Here it is, in its full glory: Flames on the side of my face.
Please put forth your reasoning why this little ad-libbed moment is so enduring and timeless in the comments. Why do we love this scene so much?
Here it is, in its full glory: Flames on the side of my face.
Please put forth your reasoning why this little ad-libbed moment is so enduring and timeless in the comments. Why do we love this scene so much?
First, let us all agree that Clue is a cinematic masterpiece that should never ever be remade and Hollywood can go duck itself for trying.
Second, I did not understand at least 50% of this film as a child. It wasn’t until I watched it again in high school that I got all the political/Mr Green stuff.
Finally, this is the perfect explanation for how I feel when I encounter MRAs/GG-ers/terrible people on the Internet.
My sister and I watched Clue approximately eleventy million times growing up (we can still do tag-team dialogue recitations) and yes–some stuff we got, most we did not. “Communism is a red herring” prompted me to the dictionary to look up “red herring”, and I got the meaning of “communism is/was not important to the murderer’s motives” but not the pun, and certainly not Tim Curry’s perfect teensy smirk of “I am not too proud to make this pun, but I *am* too proud to smile at my own pun”.
We were in *college* before we realized that Professor Plum worked for UNO WHO.
…I had never considered that “Communism was just a red herring” was a pun before. I feel like I need to be put into some kind of box.
…me either holy shit. THIS MOVIE CONTINUES TO GET MORE BRILLIANT
THE SAD THING IS I THINK OF THAT LINE NOT UNOFTEN
I was so obsessed with Clue as a kid that me and a group of friends put on a classroom production of it in the third grade. All the lines about prostitution, homosexuality, communism…I can only imagine what the teacher was thinking! So much flew over our heads for sure. I know there was video of it at the time…boy would I pay dearly to get my hands on it.
But yeah, I think the enduringness of it, aside from the sheer brilliance of Madeline Kahn, is just the weird idiosyncratic nature of the moment. It’s just this odd little thing that happens, out of nowhere, and the action really grinds to a halt for those thirty seconds–everyone else kind of stands by and gives it the space to happen and then the story just keeps moving right along as if it never happened. Knowing that it was improvised goes a long way toward explaining their reaction, but it just works so well.
Oh that “Why is J Edgar Hoover on your phone? – I don’t know. He’s on everybody else’s. Why shouldn’t he be on mine?” joke took me years to get. YEARS.
It’s just such a wonderful departure from the pace of the rest of the film, and the final 10 minutes especially. An entirely different joke structure in a film that had previously been very specific about the kinds of jokes it was telling, delivered by a brilliant comedic actress.
It is a douglas fir in the desert. It does not belong there, it should not survive there, and yet it is a beautiful.
This is it, for me. This moment wouldn’t work so well if the majority of the film hadn’t been done at a breathless pace and full of whip-smart banter. The momentum of the rest of the movie allows for this little journey into low-stakes weirdness.
If Clue is a train, this scene slams on the brakes, goes off the rails, careens through a quiet meadow, then — and this is important — hops back onto the rails like nothing happened.
(See my fictional book Okay But What If Movies Were Trains for more great metaphors like this!)
what kind of train would *Snowpiercer* be, out of curiosity?
I would read this book so hard, please have your people send my people 10,000 copies immediately
i am ready to greenlight the pilot for the tv show based on this book
So when can I back your book’s kickstarter?
It’s so…strangely real? When you’re that mad words don’t quite form. It’s refreshing to see this in a film, where everyone usually has a snappy way of expressing themselves.
That’s not an amusing comment, but it’s true.
Yes! It’s the way she’s stopped in her tracks and doesn’t make sentences anymore that I love so much.
This is exactly why I enjoy the phrase “I cannot with [blank].” Most slang of that ilk bothers me, but I like the utility of being able to sigh “I just can’t with Ryan Murphy” and express that I so much CANNOT with him that I cannot even be bothered to find a verb.
