Movie Speech: Life Stinks

I like some of Mel Brooks stuff and yet find other material by him tedious. However, the movie Life Stinks, in my view, is brilliant. If you haven't yet seen it, go out and rent it and don't read any further, there are spoilers ahead.

In the movie Brooks plays Goddard Bolt, the world's richest man, who wagers that he can survive in the ghetto for a month without his resources, wealth and identity.

Whilst there he meets and falls in love with Molly, a bag lady, played by Lesley Anne Warren. The street people call him Pepto, the name left on his forehead from the ink when he sleeps on a piece of Pepto Bismol cardboard on his first night in the slums.

The following scene is where he is in a coma in hospital and close to death:

Molly:

Pepto, I know you want to give up, but you're wrong. Even without money, life is good. No? What about when you didn't eat for two days and then you had your first big meal at the mission? Wasn't that good? Remember the other night when we drank champagne and danced and rolled around in rags? I know they’re only moments but that’s all life is, just a bunch of moments. Most of them are lousy but once in a while you steal a good one. Come on, come on back to me. Don’t be such a selfish bastard. You’re the only person I can stand. Don’t leave me. I love you. Please, don’t leave me.

Pepto:

(Coming out of his coma):

Molly, you’re crying. What happened? Somebody die?

Molly: 

Somebody lived.

Speech: The Hindenburg Disaster / Herbert Morrison

Today’s speech is a departure from movie speeches.  It is a speech with which many will be familiar, the commentary by Herbert Morrison of the destruction of the airship Hindenburg.

The film and audio can be seen at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F54rqDh2mWA

Movie Speech: The American President

Made in 1995, The American President is a romantic comedy with Michael Douglas portraying US President Andrew Shepherd and Annette Benning playing Sydney Ellen Wade, a lobbyist. Shepherd, a widower, falls in love with Sydney Wade when she lobbies to have a crime control bill passed.

With an election in the offing, Presidential hopeful Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfus) uses the relationship to attack Shepherd, including releasing to the press photos of Sydney Wade at a demonstration years ago where an American flag was burnt. She was an activist and is a member of the ACLU. Rumson also publicly criticises the relationship, intimating that Sydney Wade has loose morals. Each public utterance by Rumson is concluded by the words “I’m Bob Rumson and I’m running for President.”

Shepherd refuses to respond to the personal attacks, maintaining that he does not want to get in the gutter with Rumson arguing such matters. He prefers dignified silence. His popularity declines and, to secure votes for passage of a bill that he wants, he breaks his agreement with Sydney Wade relative to passage of her crime bill. She is fired by the people who had engaged her as a lobbyist and she breaks it off with Shepherd.

In the following scene, President Shepherd, having lost Sydney, having supported a bill he does not believe in whilst having dumped a bill that had merit, delivers a speech in the Press Room different to the speech he has prepared:

Movie Speech: Shawshank Redemption

Morgan Freeman portrays Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding in the 1994 flick Shawshank Redemption, a story set around young Andy Dufresne, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947 for the murder of his wife and her lover. Notwithstanding the grim life in Shawshank Prison and that he is innocent, Andy maintains hope and his dreams.

Red is a fellow inmate and the prison “fixer”. He is serving a life sentence for murder and at various parole hearings he tries to convince the Parole Board of his rehabilitation, his contrition, that he will not offend again and of his sincerity. Each time his parole form is stamped "Rejected".

In 1967 he comes up for parole again…

Movie Speech: The Matrix

For those who have not yet seen The Matrix trilogy, it concerns the reality of our world but not as we know it, that being only an implanted illusion. The reality is that the world is a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines which live off of their body heat and imprison their minds within the artificial reality, known as the Matrix. The agents of the Matrix are led by Agent Smith, played superbly by our own Hugo Weaving. Here he speaks to Neo, a hacker who is awakened to the real world and who becomes involved in a rebellion…

"I’d like to share with you a revelation I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its 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. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we... are the cure."

