I know that every website and clickbait site has their favourite monologues from film. Personally I think they're lazy writing but can add to great acting.
There are some great ones. Roy Batty in Blade Runner, is great but ad libbed, Quint in Jaws which was well written and then ad ribbed. Then there are some badly written ones sold well....(Gladiator) but do you have a favourite, as written, that not many talk about?
Mine would be Malice....a speech as written, (a great script by the way, read it if you can)where he proclaims himself God. Which was then expertly mocked in 30 Rock!!! And the joke monologue is even better!!!!
Ignore the actor. What is the best monologues you have ever READ!!!
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I've read great monologues in spec scripts and shooting scripts, Aaron Lumley. My favorite monologue is Rocky's speech to his son in Rocky Balboa. Monologues can be lazy writing, but it depends on how writers write them in my opinion.
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I love this one. Not quiet a monologue but could easily be transmuted into one:
Abigail Adams in the John Adams series:
Winter 1775. Some months later in Massachusetts, it’s winter and the fighting has gone on. Adams and wife Abigail are on a hill overlooking the city from their farm.
Abigail: What is that but an army of occupation? And the Congress goes on its knees to the King. Has the King deigned to reply? (John doesn’t answer). I understand people like Mr. Dickinson and his friends all too well, John. Send a woman to the Congress. She might knock some sense into them.
Adams: It is not a question of men and women. It is a matter politics.
Abigail: Politics. Politics? And do women not live politics, John Adams? When I go to the cupboard and I find no coffee, no sugar, no pins, no meat, am I not living politics? This war touches people that your Congress treats with the same contempt King George deserves for the people of Boston. I mean women, yes, and slaves too, for that matter. Though I am sure you wish I would not mention that subject, as it might upset your southern friends.
Adams: You're harsh, madam.
Abigail: I am cold. And frightened. I am afraid this war will never end or begin.
Adams: I am frightened too, Abigail. And however much I talk and talk, I will never carry the Congress.
Abigail: It seems that I must come down to Philadelphia and box the ears of Mr. Dickinson and his cronies.
Adams: I must pray for guidance in all our endeavors, wherever they may lead us.
Abigail: And where will they lead us, John? I sometimes think we may be heading to a complete and irrevocable independence.
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I haven't read it, but Johnny Depp's monologue about love in Don Juan De Marco ("There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.") will forever live rent-free in my head.
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John Adams is a wildly brilliant piece of television. The speeches in this, when they're chewed up by someone like Giamatti show just how a good monologue can work. And then when he's working up to blather on at his wife....and she cuts him down like this! Brilliant
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YES Aaron Lumley !