1. Scent Of A Woman
A monologue from the screenplay by Bo Goldman
Slade – 1
Outta order? I’ll show you outta order! You don’t know what outta order is, Mr. Trask! I’d show you but I’m too old;
I’m too tired; I’m too f***in’ blind. If I were the man I was five years ago I’d take a FLAME-THROWER to this place!
Outta order. Who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to? I’ve been around, you know? There was a time I could see.
And I have seen boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn’t nothin’ like the sight of an amputated spirit; there is no prosthetic for that.
You think you’re merely sendin’ this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executin’ his SOUL!!
And why?! Because he’s not a Baird man! Baird men, ya hurt this boy, you’re going to be Baird Bums, the lot of ya.
And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, F*** YOU, too!
Slade – 2
I’m not finished! As I came in here, I heard those words, “cradle of leadership.” Well, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
And it has fallen here; it has fallen. Makers of men; creators of leaders; be careful what kind of leaders you’re producin’ here.
I don’t know if Charlie’s silence here today is right or wrong. I’m not a judge or jury. But I can tell you this: he won’t sell anybody out to buy his future!!
And that, my friends, is called integrity! That’s called courage! Now that’s the stuff leaders should be made of.
Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew.
But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard. Now here’s Charlie. He’s come to the crossroads.
He has chosen a path. It’s the right path. It’s a path made of principle — that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey.
You hold this boy’s future in your hands, committee. It’s a valuable future. Believe me. Don’t destroy it! Protect it.
Embrace it. It’s gonna make ya proud one day — I promise you.
2. The Shawshank Redemption
A monologue from the screenplay by Frank Darabont and Stephen King
Redding
Rehabilitated? Well, now, let me see. You know, I don’t have any idea what that means. — I know what you think it means, sonny.
To me, it’s just a made up word, a politician’s word, so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job.
What do you really wanna know? Am I sorry for what I did? here’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should.
I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him.
I wanna try to talk some sense to him — tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left.
I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullsh*t word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time.
Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a sh*t.
3. Cloud Atlas
A monologue from the screenplay by Lily Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer
Isaac Sachs
Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the Theory of Relativity and Principles of Uncertainty: phenomenon that determine the course of our lives.
Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday I believed that I would never have done what I did today.
These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish.
Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. At each point of intersection, each encounter suggests a new potential direction.
Proposition: I’ve fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her, and yet…I feel like something important has happened to me.
4. It’s A Wonderful Life
A monologue from the screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
Bailey
Just a minute – just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. Just a minute. Now, you’re right when you say my father was no business man.
I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know.
But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was —
Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself.
Isn’t that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get outta your slums, Mr. Potter.
And what’s wrong with that? Why — here, you’re all businessmen here. Don’t it make them better citizens?
Doesn’t it make them better customers? You, you said that they — What’d you say just a minute ago?
They had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what?! Until their children grow up and leave them?
Until they’re so old and broken-down that — You know how long it takes a workin’ man to save five thousand dollars?
Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.
Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?
Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle.
Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be.
5. Apollo 13
A monologue from the screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert
Jim Lovell
Uh well, I’ll tell ya, I remember this one time – I’m in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there’s no running lights on the carrier.
It was the Shrangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone… because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency.
And so it was – it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I’m lookin’ down at a big, black ocean,
so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit.
All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can’t even tell now what my altitude is. I know I’m running out of fuel, so I’m thinking about ditching in the ocean.
And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there’s this uh, there’s this green trail. It’s like a long carpet that’s just laid out right beneath me.
And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship.
And it was – it was – it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn’t shorted out, there’s no way I’d ever been able to see that.
So uh, you, uh, never know… what… what events are to transpire to get you home.
6. The Matrix Revolutions
A monologue from the screenplay by Lily and Lana Wachowski
Agent Smith
Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something?
Something more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love?
Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose.
And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love.
You must be able to see it Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting.
Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?
7. Gangs Of New York
A monologue from the screenplay by Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan, Jay C.
Bill “The Butcher” Cutting
I’m forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts.
Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue.
He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That’s what preserves the order of things.
Fear. That one tonight, who was he? A nobody. A coward. What an ignominious end that would have been.
