“Greed is all right” — the forerunner of “Greed is good”

Wall Street whiz Ivan Boesky was riding high in 1986. During the early 1980s, he’d made hundreds of millions of dollars trading stocks, doing real estate deals and masterminding leverage…

“I coulda been a contender!”

When On the Waterfront was first released to American movie theaters on July 28, 1954, the film’s director, Elia Kazan, was worried about how well it would do on opening…

“Houston, we have a problem” — and “failure is not an option”…

On June 30, 1995, the movie Apollo 13 was released to theaters in the US. This epic film about the near-disastrous Apollo 13 lunar mission in April 1970 was directed…

“It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast!”

I have a nostalgic fondness for one the most famous movie quotations uttered by the great comic actor W.C. Fields: “It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast!”…

The story behind the phrase “The Year of Living Dangerously”

Google has a cool tool for researchers of words and phrases (including quotations) called the Ngram Viewer. It graphs the occurrence of a word or phrase in books published between…

“Luke, I am your father!” — the most famous movie misquote ever?

On May 21, 1980, The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the original Star Wars movie trilogy, had an initial release at a limited number of theaters in the…

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”

On April 6, 1968, director Stanley Kubrick’s visionary science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey was released to movie theaters nationwide in the United States. The film, developed from the…

The story behind the famous movie misquote: “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

On March 25, 1932, the classic film Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, premiered in New York City. The famous movie misquote associated with…

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

I’m a big fan of the Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather and the movie that was made from it in 1972. I am also a big fan of vintage…

“Life is like a box of chocolates” – the misquote that launched a thousand variations…

Here’s another “Guest Post” from my QuoteCounterquote.com blog… THE FAMOUS MOVIE QUOTE: “My mama always said, life was like a box a chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”…