You ain’t gonna believe this, but you used to fit right here.
I’d hold you up to say to your mother, “This kid’s gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid’s gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew.” And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilege. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!
I’m always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain’t gonna have a life. Don’t forget to visit your mother.
Photofest One of the most parodied movie lines in cinema — even Ryan O’Neal himself poked fun at it in Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?. When Barbra Streisand quotes it, he retorts, “That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”
Photofest The only way Paramount pictures would fund Mel Gibson’s passion project about the 13th century Scottish noble was if he agreed to star in it as well as direct.
Photofest Poitier did not want to shoot the film in Mississippi because he had been harassed by the Ku Klux Klan when he had visited there with Harry Belafonte at the height of the civil rights movement in 1964, so most of it was filmed in Sparta, Illinois. Filmmakers even changed the name of the fictional Mississippi town in the movie to Sparta so they wouldn’t have to pay to have the town’s water tower repainted.
Photofest Writer Nora Ephron’s first draft didn’t have Sally and Harry ending up together because she considered a breakup to be a more realistic ending. So when it came time to film the revised happy ending, Billy Crystal ad-libbed much of his dialogue with Meg Ryan, including this most remembered line of the picture.
Photofest True to his word, Liam Neeson kills 35 men in 93 minutes in the first film, scores more in the second and third, and who knows how many in the planned TV prequel.
Photofest “It was one of those lines that came so easily, it felt almost too easy,” remembers writer-director Cameron Crowe. “When I first gave the script to Tom Cruise, and we were reading through it, I said, ‘I’m going to change that line.’ He said, ‘Uh, I love that line. Why don’t you give me a crack at it.’ I left it in, and on the night of filming — it was 4 a.m., on a Friday, and everybody was dropping from exhaustion — Tom says the line. By the end of his speech, everybody was in tears. Across the room, Renee was a wreck. Tom had delivered the line so powerfully, and so directly to her, she was still getting over it. Later he told me, ‘I had always wanted to say ‘I love you’ like that in a movie.’”
Photofest Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott didn’t quite see eye to eye on the screenplay, and on this line in particular. He routinely strayed from the script — by John Logan and William Nicholson — trying to improvise a bunch of alternatives, until Scott forced him to read the line as written. It went over like gangbusters, even though Crowe still hated it: “It was shit. But I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even shit sound good.” The “shit” script would get nominated for best original screenplay at the 2001 Oscars and Crowe would win best actor.
Photofest A variation of the line was uttered by Sen. Albert Fall of New Mexico during congressional hearings in 1924 on the Teapot Dome scandal, which also involved oil tycoon Edward Doheny, who was the basis for Daniel Day-Lewis’ character: “Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake, and my straw reaches across the room, I’ll end up drinking your milkshake.”
Photofest The secret behind Charlton Heston’s hoarse, gravelly delivery? Great acting, sure, but also Heston had the flu through much of the production.
Photofest Though Jack Nicholson worried that his character was so unlikeable people would flee theaters, he ended up winning an Oscar for it, along with co-star Helen Hunt.
Photofest “I am always compiling slang words,” says Clueless writer-director Amy Heckerling about the line’s origins. “In the early to mid-'90s ‘as if’ was floating around in the gay community, and I heard it and thought it was a multipurpose phrase. Some of the people I knew were already beyond ‘as if’ and they were just going, ‘zif!’"
Photofest Harrison Ford considers director J.J. Abrams a “communications genius” for his decision to use the line in the movie’s trailer. “‘Chewie, we’re home’ was kind of the key in the door. Familiarity was unlocked at that moment,” said Ford.
Photofest Even though Nicholson and director Roman Polanski fought endlessly during the making of the movie, when the actor saw the rough cut he told producer Robert Evans, “We got a hot one. Get those checks ready — we’re on our way!”
Photofest Amp maker Marshall liked the publicity surrounding this line so much, they made Christopher Guest a special set of speakers whose highest setting is infinity.
Photofest Dustin Hoffman’s line was ad-libbed, and the scene was shot guerilla style because they didn’t have enough money to shut down a New York street. The cab “almost hit us,” Hoffman once recalled. “I guess the brain works so quickly, I said, in a split of a second, ‘Don’t go out of character …’ So I said, ‘I’m walking here.’ Director John Schlesinger started laughing. He clapped his hands and said, ‘We must have that, we must have that,’ and redid it two or three times, because he loved it.”
Photofest When producer Merian C. Cooper pitched the role to Fay Wray, he told her, “You’ll have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.” Wray was sure she’d be acting with Cary Grant.
