Most Manly Dialogue
  • What is your favorite line of macho dialogue in all of cinema? "Make my day." flashes first for many dudes. I would probably go with a different Milius line: "Charlie don't surf!" My runner up is from Tombstone. When Doc says, "I don't." The set up line is Wyatt saying, "Hell, I got lots of friends."
    Noobied by 1sloth
  • I'm absolutely horrible when it comes to quotes, but probably something Samuel L. Jackson said at some point. :P
  • Ezekiel 25:17 perhaps, Firlocke?

    Walter White's "I am the one who knocks" line springs to mind but it isn't cinema.

    "Say hello to my little friend" - Scarface

    "You're a disease. And I'm the cure" - Cobra

    So many to choose from, especially 80's Hollywood flicks, before the 90's when guys got all emo and touchy feely with their feminine side.
  • The one from Pulp Fiction? Yeah, that'll do.

    Speaking of Tarantino, this was pretty good.

  • Correction: "Make my day." was not written by Milius. He wrote the original Dirty Harry line: "Do I feel lucky?" Make my day gained greater fame because Reagan quoted it.

    I am glad someone brought Tarantino into the discussion. Tarantino often explains why the dialogue is great within the dialogue. Ezekiel is explored at the end of Pulp Fiction. It gets to the question of what does the line actually mean? What is the definition of manhood for you?
  • I would have to say, Danny Trejo in Bullet: While having shootout with a French lawyer he says; "This is American, speak Mexican bitch."

  • Manhood. Men are gangsters in a sense. Men love a heirarchy, and enjoy establishing pecking orders of who's best at whatever, and then everyone's position relative to that. You can see it in gangs, sports, video games, government, etc. Society, man-made male dominated society, is full of them. There are 3 types of men; those who are good men, those who are good at being men, and the rare unicorn that finds balance between the two. 

    The good man is your typical nice guy. Sweet, kind, gentle, and overlooked by women in favor of assholes. He'd never hurt a fly and never offends anyone's beliefs, in short: the pussy. 

    The man who is good at being a man is the macho type. The guy who values power, performance, aggression. The asshole that no doubt fucked your wife before she settled on you. Men like these are typically portrayed as villains. Those who are not portrayed as such usually transform into the unicorn so as to earn their redemption in the eyes of the people.

    Thus we have the unicorn. The guy who has macho but still cuddles after sex and remembers anniversaries and shit like that. The hero of the day. Dead in this day and age, if indeed he ever existed at all. 

    Darth Vader. Han Solo. The Godfather. Jack Bauer. Arnie and Sylvester in almost any role they've ever played. And many many more. Are they good men? Arguably no. Are they good at being men? Fuck yes. Which ones pull the "unicorn"? 

    The path for men is the path of adversity. How we deal with that adversity, and how we come out on the other side, defines the man. Some will bow their head and toe the line, maybe grumble a bit or vent on Facebook. The good men. Some will fight and lose themselves. The villain. And very few will rise above it all. The hero, the unicorn.

    Good luck on your journey brothers. May you find virtue. 

    Noobied by 1FirLocke
  • That is certainly well argued. I would argue that their are bad men as well, both selfish and weak. I meet sociopaths regularly as a function of my job. I think you do a great job of seperating strength from virtue. That each without the other is incomplete.

    Most macho quotes in the movies are stunning statements of strength. Variations of: I'm bigger than than you. Make my day, I'm the cure, To drive your enemies before you; these are all versions of I'm bigger than you. I prefer macho quotes that are about bonds with others. I also like dialogue that packs a ton of meaning into as few words as possible. Brevity is the soul of wit. I wish I could be the guy leaning on a fence post, listening to all and then summing up the situation in one phrase. Generally I cannot shut up.

