Quotes & Sayings About Movie Dialogue

Movies without meaningful dialogue play well all over the world. The Apostle is probably the best movie of the year, but it won't do squat in Korea. — Robert Benton

Meredith looked at him. "That's a quote from Airplane. Surely, you're too young to know that movie." "Airplane II, actually. I watch a lot of movies and I memorize dialogue easily. It's a gift." Cole shrugged casually. "And please, don't call me Shirley. — Wade Kelly

One of the reasons you take a role is because it's something you always wanted to do, from going to the movies as a kid. I always wanted to do a 1950s movie, for example. And I got a chance to be in 'Peggy Sue Got Married.' I would have taken only one line of dialogue to be in that. — Catherine Hicks

I think you approach a part the same way and just find out in what's making them tick and who they are. In a movie like this you may have a little less time and few dialogue scenes and exposition scenes for your character to really get that across, and so I wanted to be able to convey that she's not somebody who's just punching a clock but she has this weird emotional investment in her job to where she does get quite myopic and that's what makes her relentless. — Kate Beckinsale

With Batman & Robin , the fourth entry in the recent Batman movie series, the profitable franchise appears poised to take a nosedive. This film, which places yet another actor in the batsuit, has all the necessary hallmarks of a sorry sequel pointless, plodding plotting; asinine action; clueless, comatose characterization; and dumb dialogue ... Batman & Robin moves at a dizzying pace, yet goes absolutely nowhere. — James Berardinelli

If my life were a movie ... the title sequence would start out like a typical high school story, but then reveal that something's amiss. There'd be a tight shot, or piece of dialogue, or something that would make the viewer uncomfortable. Something to give them that prickly feeling.
-Dez — Dawn Klehr

Hi, I said, IN SCINTILLATING DIALOGUE REMINISCENT OF THE CLASSIC MOVIE CASABLANCA. — Nick Lake

It is the single image, as used in a photograph or a painting - or the frame of a film - to which words have been added to enlarge the context. The method is not the same as that by which most paintings are named. It is closer in its performance to what dialogue does to a movie, to what the caption does to a good poster. — Muriel Rukeyser

When I wrote my first film and then directed it and I looked at it for the first time on what's called an assembly, you look at this movie which is every scene you wrote, every line of dialogue you wrote and you want to kill yourself the minute you see it. It's like, 'How did I write something so horrible?' — Bruce Joel Rubin

It's kind of a cross between, I think. It's not, you know, over the top Old English, like Lord of the Rings would be or something like that, but there is a very sophisticated air about the Asgardians[?], you know, in their dialogue, and - hold on. Okay. Um, and I'm doing an English accent in the movie. — Jaimie Alexander

You can skim those stage directions and go right to the dialogue. You can almost read the movie in the same amount of time it will take you to see the movie. — William H. Macy

I can hardly believe what these 12 caricatures [about Prophet Muhammad] have caused in the world. We Danes feel like we have been placed in a scene in the wrong movie. But I don't see the fight as a clash of civilizations. Rather, we must focus on avoiding exactly this type of conflict. We have to return to dialogue, to mutual understanding and to an acknowledgement of freedom of opinion. — Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith. I spent three months studying every John Hughes teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue. Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive. You could say I covered all the bases. I studied Monty Python. And not just Holy Grail, either. Every single one of their films, albums, and books, and every episode of the original BBC — Ernest Cline

Theater roles are written by the great masters. The greatest literature that you can possibly know are the theater roles like King Lear, Hamlet, and all of those great roles. So all you do is you dive into these unchallenged roles and see how far you can get, what kind of accolades you can get, and how good you can be in them. In movie roles, you can actually improve them by knowing a lot about your own stage technique, which helps a great deal in the cinema and how you can project inner humor even though the particular dialogue is not necessarily funny, but you can infuse it with humor. — Christopher Plummer

One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right. — Gerard Butler

There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave. — Clark Gregg

The accursed ship didn't sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavour! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I have been violated; violated by a team of accountants. — Paul Murray

If you make a movie about Elizabeth I, how much of the dialogue is her real words? Audiences know when they go see a movie that it is fiction. — Jean-Jacques Annaud

Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie. — Owen Wilson

Eyes are the greatest tool in film. Mr. Capra taught me that. Sure it's nice to say very good dialogue, if you can get it. But great movie acting - watch the eyes! — Barbara Stanwyck

One movie I come back to time and again is 'The Hustler.' I don't think there's better dialogue in any film. — Simon Kinberg

Without the witty, potent dialogue and the puzzling shape of the story, the movie would have been merely an American version of the kind of brooding, shadow-filled, Ufa-style expressionist stuff that Joe had grown up watching in Prague. Without the brooding shadows and cold adventurings of the camera, without the theatrical lighting and queasy angles, it would have been merely a clever movie about a rich bastard. It was much, much more, than any movie really needed to be. In this one crucial regard--its inextricable braiding of image and narrative--Citizen Kane was like a comic book. — Michael Chabon

