8 Best Oliver Stone Monologues

Wall Street (Gordon Gekko)

Wall Street (Gordon Gekko)

Category: Movie Role: Gordon Gekko From: Wall Street

Well, I appreciate the opportunity you’re giving me Mr. Cromwell as the single largest shareholder in Teldar Paper, to speak. Well, ladies and gentlemen we’re not here to indulge in fantasy but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company! All together, these men sitting up here own less than three percent of the company. And where does Mr. Cromwell put his million-dollar salary? Not in Teldar stock; he owns less than one percent. You own the company. That’s right, you, the stockholder. And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes. … Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I’ll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Scarface (Tony Montana)

Scarface (Tony Montana)

Category: Movie Role: Tony Montana From: Scarface

You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you? Watching everything you do? Everything you say, man? Do you know I eat octopus three times a day? I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears. I got the fuckin’ Russian shoes my feet’s comin’ through. How you like that? What, you want me to stay there and do nothing? Hey, I’m no fuckin’ criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fuckin’ human rights, now! …

Platoon (Private Chris Taylor)

Platoon (Private Chris Taylor)

Category: Movie Role: Private Chris Taylor From: Platoon

Of course Mom and Dad didn’t want me to come here, they wanted me to be just like them. Respectable, hardworking, a little house, a family. They drove me crazy with their goddamn world Grandma, you know, Mom, I guess I’ve always been sheltered and special. I just wanted to be anonymous like everybody else. Do my share for my country, live up to what Grandpa did in the first war and Dad in the second. Well, here I am anonymous, alright, with guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line most of them. Small towns you never heard of. Palasky, Tennessee. Brandon, Mississippi. Pork Band, Utah. Wallpom, Pennsylvania. Two years high school, that’s about it. Maybe if they’re lucky, a job waiting for them. They got nothing. They’re poor, they’re the unwanted, yet they’re fighting for our society and our freedom. It’s weird, isn’t it? They’re the bottom of the barrel and they know it. Maybe that’s why they call themselves grunts. Cause a grunt can take it, can take anything. They’re the best I’ve ever seen Grandma, they’re the heart and soul.

Nixon (Richard Nixon)

Nixon (Richard Nixon)

Category: Movie Role: Richard Nixon From: Nixon

I believe Governor Brown has a heart, even though he believes I do not. I believe he’s a good American, even though he feels I am not. I’m proud of the fact that I defended my opponent’s patriotism. You gentlemen didn’t report it, but I’m proud that I did that. And I would appreciate it for once, gentlemen, if you would just print what I say. For sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case, you’ve had a lot of fun; a lot of fun. But recognize you have a responsibility, if you’re against the candidate, to give him the shaft, but if you do that, at least put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then. I think, all-in-all, I’ve given as good as I’ve taken. But as I leave you I want you to know just think what you’re gonna be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more. Uh, uh, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. Thank you and good day.

JFK (Jim Garrison)

JFK (Jim Garrison)

Category: Movie Role: Jim Garrison From: JFK

‘Treason doth never prosper,’ wrote an English poet, ‘What’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.’ The American public has yet to see the Zapruder film. Why? The American public has yet to see the real X-rays and photographs of the autopsy. Why? There are hundreds of documents that could help prove this conspiracy. Why are they being withheld or burned by the government? Each time my office or you the people have asked those questions, demanded crucial evidence, the answer from on high has always been ‘national security.’ What kind of national security do we have when we’ve been robbed of our leaders? What national security permits the removal of fundamental power from the hands of the American people and validates the ascendancy of an invisible government in the United States? That kind of national security, gentlemen of the jury, is when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it, you call it what it is: Fascism! I submit to you that what took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d’etat. Its most direct and tragic result was a reversal of President Kennedy’s commitment to withdraw from Vietnam. The war is the biggest business in America worth $80 billion a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy that was planned in advance at the highest levels of our government and it was carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA’s covert-operation apparatus. Among them, Clay Shaw, here before you. It was a public execution and it was covered up by like-minded individuals in the Dallas Police Department, the Secret Service, the FBI, and the White House – all the way up to and including J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson, whom I consider accomplices after the fact.

Born on the Fourth of July (Ron Kovic)

Born on the Fourth of July (Ron Kovic)

Category: Movie Role: Ron Kovic From: Born on the Fourth of July

Sometimes I wish, I wish I’d … The first time I got hit, I was shot in the foot. I could have laid down, I mean, who gives a fuck now if I was a hero or not? I was paralyzed, castrated that day. Why? It was all so stupid! I’d have my dick and my balls now, and some days, Timmy, some days I think I’d give everything I believe in, everything I got, all my values, just to have my body back again, just to be whole again. But I’m not whole; I never will be, and that’s, that’s the way it is, isn’t it?

Any Given Sunday (Tony D'Amato)

Any Given Sunday (Tony D’Amato)

Category: Movie Role: Tony D'Amato From: Any Given Sunday

I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I’ll tell you this, in any fight it’s the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?