Monolgues and you...

[Florion]

Spoiler: Jean-Claude Van Damme's monologue from JCVD. Unexpectedly moving.

This movie is for me. There we are, you and me. Why did you do that? Or why did I do that? You made my dream come true. I asked for it. I promised you something in return and I haven't delivered yet. You win, I lose. Unless... the path you've set for me is full of hurdles where the answer comes before the question. Yeah I do that. Now I know why. It's the cure, from what I've seen here. It all makes sense. It makes sense to those who understand. So... America, poverty, stealing to eat... stalking producers, actors, 'movie stars', going to clubs hoping to see a star, with my pictures, karate magazines. It's all I had. I didn't speak English. But I did 20 years of karate. 'Cause before I wasn't like that
(points to flexed bicep)
This... this is me today. I used to be small and scrawny. And I took up karate. Hence the Dojo, hence respect, thou shall believe people who say, "Oss!" It's Samurai code. It's honour, no lies. So this guy in the US, it's not the same thing. No one says "Oss" to you. Sometimes people in show business say, "We're gonna' fuck em'". I believed in people, in the Dojo. I was blessed and had a lot of 'wives'. I always believed in love. It's hard for a woman with three kids to say, "Which one do I love more?" A mother... If you have 5, 6, 7, or 10 wives in a lifetime, they've all got something special, but no one cares about that in the so-called media. What about drugs? When you got it all, you travel the world. When you've been in all the hotels, you're the prima donna of the penthouse. And in all hotels the world over, travelling, you want something more. And because of a woman... well, because of love, I tried something and I got hooked. Van-Damme, the beast, the tiger in a cage, the "Bloodsport" man got hooked. I was wasted mentally and physically. To the point that I got out of it. I got out of it. But... it's all there. It's all there. It was really tough. I saw people worse off than me. I went from poor to rich and thought, why aren't we all like me, why all the privileges? I'm just a regular guy. It makes me sick to see people... who don't have what I've got. Knowing that they have qualities, too. Much more than I do! It's not my fault if I was cut out to be a star. I asked for it. I asked for it, really believed in it. When you're 13, you believe in your dream. Well it came true for me. But I still ask myself today what I've done on this Earth. Nothing! I've done nothing! And I might just die in this post office, hoping to start all over here in Belgium, in my country, where my roots are. Start all over with my parents and get my health back, pick up again. So I really hope... nobody's gonna' pull a trigger in this post office... It's so stupid to kill people. They're so beautiful! So, today, I pray to God. I truly believe it's not a movie. It's real life. Real life. I've seen so many things. I was born in Belgium, but I'm a citizen of the world. I've travelled a lot. It's hard for me to judge people and it's hard for them... not to judge me. Easier to blame me. Yeah, something like that.

 

[Trivun]

Monologues should stay in the theatre. They always take me out of a movie if I hear one. Unless they're a theatrical character (like V).

You have a point, although I personally quite like hering monolgues in film or TV as well. I guess it's just down to each person. Though monolgues and speeches in the theatre are pretty damn epic, much better hearing it live rather than on a screen

 

[Trivun]

Okay then, here's another which I forgot to add last night:

Spoiler: Jerry Maguire - You Had Me At Hello

Jerry: Hello. I'm looking for my wife. Alright. If this is where it has to happen, then this is where it has to happen. I'm not letting you get rid of me. How about that? This used to be my specialty. I was good in a living room. Send me in there, I'll do it alone. And now I just... I don't know...but our little company had a good night tonight. A really big night. But it wasn't complete, it wasn't nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn't share it with you. I couldn't hear your voice, or laugh about it with you. I missed my wife. We live in a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors, I love you. You complete me. And I just...
Dorothy: Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello.

And to see it on Youtube, click here. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWAlvWNZj0]

 

[Woodsey]

I have several:

Spoiler: Collateral

Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn't happen, and it never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You'll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl,you can't even call that girl. What the f**k are you still doing driving a cab?

Collateral is a ledgendary film. Best scenes are that one and when the coyote appears. Chilling.

 

[Anachronism]

V for Vendetta has the best, and you took them.

You clearly haven't read Othello. Iago is the king when it comes to monologues and soliloquys.

