5 Great Movie Monologues

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential - and I see squandering. G@ddamm!t, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy sh!t we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

Fight Club (1999)
Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden
Screenplay by Jim Uhls (Chuck Palahniuk – novel)

“It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air - you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I realized there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember - I need to remember. Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world - I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”

American Beauty (1999)
Wes Bentley as Ricky Fitts
Screenplay by Alan Ball

“You like boats, but not the ocean. You go to a lake in the summer with your family up in the mountains. There's a long wooden dock and a boathouse with boards missing from the roof, and a place you used to crawl underneath to be alone. You're a sucker for French poetry and rhinestones. You're very generous. You're kind to strangers and children. And when you stand in the snow, you look like an angel.”

Groundhog Day (1993)
Bill Murray as Phil Connors
Screenplay by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis

“You know something? For years I've been listening to all these idiots on barstools with all their pet theories on Dallas. How it was the Cubans, or the CIA, or the white supremacists, or the Mob. Or whether it was one weapon or whether it was five. None of that's meant too much to me. But Leary - he questioned whether I had the guts to take that fatal bullet. God, that was a beautiful day. The sun was out, been raining all morning. Air was . . . First shot – sounded like a firecracker. I looked over and I saw him – I could tell he was hit. I don’t know why I didn’t react. I should have reacted. I should have been running flat out. I just couldn’t believe it. If only I would have reacted, I could have taken that shot. That would have been alright with me.”

In the Line of Fire (1993)
Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan
Screenplay by Jeff Maguire

“Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your Dad's. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully, you'll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talking right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out, I'm talking to you. Butch, I got something for you. This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the First World War. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee - made by the first company to ever make wristwatches. Up until then, people just carried pocket watches. It was bought by private Doughboy Ryan Coolidge on the day he set sail for Paris. This was your great-grandfather's war watch, and he wore it every day he was in the war. Then when he had done his duty, went home to your great-grandmother, took the watch off, put it in an old coffee can. And in that can it stayed until your granddad Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War II. Your great-grandfather gave it to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane's luck wasn't as good as his old man's. Dane was a Marine and he was killed along with all the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death. He knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leaving that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport named Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he had never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad's gold watch. This watch. This watch was on your Daddy's wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured and put in a Vietnamese prison camp. Now he knew that if the gooks ever saw the watch, it'd be confiscated, taken away. The way your Dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any slope’s gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something - his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he’d give me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.”

Pulp Fiction (1994)
Christopher Walken as Captain Koons
Screenplay by Quentin Tarantino