Screenwriting : Great Insults by Aaron Lumley

Aaron Lumley

Great Insults

Grumpy Old Man here again, after a week of being off somewhere else being Grumpy!!!

What is the best insult or comeback you've ever seen in a film? As written I would have to say:

1 - "You’re a child. You think you’re tough because you read books about it?" - David Mamet

2 - "You’re an idiot. You know what you’d find if you looked up the word ‘idiot’ in the dictionary?"

"A picture of me?"

"No! the definition of idiot, which you fucking are!" - Shane Black

3 - "You’re pretty, but you’re not smart." - Billy Wilder

Please let me know yours!

Maurice Vaughan

I like writing insults and comebacks in scripts, Aaron Lumley! I'll keep rewriting a line until I come up with a great one.

One of my favorite comeback lines in a movie is "You can't handle the truth!" (Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men)

Jon O'Neilll

I know it started as a play, but Angels in America:

"You are so full of piping hot shit, that the mere mention of your name draws flies."

Vidal Ramirez

It doesn't count, but it was such a weird phrase --- it comes from an interview that comedian Jim Norton was doing. I don't remember the specifics, but he called somebody "a blithering ninny."

Michael David

"You used to be big."

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

(I think of this quote a lot when I think of the last 10 years of Best Picture winners!)

E Langley

"Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy nerf herder!"

— Leia to Solo; "The Empire Strikes Back"

"I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!"

— French Castle Parapet Guard to King Arthur and entourage; "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

"Hey, Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"

"No. Have you?"

— Hudson to Vasquez, "Aliens"

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh

We don't know which movie it came from, but my best friend and I still get a good laugh from "you c--k-juggling THUNDERC--T!" xD

Liron Vardi

I'm cheating a little here, but... Okay to quote the best insult I've ever written? It hasn't been produced yet... Maybe one day!

"Listen to me, Andrey, you garlic-smelling, gaslighting roach-whisperer in an ugly clearance rack tracksuit and the world's tiniest dick. We're moving out, fucker. To a place you can only dream of."

[From my Palette Theory screenplay]

Nathaniel Watkins

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You“You’re what the French call, ‘Les Incompetents’.” – Home Alone (1990)

Nathaniel Watkins

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Liron Vardi

Nathaniel Watkins definitely one of my favorites!

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