What would we do without memorable quotes to express our otherwise bottled up emotions? We might, for instance, have to actually ask for a raise rather than scream "Show me the money!" at our bosses. However, even though we use them so often, those movie quotes we hear repeated ad nauseum frequently aren't the real quotes at all. Years of repetition have turned them into easily recognizable, but inaccurate, misquotes. And none are more often mistaken than these 8 classics.
8. "Play it again, Sam!"
Casablanca may be one of the most well respected films of all time, but that doesn't stop people from misquoting it constantly. This line, supposedly said by Ingrid Bergman, may be what your drunken uncle yells at a wedding when he hears a song that gets his toes a-tapping, but you can scour the script of the film and never find it. Instead, you will find Ingrid saying "Play it Sam, for old times' sake, play 'As Time Goes By'." The misquoted line did show up in the Marx Brothers' movie A Night in Casablanca and acted as the title for Woody Allen's Play it Again, Sam, proving that as a culture we remember a lot more from people making fun of our classic works than the classics themselves.
7. "I'm out of order? You're out of order! This whole court is out of order!"
Has a greater, more dramatic line ever been uttered in a courtroom drama than this one? I guess so, since it was never said in ... And Justice For All, its supposed place of origin. In response to the Judge proclaiming he is out of order, Al Pacino actually snaps back "You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They're out of order!" The same point is made, but in a much less quotable way. Thank god courtroom parodies ever since have pounded this altered line into the popular subconscious.
6. "You dirty rat!"
This phrase has become the cornerstone of any 1920's gangster impersonator's vocabulary. Attributed to the late great (and easily impersonated) James Cagney, the line is even some times followed by the tag "You killed my brother!" But what Cagney movie is it really from? None, of course. Cagney once called another gangster a "dirty, double-crossing rat" in Blonde Crazy, but that's as close as he came to the famous accusation. The line actually comes from none other than the Riddler himself. Yep, Frank Gorshin, famous for playing the Riddler on the Batman TV show, created the line himself as part of his own impeccable James Cagney impression.
5. "If you build it, they will come."
When a voice in your head tells you to build a baseball field so that ghosts can come play on it, that voice better be saying something pretty damn convincing. And how much more convincing and ominous can you get than this oft-repeated quote from Field of Dreams? Too bad a single pronoun is off. Even though a horde of dead baseball players show up to play on the field, only one player really matters to the main character: his father, with whom he plays a tearful round of catch with in the movie's finale. Hence the actual quote if "If you build it, he will come."
4. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"
Yes, that line you say in front of your own mirror every morning to inflate your ego for the day might do the trick, but it's not an actual movie quote. The jealous Queen berating her magical mirror over the fact that it has proclaimed Snow White the fairest person in the kingdom is an incredibly memorable scene and the instigator for the entire plot of the film. However, the actual line is "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" Until you get a magic mirror, you might as well stick with the altered version during your own narcissistic self-adoration.
3. "Hello, Clarice."
Although this line from The Silence of the Lambs gets repeated constantly, much to the chagrin of anyone named Clarice, it's never actually spoken by Anthony Hopkins in the film. For a guy that eats human flesh, Hannibal Lector does have a classy disposition, so the only such greeting is the much more polished "Good evening, Clarice." They did manage to squeeze the line into the follow-up movie Hannibal after it was already in the popular lexicon, but who remembers anything from Hannibal besides Ray Liotta getting his brains eaten?
2. "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Clint Eastwood is a badass. We all know it. And there really isn't a better line to have his entire, badass persona distilled into than this one. The only problem is that he never said it. The real line comes at the end of Dirty Harry, when Cagney's answer to whether or not he shot five or six bullets, which he ends with the query, "You've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, PUNK?" But unless you're a theatre major trying to brand yourself as the tough guy and using this during audition, who has the time to memorize an entire monologue? We just want to ask punks whether they feel lucky, in bad Clint Eastwood impressions.
1. "Luke, I am your father."
This is probably the most quoted line from one of the most famous trilogies of all time, but as any Star Wars nerd is quick to point out, most of us still haven't got it right. The moment when Darth Vader reveals himself to be Luke's father is one of the greatest twists in cinematic history, but the actual line Vader belts out between wheezes isn't quite as quotable as this condensed version with the inserted Luke so we all know who the hell the line refers to. The actual line following Luke's accusation of Vader about killing his father is "No. I am your father." Makes more sense in context, but without the same ring. But now you know. I hope I've managed to save some of your nerd cred.
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