Photofest The misquote of the line — “We don’t need no stinking badges!” — started with Micky Dolenz in a 1967 episode of The Monkees TV series, but Mel Brooks got it wrong, too, in 1974’s Blazing Saddles.
Photofest The National Science Teachers Association encourages biology and life sciences teachers to use this line to start a conversation about body image, nutrition and digestion among teenagers.
Photofest If John Travolta’s character had been hiding out in Italy rather than France, the line would have been “They call it a McRoyal DeLuxe.” If he’d been in Japan, he might have skipped the beef and tried the “Filet-O-Shrimp Burger.”
Photofest Actress Heather O’Rourke, who was just 6 when she made Poltergeist, tragically died at age 12, in 1988, from complications of a bowel obstruction.
Photofest Snow White was the only major character then-18-year-old Adriana Caselotti ever voiced. “Walt Disney thought it would spoil the illusion if you knew who the people were who provided the voices in the film,” she revealed in a 1987 interview, about the strict contract that kept her from other parts. (She died in 1997 at age 80.)
Photofest Mario Puzo’s literary estate, which contained 20 different versions of the Godfather III script written between 1978 and 1989, recently sold at auction to a private collector for $625,000.
Photofest The film’s closing line was never supposed to make it into the final cut. The writers — I.A.L Diamond and director Billy Wilder — put it into the script as a placeholder, until they came up with something better.
Photofest Sylvester Stallone utters this line too many times to count in the first five Rocky films (six in the original alone) but the only time anyone ever remembers is at the end of Rocky II, when he holds the championship belt he has just won from Apollo Creed.
Photofest “I never imagined the ‘wax on, wax off’ would amount to anything,” says screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen. “The crane at the end was the one. I wanted that to be the big moment. If I thought anyone remembered anything they’d remember that.”
Photofest Al Jolson was so excited about his rendition of “Dirty Hands, Dirty Face” that he spontaneously uttered the line before segueing into “Toot, Toot, Tootsie.” The line was going to be cut but Sam Warner insisted it stay.
Photofest When Stanley Kubrick sat down with Peter George to adapt George’s novel Red Alert, the director struggled with treating the material as a straight drama, as he initially intended. “My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay,” Kubrick said after the film’s release. “I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question.”
Photofest This line comes right from Solomon Northup’s 1853 book. Writer John Ridley has said he tried to remain true to the original. “To modify the man, no matter how sincere the desire, would have ultimately been dishonest. Solomon’s story begs for honesty. As the voice of his own history, what he wrote deserved fidelity.”
Photofest Sherlock Holmes never utters this line in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. It was invented entirely for the movies.
Photofest Although James Cromwell would get more screen time in George Miller’s talking pig tale than in any of his previous films, he had only 171 words of dialogue. These are his best five.
Photofest Screenwriter Diana Ossana got this gem directly from the New Yorker short story that inspired the film, co-written by Larry McMurtry. “The film has become a part of the popular culture,” says Ossana. “We have a Google Alert for the film, and in the 10 years since it came out there hasn’t been a day that there wasn’t something, somewhere in the news about Brokeback Mountain.”
Photofest The real-life Adrian Cronauer says he came up with the drawn out “goooood moooorning” sign-on because he was often shuffling papers to start the show and needed to stall for time.
Photofest Want your own? You don’t have to battle orcs and dragons — you just have to shop online. A platinum version, complete with Elvish script, retails for $3,100.
Photofest Screenwriter Chris Terrio actually found this memorable piece of dialogue in the real, declassified CIA report that agent Tony Melendez (played by Ben Affleck) wrote about the Iran Hostage Crisis rescue mission.
Photofest Censors cut Dr. Frankenstein’s original line — “It’s alive! It’s alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it’s like to be God!”
Photofest This line was originally delivered onstage by Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche on Broadway, and was almost delivered in the movie by Olivia de Havilland (she was offered the role but wanted too much money). Vivian Leigh took it for $100,000, making her the highest-paid English actress of the time, but there may have been moments she regretted it; she and co-star Marlon Brando initially hated each other.
Photofest In Kenya the mispronunciation of “make my day” is “makmende,” which is slang for someone who tries to be a hero and was the name creators chose for the country’s first locally created superhero, described by CNN as “one part Shaft, one part Superman.”
