Category: Movies

“Arnold doesn’t dance! He can barely walk!”

From: In & Out

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Narrator for the Exploring Your Masculinity audio tape

The story behind the quote: In and Out was a film that was pretty much a breakthrough for its time because it used homosexuality not as a punchline. Rather, it uses homosexuality as the main plot point. Not only that, it never used (outright anyway) the gay stereotype.

The story is about Howard Brackett (played by Kevin Kline), a teacher from middle school. One of his former students won the Best Actor award during the Oscars for his portrayal of a gay soldier. During the acceptance speech, the student thanks Howard Brackett for helping him… and tells the entire world Howard is gay.

Howard quickly denies being homosexual. However, after an encounter with reporter Tom Malloy (played by Tom Selleck), where he gets kissed by the gay reporter, he starts to question his manhood. He then rushes home to play a tape to try to reaffirm his heterosexuality… with poor results.

Geek wisdom: People are generally paranoid of what others think of us. So, we try to convince ourselves that we are “normal” people. No, we don’t really like comic book because “comics are for kids.” I “used” to play Dungeons and Dragons but I don’t anymore because, well, that would be ridiculous! We try to act “normal.”

The thing is, we are all normal. Our interests and likes make us what we are. However, the first thing we have to do is tell ourselves that our interests and likes are okay.

Be happy with who you really are deep down inside. In fact, you should be proud of who you are inside. If you wanna dance, go ahead and dance!

“One million dollars!”

From: Austin Powers series

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Dr. Evil

The story behind the quote: If you don’t already know, the Austin Powers series is a spoof of James Bond movies of the 60’s and 70’s and spy movies in general. However, while it is the hero that is the main star of the James Bond movies, it is the main antagonist, Dr. Evil that usually steals the spotlight. Not because he’s one of those villains that are just pure evil. Rather, it’s his incompetence on actually being evil.

An example of his incompetence would be his blackmailing the world. In the first movie, after being frozen in the 60’s and being thawed out in the 90’s, he attempted to ask all the world’s leaders for the sum of “one million dollars” and the world leaders got a good laugh out of it. It’s because, while one million dollars was a lot of money in the 60’s, it’s not that big of a deal in the 90’s, especially for the world economy.

When he went to the past, he tried to blackmail the world again, this time, he asked for 100 billion dollars (which is the new amount he asked for in the 90’s). The world leaders in the 60’s laughed at this amount as well since, well, that amount of money didn’t even exist yet!

Geek wisdom: There are always going to be changes around us. These changes will happen whether we accept them or not. So, the best thing to do is to always try to adapt. Without us even trying to know about these changes, we ourselves will never evolve.

We can try to cling to the thoughts of the “good ol’ days” all we want. It doesn’t change the fact that changes will happen. We may not always agree or even like the changes, but we do have to at least learn these changes.

“You can’t handle the truth!”

From: A Few Good Men

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: Col. Nathan R. Jessup

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the film A Few Good Men. While this may be considered spoilers since it happens pretty much at the end of the film (and is actually “the big thing” of the entire story), a lot of people don’t seem to recognize this fact.

Here’s a quick summary of the scene…

Lt. Jr. Grade Danny Keefe (played by Tom Cruise) has pretty much determined that Col. Nathat Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) given a “code red” (essentially an order to punish soldiers without any hearing) which led to the death of Officer Santiago. However, Keefe is without any form of proof. He devices a plan to call Col. Jessup to the stand during the trial and get him angry. In this way, he hopes that Col. Jessup will incriminate himself by admitting that he ordered the code red.

Keefe’s finds a flaw in the Col’s initial statement that Santiago should have been safe since there were orders not to harm him. Yet, at the same time, there were orders that he should be transferred for safety reasons. Keefe repeatedly asks the Colonel why would there be a need to transfer Santiago if there were standing orders not to hurt him. He eventually gets Col. Jessup to admit that he ordered the code red. However, the Colonel makes a speech saying that he gave the order to make sure that our freedoms are kept safe.

Geek wisdom: There are actually two pieces of Geek Wisdom we can pull from, not just the quote, but the entire monologue…

Like Col. Jessup said, there are some secrets that you think you want to be privy to, but in reality, the weight of those secrets can be too much to bear. There are going to be things that we believe that we can handle but we really can’t. We will have to rely on others to bear these (sometimes) terrible burdens and perform terrible actions because of them.

However, as Col. Jessup also said, we do have the liberty to condemn others for doing these terrible things, but we don’t know the full story. We may think that there may have been another way to prevent such horrible actions but there may be details that prevented a peaceful resolution. We do have to keep that in mind before we totally rally against something.

“A roofer listens to [his heart], not his wallet.”

From: Clerks

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: A customer from the store

The story behind the quote: Kevin Smith is a pretty popular filmmaker now. However, in 1994, he started out as a literal unknown and used up a lot of his personal savings to create his first movie, Clerks. The film tells the story of a day in the life of Dante, a down-on-his-luck clerk at a Quick Stop who was called into work on his rest day.

The quote comes from a specific scene where Dante and his friend (and clerk of a video store) Randall are talking about the construction of the Death Star in the third installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi. Randall comments that since the Death Star was still being constructed during the Rebel Alliance’s attach on the station, there must have been some innocent contractors on it when it got blown up.

A roofer who happens to overhear the conversation then interrupts and states that, since he is a contractor himself, his political beliefs actually contributes to his accepting of a job. He then tells the story when he was asked to repair the roof of a certain house and he would be paid much more than what he would usually charge. However, he found out that the house belongs to a dangerous mob boss so he decided to refer another contractor to do the job. Unfortunately for the other contractor, a rival mob decided to attack the house and was killed. The roofer then points to his heart and states that he listens to that when it’s time to select what job to take.

Geek wisdom:  A person’s integrity should not have a price.  There have to be certain limits to what we will do for material items. If you believe in something, no amount of wealth should be enough to change your mind. If there is a certain amount that will make you throw away what you believe is right, then you didn’t really believe in it in the first place.

“I have a bad feeling about this!”

From: Star Wars

Genre: Movies

Who said it?: A lot of the cast!

The story behind the quote: During the Star Wars films, the prequels and the original trilogy, practically all of the heroes (Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and even C3-P0) will deliver this quote. A lot of the time, it’s used for a humorous effect: there’s obviously something wrong is going to happen so it’s obvious that they feel that something wrong will happen. In fact, it became so popular that a lot of geeks will deliver the quote out of instinct when they know something obviously bad is about to happen.

If you want to see the quote delivered in all of the Star Wars movies, you can watch them in the clip below:

Geek wisdom:  You don’t need a mystical Force to know that something is wrong. You’ve got your gut to do that for you. Other people may think it’s just paranoia but there is going to be that time when your gut will be correct even though conventional logic says otherwise.

It’s that gut feeling that tells you to avoid taking that shortcut through a dark alley or crossing the street even though you don’t see any cars incoming. This same instinct help mankind survive for as long as we have. So, it’s something that has worked (and still does) for all of us.