To me, it perfectly embodies that feeling when you’ve been trying your best to be cool and aloof and diplomatic like “who me? no no, I am un-bothered you see” you’ve been trying SO HARD, but finally you just break. But, you’ve been bottling up your negative feelings for so long that now you’ve achieved incoherence. Because you don’t just dislike Yvette, Mrs. White, you loathe her to your very CORE.
The way she uptalks those lines so we know she’s improvising, and then the cut to Curry looking DELIGHTED.
And Martin Mull did a hell of a job not breaking in the background!
It’s true. I have just watched the clip an extra [mumble] times watching Mull keep it together. I had no idea until today that this line was ad-libbed; I would desperately love to see the entire take here just to see it all play out.
This scene is my reaction to life. Just all of it.
I have nothing to add about why this line works as well as it does that the brilliant people above haven’t already said, but I will say:
1) This is far and away the line from a movie that I quote the most. No competition.
2) I sincerely hope that the fact that the fact that both this scene and “I’m Tired” have now been posted does not mean that Madeline Kahn Mondays are coming to an end. I would be terribly sad if that were the case.
IT IS NOT
Thank you for quelling my anxiety! I am sorry I ever doubted your bounty!
We still haven’t had “Not Getting Married Today” yet, have we?
Nor anything from Young Frankenstein!
Indeed we have NOT.
I absolutely quote this the most, but that’s probably just because loathing something so much you lose words is a thing that happens in real life. If I happened to be employed as a butler though, oh how I would buttle.
(I once sent someone out to a 24 hour video rental store in the wee hours because the party was winding down to movie time and I had discovered none of them had seen Clue, so obviously nothing we already had in the house would do.)
What other folks have said, though I’d also like to point out that ‘I hate so much about the things that you choose to be’ from The Office US (2×22) is a close second for me.
Kahn does it more succinctly and elegantly here, though.
Because Madeline Kahn is the absolute best, and was given reign to be the best self she could be, so this is like Madeline Kahn squared. The essence of Madeline Kahn. It’s too beautiful to look at directly. If you were to try, your face might melt like the Nazis in the first (and best) Indiana Jones movie.
The bulk of this script felt timing intensive, almost in time to music. Her little soliloquy is set apart in its off cadence, off-rhythm realness.
Like a cadenza!
I did not see Clue until I was in college, at the insistence of the person I was dating at the time, but I remember seeing gifsets of this scene on tumblr a whole bunch. I was expecting her to be much more dramatic and campy in her delivery, but it is so subdued in actuality that it really threw me off when I finally watched it.
Ahhh same! Every single meme that I know came to me in tumblr gifsets first.
That’s how I feel about ‘Nobody puts Baby in the corner!’
She is literally incoherent with rage, in a way we all know deep in our souls, and it is glorious
Yes, this!!
And so much “incoherent” rage in media is clearly, carefully scripted, and has verbs and clauses and everything, or is just silent glaring. But no, here is The Kahn, beautifully demonstrating true, rage-filled loathing.
Yes! I love how she bypasses all the verbs and grammar and actual descriptions of thoughts & feelings and just goes straight for the pure gestalt of Rage As It Is Experienced, expressing it perfectly in as few words as humanly possible. Genius.
It’s a more cogent, less profane version of “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-“
What makes it perfect is not just her delivery, but the wild-eyed reaxtions from her co-stars and the fact that she gets cut off mid-sentence and Tim Curry moves on like nothing happened. Similar to the murder of the singing telegram, the abrupt ending makes the joke land HARD.
Do recognize there are several cuts in that clip, and, most probably Tim’s reaction shot was at least one camera setup later than Madeline’s. The director recognized the value of Madeline’s line and created cutaways to support it. OR, it was shot as scripted and none of this is by happenstance – Madeline is that good.
I’ve yet to see Clue, but I pulled up this very clip and watched it for the first time over the weekend after seeing a guy reference it during a monologue and get a howling reaction from the crowd. So I can’t offer thoughtful analysis, but I like how timely its reappearance was. For the longest time I saw the memes here and because the faces are blurry in the stills thought it was a scene from “Frasier.” The more you know.
you should really see Clue. I’m not a big fan of film as a medium, but it is so good. so good.