I killed the last honorable man fifteen years ago. Since then, it’s… You seen his portrait downstairs? (pause)
Is your mouth all glued up with cunny juice? I asked you a question…. (laughs) Oh, you got a murderous rage in you, and I like it.
It’s life, boiling up inside of you. It’s good. The Priest and me, we lived by the same principles. It was only faith divided us.
He gave me this, you know. That was the finest beating I ever took. My face was pulp, my guts was pierced, and my ribs was all mashed up.
And when he came to finish me, I couldn’t look him in the eye. He spared me because he wanted me to live in shame.
This was a great man. A great man. So I cut out the eye that looked away. Sent it to him wrapped in blue paper.
I would have cut ’em both out if I could have fought him blind. Then I rose back up again with a full heart and buried him in his own blood…
He was the only man I ever killed worth remembering.
8. Cast Away
A monologue from the screenplay by William Broyles Jr.
Chuck
We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and… knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had… lost her.
‘cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something.
The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen.
So… I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me.
And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I — , I couldn’t even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing.
And that’s when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive.
Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again.
So that’s what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail.
And now, here I am. I’m back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass… And I’ve lost her all over again.
I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly. But I’m so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now.
I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?
9. Inglorious Basterds
A monologue from the screenplay by Quentin Tarantino
SS Colonel Hans Landa
Monsieur LaPadite, are you aware of the nickname the people of France have given me? … But you are aware of what they call me. …
What are you aware of? … [“The Jew Hunter.” ]… Precisely. I understand your trepidation in repeating it.
Heydrich apparently hates the moniker the good people of Prague have bestowed on him. Actually, why he would hate the name “the Hangman” is baffling to me.
It would appear he has done everything in his power to earn it. Now I, on the other hand, love my unofficial title precisely because I’ve earned it.
The feature that makes me such an effective hunter of the Jews is, as opposed to most German soldiers, I can think like a Jew where they can only think like a German.
More precisely, a German soldier. Now, if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk.
But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat.
The Fuhrer and Goebbels’ propaganda have said pretty much the same thing. But where our conclusions differ, is I don’t consider the comparison an insult.
Consider for a moment the world a rat lives in. It’s a hostile world, indeed. If a rat were to scamper through your front door, right now, would you greet it with hostility? …
Has a rat ever done anything to you to create this animosity you feel toward them?
Rats were the cause of the bubonic plague, but that’s some time ago. I propose to you any disease a rat could spread, a squirrel could equally carry.
Would you agree? Yet, I assume you don’t share the same animosity with squirrels that you do with rats, do you?
Yet, they’re both rodents, are they not? And except for the tail, they even rather look alike, don’t they?
However interesting as the thought may be, it makes not one bit of difference to how you feel. If a rat were to walk in here, right now, as I’m talking would you greet it with a saucer of your delicious milk?
I didn’t think so. You don’t like them. You don’t really know why you don’t like them. All you know is you find them repulsive.
Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look?
He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide. But there are so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide.
However, the reason the Fuhrer has brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me.
Because I’m aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity. May I smoke my pipe as well? …
Now, my job dictates that I must have my men enter your home and conduct a thorough search before I can officially cross your family’s name off my list.
And if there are any irregularities to be found, rest assured they will be. That is unless you have something to tell me that makes the conducting of a search unnecessary.
I might add, also, that any information that makes the performance of my duty easier will not be met with punishment.
Actually, quite the contrary. It will be met with reward.
And that reward will be, your family will cease to be harassed in any way by the German military during the rest of our occupation of your country.
You’re sheltering enemies of the state, are you not?
10. The Road
A monologue from the screenplay by Joe Penhall
Man
The clocks stopped at 1:17. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions.
Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day, the dead impaled on spikes along the road.
I think it’s October but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calendar for years. Each day is more gray than the one before.
It’s cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived, and all the crops are long gone.
Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees stealing cars and gangs carrying weapons.
Looking for fuel and food. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism, cannibalism is the great fear.
Mostly I’m worried about food, always food. Food and the cold and our shoes.
Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice, difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant.
And if he’s not the word of God, then God never spoke.
11. Up In The Air
A monologue from the screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
Ryan
Now, this is gonna be a little difficult, so stay with me. You have a new backpack. Only this time, I want you to fill it with people.
Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office, and then you move into the people that you trust with your most intimate secrets.
