1077 Best Movie Monologues

Almost Famous (Lester Bangs)

Almost Famous (Lester Bangs)

Category: Movie Role: Lester Bangs From: Almost Famous

You cannot make friends with the rock stars. If you’re gonna be a true journalist. If you’re a rock journalist, first, you will never get paid much. But you will get free records from the record company. Fuckin nothing about you that’s controversial man. It’s gonna get ugly.And they’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs… I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it. They are trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously And righteously dumb. Now, you’re smart enough to know that. And the day it ceases to be dumb is the day that it ceases to be real, right? And then it just becomes an industry of…cool. I’m tellin’ you, you’re coming along at a very dangerous time for rock ‘n’ roll. I mean, the war is over. They won. And 99% of what passes for rock ‘n’ roll these days, silence is more compelling. That’s why I think you should just turn around and go back, you know, and be a lawyer or something. But I can tell from your face that you won’t. I can give you 35 bucks. Give me a thousand words on Black Sabbath.

Almost Famous (Lester Bangs)

Almost Famous (Lester Bangs)

Category: Movie Role: Lester Bangs From: Almost Famous

Oh man, you made friends with ’em. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong….Because they make you feel cool, and hey, I met you. You are not cool….We are uncool. Women will always be a problem for guys like us, most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. Good looking people they got no spine, their art never lasts. They get the girls but we’re smarter… Great art is about guilt and longing. Love disguised as sex and sex disguised as love. Let’s face, you got a big head start…. I’m always home, I’m uncool. …The only true currency is this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool. My advice to you, I know you think these guys are your friends, you want to be a true friend to ‘em, be honest and unmerciful.

Almost Famous (Penny Lane)

Almost Famous (Penny Lane)

Category: Movie Role: Penny Lane From: Almost Famous

I always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if ya never take it seriosuly, ya never get hurt, ya never get hurt, ya always have fun, and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.

Altered States (Dr. Eddie Jessup)

Altered States (Dr. Eddie Jessup)

Category: Movie Role: Dr. Eddie Jessup From: Altered States

What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist god per se. It is the self, the individual mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth. At least I know where the self is. It’s in our own minds. It’s a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We’ve got six billion years of memory in our minds. Memory is energy! It doesn’t disappear – it’s still in there. There’s a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be. And I’m telling you, it’s in the god-damned limbic system…. I’m a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? Everybody’s looking for their true selves. We’re all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life….Well, I think that that true self, that original self, that first self is a real, mensurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate. And I’m going to find the fucker.

Amadeus (Antonio Salieri)

Amadeus (Antonio Salieri)

Category: Movie Role: Antonio Salieri From: Amadeus

On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse – bassoons and basset horns – like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.
My plan was so simple that it terrified me. First I must get the death mass and then I, I must achieve his death. His funeral! Imagine it, all of Vienna there, Mozart’s coffin, Mozart’s little coffin in the middle, and then suddenly, in that silence, music! A divine music bursts out over them all. A great mass of death! Requiem mass for Wolfgang Mozart, composed by his dear friend, Antonio Salieri! Oh what sublimity, what depth, what passion in the music! Salieri has been touched by God at last. And God is forced to listen!! Powerless, powerless to stop it! I, for once in the end, laughing at him! The only thing that bothered me was the actual killing. How does one do that? Hm? How does one kill a man? Well it’s one thing to dream about it; very different when you, when you have to do it with your own hands.

All That Jazz (O'Connor Flood)

All That Jazz (O’Connor Flood)

Category: Movie Role: O'Connor Flood From: All That Jazz

Folks! What can I tell you about my next guest? This cat allowed himself to be adored, but not loved. And his success in show business was matched by failure in his personal relationship bag, now – that’s where he really bombed. And he came to believe that work, show business, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz, was bullshit. He became numero uno game player – uh, to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended and the reality began. Like, for this cat, the only reality – is death, man. Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never nobody’s friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life – uh, you can applaud if you wanna. Mr. Joe Gideon!

All the King's Men (Willie Stark)

All the King’s Men (Willie Stark)

Category: Movie Role: Willie Stark From: All the King's Men

My friends, my friends, I have a speech here. It’s a speech about what this state needs. There’s no need in my telling you what this state needs. You are the state and you know what you need. You over there, look at your pants. Have they got holes in the knees? Listen to your stomach. Did you ever hear it rumble for hunger? And you, what about your crops? Did they ever rot in the field because the road was so bad you couldn’t get ’em to market? And you, what about your kids? Are they growin’ up ignorant as dirt, ignorant as you ’cause there’s no school for ’em? Nah, I’m not gonna read you any speech. But I am gonna tell ya a story. It’s a funny story so get ready to laugh. Get ready to bust your sides laughin’, ’cause it’s sure a funny story. It’s about a hick, a hick like you, if ya please. Yeah, like you. He grew up on the dirt roads and the gully washes of a farm. He knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse. Ah, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right. He figured if he was gonna get anything done, well, he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books. He studied law, because he thought he might be able to change things some – for himself and for folks like him. Now I’m not gonna lie to ya. He didn’t start off thinkin’ about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was gonna do for ’em. Nah, nah, he started off thinkin’ of number one. But somethin’ came to him on the way. How he could do nothin’ for himself without the help of the people. That’s what came to him. And it also came to him with the powerful force of God’s own lightning back in his home county when the school building collapsed ’cause it was built of politics’ rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he’d fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that, so they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for Governor and he swallowed it. He looked in his heart and he thought in all humility, how he’d like to try and change things. He was just a country boy who thought that even the plainest, poorest man can be Governor if his fellow citizens find he’s got the stuff for the job. All those fellas in the striped pants, they saw that hick and they took him in. There he is! There’s your Judas Iscariot! Look at him! …Look at him….! Now, shut up! Shut up, all of ya! Now listen to me, ya hicks. Yeah, you’re hicks too, and they fooled you a thousand times just like they fooled me. But this time, I’m gonna fool somebody. I’m gonna stay in this race. I’m on my own and I’m out for blood. Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God’s blessed and unflyblown truth. And this is the truth! You’re a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself! Alright, listen to me! Listen to me! I’m the hick they were gonna use to split the hick vote. Well, I’m standin’ right here now on my hind legs. Even a dog can learn to do that. Are you standin’ on your hind legs? Have you learned to do that much yet? Here it is! Here it is, ya hicks! Nail up anybody who stands in your way! Nail up Joe Harrison! Nail up McMurphy! And if they don’t deliver, give me the hammer and I’ll do it myself!

All the President's Men (Ben Bradlee)

All the President’s Men (Ben Bradlee)

Category: Movie Role: Ben Bradlee From: All the President's Men

You know once when I was reporting, Lyndon Johnson’s top guy gave me the word; they’re looking for a successor to J. Edgar Hoover. I wrote it and the day that it appeared, Johnson held a press conference and appointed Hoover the head of the FBI for life. When he was done, turned to his top guy and the President said call Ben Bradlee and tell him, “Fuck you.” Now everyone said you did it Ben, you screwed up, you stuck us with Hoover forever. I screwed up, but I wasn’t wrong. … How much can you tell me about Deep Throat? … You trust him? … I can’t do the reporting for my reporters which means I have to trust them and I hate trusting anybody. … Run that baby.