The Coen Brothers have been writing some of the very best dialogue in Hollywood for decades. Joel and Ethan Coen's comedies have some truly outrageous lines and that's what this list is dedicated to. These are just a few of the most hilarious lines in the Coen Brothers canon.
Obviously You're Not A Golfer - The Big Lebowski
When Jackie Treehorn's thugs break into The Dude's house, one picks up a bowling ball and asks what it is. The Dude (Jeff Bridges) looks at him and wonders aloud what sport the ball belongs to.
Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404? - Fargo
One of the things that makes Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) so great is how wholesome she is. She even loves to tell dad jokes! For a future mother, that's going to come in handy.
What Evelle here is trying to say is that we felt that the institution no longer had anything to offer us. - Raising Arizona
Gale Snoats (John Goodman) and his brother Evelle (William Forsythe) are recently escaped convicts when they burst into the door to H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and Ed's (Holly Hunter) trailer. Although, if you listen to Gale tell it, they aren't escaped so much as liberated.
I like the smell of my hair treatment; the pleasing odor is half the point. - O Brother Where Art Thou?
A Dapper Dan man, as Everett (George Clooney) is, won't except just any brand of pomade. It's important for a man like Everett to smell as good as he looks and anything other than Dapper Dan just won't work.
So you went and married old Norm son of a Gunderson. - Fargo
Mike Yanagita (Steve Park) is one of the best side characters in any Coen Brothers movie. His nickname for Marge's wife is amazing.
Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. - The Big Lebowski
This is a list we could make up using only quotes from The Big Lebowski, and this one is among the best. Especially if you're not into the whole brevity, which The Dude clearly is not.
...and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand. - Raising Arizona
H.I.'s cellmate in prison doesn't have many lines, but the few he does have are aces. Like the time he was explaining to H.I. what it was like to grow up poor. They lived on a diet of... sand.
No. No, I'm sorry, I don't know the number to, uh, my savings account because believe it or not I don't spend my entire day sitting around trying to memorize the numbers to my bank accounts! Moron! - Burn After Reading
John Malkovich's character in Burn After Reading is very angry, pretty much all of the time. This isn't more clear than when he runs out of patience with a co-worker at CIA. He doesn't have a lot of patience for anyone else, either.
He was just funny looking. More than most people even. - Fargo
The two girls that Marge meets at the bar in the course of her investigation in Fargo are priceless. They are full of hilarious dialogue, but when one of them talks about how "funny looking" Steve Buscemi's character is, the scene hits its crescendo.
You can't display a toad in a fine restaurant like this! Why, the good folks here would go right off the feed! - O Brother Where Art Thou?
After mistakenly believing John Turturro's character has been turned into a toad, Everett takes offense to their compadre taking the amphibian into a restaurant while they eat. And you know what? He's not wrong. Leave the toad outside, or at least in the box.
Walter, I love you, but sooner or later, you're going to have to face the fact you're a moron. - The Big Lebowski
The Dude puts up with a lot of nonsense from Walter (John Goodman). At several points, he seems like he can't put up with the Vietnam vet anymore, and the scene in the car as they go to deliver the ransom money is one of them. Walter is a moron, most of the time. This affects all of us, man.
6787049A/6. That is your employee number. It will not be repeated! Without your employee number you cannot get your paycheck. - The Hudsucker Proxy
In a lot of ways, The Hudsucker Proxy is the peak of the Coens' absurdist side. This is seen clearly when Tim Robbin's character starts working in the mail room and has to dodge incoming letters and people while his new boss screams out the rules and regulations. It's about the worst place on the earth to work.
Objection, Your Honor: strangling the witness. - Intolerable Cruelty
The courtroom scene in Intolerable Cruelty is so over-the-top it pushes the envelope even by Coen Brothers standards. When one of the parties in the divorce has had enough and explodes over the witness stand to get out a hostile witness, the opposing council is helpless to do anything but object.
I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man. - The Big Lebowski
One of the most iconic lines in The Big Lebowski comes as The Dude is arguing with the millionaire Jeffery Lebowski and spits out a line he'd learned earlier in the movie when President George H.W. Bush said the same thing on TV about Saddam's invasion into Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash ya got. - Raising Arizona
H.I. just can't escape his criminal background in Raising Arizona and when he gets desperate he falls back on his old bad habits. It's one of the funniest scenes in the movie, too.
We had a deal here for nineteen-five. You sat there and darned if you didn't tell me you'd get me this car, these options, without the sealant for nineteen-five. - Fargo
Jerry Lundergaard (William H. Macy) is swarming and hapless all at the same time and one scene that really brings that home is when he's getting yelled out by a customer to whom he is trying to sell a car. Everyone can empathize with the upset man.
