Dir: Allison Anders • Scr: Allison Anders • Based on a novel by Richard Peck • Cast: Donovan Leitch (Darius)
1994 THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
A prisoner risks punishment by broadcasting an opera aria over the workyard loudspeakers.
RED
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 grey 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.
Dir: Frank Darabont • Scr: Frank Darabont • Based on a novella by Stephen King • Cast: Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding)
Although the film did not prove a hit in cinemas, it has grown hugely in popularity and is now ranked number one in the Internet Movie Database readers’ poll. Since one of the inmates keeps a pet crow, the American Humane Association was present during the shoot to make sure it was properly treated; they approved of the bird’s conditions but objected to the scene where the inmate feeds it a maggot on the grounds that it was cruel to the bug. Happily, a maggot that had died from natural causes was discovered and used instead.
1995 THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
A passionate affair causes a photographer to review his life.
ROBERT
The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out, but glad I had them.
Dir: Clint Eastwood • Scr: Richard LaGravenese • Based on a novel by Robert James Waller • Cast: Clint Eastwood (Robert Kincaid)
IN THE BEGINNING
After the Twentieth Century-Fox searchlight has swept the sky, the MGM lion has roared and (for those of us old enough to remember) Rank’s sculpted bodybuilder has beaten the vast gong an expectant hush settles over the audience as we await the first moments of the film. No wonder screenwriters feel the pressure of capturing our attention in the very opening scene, and actors vie for the juiciest lines for us to recite when the lights come up. Here are some of the most captivating opening salvos:
Rosebud...
Citizen Kane (1941)
This is the universe. Big, isn’t it?
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm — Constantinople suited me better.
The Third Man (1949)
ANTONIUS: Who are you?
DEATH: I am Death.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?
Love Story (1969)
I believe in America.
The Godfather (1972)
I am not a bum. I’m a jerk. I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beautiful woman. Now I only have two things: my friends and. . . uh. . . my thermos.
The Jerk (1979)
Saigon. . . Shit. I’m still only in Saigon. Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said ‘yes’ to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
I was twelve going on thirteen first time I saw a dead human being.
Stand By Me (1986)
Today is a good day to die.
Flatliners (1990)
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.
Goodfellas (1990)
Oh, fuck! Fuck!
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Come to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighbourhood; this is my street; this is my life. I am forty-two years old; in less than a year I will be dead. Of course I don’t know that yet, and in a way, I am dead already.
American Beauty (1999)
What came first, the music or the misery?
High Fidelity (2000)
The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
I only ever met one man I wouldn’t wanna fight.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Are you watching closely?
The Prestige (2006)
There’s a hundred thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five-minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you’re on your own. Do you understand?
Drive (2011)
1996 TRAINSPOTTING
A junkie celebrates the thrill of oblivion.
RENTON
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life. . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?
Dir: Danny Boyle • Scr: John Hodge • Based on a novel by Irvine Welsh • Cast: Ewan McGregor (Mark ‘Rent Boy’ Renton)
The first twenty minutes of the Edinburgh-set film had to be redubbed for American audiences. Director Danny Boyle had hoped to license the theme music to Mission: Impossible for one sequence until he discovered it would have cost three times the production’s budget.
1999 THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY
A New York lavatory attendant passes himself off as a well-to-do Princeton student.
RIPLEY
I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.
Dir: Anthony Minghella • Scr: Anthony Minghella • Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith • Cast: Matt Damon (Tom Ripley)
1999 THE MATRIX
Cyber-warrior Trinity persuades Neo to join forces with the mysterious Orpheus, who leads the fight against the machines that have enslaved humanity.
TRINITY
I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. . . why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit by your compute
r. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.
NEO
What is the Matrix?
TRINITY
The answer is out there, Neo, and it’s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.
Dir: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski • Scr: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski • Cast: Keanu Reeves (Neo), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity)
1999 THE SIXTH SENSE
A child psychologist tries to help a young boy who is visited by ghosts.
COLE
I see dead people.
MALCOLM
In your dreams?
Cole shakes his head.
MALCOLM
While you’re awake?
Cole nods.
MALCOLM
Dead people like, in graves? In coffins?
COLE
Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.
MALCOLM
How often do you see them?
COLE
All the time. They’re everywhere.
Dir: M. Night Shyamalan • Scr: M. Night Shyamalan • Cast: Bruce Willis (Dr Malcolm Crowe), Haley Joel Osment (Cole Sear)
Director M. Night Shyamalan described the project to his backers as a cross between The Exorcist and Ordinary People. Toni Collette (playing Cole’s mother) was so immersed in the real emotions of the family that she failed to realize the film was a horror story.
2000 BILLY ELLIOT
A young boy growing up in a tough mining town fights to protect his dream.
BILLY
I don’t want a childhood. I want to be a ballet dancer.
Dir: Stephen Daldry • Scr: Lee Hall • Cast: Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot)
2004 I, ROBOT
Detective Spooner questions Sonny, a robot, reluctant to believe it is capable of independent thought.
SPOONER
Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you — you’re just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
SONNY
Can you?
Dir: Alex Proyas • Scr: Jeff Vintar, Akiva Goldsman • Based on short stories by Isaac Asimov • Cast: William Smith (Detective Del Spooner), Alan Tudyk (Sonny)
2006 THE DEPARTED
Frank Costello, a Boston mobster, explains his power over the community.
COSTELLO
I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.