Your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, your brothers, your sisters, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
You get them into that backpack. And don’t worry. I’m not gonna ask you to light it on fire. Feel the weight of that bag.
Make no mistake – your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. Do you feel the straps cutting into your shoulders?
All those negotiations and arguments, and secrets and compromises. You don’t need to carry all that weight.
Why don’t you set that bag down?
Some animals were meant to carry each other, to live symbiotically for a lifetime – star crossed lovers, monogamous swans.
We are not those animals. The slower we move, the faster we die. We are not swans. We’re sharks.
12. To Kill A Mocking Bird
A monologue from the screenplay by Horton Foote (Based on the book by Harper Lee)
Atticus Finch
To begin with, this case should never have come to trial.
The State has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place.
It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant.
Now there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led, almost exclusively, with his left [hand].
And Tom Robinson now sits before you, having taken “The Oath” with the only good hand he possesses — his right.
I have nothing but pity in my heart for the Chief Witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance.
But, my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt.
Now I say “guilt,” gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She’s committed no crime.
She has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with.
She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But, what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being.
She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now what did she do?
She tempted a negro. She was white and she tempted a negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable:
She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.
The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Lincoln County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen —
to this Court — in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted; confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption,
the evil assumption, that all negroes lie; all negroes are basically immoral beings; all negro men are not to be trusted around our women,
an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie — which I do not need to point out to you.
And so, a quiet, humble, respectable negro, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white peoples.
The defendant is not guilty. But somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers.
In our courts, all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system.
That’s no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!
Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family.
In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.
13. American Psycho
A monologue from the screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner
Patrick Bateman
I live in the American Gardens Building on West 81st Street on the 11th floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I’m 27 years old.
I believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I’ll put on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches.
I can do a thousand now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion.
In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub.
Then I apply an herb-mint facial masque which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine.
I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older.
Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion. There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman.
Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory.
And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours,
and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.
14. Network
A monologue from the screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
Jensen
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal.
That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back!
It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples.
There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds.
There is no West.
There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.
Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today.
That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx?
They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality —
one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock,
all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
15. Da 5 Bloods
A monologue from the screenplay by Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee
Paul
Dey Mind’s weak. Got no intestinal fortitude.
Ain’t as strong as you, Paul, NO SIR!!!
Ain’t got da Guts Paul got!!! Ain’t dey fault.
Dey wuz Born Weak. Otis and his Ho.
Car Thieves, Guttersnipes, Chain Snatchers!
Dey ain’t snatchin’ My Gold Bars. Not Me.
No, Sir. I ain’t gettin’ F***ed again.
Trying to F*** Me with Salt in the Vasaline.
Not Paul. Not dis Time. I’m gettin’
mine!!! SHONUFF!!! Sum-Bitches
turned my G*ddamn own Son against
Me. My own Blood! Yeah, well, we’ll
see who’s standin’ in Da End… I
don’t care what dat Damn VA say…
VA don’t know Sh*t from Shinola!
Worst F***ing Doctors In Da World!
Malignancy, Sh*t… I was born
Malignant! Dis F***in’ Place bathed
me in dat Agent Orange Lymphoma
Herbicidal Stew. Army Bastards
scorched Da Earth wit’ it! Sprayed
dat Poisonous Sh*t in Da Water, Da
Air, My Blood Stream, My Cells, My
DNA, in my Muthaf***in’ Soul!!! I
ain’t dying from dat Sh*t!!! HEAR
ME!!! HEAR ME!!!
You will not Kill Paul!!! THE U.S.
GOVERNMENT WILL NOT TAKE ME OUT!!!
I will choose how I die!!! GOT
IT!!! Couldn’t kill me then, ya’ll
SHO’ IN DA F*** WON’T KILL ME
NOW!!! RIGHT ON!!! RIGHT ON!!!
16. Any Given Sunday
A monologue from the screenplay by John Logan and Oliver Stone
Coach Tony D’Amato
I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes till the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today.
Now either we heal as a team or we’re gonna crumble, inch by inch, play by play, ’til we’re finished.
We’re in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me. And, we can stay here — get the sh*t kicked out of us — or we can fight our way back into the light.
