There's a line of dialogue I wrote for Jill Clayburgh for a CBS Movie about a woman with terminal cancer: "Dying with dignity isn't all it's cracked up to be."
I fancied it a rather memorable line, even stroked my own ego after I birthed it. As it turned out, it was memorable. For another writer. A few years later. Who used it in a similar-themed TV movie. But I never heard anyone else use it again.
Crushed would be an overstatement, but I was disappointed. Why didn't people pick up on my finely crafted bauble? I felt it sang;. It even possessed alliteration. Maybe it was the venue - the low rent district of the made-for-TV movie. Was the thematic context too depressing?. Maybe the line wasn't smart-ass enough. Romantic enough. Aggressive enough. Too many words? Perhaps it was too deep. Maybe the problem was (I'm flailing, ignoring PC here), it was uttered by an actress (More later).
But, hell, who really knows why some movie lines become memorable and others disappear into a cultural gulag, never to be heard again.
Questions, Questions, Questions
We all have our favorite lines from movies. But why are they our favorites? Do memorable quotes jump out at the audience which senses "Oh, this my life they're talking about; my song they're singing;" or do they only emerge as memorable upon reflection?
Or, do pieces of dialogue generally strike universal chords, thus rendering them memorable? Perhaps there are lines that are only memorable to a few people because they capture existential moments to which the few have become sensitized like the line in the film of Sartre's play,No Exit, "Hell is other people."
How much of quote memorability has to do with the actor and how the line is delivered? In what context? Could anyone have delivered the All About Eve line "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be bumpy night?" Or did it have to be Bette Davis
in that inimitable Davis style? And why are Clint's Harry Callahan and Arnold's "Terminator" so often quoted? It sure ain't their acting chops. Yet, they struck gold.
As mentioned in
Part 1 of this blog quote trilogy, for answers to these and other questions about movie quotes, I turned to research. My media psych students and I collected 1,083 surveys from a nation-wide, cross-section of people, soliciting their favorite movie quotes. We classified each according to frequency of citation, the kind of sentiment expressed in the quote (e.g., aggressive, romantic, sexual, sarcastic,
wisdom, inspiration, defiance, etc.), the actor who uttered it, the movie from which it originated, and other statistical delicacies. We probed the qualities that these quotes possessed that possibly made them stick in the minds and hearts of Americans? The study was published in the
Journal of Media Psychology).
Only a limited overview of the results will be reported here. Of the 5,676 quotes we collected, 2,253, or 40%, were cited only once. Clearly, there is a lot of individualism and idiosyncrasy in what people find memorable in strands of movie dialogue. But there were also over 3,400 quotes mentioned in multiples, ranging from 2 to 159. We ranked all quotes in terms of frequency of citation by several demographic groups to see if age (Young, Middle, Older) and sex affected quote preferences. They did, as the accompanying lists below indicate.
For ease of interpretation and summary, we used the "top 20" quotes for each demographic group. Here are the lists for these groups individually . Do the comparisons between groups and with your preferences.
TABLE 1 TOP 20 MOVIE QUOTES
MALES
1 I'll be back (The Terminator)
2 Go ahead, make my day (Sudden Impact)
3 Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn (Gone With the Wind)
4 Show me the money (Jerry Maguire)
5 You can't handle the truth (A Few Good Men)
6 May the force be with you (Star Wars)
7 Hasta la vista, baby (T2)
8 Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates (Forrest Gump)
9 Bond, James Bond (James Bond movies)
10 Here's looking at you, kid (Casablanca)
11 Are you talking to me? (Taxi Driver)
12 I love the smell of napalm in the morning (Apocalypse Now)
13 E.T. phone home (E. T.)
14* Yeah, baby (Austin Powers films)
14* (I'll) make him an offer he can't refuse (The Godfather)
14* I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more (Network)
15* Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night (All About Eve)
15* I coulda been a contender (On the Waterfront)
16 Play it again, Sam (Casablanca)
17 There's no place like home (The Wizard of Oz)
18 Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more (The Wizard of Oz)
19 +We don't need no stinking badges (The Treasure of Sierra Madre)
20 Round up the usual suspects (Casablanca)
+Actual quote from Treasure of Sierra Madre: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges.I don't have to show you any stinking badges."
+Actual quote from Casablanca: "Play it once, Sam, for old time's sake. Play ‘As Time Goes By' "
TABLE 2 TOP 20 MOVIE QUOTES
FEMALES
1 Show me the money (Jerry Maguire)
2 Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn (Gone With The Wind)
3 Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates (Forrest Gump)
4 I'll be back (The Terminator)
5 Hasta la vista, baby (T2)
6 There's no place like home (The Wizard of Oz)
7 Go ahead, make my day (Sudden Impact)
8 You can't handle the truth (A Few Good Men)
9 Yeah, baby (Austin Powers movies)
10 You complete me (Jerry Maguire)
11 Hakuna Matata (The Lion King)
12 Here's looking at you, kid (Casablanca)
13 You had me at hello (Jerry Maguire)
14 Oh, behave (Austin Powers)
15 Run, Forrest, run (Forrest Gump)
16 I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more (Network)
17 I vant to be alone (Grand Hotel)
18* Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night (All Above Eve)
18* To infinity and beyond (Toy Story)
19 As if (Clueless)
20* That'll do pig, that'll do (Babe)
20* Stupid is as stupid does (Forrest Gump)
20* Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more (The Wizard of Oz)
TABLE 3 TOP 20 MOVIE QUOTES
YOUNG: (UNDER THE AGE OF 26)
