Help me remember the movie this line comes from

October 19, 2017 8:10 AM

You all always know right away the movie I'm trying to remember, but this time it's a tough one. The line: "Screw you." Yep, that's it. More inside.

So, I'm absolutely sure it is a woman who delivers the line, in reply to someone putting her down in some way. She says it in kind of a downbeat way, not as a fierce retort, but rather as a reply while hurting from the cutting remarks.

The woman has an accent like a young Madonna or Stephanie from Saturday Night Fever (I actually thought this was the movie, but a search of the script didn't turn up anything like the link I'm thinking of). More the latter than the former.

The movie can't be any more recent than ~2004 when I lost my hearing and it isn't any older than the 1970s since I don't recall the line being out of place for the contemporary setting. But I could be wrong.

I just know the line is right there in my head and I can almost reach out and grab the woman saying it, but she's just not coming to mind. Help me out, for great justice!

posted by Fukiyama to Media & Arts (18 answers total)

For some reason, I'm seeing Michelle Pfeiffer saying this, either in Married to the Mob or in Scarface. I can't figure out if I'm just making that up, though.
posted by xingcat at 8:16 AM on October 19, 2017

I don't have any evidence, but I'm getting mental mages of Annie Potts in Ghostbusters.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:48 AM on October 19, 2017

I feel like I'm hearing Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny? Or Mira Sorvino in something?
posted by CheeseLouise at 8:57 AM on October 19, 2017

Tip: if you have some ideas of the movie and you want to search for the scene, you can search movie (tran)scripts for the phrase, to ensure it was actually said and get some context. (That's a link to Springfield Springfield, which often has transcripts posted in very rough forms, so it's unclear who said what, and sometimes line breaks make it appear as if the lines were said by different individuals or at different times, when that's just a formatting issue. Other script or transcript sites may be better resources, but this one is extensive.)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:07 AM on October 19, 2017

I thought it was Mercedes Ruehl in "The Fisher King" but I can't find a clip. Could still be her though...
posted by shibori at 9:15 AM on October 19, 2017

A mysteeeeerious figure just wrote in to the contact form to suggest it could be from Clerks, at 1:18 in this segment.
posted by cortex at 9:34 AM on October 19, 2017

There's a very dramatic screw you in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though I'm on mobile and can't find the link at the moment.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 9:57 AM on October 19, 2017

Mercedes Ruehl was sure who popped into mind for me right off, but doesn't look like it's in the Fisher King shooting script if it was.
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:11 AM on October 19, 2017

Not a female actor, but we just saw Arnold Scwarznegger say this in"Total Recall" (2000) when he takes down the taxi driver. "Screw yoooooooooo!"
posted by Rube R. Nekker at 10:33 AM on October 19, 2017

Oops, wrong year, should have said 1990.
posted by Rube R. Nekker at 10:58 AM on October 19, 2017

I'm imagining Carol Kane but that might be because of her role on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
posted by fuse theorem at 11:03 AM on October 19, 2017

Grease: Rizzo to Kenickie or Sonny?
posted by freya_lamb at 12:05 PM on October 19, 2017

I feel like the adult female lead in Curly Sue might have said this. Kelly Lynch I think?
posted by BlueBear at 12:24 PM on October 19, 2017

In the Rocky movie, Marie says it to Rocky.
posted by Jubey at 4:13 PM on October 19, 2017

xingcat: I've never seen Married to the Mob or Scarface.

under_petticoat_rule: Not a bad guess, but Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies. I'm pretty sure it's not that.

CheeseLouise: Marisa in My Cousin Vinny merits more investigation my part. Thanks for the idea! It's not Mira, I've only seen a couple of her movies and those only once. Not enough to stick in my mind years later.

filthy light thief: Thanks for the lead. The site you link to didn't give me any results, but I'll check some of the others

shibori: I have never seen The Fisher King. :(

cortex: Never seen Clerks either. :(

pretentious illiterate: Not Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Never been a Liz+Richard fan.

dlugoczaj: Haven't seen The Fisher King, yeah. I always try to make sure what I'm looking at is a transcript. It's funny how even shooting scripts can be incomplete due to ad libbed lines and such.

Rube R. Nekker: Hahaha, no, not the Terminator. :D

fuse theorem: I've only really seen her in Annie Hall and License to Drive. But her voice is not far off from what I have in mind. Good idea, but not what I'm thinking of.

freya_lamb: Ack, no! I've only seen Grease all the way through once in my life. ;)

BlueBear: Not Kelly, no. Definitely not a beautiful blond.

Jubey: She does, but Marie's part is way too small. I'm quite certain it the female lead of the movie.

Thanks everyone for suggestions so far. I will check out the ones I think are possibilities. No doubt once I remember or am reminded, it will feel like a two by four to my head, it will be so obvious.
posted by Fukiyama at 5:25 PM on October 19, 2017

I was also going to say, A League of Their Own is coming to mind. Maybe the younger sister Kit to the Geena Davis character?

Need to find a good script site that has it.
posted by Fukiyama at 5:26 PM on October 19, 2017

Is it any of these on Yarn? - it's a great tool for finding specific video clips, though it doesn't have everything.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:14 PM on October 19, 2017

If anyone is monitoring activity, let me run this by you:

In the penultimate episode of the season of House MD when House is seeing Dead Amber, in the argument that leads to where House hallucinates sleeping with Cuddy, House says something nasty to Cuddy about her adopted daughter and Cuddy replies, "Screw you."

Am I remembering this right?
posted by Fukiyama at 5:05 PM on December 7, 2017