Original subtitles

>> Speaker 1: While most of Hollywood history is written with scripts,

there's something special about going off book.

And we're not just talking single lines.

It's gotta be a back and forth, give and take, entire scenes.

These are the top ten improvised scenes of all time.

>> [MUSIC]

>> Speaker 1: When you think of improv,

there's hardly a name that comes to mind before Judd Apatow's.

Judd's been behind some of the decade's best ad libbing,

from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, to Knocked Up, to Superbad.

And it's mostly because he treats his actors like true equals in

the creative process.

As a result,

he's helped launch the careers of some of the funniest guys in Hollywood.

But for our list, we didn't pick any of them.

Instead, our number 10 goes to the women in Bridesmaids.

>> Speaker 2: No carry-on?

>> Speaker 3: No.

>> Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed.

I noticed you didn't put anything in the overhead bin either.

And I get it, I get it.

I want you to know.

Protect and serve, Air Marshal style.

>> Speaker 1: The 2011 breakout was hysterical from start to finish.

Partly because of the killer script,

but mostly because they usually tossed it out the window.

Coming up with enough material for

a 20 hour version of the movie that supposedly exists somewhere.

And while the whole cast deserves a spot on this list,

we've gotta give it up to the Air Marshal scene between Groundlings veteran

Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone.

>> Speaker 4: You're an errand boy,

sent by grocery clerks.

>> [MUSIC]

>> Speaker 4: To collect the bill.

>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 9, Apocalypse Now.

If you haven't heard the stories,

you should definitely check out Hearts of Darkness, the making-of documentary.

But it was a basically a year of heart attacks, seizures, typhoons,

monsoons, actual war, and human corpses that drove the entire cast and

crew to the breaking point.

It also led to a cinematic masterpiece and

some of the best improvised scenes to boot.

And these weren't necessarily improv of invention so much as of last resort.

Martin Sheen's opening scene was completely improvised and had him actually

slicing his hand up because of his not so pretend intoxication.

But we've gotta hand it to Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz for our number 9 slot.

Of course, Brando's no stranger to improv.

His famous monologue from On the Waterfront wasn't scripted either.

>> Speaker 5: I could've been a contender.

>> Speaker 1: But for Apocalypse Now, Brando showed up on set without having so

much as read the script.

He shut down the production for a week,

while Coppola tried to get him to learn his lines by reading them to him out loud.

And when that didn't work, Brando said he'd just wing it.

So he babbled for 18 minutes worth of madness before declaring to Coppola that

he couldn't think of anything else to say.

And if he wanted more, he could hire another actor.

>> Speaker 6: Is it better to be feared or respected?

And I say, is it too much to ask for both?

>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 8,

we're looking at pretty much the entirety of Iron Man.

That's right, Robert Downey Jr's motormouth Tony Stark

was pretty much completely off the cuff.

When studio executives greenlit the first entry into the modern Marvel franchise,

they got a little too caught up in the special effects to worry about the script.

By the time shooting rolled around, all they really had was an outline.

So RDJ and director Jon Favreau sort of just winged it.

And when Jeff Bridges had trouble wrapping his head around the chaos of it all,

he says he just thought of it as a $200 million student film and

rolled with the punches.

>> [NOISE] >> Speaker 1: That's some student film.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Speaker 7: Wait a minute,

wait a minute.

You ain't heard nothing yet.

>> Speaker 1: At number 7, The Jazz Singer.

Back in 1927, when Warner Brothers set out to revolutionize the movie business

with sound, they figured it would be perfect for musical numbers.

They intended for people to sing, not talk.

But when Al Jolson finished his first musical number,

he did something that changed Hollywood forever.

He started speaking.

That's right, the whole concept of dialog came from an ad lib.

As you can imagine, audiences ate it up.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

>> [MUSIC]

>> Speaker 1: Next up at number 6, none other than Bill Murray.

Mr. Murray seems to be more myth than manly lately and for good reason.

He's one of the most effortlessly funny human beings on the planet.

After training at Second City improv, Bill went from National Lampoon to

Saturday Night Live, to his breakout role in Meatballs.

And he's been crafting scenes on the fly ever since.

Whether he was ad libbing every line in Ghostbusters.

>> Speaker 8: I feel so funky.

>> Speaker 1: Stealing the show in Tootsie.

>> Speaker 9: I wish I had a theater that was only open when it rained.

>> Speaker 1: Or whispering something we'll never know into Scarlett Johansson's

ear in Lost in Translation.

>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Speaker 1: Bill improvised most

of the classic comedy moments from our childhood.

But for our pick, it's gotta be his Cinderella story from Caddyshack.

>> Speaker 10: What an incredible Cinderella story.

This unknown comes out of nowhere to lead the pack at Augusta.

He's at his final hole.

He's about 455 yards away.

He's gonna hit about a 2-iron, I think.

Cinderella story, out of nowhere.

A former greenskeeper, now about to become the Masters champion.

[SOUND] It looks like a mirac, it's in the hole.

>> Speaker 1: The scene was scripted with only two lines of stage direction and

meant as a simple transition shot.

