Sunday, July 26, 2009

Great Motivational Speeches In World History (ok, trash films)


I was changing channels while folding laundry and happened upon Bill Murray's motivational speech in Stripes (well-timed, given the recent posts of 1984 as THE year in film). It reminds of a fine time long ago, when the trash movies of the day usually had the underdogs up against the elites, and hope would be nearly lost. The lead would then make a speech, rallying the troops.

Three of these stand out:
  1. The aforementioned Stripes monologue: "We are the wretched refuse," "Our forefathers were kicked out of every country ....," and the US is "10 and 1," referring to Vietnam. The story then moves onto a nice cold war confrontation.
  2. Bill Murray's address in Meatballs: "It just doesn't matter. Even if we win, the good-looking girls will still go out with the guys from Camp Mohawk..... IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER."
  3. Finally, the first and perhaps still the best (although the Meatball's speech is hard to top) is John Belushi's rant in Animal House: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" This, of course, is his call for a Toga party.
I don't think that these kind of movies have good monologues anymore. Of course, I may not be watching as many of these films as I used to watch. Any suggestions of 21st century wacky motivational speeches?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, did you know that Heather Munroe-Blum's husband Len wrote those first two films?