Photofest The “funny how” bit was heavily based on an incident Joe Pesci experienced as a young waiter when he complimented a mobster on his sense of humor. Needless to say, the man didn’t take it too well. Martin Scorsese heard the story during rehearsal and liked it so much that he let Pesci and Ray Liotta incorporate it by improvising their dialogue. The other actors in the scene weren’t given advanced notice because Scorsese wanted their genuine, unrehearsed reactions, and he shot it with only medium takes and no close-ups in order to capture their surprise.
Photofest Soon after the film came out in 1977, Sir Alec Guinness told the BBC that fans sought him out for Obi-Wan-like wisdom. “I’ve been getting some pretty strange letters: ‘My wife and I have got problems, could you come over and live with us.’”
Photofest The racy double entendre wasn’t penned by the credited screenwriters — that’d be Jules Furthman and William Faulkner — but by producer Howard Hawks, who came up with the line at Lauren Bacall’s test screening. She was so good at it, Hawks asked Faulkner to pencil it into the shooting script.
Photofest “One of the weirdest places I’ve seen the line pop up,” says writer-director Tate Taylor, “was in a gift shop in Mississippi. It was crocheted toilet-seat cover that said, ‘You is kind, you is smart, you is important.’ I guess they thought it would be a beautiful place to those words every day.”
Photofest Though the screenplay, which went through numerous revisions, has four credited writers, this line is lifted directly from the book, where it is the closing line of the novel.
Photofest Since 1997, the annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival has held a Stanley and Stella shouting contest.
Photofest L. Frank Baum, the author of the novel on which the film is based, reportedly thought up the name “Oz” when looking at his filing cabinets, which were organized from A to N and O to Z.
Photofest No surprise that one of the ultimate rom-com lines of all time also had the biggest disparity between male and female voters. Women had it at No. 28. Men just No. 100.
Photofest The inspiration for Jeff Bridges’ character was Jeff Dowd, legendary publicist and former head of the Seattle Film Festival. At Sundance in 2009, the real Dude famously got into a fistfight with Variety film critic John Anderson over a disagreement over a documentary titled Dirt! The Movie.
Photofest “Sayonara, baby” was used in the Spanish-language version of the film since hasta la vista wouldn’t have been funny to Spanish-speaking audiences.
Photofest Judy Garland became so attached to the little black Cairn Terrier who played Toto that she tried to adopt the pooch after filming ended. (His owner said no.) The dog, whose real name was Terry, was compensated well for his work: He got more than twice what the Munchkins received.
Photofest Blame Woody Allen and his 1972 comedy, Play it Again, Sam, for making this the all-time most misquoted movie line in film history.
Photofest With lines as good as this one, Anthony Hopkins only needed about 16 minutes of screen time to win a best actor Oscar, among the shortest performances ever to earn someone an Academy Award in the category.
Photofest The line was voiced before any part of Roger Rabbit had been illustrated, so to get Bob Hoskins in the mood, director Robert Zemeckis told the late actor to simply imagine his ideal sexual fantasy.
Photofest Another misquote! Nobody in Field of Dreams ever says, “If you build it, they will come.”
Photofest This line — voiced by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres — was so popular, it’s earned her sidekick fish character, Dory, her own Nemo sequel, Finding Dory, coming this summer.
Photofest Forrest Gump may have popularized the phrase, but it’s actually a variant of the old adage, "Handsome is as handsome does,” which appears in, among other places, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd.
Photofest Director James Cameron admitted “making a fool of” himself by repeating the line as he accepted the movie’s best picture Oscar.
Photofest The line is uttered onscreen for the first time by Dr. No, the villain in the first Bond movie. Bond himself doesn’t say it until Goldfinger, the third movie.
Photofest Screenwriter Frank Pierson thought the line seemed too refined to be uttered by Strother Martin’s prison warden, so he wrote an elaborate backstory for the character that involved criminology courses that improved his vocabulary.
Photofest Numerous retired silent film stars were considered for the role of Norma Desmond — Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Pola Negri — but, of course, the part ultimately went to Gloria Swanson, who stayed in character throughout the entire shoot.
Photofest There are 42 rings heard during the movie, meaning, if Clarence (Henry Travers) is right, 42 new angels.
Photofest Although this line is variously attributed to Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and an Arabian proverb, this specific phrasing came straight from the pens of screenwriters Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola.
Photofest The line actually comes from 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Paris Spleen. In French it is, “La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas."
Photofest Network screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky originally envisioned Paul Newman in the the role that won Peter Finch an Oscar — the first to be given posthumously (the second went to Heath Ledger). Two months before the Academy Awards, Finch suffered a heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel while waiting for a meeting with director Sidney Lumet.