Spoiler: My favourite of Iago's soliloquys

And what's he then that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give and honest,
Probal to thinking and indeed the course
To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy
The inclining Desdemona to subdue
In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful
As the free elements. And then for her
To win the Moor--were't to renounce his baptism,
All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,
His soul is so enfetter'd to her love,
That she may make, unmake, do what she list,
Even as her appetite shall play the god
With his weak function. How am I then a villain
To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,
Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now: for whiles this honest fool
Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I'll pour this pestilence into his ear,
That she repeals him for her body's lust;
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.

He's the threatrical equivalent of the Comedian. You know he's a bastard, and yet you can't help but like him.

 

[Custard_Angel]

Basically any of Rorschachs bits from Watchmen... Specifically when he tells the story of the little girls murder.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Spoiler: A Few Good Men

Col. Jessep: Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and curse the Marines; you have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use them as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest that you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGvQtumNAY

I would add more but then it would be a dialogue.

 

[Trivun]

In The Crucible (play by Arthur Miller), John Proctor has some really good and emotional speeches and dialogues, especially in court and prison and with his wife in Act II:

Spoiler: The Crucible - Argument between Proctor and his wife - Act II

Proctor: You will not judge me more, Elizabeth. I have good reason to think before I charge fraud on Abigail, and I will think on it. Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any more. I have forgot Abigail, and ?
Elizabeth: And I.
Proctor: Spare me! You forget nothin' and forgive nothin.' Learn charity, woman. I have gone tiptoe in this house all seven months since she is gone. I have not moved from there to here without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!
Elizabeth: I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John ? only somewhat bewildered.
Proctor: Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!

Spoiler: The Crucible - Proctor on his wife's arrest for witchcraft in Salem - Act II

Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem ? vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! This warrant's vengeance! I'll not give my wife to vengeance!

Spoiler: The Crucible -Proctor and Judge Danforth debating Proctor's confession for witchcraft - Act IV

Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let ?
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

 

[LockHeart]

One of my favourites is from The Wedding Crashers, where Vince Vaughn is giving his views on dating.

Spoiler: I found a typography version on YouTube :)

 

[high_castle]

I have several:

Spoiler: Collateral

Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn't happen, and it never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You'll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl,you can't even call that girl. What the f**k are you still doing driving a cab?

Collateral is a ledgendary film. Best scenes are that one and when the coyote appears. Chilling.

Agreed. I think it's Michael Mann's best film, better even than Heat. And it's one of those movies I can watch repeatedly and still find something new.

 

[Trivun]

V for Vendetta has the best, and you took them.

You clearly haven't read Othello. Iago is the king when it comes to monologues and soliloquys.

Spoiler: My favourite of Iago's soliloquys

And what's he then that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give and honest,
Probal to thinking and indeed the course
To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy
The inclining Desdemona to subdue
In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful
As the free elements. And then for her
To win the Moor--were't to renounce his baptism,
All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,
His soul is so enfetter'd to her love,
That she may make, unmake, do what she list,
Even as her appetite shall play the god
With his weak function. How am I then a villain
To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,
Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now: for whiles this honest fool
Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I'll pour this pestilence into his ear,
That she repeals him for her body's lust;
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.

He's the threatrical equivalent of the Comedian. You know he's a bastard, and yet you can't help but like him.

Oh yes, that's a very good one. Anything of Shakespeare's is pretty damn epic though, but Iago as the classic villain has some really great ones

 

[Berethond]

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no."

 

[SideburnsPuppy]

Here's one from Reservoir Dogs (Mr. White to Mr. Orange, on resistance in regards to their heist). Probably not good for a play tryout. What play are you going for?


When you're dealing with a store like this, they're insured up the ass. They're not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he's Charles Bronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that. You might get some ***** talk shit to you, but give her a look like you're gonna smash her in the face next, watch her shut the fuck up. Now if it's a manager, that's a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that's giving you static, he probably thinks he's a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a ***** in two. If you wanna know something and he won't tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb's next. After that he'll tell you if he wears ladies underwear. I'm hungry. Let's get a taco.

 

[Trivun]

Here's one from Reservoir Dogs (Mr. White to Mr. Orange, on resistance in regards to their heist). Probably not good for a play tryout. What play are you going for?