We can climb outta hell one inch at a time. Now, I can’t do it for you. I’m too old. I look around. I see these young faces, and I think —
I mean — I made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I pissed away all my money, believe it or not.
I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old in life things get taken from you.
I mean that’s…part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches.
So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small — I mean one-half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it.
One-half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch.
We claw with our fingernails for that inch, because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the f***in’ difference between winning and losing!
Between livin’ and dyin’! I’ll tell you this: In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s gonna win that inch.
And I know if I’m gonna have any life anymore, it’s because I’m still willin’ to fight and die for that inch. Because that’s what livin’ is!
The six inches in front of your face!! Now I can’t make you do it. You got to look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes!
Now I think you’re gonna see a guy who will go that inch with you.
You’re gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows, when it comes down to it, you’re gonna do the same for him!
That’s a team, gentleman! And, either we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys.
That’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?
17. The Departed
A monologue from the screenplay by William Monahan
Billy Costigan
Look… look, I’m having panic attacks, alright? The other night I thought I was having a f***ing heart attack.
I puked in a trash barrel on the way over here. I haven’t slept for f***ing weeks. Yeah, that’s true. Alright? I said it was f***ing true.
I want some f***ing pills and you’re gonna what? You’re gonna close my file? Is that what you’re going to do?
[angry] I thought I was supposed to tell the truth here, if only f***ing here! Christ.
I mean, a guy comes in here against every, every instinct of privacy and self-reliance he has and what do you do? What do you do, huh?
You send him off on the street to score smack, is that what you do? You’re f***ing ridiculous!
[Madolyn hands Costigan some Valium]
[picking up the pills] Two pills? Great. Why don’t you just give me a bottle of scotch and a handgun to blow my f***ing head off!
Are we done here with this psychiatry bullsh*t?
What the f*** did I just put myself through? I’m f***ing out of here. And what if that was a legitimate threat?
Think about it f***ing hotshot!
18. 12 Angry Men
A monologue from the screenplay by Reginald Rose
Juror #3
Well, what do you want? I say he’s guilty. I *gave* you my arguments! [another pause, seething with anger]
Everything – *every single thing* that took place in that courtroom, but I mean everything – says he’s guilty.
What d’ya think, I’m an idiot or somethin’? [gets out of his seat] Why don’tcha take that stuff about the old man –
the old man who *lived* there and heard *every*thing? Or this business about the knife! What, ’cause we found one exactly like it?
The old man *saw* him! Right there on the stairs! What’s the difference how many seconds it was? Every single thing…
The knife falling through a hole in his pocket… You can’t *prove* he didn’t get to the door! Sure, you can take all the time, hobblin’ around the room, but you can’t prove it!
And what about this business with the El? And the movies! There’s a phony deal if I ever heard one.
I betcha five thousand dollars I’d remember the movies I saw! I’m tellin’ ya, everything that’s gone on has been twisted… and turned!
[points at Juror #8] This business with the glasses? How do *you* know she didn’t have ’em on? This woman testified in open court!
And what about hearin’ the kid yell? Huh? I’m tellin’ ya, I’ve got all the facts here…[struggles with his notebook]
Here… Ah. [He throws it on the table. The photo of him with his son is on top] Well, that’s it – that’s the whole case!
[He turns towards the window as the other jurors stare at him; he turns back to them] Well? *Say* something!
[No one obliges; everyone is focused on him]
You lousy bunch of bleedin’ ‘earts… You’re not goin’ to intimidate me – I’m *entitled* to my opinion!
[He sees the picture of his son on the table]
Rotten kids, you work your life out…!
[He grabs the picture and tears it to pieces. He suddenly realizes what he’s doing and sobs into his clenched fist]…
no. Not guilty. Not guilty.
19. Whiplash
A monologue from the screenplay by Damien Chazelle
Andrew
I’m just gonna lay it out there. This is why I don’t think we should be together. And I’ve thought about it a lot and this is what’s gonna happen.
I’m gonna keep pursuing what I’m pursuing. And because I’m doing that, it’s gonna take up more and more of my time.
And I’m not gonna be able to spend as much time with you. And when I do spend time with you, I’m gonna be thinking about drumming.
And I’m gonna be thinking about jazz music, my charts, all that. And because of that, you’re gonna start to resent me.
And you’re gonna tell me to ease up on the drumming, spend more time with you because you’re not feeling important.