Photofest Rod Steiger’s reaction to this line was filmed without Brando present. Brando’s deal with the studio allowed him to leave at 4:00 every day to attend therapy to deal with the recent death of his mother.
Photofest One of two lines on this list that have been quoted in State of the Union addresses (see also: No. 32). “There is just no greater tribute you can get than have the president of the United States quote your movie, no matter what your politics are,” says writer Bob Gale.
Photofest Despite holding the record for the most Academy Award nominations for a single film (14, tied with Titanic) and making nearly every list of the top 100 movies of all time, this is one of the most misquoted lines in movie history. Most say, “…It’s going to be a bumpy RIDE.
Photofest In the 37 years since the movie was released, this line has been parodied more than 50 times in other TV shows and movies, including Lizzie Maguire(“I love the smell of pop quizzes in the morning!”) and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie (“I love the smell of destruction in the evening!”).
Photofest Another misquote. Contrary to popular belief, Clint Eastwood never says, “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
Photofest Al Pacino’s M203 grenade launcher — which was custom-made for the film and later appeared in Predator — sold at an auction in November for $54,400.
Photofest “The most surreal part of hearing the line reappear in the culture,” writer-director Cameron Crowe tells THR about Cuba Gooding Jr.'s signature phrase, “was when George W. Bush and then Barack Obama both quoted it in their State of the Union speeches. When Obama said it, my mom called immediately: ‘OK, you did it,’ she said, ‘you got Bush and Obama to agree about something.’”
Photofest Richard Castellano, who played Clemenza, ad-libbed “take the cannoli,” riffing on an earlier scene where his character’s wife asks him to pick up the dessert on his way home.
Photofest “I have a pair of pants from a company called Carpe Denim,” screenwriter Tom Schulman tells THR. “I didn’t realize when I bought them, but when they were folded in a certain way I saw it on the inside of the waistband. The ‘Denim’ is pretty much the funniest thing I’ve seen with that line.”
Photofest In Mike Nichols’ movie, Mrs. Robinson is supposed to be 25 years older than recent college grad Ben Braddock. But in reality, 35-year-old Anne Bancroft was only six years older than 29-year-old Dustin Hoffman.
Courtesy of Photofest “I think people remember the line because of Leslie Nielsen’s delivery,” Jeff Zucker (who co-wrote the script with his brother David and Jim Abrahamson) tells THR. “The way he said it was exactly what we were going for. We told the actors to pretend they didn’t know they were in a comedy.”
Photofest All the script called for was for Jack Nicholson’s deranged writer, Jack Torrance, to break down the door to get to his cowering wife. But Nicholson added a little something to cut the tension — the production went through dozens of doors before director Stanley Kubrick was satisfied — and his improvised “Here’s Johnny!” made the cut.
Photofest “If somebody put a gun to my head and said 'What would be sort of the defining line from A League of Their Own, I would pick a line much later in the movie,” says screenwriter Babaloo Mandel. “Geena Davis is quitting and she’s trying to tell him, ‘It just got too hard,’ and Tom Hanks says to her, ‘It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The “hard” is what makes it great.’ I would pick that.”
Photofest “It was a straight-up tip of the hat to Billy Wilder and the last line of The Apartment,” says writer-director Cameron Crowe. “I always loved it when Shirley MacLaine said to Jack Lemmon, ‘Shut up and deal.’ It was the favorite last line to any movie in my family growing up. We loved it. So for Jerry Maguire, I wanted Renee to just cut him off and say it. The actual full line is, ‘Shut up — you had me at hello.’ It’s pretty much a rule of thumb for every screenwriter: Billy Wilder will never steer you wrong.”
Photofest Hollywood doing a little historical revisionism: In real life, astronaut Jim Lovell said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
Photofest Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase is actually a variation of the line “Beyond the infinite,” which appears as a title card in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The phrase later served as the title of Karen Paik’s book recounting the history of Pixar — and as a lyric in Beyonce’s 2008 hit, “Single Ladies.”
Photofest “I wrote ‘Yippe-ki-yay, asshole,’” says screenwriter Steven E. de Souza. "But Bruce, on his final take, ad-libbed the ‘motherf—er,’ much to the amusement of the crew. The studio nervously left it in for the first test screening and the reaction made it permanent. But you don’t always know.”
Photofest Director Steven Spielberg voiced E.T. during shooting — standing just to the side of the camera and interacting with the child actors. Then sound designer Ben Burtt recorded actress Pat Welsh, whose raspy smoker’s voice he overheard one day at a camera store, and mixed it with animal sounds to get the friendly alien’s voice just right.
