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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsName a great generic line from the movies...
Examples:
Secret Agent: "You have interfered with my plans for the last time, Mr Bond."
Gangster: "Here's a C-note. Get yourself some fresh duds. I like my boys looking sharp."
JDC
(10,154 posts)"More Feeling" prison guard to inmate band
GreenEyedLefty
(2,073 posts)matt819
(10,749 posts)I dont believe in coincidence.
NBachers
(17,203 posts)Lint Head
(15,064 posts)NBachers
(17,203 posts)NBachers
(17,203 posts)NanceGreggs
(27,821 posts)... usually spoken by a private investigator:
"So I did some digging and ___ did this and that. But here's where it gets interesting."
That line is almost invariably followed by the words "Turns out ...", whereupon the PI rattles off a litany of nefarious facts about the subject under investigation.
"Turns out this guy is shacked-up with a blowsey blonde waitress who works in a dive bar ..."
"Turns out this guy has a few friends from the wrong side of the tracks ..."
"Turns out this guy was flat broke, but suddenly started spending cash like it was water ..."
"Turns out this guy has had more than a few run-ins with the Feds ..."
pressbox69
(2,252 posts)is it the same for you as it is for me?
LeftInTX
(25,876 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(57,838 posts)It's that stock scream that shows up in movie after movie after movie.
The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect of a man screaming that has been used in 372 movies and countless television series, beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion, and is most commonly used in films and television.
Most likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley, the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the third movie to use the effect.
The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in the Star Wars series, the Indiana Jones series, Disney cartoons, and many other blockbuster films, as well as many television programs and video games.
History
The Wilhelm scream originates from a series of sound effects recorded for the 1951 movie Distant Drums. In a scene from the film, soldiers are wading through a swamp in the Everglades, and one of them is bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator. The scream for that scene was recorded later in a single take, along with five other short, pained screams, which were labelled "man getting bit by an alligator, and he screamed." The fifth scream was used for the soldier in the alligator scenebut the fourth, fifth, and sixth screams recorded in the session were also used earlier in the filmwhen three Native Americans are shot during a raid on a fort. Although takes 4, 5, and 6 are the most recognizable, all the screams are referred to as "Wilhelm" by those in the sound community.
The Wilhelm scream's major breakout in popular culture came from motion picture sound designer Ben Burtt, who discovered the original recording (which he found as a studio reel labeled "Man being eaten by alligator" ) and incorporated it into a scene in Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker shoots a Stormtrooper off of a ledge, with the effect being used as the Stormtrooper is falling. Burtt is credited with naming the scream after Private Wilhelm (see The Charge at Feather River). Over the next decade, Burtt began incorporating the effect in other films on which he worked, including most projects involving George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, notably the rest of the subsequent Star Wars films, as well as the Indiana Jones movies. Other sound designers picked up on the effect, and inclusion of the sound in films became a tradition among the community of sound designers. In what is perhaps an in-joke within an in-joke, one of the scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom actually features a man being eaten by a crocodile (closely related to the alligator) accompanied by the scream.
Research by Burtt suggests that Sheb Wooley, best known for his novelty song "The Purple People Eater" in 1958 and as scout Pete Nolan on the television series Rawhide, is likely to have been the voice actor who originally performed the scream. This has been supported by an interview in 2005 with Linda Dotson, Wooley's widow. Burtt discovered records at Warner Brothers from the editor of Distant Drums including a short list of names of actors scheduled to record lines of dialogue for miscellaneous roles in the movie. Wooley played the uncredited role of Private Jessup in Distant Drums, and was one of the few actors assembled for the recording of additional vocal elements for the film. Wooley performed additional vocal elements, including the screams for a man being bitten by an alligator. Dotson confirmed Wooley's scream had been in many Westerns, adding, "He always used to joke about how he was so great about screaming and dying in films." Despite the usage of the sound, no royalties are paid.
For a pure sound effect (i.e., not something uttered by a human being), I nominate the ringing telephone from "The Rockford Files." I've heard that phone in countless other TV shows.
JDC
(10,154 posts)Thx
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Which brings me to one of my favorite complaints.
A character, usually the lead, is in a large room. There is a gentle knock at the thick heavy wood--marble-- concrete door, depending on location, and the character says, in a normal low conversational voice.."come in". Someone enters.
how the hell can the knocker even hear the "come in"? Defies real life.
AND, while I am at it.
in the same kind of room, sometimes the same damn room, the heroine is being menaced and prepares to scream, and the villain says.." No use to scream, no one will hear you".
Glorfindel
(9,755 posts)n/t
Jane Austin
(9,199 posts)n/t
benld74
(9,916 posts)Aristus
(66,557 posts)The hero calling to his best friend, who is knocking on the front door.
A soon-to-be murder victim who is expecting someone else.
The heroine eagerly awaiting her lover at home.
The insouciant villain to the hero who has just bashed down the door to the villain's lair.