I persuaded Anna to watch Jaws with me last night. I figured since we are moving miles away from any ocean (and any gigantic great white shark looming to devour us), we had no cause to fear lost sleep or ruined beach trips. Anna wasn’t so sure. As a little girl she had snuck a quick peak at Jaws against her parents’ forbidding. Just a little bit was more than enough to scare Anna. Of course, the clip she saw was when Quint (Robert Shaw) finally succumbed to Jaws’ tremendous appetite for destruction – going down in a mess of blood and boat rubbish. The scene is a sad end to a great character.
Robert Shaw’s portrayal of the cantankerous, old fisherman in Jaws is timeless – one of my personal favorites in all cinema. He unfortunately does not get the best line in Jaws. That prize goes to Roy Scheider’s character when he first sets eyes on Jaws and stammers in shock, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” (If Jaws was on television, my father – a compulsive channel flipper – would invariably put down the remote and watch the film just to hear this one line.) It’s a great line, but to me it’s not the greatest scene in the movie. The best moment of the entire film comes from Shaw when he delivers a monologue about the USS Indianapolis.
Shaw’s monologue late in Jaws emerges from two competing personalities (the book-smart, rich scientist versus the life-battered, poor loner) finding themselves stuck in the small cabin of a boat. Thankfully, they’ve been drinking, which allows their animosity to drain away. It also allows Quint to open up about his harshest life experience – surviving the sinking of the Indianapolis and day upon day of circling sharks in the Pacific. Two-thirds of his shipmates were eaten by sharks; he manages to survive with the pledge he would never wear a life vest again. It is a pivotal monologue – allowing the viewer to get a brief glimpse into Quint’s thick-skinned soul while also adding significantly to the overall drama and danger of a shark attack.
As I watched Shaw’s monologue last night I started thinking about what makes a monologue effective. Are there commonalities between good monologues? What purpose do they serve?
Monologues are terribly difficult to perform, and they can be death to the overall pace and rhythm of a movie. But, when done well, they can be the greatest opening (like George C. Scott’s thunderous speech to begin Patton), closing (like Nicolas Cage’s comedic dream at the end of Raising Arizona) or centerpiece to hold a movie together (like Mel Gibson’s raucous speech before a major battle in Braveheart). Good monologues can make great movies.
Good monologues have a transcendent quality to them. They allow the audience to step out of time and space with the character or narrator and see things in a brand new light, often providing a prophetic or moralistic voice. In essence, the monologue is not too far different from another form of oration: the sermon. And like a sermon, a good monologue must strike a fine balance between being bold and being relevant. It must raise the audience’s awareness of a major theme or truth while not seeming trite or prefabricated. It must be important enough to stand alone, yet seamless enough to fit with the whole.
Beyond those important characteristics, I also found five other key elements for good monologues:
1. All is fair in love and war, including monologues: Not surprisingly, good monologues need good drama and/or good comedy. Some of the greatest war stories are anchored by classic monologues: Robert Duvall’s fiery declaration in Apocalypse Now that he loves the smell of napalm in the morning or R. Lee Ermy delivering a verbal beating as a drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Likewise, good romantic comedies also have great monologues: Woody Allen delivering deap-pan comedy to open and close his quirky relationship tale or Billy Crystal offering a defeated, depressed and realistic description of life during career day in City Slickers.
2. Get a Jack of all trades: If you want a good monologue, you’re best bet seems to be Jack Nicholson. Whether it’s Five Easy Pieces or About Schmidt, Nicholson is great at being both an everyman and a strikingly different voice. He cuts both ways. No, in fact he cuts many ways – going from funny to intense to sincere to apologetic. His best monologue – one that many feel might be the best in any movie – comes in A Few Good Man with his “you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall,” tirade. And, luckily he also gets the perfect environment to deliver this monologue in A Few Good Men: a courtroom.
3. A final word (or a monologue) your honor: No stage seems as appropriate or oft used for a monologue as the courtroom. To Kill a Mockingbird, Inherit the Wind, 12 Angry Men, North Country, I am Sam and limitless other films have used every conceivable angle of a courtroom (witness stand, plaintiff’s opening arguments, defendant’s closing remarks) as a platform for the monologue. If you leave a movie with a crucial courtroom scene and there is no good monologue in it, you’ve been robbed.
4. When there’s nothing else left, there’s always a good monologue: Sometimes the only thing we have left in the world is our voice and our words, or at least that’s what some good movies have discovered. Marlon Brando uttered the famous line “I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am,” in On the Waterfront as a desperate plea to escape the filth around him. Paul Scofield playing Sir Thomas More delivered a haunting farewell of words in A Man for All Seasons as both judgment and witness. My personal favorite of this type of monologue comes from my favorite movie: The Shawshank Redemption. When Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, is confronted with the question of his rehabilitation, we the viewer get a wonderful monologue that perfectly captures Red’s indifference to a punitive system that has tried to take away what he took away from himself. The monologue as defeat and as victory. Touche!
5. Those who dare to monologue dare to be different: No ordinary Joe Schmoe can deliver a monologue, mind you. To be a monologuer, you’ve got to be a bit different, like Quint in Jaws. You’ve got to carry weight or significance, which sets you apart from the other cast of characters. It helps to have a booming or distinct voice like James Earl Jones so you can go on and on about why “people will come” to a baseball field in the middle of Iowa without the audience stopping mid-thought and wondering “why does this really matter?” But don’t worry if you can’t separate yourself as a strong presence. You might fare just as well being a mysterious Mr. X – like Donald Sutherland’s character in JFK – as you unfold secrets and hidden truths as a voice-over monologue. Still better is the half-crazy, biblical-prophet voice of Peter Finch in Network. No other movie may utilize the monologue as frequently, and Finch is a huge reason why the movie is a success. His fed-up attitude allows him to finally rise above just being an average newscaster to unveil the truth.
So, in summation, the perfect recipe for a monologue appears to contain the following: a war movie which concludes in the hallowed confines of a courtroom with Jack Nicholson on trial while dancing a fine line between sanity and insanity (which is about the only role Jack can play thankfully). And just for good measure, make sure there’s some important moral issue at the center of the drama. Oh, wait. I guess A Few Good Men was the perfect storm of these monologue forces. No wonder Jack stole the show, although I don’t think Robert Shaw is too far behind.
But, that's just me. What's your favorite monologue?
Wes
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