Confession? I don't like monologues. I'll even say that monologues detract from any film or play that features them.

The sole function of a monologue is to grab the audience by the lapel and say "you know that symbolism and allegory we've been wafting at you for an hour and a half? Sit down, we have a spoon. Yes, now open wide. Wider. WIDER. There. Now there can be no confusion."

Quint's speech - "I'm an old man that's seen a lot of shit. Here, I have depth."

Goonies - "In case you missed it, we're oppressed but this is an adventure all about us."

American President - "people are mostly stupid, they follow charisma."

Network - "TV is bad, mmmkay?"

Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now - "Marlon Brando is a visionary, also dangerously crazy."

Monologues pretty much exist for the screenwriter to go "Fuck show don't tell! I do words for a living goddamn it!" And the most egregious of them monologue the fuck out of everything. John Milius? Good grief. That's Quint's Speech, Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, James Earl Jones in Conan and the "half a million chinamen" in Red Dawn. Paddy Chayefski? Sweet jesus the dude could ramble.

It's such a pernicious problem that the actors won't do roles unless there's a big juicy monologue because we've got this idea that if there isn't a bolus of Shakespearean bombast in it somewhere, it isn't a movie. William Broyles managed to write Cast Away without a single monologue. Nothing. The whole thing is this beautiful, light, show-don't-tell thing of pure, unabashed emotion and then Tom Hanks gets ahold of it and decides he's not going to get an oscar for talking to a volleyball for three hours so they weld this shit on:

It's like the Cliff's Notes of the movie. We know, Tom. We've been sitting here for three hours watching it happen.

Wanna see it done right? Here's Dennis Hopper's all-time favorite role - he said as much on Inside the Actor's Studio. To set it up - this is 10 minutes into the film. We've never met this character before. And he's the first adult we've seen in the movie, other than the back of Keanu Reeves' mom's head and a clerk selling beer:

Or hey - here's William Goldman (Princess Bride, All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy)'s big brother, showing how to give actors dialogue they love, to each other:

Worth seeing purely for "Introducing Anthony Hopkins as Richard the Lionheart" but also to watch Catherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole hate each other marvelously. And yes, that is Timothy "The Living Daylights" Dalton.