Why do you go to the movies? I do, because I have been in love with them, this whole movie-viewing, movie-anticipating (oh, the thrill of the Friday, first show!), movie-dissecting (imagine, Ramesh Sippy, the guy who made Sholaay also made Bhrashtachaar?) experience for as long as I can remember.
I have loved going to the movies since I first watched Manoj Kumar’s Shaheed on a crowded ground in Diglipur. For a few years after that, I thought Manoj Kumar was Bhagat Singh.
Later, I skipped school with friends to watch the oh-so-adult Lacemaker and Gypsy
First Satyakaam and then Anand and Mili convinced me cancer was serious business. I seriously fell in love with Jessica Lange after watching Tootsie. Movies had seamlessly become part of one’s life.
Some scenes are etched in your memory for ever. I have a feeling if I ever suffer from memory loss, I will wake up the next morning and still remember the train fight sequence in Sholaay.
Or that Amitabh one-liner in Gabbar’s lair : “Kisine hilne ki koshish ki to bhun ke rakh doonga.” All through adolescence and even college days, every time I mouthed that dialogue, it would seem to usher in bodily changes – I felt I had grown taller, adding several inches to my five-foot, three-inch frame.
If school years were all about Amitabh Bachchan and RD Burman and Kishore Kumar, then college was all about Woody Allen. In my second year in college, I was persuaded by my friends to go and watch a movie called
Over the years, there have been many many great (and I dare say, several terrible, crappy ones!) films that one has seen. Too many to list here. Too many different reasons too why I liked the movies that I have. Some for their music (Teri Kasam), some for the action (remember James Coburn in that knife throwing sequence in The Magnificent Seven?), some for the photography (A Walk in the Clouds) and others simply because they were such great movies.
But I guess if I had to choose one reason, one solitary reason, why I like the movies so much, then it has to be the dialogue. Those lovely, lovely lines that my favourite screen personalities mouth, the one liners that “make your day.” My sentimental favourite are the opening and closing lines of Annie Hall, regarded by many as Woody Allen's finest movie .
Opening lines of ANNIE HALL :
Alvy Singer : [addressing the camera] There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.
Closing lines of ANNIE HALL :Alvy Singer : [narrating] After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs.
The following is a collection of some of my favourites, and I bet yours too. Have fun…
Receptionist : How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall : I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
Isaac Davis : I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion.
Hawkeye : No wonder they execute people at dawn. Who wants to live at
John McClane : Hey, Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first? The lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?
[under his breath]
- DIE HARD 2
Harry : Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.
- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
Gareth : I've got a new theory about marriage. Two people are in love, they live together, and then suddenly one day, they run out of conversation.
Charles : Uh-huh.
Gareth : Totally. I mean they can't think of a single thing to say to each other. That's it: panic! Then suddenly it-it occurs to the chap that there is a way out of the deadlock.
Charles : Which is?
Gareth : He'll ask her to marry him.
Charles : Brilliant! Brilliant!
Gareth : Suddenly they've got something to talk about for the rest of their lives.
Charles : Basically you're saying marriage is just a way of getting out of an embarrassing pause in conversation.
Gareth : The definitive icebreaker.
- FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL
[after learning Mickey is infertile]
Hannah : Could you have ruined yourself somehow?
Mickey : How could I ruin myself?
Hannah : I don't know. Excessive masturbation?
Mickey : You gonna start knockin' my hobbies?
- HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
Alvy Singer : Hey, Harvard makes mistakes too! Kissinger taught there!
- ANNIE HALL
Melvin Udall : People who talk in metaphors oughta shampoo my crotch.
- AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Mary Wilke : Don't psychoanalyze me. I pay a doctor for that.
Isaac Davis : Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor? I mean, you don't get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?
Mary Wilke : All right, so he's unorthodox. He's a highly qualified doctor.
Isac Davis : He's done a great job on you, y'know. Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's.
[Sgt. Zale, drunk, has broken his hand]
B.J. : Congratulations, Sergeant. You've just turned your right hand into a maraca. Once I set it, you can sit in with the relief band.
Zale : How come I don't feel no pain?
B.J. : It's swimming upstream against the bourbon.
- M*A*S*H
Melvin Udall : Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there's a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there's a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you're going to faint. Even then, don't come knocking. Or, if it's election night, and you're excited and you wanna celebrate because some fudgepacker that you date has been elected the first queer president of the United States and he's going to have you down to Camp David, and you want someone to share the moment with. Even then, don't knock. Not on this door. Not for ANY reason. Do you get me, sweetheart?
Simon Bishop: [clears his throat] Uhm, yes. It's not a... subtle point that you're making.
Melvin Udall : Okay then.
Shuts door in Simon's face
- AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Jess : Marriages don't break up on account of infidelity. It's just a symptom that something else is wrong.
Harry Burns : Oh really? Well, that "symptom" is fucking my wife.
- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
Hawkeye : Frank, you are 10 of the most boring people I know.
- M*A*S*H
Melvin Udall : Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some
- AS GOOD AS IT GETS
[Harry and Sally discussing orgasms]
Sally : Most women at one time or another have faked it.
Harry : Well, they haven't faked it with me.
Sally : How do you know?
Harry : Because I know.
Sally : Oh. Right. Thats right. I forgot. Youre a man.
Harry : What was that supposed to mean?
Sally : Nothing. Its just that all men are sure it never happened to them and all women at one time or other have done it so you do the math.
- WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
Melvin Udall : What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good.
- AS GOOD AS IT GETS
No comments:
Post a Comment