Rolling...

Disclaimer: this post may very well be one big spoiler alert, so proceed with caution.

I suck at making lists. Plain and simple.

I have issues with being able to narrow things down – such as: if you were stranded on an island and could only take 3 albums with you, which ones would you take? What are your top 5 movies? Your top 10 songs? Your 3 favorite meals? So on and so forth…

Can’t do it. So, just consider the following a collection of some memorable movie scenes. However, I did keep the movie choices at 10 to keep it somewhat ‘list-like’.

And I am 101% sure I’ve left out some of my favorites – but, as I said there were no guidelines to creating this ‘collection’. Just scenes from the top of my head.

I like how I’m trying to justify this pointless rambling of a post to myself…

Onward! In no particular order…

American Psycho: Chainsaw scene
Unfortunately it took me far too long after this movie came out to even see it – but after that fateful night of drinking 249 pots of coffee at Tina’s and watching it on AMC at 5am – I was totally hooked. I didn’t really want to pick one, as I rifled through so many: “FEED ME A KITTEN”, the business card scene, “is that a raincoat?”, “STOP SOUNDING SO F*CKING SAD, JESUS!” and of course the hilarious scene with Mr. Bateman in hysterics confessing his crimes. But there’s just something about that maddening scene with him completely crazed, chasing that poor girl through his apartment and into the stairwell in nothing but tennis shoes wielding a chainsaw that gets me every time.

Eulogy: Alice & Samantha scene
First off, let me say that I think this movie is truly one of the most underrated movies of all time. I had never even heard of it until I happened upon it in the ‘previously viewed’ section of Blockbuster. To be honest the only reason I bought it was because Zooey Deschanel, my major girl crush, was in it. Pleasantly surprised is an understatement. It follows a family’s coping mechanisms and general dysfunction after a family member dies. Secrets are exposed and hilarious turmoil ensues. And it is SO wonderfully weird.

Back to the task at hand. Alice (Debra Winger) is one of 4 siblings affected by the death of Ed (Rip Torn), her father. She’s high strung, cynical, married to a man she’s practically made mute, and has 3 just-as-mute children. She spends most of the first half antagonizing her sister Lucy (Kelly Preston), and her partner Judy (Famke Jannsen) about their lesbian lifestyle. However at one point you witness an awkward encounter between Alice and Samantha (Glenne Headly) after they are re-united after many years. This sets us up for the scene I’m referring to. Alice and Samantha are sitting in her car in the rain, discussing the tragic loss of Ed, and life in general when Alice asks “do you remember when my dad caught us in the basement?” – there was a moment of silence and then Samantha asks “were we doing this?” – and before you know it, everything you know/thought about Alice is turned on it’s head. Suddenly her character makes so much more sense – and then you feel a tinge of sadness because she’s been living a lie and all the things she hated in her sister were all the things she couldn’t understand in herself. And then you can’t help but laugh as someone’s ass comes crashing through the sunroof mid reunited make out session.

Believe me, this is just one of MANY, heartwarming, odd, hysterical scenes that make up this movie.

Caddyshack: Cinderella Boy
Now, this movie is CHOCK full of golden nuggets, but the first scene that always comes to mind is the groundskeeper Carl, imagining himself on the PGA Tour (or something), muttering to himself as the announcer whilst hitting the living daylights out of peonies (were they? I don’t know they looked like it) as if they were golf balls. “He’s a Cinderella boyyy, tears in his eyes I guess as he lines up for this next shot…”. Nobody but Bill Murray could have pulled this off as well.

Baby Mama: Gum scene
You cannot go wrong with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Inching ahead past the “chocolate or poop” scene is the gum scene. Angie (Poehler) is getting used to living in a civilized manner and while cackling hysterically at a guy getting whacked in the balls on “Funniest Home Videos”, puts a chewed piece of gum under the coffee table, as Kate (Fey) watches. “Did you just put gum underneath my coffee table, do you think you're at an Arby’s?” Angie’s responses are classic, “I don’t knooooow…maybe you put some of it under there!...Bitch, I don’t know your life!” Never. Gets. Old.

Waynes World: I’m in…Delaware scene
If you know me, you probably know how extremely difficult it was for me to pick ONE scene from this movie. So I went with the one that often randomly pops into my head, and that I will find any excuse to quote.

Wayne and Garth are experimenting with the new green screen capabilities after their show “Wayne’s World” becomes sponsored and put on network television. They’re standing in front as locations ‘magically’ appear behind them. “Texas, howdy partner…” “Hawaii, mooka laka laylie, c’mon you wanna lay me” and finally, “Or, Imagine! Being magically whisked away to…Delaware. Hi…I’m in…Delaware” His facial expression says it all.

