You can’t go wrong with Sidney Poitier. This F*@% Yeah scene was famous with a whole generation of movie goers – so famous that they named an entire movie after the line Poitier utters in the scene. That’s how bad-ass this scene is. I’d love to see a Star Trek movie starring George Takei called “Target the Center of That Explosion and Fire!”
Anyway, In the Heat of the Night is a gripping crime drama about a black police detective named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) who investigates a murder with a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger) in a small Southern town. Hilarity ensues. The great thing about the movie is that at the end, Tibbs and the sheriff haven’t magically become buddies and come to understand each other or some happy bullshit like that. At best, the two cops have formed an uneasy détente.
There’s a famous exchange at the beginning of the film where Steiger and Poitier’s characters become acquainted. The sheriff asks Tibbs in a disrespectful tone, “What do the call you up there?” Poitier fixes him with a “fuck you” glare and says in a dignified, outraged voice: “They call me Mr. Tibbs!”
F*@% Yeah! I love that scene!
In the Heat of the Night was so popular that it led to a sequel called – you guessed it – They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, a TV show starring Carol O’Connor, and a series of TV commercials. “They call me Mr. Tibbs – by dialing 1-800-COLLECT!”
OK, I’m kidding about that last one.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Harper Lee’s classic (and only) novel was the inspiration for an equally classic movie starring Gregory Fucking Peck as Southern lawyer and widower Atticus Finch, who raises two precocious youngsters while defending a black client unjustly accused of the rape of a white woman. If you have not read the book or seen the movie, you are missing out BIG TIME and are probably a communist.
Again, this is a movie with more than one F*@% Yeah moment, but my choice is the scene where Atticus Finch gathers his papers into a briefcase and walks out of the courtroom. In the segregated South, all the black townfolk have to sit in the courtroom’s hot balcony, and as he passes below them, they all stand out of respect.
F*@% Yeah! That gets me every time.
47 comments:
These posts are awesome. I totally want to steal the idea for my own blog, but I won't out of respect. Or at least until I don't have anything else to do.
Keep them coming!
"One of" the Finch girls?!? You haven't read the book or seen the movie, have you, you lying commie!!!
Don't be mean John.
I'm sure that Dave simply confused To Kill a Mockingbird with Jem and the Holograms.
Happens all the time!
Oh god, I can't look at that Dafoe pic without thinking that he's doing his "I Spent The Night With Gwen Stacy" face.
Poor old BD Howard.
//\Oo/\\
Fine, I'll change it! I'm no commie!
A likely story, comrade.
Totally lovin' these. You could do an entire blog based solely around The F*@% Files.
I've seen way too many movies in my day and could therefore name a lot of those, but the first that came to my mind for me: Ripley confronting the Alien Queen in a Power Loader in Aliens
"Get away from her you bitch!"
F*@% Yeah!
Actually, there were TWO Tibbs sequels to "In the Heat of the Night": "Mr. Tibbs" was one; the other was "The Organization," which seems to run once a day on one of those 800 Showtime offshoot channels.
Hey, what good is the International Movie Database if ya COULDN'T access obscure shit like that?
To Kill A Mockingbird leaves me utterly devastated each time I watch it. I just curl up and cry and cry at its beauty in both book and film form.
And to make up for revealing that tidbit: the man that Atticus defends is played by ADMIRAL CARTWRIGHT from Star Trek VI. Brock Peters, motherfuckers! (RIP)
"...Atticus Finch, who raises two precocious daughters..."
Not that I disagree with the F*@% YEAH-ness of your pick, but Finch's kids are a girl and a boy.
Admiral Cartwright is a freaking traitor to the Federation.
So if you ask me Atticus Finch is possibly in league with a Klingon-Romulan-Rene-Auborjonois cabal!
I WAS just going to make a somewhat offensive not-really-offensive-except-to-the-oversensitive comment that this post has a racial whosis theme today...
I just thought To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Maybe I'm evil.
Every movie should have some kind of F*@% YEAH moment right before the denouement-- if you can't even muster up a "You see? You see? He's not a machine, he's a man, he's a man."/ "He's not human. He's like a piece of iron.", then you might need to reconsider your screenplay. F*@% YEAH! moments without the weight of the third act behind them are all the more impressive. Is the "Danny Boy" sequence from Miller's Crossing too prolonged for a F*@% YEAH! ?
Rocky IV! YESSS!
