Tag Archives: Scenes That I Love

Scenes That People Love: The Al Pacino Locker Room Speech From Any Given Sunday

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I once read an article where Al Pacino’s lock room speech in Oliver’s Stone 1999 football film, Any Given Sunday, was described as being the most inspirational locker room speech ever.

I don’t really know if I agree with that.

I mean, to be honest, Al Pacino’s Tony D’Amato kind of looks really beaten down in this scene.  It looks like, instead of spending the previous night studying game film and coming up with plays, the coach spent the previous night out drinking.  If I was one of his players, I would be wondering if the coach was hungover and I might reset that.  I might be like, “Hey, I’ve been staying off cocaine all week for this game and then coach shows up looking like he’s just killed Frank Lopez.  Someone get Aaron Eckhart in here — he’s the coach we need!”  Also, for the most part, his speech seems to be more about him than the team.  It’s like, “I’ve got failed marriages, I’ve got this, I’ve got that …. life is a game of inches!”  Well, that’s great, Tony, but how are we going to win the game?  “I got problems!”  Well, we’ve all got problems, coach!  I mean, he’s talking to a room full of people who probably can’t stand up without hearing a hundred different things going snap in their knees.

Do locker room speeches really make that much of a difference?  I’ve seen enough sports films that I often wondered this.  Is it a requirement that a coach give a speech?  If the coach refused to give a speech, the team would still be obligated to go out there and play hard, right?  As I’ve said many a time, I really don’t get the point of long speeches but some of that is because of the ADD.  There’s no way that I could listen to anyone talk about life being a game of inches for four minutes.  I would just zone out.

What if a coach filibustered and just kept going and going in his speech?  Would the team have to forfeit?

Would it have been more effective to show the team the Willie Beamon music video as opposed to forcing them to listen to a speech from hung over Tony D?  Well, probably not.  If I remember correctly, the team did win the big game and they did it even after Dennis Quaid got injured for like the 100th time.  So, I guess the speech did work.  That shows you everything I know about football.

Anyway, I know a lot of people love this speech.  I mean, there’s a reason why it showed up in that car commercial.  And, to be honest, it worked pretty well in that commercial.  Certainly, it made more sense to use Tony’s “life is a game of inches” speech as opposed to Robin Williams’s poetry speech from Dead Poets Society.  (Car commercials are weird.)  So, in honor of those people and Super Bowl Sunday, here is the Tony D’Amato Any Given Sunday locker room speech:

Scenes that I Love: The Final Scene of Twin Peaks: The Return

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy birthday, David Lynch!

One of the things that makes David Lynch so special is that he’s willing to take risks and somehow, he always manages to get away with the type of things that would drive you crazy if any other director tried them. For instance, what other director could end an 18-hour film on a note of ominous and disturbing ambiguity and have viewers say, “That was perfect!”

That’s the talent of David Lynch.

Today’s scene that I love comes from Twin Peaks: The Return. Agent Cooper returns someone who might be Laura Palmer to her home in Twin Peaks. However, it appears that the Palmers have either left the house or perhaps they haven’t even moved in yet.

“What year is this?” Cooper asks.

In the night, someone says, “Laura?”

Laura screams.

I know there are some who says that we need a new season of Twin Peaks to explain all of this. I’m not sure that I agree, though I’d love to see everyone again. But, to be honest, I feel this is the perfect ending to Lynch’s American dream.

Scene That I Love: Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 81st birthday to the one and only Faye Dunaway.  In honor of this day, I want to share a scene that I love from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.

Now, Bonnie and Clyde was not Dunaway’s first film.  After appearing on Broadway, she was cast as a hippie kidnapped in a forgettable crime comedy called The Happening.  Otto Preminger, who could always spot talent even if he didn’t always seem to understand how to persuade that talent to work with him, put her under contract and featured her as the wife of John Phillip Law in his legendary flop, Hurry Sundown.  (Dunaway later said she had wanted to play the role of Michael Caine’s wife, a part that went to Jane Fonda and she never quite forgave Preminger for giving her a less interesting role.)  Dunaway reportedly did not get along with Preminger and didn’t care much for the films that he was planning on featuring her in.  One can imagine that she was happy when Warner Bros. bought her contract so that she could star opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.  

Despite the fact that the real-life Bonnie Parker was notably shorter and certainly nowhere as glamorous as as the actress who was selected to play, Faye Dunaway proved to be the perfect choice for the role.  Bonnie and Clyde proved to be a surprise hit and an Oscar contender.  It made Dunaway a star, a fashion icon, and it resulted in her first Oscar nomination.  Dunaway would go on to appear in such classic 70s films as Chinatown, The Towering Inferno, Three Days of the Concord, and Network before her unfortunate decision to star as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest would slow the momentum of her career.  Unfortunately, she would later become better known for having a difficult reputation and for engaging in some very public feuds, with the press often acting as if Dunaway was somehow uniquely eccentric in this regard.  (To Hollywood, Dunaway’s sin wasn’t that she fought as much as it was that she fought in public.)  Though Dunaway’s career has had its ups and downs, one cannot deny that when she was good, she was very, very good.  

In this scene, from Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie Parker (played by Faye Dunaway) writes a poem and tries to craft the future image of Bonnie and Clyde.  Though it has none of the violence that made Bonnie and Clyde such a controversial film in 1967, this is still an important scene.  (Actually, it’s more than one scene.)  Indeed, this scene is a turning point for the entire film, the moment that Bonnie and Clyde goes from being an occasionally comedic attack on the establishment to a fatalistic crime noir.  This is where Bonnie shows that, unlike Clyde, she knows that death is inescapable but she also knows that she and Clyde are destined to be legends.

