Over 3.8K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Famous Movie Lines That Were Unscripted
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Vote up the unscripted movie lines that movies wouldn't be the same without.
What if we told you the famous line, "Warriors, come out to play," is actually an unscripted, totally ad-libbed movie line? In this list, we're going to focus on the magic that strikes during production. It's when the right actor has just the right instinct at the right moment and creates something iconic. The actor says a line that becomes larger than the script, larger than the moment, and sometimes represents the entire movie.
Movies are an incredibly huge undertaking. It takes a village (or an army, depending on who you ask) to make a film. They say you make a film three times: once in pre-production, again while you're filming, and finally while you're editing. At any of these points, lightning can strike and completely change the course of the film. This is a collection of famous, originally unscripted, dialogue in classic films. Those one-in-a-million pieces of magic where a line struck all the right chords and became legendary.
Latest additions: "Son Of A Bitch Stole My Line." - Good Will Hunting
While luring the great white shark within range, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) gets his first look at the shark and how impossibly large it is. Stunned, he stands and mutters the now famous line to Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) completely off-the-cuff, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duval) and her son Danny (Danny Lloyd) hide from the unhinged Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in a hotel bathroom. Jack chops through the door with an ax. As he makes a hole big enough for his face, he yells a phrase previously made popular by Ed McMahon on The Tonight Show, "Here's Johnny!" The line was never part of the script, but was instantly iconic.
In this scene, there was no specific dialogue. The script merely said, Travis talks to himself in the mirror. Every single thing that Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) says during his insane conversation with himself in the mirror was improvised by De Niro.
All of the dialogue between Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) was scripted, but many of the nuances and iconic subtleties were not. Most iconically, the hiss was something that Anthony Hopkins would do to make Jodie Foster uncomfortable between takes.
After a New York City taxi completely ignored all of the road closure signs and filming notifications, Dustin Hoffman (Ratso) and Jon Voight (Joe Buck) were nearly hit by the speeding car. Staying completely in character and never missing a beat, Hoffman turned the moment into one of the best in the film, improvising and tying it into his character and the scene.
Sure, it's one of the best movie quotes of all time and yes, it's one of the most quoted lines ever, especially when referencing classic cinema. But it wasn't even in the script. It was actually just what Humphrey Bogart (playing Rick Blaine) said to Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund) while teaching her to play poker between takes. It became second nature, made its way into the film, and then into our pop culture lexicon.
