I love books and I love movies, but sometimes I do not like the transition from one to the other.  I’m not one of those people who think that the book will be “absolutely ruined” if the movie takes a few creative liberties, but some changes really really irk me.  I’m not sure why, but it’s possibly because I have too much time on my hands and no friends so must reassure myself that I’m better than others because of my superior book knowledge.  At any rate, here are the top five misquoted quotes that annoy me the most:

1. Nobody said: “Run Forrest, Run!” – Forrest Gump (1994)

Whenever anyone’s running to catch a bus, running to get to work on time, or running away from ravenous bears, chances are their smart-ass friends are on the sidelines shouting, “Run, Forrest! Run!”  Always in that really annoying voice, too.

In the movie, it all starts with Jenny Curran, Forrest Gump’s supporter/sort-of girlfriend.  Gump’s being teased relentlessly about his leg braces.  Jenny shouts at him to “Run, Forrest! Run!”  And he does.  He runs from the bullies, he runs across America, he runs through the forests of Vietnam.

In the book, he likes to run.  Running gets him away from mean kids and wins him a football scholarship.  He does use his speed and strength in Vietnam.  But it’s not that huge of a deal.  He’s not a cripple with leg braces who is magically cured by the “Run, Forrest, run!” chant.

Among the top contenders for worse misuse of this quote is Fight Club, the movie.  In one scene, Tyler Durden holds a gun up to someone’s head threatening bad news unless they got their life together.  When he drops the gun, the guy runs and Tyler shouts after him, you guessed it, “Run, Forrest! Run!”  Which is a total meta-mistake, because it’s not in the book Fight Club.  So we have one movie using a line that’s not in the book to quote another movie’s line which isn’t in that book.  Brilliant!

2. Forrest Gump’s Mother Never Said: “Life is like a box of chocolates…” – Forrest Gump (1994)

Whenever you’ve had a bad day and someone is trying to cheer you up, or whenever something negative unexpectedly happens, or whenever one of your annoying friends is trying to be clever, you’ll hear this.  “Life is like a box of chocolates.”  And then the punchline, said in the same irritating tone: “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Maybe it’s the voice people quote it in that gets me.  I don’t mind Forrest’s voice in the movie and I don’t mind the spelling changes in the book to portray his accent and intelligence level, but I hate the voice everyone uses to mimic him.  And also, once you hear it, it never never goes away.  Seriously, I can’t even write either of these Gump quotes without hearing the horrible, condescending forced southern/idiot drawl of friends who don’t have anything better to do than quote movies instead of books.

What especially bothers me is that in the book, his mother does mention chocolates, and she does compare life to them.  Only the quote is, “Life isn’t a box of chocolates.”

Also, boxes of chocolate totally come with a pamphlet describing each chocolate.

3.  Gandalf Never Said: “You Shall Not Pass!” – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

I‘m guilty of it, too:  Whenever I’m holding a stick of any sort, I plant it firmly in front of me and declare in my best Gandalf voice that “You shall not pass!!”  Recently I even drew a stick-figure of Gandalf on one of my exams with a “You shall not pass” speech bubble.

In the book, the line is “You cannot pass!”  I’m sure there are some serious linguistic discussions of the meaning of “shall not” vs. the meaning of “cannot.”  Cannot seems like the stronger word to me, but shall not sounds more Middle Earth-y.  But, really, they’re basically the same thing, right?  So why did Peter Jackson have to go and change what was already a perfectly good quote?

4. Rhett Butler Never Said: “Frankly, My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn.” – Gone with the Wind (1939)

Speaking of changing a perfectly good quote, Rhett never said “Frankly” in the book Gone With the Wind.  It was just “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”  The “frankly” makes it sound sarcastic and mean, but in the book Rhett was actually having an honest and quietly emotional moment with Scarlett O’Hara.  He’d loved her all along and throughout the book Scarlett was always pining after other boys.  When she finally realizes she loves him, he’s grown sick of her flightly complicated ways and doesn’t care anymore.  Adding that one little word, “frankly,” to the quote cheapens it, makes it less sad and more like just a clever comeback.

In 2005, the American Film Institute voted “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” as the number one movie line of all time.

5. Dorothy never said: “There’s No Place Like Home” – The Wizard of Oz (1939)

At least not while clicking her heels together.  Also, she didn’t wear ruby slippers — they were silver.  The color change was probably so they’d look flashier in the colored world of Oz.  Since black and white represents her non-magical life, they wanted everything in the magical land to pop.  And I guess silver just didn’t make that cut.

In the book, she doesn’t click these silver shoes together three times and say, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”  Much less dramatic, in the book the magic words that took her back to Kansas were demanding and straightforward: “Take me home to Aunt Em!”

Which, even if it doesn’t have the same flair as “there’s no place like home,” still sounds much more like what a little girl would say at the end of a long day in a strange place.  But I guess that’s show-biz for  you.

Those are my top 5 worst contenders.  What are yours?  Surely I’m not the only one fighting this brave battle against misquoted movies!