• I’m the lady who works at Paramount all day. . . and Fox all night.
• I always save one boyfriend for a rainy day. . . and another in case it doesn’t rain.
• Sex is an emotion in motion. . . Love is what you make it and who you make it with.
1945 MILDRED PIERCE
MONTE
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to what he’s been thinking about all winter.
Dir: Michael Curtiz • Scr: Ranald MacDougall • Based on a novel by James M. Cain • Cast: Zachary Scott (Monte Beragon)
1946 THE BIG SLEEP
MARLOWE
She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
Dir: Howard Hawks • Scr: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman • Based on a novel by Raymond Chandler • Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Philip Marlowe)
Hawks claims that when producer Jack Warner gave him $50,000 [$600,000] to buy the rights to The Big Sleep he paid Chandler $5,000 [$60,000] and kept the rest for himself. Bogart and Bacall argued for years about whose idea it had been for Marlowe to adopt his flustered disguise, conveniently forgetting that Chandler’s novel already contained the line: ‘I had my horn-rimmed glasses on. I put my voice high and let a bird twitter in it.’
1946 GILDA
Two lovers meet again years after their acrimonious split.
GILDA
You do hate me, don’t you, Johnny?
JOHNNY
I don’t think you have any idea of how much.
GILDA
Hate is a very exciting emotion. Haven’t you noticed? Very exciting. I hate you too, Johnny. I hate you so much I think I’m going to die from it. Darling...
They kiss passionately.
I think I’m going to die from it.
Dir: Charles Vidor • Scr: Marion Parsonnet, E. A. Ellington • Cast: Rita Hayworth (Gilda Mundson Farrell), Glenn Ford (Johnny Farrell)
1955 THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
Sherman confesses to his analyst that he is restless in his marriage.
DR BRUBAKER
When something itches, my dear sir, the natural tendency is to scratch.
SHERMAN
Last night I scratched.
Dir: Billy Wilder • Scr: Billy Wilder, George Axelrod • Based on a play by George Axelrod • Cast: Oskar Homolka (Dr Brubaker), Tom Ewell (Richard Sherman)
1959 PILLOW TALK
Jan shares a telephone line with Brad Allen, a relentless womanizer.
JAN
Mr Allen, this may come as a shock to you, but there are some men who don’t end every sentence with a proposition.
Dir: Michael Gordon • Scr: Stanley Shapiro, Maurice Richlin • Cast: Doris Day (Jan Morrow)
1960 PEEPING TOM
Lewis, a psychopathic photographer, is interviewed for a job shooting glamour pictures.
MR PETERS
Got a question for you. Which magazines sell the most copies?
MARK
Those with girls on the front covers and no front covers on the girls.
Dir: Michael Powell • Scr: Leo Marks • Cast: Bartlett Mullins (Mr Peters), Karlheinz Böhm (Mark Lewis)
Writer Leo Marks was a noted cryptographer during the Second World War. The thriller explored many of Freud’s theories in a sophisticated but shocking manner; censors savaged the released version and the public was outraged by its subject matter. The furore destroyed Powell’s hitherto glittering career, although the film is now hailed as a masterpiece. As Powell noted ruefully in his autobiography, ‘I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it.’ Peeping Tom remains banned in Finland to this day.
1963 HUD
Ruthless hedonist Hud takes a single-minded approach in matters of love.
HUD
The only question I ever ask any woman is ‘What time is your husband coming home?’
Dir: Martin Ritt • Scr: Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr • Based on a novel by Larry McMurtry • Cast: Paul Newman (Hud Bannon)
1975 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
McMurphy has been undergoing electroconvulsive therapy against his will.
MCMURPHY
They was giving me ten thousand watts a day, you know, and I’m hot to trot. The next woman takes me on’s gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars!
Dir: Miloš Forman • Scr: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman • Based on a novel by Ken Kesey • Cast: Jack Nicholson (Randle ‘Mac’ McMurphy)
1983 SCARFACE
Tony dances with Elvira but grows frustrated as she resists his advances.
TONY
Hey baby, what is your problem? Huh, you got a problem? You’re good looking, you got a beautiful body, beautiful legs, beautiful face, all these guys in love with you. Only you got a look in your eye like you haven’t been fucked in a year.
Dir: Brian De Palma • Scr: Oliver Stone • Based on a 1932 film of the same name, and on a novel by Armitage Trail • Cast: Al Pacino (Tony Montana)
1987 PERSONAL SERVICES
After a raid on her brothel, Christine Painter is interviewed by police.
CHRISTINE
I’m responsible, not the men. You can’t expect the men to be responsible. When the balls are full, the brain is empty.
Dir: Terry Jones • Scr: David Leland • Cast: Julie Walters (Christine Painter)
1988 A FISH CALLED WANDA
Repressed English laywer Archie finds himself so in love with Wanda that he throws caution to the wind.
