Great dialogue transcends film, generations and situations. In other words, lines from great movies can be used anytime, anywhere, for anything. If you know these lines, you’re prepared for whatever comes your way. Here’s a few darts from my personal movie line quiver.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Greatest movie ever, and it has the absolute greatest dialogue ever written.
For example, let’s say you’re a kid at school. We all know that at school, kids pick on each other. How do you cope with it? Python has the answer. Remember when Arthur approaches the first castle?
Guard 1: “What, ridden on a horse?”
Arthur: “Yes!”
Guard 1: “You’re using coconuts.”
Arthur: “What?”
Guard 1: “You’ve got two empty halves of a coconut and you’re banging them together.”
Arthur: “So?”
See, it’s that last bit that I tell my kids to use. People harass you, make fun of you, whatever, you just use the King Arthur Gambit. “So?”
It works, I swear!
Bully: “Hey, you suck. You’re like, an idiot.”
Regular Kid: “So?”
Bully: [stands there with dumb look on face, drooling like a retard]
or
Guy at Work: “You’ll never get that promotion. You suck.”
Regular Guy: “So?”
Guy at Work: [starts crying because he realizes he's a chump who cares too much about his ********* job!]
More examples: (use them as you choose)
When you’re boss orders you around you can echo the words of Dennis: “Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!” (If you really want to mess around with the boss’s head you could start off with, “Listen, strange women lying in pond’s distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”)
Then, the boss will be all, “Shutup and do what I say.” You respond, “Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!”
The Black Knight scene is replete with usable bits.
Whenever you fall and hurt yourself, your first words should be: “I’ve had worse.” Or maybe, “Just a flesh wound.”
When someone bests you at any kind of contest, utter the profundity of: “I’m invincible!”
When people tell you they need something, you say, “Then you shall die.”
The French Knights provide classic put-downs.
“Go away or I shall taunt you a second time.”
“I fart in your general direction.”
“You second-hand electric donkey bottom biters!”
When all else fails, when you are backed into a corner, caught with your pants down, whenever it is that you must turn the tables on your opponents, always remember the Ultimate Question (to which the answer may or may not be forty-two): “What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
The Keeper of the Bridge of Death shalt be proud.
