1) "That went well, I thought."2) "Showtime!"
3) "We've got company."
4) "I'm getting too old for this."
5) "I've got a bad feeling about this."
Write any of these, and I shall magically appear and set fire to your laptop (see helpful pic). Over to you - any more for the list?
***
And check out my:
'here we go again'
ReplyDelete"He's behind me, isn't he?"
ReplyDelete"That was bad on so many levels"
ReplyDelete“Yeah. A little TOO quiet.”
“Don’t you die on me!”
And anyone asking for X amount of money in "unmarked bills"
"Did I just say that out loud?"
ReplyDelete"What's that supposed to mean?"
ReplyDeleteW
"We have to talk."
ReplyDelete"What are you trying to say?"
"I can't talk about this now."
"I don't understand."
"What's going on?" is officially banned from EastEnders scripts, though I think a few sneak through when no-one's looking.
ReplyDelete"Please, no - "
ReplyDelete"I - "
"Don't - "
"I just - "
Followed by an interruptionm (usually a bullet or a line from another character)
Just came to post most of the ones above, but there's still:
ReplyDelete"I just threw up in my mouth"
and
"a little bit of wee came out"
Use other lines please, chuckleheads.
'Hi sis!'
ReplyDelete'So...'
'It's like some kind of movie...'
'Impossible!'
'CHARACTER X looks to camera'
"Try to get some sleep..."
ReplyDeleteYou bunch of dialogue fascists!
ReplyDeleteThough if any of you lot write a screenplay with as "steaming mug" of any type of beverage or have your characters BASKING IN THE AFTERGLOW of sex in your scene description, you are officially dead to me. DEAD.
"Let's go to work."
ReplyDelete"This isn't over 'till it's over"
ReplyDeleteHa. I did a whole list of these. Will have to amend my post, thanks to some of these add-ons, though.
ReplyDeleteHere was my post on the definitive list of cliché dialogue: http://kevinlehane.com/2008/09/15/the-definitive-list-of-cliched-dialogue/
(Btw, pardon the rudeness if it seems that way by linking to my own post -- just thought you'd get a kick out of it.)
"You just don't get it, do you?"
ReplyDeleteWhich roughly translates as "Either we haven't explained this properly, or the audience are fucking morons, so let's have another go."
4 & 5 should have been banned ages ago!
ReplyDeleteall of these are rgeat, I'm gonna have to go look at the link.
ReplyDelete"That's it - I'm taking you OFF THE CASE!"
ReplyDelete"What's up with you, you look like you've just seen a ghost.
"(thoughtful) Yeah. Maybe I have... "
"McMurphy, you and I go back a long way, don't we? But the DA's all over me on this one... "
"Hey detective, don't you have enough work to do without giving decent citizens a hard time?"
'Put that Banana away, you big, beautiful fool'
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Hedley Lemarr, I hate that cliche!
Lord Lehane, how dare you divert my traffic like this? If they're not here at Bloggery-Pokery, how are people supposed to buy my officially-licensed Jason Arnopp mugs, pens, garlic crushers and cock-rings? Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to give us a linky-credit, too, on your splendidly amended list. You've got 48 hours, Lehane!
Done and done.
ReplyDeleteOh, there's another one for the list!
:-)
Thank you sir - you JUST made the 48-hour deadline. If you'd failed, it would've been your badge!
ReplyDeleteJust try and stop me. You'll never take me alive! Ahem.
ReplyDeleteThis could run and run and run.
'This is where the fun starts'
ReplyDelete(Lucas used this in the SW prequels, yp help us know that what was unfolding constituted 'fun')
Any scene in which the young rookie is about to leave and the older gruff mentor stops him at the door to say 'Thanks' or 'You did good'.
"Breathe, dammit!"
ReplyDeleteI take it you've been watching Demons from the list?
Anna
Any sentence including the word "smite" in any variation.
ReplyDelete"I don't believe I'm 'earin this!" (mainly EastEnders)
ReplyDelete"We're in." (said by a hacker)
"You wouldn't pull that trigger - you don't have the guts!" (Dunno about you, but I wouldn't taunt someone pointing a gun at me)
"You know how I said that I'd let you go if you [did X]? I LIED."
J
"Don't worry. Everything's gonna be alright"
ReplyDeleteSo, where the hell is the link to the officially licensed Jason Arnopp cock-rings, then? I've looked everywhere... :0/ And who is modelling, eh, Jase? Tsk.
"This is the best way - the only way..."
ReplyDelete"You complete me!"
"Leave it! He's/She's/They're not worth it!'