We don't often have the luxury of time [in Steve Jobs movie ]to have these conversations where you just literally get to sit around for day and days and analyze every line of dialogue. — Seth Rogen

I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called "Adaptation" where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball and a gas stand. — Nicolas Cage

Directing is a reactionary job more than a creation job. The job is to react whether it's moment one, the first time you read the script or see an article or read a book or notice something happen on the street and have an idea for a movie, and it just continues from there on in. You're just reacting to dialogue, a performance, an audition, a headache, a piece of furniture, a piece of clothing. — Jason Reitman

I do a little improv in my shows. Kind of like our movie, I'll do beats and ideas of dialogue, but I think there's less pressure because it's a live show. If you mess up, the audience laughs because we don't really know what we're doing. But as far as shooting, that was very scary, trying to make a point and drive the film. It definitely helped improvising. — Charlyne Yi

Die Hard represents the class of modern action pictures and the standard by which they must be judged. Few films falling into the "mindless entertainment" genre have as much going for them as this movie. Not only is it a thrill-a-minute ride, but it has one of the best film villains in recent memory, a hero everyone can relate to, dialogue that crackles with wit, and a lot of very impressive pyrotechnics. — James Berardinelli

She'd made him watch every Alien movie. Most of the goriest scenes were accompanied by his dialogue: 'Ach, that's no' - that's just no' right ... Bloody hell, this canna be right. — Kresley Cole

I love the movie 'Taken,' but the dialogue in the beginning of that movie is hilarious. They're talking, these commando types, and there's dialogue like, 'Hopefully your daughter appreciates what you're doing for her. Does she know that you're doing it?' What guys talk like this? — Michael Jai White

We're so used to everything being properly manicured, like you can hear every footstep in a movie, you can hear every bit of dialogue, and everything is in its place. — Jon Brion

Desi, Desi, Desi what am I going to do with you? (Kyrian)
Don't you dare take that flippant tone with me! (Desiderius)
Why ever not? (Kyrian)
Because I am not some scared little Daimon to run cringing from you. I am your worst nightmare. (Desiderius)
Must you resort to cliches? C'mon, Desidisastrous, couldn't you think of anything more original than that B-movie dialogue staple? (Kyrian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

My favorite movie is 'The Women' from 1939. It's been my favorite movie since I was like 12 years old. I love the dialogue, really. It's just a lot of really strong female performances. Rosalind Russell kills it, you know. — Anna Kendrick

Games are not about being told things. If you want to tell people things, write a book or make a movie. Games are dialogues - and dialogue requires both parties to take the floor once in a while — Warren Spector

I look at it [Scream movie] and think, wow, I can't believe I wrote that at such a young age. I also look at it and go, ohhh ouch, that dialogue, whoa. — Kevin D. Williamson

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. — Pete Docter

In every movie I do have a dialogue. — Jackie Chan

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that. — Michel Hazanavicius

Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally. — Ani DiFranco

I devoured each of what Halliday referred to as "The Holy Trilogies": Star Wars (original and prequel trilogies, in that order), Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Mad Max, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones. (Halliday once said that he preferred to pretend the other Indiana Jones films, from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull onward, didn't exist. I tended to agree.)
I also absorbed the complete filmographies of each of his favorite directors. Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.
I spent three months studying every John Hughes teen movie and memorizing all the key lines of dialogue. — Ernest Cline

Very often, things that people may think come from the writer, very often don't. There's a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie. When you hear a line of dialogue that sounds kind of tinny, it's pretty easy to cite the screenwriter. But there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a movie. — Evan Daugherty

We improv-ed scenes that didn't happen in the movie. We improv-ed the scenes that are written in the movie without the dialogue as written. We played around a lot to try and figure out just how we could flow with what was already written in the story and how we could highlight those imbalances and those points at which we came to loggerheads. — Bruce Greenwood

Things are going so well. We're volleying words back and forth. Everything she says, I have something I can say back. We're sparking, and part of me just wants to sit back and watch. We're clicking. Not because a part of me is fitting into a part of her. But because our words are clicking into each other to form sentences and our sentences are clicking into each other to form dialogue and our dialogue is clicking together to form this scene from this ongoing movie that's as comfortable as it is unrehearsed. — David Levithan

Every time I do a movie, I'm reading the script, or if it's something I have coming up, I'm reading the script, and I just spend hours and hours and days and weeks and months going over the script and just writing a lot of different ideas down, finding a little dialogue or just coming up with ideas for scenes and moments and all that kind of stuff. — Mark Wahlberg

As a writer, Chris Columbus was a big influence. 'The Goonies' was the first movie I ever saw that kids speak normally and not imagined how kids would talk. Always a big fan of Chris Columbus' dialogue and storytelling. — Adam Green

