Those three words

Some movies have scenes so great that they supercede everything else in the movie. One of the main ingredients to make said scene great- dialogue. The 90's found us sitting in coffee shops listening to people talk about tipping and when we weren't busy eavesdropping on a conversation about someone being thrown out of a window on account of a foot massage we were strapped in our chair getting chewed out by a boss from hell that drove a Hyundai to work. Because that's who the fuck he is. The reject misfit of the pack was a short stocky comic book nerd by the name of Kevin Smith. His movie Clerks ended up turning heads at Sundance and of course would hit cult status. He would follow it up with the forgettable Mallrats. A movie that had some laughs but fell short in the race of wit.

Chasing Amy saw Smith already breaking away from the confines that bound him. The film ended up being a nailbomb in the face of trite romantic comedies. Woody Allen will always remain the benchmark for dialogue regarding relationships and the oh so many roads they take. But the 90's in a way gave us two great scenes of honest dialogue about relationships that didn't come off as sentimental hogwash. The first being a scene in The Fisher King involving Robin Williams reminding Amanda Plummer that he doesn't drink coffee. The second was this:



Smith wouldn't reach this level of dialogue again until 2011, when he unleashed Red State and sat us down in pews to listen to the sermon of Abin Cooper. A speech so well crafted it could belong to the Tarantino school of screenwriting.