De Palma's The Untouchables was jam-packed with "F*@% Yeah!" moments. Hell, Karl Malden was basically the God of "F*@% Yeah!" in Kazan's On The Waterfront.
Dunno if we could nominate movies/moments, but if we can, those two flicks rate near the top of my list.
I'm Chalk!
Not to nit-pick, but Virgil Tibbs was a detective in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, not Mississippi).
Is there such a thing as geek block? I am trying to think of more F Yeah moments and am coming up dry. What about when Kyle MacLachlan stabs Sting in the face?
And breaks out with his own Fuck You so loud it shatters Sting's body?
OH I know. Now before you start yelling let me qualify this by saying that I realize that Steven Segal has only made one good movie. His first one, 'Above the Law'. There is a scene in it where assasins try to do him in. After they spend all their ammunition on his empty car he pops up with a pistol and says "freeze". Then there is this stand-off that we have all seen a million times. From Randolph Scott to Don Johnson. The one good guy has the crowd of bad guys covered but they know that he is a good guy. He wouldn't shoot an unarmed man. One of the bad guys steps forward and says "You can't take us all." Seagal takes aim and pops one right into his chest.
You are so surprised because we have been trained to think that a cop wouldn't do that. F Yeah.
Here's a question, which actor has the most f@#$ yeah! moments?
Eastwood has to be up there:
"You just shot an unarmed man!"
"He should have armed himself if he was goin' to decorate his establishment with my friend."
Totally agreed on Eastwood. He could possibly be the King of F*@# YEAH!
Perhaps there should be a F*@# YEAH Moment Tournament.
Which would lead to F*@# YEAH Fantasy Leagues and well...
the world would be a better place I think
"De Palma's The Untouchables was jam-packed with "F*@% Yeah!" moments."
Hell, yeah.
"He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the MORGUE! That's the Chicago Way!"
Predator's got some good ones. I like when Jesse Ventura pulls out Ol' Painless: *chi-chunk* "Payback time."
Rio Bravo's got a lot of them, too.
My favorite F^@% YEAH moment is in THE WILD GEESE, when the medic is out of ammo, surrounded and whips out his knife and says, "Step up, lovelies", right before he gets hacked to pieces.
Of course I haven't seen the movie in a while, so it might be a machete, and he might say something else entirely, but, still. Fuck yeah.
C'mon, Clint Eastwood had a whole F^@% Yeah decade. Actually, starting at the dollars trilogy and going all the way to Unforgiven, it lasted more than two decades.
I am sure that the F*@% Yeah crown would go to Clint. This reminds me of a game my brother and I would play in the 80's. We would go to the video store and head to the action section. We would then each pick a rack and whoever's rack had more tapes starring Rutger Hauer would win. Seriously that guy made every bad movie ever back then.
The beauty of Clint's F*@% YEAH's is the subtlty with which they are revealed. For example, never even looking back at the guy sneaking up on him with the knife when he says, "You're gonna look awful silly with the knife sticking out of your ass," in High Plains Drifter.
My gauge for F*@% YEAH moments is a little damaged since having kids though. For example, just about everything after the giant gingerbread man appears in Shrek 2 gets me fired up.
You know what we need...a "What the F&%$" Files. It's where you start out thinking "F%@# Yeah" but when you think about it later, it turns into WTF? I'll start with Revenge of the Sith, with the whole "high ground" thing. Looked cool, but thining about it later...WTF?
Or Superman. That scream when Lois died....it's up there with Kahn....F&*$ YEAH!!! Then he does WHAT? WTF?
Heh...my Turing word ends in Zods.
You did a shout-out for "To Kill A Mockingbird". Dave, I think I love you. Will you marry me?
Star Trek II. Kahn is threatening to destroy an apparently-helpless Enterprise unless Kirk transmits the code for the Genesis Device. Meanwhile, Spock prepares to send a remote command that will cause Khan's ship to drop its shields.
Khan insists that Kirk hurry.
"All right, Khan," Kirk purrs. "Here it comes..."
Khan sits with a frozen expression that reads, I am about to be utterly screwed, and I have no idea how.
Maybe this should have gone in the other thread. Still...
There's a reason I named my cat Atticus.
That scene with the rabid dog. ZOMG. More manly than a six pack of Sylvester Stallones!
In all honesty these are two of my favourite movie moments of all time. I find that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird so moving that when I tried to describe it to a friend of mine who hadn't seen it I actually started crying in the middle of crowded pub.