Photofest It took an entire day to shoot the climatic courtroom scene where Nicholson utters this line. When it came time to shoot coverage — filming reaction shots from others in the scene — director Rob Reiner told Nicholson he would get someone else to read his lines off-camera, but Nicholson insisted on reading them himself, doing the speech about 50 times. Why? “I just love to act,” he told Reiner.
Photofest Schwarzenegger wanted to change the line to “I will be back” because it sounded more machine-like and he had trouble pronouncing “I’ll.” He said director James Cameron “looked at me like I’d lost my mind.”
Photofest As Haley Joel Osment says this line, the camera pans over Bruce Willis’ face. That worried producer Frank Marshall, who thought it might give away the movie’s twist. Test audience, though, didn’t have a clue.
Photofest Ian Fleming named his superspy by looking for the most boring moniker he could find on his bookshelves — it turned out to be the author of a bird-watching guide. “By God, [that] is the dullest name I’ve ever heard,” Fleming recalled of his eureka moment.
Photofest In an oral history for the Writers Guild, screenwriter Julius Epstein recalled, “I wrote a note to [producer] Hal Wallis telling him how terrible [the script for Casablanca] was. He put it in a drawer. Thereafter, any time we had an argument about anything, he would open the drawer, pull out that note and hand it to [me] to read.”
Photofest The original draft of the screenplay ended with Claude Rains, not Bogart, saying “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” and Bogart replying, “Yes, but don’t forget you still owe me 10,000 francs.”
Photofest According to Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan was so self-conscious about faking an orgasm, director Rob Reiner faked “an orgasm that King Kong would be jealous of” to make her relax.
Photofest Heath Ledger’s brilliantly twisted delivery may account for why this line finished No. 1 among 20- to 29-year-old voters.
Photofest Mandy Patinkin has said that this line — by far the most famous he’s ever uttered — gets repeated back to him by fans at least two or three times a day.
Photofest One of the most misquoted lines in movie history, right up there with “Play it again, Sam.” The real line has no “Luke” in it.
Photofest Edward Norton and Brad Pitt took their preparation for Fight Club seriously. Both took lessons in boxing, tae kwon do, grappling and studied hours of UFC programming. Pitt even visited a dentist to have his front tooth chipped. They also almost didn’t get the roles: Matt Damon and Sean Penn were considered for The Narrator, but David Fincher wanted Norton, as he was impressed with his performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt. One producer has his eye on Russell Crowe for Tyler Durden, but another producer overruled him.
Courtesy of Still Moving The film adaption took a lot of liberties with L. Frank Baum’s 1900 fantasy novel. The filmmakers did, however, take this jewel straight from the book.
Photofest Robert De Niro improvised the line. The script simply said, “Travis speaks to himself in the mirror.” Writer Paul Schrader told the actor his character was just “a little kid playing with guns and acting tough.”
Photofest Casablanca has the most quotes in the top 100. In addition to this one there are Casablanca lines at Nos. 2, 15, 16 and 52.
Photofest Some variation of this line appears in all three Godfather movies. Screenwriter Mario Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola were on opposite coasts when they were co-writing the script for the first film — Puzo in New York City, Coppola in San Francisco — and they literally mailed drafts back and forth to each other.
Photofest Since Dorothy first uttered it 77 years ago, this line has popped up in countless TV shows and movies, from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to Avatar, from Grey’s Anatomy to Gilmore Girls. Not to mention Jo Dee Messina’s 1996 hit “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore.”
Photofest Several characters say this line in the original movie, but surprisingly not Obi-Wan Kenobi, who doesn’t utter it until 2002’s Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Courtesy of Universal “[Richard] Zanuck and [David] Brown were very stingy producers and everyone kept telling them ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat,’” recalls Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb (who moved in with director Steven Spielberg for four months to work on the shooting script). “It became a catchphrase for anytime anything went wrong — whether lunch was late or if the swells were rocking the camera.”
Photofest The Japanese version of the line — "Kimi no hitomi ni kanpai’’ — literally translates as, “Cheers to your eyes.” Manako Ihaya of the American Translators Association calls it “a classic example of a good movie script translation” for its ability to capture the nuance of the English for the Japanese audience.
Photofest Two months before the movie’s release, censors demanded that “damn” be dropped. The producers came up with 22 variations of the line, including “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a whoop,” before the censors relented and allowed the “damn” to stay.