You might be surprised to learn just how many of the most iconic lines in film history were actually unscripted pieces of dialogue that were made up on the fly.
Jaws
‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’ is easily the most famous line from Jaws, and it turns out that it was improvised. At least, kind of improvised. Roy Scheider didn’t just invent it out of nowhere during that shark scene because the line had actually become a running joke on the film set.
The production boat was apparently too small for all the equipment and crew, so Scheider kept saying the line during different scenes. Most versions were cut during editing, but the filmmakers kept the one after Brody finally sees the shark. From that scene, the line became movie history.
Midnight Cowboy
New York traffic had a part to play in this line from Midnight Cowboy. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight were filming on an actual Manhattan street when a taxi came through the shot. It got way too close to them, so Hoffman, still acting as Ratso Rizzo, smacked the cab.
He yelled, ‘I’m walkin’ here!’ He was originally going to say, ‘We’re filming here,’ but he said he realized it’d ruin the shot, so he decided to stay in character. It was completely unplanned, yet the movie was all the better for it.
The Empire Strikes Back
There’s a famous scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Princess Leia tells Han Solo, ‘I love you.’ The script had Harrison Ford’s Han reply with, ‘I love you, too,’ but neither Ford nor director Irvin Kershner got comfortable with it.
They tried the scene again and again until Kershner finally told Ford to stop worrying about the script. He told him to say whatever felt right. That’s exactly what Ford did, and he said, ‘I know.’ George Lucas supposedly wasn’t happy at first, but Kershner pushed to keep the take. It’s kind of hard to imagine Han saying anything else now, honestly.
The Shining
The line ‘Here’s Johnny!’ has become so attached to The Shining that it’s hard to remember it’s a reference. Jack Nicholson said the line after chopping through the bathroom door and sticking his face through the opening. The phrase came from Ed McMahon’s introduction for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.
But it wasn’t in the screenplay. Director Stanley Kubrick had been living in Britain at the time and apparently didn’t get the reference at first. Yet it still went on to become one of the movie’s most recognizable lines.
Aliens
Actor Bill Paxton and director James Cameron would play around with lines during rehearsals for Aliens. They’d throw out any ideas that failed and keep any that worked. ‘Game over, man! Game over!’ was one of them.
That’s not to say Paxton was simply blurting random things out during takes or anything. There was a little more preparation than that. Still, the line was technically improvised because it didn’t actually appear in the original script.
Casablanca
The truth about this line is kind of difficult to work out. An earlier version of the screenplay for Casablanca has Rick saying, ‘Here’s good luck to you, kid.’ But Humphrey Bogart ultimately says the much better-known ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ and it was supposedly improvised.
Bogart apparently started using the phrase after teaching Ingrid Bergman poker between takes. It wasn’t completely improv because some of the original wording was still there, yet it seems that spur-of-the-moment feelings changed it a bit.
When Harry Met Sally…
The funniest part of the line ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ from When Harry Met Sally… is that it didn’t come from Estelle Reiner. No, Rob Reiner, Nora Ephron, Billy Crystal, and Meg Ryan were already working on the deli scene. They realized they needed one last joke.
It’s unclear where the line came from, though. Rob Reiner has said he came up with it, while some reports claim Billy Crystal was responsible. Either way, Estelle, Reiner’s mother, said those famous five words that became movie gold.
Mrs. Doubtfire
Miranda realizes Mrs. Doubtfire is actually Daniel towards the end of Mrs. Doubtfire. Actor Sally Field chose to spiral during that scene, and the repeated “the whole time?” came from Field herself. It wasn’t in the script.
That wasn’t the only improv line from the movie, as Chris Columbus gave Robin Williams and the rest of the cast plenty of room to play around with dialogue. Field’s reaction only got bigger and stranger during that scene. It makes sense, really.
Captain Phillips
Captain Phillips was actually Barkhad Abdi’s first-ever movie. He managed to make one of its most quoted lines himself. It’s during the bridge scene, when Muse needs Phillips to understand very quickly that the power has changed hands.
Abdi looked at Tom Hanks and said, ‘Look at me. I’m the captain now.’ Abdi said the line just came out in the moment, and he didn’t realize how big the line had become until he saw it in the movie’s trailers.
House of Gucci
Time for a more recent improv one. Lady Gaga’s line, ‘Father, Son and House of Gucci’ from 2021’s House of Gucci sounds perfectly made for the movie. So much so, in fact, that you’d assume a writer spent ages polishing it. But it turns out that the pop star came up with it on the first take.
She changed the usual sign-of-the-cross wording to fit fashion designer Patrizia Reggiani’s world. Ridley Scott decided to keep it in, and the line eventually became one of the trailer’s big moments. It was theatrical, yes, but it is House of Gucci.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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