But the director, Bill's Second City co-star Harold Ramis,

had a different idea and told Bill Murray to go wild.

Which is exactly what he did.

Now if you give Bill Murray and

Harold Ramis two lines of stage direction, you end up with a scene like that.

But if you give it Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese,

you're bound to wind up with something completely different.

And that's exactly how we ended up with the famous mirror sequence from

Taxi Driver.

>> Speaker 11: You talking to me?

>> Speaker 11: You talking to me?

>> Speaker 1: But for our number 5,

we're going with a different Scorsese improve scene.

Yes, we're talking about the funny how scene between Joe Pesci and

Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.

>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 12: You're really funny.

>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 12: You're really funny.

>> Speaker 13: What do you mean I'm funny?

>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 13: It's funny, that story,

it's funny, you're a funny guy.

>> Speaker 12: What do you mean funny?

Funny, how?

How am I funny?

>> Speaker 1: When Pesci told Scorsese a story about calling a mobster funny back

when he was younger, Scorsese told him to recreate the incident on screen with Ray.

The only catch was, that he didn't tell anybody else.

The resulting scene perfectly captures the manic nature of Pesci's character, and

the danger of the world they lived in, all without a single page of script.

At number 4, The Breakfast Club.

John Hughes shot this high school classic entirely in sequence.

And when he arrived at the dramatic climax, where they all sit in circle and

explain how they ended up there, Hughes tossed out the script and

told them to improvise it.

Letting the actors rely on the instincts they'd built up

over the course of the shoot.

And the result is one of the most touching scenes of the film.

And we don't wanna give too much away, so we'll just let them do the talking.

>> Speaker 14: What's bizarre?

I mean, we're all pretty bizarre.

Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.

>> Speaker 15: How are you bizarre?

>> Speaker 16: He can't think for himself.

>> Speaker 1: Now if there's one genre that's just a gold mine for

improv, it's mockumentary.

Borat saw Sacha Baron Cohen unleash his wild

Kazakhstani antics on an unsuspecting public.

And Christopher Guest has directed a long string of mockumentaries from Waiting for

Guffman to Best in Show.

But our number 3, goes back to where it all began with This Is Spinal Tap.

>> Speaker 17: It's such a fine line between stupid and-

>> Speaker 18: Clever.

>> Speaker 1: Completely unscripted and based on a party gag,

Rob Reiner shot Spinal Tap exactly as if it were a documentary.

Taking nine whole months to essentially write the movie in the edit bay.

But if we had to pick a single scene from Spinal Tap, even though there are so

many, it's always gotta be the one with the amp that goes to 11.

>> Speaker 17: This is a top to what we use on stage, but

it's very, very special because, if you can see.

>> Speaker 18: Yeah.

>> Speaker 17: The numbers all go to 11.

One louder.

>> Speaker 18: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and

make that a little louder?

>> Speaker 17: These go to 11.

>> Speaker 1: Kubrick's widely known as one of the most meticulous and

controlling directors to ever walk a set.

Hardly letting anyone change so much as a single line.

But if you look at his body of work,

he's gotta surprising amount of improv throughout.

>From Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove.

>> Speaker 19: Mein Fuhrer!

I can walk!

>> Speaker 1: To R Lee Ermey's nonstop abuse in Full Metal Jacket.

>> Speaker 20: I bet you're the kinda guy that would [SOUND] a person in the ass and

not even have the God damn common courtesy to give him a reach around.

>> Speaker 1: And even Nicholson's classic line from The Shining.

>> Speaker 21: Here's Johnny.

>> Speaker 1: But our number 2 goes to the home invasion from A Clockwork Orange.

>> Speaker 22: I'm singin' in the- >> [SOUND]

>> Speaker 22: Just singin' in the rain.

What a glorious feeling.

I'm happy again.

>> Speaker 1: Kubrick had spent four days working on the scene and

still felt that something wasn't working.

Frustrated, he asked Malcolm McDowell if he could try something else,

perhaps a dance, in the next take.

So McDowell decided to include a song with his dance.

And he belted out the only one he could remember at the time, which just so

happened to be Singin' In The Rain.

The result is one of the eeriest juxtapositions caught on film.

And it just so happened to be completely unplanned.

And finally at number 1,

pretty much the entire body of work of the master of improv himself, Robin Williams.

We're sad to let him go but grateful for the laughs he left behind.

Here's to Robin.

>> Speaker 23: Good morning, Vietnam!

10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck.

Hello.

She used to fart in her sleep.

>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 23: One night it was so loud,

it woke the dog.

What's the weather like out there?

It's hot, damn hot, real hot!

Hottest things is my shorts.

I can cook things in it.

Well, can you tell me what it feels like?

Fool, it's hot! I told you again. Were you born on the sun? >> [MUSIC]

>> Speaker 23: Son of a bitch.

Stole my line.

>> Speaker 1: So what do you think?

Did we leave out one of your favorite improv scenes?

Did you find one of our picks to be wildly overrated?

Let us know in the comments below and subscribe to Cinefix for

more Indiewire movie lists.

>> [MUSIC]