Only available on DVD from Netflix, but when I resettle it will be added to my library wish/waiting list. I think I could piece the whole thing together in posted clips, but that’s a lot of work and ads for the squatty potty to get through.
Oh, that’s a shame! It’s available for streaming in Netflix UK.
Because it’s just the goddamn BEST, is why.
I think it’s that even though she’s incoherent with rage, she’s still so gloriously composed and thoroughly Madeline. “I hated her soooooo much.” The juxtaposition between what she’s saying and how she’s saying it is just perfection, and only somebody like her could really pull it off. It’s a small master class in delivery–pretty much everything she did was that.
YES! I feel like that is a hallmark of Madeline’s comedic work – that she delivers her line(s) with perfect sincerity and conviction, yet from a place that is slightly skewed from the actual *intent* of the line(s). She plays it straight & with affection for the character (which is why she’s so brilliant in campy comedy, IMO), relying on just the smallest inflections in her face, mannerisms and voice.
I have actually never seen Clue, but I will need to now. This is amazing; it’s like a tiny moment of live theater in the middle of a movie! They even cut to the almost-corpseing stunned other actors right before Tim Curry jumps in and brings things back in line. It’s kinda mean to say “oh she probably just forgot her line” but I’m not complaining; the result has an amazing cadence and tension.
Actually, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that the script says “I hated her so much, [Madeline ad-libs]”.
If it doesn’t, then she truly ad-libbed, it was seen to be perfection, and then they shot the reaction shots to suit. Either way, perfection it is.
From the Buzzfeed article about Clue that I’ve read a few times because it goes into the sort of loving nerdy detail that I adore (http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/something-terrible-has-happened-here-the-crazy-story-of-how#.mqEkXYr8P):
In point of fact, while Lynn certainly allowed for a loose and convivial set, he exercised the most control when it came to his script. “Jonathan is a by-the-book guy, and if it was written, that was the way we did it,” says Mull. “For Madeline, of course, that’s like telling Cicero not to speak, you know what I mean?” Indeed, while most Hollywood comedies today are often largely improvised, all the actors I spoke to said there was really only one time Lynn allowed anyone to significantly break from the screenplay: Madeline Kahn’s “Flames on the side of my face” speech.
It lasts only 20 seconds, but for many Clue faithful, this is The Moment, when the movie passes through the threshold from genuine enjoyment to something approaching love […] “All that was written was, ‘I hated her so much that I wanted to kill her,’ or something like that,” says McKean, still smiling from the memory. “But she just kind of went into a fugue about hatred. She did it three or four times, and each time was funnier than the last. I thought that they could have strung a bunch of them together because they had plenty of cutaways of all of us going, What the fuck is she talking about?”
How everything just stops and Madeline just keeps everyone on their toes with that line. How truthful it is to be filled with that much rage for someone that you can’t even explain it.
It makes me think of how music has rests to highlight and give dramatic tension to the notes.
Is now a good time to share the story of the time my best friend played Mrs. White in our high school’s production of Clue?
It was the scene where Mrs. White and Wadsworth search the second floor while everyone else searches various other floors, and meanwhile the Motorist is murdered. I forgot exactly what was happening at the time, but someone missed a cue and Wadsworth and Mrs. White were standing there having to improvise –
WADSWORTH: I don’t want to go in there much.
MRS WHITE: Are you scared of the dark Wadsworth?
WADWORTH: No, not of the dark, of you! You’ve emasculated someone before –
MRS WHITE: Oh, don’t worry about that, Wadsworth. In your case, it wouldn’t be a very BIG loss.
WADSWORTH, DEAD MOTORIST, ENTIRE CAST AND CREW: *trying to lose their shit as quietly as possible*
I nearly missed MY next cue on the lightboard because I was laughing so hard. I think this was early on in our run (or a dress rehearsal? Idk) so of course the line had to stay in for the next performances.