Airplane!: Cockpit scene
Seriously, this whole movie is basically one whole scene. There are too many classic one-liners to count. But, in honor of Peter Graves (who passed away today) I will go with one of several hilarious cockpit scenes. Little Joey is invited into the cockpit and while there, endures a serious of random, irrelevant questions from Captain Oveur (Graves). After a sensible “You ever been in a cockpit before?” comes “You ever seen a grown man naked?” and “Joey, you ever been in a…Turkish prison?” Ahh, Random and I go hand in hand.

Following close behind is all of Rumack’s (Leslie Nielsen) ridiculous banter with various flight staff.

Striker: “Surely you can’t be serious”
Rumack: “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley”.

Rumack: “Well, can’t you take a guess?”
Oveur: “Not for another two hours”
Rumack: “You can’t take a guess for another two hours?”

Town & Country: Hover-round scene
This movie is another hidden gem. While the entire thing isn’t necessarily quotable, there is one particular scene that busts my gut. I can’t even correctly set it up as I haven’t seen it in awhile – but Eugenie (Andie McDowell) is at her mother’s home – and her mother is a crotchety old bag with a drinking problem and in a motorized wheel chair. She goes off on a foul-mouthed tirade about her husband not “doing it to her anymore”, wants him to stir her drink with “that big swinging d*** of his”, shouts an incorrectly tensed expletive and speeds past the scene in her hover-round.

Honestly one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen, because of the WTF factor.

First Wives Club: C’mon Annie scene
I want to be Diane Keaton when I grow up. The woman is naturally gorgeous and I really can’t name a movie I didn’t like her in. FWC is an old favorite and there’s a scene a friend and I quote to this day, out of the blue, 12 years later. Annie (Keaton) is at her therapists (Marcia Gay Harden) dealing with the demise of her marriage. At one point, the therapist gives Annie a foam bat and tells her to hit her. Annie, being the kind hearted, naturally mellow person she is, declines more than once as her therapist repeatedly tells her to “C’MON ANNIE, HIT ME!!” Through laughter she finally exclaims “I’d love to!” and proceeds to smack her in the face multiple times as if she were trying to kill an unwanted spider in the vicinity.

This scene has 10x the hilarity if you pause it different times throughout the bashing and take note of their facial expressions.

Along Came Polly: White Chocolate scene
As several of you know, Philip Seymour Hoffman has a special place in my heart. Because, as I so profoundly put once upon a time, he “has great comedic timing. And he’s really good in serious movies too.”

Sandy (Hoffman) is an expired child star in the movie, still living of the profits of “Crocodile Tears”. In this scene, Sandy and Ruben (Ben Stiller) are playing basketball and a maniacal Sandy is running his sweatpants’d, chubby ass around the court like a crazy person, hogging the ball and taking ridiculous shots while yelling things like “white chocolate!” and “make it rain!” as each shot bounces clean of the backboard or completely misses the hoop altogether. Then pauses the game because his “lungs are burning”.

Definitely a rewind scene (as well as in the beginning of the movie when he slips and falls on a freshly waxed dance floor).

Annnd finally

The Notebook: The Rain scene
After thinking about this ‘list’ – I realized most of my choices were comedies. Makes sense since those are typically the ones that enter my mind at any given time, causing me to laugh at inopportune times like when I’m alone which results in me looking like a complete whack-a-mole.

So then I thought about The Notebook. The first time I saw this movie was during a particularly rough period in my life – I started crying 15 minutes in and did not stop until the end. Ask my girls, Katie and Z. My eyes were so swollen I actually wore sunglasses at work the next day.

Once I was able to view the movie when my life wasn’t a somber, black hole – I was able to enjoy it like a normal person. Though most of the movie still gets to me, no matter how many times I watch it, it has become one of my most favorites. The scene where Noah and Allie are rowing back to the house shortly after they were reunited again after so many years is without a doubt my favorite. In the middle of the journey it starts pouring and once they reach the dock, Allie demands to know why he never wrote her. She finds out he did in fact write her, 365 letters, and her mother kept them from her. He exclaims it wasn’t over, and “IT STILL ISN’T OVER” – as he rushes over, mashes his face against hers and they stumble into the house, lip-locked, and make wet, soggy love. Awwww.

C’mon what do you want from me, I’m a chick.

Aaaand scene.