The folks at the American Film Institute are about to make an offer you can't refuse, but since you can't handle the truth, you're probably thinking, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
But fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a new countdown from those prolific list-makers: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes: America's Greatest Quips, Comebacks and Catchphrases, which will name the 100 most memorable lines of big-screen banter.
The list is the latest from the group behind 1998's 100 Years...100 Movies, 1999's 100 Stars, and 2000's 100 Laughs to 2001's 100 Thrills, 2002's 100 Passions, 2003's 100 Villains and last year's 100 Songs.
"Great movie quotes become part of our cultural vocabulary," says AFI director Jean Picker Firstenberg. "When you consider that any phrase from American film is eligible, you realize this is our most subjective topic to date. We expect nothing less than a war of words as we reignite interest in classic American movies.
To that end, a master list of 400 lines of dialogue has been compiled, ranging from 1927's first sound motion picture The Jazz Singer ("Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!") to 2002's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ("My precious!").
A panel of filmmakers, actors, historians, scholars, journalists and industry types will whittle down the list to the top 100, deciding whether unforgettable phrases from golden age classics like 1939's The Wizard of Oz ("Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.") and 1950's All About Eve ("Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!") rank alongside newer films like 1977's Star Wars ("May the Force be with you."), 1984's The Terminator ("I'll be back."), 1986's Moonstruck ("Snap out of it!"), 1995's Apollo 13 ("Houston, we have a problem.") or 1996's Jerry Maguire ("Show me the money!").
Casablanca, written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, has the most quotes in the countdown with seven, including such trademark Humphrey Bogart lines as "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," "We'll always have Paris," and "Here's looking at you, kid."
Bogart, by the way, had the most quips for an actor with 10, followed by Al Pacino, Tom Hanks, the Marx Brothers, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Jimmy Stewart with five apiece.
The late legendary Billy Wilder is the top wordsmith, with 13 lines from films he wrote or cowrote represented. Francis Ford Coppola turned in nine classics, seven of which came from The Godfather trilogy, which he wrote with Mario Puzo. Woody Allen followed with six, while William Goldman tied Stanley Kubrick and Cameron Crowe with five each.
Overall, 1939 is the biggest year for memorable catchphrases with 19, followed by 1942 with 17, and 1980 with 12.
AFI will unveil its 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes with a three-hour prime-time special that will air on CBS in June.