ARCHIE
Wanda, do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone ‘Are you married?’ and hearing ‘My wife left me this morning,’ or saying, uh, ‘Do you have children?’ and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday. You see, Wanda, we’re all terrified of embarrassment. That’s why we’re so. . . dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know - we have these piles of corpses to dinner. But you’re alive, God bless you, and I want to be, I’m so fed up with all this. I want to make love with you, Wanda. I’m a good lover — at least I used to be, back in the early fourteenth century. Can we go to bed?
Dir: Charles Crichton, John Cleese (uncredited) • Scr: John Cleese, Charles Crichton • Cast: John Cleese (Archie Leach)
Cleese named his character Archibald Leach, the real name of screen idol Cary Grant. When an interviewer once offered that ‘Everybody would like to be Cary Grant’, Grant reputedly replied: ‘So would I.’ He also decried the many rumours about his reputation, saying: ‘Hell, if I’d jumped on all the dames I’m supposed to have jumped on, I’d have had no time to go fishing.’
1989 WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...
Meeting by chance, old acquaintances Harry and Sally seem unsure how things stand between them.
HARRY
You realize, of course, that we could never be friends.
SALLY
Why not?
HARRY
What I’m saying is, and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form, is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
SALLY
That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
HARRY
No, you don’t.
SALLY
Yes, I do.
HARRY
No, you don’t.
SALLY
Yes, I do.
HARRY
You only think you do.
SALLY
You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
HARRY
No, what I’m saying is they all want to have sex with you.
SALLY
They do not.
HARRY
Do too.
SALLY
How do you know?
HARRY
Because no man can be friends with a woman th
at he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
SALLY
So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
HARRY
No. You pretty much want to nail them too.
SALLY
What if they don’t want to have sex with you?
HARRY
Doesn’t matter, because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that’s the end of the story.
SALLY
Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
HARRY
I guess not.
SALLY
That’s too bad. You were the only person that I knew in New York.
Dir: Rob Reiner • Scr: Nora Ephron • Cast: Billy Crystal (Harry Burns), Meg Ryan (Sally Albright)
According to screenwriter Nora Ephron, the infamous ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ line was actually suggested by Billy Crystal.
1990 PRETTY WOMAN
A high-class call girl negotiates her nightly fee with an attractive client.
VIVIAN
I would have stayed for two thousand.
EDWARD
I would have paid four.
Dir: Garry Marshall • Scr: J. F. Lawton • Cast: Julia Roberts (Vivian Ward), Richard Gere (Edward Lewis)
The modern Cinderella story struck a chord with many women – but not all. As Laney Boggs says in She’s All That (1999): ‘I feel just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. You know, except for the whole hooker thing.’
The studio didn’t initially want to cast Julia Roberts as Vivian; along the way they considered Meg Ryan, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner, Debra Winger, Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher, Bo Derek, Kelly McGillis, Melanie Griffith, Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, Madonna, Jamie Lee Curtis, Emma Thompson, Rosanna Arquette, Heather Locklear, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack, Phoebe Cates, Elisabeth Shue, Tatum O’Neal, Bridget Fonda, Lori Loughlin, Diane Lane and Justine Bateman.
1990 WILD AT HEART
Romantic Southern outlaw Sailor Ripley has a way with words.
SAILOR
Man, I had a boner with a capital ‘O’.
Dir: David Lynch • Scr: David Lynch • Based on a novel by Barry Gifford • Cast: Nicolas Cage (Sailor Ripley)
A FONT FOR SCHMUCKS
Producer Jack Warner (1892–1978) once dismissively referred to the staff contracted to work at his studio: ‘Actors? Schmucks. Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods.’ (The latter was a famous brand of manual typewriter.) Warner reputedly demanded his team deliver a minimum number of pages a week and used to stand outside the writers’ building ready to burst in if he did not hear the reassuring clack of machinery and the familiar carriage return bell.
It was during Warner’s heyday in the 1930s that the screenplay format took its enduring shape and its conventions remain today. Fifty years after the widespread acceptance of the electric typewriter (and thirty years after the personal computer became commonplace), the typeface used a century ago is still used by the vast majority of film writers.
The original font emulating the manuscript look for printing was designed by Howard Kettler in 1955. Originally named ‘Messenger’ it was finally christened ‘Courier’, as Kettler explained: ‘A letter can be [from] an ordinary messenger, or it can be [from a] courier, which radiates dignity, prestige, and stability.’ His creation endured as the standard typeface for the US State Department until 2004, doubtless lending the font an air of respectability to modern readers.
One of its advantages for the film industry is that it is monospaced – that is, each letter takes up the same width on the page, which regularizes formatting and word counts. The result gives fifty-five average length lines per page, approximating handily to a rule of thumb that each sheet represents a minute of screen time.