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget:
ReplyDelete"how long have we known each other?"
and
"I know you're my brother/sister/mother/father/best friend/neighbour but..."
Ergh.
*spits*
"You just don't GET it, do you?"
ReplyDeleteFollowed by exposition to make sure that WE get it.
(interrupting geek/ scientist Character A's technical explanation...)
ReplyDeleteGruff Character B: "In English, please..."
"Congratulations Detective XXX, you just screwed up 3 years undercover work."
ReplyDeleteHas no TV/Film 'tec ever heard of inter-departmental co-operation?
"I'm not falling for that watch out behind you trick."
ReplyDeleteFollowed by beng clobbered by the 'whatever' behind them.
"What are midichlorians, Master Qui gon?"
ReplyDelete"I'm through the firewall"
ReplyDeleteAny scene in which someone purporting to be a hacker, or indeed is just using a computer randomly hits keys on their keyboard.
"You'll never get me to [do whatever]."
I'm a bit late to the party, but...
ReplyDelete"I don't hate you... I feel sorry for you."
...and when someone's about to die, instead of being frightened they look a bit annoyed or resigned and say, "Oh sh--" BOOM!
ReplyDeleteMy God. If it carries on like this the cliche cupboard will be bare.
ReplyDeleteDoes a character in a police station/CTU scenario being told 'walk with me' and then being briefed on the fly about everything that's happened so far (purely for our benefit) count?
It might also be worth calling time on the rooftop epilogue with rookie and mentor both having learned something and staring into the middle distance...
(Note: I may end up using both of these at some point...)
I seem to remember that Garth Marenghi's Darkplace did a real job on rooftop epilogues.
ReplyDeleteAnd I pretty much gave up on Fringe the moment Special Agent Hardass opened his team briefing with "OK, people..."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Is it raining? I hadn't noticed."
ReplyDeleteTruly "a cowpat strewn from the devil's own Satanic herd".
(See what I did there?)
I think some people are confusing bad lines with overused lines - this is about lines that have been used way, WAY too often, not just really bad lines that have been used once. Blasphemy! How about:
ReplyDelete"No, I won't kill you - that'd make me just like you / bring me down to your level" - when in reality, you'd blow his fucking head off.
"Let's go!" - supposedly the most common phrase in action movies (I think the original Dawn of the Dead holds the record for most uses). Trouble is, it's really handy and sounds exciting. And yes, I've used it a lot.
"*Not* good" - when something catastrophic is happening.
"Okay, I'll tell you what's going on. The murderer is-- AAAGGHHH!" - cue the informant being shot. Oh Jack Bauer, I love you, in a deep and sexual way, but 24 does this way too often.
"What you don't know? Wow. You really don't know, do you? You honestly, really don't remember?" - NO! HE FUCKING DOESN'T! NOW TELL US!
And John Soanes: "I LIED" is a CLASSIC, sir! How DARE you?? I don't believe I'm 'earin' this - you're off the case!
How about lines we should hear more of? Like "I suppose you're all wondering why I gathered you here", or "will somebody please tell me just what THE HELL is going on here?" (also known as "The Line", used in every disaster movie ever, and shamelessly stolen by me in nearly everything I write).
I wasn't confusing bad lines with overused... 'Is it raining etc.' is such a bad line that using it even once is over-use!
ReplyDeleteEven by the time it appeared in Four Weddings I'd heard variations a couple of times.
A line I want to hear used... just once... is 'Grease the otter, Private, we're going in.'
Do they really use "Okay, I'll tell you what's going on. The murderer is-- AAAGGHHH!" in 24. I don't watch the programme... but that was an old chestnut back in the Silent Era!
ReplyDeleteI heard "It's just a scratch" on something the other day, which should by rights be the classic overused line, yet I can't remember ever hearing it before.
ReplyDeleteOoh, how about "We don't want to make a martyr out of him" as an unconvincing reason why the baddies haven't simply shot the goodie when they had a chance.
ReplyDeleteFuck martyring, shoot him in the head, and then write "I bum goats" on his head with a magic marker. Simple as.
John: Oh they do, about every five minutes - I sympathise that they can't give the characters too much otherwise the story will wrap up, and they have to fill 24 eps - but sometimes you can even predict it. Oh, they've caught him! He'll be dead in a minute, then.
ReplyDeleteAnother one is someone coughing, and then saying "no, I'm fine" - they have cancer, or AIDS, or TB, and will be dead before too long.
Sounds almost Pythonesque... The Black Knight's 'Tis but a scratch'* and the Old Man's 'I feel much better'.
ReplyDelete(*is that where you heard it, James Henry?)
