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Letter to the editor

Film

Another year, another AFI list

By STEVE PERSALL
Published November 26, 2004

Never mind that the art of filmmaking is nearly 108 years old. The American Film Institute is still milking cinema's first century with another survey of anything ever onscreen that can be packaged into profitable television nostalgia.

This time it's AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movie Quotes, its eighth annual survey, and only the fourth with merit. Although more deserving, entire screenplays are too complex and subjective to fairly compete, even when only five are nominated in an Oscar category. Memorable dialogue passages will have to suffice.

Once you've identified the best movies, actors, songs and lines of all time, there aren't many other cinematic subsets to explore without spreading posterity too thin or getting too esoteric for mainstream television. Directors and cinematographers are more within the domain of PBS, not CBS.

But that hasn't stopped the AFI from producing other snazzy network specials on the top heroes, villains, comedies, romances and "thrills," a particularly clumsy endeavor that jumbled horror, sci-fi, swashbuckling and psychological tension, as if those are the only ways that movies thrill.

Nearly 1,500 film industry professionals, including critics like myself, vote for honorees that, frankly, have become redundant. (Okay, we get it: Casablanca is the best movie ever, Over the Rainbow is a lovely earworm, and anything starring Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis or either Hepburn is worth viewing.)

Millions of moviegoers see prime time televised results and debate them the next day on talk radio and around water coolers. Some purchase DVDs and paperback collections as keepsakes. The AFI's share of any proceeds goes toward worthwhile projects such as scholarships and film preservation. Just like the Hollywood system it celebrates, AFI thrives on sequels, creating imitations with diminishing creative returns.

We're all invited guests; it's the party that won't leave.

Next thing you know, the AFI will begin updating previous lists: How about AFI's 108 Years . . . Still Only 100 Movies Worth Remembering? Or else be even more generous with its back-patting, such as 100 Years . . . 100 End Credits and 100 Years . . . 100 Best Boys. Pick up the pace and soon we'll have 100 Years . . . 100 AFI Lists.

My grudge with the AFI's list obsession came to a head when Dueling Banjos from Deliverance wasn't eligible for the top songs survey since it didn't contain lyrics. If only that creepy backwoods kid mumbled something, it might have been nominated. But Dueling Banjos was a key element in a signature scene of a classic film, not to mention a top 40 radio hit and a bluegrass concert staple. It deserved a spot among the elite 100 at least as much as (We're Off on the) Road to Morocco, Flashdance . . . What a Feeling and too many recycled Broadway tunes to mention.

Deliverance earned a measure of payback when it ranked No. 15 on the 100 Thrills list. Now we have another survey, and more puzzling selections among 400 nominees for the greatest movie quotes of all time.

The nomination ballot for 100 Years . . . 100 Movie Quotes informs me that only four lines from films released after 1999 are worth repeating. I'm sure that's surprising to Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Wes Anderson and other screenwriters acknowledged among the best of their era.

Two nominated quotes, from Erin Brockovich and Meet the Parents, are breast jokes. Another is a Russell Crowe brood from Gladiator I've never heard outside a theater, which is a true sign of dialogue's importance, the way it seeps into everyday language. I refuse to believe that the only movie line delivered so far in the 21st century worth quoting is Gollum hissing "My precious" in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. AFI rules eliminated any movie released after 2002, at least a year early in my judgment.

The usual suspects are rounded up (Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, "Rosebud" from Citizen Kane) plus a few movies - The Warriors, They Live, Sudden Impact - that don't deserve to make an AFI list for any other reason than one decent line.

I'm voting for three movie quotes just to make CBS nervous: Bruce Willis' "Yippee-ki-yay, (expletive deleted)" in Die Hard, John Wayne's profane challenge to fight in True Grit, and Sigourney Weaver calling the mother of Aliens something that rhymes with "witch." Toss in Peter O'Toole's politically incorrect view of Arabs in Lawrence of Arabia, a Woody Allen masturbation joke, a Blazing Saddles blusher and Peter Graves' Capt. Oveur-ture to a young boy in Airplane! That should keep the FCC busy.

War in Iraq may figure into the balloting. It will be interesting to see which ranks higher after President Bush's re-election: George C. Scott's hawkish concept of war in Patton or a German soldier's antiwar thoughts in All Quiet on the Western Front.

I'll withhold my choice on that one. But here's one political declaration: I'll forgive the AFI nominating Meryl Streep's insignificant line from Out of Africa ("I had a farm in Africa.") if voters sneak in her A Cry in the Dark line ("The dingo took my baby!") that I've always enjoyed in a twisted way.

Reading through the nominated quotes, it's interesting to realize how many of them don't seem as special on the printed page. Often it's solely in the actors' delivery, such as "They're here" from Poltergeist and "Schwing!" from Wayne's World. Some quotes depend entirely upon other dialogue setting them up: "Nobody's perfect" in Some Like It Hot, for example.

The shortest nominee is "Non," spoken in French by legendary mime Marcel Marceau, the only word heard in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. The longest by far is a seductive exchange between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity that runs 10 sentences, calling into question the AFI's definition of a "movie quote."

That's a scene in my book, but that's another TV special.

- Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 29, 2004, 09:19:20]