A further commonplace is that a one-sentence scene with traditional spacing and numbering takes up an eighth of a page, and thus represents around seven seconds of action. Sometimes writers resent the notion that their work can be mathematically analysed and cheekily compress complicated scenes to frustrate assistant directors. An action-packed war episode might read as follows:
38. DAY EXTERIOR — PEARL HARBOR — QUAYSIDE — (1/8 page)
CIVILIANS race for cover and hundreds of NAVY GUNNERS open fire as the cloudless sky is filled with JAPANESE AIRCRAFT releasing TORPEDOES and BOMBS on the entire US FLEET.
1992 WAYNE’S WORLD
Two teenagers recording a home video introduce a tribute to the model Claudia Schiffer.
WAYNE
Schwing!
GARTH
Schwing!
WAYNE
Tent pole! She’s a babe!
GARTH
She’s magically babelicious.
WAYNE
She tested very high on the strokability scale.
Dir: Penelope Spheeris • Scr: Mike Myers, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner • Cast: Mike Myers (Wayne Campbell), Dana Carvey (Garth Algar)
1992 BASIC INSTINCT
Gus worries his detective partner is allowing an attractive suspect to distract him.
GUS
Well, she got that magna cum laude pussy on her that done fried up your brain.
Dir: Paul Verhoeven • Scr: Joe Eszterhas • Cast: George Dzundza (Gus)
Joe Eszterhas claimed to have written the uncommissioned script in thirteen days; a bidding war between studios raised the price of the screenplay to an unprecedented $3 million [$5 million]. Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven fell out several times during production over the edgy material, and the shoot was picketed by San Francisco’s gay community who objected to the crude depiction of lesbian and bisexual characters. The American public had no such reservations; the film took $350 million [$580 million] at the box office.
1992 SCENT OF A WOMAN
A retired US Army Ranger refuses to let his blindness compromise his passion for life.
FRANK
Ooh, but I still smell her. . . Women! What could you say? Who made ’em? God must have been a fuckin’ genius. The hair — they say the hair is everything, you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls, just wanted to go to sleep forever? Or lips — and when they touched yours were like that first swallow of wine after you just crossed the desert. Tits. Hoo-hah! Big ones, little ones, nipples starin’ right out at ya, like secret searchlights. Mmm. Legs. I don’t care if they’re Greek columns or secondhand Steinways. What’s between ’em - passport to heaven. I need a drink. Yes, Mr Simms, there’s only two syllables in this whole wide world worth hearin’: pussy. Hah! Are you listenin’ to me, son? I’m givin’ ya pearls here.
Dir: Martin Brest • Scr: Bo Goldman • Based on the film Profumo di donna by Ruggero Maccari, Dino Risi, and on a novel by Giovanni Arpino • Cast: Al Pacino (Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade)
1994 NAKED GUN 331⁄3 : THE FINAL INSULT
Hapless detective Frank Drebin resists an invitation to a ménage à trois.
FRANK
I like my sex the way I play basketball — one on one, with as little dribbling as possible.
Dir: Peter Segal • Scr: Pat Proft, David Zucker, Robert LoCash • Based on a TV series by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker • Cast: Leslie Nielsen (Lieutenant Frank Drebin)
1997 BOOGIE NIGHTS
A porn film producer discovers a huge new male talent.
JACK
I got a feeling that behind those jeans is something wonderful just waiting to get out.
Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson • Scr: Paul Thomas Anderson • Cast: Burt Reynolds (Jack Horner)
The film opens with an unbroken shot lasting almost three minutes. Although Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil (1958) pioneered this technique on a single exterior set, Paul Thomas Anderson’s camera move sweeps from a real Los Angeles cityscape through traffic shots and crowds before entering a nightclub where it introduces us to almost every key character in the subsequent story on the pac
ked dance floor.
1988 COLORS
An over-confident young cop offers his wisdom about women.
DANNY
You don’t wanna get laid, man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you gotta talk to ’em.
Dir: Dennis Hopper • Scr: Michael Schiffer • Cast: Sean Penn (Danny McGavin)
The story is set in south-central Los Angeles; the producers hired real gang members as guardians as well as actors but two of them were shot during filming.
1999 ANALYZE THIS
A Mafia boss forces a psychoanalyst to take him on as a client.
DR SOBEL
What happened with your wife last night?
PAUL
I wasn’t with my wife, I was with my girlfriend.
DR SOBEL
Are you having marriage problems?
PAUL
No.
DR SOBEL
Then why do you have a girlfriend?
PAUL
What, are you gonna start moralizing on me?
DR SOBEL
No, I’m not — I’m just trying to understand. Why do you have a girlfriend?
PAUL
I do things with her I can’t do with my wife.
DR SOBEL
Why can’t you do them with your wife?
PAUL
Hey, that’s the mouth she kisses my kids goodnight with! What are you, crazy?
Dir: Harold Ramis • Scr: Kenneth Lonergan, Peter Tolan, Harold Ramis • Cast: Billy Crystal (Dr Ben Sobel), Robert De Niro (Paul Vitti)
2000 HIGH FIDELITY
Rob cannot shake the thought that his ex-girlfriend is now with a new partner.
ROB
All the Best Lines Page 12