Movie Speech: Dogma

In the film "Dogma", Cardinal Glick holds a press conference to announce a proposed revitalisation of the Catholic Church with a new publicity campaign...

"Thank you, Thank you. Now we all know how the majority and the media in this country view the Catholic Church. They think of us as a passe, archaic institution. People find the Bible obtuse, even hokey. Now, in an effort to disprove all that the church has appointed this year as a time of renewal both of faith and of style. For example, the crucifix. While it has been a time-honored symbol of our faith, Holy Mother Church has decided to retire this highly recognisable yet wholly depressing image of our Lord, crucified. Christ didn't come to earth to give us the willies. He came to help us out. He was a booster, and i'ts with that take on our Lord in mind that we've come up with a new, more inspiring symbol. So, it is with great pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the "Catholicism Wow!" campaign will unveil over the next year, I give you....The Buddy Christ. That's not the sanctioned term we're using for the symbol. Just something we've been kicking around the office. But look at it: Doesn't it pop? Buddy Christ."

Movie Speech:Love Actually

Hugh Grant plays David, the newly elected Prime Minister of England, in Love Actually. The movie is a “romantic comedy” (translation: chick flick) but don’t let that put you off. It may not have Arnie or Sly in it but I enjoyed it nonetheless, as much on subsequent viewings as on the first.

The following voice over by Hugh Grant opens the movie during the credits, delivered with views of the arrivals terminal at London's Heathrow Airport where people are greeting each other, hugging and kissing:

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."

Movie Speech: The Princess Bride

(Another Fathers Day posting).

Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) is a character in a wonderful movie The Princess Bride. At the point when he and the Dread Pirate Roberts propose to fight with swords, Inigo asks whether his opponent has six fingers on his right hand. He does not. Inigo explains that his father, a great sword-maker, had been commissioned by a 6 fingered man to make a sword. His father slaved at the work for a year, then the 6 fingered man offered one tenth of the agreed price. When his father refused, the 6 fingered man slashed his father through the heart. Inigo, who was eleven at the time, fought the man but was defeated. The man left him alive and left him the sword.

Inigo Montoya: I was eleven years old. When I was strong enough, I dedicated my life to the study of fencing, so the next time we meet, I will not fail. I will go up to the six-fingered man and say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Dread Pirate Roberts: You've done nothing but study swordplay?

Movie Speech: Judgment at Nuremburg

I previously posted Judge Haywood’s verdict from Judgment at Nuremburg. The movie has numerous dramatic moments and memorable quotations but one other speech stands out, the moment when Dr Ernst Janning, Germany’s leading jurist, speaks after having remained silent throughout the trial:

“I wish to testify about the Feldenstein case because it was the most significant trial of the period. It is important not only for the tribunal to understand it, but for the whole German people. But in order to understand it, one must understand the period in which it happened.

There was a fever over the land, a fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all there was fear, fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbours, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us, because he said to us:

Movie Speech: Judgment at Nuremburg

Made in 1961 and originally written for television, the film depicts a trial at Nuremburg of certain judges who executed Nazi law. The film is based on a real trial and depicts real events in examining the issue of individual complicity in crimes committed by the state.

Burt Lancaster portrays Dr Ernst Janning, a renowned German champion of justice and judge who assisted in moulding the Ministry of Justice into an instrument of Nazism.

The trial takes place 3 years after the end of WW2, at a time when the strategic position of Berlin vis a vis the Russians makes it important for the US to have German support. Judge Haywood and the other judges receive pressure to deliver favourable verdicts and sentences for the defendants so as not to alienate German support for the US.

Movie Speech: Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Gunnery Sgt. Hartman's (R. Lee Ermy) degrading, intimidating introductory speech to new inducted recruits at Parris Island:

"If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human, fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganised grabastic pieces of amphibian shit. Because I am hard you will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard, but I am fair! There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?"