Americans have fallen deeply in love with that beguiling conspiracy of light and darkness and color and silence and sound and music that we call the movies. Film megastar Matt Damon says it this way: “Movies are one of the few things that bind us, that allow people to experience the same dreams and memories when they’re sitting in a theater.”
In the movie theater, and increasingly on smaller screens, the boundaries between real and reel wavers and blurs. Something has happened to our American language—and I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
You’ll probably recognize the second part of that statement as a borrowing from the film The Wizard of Oz. Being transported out of Kansas is one of a passel of expressions from movies that have launched a thousand lips.
Tomorrow evening, the 98th presentation of the Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, will unfold in Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.
The very first Academy Awards ceremony took place during a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Two hundred and fifty attended and tickets cost $10. When the first awards were handed out on May 16, 1929, movies had just begun to talk. I would love to have been a time traveler rushing into the Blossom Room to announce the luminous future of the Academy Awards ceremony:
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothing yet!” That’s what Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer (1927), the mother of all talking films. Ever since, lines from the movies have shaped our hopes and dreams and aspirations and have suffused our everyday conversations.
Today I’m making you an offer you can’t refuse — a version of the line in Mario Puzo’snovel, The Godfather, published in 1961, and embedded in the 1972 film of the same name.
So what’s up, Doc? That’s, of course, Bugs Bunny’s signature question to Elmer Fudd. What’s up is that I hope never to hear from you readers, “What we have here is a failure to communicate” or “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
The first statement began life as a line in Cool Hand Luke, and the second in Peter
Finch’s furious complaint in Network.
May you never sneer at me, “Frankly, my dear. I don’t give a damn,” spoken by Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. But that’s okay because “tomorrow is another day.”
Indeed, I think this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, a line delivered by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. That film also gave us “Round up the usual suspects” and “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Plunge ahead, gentle reader, and you’ll go ahead, make my day—the signature statement of the Clint Eastwood character Dirty Harry in the 1983 film, Sudden Impact, a line made even more famous by President Ronald Reagan.
You’ll make my day because love is never having to say you’re sorry, an enduring sentiment from Love Story.
So, who you gonna call? — your faithful language columnist! That’s a spin-off from Ghostbusters, and, of course, it should be “whom are you going to call?”
Now identify the films whence came the following expressions that inhabit our everyday conversations:
1. They’re ba-a-a-ck!
2. If you build it, they will come.
3. Houston, we have a problem.
4. Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.
5. You talkin’ to me?
6. I coulda been a contender!
7. Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?
8. This could be the end of civilization as we know it.
9. May the Force be with you!
10. Show me the money!
11. I’ll have what she’s having.
12. Here’s Johnny!
13. You’re gonna need a bigger boat!
14. I’m king of the world!
15. There’s no crying in baseball!
Answers
1. Poltergeist 2. Field of Dreams 3. Apollo 13 4. Forrest Gump 5. Taxi Driver
6. On the Waterfront 7. She Done Him Wrong 8. Citizen Kane 9. Star Wars 10. Jerry Maguire
11. When Harry Met Sally 12. The Shining 13. Jaws 14. Titanic 15. A League of Their Own
That’s all, folks! Hasta la vista, baby! — and you know where those two lines got their start: Merry Melodies and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.