Flickgrrl

"You're dead, son; go get buried" and other movie put-downs

Henry Hanrahan has compiled an eff-travaganza of a compilation video devoted to digs, kiss-offs and put-downs in movies. I would have posted the Youtube video, but it's strictly NSFW (not suitable for work) because of its emphasis on F- and S-word rebuffs.

23 comments

"You're dead, son; go get buried" and other movie put-downs

POSTED: Tuesday, July 6, 2010, 3:05 PM

Carrie Rickey, Film Critic

Tony Curtis (left) listens to Burt Lancaster in "Sweet Smell of Success": "You're dead, son. Go get buried."

Flickgrrl prefers more polish and less profanity in her ridicule, as in this denunciation of a treacherous frenemy in Patrice Leconte's Ridicule (1996): "Judas kept excellent company." And as in Burt Lancaster's kiss-off to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957): "You're dead, son. Go get buried."

While Hanrahan's compendium includes those amusing allusions to low birth: "Your mother was a hamster! And your father smells of elderberries!" (Monty Python and the Holy Grail); "You son of a motherless goat!" (The Three Amigos), it is missing the classic girl-on-girl putdown (from Joan Blondell to Ruth Donnelly) in Footlight Parade: "As long as there's sidewalks, sweetheart, you'll have a job!"

Among Flickgrrl's favorites that overlap with Hanrahan's: "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!" (Jamie-Lee Curtis to Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda) and the zinger snapped by Jack Nicholson to a fan in As Good as it Gets who wonders how his writer invents such great female characters: " I think of a man and take away reason and accountability."

Among those that Hanrahan neglected: "You have sunk below the deepest layer of prehistoric frog [excrement] at the bottom of a New Jersey scum swamp" (Michael Douglas to Kathleen Turner in War of the Roses); and (read this in a French accent) "Sir, zee pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave!" (Steve Martin in Roxanne).

Flickgrrl's nomination for best putdown ever is from Mildred Pierce, where Eve Arden commiserates with Joan Crawford about her awful daughter, Veda: "Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."

Your nominations?

23 comments

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Comments (23)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 11:23 PM, 07/06/2010

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son." Dean Wormer to Flounder in Animal House.

— Philly Ray

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 11:24 PM, 07/06/2010

All time best: You're buckwheat. Spoken by Christopher Walken in Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead.

— MichaelZoe

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 11:44 PM, 07/06/2010

definitely the most hurtful is there will be blood... 'your just the afterbirth, eli. they should have kept you in a jar on the mantle...'

— juggadore

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 12:12 AM, 07/07/2010

Full Metal Jacket there are sooo many but, "You look like you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose!"

— chunkyblamm

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:50 PM, 07/08/2010

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner." Also, I love when Jessica Walter, terrorizing Donna Mills in "Play 'Misty' for Me," looks directly into the camera, with knife in hand, and intones, "Gosh you're dumb."

— Pash

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 7:33 AM, 07/10/2010

When you mentioned Footlight Parade, I was reminded of Dinner at Eight. Jean Harlow comments that she read in a book (cue hilarious double-take from Marie Dressler) that machines will soon replace all professions. Dressler: "Oh, my dear...you'll never have to worry about that!" I'm not sure this qualifies as a put-down, but I love Brando's Wild Ones retort to "Whaddya rebellin' against?" "Whaddya got?" And as long as we're on Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, how about "Go sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here"?

— NGreenberg

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 12:14 PM, 07/18/2010

"If my dog had a face like yours, I'd shave its behind and make it walk backwards." Source UNKNOWN

— PHILLYRWFM

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 5:08 PM, 07/19/2010

One of my favorite put-downs ever - and one that applies to a remarkable number of public figures, sadly - was said by Doris Day to Clark Gable in "Teacher's Pet": "You're stupid and you're proud of it, and that makes you cruel."

— wwolfe