And I’m not gonna be able to do that. And really, I’m gonna start to resent you for even asking me to stop drumming.
And we’re just gonna start to hate each other. And it’s gonna get very… It’s gonna be ugly.
And so for those reasons, I’d rather just, you know, break it off clean… because I wanna be great.
20. 300
A monologue from the screenplay by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Michael B. Gordon
Dilios
Remember us, as simple an order as a king can give. Remember why we died.
He did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor. His wish was simple.
“Remember us” he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be.
“May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, “Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie.”
And so my king died, and my brothers died, barely a year ago. Long I pondered my king’s cryptic talk of victory.
Time has proven him wise, for from free Greek to free Greek, the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his three hundred, so far from home, laid down their lives.
Not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds. [takes his spear from a soldier]
Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, Xerxes’s hordes face obliteration!
Just there the barbarians huddle, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers… knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of three hundred.
Yet they stare now across the plain at *ten thousand* Spartans commanding thirty thousand free Greeks!
HA-OOH! The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one, good odds for any Greek.
This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.
[puts on his helmet] Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300! TO VICTORY!
21. Blow
A monologue from the screenplay by Nick Cassavetes and David McKenna
George
“Hello, Dad.
Y’know, I remember a lifetime ago I was about three and a half feet tall, weighing only sixty pounds, but every inch your son.
Those Saturday mornings, going to work with my dad and we’d pile into that big, green truck.
I thought that truck was the… was the biggest truck in the universe, Pop. I remember how important the job we did was.
How, if it weren’t for us, people would freeze to death.
I thought you were the strongest man in the world. Remember those home movies, when Mom would dress up like Loretta Young?
Ice creams, football games, playing hook the tuna, the day I left for California only to come home with the FBI chasing me, that FBI Agent Trout…
When he had to get on his knees to put my boots on, you said, “That’s where you belong, you sonofab!*ch, puttin on Georgie’s boots.
”That was a good one, Dad. That was really something. You remember that? And that time you told me that money wasn’t real?
Well, old man, I’m 42 years old and I’ve finally realised what you were trying to tell me too many years ago.
I finally understand. You’re the best, Dad. I just wish I could’ve done more for you. Wish we had more time.
Anyway, may the wind always be at your back, and the sun always upon your face, and the winds of destiny to carry you aloft, to dance with the stars.
I love you, Dad.
Love, George.”
22. A Time To Kill
A monologue from the screenplay by Akiva Goldsman (Based on the novel by John Grisham)
Jake Tyler Brigance
Now I wanna tell you a story. I’m gonna ask ya’all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I want you to listen to me.
I want you to listen to yourselves. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon.
I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her.
They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up, and they rip her clothes from her body.
Now they climb on, first one then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure — vicious thrusts — in a fog of drunken breath and sweat.
And when they’re done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice.
So they start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw ’em so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones — and they urinate on her.
Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose. Imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk.
She’s pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking and they don’t find the ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough.
It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge.
And she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her?
Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their s*men, soaked in her blood — left to die.
Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she’s white. The defense rests your honor.
23. Flight
A monologue from the screenplay by John Gatins
Whip Whittaker
That was it. I was finished, I was done. It was as if I had reached my lifelong limit of lies. I could not tell one more lie.
And maybe I’m a sucker — because if I had told just one more lie, I could have walked away from all that mess, and kept my wings, kept my false sense of pride.
And more importantly, I could have avoided being locked up in here with all you nice folks for the last months.
But I’m here. And I’ll be here for at least the next four or five years — and that’s fair. I betrayed the public trust. I did.
That’s how the judge explained it to me: I had “betrayed the public trust.”
The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], they took away my pilot’s license — and that’s fair. My chances of ever flying again are slim to none — and I accept that.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, all of it. Doing some writing. I wrote letters to each of the families that had lost loved ones and some of them were able to hear my apology.
Some of them never will. And I also apologized to all the people that tried to help me along the way but I couldn’t or wouldn’t listen, people like my wife — my ex-wife — and…my son.
And again, like I said, you know, some of them will never forgive me. Some of them will. But at least I’m sober. And I thank God for that.
I’m grateful for that. And this is gonna sound real stupid coming from a man who’s locked up in prison, but for the first time in my life: I’m free.
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