The city I inhabit now is not the city that I moved to in 1926; it has become a mean-spirited action movie complete with repulsive plot twists and preposterous dialogue. — Kathleen Rooney

Bad acting comes in many bags, various odors. It can be performed by cardboard refugees from an Ed Wood movie, reciting their dialogue off an eye chart, or by hopped-up pros looking to punch a hole through the fourth wall from pure ballistic force of personality, like Joe Pesci in a bad mood. I can respect bad acting that owns its own style. — James Wolcott

Do you like manga?" she asked after a minute. "Anime?"
"Anime's cool. I'm not really into it, but 1 like Japanese movies,
animated or not."
"Well, I'm into it. I watch the shows, read the books, chat on the boards, and all that. But this girl I know, she's
completely into it. She spends most of her allowance on the books and DVDs. She can recite dialogue from
them." She caught my gaze. "So would you say she belongs here?"
"No. Most kids are that way about something, right? With me, it's
movies. Like knowing who directed a sci-fi movie made before I was born. — Kelley Armstrong

The whole purpose of screenwriting is to convey everything through action and dialogue and not explanation and exposition. To me, there are movies where voiceover works really well because it does something more than exposition; it actually becomes a tonal element of the movie. — Jonathan Tropper

Acting for me was an escape and it wasn't until Smoke Signals that made me realize that acting is a personal development and challenge to grow. Smoke Signals really mirrored the way I grew up and how I felt, and that movie was the first time I'd dealt with my parents' death and how I felt that loss and sadness and anger. After that movie I said, "Y'know what, I have to realistically wear my emotions now when I do a job. That's gotta be as real as it gets. It's not just dialogue anymore." — Adam Beach

This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. — Roger Ebert

You know, making an animated movie is such a lonesome thing. You mostly don't see your fellow actors or anything. You go into your booth, you record all your dialogue. It's very much an issue of trust. You leave it all up to the director. — Julie Andrews

I had seen "Force Majeure" and I just love that movie so much. And I really wanted to artistically give a little hello to the filmmakers, and that kind of back and forth dialogue between artists that say, "I loved your movie. I was influenced by your movie. If I didn't have this job, I wouldn't be thinking of that. Do my TV show and then one day I'll make a movie where I can play with some of the visual themes in "Force Majeure." — Jill Soloway

Movie dialogue is movie dialogue. It can sound real, but no one speaks that way. — Brian Helgeland

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real. — Zach Braff

I don't want to be in a movie with 20 minutes of dialogue and then stand around while the robots start explosions. — Henry Hopper

So maybe we never would have realized we were so compatible if we hadn't been trading song lyrics and movie dialogue. That's textbook trivia right there."
Mindy looks unconvinced. "But that's how *everybody* gets together. They find some dumb thing they both know a little about that they can talk about until the waiter brings dinner. According to you, there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia."
"I think that's exactly right," I agree. "To trivia. — Ken Jennings

Structure 19. You worried about structure when you came up with your story! If you did, I'm sorry. You missed some of the most joyous moments in writing. Character and story come first. Before anything. Certainly before all that Act One, Two, and Three crapola. When you're teasing out your story, make lots of notes. Think out loud. Talk to a tape recorder. Make more notes. Fill up oceans of 3x5 cards. Write on yellow legal pads. Write on white legal pads. Scribble on napkins or beer coasters. Write down cool stuff for characters to do that may never find its way into the movie. Make notes and more notes and more notes, but do not trouble yourself with structure. Screw structure. Have fun. Structure is for later. For now, just let your incredibly creative mind run free. Make notes about character and plot and story and funny moments and locations you'd like to visit. Tape record dialogue for your — William M. Akers

If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know. — Michel Hazanavicius

I've seen some terrible plays, but I generally enjoy myself. One play I walked out of, I have a tremendous respect for the author. That was Robert Wilson, something called 'Network,' which consisted of Wilson sitting on a bunk, the dialogue of the movie 'Network' looped in while a chair on a rope went up and down. — August Wilson

The best sounds a kid will get is in a movie theater, with huge speakers, turned up loud. I always mix my music really loud. I don't care if you don't hear all the dialogue. The audience are not idiots. — John Hughes

He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other. — Richard Russo

I could never be the kind of writer who went to the set of the movie and fussed and fretted about, 'Oh, that dialogue's wrong,' or 'That character doesn't look like that.' That would be insufferable. — Alan Moore

I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning. — Paul Thomas Anderson

The way you write dialogue is the same whether you're writing for movies or TV or games. We use movie scriptwriting software to write the screenplays for our games, but naturally we have things in the script that you would never have in a movie script
different branches and optional dialogue, for example. But still, when it comes to storytelling and dialogue, they are very much the same. — Sam Lake