And yes I am the world's biggest pussy.
I thought that every scene in the movie hellboy that contained Kroenen was a F*@% Yeah!! moment.
Dave...I don't even know how to thank you for this blog. Like many others (apparently) I don't even know how I stumbled on it but now....
Word verification: umuekyfg. Me try to employ my favorite dirty word while eating a donut.
Zach
Yes, I'm a geek who grew up the 70's. The biggest F*@% Yeah movie moment of the decade has to be when Han Solo comes out of nowhere to blast Darth Vader's ship. "You're all clear, kid. Now let's blow this thing and go home!" I still get goose bumps.
Runner up F*@% Yeah moment of that movie: Han shoots Greedo.
Sting's cameo in Baron Munchausen.
Heroic soldier Sting is presented to Leader Guy Jonathan Pryce, for commendation.
Pryce orders that Sting be executed because his heroism could demoralize the rest of the soldiers. Sting is hauled off, stricken look on his face.
F*@% YEAH!
Another moment:
High Fidelity, when they (even the mousy guy) savagely beat the crap out of Tim Robbins.
Dirty Pretty Things: when the slimy hotel manager gets his comeuppance (and a kidney removed).
Can there be "comedy F*@% Yeahs"? Like when Belushi breaks the acoustic guitar in Animal House, (second place: "I'm a zit. Get it?") or when in Bill & Ted the guys go, "Wait, if you're us, then what number are we thinking of?"
But in TKAM (the movie), my F*@% Yeah has to be the moment when Atticus steps on his glasses when he's about to shoot that dog.
The scene in Indiana Jones: Last Crusade, where Indy and his father are tied up back-to-back, and *both* respond when the sexy blonde refers to having sleept together (or prowess in bed, or something to that effect).
For that matter, also the scene where Connery scares the flock of birds up into the Nazi plane's path, causing it to crash.
Crap, I'm so embarassed about the Philadelphia/New York mistake AND saying that Atticus has two daughters. I'll make it up to you - I swear!
Ooh, just thought of another one. When Obi Wan and Vader are fighting and Vader tells OW that he's going to kill him, resistance is useless, powah of the fohce, yadda yadda, Obi Wan just looks at him and says with absolute confidence, "If you kill me, I shall be become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Then with a quick glance, he sees that Luke and Co. are making their escape, so he just stops fighting. He just takes a moment, smiles slightly to himself and just wills himself out of that plane of existence. He just vanishes and Vader's all, "Whuh??"
Alec Guinness, y'all.
"Manhunter" when William Peterson jumps through the window while "inna gada davida" is playing.(ps. Brian Cox is a waaaaay better hannibal)
"Silverado" nearly every scene with Kevin Klein cause he's so fuckin cool in that film.
"A Bittersweet Life" where the main guy whose name eludes me jams the phone battery into Moons face.
and of course everyone knows the bit in "Lethal Weapon" where Danny Glover says "RIGGS!" in an exasperated tone of voice.
Bad film, but:
Superman III.
Fight in the junkyard.
Clark wins.
Opens shirt.
He's Superman!
John Williams plays.
By God, yes. Robert Vaughan won't know what hit him.
And to Jake: the gingerbread man stuff had the same effect on me, and I don't have kids. Come on - Bonnie Tyler, giant gingerbread man, Shrek's determination as he approaches the castle, Princess Fiona *almost* getting stolen away... Who could resist that?
One more KHAN moment: when Spock lowers Reliant's shields, Khan's malicious grin drops right off his face. Cut to smirky Kirk ordering "fire!" Oh my yes.
Chris Arndt said...Admiral Cartwright is a freaking traitor to the Federation.
Of course he is! Brock Peters also played Darth Vader on the NPR radio version of Star Wars.
Never trust Brock Peters.
That's definitely the best moment in To Kill A Mockingbird. I cry EVERY TIME it comes to that part.
And anybody who doesn't like TKAM is a damn dirty commie ape.
It's been a long time since I've seen the film, so I don't know if it's in there, but one scene from the novel always gets me-
After Atticus finishes his brilliant closing argument, he whispers to the jury- or to no one, really, "For the love of GOD--"
"--please believe me." Brilliantly encapsulates the tragedy that he's trying to prevent. Scout heard it, and that was enough.
This can't really work, I believe like this.
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