    Anyway, I love Robert Duvall shouting "Charlie don't surf!" In Apocalypse Now because it is a statement of insane brotherhood in an insane world. Charlie don't surf, we do. We are Americans. We may be stuck out in this jungle, due to crappy decisions made by crappy leaders, but we are who we are and we are together. We are going to take that point for no better reason than we are going to surf it. We do this at least in part because it is insane. This is an insane war. There are no sane decisions to be made. We can only do insane things. Let us do insane things that true to who we are as a people.
    Noobied by 1FirLocke
  • I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say you liked English class in high school :p All that inferred from "Charlie don't surf". You must have had a field day with Shakespeare or Dickens et al.

    As for your bad guys, the selfish and weak lot, I would say that you might consider that a perversion of the nice guy. The pussy gone bad, if you will. But if you think about it such a man is the ultimate failure of manliness, despised by all, and thus not really relevant to a discussion on what IS manhood. Those guys got an F on the Man Exam. The weasels are the guys you cheer when they finally get their comeuppance. How many people cheered the death of Vader? Or Don Corleone? Men like a bad macho, there's still something in there we can relate to and respect, even if it has strayed from clean goodly wholesomeness. The evil pussy on the other hand, we find absolutely repugnant.

    Anyway back to the quotes then. If those are the kinds of quotes you're after Fight Club is the movie that does it for me. That movie is filled with shit I just nodded my head along to.

    "If you don't know what you want you end up with a lot you don't."

    "The things you used to own, now they own you".


    "I just don't want to die without a few scars"

    "Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.... Maybe self-destruction is the answer" (this one in particular I love, sends me into a Nietzsche nihilism tailspin).


    "You're not your fucking khakis".

    and the list goes on. Fight Club is some deep shit, and it blows my mind how many people miss the point of that movie.
  • Fight Club is awesome. I still watch it a couple of times a year. It is a quest for manhood. It's rejection of materialism is the starting point of the quest. Whether it arrives at any answers is another question. I don't think it ever arrives at the revelation it promises. Maybe the point is that there is no revelation. It is a Hell of ride and perhaps the journey is the destination. Quote wise, when I say who is Tyler Durden I am literally asking who I am, and not even recognizing the question. I am just so out of touch at the start that I do not know I am Tyler Durden. Spoilers.
  • Fuck, I knew I should've kept on wanting to be a unicorn when I grow up.

    I need to see Fight Club! I've never seen it before. Great discussion btw guys. :)
  • Iirc-it's been quite a while- but wasn't Nietzsche's idea about nihilism something along the lines of it being a transitional disease? You destroy yourself in order to remake yourself, and become the man god. Also going from memory he said nihilism ended either in death (the hopelessness being too much), the joining of another value system (you end up back where you started essentially), or creating your own (man god). I always interpreted Fight Club a bit like that. Tyler was the disease, and what kind of man emerged on the other side was left up to us, the movie seemed to imply the happy end (but in the book large emphasis is placed on the fact that a bomb is in the basement of the building they are standing in, so maybe they died?). But assuming they didn't all die, he's obviously tougher for surviving Tyler, and the final scene shows him holding hands with Marla, whom he had treated like shit for the better part of the movie. Balance achieved.

    So he could have let Tyler kill him (death, suicide), let Tyler win (become Tyler, in effect embracing a different value system, but still not his own, thereby losing himself), or kill Tyler (end his battle with the disease and emerge his own man).

    Anyway, I was horrified to learn there is a Fight Club 2 being written.
  • "You destroy yourself in order to remake yourself"

    I knew I heard something similar recently when you said that, and it happens to be a quote from the very man that you mentioned, Nietzcshe.

    "You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”- I cannot for the life of me remember where I heard this. I think it was Christopher Walken that said it though.
    Noobied by 1Dr Flibble
  • Christopher Walken also carried a watch up his ass. I love this scene.

    Nice quote hunting Firlocke.
  • OMG there is no way way Fight Club 2 can be anything less than abhorrent.

    Also the Walken scene is, again, insane brotherhood. I approve, of course.
  • I also like this scene in Bladerunner. I have a bit of a soft spot for Rutger Hauer.

  • Aliens this off course
  • Nobody has dropped any David Mamet. Spartan has at least three great lines and Heist has a couple. I think everyone should see those two.
  • Never heard of either of them. I'll try check them out.

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