The Greatest Movie Speeches

Anthony Hopkins' winning speech in "Amistad" was absolutely fabulous.

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ALL WE DO OUR CHILDREN WOULD LIVE AFTER TOMORROW. IT IS OUR RESPONSIBLITY AND MANDATE AS ASPIRING AND PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKERS TO SET A HIGH PACE SO IT GETS HIGHER LATER.

Someone had listed the Youtube vid for this, but now it does not work.

I was unable to find an accurate version of this monologue online, so I have jotted it down real quick. Includes intro dialog.

BRODY
What’s that one?

QUINT
What?

BRODY
That one there, on your arm?

QUINT
Oh, well, that’s a tatoo. I got that removed.

HOOPER
Don’t tell me ... mother.
(laughs)

Quint places a hand on Hooper’s shoulder and gives him a solemn look.

QUINT
Hooper, that’s the USS Indianapolis.

HOOPER
(stops laughing)
You were on the Indianapolis?

BRODY
What happened?

QUINT
(monologue)
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We were comin’ back from the Island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb ... the Hiroshima bomb.
(BEAT)
Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. Ya’ kno-, ya’ know how you know that when you’re in the water Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know is that our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.
(smiles and laughs)
They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, the sharks come cruisin’ - so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, uh, kind of like old squares in a battle, like you see in the calender of the Battle of Waterloo ... and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and then he starts poundin’, hollerin’, screamin’ - sometimes the shark would go away ... and sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya’, right into you’re eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got liveless eyes, black eyes, like a dolls eyes. When he comes at you, doesn’t seem to be livin’ ... until he bites ya’ and those black eyes roll over white and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’. The ocean turns red. Despite all the poundin’ and hollerin’, they all come in and rip you to pieces. Know, by the end of that first dawn ... lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men, they averaged about six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosun’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda’ top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us - a young pilot, alot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he came in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down to start to pick us up. You know, that was the time I was the most frightened, waitin’ for my turn ... I’ll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water ... three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

- Quint’s monologue written by Howard Sackler, John Milius, and Robert Shaw.
Performed by Robert Shaw.
Transcript by GOM (me).
From the film by Steven Spielberg, JAWS (1976)

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R.I.P.

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embedding seems to have failed

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I don't know how I forgot this one.

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The argument for Jabez Stone (James Craig) against Mr. Scratch (Walter Huston) by Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) before a Jury of the Damned in The Devil and Daniel Webster aka All That Money Can Buy. Unfortunately, the beginning is at the end of one video and the rest on another. (If you want to see who the entire jury consists of, watch the entire first video.)

It starts at 8:50 here.
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It goes from the beginning to around 4:50 (Warning: this video contains the ending of the film.)
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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Possibly one of the finest monologues by an actor in the 21st Century by one of my favourite method actors.

In this scene Daniel Day Lewis' character speaks to Di Caprio's character describing who and what he is...

Here's some I haven't seen mentioned...

Unbreakable

Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it? Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb.

Now that we know who you are... I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense. In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero, and most time's they're friends, like you and me. I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr. Glass.

The Shawshank Redemption

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big ***damn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he'd been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guards simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of s*** smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

This is the first thing that immediately sprung to mind.



The Goonies (1985)

and not quite sure it counts as a speech, but



The Breakfast Club (1985)

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Tim Blake-Nelson in Syriana waxes poetic on Corruption:

"Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole? Make a name for himself? Maybe get elected some two-bit congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here? No, I tell you. No, sir! Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a ******* Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."

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replayback.com -- movies worth repeat viewing
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Any Given Sunday.

Haven't seen the movie personally but saw the clip a while ago on YouTube and thought it was worth a mention.

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This one cracks me up every time. Go Rosie!

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Under-the-radar Movie Awesomeness.
http://earlsmoviepicks.blogspot.com/

Id4

I noticed 49th Parallel (1941) was on today and managed to see this speech again:

THE ROCK, WHEN ED HARRIS TALKS ABOUT PATRIOTISM

There are obviously some the naturally fit into the film(Brando in Julius Caesar or Apoc Now for example) but quiet often I tend to view them as almost ad admission of failure, that you had to have a character stand up and explain the intensions of the film.

Coming Home

Luke's speech (Jon Voight)

You know, you want to be a part of it, patriotic, go out and get your licks in for the U.S. of A. And when you get over there, it's a totally different situation. I mean, you grow up real quick. Because all you're seeing is, um, a lot of death. And I know some of you guys are going to look at the uniformed man and you're going to remember all the films and you're going to think about the glory of other wars and think about some vague patriotic feeling and go off and fight this turkey too. And I'm telling you it ain't like it's in the movies. That's all I want to tell you, because I didn't have a choice. When I was your age, all I got was some guy standing up like that, man, giving me a lot of bull****, man, which I caught. I was really in good shape then, man. I was captain of the football team. And I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I'm here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don't feel good about it. Because there's not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I'm here to tell you, it's a lousy thing, man. I don't see any reason for it. And there's a lot of **** that I did over there that I find ****ing hard to live with. And I don't want to see people like you, man, coming back and having to face the rest of your lives with that kind of ****. It's as simple as that. I don't feel sorry for myself. I'm a lot ****ing smarter now than when I went. And I'm just telling you that there's a choice to be made here.

I would have put up the clip from the movie, but it's a spoiler and I really hope people watch that film.

It kept being my favorite speech of all time since the first time I saw it.
What a terrific performance Paddy.

I’ve always loved the opening of Annie Hall, even if it’s more of a monologue than a speech.