The artists who put the words in the mouths of the stars
Take your time
Have you ever sat in a busy restaurant, placed your order and then waited for what seems like days between your starter and main course? Pity the poor scriptwriter who can wait years between putting down their quill and watching the cameras roll and actors speak their lines.
The record for the longest delay between final full stop and first cry of ‘Action!’ is 38 years. Dylan Thomas wrote his original screenplay The Doctor and the Devils in 1947. He dramatised the story of Edinburgh grave robbers and corpse providers Burke and Hare for the Rank Organisation, who failed to get it to the screen. Brit director Nic Roeg (Performance, Bad Timing, Eureka, Don’t Look Now) tried again in the 1960s. In the end it was the unlikely figure of comedian and movie producer Mel Brooks, fresh from his success producing The Elephant Man, who succeeded where everybody else failed. In 1985, with a bit of rewriting from Ronald Harwood (The Pianist), Thomas’ script was finally filmed by Freddie Francis, starring future James Bond Timothy Dalton as medical ghoul Dr Thomas Rock. The only problem was, poor Dylan was no longer around to see it – he’d died 32 years earlier. That may have been a mercy, however, as at least he was spared having to see former 1960s supermodel Twiggy’s atrocious performance as cockney tart Jenny Bailey in the film.
Clichéd clichés
A recent survey of 350 American feature films delivered this statistic: 81%, that’s just over 250 of the films viewed, contain the line ‘Let’s get outta here!’ During the 1970s this cliché was eclipsed by the evergreen favourite ‘Oh my God!’ which is sometimes spoken by characters in especially grim or astonishing situations with greater emphasis: ‘Oh. My. God.’ In the 1980s even OMG was briefly overtaken by the single word, usually dragged out in slow motion to last over the hero’s mad dash to rescue or fail to rescue a child, puppy or wife: ‘Noooooooooooo!’ This reached a pinnacle with Mel Gibson’s slo-mo shriek in the Roland Emmerich American War of Independence epic The Patriot, and was parodied in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. In that scene, Michael James, shot from several angles over long, long seconds in an uncredited screech, loses his life as ‘Henchman Flattened by Steamroller’.
Dictators on parade!
Two fo the 20th century’s most notorious fascist dictaotrs lived parallel lives as movie scriptwriters. The hundreds of thousands of Republican Spaniards and innocent civilians who were slaughtered by Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Loyalist soldiers and death squads might have changed their minds about Spain’s leader if they had only known that Franco adapted his own novel The Spirit of the Race (1941) for the silver screen. Foolishly, he did the work under a nom de plume – Jaime de Andrade – thus disguising his more sensitive and caring artistic side. His protagonist, José, is the incarnation of the model military man and Spanish horseman as Franco understood it. The Spanish dictator, who died in 1976, also scripted and shot his own animated cartoons.
Moving east, we come to Italy’s Duce, Benito Mussolini. Apart from being father-in-law to Sophia Loren’s sister, Mussolini’s involvement with the movie business extended to scripting a very successful silent movie entitled The Cardinal’s Mistress. Sample dialogue: ‘Ah, you do not listen to me, shameless courtesan, harlot. Well, I shall come to get you in this same castle. I shall let the common brutes of the market-place satiate their idle lusts on your sinful body. You shall be the mockery of the unreasoning mob. Your corpse will not have the rites of Christian burial. You will be cast into the field of the Badia with the witches. And when the hour of your agony comes, when, trampled on, transfixed and rent by the blows of the mob, you shall implore aid and succour with the eyes which now so disdainfully regard me, I shall be the evil demon of that supreme hour, I shall come to torture you with memories of me, to gloat in my triumph.’ Shame he didn’t give up the day job.
You talkin’ to me?
‘There’s a little bit of yourself in every character.’