Appearances can be... deceptive. - Burn After Reading
Brad Pitt isn't a regular in Coen Brothers movies, but he is hilarious in Burn After Reading. The scene in the car as he is trying to blackmail John Malkovich's character is the best. The way keeps narrowing his eyes to deliver his threats is just perfect for the character.
Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax... - The Big Lebowski
John Goodman's character Walter is serious about his Jewish faith and in one scene in his van, as he is breaking the Sabbath, he explains to The Dude exactly why he is living in the past and how is "as Jewish as Tevye" from Fiddler On The Roof.
We thought you was a toad! - O Brother Where Art Thou?
No one is more relieved than Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) when it turns out Pete (John Turturro) hasn't been transformed at all, and that he is not, in fact, a toad.
Say, buddy, what takes fifty years to get up to the top floor, and thirty seconds to get down? Waring Hudsucker! Ya get it, buddy? - The Hudsucker Proxy
Buzz, the elevator operator, is the most annoying kind of person, one with terrible jokes that come out of his mouth in an endless stream. Still, he's pretty hilarious for those of us who are just watching The Hudsucker Proxy.
Is this your homework, Larry? - The Big Lebowski
Larry Sellers stonewalls Walter but good in The Big Lebowski when Walter is trying to investigate just what happened to The Dude's car. He knows it's Larry's homework, but he doesn't know anything else.
And then he calls me a jerk, and says that the last guy who thought he was a jerk is dead now. So I don't say nothin' and he says, "What do ya think about that?" So I says, "Well, that don't sound like too good a deal for him, then." - Fargo
A big part of the charm of Fargo is the wholesome goodness of the characters we meet over the course of Marge's investigation. Like the guy who had a run-in with the two kidnappers, but just couldn't bring himself to use the swear words the bad guys used.
Those boys desecrated a burning cross! - O Brother Where Art Thou?
You can't set a movie in the South during the Depression without a few racists, and the Coens sure were deft at making them both cartoonish and despicable, exactly what people like are should be made to look like. Like the man trying to slam the Soggy Bottom Boys, but only sounds like a fool doing it.
I don't know - they were jammies! They had Yodas 'n' stuff on 'em! - Raising Arizona
Dads don't always notice what decorates their kids' pajamas and Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) is no exception. The way he describes the jammies is wonderful. Because, you know, it's stuff kids have on their jammies!
Oh, for Pete's sake! For Pete's sake, he's fleeing the interview. He's fleeing the interview! - Fargo
In Fargo, not only is Marge just the sweetest woman to her friends and family, but she is also an extremely capable cop. Sure, it comes across as innocence to some, but she doesn't miss anything, especially the obvious like Jerry trying to make a run for it from the dealership.
What would Ed and little angel do if a truck came along and splattered your brains all over the interstate? Or got carried off with a twister? - Raising Arizona
Ed's best friend in Raising Arizona, Dot, played by Frances McDormand, is just full of hard questions for Ed and H.I. including asking the ridiculous one of what would happen if H.I. went out like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Sure you could and yet many writers do everything in their power to insulate themselves from the common man, from where they live, from where they trade, from where they fight and love and converse and... and... So naturally their work suffers and regresses into empty formalism and... well, I'm spouting off again, but to put it in your language, the theatre becomes as phony as a three-dollar bill. - Barton Fink
Barton Fink was the first foray for the Coens into more serious stuff, but they never really escape their absurdist nature. This line from the movie, delivered by Fink himself, isn't funny-haha as much as it is funny-sad. Just like Fink.
Two thousand years after Jesus, thirty years after Martin Luther King, the age of Montel; sweet Lord of mercy is that where we at? - The Ladykillers
The Ladykillers gets a bad rap, but it's a better movie than most people give it credit for. Well, at least the opening scene is when Marva files her complaint about the neighbors being too loud and playing that "hippity hop" music. It's even disturbing her dead husband.
Pete, the personal rancor reflected in that remark I don't intend to dignify with comment. But I would like to address your general attitude of hopeless negativism. Consider the lilies of the field or... hell! Take at look at Delmar here as your paradigm of hope. - O Brother Where Art Thou?
What makes this line delivered by George Clooney in O Brother Where Are Thou? so great is how quickly it shows just how loquacious his character is. It's really the key to the whole movie.
Manolo, you DIDN'T find this. - Burn After Reading
Poor Manolo. No matter how many times Brad Pitt's character explains to him what he's supposed to say about the CD he found, Manolo just doesn't understand.
Say that reminds me. - Raising Arizona
Dot's husband Glen (Sam McMurray) is one of most obnoxious characters in the whole Coen canon, and that is really saying something. Say, that reminds me, why does he need to start every question and comment and bad joke by saying that??
I've always found that writing comes from a great inner pain. - Barton Fink
This might not be funny to everyone, but for those of who are writers, well...we get it.
