First!

Anyway, I've always loved the speech given by President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) at the end of 'An American President'. It shifts seamlessly from serious to personal to political and I find it uplifting every time I hear it - and I'm not even american!

Video and full text here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechtheamericanpresident.html

Cheers!

Rob

ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) directed by John Landis
written by Harold Ramis, Doug Kenney, and Chris Miller

Bluto: Hey! What's all this laying around stuff? Why are you all still laying around here for?
Stork: What the hell are we supposed to do, ya moron?
D-Day: [to Bluto] Let it go. War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: What? Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: [to Boon] Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard of something to say]
Bluto: The tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[Bluto runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic... but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: [stands up] Yeah, I agree. Let's go get 'em.
Boon: Let's do it.
Bluto: [shouting] "Let's do it"!
[all of the Deltas stand up and run out with Bluto]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vtWB4owdE

This may have to wait until the end of the week, but it's a great tweak of the political speech -- Robert Redford in The Candidate practicing his stump speech in the car.

Here's the text (from my old movieblog site)

and here's the video.

Also, to Rob's American President -- it's a great movie speech, but also a great example of how great movie speeches can deform political thinking. As an aside, how about including with it Jon Chait's takedown of Drew Westen, which references TAP to great effect?

I was amazed how "The King's Speech" made true drama out of a disability and had 21st century audiences hanging on every word from 70 years ago. I could not find a clip, but this site has the entire (actual) speech in both text and audio recording.
http://www.awesomestories.com/assets/george-vi-sep-3-1939

Well you have to go with Branagh's Crispian's Day speech in HENRY V. They don't get any better than that one...

HENRY V: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z399i_PksfU

And one of my favorite movie scores of all time. :)

I'm loving the opening to Patton - George C Scott's "Americans love a winner" speech to his unseen army.
http://cli.ps/VT7x

Full PDF screenplay at www.myPDFscripts.com - but an excerpt c/- imdb :

"Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that "we are holding our position." We're not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose!"

Cheers

Dan

I think you knew I'd put this one forth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh9S1Hk975U&feature=related

Braveheart (1995)

William Wallace: Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace.
Young Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall!
William Wallace: Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.
[Scottish army laughs]
William Wallace: I *am* William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men... and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?
Veteran: Fight? Against that? No! We will run. And we will live.
William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

http://movieclips.com/TE7V-braveheart-movie-they-will-never-take-our-freedom/

BATMAN RETURNS 1992
Penguin addresses his legion of penguins

PENGUIN
My penguins ... We stand at a great
threshold. It's okay to be
scared. Many of you won't be
coming back ...

He's choked up. He has to pause, compose himself.

PENGUIN
Thanks to Batman, the time has
come to punish all God's chillun ...
first, second, third and fourth-born,
why be biased? Male and female ...
hell, the sexes are equal with
their erogenous zones blown sky-high ...

In this area are TV monitors scavenged from the Arctic
World info-pavilion and other technology cannibalized
from the old exhibit. Today the screens show various
angles of the sleeping city. The Fat Clown mans the
controls.

PENGUIN
Forward, march! The liberation of
Gotham has begun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj_5qjiPFmY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K75w6p7cKB8

charlie chaplin "the great dictator" let us unite- music by Hans Zimmer from Inception Soundtrack

@Josh - That was awesome. Thanks.

From They Might Be Giants:

Dr. Mildred Watson: You're just like Don Quixote. You think that everything is always something else.
Justin Playfair: Well, he had a point. 'Course he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be, well... All the best minds used to think the world was flat. But what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what might be, why we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

And (from the same movie):

Justin Playfair: Dear friends, would those of you who know what this is all about please raise your hands? I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death. Because, you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong. We never left the Garden. Look about you. This is paradise. It's hard to find, I, I'll grant you, but it is here. Under our feet, beneath the surface, all around us is everything we want. The earth is shining under the soot. We are all fools. Ha ha. Moriarty has made fools of all of us. But together, you and I, tonight... we'll bring him down.

Lots of good suggestions. Should be a fun week. And hopefully we can learn something about writing speeches in scripts.

Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman delivers a nice over the top speech in an over the top fun performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xgQIokLsDI

unfortunately the speech on IMDB is not complete:

Lt. Col. Frank Slade: Out of order, I show you out of order. You don't know what out of order is, Mr. Trask. I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired, I'm too fuckin' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell do you think you're talkin' to? I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are... executin' his soul! And why? Because he's not a Bairdman. Bairdmen. You hurt this boy, you're gonna be Baird bums, the lot of ya. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, FUCK YOU TOO!