Very reassuring those words and that writerly sentiment should be coming from the author of, say, Harry Potter. But a shiver of dread comes with the knowledge that those words were spoken by writer/director Paul Schrader, creator of infamous psychopath and avenger of underage whores Travis Bickle, ‘hero’ of Schrader and Martin Scorsese’s iconic 1976 meditation on violence, Taxi Driver. The character’s distinctive name, according to Schrader, came from ‘the romantic, soft sound of Travis, meaning “travel”, and the hard, unpleasant sound of Bickle, which I took from a little radio show about a couple who always argue, called The Bickersons.’
Though Schrader’s script made his name, its most quoted and parodied dialogue was not actually included in it, but improvised on set by Robert de Niro. The actor dug deep into his Mean Streets education to pose in front of a full-length mirror, tooled up, a gun in his sleeve and every pocket, minding his own business, when an imaginary wise-guy stares at him from the other side of the mirror. Travis’ immortal reply, quoted nightly in a thousand bars and street corners: ‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who do you think you’re talking to?’
Don’t quote me
‘I want to suck your blood’ is never actually said by Bela Lugosi’s Count in the Universal horror classic Dracula (1931). However, the line is used in a humorous context by Dr Tom Mason (Ned Bellamy) practising his Lugosi impersonation in director Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994).
‘You dirty rat!’ was never said on screen by James Cagney verbatim, although he does say something similar in Blonde Crazy (1931): ‘Mmm, that dirty, double-crossin’ rat.’
‘Me Tarzan, you Jane,’ is a frequent misquote from Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932). The scene actually reads:
Jane: (pointing at herself) Jane.
Tarzan: (pointing at her) Jane.
Jane: And you? (pointing at him) You?
Tarzan: (stabbing himself proudly in the chest) Tarzan, Tarzan.
Jane: Tarzan.
Tarzan: (pointing back and forth each time) Jane. Tarzan. Jane, Tarzan…
‘Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?’ is never said by Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933), but she does restate the line to co-star George Hamilton in her final film Sextette (1978). Nor does she say: ‘Come up and see me sometime,’ in the 1933 film. The actual line is: ‘Why don’t you come up sometime ‘n see me?’
‘Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into,’ is not what Oliver Hardy exclaims to his partner Stan Laurel in their classic comedy, Sons of the Desert (1933). In fact he says: ‘Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!’
‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ is not what the Queen says looking at her reflection in Disney’s animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Her actual words are: ‘Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?’
‘Play it again, Sam’ is never said by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942) to pianist Sam (Dooley Wilson), the nightclub pianist and reluctant performer of the sentimental song As Time Goes By. When Play It Again, Sam became the title of Woody Allen’s 1972 comedy, which in part spoofs the classic 1942 film, the misquote was further reinforced. What Bogart really says is: ‘Play it.’
‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille,’ is often quoted as the Gloria Swanson character Norma Desmond’s line in the closing scene of Sunset Blvd (1950). What she really says is: ‘All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.’
‘May the Force be with you,’ isn’t said verbatim by Obi Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) in Star Wars (1977). But he does say, on two occasions: ‘The Force will be with you… always.’
‘King of the world!’ isn’t exactly what Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack says standing on the prow of Titanic (1997). The line is actually: ‘I’m the king of the world!’
A plug too far
In the hit British romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999), Hugh Grant plays a bookshop owner who – somewhat against the odds – ends up marrying the biggest star in the world, played by Julia Roberts, who arguably is just that. So it’s fair enough that, in the final scene when the couple are relixing in a W11 garden square, Grant should be seen with a book in his hand. Director Roger Michell and production company Working Title seized the opportunity to insert a sly plug for what they hoped was going to be their next blockbuster. The book Grant is seen reading, with its distinctive blue and white cover design, was the chattering classes’ must-read book of the moment, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. But the plug misfired. Before he could start shooting Corelli, Michell had a heart attack and had to leave the project, while the film itself, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by John Madden, turned out to be a critical and box-office flop.
Movie Idols, excerpt from Chapter 4, © John Wrathall & Mick Molloy 2005, All Rights Reserved
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