Movie dialogue

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“You know that great John Goodman line from 'The Big Lebowski’?” Apollonia asked me recently.

 

 

I've only seen “Lebowski” once.  “Which line?” I asked.

 

 

“You remember,” she said:

 

 

“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”

 

 

Okay.  That's pretty good.

 

 

So often, a really good line of movie dialogue needs a lot of setup.  In the movie “Jumbo,” for example. Jimmy Durante is trying to hide an elephant.  It's right behind him!  The policeman says something like, “We're here to take the elephant.”  And Durante (with the elephant right behind him, remember) says, with great innocence:

 

 

“What elephant?”

 

 

Sometimes it's tone of voice.  The young Hayley Mills, in “The Trouble with Angels,” was able to deliver this line at least twice, in an unforgettably passionate teenage British-accented voice:

 

 

“I've got the most scathingly brilliant idea!”

 

 

Maybe Katherine Hepburn as the scheming Eleanor of Aquitaine in “The Lion in Winter”?:

 

 

“Of course he has a knife!  We all have knives!  It’s 1183, and we’re barbarians!”

 

 

You've got to ask yourself: will it mean anything to the people who haven't seen the movie?  We movie-lovers are, after all, a very odd lot.  We speak in code, like any mysterious medieval guild. 

 

 

Okay.  “Sleeper,” with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.  He's wearing this ridiculous inflatable suit, and she's riding on his back as they speedboat across the river, and the police are shooting at them as they're escaping, and she's crying and pounding her fists on his back and shrieking: “I hate you I hate you I hate you!”  And Woody says, very calmly:

 

 

“Try not to get upset.”

 

 

Perfect.

 

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