roth is suing his financial advisor, as the advisor just dumped all of Roth's money into Madoff's fund willy-nilly.

*Funner Fact! Using the "Fart Machine" Iphone app, for a well-timed fart during one of the many slow, long and drawn out silent scenes in Benjamin Button was worth the price of admission.

Thanks for highlight the great speeches.Saw "The C...

2008-12-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks for highlight the great speeches.

Saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" last night and thought it was pretty awful.

Have you reviewed it? Curious to read your analysis of what went wrong.

Aaaah, there's nothing like a heartfelt speech.I r...

2008-12-28T11:52:00.000-05:00

Aaaah, there's nothing like a heartfelt speech.

I really liked the one from the American President.

That's all right, you can keep your seats. For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character...

ANGLE - ROBIN

who's picked up the receiver from a wall phone and punches in four numbers.

She turns in to the wall to shield her conversation from the rest of the room.

ROBIN(into phone)
Lewis...call A.J. and come on down here...I don't know, but something's happening.

SHEPHERD
...and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on
me, I've been here three years and
three days, and I can tell you
without hesitation: Being President
of this country is entirely about
character.

LEWIS enters with A.J. and KODAK.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
For the record: Yes, I am a card-
carrying member of the A.C.L.U. But
the more important question is why
aren't you, Bob? This is an
organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it
naturally begs the questions.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
Why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for president, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? If you can answer that question, then, folks, you're smarter than I am,because I didn't understand it until a couple of minutes ago. Everybody knows American isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's
gonna put up a fight. It's gonna
say, "You want free speech? Let's
see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating, at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim
this land as the land of the free,
then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest." Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.
Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free. I've known Bob Rumson for years. I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't
get it. Bob's problem is that he
can't sell it. Nobody has ever won
an election by talking about what I
was just talking about.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-
income voters who remember with
longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and personal character. Then you have an old photo of the President's girlfriend. You scream about patriotism and you tell them
she's to blame for their lot in life, you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through law school, prosecute criminals for five years, represent the interests of
public school teachers for two years, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
You want a character debate? Fine,
but you better stick with me, 'cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league. I've loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer, and I lost the other 'cause I was so busy keeping my job I forgot to do my job.
Well that ends right now.

SHEPHERD (continuing)
Tomorrow morning the White House is
sending a bill to Congress for its
consideration. It's White House
Resolution 455, an energy bill
requiring a 20 percent reduction of the emission of fossil fuels over the next ten years. It is by far the most aggressive stride ever taken in the fight to reverse the effects of global warming. The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today it no longer exists. I'm throwing it out. I'm throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense.
You cannot address crime prevention
without getting rid of assault
weapons and handguns.
I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I'm gonna convince Americans that I'm right, and I'm gonna get the guns. We've got serious problems, and we need serious men, and if you want to talk about character, Bob, you'd better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to
talk about character and American
values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I'll show up. This is a time for serious men, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up. My name's Andrew Shepherd, and I am the President.

Dude!I'm honored. Thank you.

2008-12-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

Dude!

I'm honored. Thank you.

Of course, the best monologue of all time can be a...

2008-12-28T01:22:00.000-05:00

Of course, the best monologue of all time can be attributed to Welles in "The Third Man."

HARRY
I wish I had asked you to bring me
some of these tablets from home...
Holly, I would like to cut you in,
old man. Nobody left in Vienna I
can really trust - and we have
always done everything together.
When you make up your mind, send me
a message... I'll meet you any
place, any time. And when we do
meet, old man, it is you I want to
see, not the police. Remember that,
won't you?...Don't be so gloomy...After all,
it's not that awful. Remember what
the fellow said in Italy, for thirty years under
the Borgias, they had warfare,
terror, murder, bloodshed, but they
produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo
Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In
Switzerland, they had brotherly
love. They had five hundred years
of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?...The cuckoo clock.
So long, Holly.

One of my favorite monologues comes from Brazil.Of...

2008-12-28T01:16:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite monologues comes from Brazil.

Official

I hereby inform you under powers
entrusted to me under Section 47,
Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number
438476, that Mr Buttle, Archibald,
residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Ministry of Information with certain enquiries, the nature of
which may be ascertained on
completion of application form
BZ/ST/486/C fourteen days within this date, and that he is liable to
certain obligations as specified in
Council Order 173497, including
financial restitutions which may or
may not be incurred if Information
Retrieval procedures beyond those
incorporated in Article 7 subsections 8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit
information leading to permanent
arrest - notification of which will
he served with the time period of 5
working days as stipulated by law. In that instance the detainee will be debited without further notice
through central banking procedures
without prejudice until and unless at such a time when re-imbursement
procedures may be instituted by you
or third parties on completion of a
re-imbursement form RB/CZ/907/X ...