Dir: Martin Scorsese • Scr: William Monahan • Cast: Jack Nicholson (Frank Costello)
When Martin Scorsese received a Director’s Guild of America award for the film, he claimed: ‘this is the first movie I have ever done with a plot’. Jack Nicholson relished the opportunity to play Frank Costello, describing his character as ‘the pure incarnation of evil’. With Scorsese’s approval he improvised much of his performance, including the scene in a porn theatre where he startles Matt Damon by pretending to ejaculate on him with a dildo.
2008 SEX AND THE CITY
Carrie sets the scene for the romantic adventures of her group of friends.
CARRIE
We were perfectly happy until we decided to live happily ever after.
Dir: Michael Patrick King • Scr: Michael Patrick King • Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw)
2009 THE ROAD
A father tries to find a place of safety for his son in a hostile post-apocalyptic world.
THE MAN
I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means you’re still fighting and you’re still alive. It’s when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry.
Dir: John Hillcoat • Scr: Joe Penhall • Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy • Cast: Viggo Mortensen (The Man)
2010 ALICE IN WONDERLAND
ALICE
This is impossible.
MAD HATTER
Only if you believe it is.
Dir: Tim Burton • Scr: Linda Woolverton • Based on books by Lewis Carroll • Cast: Mia Wasikowska (Alice), Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter)
The closest reference to this dialogue in Lewis Carroll’s novel seems to be Alice’s remark that ‘Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
The Wizard of Oz (1939) delighted audiences with its early use of the Technicolor film process.
Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002). Despite accepting relatively few film roles he is the only male actor to have won three Oscars.
Billy Wilder (right), a director noted for his wit both on screen and off, is photographed here with his longtime collaborator, the writer I. A. L. Diamond.
Friends
1935 THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
THE MONSTER
Alone, bad. Friend, good.
Dir: James Whale • Scr: William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston • Based on a novel by Mary Shelley • Cast: Boris Karloff (The Monster)
Boris Karloff’s costume for the monster was so hot that he sweated off 10kg over the course of the shoot. The actor was so famous at the time that his screen credit was simply his surname.
1940 THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
Tracy Lord needs to get married; tabloid reporter Macaulay Connor chivalrously offers his hand.
MACAULAY
It can’t be anything like love, can it?
TRACY
No, no, it can’t be.
MACAULAY
Would it be inconvenient?
TRACY
Terribly.
Dir: George Cukor • Scr: Donald Ogden Stewart • Based on a play by Philip Barry • Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Tracy Lord), James Stewart (Macaulay ‘Mike’ Connor)
George Cukor (1899–1983) was famous both as a sympathetic director of actors and a generous, loyal colleague. During the filming of Cukor’s Camille (1936), Greta Garbo was confused to notice the same actor taking several different background roles in various scenes. She asked Cukor: ‘Who is that big man, and what part is he playing?’ The director replied: ‘His name is Rex Evans, and he’s playing the part of a friend who needs a job.’ Evans eventually appeared in ten Cukor pictures.
Despite his renown as a difficult artist who resisted creative discussions with his actors, Cukor candidly confessed: ‘Give me a good script, and I’ll be a hundred times better.’
1950 ALL ABOUT EVE
An ambitious Broadway producer kids himself — and his colleagues — about his motives.
MAX
Let the rest of the world beat their brains out for a buck. It’s friends that count. And I got friends.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz • Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz • Based on a story by Mary Orr • Cast: Gregory Ratoff (Max Fabian)
1956 THE KILLING
Johnny plans a racetrack heist with his accomplice Joe.
JOHNNY
A friend of mine will be stopping by tomorrow to drop something off for me. He’s a cop.
JOE
A cop? That’s a funny kind of a friend.
JOHNNY
Well, he’s a funny kind of a cop.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick • Scr: Stanley Kubrick, Jim Thompson • Based on a novel by Lionel White • Cast: Sterling Hayden (Johnny Clay), Tito Vuolo (Joe Piano)
The film tells the story of the robbery from multiple points of view, but the producers forced Kubrick to cut a more linear version; the result was even more confusing, so they relented and the original edit was restored. When they insisted on a narrator to clarify the plot, Kubrick wrote a voice-over that was full of deliberate errors. The film’s style proved a huge influence on later non-linear movies like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Magnolia (1999).
1969 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
Butch and Sundance are sharing a cabin – and a friendship – with Etta.
SUNDANCE KID
Hey, what are you doing?
BUTCH CASSIDY
Stealing your woman.
Sundance thinks about it.
SUNDANCE KID
Take her.
He sighs.
Take her.
BUTCH CASSIDY
Well, you’re a romantic bastard, I’ll give you that.
Dir: George Roy Hill • Scr: William Goldman • Cast: Robert Redford (The Sundance Kid), Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy)
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING
William Goldman (b. 1931) is the screenwriter’s screenwriter, responsible for All the President’s Men (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Marathon Man (1976) and The Princess Bride (1987). Originally a successful novelist, he spent over a decade researching the idea for his first major screenplay – ‘The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy’. He sold it as a ‘spec’ (speculative or uncommissioned) script for $400,000 [$2.5 million] and soon attracted Steve McQueen and Paul Newman for the lead roles. When McQueen dropped out and Robert Redford was approached, the title’s names were fortuitously reversed since Redford was a virtual unknown. The film put both Goldman and Redford firmly on the map, winning four Oscars in 1971; it also garnered nine BAFTA awards, a record that still stands.
Goldman’s delightful and self-deprecating memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), is not a formal writing guide but contains plenty of wisdom about the process and pitfalls of delivering a script. It is unafraid to deal with Hollywood in the same way Hollywood frequently deals with its writers:
All the Best Lines Page 3