When you're dealing with a store like this, they're insured up the ass. They're not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he's Charles Bronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that. You might get some ***** talk shit to you, but give her a look like you're gonna smash her in the face next, watch her shut the fuck up. Now if it's a manager, that's a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that's giving you static, he probably thinks he's a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a ***** in two. If you wanna know something and he won't tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb's next. After that he'll tell you if he wears ladies underwear. I'm hungry. Let's get a taco.

I'm trying out for some Frank McGuiness play (Someone Who Will Watch Over Me), and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I actually played Francis Nurse in The Crucible two years ago so I already know the play, I want to try for the role of John Proctor this time though (main role and he gets some amazingly emotional and dramatic speeches). However, these monologues won't be needed in the auditions, we get given scripts to read from at the actual auditions. I just decided to see what people's favourite speeches were since I'd gotten myself interested in the idea of speeches in drama thanks to the auditions themselves.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I'm cheating a little here, since it's a movie based on a Shakespeare play, but one of my favorites has always been the part of Branagh's Henry V where he's besieging the city of Harfleur and demands its surrender:

Spoiler: Henry V lays down the law

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves,
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by their silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds [...]
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

It's some high-quality threatening.

 

[Trivun]

I'm cheating a little here, since it's a movie based on a Shakespeare play, but one of my favorites has always been the part of Branagh's Henry V where he's besieging the city of Harfleur and demands its surrender:

Spoiler: Henry V lays down the law

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves,
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by their silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds [...]
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

It's some high-quality threatening.

Indeed it is. I'm going to cheat a little here too (though I posted dialogue from a play earlier, so I've already cheated) and post another memorable speech from Henry V. Branagh's portrayal of Henry V has to be one of the best acts I've seen in a long time

Spoiler: Henry V - Act III, Scene I

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace, there ?s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

Spoiler: Henry V - Act III, Scene I, a short while later

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot;
Follow your spirit: and upon this charge,
Cry ? God for Harry! England and Saint George!

Both quite short, but epic nonetheless.

 

[Trivun]

Here are some more great monologues to keep you going, three seperate speeches from the courtrooms of Maycomb, Alabama.

Spoiler: To Kill A Mockingbird - Courtroom - three speeches from Atticus Finch

- She lied in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime. She has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson ? a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was, for her, a daily reminder of what she did. Now what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.


- The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the Sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted. Confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negros lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women; an assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so a quiet, humble, respectable Negro, who has had the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white people.


- Now gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

Tyler Durden from Fight Club about consummerism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_TSSj27k1A

 

[BuckminsterF]

Spoiler: Mark Antony's Speech in Julius Cesar

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man?.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason?. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

[sarahvait]

Spoiler

"The story of Boogiepop is one that weighs heavily upon me. It's a subject that I still haven't finished sorting out my feelings about. He's no longer around, but I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to feel relieved about that fact or not.

He was...unusual, to say the least. I'd never met anyone as strange as him in the seventeen years that I've been alive, and I doubt I ever will again. After all, he was a transforming super-hero.

That sort of thing is only fun if they're on TV. If you're standing right next to one, it causes nothing but trouble. And, in my case, it wasn't exactly somebody else's problem.

I never once saw him smile. He always looked grim, and would look at me and say depressing things like, "Takeda-kun, this world is filled with flaws." This, with the exact same pretty face that always made my head reel.

But Boogiepop is gone now. I'll never know if everything he told me was a lie or not."

Takeda Keiji-Boogiepop and Others

Spoiler

"Why did I come here? If I was looking for the source of the letter, this place wasn't going to be of any use. But this high school was was the only remaining connection that I had with Kamikishiro. Someone else had moved into her apartment. There were no traces of her left.

There was nowhere else for me to go. She just wasn't here.

Yeah. Somewhere inside, I had wondered if Kamikishiro herself had sent the letter. But that was probably wrong. Even here in school, she wasn't around. The letter was nothing but a prank. Everything was over. It was all in the past.

She had told me all her secrets, metaphorically. Told me; not Tanaka Shiro, not anyone else. And I never understood what she meant by it.

Wasn't that enough? That's all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I fell in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then--impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy."

Kimura Akio-Boogiepop and Others

I love me some Boogiepop. Whee. XD