Sunday evening, as the opening bars of Henry Mancini's classic "The Pink Panther Theme" played on my TV, my 18-year-old daughter in the other room said, "Does your dog bite?"
Actually, it was more like "Dez urr dooig biete?"
It was a funny moment on its own, but also a proud one. As parents, it is our obligation to introduce our children to the classics, and Peter Sellers' work as Inspector Clouseau ranks right up there with works by Shakespeare, The Beatles and Mel Blanc.
Many have argued that the Sellers dog scene from "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" is one of the funniest in all of filmdom. It's certainly up there. It's also one that everyone should instantly recognize.
It got me thinking of classic movie lines and how they become part of our everyday lives and culture. Rhett Butler's famous dismissal of Scarlett O'Hara continues to be rated the No. 1 movie line of all time by a variety of sources. That's partly because it's great but also because people can actually use it in everyday life to great effect.
Like a line from great literature or a song, a well-chosen movie line can further a conversation in just a few words.
When "American Graffiti" came out in 1973, I was 10. A line like "who cut the cheese?" was gold to a 10-year-old. If you wanted to lighten things up in Sister John Phillips' art class, just drop that line and you were the funniest guy on the planet. Never mind that it'd been said 15 times already that day.
Later in life, "Airplane" came out, and it seemed like everybody was acting like 10-year-old boys. I remember a high-school friend of mine lamenting the fact that her father thought that "don't call me Shirley" was hilarious and said it all the time. That movie gave us a bunch of lines that were repeated on playgrounds and in boardrooms everywhere.
Below are some other lines that everybody should be able to instantly identify. Some are old, and some are fairly new. I'm thinking we can post them on Facebook and see who can identify them all and maybe offer some new ones.
These to me are pretty easy.
• "And your little dog, too."
• "Son, you got a panty on your head."
• "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room."
• "What we've got here is failure to communicate."
• "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
• "You're killing me, Smalls."
• "I'm kind of a big deal."
• "He hates these cans."
• "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
• "Why a duck?"
• "It's in the hole. It's in the hole. It's in the hole.'
• "Inconceivable."
• "I coulda been a contender."
• "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."
• "Life's a garden. Dig it."
• "Here's Johnny."
• "Check out the big brain on Brad."
• "Would you please put some pants on? I feel weird having to ask you twice."
• "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges."
That last one is actually kind of a twofer as it appears in two classic movies.