I still can’t believe admin let us get away with that one.
amazing [applause emoji x 100]
When I was in high school, a few friends and I were in a theatrical adaptation of Clue, and all I want is the video footage, because I can’t imagine how weird it must have been.
I was a 16-year-old Mrs. White who made out with Mr. Boddy at the cast party because OBVIOUSLY.
The best thing I’ve ever seen about this was Michael McKean telling the story of that scene in a 2013 retrospective for Buzzfeed:
“All that was written was, ‘I hated her so much that I wanted to kill her,’ or something like that,” says McKean, still smiling from the memory. “But she just kind of went into a fugue about hatred. She did it three or four times, and each time was funnier than the last. I thought that they could have strung a bunch of them together because they had plenty of cutaways of all of us going, What the fuck is she talking about?”
So, Mull’s confused look is genuine here. I love it.
Complete story, aptly titled Something Terrible Has Happened Here! http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/something-terri…
GOD I LOVE THAT ARTICLE. I go back and reread it periodically because it makes me happy. (I independently linked someone to that very passage elsewhere in the comments.) Related: I have spent hours reading The Annotated Pratchett on L-Space.
As has been noted by previous commenters more observant than myself: This is an amazing and rare example in film of something most of us experience quite often: A simple inability to find the WORDS because… well… flames on the side of your face, is why. In a movie chock-full of hilarious Bits, this is a Moment.
I absolutely quote this the most, but that's probably just because loathing something so much you lose words is a thing that happens in real life. If I happened to be employed as a butler though, oh how I would buttle.
(I once sent someone out to a 24 hour video rental store in the wee hours because the party was winding down to movie time and I had discovered none of them had seen Clue, so obviously nothing we already had in the house would do.)
Thank you for posting this. They reference this line so much at Go Fug Yourself that I was starting to think that Heather & Jessica came up with it themselves. It was bothering me, “did they make that up? Haven’t I heard it before? Where have i heard it?” I haven’t seen Clue since it came out in theaters so safe to say I never would have remembered.
MALLORY SAVES THE DAY AGAIN!
I dressed up as Mrs. White for Halloween this year. I watched this clip over and over so I could try to imitate her but I couldn't do it justice. I practically REHEARSED this scene for my friend's Halloween party. Just goes to show that Madeline Kahn is a precious land mermaid that no one can copy. That's why, for me, this scene is amazing.
Oh, that's a shame! It's available for streaming in Netflix UK.
From the Buzzfeed article about Clue that I've read a few times because it goes into the sort of loving nerdy detail that I adore (http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/something-terrible-has-happened-here-the-crazy-story-of-how#.mqEkXYr8P):
In point of fact, while Lynn certainly allowed for a loose and convivial set, he exercised the most control when it came to his script. “Jonathan is a by-the-book guy, and if it was written, that was the way we did it,” says Mull. “For Madeline, of course, that’s like telling Cicero not to speak, you know what I mean?” Indeed, while most Hollywood comedies today are often largely improvised, all the actors I spoke to said there was really only one time Lynn allowed anyone to significantly break from the screenplay: Madeline Kahn’s “Flames on the side of my face” speech.
It lasts only 20 seconds, but for many Clue faithful, this is The Moment, when the movie passes through the threshold from genuine enjoyment to something approaching love […] “All that was written was, ‘I hated her so much that I wanted to kill her,’ or something like that,” says McKean, still smiling from the memory. “But she just kind of went into a fugue about hatred. She did it three or four times, and each time was funnier than the last. I thought that they could have strung a bunch of them together because they had plenty of cutaways of all of us going, What the fuck is she talking about?”
GOD I LOVE THAT ARTICLE. I go back and reread it periodically because it makes me happy. (I independently linked someone to that very passage elsewhere in the comments.) Related: I have spent hours reading The Annotated Pratchett on L-Space.
Clue is perfection and this line is perfection and I found out today that my coworker has never seen this and I immediately demanded we have a movie night to rectify this horrific situation.
Clue is perfection and this line is perfection and I found out today that my coworker has never seen this and I immediately demanded we have a movie night to rectify this horrific situation.