They’ve got a little list
The AFI has their latest list of best-loved moments from the movies; this time it’s quotes, memorable lines of dialogue. Notice a few things. First of all, nowhere on this list will you find the names of the screenwriters who, in most cases, thought up those memorable lines of dialogue.
Also, I have this weird, maybe snobby, idea that lines that originated in other forms, like, say, “My precious” from The Two Towers, shouldn’t have been included. That line was famous the world over years before Peter Jackson had Andy Sirkus put on his motion-capture suit. And crediting the Abbott & Costello movie The Naughty Nineties with “Who’s on first?”
Still, some pretty good lines. I love that one of Aaron Sorkin’s is included–“You can’t handle the truth,” of course. And they got what may be the greatest “curtain” line in movie history: “Well, nobody’s perfect,” from Some Like It Hot.
My runner-up for best curtain line in a film, BTW, did not make the list but by coincidence also involves Jack Lemmon–
“It is I, Ensign Pulver! I just threw your potted plant overboard. Now what’s all this crud about no movie tonight?”
–from Mr. Roberts. That one’s even better in the “uncensored” version from the original play, though.
I don’t know if I would have chosen the particular line from Psycho they did. I’ve always been fonder of “My mother…what is the phrase…my mother isn’t quite herself these days.”
But I can’t believe a line from Dirty Dancing made it in…