Wow. This is the mother of all discussion points, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteCould I respectfully suggest maybe a new thread about lines we love?
After all, long, long ago some of the stale old lines listed here were fresh and shiny.
For example 'He's behind me, isn't he?'worked wonderfully in 'City Slickers'. (Shut up. It did)
Aha! The 'scratch' line does of course come from Python! Thanks Jon.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I have found some use for my misspent youth! :)
ReplyDelete"It's not you, it's me"
ReplyDeleteTwo guys square off to each other.
ReplyDelete"All right, motherf*cker. Let's dance."
Any mention of fighting being like dancing is banned!!! Anyone who's been in a fight would say dancing is the complete opposite.
Most fights don't start with a mission statement either...
ReplyDeleteJust hold me.
ReplyDeleteAnybody storming out of a room saying I never want to see you again/ it's over/ etc. then immediately coming back, sheepishly, for a left behind folder/ handbag/ whatever...
ReplyDelete...cue laughter.
Armstrong and Miller have taken that last one and run with it as a recurring theme for a sketch. It's quite amusing.
ReplyDelete...ah yes... the one about the Prime Minister-type who exits to plaudits having got something agreed and then...
ReplyDeleteNo Piers!
ReplyDeleteIt's
"Hold me like you don't ever want to let me go."
I read that frighteningly often.
I'm always amused by 'kissed me like I've never been kissed before'. (Or variations thereof.)
ReplyDeleteI always hope for a flashback to an elbow or nose being passionately kissed.
Completely agree with Rob on "hi sis!", and anything else that is used in the first film minutes of a film to tell rather than show - saw a really shit horror film the other day and this dialogue appeared in the first scene:
ReplyDeleteBoy A: "I can't believe you made me take this trip a few days before my medical school finals!"
Boy B: "Well I'm you're irresponsible older brother, what else do you expect me to do?"
You can pretty much eject the DVD at that point, no?
"You're my brother and I love you, but -"
"We were just kids ... we didn't know what we were doing"
"I'm not leaving without you"
"That the best you've got?"
There is absolutely no way you're going to make me...
ReplyDeleteCut to same person doing it. Grrrr
This is like scriptwriting therapy
A similar one to Phill Barron's "You just don't get it, do you?" is the horrid "Let me get this straight..." where a character repeats the situation and/or plan back to someone as a means of recapping it for the audience. And possibly also underlining how MAD it all is - as if, by having a character say the situation is ridiculous or the plan bizarre, the writer can protect themselves from the same accusation from the audience. (Ref: TurkeyCity - "You Can't Fire Me, I Quit")
ReplyDeleteHeck... I'm gonna write a movie with all of these in. ALL of them!
ReplyDeleteHeck... I'm gonna write a movie with all of these in. ALL of them!
ReplyDeleteThat's what Shakespeare done with Hamlet, innit? Got loads of well-known phrases and stuck them together in a play?
In that case, I must demand that your hero crawls through air vents.
ReplyDeleteI love air vents.
If you get vents I demand the bit where there's a sound which turns out to be 'just a cat'...
ReplyDelete"It's not me, it's you."
ReplyDeleteAs long as right after the 'just a cat' bit, the real nightmare/psycho/nameless horror leaps out and stabs them.
ReplyDeleteI remember a police procedural TV movie which began with a body face-down in a pond and the line,
ReplyDelete"Three weeks in the job as Chief of Police and look how he ends up. Some days I wish I wasn't Head of Internal Affairs."
I could tell you the title of it, but then I'd have to kill you.
(actually I can't remember it)
This could go very Dr Seuss and you shall be banished to write scripts composed entirely from these lines.
ReplyDeleteactually i think that's what you need to do, run a competition to either create a short script using only cliches - or (perhaps better) a script that contains the phrase 'Grease the otter, Private, we're going in.'
ReplyDeleteyou could offer some official arnopp merchandise as a prize.
How about "This isn't the movies/tv you know"...
ReplyDeleteI've just seen an episode of the 2008 Knightrider - it had every single one of these lines in it and about 300 more which *should* be added to the list.
ReplyDeleteJesus.
In this uber-cliche movie, make sure your hero gets shot and 'killed' only to be saved by the lucky bible/coin/flask that he put on earlier.
ReplyDeleteI thought they officially retired that until I saw it in White House Down.
'In this uber-cliche movie, make sure your hero gets shot and 'killed' only to be saved by the lucky bible/coin/flask that he put on earlier.I thought they officially retired that until I saw it in White House Down.'
ReplyDeleteEspecially having been subverted so well in the final episode of Blackadder III.