(Of course, Dunaway and Beatty — two performers who one epitomized an era but only work occasionally nowadays — are already legends.)

Scene That I Love: Lee Van Cleef Meets Klaus Kinski in For A Few Dollars More

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1925, on this very date, Lee Van Cleef was born in Somervillve, New Jersey.  In honor of what would have been Lee Van Cleef’s 97th birthday, here he is with Klaus Kinski and Clint Eastwood in For A Few Dollars More.

There’s not a lot of dialogue in this scene but when you had actors like Eastwood, Kinski, and Lee Van Cleef, you didn’t need a lot of dialogue to make an impression.

Scene That I Love: David Bowie Performs For Christane F.

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today would have been David Bowie’s 75th birthday.  Though it’s been six years since David Bowie passed, he remains an iconic cultural force.  He is missed, as both a musician and an actor.

In honor of the man’s birthday and his legacy as a performer, today’s scene that I love is from the 1981 German film, Christiane F.  Directed by Uli Edel and based on a true story, Christiane F. is the story of a 13 year-old drug addict.  It’s a powerful film, though perhaps not one to watch if you’re dealing with any sort of severe depression.  David Bowie both composed the film’s soundtrack and appeared in the film himself.

Here, he performs Station to Station while Christiane F. watches.  The scene perfectly captures not only Christiane F.’s fascination with Bowie but also Bowie’s charisma as a performer.  The scene was shot an actual concert that David Bowie performed in Berlin, though the shots of Christiane F. and her friends watching were filmed separately.

Scenes That I Love: Nicolas Cage in Wild At Heart

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Nicolas Cage’s birthday!

How old is Nicolas Cage today?  It doesn’t matter.  Nicolas Cage is timeless.  He has no age.  You could say that Nicolas Cage has always been there and will always be there.

On a more realistic note, you could say that Nicolas Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and that he started his film career as Nicolas Coppola.  (That was the name he used when he made his film debut with a small role in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.)  Not wanting people to assume that he only got work because of his family connections, Nic soon changed his last name to Cage in honor of Marvel’s Luke Cage.  Nicolas Cage has gone on to become one of the best-known actors in the world, an iconic figure of sorts.  When he’s good, Nicolas Cage is great.  When he’s appearing in a bad film, Nicolas Cage is often fascinating.  Cage may have a reputation for being an eccentric and for appearing in almost anything but often Cage’s brand of weirdness is just what is needed to elevate a film like Mandy or Pig from good to great.

In honor of his birthday, here are two scenes that I love from a very good film, David Lynch’s Wild At Heart.  Watch as Nicolas Cage explains the meaning of his snakeskin jacket.  Stick around to watch Nicolas Cage serenade Laura Dern with the world’s greatest Elvis impersonation.

Happy birthday, Nicolas Cage!

Scenes That I Love: The Robot Montage from George P. Cosmatos’s Cobra

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this date, in 1941, future director George Pan Cosmatos was born in Italy.  Cosmatos would go on to direct some of the most financially successfully (if critically lambasted) films of the 80s.  He’s also credited as being the director on Tombstone, though it’s generally agreed that Cosmatos largely deferred to Kurt Russell on that film.  (Cosmatos was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director.)

Other than Tombstone, Cosmatos is best-known for the films that he did with Sylvester Stallone.  And today’s scene that I love comes from the 1986 film, Cobra.  Cobra stars Stallone as a motorcycle-riding cop who never asks question when he can just shoot a big gun instead.  Stallone’s show-no-mercy attitude may upset his superiors but it turns out to be just what’s needed to take care of a murderous cult.  Now, Cobra may be a fairly dumb film but it does have one sequence that pretty much epitomizes an era.  If nothing else, George Pan Cosmatos deserves to be remembered for Cobra’s famous robot montage.  While Sylvester Stallone searches for the murders who are decimating his city, model Brigitte Nielsen poses with a bunch of life-size robots.

One reason why this sequence works is because it really does seem to come out of nowhere.  The film goes from Stallone promising to wipe out the bad guys to a bunch of adorable robots.  It’s all very 80s.  And we have George Pan Cosmatos to thank for it.

Here’s a scene that I love:

Scenes That I Love: The Ending of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS BELOW)

The final moments of Sergio Leone’s epic 1984 gangster film, Once Upon A Time in America, are filed with questions and mysteries.

In 1968, who did Noodles (played by Robert De Niro) see standing outside of Max’s mansion?  When the garbage truck pulled up, did the mysterious man get in the truck or was he thrown in by some unseen force?

Why, in 1968, did Noodles see a car from the 1920s, one that was full of people who appeared to be celebrating the end of prohibition?  Was the car really there, in 1968, or was it an element of Noodles’s past as a gangster suddenly popping into his mind?

When we then see a young Noodles in an opium den, are we flashing back to the 1920s?  Is Noodles remembering the past or is it possible that we’ve been in the 20s the whole time and all of the scenes set in 1968 were actually only a drug-induced dream?

Why, with men looking to kill him and all of his friends apparently dead, does Noodles suddenly smile at the end of the film?  Is that sudden smile a result of the drugs or is there something else going on?

Once Upon A Time In America was Sergio Leone’s final film.  It’s one that he spent decades trying to get made and, once it was finally produced, it was butchered and re-edited by a studio hacks who demanded that the film tell its story in a linear style.  Leone was reportedly heart-broken by how his film was treated.  Some have speculated that his disappointment may have even contributed to the heart attack that eventually killed him.  It was only after Leone passed that his version of Once Upon A Time In America became widely available in the U.S.  This enigmatic epic continues to spark debate.  One thing that can’t be denied is that it’s a brilliant film.

As today is Leone’s birthday, it only seems appropriate to share a scene that I love, the ending of Once Upon A Time In America.